My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. This is the second part of our series called The Songs We Sing. Last week, we opened up and we did Graves in the Gardens. I gave you kind of a background of worship, and I started to, it's kind of trickled into me some good feedback that you guys are excited about this series, looking forward to it, looking forward to seeing what we've been singing in the Bible, what we will be singing in the Bible. And so I am thrilled to be going through this series with you because like I said, it's one that I've been wanting to do for a while. And last week when I got done preaching and we sang together, I was so encouraged at the voices being lifted up. And this morning we'll have the same opportunity. I'm going to preach about the song that we just sang because it's pulled straight out of Psalm chapter 8. And then we'll sing it again, knowing it better, having a better understanding of what it means in a full-throated, open-hearted way. And then we'll sing some other songs that are really special to us. And then we'll go into our week. So I'm feeling really good about this Sunday. And I just feel like it's worth saying sometimes that I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful for my church. I'm so grateful for the love and the community that we experience here, for the handshakes and hugs and laughter and the lobby for the stories of the team coming back from Mexico I'm just grateful for y'all I'm grateful to be here and I'm excited to teach to you out of the book of Psalms this morning now to do a series focused on worship and to not have at least one morning out of the book of Psalms would be sacrilegious. It would be absolutely awful because Psalms is the hymn book of the Old Testament. It is the hymn book of the Hebrew people. It is intended to be sung. A vast majority of the Psalms are intended to be sung. And sometimes there's even instructions about it at the beginning of eight. You don't have to look there yet, but the very first thing it says is to the choir master, according to the Giddeth, nobody knows what that is, a Psalm of David, but they think it's a certain tune to which it's supposed to be sung. So David is even giving this to the choir master. I wrote this to praise our God. Let's sing it to this tune. Let's sing it together. A vast majority of the Psalms were written with the intention of God's body of believers singing them his words back to him, which I think is remarkable. And Psalms is a remarkable book. It sits in the dead center of our Bible. It's the longest book in the Bible with 150 chapters. It's divided into five separate books within the book of Psalms. It has the longest chapter in the Bible in Psalm 119, which comes in at, I believe, 176 verses. It's a super long chapter of the Bible because it's a beautiful Hebrew poem. There's 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and Psalm 119 has 22 stanzas, and each stanza, every line begins with that letter of the alphabet as the psalmist moves through. It's the one thing in the Bible that really makes me want to learn original Hebrew so I could hear that psalm read and sung in the original language in which it was intended because I've got a feeling that it is beautiful. I'll just wait until I get to heaven. I'm not actually going to do the work to learn Hebrew. That seems super hard. The seminary I chose, I chose it so I didn't have to learn original languages, so I'm not about to reverse course now, you know? But it's the longest book with the longest chapter, and it's filled with songs. And they're not all praise songs. They're divided up in different ways depending on who you ask and who's doing the dividing. You can find some people that divide them into five different types of Psalms, some as many as 20 and everything in between. But just a few examples of the types of Psalms that you can find in your Bible as you read through Psalms. And shame on me, I realize I haven't done a series in Psalms in the six and a half years I've been here. Shame on me for that. So I am promising you that coming up, we will do a series in Psalms at some point. But if you want to know some of the divisions of the book of Psalms, the different types that we have, there's Psalms of praise. Obviously, there's royal Psalms, Psalms of lament. And we're actually going to talk about those next week. I'm so grateful that our Bible has Psalms of lament, expressions of sadness and grief. There's what's called imprecatory psalms or psalms that are prayed and sung to seek vengeance over our enemies. David had a lot of reason to sing those. You probably don't. You probably don't have many enemies that you should sing imprecatory songs over, but they're in there. Psalms of enthronement and then psalms of pilgrimage. And I think these psalms of pilgrimage are really interesting. And I want to actually point you towards a book for my people who are readers. There's this book by a pastor named Eugene Peterson. Eugene Peterson is the pastor that faithfully translated the message to make scriptures a little bit more approachable for people who have never encountered them before. I read his biography last year, and I think it was an autobiography, a memoir, and it was one of the more moving books I've read in a long time. I was really, really touched by the heart of Eugene Peterson. And probably his most famous book is a book called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. And A Long Obedience in the Same Direction actually moves through what's called the Psalms of Ascent, this group of pilgrimage psalms And I've wanted to, that may be the Psalm series that we do. I'm either going to do it as a series as we walk through the book together, or I'm going to do it as like a Wednesday night course where those that want to come and we move through it together. But if you're a reader, I would highly encourage you to go grab or write down or put in your Goodreads, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. But in the book of Psalms, we have all these different categories. We have all these different verses. And one of the things we see that I think is remarkable is that a majority of them are written by David. They're not all written by David. There's some authors that are just referred to as the sons of Asaph. And Asaph was, I believe, the choir master, the worship leader. And then these are his sons that he has passed this responsibility down to. And they've written their own Psalms in there. But one of the remarkable things about the book of Psalms is to see the heart of David just kind of filleted open on the table for you. And I love that God in his goodness includes the Psalms to offset the other stories of David. Because if you read the story of David in 1 and 2 Samuel, you can also see the stories in 1st Kings but more of details of the story are in 1st and 2nd Samuel and if you read the story of David you see this traditionally masculine macho guy who's fighting and killing and he kills Goliath and he fights lions and bears with his bare hands which you know who hasn't and then there's a song about him him. David has killed his tens of thousands. Saul has killed his thousands. It's just like, yeah, spear-throwing, meat-eating dude. And then you open Psalms, and here's a guy that's brokenhearted. Here's a guy that's highly emotional, highly vulnerable, who displays his tears and his lament and his repentance and his hopes and his fears and his deepest prayers for all of time to see. And the juxtaposition of Psalms and 1 and 2 Samuel kind of brings together this vision of what we can be as people and how multifaceted we can be. So I'm grateful that Psalms reads almost like a prayer journal of David at times. But to me, the most remarkable thing about the book of Psalms is that when we sing the Psalms, we join in the ancient chorus of all the saints. When we sing the Psalms, we join in the ancient chorus of all the saints. And you can sing the Psalms. Write this down if you want to, if you want something else to listen to. There's this, I don't know, I guess they're just a duet, a duo, I don't know the rules, a band, Shane and Shane. And they have an album called Psalms, where they have set the Psalms to music, and it's one of my favorites. I love it. I've loved it for years and years. You can go find it. It's on Spotify. It's on all the things. And you can sing the Psalms. I would highly recommend it. When we sing the Psalms, understand this, we are joining in to an ancient chorus of all the saints. I spoke last week about how when we worship, when we praise, when we sing out, that we join our brothers and sisters in Christ in unity. It unifies us according to the high priestly prayer of Jesus in John chapter 17. When we sing together, it unifies us in this remarkable way. When we walk in Republican and Democrat, we walk in 80 and 20. We walk in stressed and not stressed, successful and not successful in a season of plenty and a season of need. And we lay all of those things down and we praise our God together and it unifies us. And I've just, I just got to tell you, I shared this with the band and the tech team before the service. But this is just a, just such a good picture of how it unifies us. if I don't say it I might die a little on the inside. So I'm just gonna have to Yesterday I was at the funeral for a friend of mine's wife 40 years old perfectly healthy Went on a girl's trip Heart heart attack, died in the bathroom. No other explanation. Incredibly sad thing. Two kids, sixth grader, third grader. So I drive down, I go to the funeral, and the husband's name, my buddy's name is Jeff. There's about 750 people in the room. And in between speakers, they put up a slideshow of Jodi and her family. And they started playing under that slideshow a song called Gratitude. We've sang it here a couple of times. It's going to be the last song that we sing this morning. They started playing Gratitude. And when that song started, Jeff, the husband who lost his wife a week ago, stood up and raised his hands in worship. And so, if you're at a funeral and the husband of the deceased woman stands up and raises his hands, you stand up and you raise your hands. So 750 people stand up and raise their hands to this song too. And then they spontaneously started singing it. And I'm six hours away from my church family, with my old church family, singing a song with myriad other church families, with our hands raised, choosing to praise in a moment of grief, and it just unifies you in a way that nothing else can. It was a remarkable moment. And when we sing it this morning, we join them and their praises to a God in spite of grief. We join Jeff in our prayers for him. We join the other congregations that sing that too. So when we sing the Psalms, we join into the ancient chorus of all the saints. Do you understand? When we sing in a few minutes, Psalm 8, back to God, we are singing it with David. We are singing it with the generations of David and Solomon and the faithful generations of Jeroboam and Rehoboam. We're singing it with Hezekiah and King Asa. We are singing it with the faithful generations, with the remnant that gets taken to Babylon. We are singing these psalms with Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego. We are singing these psalms with the Maccabees who lit the menorah in Roman oppression. We are singing these psalms with the generations that cried out in the 400 years of silence between Malachi and Matthew We are singing these songs with Jesus himself and with the disciples And with the early churches that met in the basements in Rome when we sing the Psalms We are joining with the underground churches in China and in Lebanon and in Istanbul, singing God's songs back to him. One of my favorite quotes about the Psalms is by Charles Spurgeon, and I'll tell you why he deserves to be the one who writes this in a second. Also, I'm just going to compose myself. We've got a long way to go here. This is premature. I can't afford this. I only have one tissue. Jen's laughing at me the hardest, she knows. It's been an emotional weekend. Back off. All right. Spurgeon writes this, the book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. I love that. The book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. That when we sing Psalms, we are mounted on wings of eagles and we soar in the presence of God. Now let me tell you why Spurgeon has a right to write that sentence and should rightly be pointed out in any sermon on Psalms. If you don't know who Charles Haddon Spurgeon is, he was a preacher. He was loud. He had combed back hair and a beard and a belly, and he suffered from gout, and he liked to drink whiskey. So, just saying, he was called. He was and is called the Prince of Preachers. He holds the world record for preaching to the most people in one space at one time without a microphone and being heard. One time he was preaching in an auditorium. This is in the late 1800s in London. He was preaching in an auditorium, going through what he wanted to say, and some janitor in a hallway that he couldn't see bowed on his knees right there and accepted Jesus listening to Charles go through his sermon. It's an amazing story. The volume of work of Charles Spurgeon is unbelievable. The amount of books that he wrote. You can look up any of his sermons online, and they're long, wordy, lengthy sermons. And it was said of him that people would come from all over the world to hear him preach, and what they would say is, yeah, the sermon's great, but you need to listen to the man pray. He was known all over the world. He wrote tons of books. He ran a seminary out of his church. He wrote books for the seminarians that I have, that I refer to regularly, that still help me and my approach to pastoring and preaching and all the things. But his whole life, he worked on one book that became a three-volume set called The Treasury of David. It's a commentary on the book of Psalms. And he carried it with him wherever he went. He worked on it for decades. He would work on it for a bit. He'd put it back down, he'd pick it back up. You better believe that I've got the treasury of David in my office. And that every time I preach out of a psalm, that's the first place I go. If you're someone who appreciates materials like that, go get it. It's not like super expensive. Find it on Amazon with a cheesy cover. And he writes in the intro to his magnum opus, the book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. The book of Psalms is worthy of our study and it's worthy of our singing. And we ought to acknowledge when we're singing it back to God because when we do, we join into that ancient chorus of all the saints through all the decades. Now this morning, we're going to be in Psalm chapter 8. So if you have a Bible with you, I would encourage you to turn there. And I'm going to say this this morning. I don't try to get you to do a lot of stuff because I want it to matter when I ask you to do something. So I intentionally don't try to put pressure on you to do things. I just want you to be a good Christian adult and do what you want to do and do as the Spirit moves you. But I'm going to encourage us as a church to begin to bring our Bibles to church for Sunday mornings. Some of you like to read through apps. That's fine. Read your app. Bring it. Have your phone out. I'm giving you permission to have your phone out in church. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not scrolling something that you shouldn't be scrolling during a church service. And if you are someone who likes to read the Bible on your phone, that's fine to have it out. Just make sure that the screen is visible to the people next to you, okay? So that they can smack you if you're cheating and you're checking a score or something. But let's be people who bring our Bible to church. Because here's what I want for you. I want you to sit, and I want you to have your Bible open. And when something strikes you, I want you to be able to write a note. When you see a verse that you like, that you want to remember, I want you to be able to highlight it. I want your Bibles to serve you as kind of these spiritual journals where when you flip through them, you see where you've been. You know that God's spoken to you there before. When you go to different places, you have notes on the sides and you have dates and you have prayers so that as you flip through your Bible years from now, you see times when God was faithful. I can't tell you how many passages I have written beside them. What does this mean? God help me understand. And then I'll hear sermon on it, or I'll hear somebody teach about it. I'll read a book on it, and I'll turn to that passage, and I'll go, oh, I think I understand this now. Thank you, God, for your faithfulness. I want to encourage you to bring your Bible to church. Open it up. Make notes about what I'm saying or what God is saying to you. And then let me just tell you this. If things get boring, as they often do, you can start flipping through your Bible like you're source checking me or you're just interested in something. And then you look double spiritual. The people in your row are going to be like, yo, they're cross-referencing Nate. That's, look at, look at them. That's super spiritual. So just bring it, man. We'll probably make you an elder if you start doing that stuff. And you're just doing it because you're bored. It's so many benefits. Let's start bringing our Bibles if we don't already. But right now, what I want you to do is grab the Bible. If you don't have one, grab the one in front of you and let's read Psalm 8 together. It's only nine verses and I thought it would be well worth it to spend some time reading it together this morning. Find Psalm 8. It says this. When I look at your heavens, the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. Verse 9, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. What a wonderful, declarative psalm of praise. This is the psalm that we sing from. This is the psalm that when I'm done talking, we will sing from again. And as we look through it and we go through it together and see what it has to offer, I think there's such depth of wisdom and goodness here. I love the way that the psalm starts. Verse 1, if you look at it in your Bibles, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name and all the earth. What I love about this, and this is a point that Spurgeon made, not me. What I love about this is the inadequacy of that declaration. This is a psalm that is clearly meant to glorify the majesty of God, that is clearly meant to frame him up among the stars, that is clearly meant to swoop us up and to carry us away into a reverent awe of the majesty of God. This is a big deal psalm. This needs to resound through the generations. And so we would expect some honorifics to go along with the Lord's name, wouldn't we? We would expect some more adjectives to be there. How majestic and all of your grandeur and the worthiness of your ways and whatever else. We would expect it to be this grand entrance as we open this declaration about God. And yet it's not that. It's this humble, oh Lord, our Lord. That's the best David could muster. Oh Lord, our Lord. It feels so inadequate for the moment, but that's why it's so good. Because to start a majestic psalm that way, so humbly, is to confess without even having to say it out loud, my words are inadequate for your greatness, oh God. What else could David say but oh Lord, our Lord? What else is fitting? What honorifics should he put there that would adequately capture who our creator God is? There's nothing worthy enough of writing. So he just humbly puts, oh Lord, our Lord. And so when we sing those words in a few minutes, when we say, oh Lord, our Lord, how wonderful your name, we are admitting in that song and in that declaration and with our voices and in our hearts that we are inadequate to adequately title God's glory and goodness. We are inadequate to adequately express and explain and capture who he is. And so we surrender to the simple, humble, oh Lord, our Lord. How majestic is your name. It's such a good beginning of the psalm to start it with humility and with simplicity as we confess through our words and our spirits, our inadequacy to capture who our creator God is. Verse two, we're actually going to look at in a second. That becomes important when we start to think about how Jesus employed this psalm. But verse 3, I love, when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. Psalm 8 proclaims that God has told the story of himself through his creation. The song that we are singing based out of Psalm 8 is called Tell the Story. And it talks about how creation tells the story of God and how we participate in that. When we look at creation, when we look at a sunset or a sunrise, when we're on a plane and we can look out and get that unique view of God's creation and his earth, when we hike and we see beautiful things, when we look into the heavens and we marvel at God, when we get away from the city and we can actually see the stars, when we do those things, the heavens are declaring the glory of God. They're preaching to us about the presence of God. The purpose of creation is to tell the story of the creator. And since you are his creation and you are the only one imbued with a voice and entrusted with a voice, then it is our responsibility to cry out to God in ways that the rest of creation cannot do. It is our responsibility to make sure that the rocks don't have to cry out to our God because we're going to do that because we are the part of his creation that was made to praise him. And so we do it loudly. We do it vigorously. We do it openheartedly. And I'm reminded in verse three, as it points to God's creation, kind of declaring who he is of Romans one, Paul writes about this. Paul in Romans 1 says that the Lord has revealed himself in creation so that no man is without excuse. Through the millennia, men and women and children have looked at God's creation and marveled at the creator. The sun, the moon, and the stars tell the story of our God and who he is. And then we move into verses four and following what could be a little bit of a confusing portion. Because as I read it earlier, you may have picked up on the difference. If you were following along in an NIV, if you're using one of our Bibles this morning, then you're reading an N NIV maybe you pulled up an NIV on your app or that's what you carried in this morning but what you saw is in verse 4 when it says what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him your version says them so the ESV and some other versions say him and your version and some other versions say them. And so the question becomes, why is there a difference there? Why does that matter? Why is that important? Well, the Hebrew word there can be translated either way. And so some translations choose to say them because clearly some of these verses are referring to us, to humankind. I mean, when we read it, especially verse 4, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? That's not talking about Jesus. Who is Jesus that you would care about him, that you are mindful of him? Obviously, it's not talking about Jesus. It's us. Who are we that you would care about us? And to this point, just to bring this home, I do like that verse. I'm going to pause here. We're going to get back to him and them. But I like this thought, who am I that you would care for me? Why do I matter to you? I don't know if you've ever experienced someone singling you out in a way that made you feel special. You're like, why are you paying attention to me? Years ago, a few months before I moved to Raleigh, my pastor growing up died. He had had an aortic aneurysm, survived for a few years, developed an infection, and he passed away. He was very old, though. He was about 62, I think. He was too young. And his church had grown pretty significantly, and they had started other churches. So the people who were there were in the thousands. There was so many people who wanted to pay their respects for Pastor Buddy that they had to have a visitation the night before at the church. And the line was over an hour long to talk to the family. And when I got there, I hadn't been going to that church in years. I worked at another church. I grew up with, I grew up at that church and Buddy has three kids, Gabe, Joy, and Spring. Joy's my age. Gabe's a few years older than me. But Gabe and I, we were buddies growing up. We played Goldeneye together. He was my Goldeneye buddy. I don't know if that resonates with any of you. Like four of you, they're like, yes, Goldeneye buddies. But we weren't like super tight. And I really didn't expect to talk to anybody. I was just showing up because I have a lot of respect for Buddy and I love that family. And before I could get in line, I heard Gabe call my name. And I'm like, cool, I get to skip the line, which I love doing. And I go up to Gabe, and he hugs me, and he says, it's such a funny question. He goes, dude, what are you doing? Like, you got anything going on? I'm like, I'm at your dad's visitation, man. This is what I'm doing. You know, like, I didn't say that, but I said, no, I'm not busy. And he goes, come on. And so he leaves the line, and he takes me back to a hospitality room where there's Zaxby's. I'd love to say it was Chick-fil-A. It wasn't. There's Zaxby's. And he sits down, and he just wants to talk with me. And I just remember thinking, why are you talking with me of all these people why do i why am i the one that gets your time why are you treating me like this and in that case i really do think it was because i knew him when we remember growing up we we were at the church running around together we were the ones running around in in the service after it was over before there was thousands of people going there. And I guess nobody else kind of knew the family like I did. But the whole time I'm sitting there, I just felt such privilege of why in the world do you care about talking to me right now? And I feel like that's what the author of Psalms, David, is describing. God, why do you even notice us? Why are you calling me out in a crowd? Why do we matter to you? That should not be something that's lost on us, that God sees us, that he calls our name, and he says, hey, come here, let's talk. That's a remarkable thing. And so back to the he, him, and them. There are some verses that are very clearly talking about humankind, us. But there are some verses that are very clearly talking about Jesus. Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You gave him dominion over the works of your hand. You have put all things under his feet. Clearly that's talking about Jesus. And so the question becomes in Psalm chapter 8, in verse 5, is the psalmist talking about us or Jesus? Yes. He's talking about both things. He's talking about both us and Christ. Again, because clearly there are some verses here that could not apply to Christ. Who is Christ that you should consider him? That doesn't really work out. He's part of the Trinity. So that has to be for us. But he has not put everything under our feet. He's put everything under Jesus' feet. So clearly that's for Jesus. And I'll tell you how I know that's for Jesus, because Jesus, Paul, and the author of Hebrews also thought that it was for Jesus. If you turn to Hebrews, you'll see, I forget the chapter. I think maybe I wrote it down somewhere. Yeah, chapter 2. The author of Hebrews is comparing Jesus to the angels, saying that he's superior to the angels. To do that, he quotes Psalm 8 and uses it to point back to Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15, verses 25 through 27, this is one of the times that you could flip and check me if you're bored and you'd look super spiritual. Paul is talking about Jesus and he's telling the people this is who Jesus is. He's the one that Psalm 8 was referring to. He's the Messiah that we are waiting on. The whole earth is in subjection to him. That is who we serve. And then Jesus himself uses this psalm to prove to a group of Pharisees that he's actually Jesus. He uses it to tick them off, which, you know, I'm a fan of. But this is what he says. Matthew 21 verses 15 and 16. I cheated. I had it marked. So I got there extra fast. Jesus says this, well, this isn't Jesus yet, but he'll talk soon. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant. Now they're indignant because for, for someone to declare Hosanna to the Son of David is to declare them the Messiah. It is to declare them God incarnate. And they were not willing to accept that about Jesus. So the children acknowledged who Jesus was before the adults were willing to acknowledge it. They were indignant. Verse 16. And they said to him, Do you hear what these are saying? Like, you need to tell them to be quiet if you have any sense. And Jesus said to them, Yes. Have you never read? Which is hilarious. Have you never read? That's like asking a Tennessee fan if they don't know that they got their tails kicked yesterday. Yes, of course they know that. Of course they do. Have you never read? It's ridiculous. Have you never read? Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise. It is a direct reference to Psalm chapter 8, where Jesus says, yeah, have you not read that Psalm? It's about me. So how can I be sure that Psalm 8 is about us and Jesus? Because Jesus told me. He uses it as a proof text to say, yeah, I am Hosanna, the son of David. And so what this means, what all this means, and I don't want you guys to miss this. When we sing Psalm 8, we declare the majesty of God, our wonder at his love for us, and the glory of our risen Savior. When we sing Psalm 8, we declare the majesty of our God, our wonder at his love for us, and the glory of our risen Savior. That's what's packed into these nine verses. We declare the majesty of God. Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. We declare God is grand. God is big. God is huge. We declare it along with the churches down through the centuries. We declare glory unto God. We marvel at his wonder for us. Who are we that you should pick us out of a crowd, that you should call us, that you should talk to us, that you should care about us, that you should know us, that you would want my praise. Who am I that I matter to you, God? Why in the world did you send your son for me? So we marvel at God's love as we sing. And then, and then we declared glory for the risen Savior. We shine him in glory, understanding that Psalm 8 is also a messianic psalm that talks about Jesus and declares his glory and puts him in dominion and says the world is under his feet and we are in that world so we are subservient to him. So in this psalm, as we sing it and as we move through it, we declare the glory of God. We wonder at his love for us and we declare the glory of our risen Savior all in those nine verses. And if this all doesn't stir your soul to sing, I can't help but think I must be a terrible pastor. Because as I studied this, as I prepared this morning, as I thought through this, I couldn't wait to sing with you guys. If I were you, I would want me to shut up so I could start singing. That's what I would want right now. And so I'm going to do that right before I do. I just want to show you the words we're about to sing. And I want to show you the verses that they come from. So when we sing this song together, when we, in a few minutes, join the ancient chorus of believers who have been singing this song through the centuries. When we join the churches all over the world who have been singing this song and who might even sing this song or sing from the songs this morning. I want us to know what we're singing. So let's look. The first verse, the first words, O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful your name. That comes directly out of verse 1. Directly out of verse 1. We're singing that right back to God. And then the words right after that in the song are your glory on display. The works of your hands show us who you are. That's verses 2 and 3. Do you see? That's verses two and three when it says the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. We're singing those words back to God. That's where they're pulled from. On down we see verse three highlighted again where it says, O Lord, our Lord, you light up our world, the sun, moon, and stars. Declare who you are. Declare who you are. And then finally, we see verse 4, and O who am I, unworthy one, that you would give your only son? Who are you to care for me? Amazing love, how can it be? That's where directly out of verse 4, we wonder and marvel at the love that God has for us, that he would notice us and care about us. And then the whole psalm declares the glory of Jesus. Anytime we sing about Jesus, who am I that you would send your only son? That's Jesus. That's who we're singing about. And then we say and we declare, tell the story. As we sing, God use me to tell your story of creation. I would remind you, all of creation was made to tell the story of God and declare praise for him. We're the only part of that creation that was given a voice to praise him. So let's use it together as we close out in these songs together. I'm going to pray and then Aaron and the band's going to come and we're going to sing together. Father, you are worthy of our praise. You are worthy of our adoration. Our words and our praise and our declarations are insufficient for you. They are inadequate for you and who you are. We admit that, God, as we look to sing to you. Lord, would you fill our lungs with praise for you? Would you fill our hearts with your grace and your goodness and your love that we might pour it back out to you? Would what we experience as we sing now not simply be something that makes our Sunday morning better, but will it carry us on a wave of praise into our weeks and maybe wash back up on these shores next week ready to praise again. God, fill our hearts with praise. Fill our hearts with joy. And let us do now, God, what you created us to do, to sing your praises back to you. In Jesus' name, amen.
My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. This is the second part of our series called The Songs We Sing. Last week, we opened up and we did Graves in the Gardens. I gave you kind of a background of worship, and I started to, it's kind of trickled into me some good feedback that you guys are excited about this series, looking forward to it, looking forward to seeing what we've been singing in the Bible, what we will be singing in the Bible. And so I am thrilled to be going through this series with you because like I said, it's one that I've been wanting to do for a while. And last week when I got done preaching and we sang together, I was so encouraged at the voices being lifted up. And this morning we'll have the same opportunity. I'm going to preach about the song that we just sang because it's pulled straight out of Psalm chapter 8. And then we'll sing it again, knowing it better, having a better understanding of what it means in a full-throated, open-hearted way. And then we'll sing some other songs that are really special to us. And then we'll go into our week. So I'm feeling really good about this Sunday. And I just feel like it's worth saying sometimes that I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful for my church. I'm so grateful for the love and the community that we experience here, for the handshakes and hugs and laughter and the lobby for the stories of the team coming back from Mexico I'm just grateful for y'all I'm grateful to be here and I'm excited to teach to you out of the book of Psalms this morning now to do a series focused on worship and to not have at least one morning out of the book of Psalms would be sacrilegious. It would be absolutely awful because Psalms is the hymn book of the Old Testament. It is the hymn book of the Hebrew people. It is intended to be sung. A vast majority of the Psalms are intended to be sung. And sometimes there's even instructions about it at the beginning of eight. You don't have to look there yet, but the very first thing it says is to the choir master, according to the Giddeth, nobody knows what that is, a Psalm of David, but they think it's a certain tune to which it's supposed to be sung. So David is even giving this to the choir master. I wrote this to praise our God. Let's sing it to this tune. Let's sing it together. A vast majority of the Psalms were written with the intention of God's body of believers singing them his words back to him, which I think is remarkable. And Psalms is a remarkable book. It sits in the dead center of our Bible. It's the longest book in the Bible with 150 chapters. It's divided into five separate books within the book of Psalms. It has the longest chapter in the Bible in Psalm 119, which comes in at, I believe, 176 verses. It's a super long chapter of the Bible because it's a beautiful Hebrew poem. There's 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and Psalm 119 has 22 stanzas, and each stanza, every line begins with that letter of the alphabet as the psalmist moves through. It's the one thing in the Bible that really makes me want to learn original Hebrew so I could hear that psalm read and sung in the original language in which it was intended because I've got a feeling that it is beautiful. I'll just wait until I get to heaven. I'm not actually going to do the work to learn Hebrew. That seems super hard. The seminary I chose, I chose it so I didn't have to learn original languages, so I'm not about to reverse course now, you know? But it's the longest book with the longest chapter, and it's filled with songs. And they're not all praise songs. They're divided up in different ways depending on who you ask and who's doing the dividing. You can find some people that divide them into five different types of Psalms, some as many as 20 and everything in between. But just a few examples of the types of Psalms that you can find in your Bible as you read through Psalms. And shame on me, I realize I haven't done a series in Psalms in the six and a half years I've been here. Shame on me for that. So I am promising you that coming up, we will do a series in Psalms at some point. But if you want to know some of the divisions of the book of Psalms, the different types that we have, there's Psalms of praise. Obviously, there's royal Psalms, Psalms of lament. And we're actually going to talk about those next week. I'm so grateful that our Bible has Psalms of lament, expressions of sadness and grief. There's what's called imprecatory psalms or psalms that are prayed and sung to seek vengeance over our enemies. David had a lot of reason to sing those. You probably don't. You probably don't have many enemies that you should sing imprecatory songs over, but they're in there. Psalms of enthronement and then psalms of pilgrimage. And I think these psalms of pilgrimage are really interesting. And I want to actually point you towards a book for my people who are readers. There's this book by a pastor named Eugene Peterson. Eugene Peterson is the pastor that faithfully translated the message to make scriptures a little bit more approachable for people who have never encountered them before. I read his biography last year, and I think it was an autobiography, a memoir, and it was one of the more moving books I've read in a long time. I was really, really touched by the heart of Eugene Peterson. And probably his most famous book is a book called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. And A Long Obedience in the Same Direction actually moves through what's called the Psalms of Ascent, this group of pilgrimage psalms And I've wanted to, that may be the Psalm series that we do. I'm either going to do it as a series as we walk through the book together, or I'm going to do it as like a Wednesday night course where those that want to come and we move through it together. But if you're a reader, I would highly encourage you to go grab or write down or put in your Goodreads, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. But in the book of Psalms, we have all these different categories. We have all these different verses. And one of the things we see that I think is remarkable is that a majority of them are written by David. They're not all written by David. There's some authors that are just referred to as the sons of Asaph. And Asaph was, I believe, the choir master, the worship leader. And then these are his sons that he has passed this responsibility down to. And they've written their own Psalms in there. But one of the remarkable things about the book of Psalms is to see the heart of David just kind of filleted open on the table for you. And I love that God in his goodness includes the Psalms to offset the other stories of David. Because if you read the story of David in 1 and 2 Samuel, you can also see the stories in 1st Kings but more of details of the story are in 1st and 2nd Samuel and if you read the story of David you see this traditionally masculine macho guy who's fighting and killing and he kills Goliath and he fights lions and bears with his bare hands which you know who hasn't and then there's a song about him him. David has killed his tens of thousands. Saul has killed his thousands. It's just like, yeah, spear-throwing, meat-eating dude. And then you open Psalms, and here's a guy that's brokenhearted. Here's a guy that's highly emotional, highly vulnerable, who displays his tears and his lament and his repentance and his hopes and his fears and his deepest prayers for all of time to see. And the juxtaposition of Psalms and 1 and 2 Samuel kind of brings together this vision of what we can be as people and how multifaceted we can be. So I'm grateful that Psalms reads almost like a prayer journal of David at times. But to me, the most remarkable thing about the book of Psalms is that when we sing the Psalms, we join in the ancient chorus of all the saints. When we sing the Psalms, we join in the ancient chorus of all the saints. And you can sing the Psalms. Write this down if you want to, if you want something else to listen to. There's this, I don't know, I guess they're just a duet, a duo, I don't know the rules, a band, Shane and Shane. And they have an album called Psalms, where they have set the Psalms to music, and it's one of my favorites. I love it. I've loved it for years and years. You can go find it. It's on Spotify. It's on all the things. And you can sing the Psalms. I would highly recommend it. When we sing the Psalms, understand this, we are joining in to an ancient chorus of all the saints. I spoke last week about how when we worship, when we praise, when we sing out, that we join our brothers and sisters in Christ in unity. It unifies us according to the high priestly prayer of Jesus in John chapter 17. When we sing together, it unifies us in this remarkable way. When we walk in Republican and Democrat, we walk in 80 and 20. We walk in stressed and not stressed, successful and not successful in a season of plenty and a season of need. And we lay all of those things down and we praise our God together and it unifies us. And I've just, I just got to tell you, I shared this with the band and the tech team before the service. But this is just a, just such a good picture of how it unifies us. if I don't say it I might die a little on the inside. So I'm just gonna have to Yesterday I was at the funeral for a friend of mine's wife 40 years old perfectly healthy Went on a girl's trip Heart heart attack, died in the bathroom. No other explanation. Incredibly sad thing. Two kids, sixth grader, third grader. So I drive down, I go to the funeral, and the husband's name, my buddy's name is Jeff. There's about 750 people in the room. And in between speakers, they put up a slideshow of Jodi and her family. And they started playing under that slideshow a song called Gratitude. We've sang it here a couple of times. It's going to be the last song that we sing this morning. They started playing Gratitude. And when that song started, Jeff, the husband who lost his wife a week ago, stood up and raised his hands in worship. And so, if you're at a funeral and the husband of the deceased woman stands up and raises his hands, you stand up and you raise your hands. So 750 people stand up and raise their hands to this song too. And then they spontaneously started singing it. And I'm six hours away from my church family, with my old church family, singing a song with myriad other church families, with our hands raised, choosing to praise in a moment of grief, and it just unifies you in a way that nothing else can. It was a remarkable moment. And when we sing it this morning, we join them and their praises to a God in spite of grief. We join Jeff in our prayers for him. We join the other congregations that sing that too. So when we sing the Psalms, we join into the ancient chorus of all the saints. Do you understand? When we sing in a few minutes, Psalm 8, back to God, we are singing it with David. We are singing it with the generations of David and Solomon and the faithful generations of Jeroboam and Rehoboam. We're singing it with Hezekiah and King Asa. We are singing it with the faithful generations, with the remnant that gets taken to Babylon. We are singing these psalms with Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego. We are singing these psalms with the Maccabees who lit the menorah in Roman oppression. We are singing these psalms with the generations that cried out in the 400 years of silence between Malachi and Matthew We are singing these songs with Jesus himself and with the disciples And with the early churches that met in the basements in Rome when we sing the Psalms We are joining with the underground churches in China and in Lebanon and in Istanbul, singing God's songs back to him. One of my favorite quotes about the Psalms is by Charles Spurgeon, and I'll tell you why he deserves to be the one who writes this in a second. Also, I'm just going to compose myself. We've got a long way to go here. This is premature. I can't afford this. I only have one tissue. Jen's laughing at me the hardest, she knows. It's been an emotional weekend. Back off. All right. Spurgeon writes this, the book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. I love that. The book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. That when we sing Psalms, we are mounted on wings of eagles and we soar in the presence of God. Now let me tell you why Spurgeon has a right to write that sentence and should rightly be pointed out in any sermon on Psalms. If you don't know who Charles Haddon Spurgeon is, he was a preacher. He was loud. He had combed back hair and a beard and a belly, and he suffered from gout, and he liked to drink whiskey. So, just saying, he was called. He was and is called the Prince of Preachers. He holds the world record for preaching to the most people in one space at one time without a microphone and being heard. One time he was preaching in an auditorium. This is in the late 1800s in London. He was preaching in an auditorium, going through what he wanted to say, and some janitor in a hallway that he couldn't see bowed on his knees right there and accepted Jesus listening to Charles go through his sermon. It's an amazing story. The volume of work of Charles Spurgeon is unbelievable. The amount of books that he wrote. You can look up any of his sermons online, and they're long, wordy, lengthy sermons. And it was said of him that people would come from all over the world to hear him preach, and what they would say is, yeah, the sermon's great, but you need to listen to the man pray. He was known all over the world. He wrote tons of books. He ran a seminary out of his church. He wrote books for the seminarians that I have, that I refer to regularly, that still help me and my approach to pastoring and preaching and all the things. But his whole life, he worked on one book that became a three-volume set called The Treasury of David. It's a commentary on the book of Psalms. And he carried it with him wherever he went. He worked on it for decades. He would work on it for a bit. He'd put it back down, he'd pick it back up. You better believe that I've got the treasury of David in my office. And that every time I preach out of a psalm, that's the first place I go. If you're someone who appreciates materials like that, go get it. It's not like super expensive. Find it on Amazon with a cheesy cover. And he writes in the intro to his magnum opus, the book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. The book of Psalms is worthy of our study and it's worthy of our singing. And we ought to acknowledge when we're singing it back to God because when we do, we join into that ancient chorus of all the saints through all the decades. Now this morning, we're going to be in Psalm chapter 8. So if you have a Bible with you, I would encourage you to turn there. And I'm going to say this this morning. I don't try to get you to do a lot of stuff because I want it to matter when I ask you to do something. So I intentionally don't try to put pressure on you to do things. I just want you to be a good Christian adult and do what you want to do and do as the Spirit moves you. But I'm going to encourage us as a church to begin to bring our Bibles to church for Sunday mornings. Some of you like to read through apps. That's fine. Read your app. Bring it. Have your phone out. I'm giving you permission to have your phone out in church. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not scrolling something that you shouldn't be scrolling during a church service. And if you are someone who likes to read the Bible on your phone, that's fine to have it out. Just make sure that the screen is visible to the people next to you, okay? So that they can smack you if you're cheating and you're checking a score or something. But let's be people who bring our Bible to church. Because here's what I want for you. I want you to sit, and I want you to have your Bible open. And when something strikes you, I want you to be able to write a note. When you see a verse that you like, that you want to remember, I want you to be able to highlight it. I want your Bibles to serve you as kind of these spiritual journals where when you flip through them, you see where you've been. You know that God's spoken to you there before. When you go to different places, you have notes on the sides and you have dates and you have prayers so that as you flip through your Bible years from now, you see times when God was faithful. I can't tell you how many passages I have written beside them. What does this mean? God help me understand. And then I'll hear sermon on it, or I'll hear somebody teach about it. I'll read a book on it, and I'll turn to that passage, and I'll go, oh, I think I understand this now. Thank you, God, for your faithfulness. I want to encourage you to bring your Bible to church. Open it up. Make notes about what I'm saying or what God is saying to you. And then let me just tell you this. If things get boring, as they often do, you can start flipping through your Bible like you're source checking me or you're just interested in something. And then you look double spiritual. The people in your row are going to be like, yo, they're cross-referencing Nate. That's, look at, look at them. That's super spiritual. So just bring it, man. We'll probably make you an elder if you start doing that stuff. And you're just doing it because you're bored. It's so many benefits. Let's start bringing our Bibles if we don't already. But right now, what I want you to do is grab the Bible. If you don't have one, grab the one in front of you and let's read Psalm 8 together. It's only nine verses and I thought it would be well worth it to spend some time reading it together this morning. Find Psalm 8. It says this. When I look at your heavens, the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. Verse 9, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. What a wonderful, declarative psalm of praise. This is the psalm that we sing from. This is the psalm that when I'm done talking, we will sing from again. And as we look through it and we go through it together and see what it has to offer, I think there's such depth of wisdom and goodness here. I love the way that the psalm starts. Verse 1, if you look at it in your Bibles, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name and all the earth. What I love about this, and this is a point that Spurgeon made, not me. What I love about this is the inadequacy of that declaration. This is a psalm that is clearly meant to glorify the majesty of God, that is clearly meant to frame him up among the stars, that is clearly meant to swoop us up and to carry us away into a reverent awe of the majesty of God. This is a big deal psalm. This needs to resound through the generations. And so we would expect some honorifics to go along with the Lord's name, wouldn't we? We would expect some more adjectives to be there. How majestic and all of your grandeur and the worthiness of your ways and whatever else. We would expect it to be this grand entrance as we open this declaration about God. And yet it's not that. It's this humble, oh Lord, our Lord. That's the best David could muster. Oh Lord, our Lord. It feels so inadequate for the moment, but that's why it's so good. Because to start a majestic psalm that way, so humbly, is to confess without even having to say it out loud, my words are inadequate for your greatness, oh God. What else could David say but oh Lord, our Lord? What else is fitting? What honorifics should he put there that would adequately capture who our creator God is? There's nothing worthy enough of writing. So he just humbly puts, oh Lord, our Lord. And so when we sing those words in a few minutes, when we say, oh Lord, our Lord, how wonderful your name, we are admitting in that song and in that declaration and with our voices and in our hearts that we are inadequate to adequately title God's glory and goodness. We are inadequate to adequately express and explain and capture who he is. And so we surrender to the simple, humble, oh Lord, our Lord. How majestic is your name. It's such a good beginning of the psalm to start it with humility and with simplicity as we confess through our words and our spirits, our inadequacy to capture who our creator God is. Verse two, we're actually going to look at in a second. That becomes important when we start to think about how Jesus employed this psalm. But verse 3, I love, when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. Psalm 8 proclaims that God has told the story of himself through his creation. The song that we are singing based out of Psalm 8 is called Tell the Story. And it talks about how creation tells the story of God and how we participate in that. When we look at creation, when we look at a sunset or a sunrise, when we're on a plane and we can look out and get that unique view of God's creation and his earth, when we hike and we see beautiful things, when we look into the heavens and we marvel at God, when we get away from the city and we can actually see the stars, when we do those things, the heavens are declaring the glory of God. They're preaching to us about the presence of God. The purpose of creation is to tell the story of the creator. And since you are his creation and you are the only one imbued with a voice and entrusted with a voice, then it is our responsibility to cry out to God in ways that the rest of creation cannot do. It is our responsibility to make sure that the rocks don't have to cry out to our God because we're going to do that because we are the part of his creation that was made to praise him. And so we do it loudly. We do it vigorously. We do it openheartedly. And I'm reminded in verse three, as it points to God's creation, kind of declaring who he is of Romans one, Paul writes about this. Paul in Romans 1 says that the Lord has revealed himself in creation so that no man is without excuse. Through the millennia, men and women and children have looked at God's creation and marveled at the creator. The sun, the moon, and the stars tell the story of our God and who he is. And then we move into verses four and following what could be a little bit of a confusing portion. Because as I read it earlier, you may have picked up on the difference. If you were following along in an NIV, if you're using one of our Bibles this morning, then you're reading an N NIV maybe you pulled up an NIV on your app or that's what you carried in this morning but what you saw is in verse 4 when it says what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him your version says them so the ESV and some other versions say him and your version and some other versions say them. And so the question becomes, why is there a difference there? Why does that matter? Why is that important? Well, the Hebrew word there can be translated either way. And so some translations choose to say them because clearly some of these verses are referring to us, to humankind. I mean, when we read it, especially verse 4, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? That's not talking about Jesus. Who is Jesus that you would care about him, that you are mindful of him? Obviously, it's not talking about Jesus. It's us. Who are we that you would care about us? And to this point, just to bring this home, I do like that verse. I'm going to pause here. We're going to get back to him and them. But I like this thought, who am I that you would care for me? Why do I matter to you? I don't know if you've ever experienced someone singling you out in a way that made you feel special. You're like, why are you paying attention to me? Years ago, a few months before I moved to Raleigh, my pastor growing up died. He had had an aortic aneurysm, survived for a few years, developed an infection, and he passed away. He was very old, though. He was about 62, I think. He was too young. And his church had grown pretty significantly, and they had started other churches. So the people who were there were in the thousands. There was so many people who wanted to pay their respects for Pastor Buddy that they had to have a visitation the night before at the church. And the line was over an hour long to talk to the family. And when I got there, I hadn't been going to that church in years. I worked at another church. I grew up with, I grew up at that church and Buddy has three kids, Gabe, Joy, and Spring. Joy's my age. Gabe's a few years older than me. But Gabe and I, we were buddies growing up. We played Goldeneye together. He was my Goldeneye buddy. I don't know if that resonates with any of you. Like four of you, they're like, yes, Goldeneye buddies. But we weren't like super tight. And I really didn't expect to talk to anybody. I was just showing up because I have a lot of respect for Buddy and I love that family. And before I could get in line, I heard Gabe call my name. And I'm like, cool, I get to skip the line, which I love doing. And I go up to Gabe, and he hugs me, and he says, it's such a funny question. He goes, dude, what are you doing? Like, you got anything going on? I'm like, I'm at your dad's visitation, man. This is what I'm doing. You know, like, I didn't say that, but I said, no, I'm not busy. And he goes, come on. And so he leaves the line, and he takes me back to a hospitality room where there's Zaxby's. I'd love to say it was Chick-fil-A. It wasn't. There's Zaxby's. And he sits down, and he just wants to talk with me. And I just remember thinking, why are you talking with me of all these people why do i why am i the one that gets your time why are you treating me like this and in that case i really do think it was because i knew him when we remember growing up we we were at the church running around together we were the ones running around in in the service after it was over before there was thousands of people going there. And I guess nobody else kind of knew the family like I did. But the whole time I'm sitting there, I just felt such privilege of why in the world do you care about talking to me right now? And I feel like that's what the author of Psalms, David, is describing. God, why do you even notice us? Why are you calling me out in a crowd? Why do we matter to you? That should not be something that's lost on us, that God sees us, that he calls our name, and he says, hey, come here, let's talk. That's a remarkable thing. And so back to the he, him, and them. There are some verses that are very clearly talking about humankind, us. But there are some verses that are very clearly talking about Jesus. Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You gave him dominion over the works of your hand. You have put all things under his feet. Clearly that's talking about Jesus. And so the question becomes in Psalm chapter 8, in verse 5, is the psalmist talking about us or Jesus? Yes. He's talking about both things. He's talking about both us and Christ. Again, because clearly there are some verses here that could not apply to Christ. Who is Christ that you should consider him? That doesn't really work out. He's part of the Trinity. So that has to be for us. But he has not put everything under our feet. He's put everything under Jesus' feet. So clearly that's for Jesus. And I'll tell you how I know that's for Jesus, because Jesus, Paul, and the author of Hebrews also thought that it was for Jesus. If you turn to Hebrews, you'll see, I forget the chapter. I think maybe I wrote it down somewhere. Yeah, chapter 2. The author of Hebrews is comparing Jesus to the angels, saying that he's superior to the angels. To do that, he quotes Psalm 8 and uses it to point back to Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15, verses 25 through 27, this is one of the times that you could flip and check me if you're bored and you'd look super spiritual. Paul is talking about Jesus and he's telling the people this is who Jesus is. He's the one that Psalm 8 was referring to. He's the Messiah that we are waiting on. The whole earth is in subjection to him. That is who we serve. And then Jesus himself uses this psalm to prove to a group of Pharisees that he's actually Jesus. He uses it to tick them off, which, you know, I'm a fan of. But this is what he says. Matthew 21 verses 15 and 16. I cheated. I had it marked. So I got there extra fast. Jesus says this, well, this isn't Jesus yet, but he'll talk soon. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant. Now they're indignant because for, for someone to declare Hosanna to the Son of David is to declare them the Messiah. It is to declare them God incarnate. And they were not willing to accept that about Jesus. So the children acknowledged who Jesus was before the adults were willing to acknowledge it. They were indignant. Verse 16. And they said to him, Do you hear what these are saying? Like, you need to tell them to be quiet if you have any sense. And Jesus said to them, Yes. Have you never read? Which is hilarious. Have you never read? That's like asking a Tennessee fan if they don't know that they got their tails kicked yesterday. Yes, of course they know that. Of course they do. Have you never read? It's ridiculous. Have you never read? Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise. It is a direct reference to Psalm chapter 8, where Jesus says, yeah, have you not read that Psalm? It's about me. So how can I be sure that Psalm 8 is about us and Jesus? Because Jesus told me. He uses it as a proof text to say, yeah, I am Hosanna, the son of David. And so what this means, what all this means, and I don't want you guys to miss this. When we sing Psalm 8, we declare the majesty of God, our wonder at his love for us, and the glory of our risen Savior. When we sing Psalm 8, we declare the majesty of our God, our wonder at his love for us, and the glory of our risen Savior. That's what's packed into these nine verses. We declare the majesty of God. Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. We declare God is grand. God is big. God is huge. We declare it along with the churches down through the centuries. We declare glory unto God. We marvel at his wonder for us. Who are we that you should pick us out of a crowd, that you should call us, that you should talk to us, that you should care about us, that you should know us, that you would want my praise. Who am I that I matter to you, God? Why in the world did you send your son for me? So we marvel at God's love as we sing. And then, and then we declared glory for the risen Savior. We shine him in glory, understanding that Psalm 8 is also a messianic psalm that talks about Jesus and declares his glory and puts him in dominion and says the world is under his feet and we are in that world so we are subservient to him. So in this psalm, as we sing it and as we move through it, we declare the glory of God. We wonder at his love for us and we declare the glory of our risen Savior all in those nine verses. And if this all doesn't stir your soul to sing, I can't help but think I must be a terrible pastor. Because as I studied this, as I prepared this morning, as I thought through this, I couldn't wait to sing with you guys. If I were you, I would want me to shut up so I could start singing. That's what I would want right now. And so I'm going to do that right before I do. I just want to show you the words we're about to sing. And I want to show you the verses that they come from. So when we sing this song together, when we, in a few minutes, join the ancient chorus of believers who have been singing this song through the centuries. When we join the churches all over the world who have been singing this song and who might even sing this song or sing from the songs this morning. I want us to know what we're singing. So let's look. The first verse, the first words, O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful your name. That comes directly out of verse 1. Directly out of verse 1. We're singing that right back to God. And then the words right after that in the song are your glory on display. The works of your hands show us who you are. That's verses 2 and 3. Do you see? That's verses two and three when it says the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. We're singing those words back to God. That's where they're pulled from. On down we see verse three highlighted again where it says, O Lord, our Lord, you light up our world, the sun, moon, and stars. Declare who you are. Declare who you are. And then finally, we see verse 4, and O who am I, unworthy one, that you would give your only son? Who are you to care for me? Amazing love, how can it be? That's where directly out of verse 4, we wonder and marvel at the love that God has for us, that he would notice us and care about us. And then the whole psalm declares the glory of Jesus. Anytime we sing about Jesus, who am I that you would send your only son? That's Jesus. That's who we're singing about. And then we say and we declare, tell the story. As we sing, God use me to tell your story of creation. I would remind you, all of creation was made to tell the story of God and declare praise for him. We're the only part of that creation that was given a voice to praise him. So let's use it together as we close out in these songs together. I'm going to pray and then Aaron and the band's going to come and we're going to sing together. Father, you are worthy of our praise. You are worthy of our adoration. Our words and our praise and our declarations are insufficient for you. They are inadequate for you and who you are. We admit that, God, as we look to sing to you. Lord, would you fill our lungs with praise for you? Would you fill our hearts with your grace and your goodness and your love that we might pour it back out to you? Would what we experience as we sing now not simply be something that makes our Sunday morning better, but will it carry us on a wave of praise into our weeks and maybe wash back up on these shores next week ready to praise again. God, fill our hearts with praise. Fill our hearts with joy. And let us do now, God, what you created us to do, to sing your praises back to you. In Jesus' name, amen.
My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. This is the second part of our series called The Songs We Sing. Last week, we opened up and we did Graves in the Gardens. I gave you kind of a background of worship, and I started to, it's kind of trickled into me some good feedback that you guys are excited about this series, looking forward to it, looking forward to seeing what we've been singing in the Bible, what we will be singing in the Bible. And so I am thrilled to be going through this series with you because like I said, it's one that I've been wanting to do for a while. And last week when I got done preaching and we sang together, I was so encouraged at the voices being lifted up. And this morning we'll have the same opportunity. I'm going to preach about the song that we just sang because it's pulled straight out of Psalm chapter 8. And then we'll sing it again, knowing it better, having a better understanding of what it means in a full-throated, open-hearted way. And then we'll sing some other songs that are really special to us. And then we'll go into our week. So I'm feeling really good about this Sunday. And I just feel like it's worth saying sometimes that I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful for my church. I'm so grateful for the love and the community that we experience here, for the handshakes and hugs and laughter and the lobby for the stories of the team coming back from Mexico I'm just grateful for y'all I'm grateful to be here and I'm excited to teach to you out of the book of Psalms this morning now to do a series focused on worship and to not have at least one morning out of the book of Psalms would be sacrilegious. It would be absolutely awful because Psalms is the hymn book of the Old Testament. It is the hymn book of the Hebrew people. It is intended to be sung. A vast majority of the Psalms are intended to be sung. And sometimes there's even instructions about it at the beginning of eight. You don't have to look there yet, but the very first thing it says is to the choir master, according to the Giddeth, nobody knows what that is, a Psalm of David, but they think it's a certain tune to which it's supposed to be sung. So David is even giving this to the choir master. I wrote this to praise our God. Let's sing it to this tune. Let's sing it together. A vast majority of the Psalms were written with the intention of God's body of believers singing them his words back to him, which I think is remarkable. And Psalms is a remarkable book. It sits in the dead center of our Bible. It's the longest book in the Bible with 150 chapters. It's divided into five separate books within the book of Psalms. It has the longest chapter in the Bible in Psalm 119, which comes in at, I believe, 176 verses. It's a super long chapter of the Bible because it's a beautiful Hebrew poem. There's 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and Psalm 119 has 22 stanzas, and each stanza, every line begins with that letter of the alphabet as the psalmist moves through. It's the one thing in the Bible that really makes me want to learn original Hebrew so I could hear that psalm read and sung in the original language in which it was intended because I've got a feeling that it is beautiful. I'll just wait until I get to heaven. I'm not actually going to do the work to learn Hebrew. That seems super hard. The seminary I chose, I chose it so I didn't have to learn original languages, so I'm not about to reverse course now, you know? But it's the longest book with the longest chapter, and it's filled with songs. And they're not all praise songs. They're divided up in different ways depending on who you ask and who's doing the dividing. You can find some people that divide them into five different types of Psalms, some as many as 20 and everything in between. But just a few examples of the types of Psalms that you can find in your Bible as you read through Psalms. And shame on me, I realize I haven't done a series in Psalms in the six and a half years I've been here. Shame on me for that. So I am promising you that coming up, we will do a series in Psalms at some point. But if you want to know some of the divisions of the book of Psalms, the different types that we have, there's Psalms of praise. Obviously, there's royal Psalms, Psalms of lament. And we're actually going to talk about those next week. I'm so grateful that our Bible has Psalms of lament, expressions of sadness and grief. There's what's called imprecatory psalms or psalms that are prayed and sung to seek vengeance over our enemies. David had a lot of reason to sing those. You probably don't. You probably don't have many enemies that you should sing imprecatory songs over, but they're in there. Psalms of enthronement and then psalms of pilgrimage. And I think these psalms of pilgrimage are really interesting. And I want to actually point you towards a book for my people who are readers. There's this book by a pastor named Eugene Peterson. Eugene Peterson is the pastor that faithfully translated the message to make scriptures a little bit more approachable for people who have never encountered them before. I read his biography last year, and I think it was an autobiography, a memoir, and it was one of the more moving books I've read in a long time. I was really, really touched by the heart of Eugene Peterson. And probably his most famous book is a book called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. And A Long Obedience in the Same Direction actually moves through what's called the Psalms of Ascent, this group of pilgrimage psalms And I've wanted to, that may be the Psalm series that we do. I'm either going to do it as a series as we walk through the book together, or I'm going to do it as like a Wednesday night course where those that want to come and we move through it together. But if you're a reader, I would highly encourage you to go grab or write down or put in your Goodreads, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. But in the book of Psalms, we have all these different categories. We have all these different verses. And one of the things we see that I think is remarkable is that a majority of them are written by David. They're not all written by David. There's some authors that are just referred to as the sons of Asaph. And Asaph was, I believe, the choir master, the worship leader. And then these are his sons that he has passed this responsibility down to. And they've written their own Psalms in there. But one of the remarkable things about the book of Psalms is to see the heart of David just kind of filleted open on the table for you. And I love that God in his goodness includes the Psalms to offset the other stories of David. Because if you read the story of David in 1 and 2 Samuel, you can also see the stories in 1st Kings but more of details of the story are in 1st and 2nd Samuel and if you read the story of David you see this traditionally masculine macho guy who's fighting and killing and he kills Goliath and he fights lions and bears with his bare hands which you know who hasn't and then there's a song about him him. David has killed his tens of thousands. Saul has killed his thousands. It's just like, yeah, spear-throwing, meat-eating dude. And then you open Psalms, and here's a guy that's brokenhearted. Here's a guy that's highly emotional, highly vulnerable, who displays his tears and his lament and his repentance and his hopes and his fears and his deepest prayers for all of time to see. And the juxtaposition of Psalms and 1 and 2 Samuel kind of brings together this vision of what we can be as people and how multifaceted we can be. So I'm grateful that Psalms reads almost like a prayer journal of David at times. But to me, the most remarkable thing about the book of Psalms is that when we sing the Psalms, we join in the ancient chorus of all the saints. When we sing the Psalms, we join in the ancient chorus of all the saints. And you can sing the Psalms. Write this down if you want to, if you want something else to listen to. There's this, I don't know, I guess they're just a duet, a duo, I don't know the rules, a band, Shane and Shane. And they have an album called Psalms, where they have set the Psalms to music, and it's one of my favorites. I love it. I've loved it for years and years. You can go find it. It's on Spotify. It's on all the things. And you can sing the Psalms. I would highly recommend it. When we sing the Psalms, understand this, we are joining in to an ancient chorus of all the saints. I spoke last week about how when we worship, when we praise, when we sing out, that we join our brothers and sisters in Christ in unity. It unifies us according to the high priestly prayer of Jesus in John chapter 17. When we sing together, it unifies us in this remarkable way. When we walk in Republican and Democrat, we walk in 80 and 20. We walk in stressed and not stressed, successful and not successful in a season of plenty and a season of need. And we lay all of those things down and we praise our God together and it unifies us. And I've just, I just got to tell you, I shared this with the band and the tech team before the service. But this is just a, just such a good picture of how it unifies us. if I don't say it I might die a little on the inside. So I'm just gonna have to Yesterday I was at the funeral for a friend of mine's wife 40 years old perfectly healthy Went on a girl's trip Heart heart attack, died in the bathroom. No other explanation. Incredibly sad thing. Two kids, sixth grader, third grader. So I drive down, I go to the funeral, and the husband's name, my buddy's name is Jeff. There's about 750 people in the room. And in between speakers, they put up a slideshow of Jodi and her family. And they started playing under that slideshow a song called Gratitude. We've sang it here a couple of times. It's going to be the last song that we sing this morning. They started playing Gratitude. And when that song started, Jeff, the husband who lost his wife a week ago, stood up and raised his hands in worship. And so, if you're at a funeral and the husband of the deceased woman stands up and raises his hands, you stand up and you raise your hands. So 750 people stand up and raise their hands to this song too. And then they spontaneously started singing it. And I'm six hours away from my church family, with my old church family, singing a song with myriad other church families, with our hands raised, choosing to praise in a moment of grief, and it just unifies you in a way that nothing else can. It was a remarkable moment. And when we sing it this morning, we join them and their praises to a God in spite of grief. We join Jeff in our prayers for him. We join the other congregations that sing that too. So when we sing the Psalms, we join into the ancient chorus of all the saints. Do you understand? When we sing in a few minutes, Psalm 8, back to God, we are singing it with David. We are singing it with the generations of David and Solomon and the faithful generations of Jeroboam and Rehoboam. We're singing it with Hezekiah and King Asa. We are singing it with the faithful generations, with the remnant that gets taken to Babylon. We are singing these psalms with Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego. We are singing these psalms with the Maccabees who lit the menorah in Roman oppression. We are singing these psalms with the generations that cried out in the 400 years of silence between Malachi and Matthew We are singing these songs with Jesus himself and with the disciples And with the early churches that met in the basements in Rome when we sing the Psalms We are joining with the underground churches in China and in Lebanon and in Istanbul, singing God's songs back to him. One of my favorite quotes about the Psalms is by Charles Spurgeon, and I'll tell you why he deserves to be the one who writes this in a second. Also, I'm just going to compose myself. We've got a long way to go here. This is premature. I can't afford this. I only have one tissue. Jen's laughing at me the hardest, she knows. It's been an emotional weekend. Back off. All right. Spurgeon writes this, the book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. I love that. The book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. That when we sing Psalms, we are mounted on wings of eagles and we soar in the presence of God. Now let me tell you why Spurgeon has a right to write that sentence and should rightly be pointed out in any sermon on Psalms. If you don't know who Charles Haddon Spurgeon is, he was a preacher. He was loud. He had combed back hair and a beard and a belly, and he suffered from gout, and he liked to drink whiskey. So, just saying, he was called. He was and is called the Prince of Preachers. He holds the world record for preaching to the most people in one space at one time without a microphone and being heard. One time he was preaching in an auditorium. This is in the late 1800s in London. He was preaching in an auditorium, going through what he wanted to say, and some janitor in a hallway that he couldn't see bowed on his knees right there and accepted Jesus listening to Charles go through his sermon. It's an amazing story. The volume of work of Charles Spurgeon is unbelievable. The amount of books that he wrote. You can look up any of his sermons online, and they're long, wordy, lengthy sermons. And it was said of him that people would come from all over the world to hear him preach, and what they would say is, yeah, the sermon's great, but you need to listen to the man pray. He was known all over the world. He wrote tons of books. He ran a seminary out of his church. He wrote books for the seminarians that I have, that I refer to regularly, that still help me and my approach to pastoring and preaching and all the things. But his whole life, he worked on one book that became a three-volume set called The Treasury of David. It's a commentary on the book of Psalms. And he carried it with him wherever he went. He worked on it for decades. He would work on it for a bit. He'd put it back down, he'd pick it back up. You better believe that I've got the treasury of David in my office. And that every time I preach out of a psalm, that's the first place I go. If you're someone who appreciates materials like that, go get it. It's not like super expensive. Find it on Amazon with a cheesy cover. And he writes in the intro to his magnum opus, the book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. The book of Psalms is worthy of our study and it's worthy of our singing. And we ought to acknowledge when we're singing it back to God because when we do, we join into that ancient chorus of all the saints through all the decades. Now this morning, we're going to be in Psalm chapter 8. So if you have a Bible with you, I would encourage you to turn there. And I'm going to say this this morning. I don't try to get you to do a lot of stuff because I want it to matter when I ask you to do something. So I intentionally don't try to put pressure on you to do things. I just want you to be a good Christian adult and do what you want to do and do as the Spirit moves you. But I'm going to encourage us as a church to begin to bring our Bibles to church for Sunday mornings. Some of you like to read through apps. That's fine. Read your app. Bring it. Have your phone out. I'm giving you permission to have your phone out in church. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not scrolling something that you shouldn't be scrolling during a church service. And if you are someone who likes to read the Bible on your phone, that's fine to have it out. Just make sure that the screen is visible to the people next to you, okay? So that they can smack you if you're cheating and you're checking a score or something. But let's be people who bring our Bible to church. Because here's what I want for you. I want you to sit, and I want you to have your Bible open. And when something strikes you, I want you to be able to write a note. When you see a verse that you like, that you want to remember, I want you to be able to highlight it. I want your Bibles to serve you as kind of these spiritual journals where when you flip through them, you see where you've been. You know that God's spoken to you there before. When you go to different places, you have notes on the sides and you have dates and you have prayers so that as you flip through your Bible years from now, you see times when God was faithful. I can't tell you how many passages I have written beside them. What does this mean? God help me understand. And then I'll hear sermon on it, or I'll hear somebody teach about it. I'll read a book on it, and I'll turn to that passage, and I'll go, oh, I think I understand this now. Thank you, God, for your faithfulness. I want to encourage you to bring your Bible to church. Open it up. Make notes about what I'm saying or what God is saying to you. And then let me just tell you this. If things get boring, as they often do, you can start flipping through your Bible like you're source checking me or you're just interested in something. And then you look double spiritual. The people in your row are going to be like, yo, they're cross-referencing Nate. That's, look at, look at them. That's super spiritual. So just bring it, man. We'll probably make you an elder if you start doing that stuff. And you're just doing it because you're bored. It's so many benefits. Let's start bringing our Bibles if we don't already. But right now, what I want you to do is grab the Bible. If you don't have one, grab the one in front of you and let's read Psalm 8 together. It's only nine verses and I thought it would be well worth it to spend some time reading it together this morning. Find Psalm 8. It says this. When I look at your heavens, the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. Verse 9, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. What a wonderful, declarative psalm of praise. This is the psalm that we sing from. This is the psalm that when I'm done talking, we will sing from again. And as we look through it and we go through it together and see what it has to offer, I think there's such depth of wisdom and goodness here. I love the way that the psalm starts. Verse 1, if you look at it in your Bibles, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name and all the earth. What I love about this, and this is a point that Spurgeon made, not me. What I love about this is the inadequacy of that declaration. This is a psalm that is clearly meant to glorify the majesty of God, that is clearly meant to frame him up among the stars, that is clearly meant to swoop us up and to carry us away into a reverent awe of the majesty of God. This is a big deal psalm. This needs to resound through the generations. And so we would expect some honorifics to go along with the Lord's name, wouldn't we? We would expect some more adjectives to be there. How majestic and all of your grandeur and the worthiness of your ways and whatever else. We would expect it to be this grand entrance as we open this declaration about God. And yet it's not that. It's this humble, oh Lord, our Lord. That's the best David could muster. Oh Lord, our Lord. It feels so inadequate for the moment, but that's why it's so good. Because to start a majestic psalm that way, so humbly, is to confess without even having to say it out loud, my words are inadequate for your greatness, oh God. What else could David say but oh Lord, our Lord? What else is fitting? What honorifics should he put there that would adequately capture who our creator God is? There's nothing worthy enough of writing. So he just humbly puts, oh Lord, our Lord. And so when we sing those words in a few minutes, when we say, oh Lord, our Lord, how wonderful your name, we are admitting in that song and in that declaration and with our voices and in our hearts that we are inadequate to adequately title God's glory and goodness. We are inadequate to adequately express and explain and capture who he is. And so we surrender to the simple, humble, oh Lord, our Lord. How majestic is your name. It's such a good beginning of the psalm to start it with humility and with simplicity as we confess through our words and our spirits, our inadequacy to capture who our creator God is. Verse two, we're actually going to look at in a second. That becomes important when we start to think about how Jesus employed this psalm. But verse 3, I love, when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. Psalm 8 proclaims that God has told the story of himself through his creation. The song that we are singing based out of Psalm 8 is called Tell the Story. And it talks about how creation tells the story of God and how we participate in that. When we look at creation, when we look at a sunset or a sunrise, when we're on a plane and we can look out and get that unique view of God's creation and his earth, when we hike and we see beautiful things, when we look into the heavens and we marvel at God, when we get away from the city and we can actually see the stars, when we do those things, the heavens are declaring the glory of God. They're preaching to us about the presence of God. The purpose of creation is to tell the story of the creator. And since you are his creation and you are the only one imbued with a voice and entrusted with a voice, then it is our responsibility to cry out to God in ways that the rest of creation cannot do. It is our responsibility to make sure that the rocks don't have to cry out to our God because we're going to do that because we are the part of his creation that was made to praise him. And so we do it loudly. We do it vigorously. We do it openheartedly. And I'm reminded in verse three, as it points to God's creation, kind of declaring who he is of Romans one, Paul writes about this. Paul in Romans 1 says that the Lord has revealed himself in creation so that no man is without excuse. Through the millennia, men and women and children have looked at God's creation and marveled at the creator. The sun, the moon, and the stars tell the story of our God and who he is. And then we move into verses four and following what could be a little bit of a confusing portion. Because as I read it earlier, you may have picked up on the difference. If you were following along in an NIV, if you're using one of our Bibles this morning, then you're reading an N NIV maybe you pulled up an NIV on your app or that's what you carried in this morning but what you saw is in verse 4 when it says what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him your version says them so the ESV and some other versions say him and your version and some other versions say them. And so the question becomes, why is there a difference there? Why does that matter? Why is that important? Well, the Hebrew word there can be translated either way. And so some translations choose to say them because clearly some of these verses are referring to us, to humankind. I mean, when we read it, especially verse 4, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? That's not talking about Jesus. Who is Jesus that you would care about him, that you are mindful of him? Obviously, it's not talking about Jesus. It's us. Who are we that you would care about us? And to this point, just to bring this home, I do like that verse. I'm going to pause here. We're going to get back to him and them. But I like this thought, who am I that you would care for me? Why do I matter to you? I don't know if you've ever experienced someone singling you out in a way that made you feel special. You're like, why are you paying attention to me? Years ago, a few months before I moved to Raleigh, my pastor growing up died. He had had an aortic aneurysm, survived for a few years, developed an infection, and he passed away. He was very old, though. He was about 62, I think. He was too young. And his church had grown pretty significantly, and they had started other churches. So the people who were there were in the thousands. There was so many people who wanted to pay their respects for Pastor Buddy that they had to have a visitation the night before at the church. And the line was over an hour long to talk to the family. And when I got there, I hadn't been going to that church in years. I worked at another church. I grew up with, I grew up at that church and Buddy has three kids, Gabe, Joy, and Spring. Joy's my age. Gabe's a few years older than me. But Gabe and I, we were buddies growing up. We played Goldeneye together. He was my Goldeneye buddy. I don't know if that resonates with any of you. Like four of you, they're like, yes, Goldeneye buddies. But we weren't like super tight. And I really didn't expect to talk to anybody. I was just showing up because I have a lot of respect for Buddy and I love that family. And before I could get in line, I heard Gabe call my name. And I'm like, cool, I get to skip the line, which I love doing. And I go up to Gabe, and he hugs me, and he says, it's such a funny question. He goes, dude, what are you doing? Like, you got anything going on? I'm like, I'm at your dad's visitation, man. This is what I'm doing. You know, like, I didn't say that, but I said, no, I'm not busy. And he goes, come on. And so he leaves the line, and he takes me back to a hospitality room where there's Zaxby's. I'd love to say it was Chick-fil-A. It wasn't. There's Zaxby's. And he sits down, and he just wants to talk with me. And I just remember thinking, why are you talking with me of all these people why do i why am i the one that gets your time why are you treating me like this and in that case i really do think it was because i knew him when we remember growing up we we were at the church running around together we were the ones running around in in the service after it was over before there was thousands of people going there. And I guess nobody else kind of knew the family like I did. But the whole time I'm sitting there, I just felt such privilege of why in the world do you care about talking to me right now? And I feel like that's what the author of Psalms, David, is describing. God, why do you even notice us? Why are you calling me out in a crowd? Why do we matter to you? That should not be something that's lost on us, that God sees us, that he calls our name, and he says, hey, come here, let's talk. That's a remarkable thing. And so back to the he, him, and them. There are some verses that are very clearly talking about humankind, us. But there are some verses that are very clearly talking about Jesus. Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You gave him dominion over the works of your hand. You have put all things under his feet. Clearly that's talking about Jesus. And so the question becomes in Psalm chapter 8, in verse 5, is the psalmist talking about us or Jesus? Yes. He's talking about both things. He's talking about both us and Christ. Again, because clearly there are some verses here that could not apply to Christ. Who is Christ that you should consider him? That doesn't really work out. He's part of the Trinity. So that has to be for us. But he has not put everything under our feet. He's put everything under Jesus' feet. So clearly that's for Jesus. And I'll tell you how I know that's for Jesus, because Jesus, Paul, and the author of Hebrews also thought that it was for Jesus. If you turn to Hebrews, you'll see, I forget the chapter. I think maybe I wrote it down somewhere. Yeah, chapter 2. The author of Hebrews is comparing Jesus to the angels, saying that he's superior to the angels. To do that, he quotes Psalm 8 and uses it to point back to Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15, verses 25 through 27, this is one of the times that you could flip and check me if you're bored and you'd look super spiritual. Paul is talking about Jesus and he's telling the people this is who Jesus is. He's the one that Psalm 8 was referring to. He's the Messiah that we are waiting on. The whole earth is in subjection to him. That is who we serve. And then Jesus himself uses this psalm to prove to a group of Pharisees that he's actually Jesus. He uses it to tick them off, which, you know, I'm a fan of. But this is what he says. Matthew 21 verses 15 and 16. I cheated. I had it marked. So I got there extra fast. Jesus says this, well, this isn't Jesus yet, but he'll talk soon. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant. Now they're indignant because for, for someone to declare Hosanna to the Son of David is to declare them the Messiah. It is to declare them God incarnate. And they were not willing to accept that about Jesus. So the children acknowledged who Jesus was before the adults were willing to acknowledge it. They were indignant. Verse 16. And they said to him, Do you hear what these are saying? Like, you need to tell them to be quiet if you have any sense. And Jesus said to them, Yes. Have you never read? Which is hilarious. Have you never read? That's like asking a Tennessee fan if they don't know that they got their tails kicked yesterday. Yes, of course they know that. Of course they do. Have you never read? It's ridiculous. Have you never read? Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise. It is a direct reference to Psalm chapter 8, where Jesus says, yeah, have you not read that Psalm? It's about me. So how can I be sure that Psalm 8 is about us and Jesus? Because Jesus told me. He uses it as a proof text to say, yeah, I am Hosanna, the son of David. And so what this means, what all this means, and I don't want you guys to miss this. When we sing Psalm 8, we declare the majesty of God, our wonder at his love for us, and the glory of our risen Savior. When we sing Psalm 8, we declare the majesty of our God, our wonder at his love for us, and the glory of our risen Savior. That's what's packed into these nine verses. We declare the majesty of God. Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. We declare God is grand. God is big. God is huge. We declare it along with the churches down through the centuries. We declare glory unto God. We marvel at his wonder for us. Who are we that you should pick us out of a crowd, that you should call us, that you should talk to us, that you should care about us, that you should know us, that you would want my praise. Who am I that I matter to you, God? Why in the world did you send your son for me? So we marvel at God's love as we sing. And then, and then we declared glory for the risen Savior. We shine him in glory, understanding that Psalm 8 is also a messianic psalm that talks about Jesus and declares his glory and puts him in dominion and says the world is under his feet and we are in that world so we are subservient to him. So in this psalm, as we sing it and as we move through it, we declare the glory of God. We wonder at his love for us and we declare the glory of our risen Savior all in those nine verses. And if this all doesn't stir your soul to sing, I can't help but think I must be a terrible pastor. Because as I studied this, as I prepared this morning, as I thought through this, I couldn't wait to sing with you guys. If I were you, I would want me to shut up so I could start singing. That's what I would want right now. And so I'm going to do that right before I do. I just want to show you the words we're about to sing. And I want to show you the verses that they come from. So when we sing this song together, when we, in a few minutes, join the ancient chorus of believers who have been singing this song through the centuries. When we join the churches all over the world who have been singing this song and who might even sing this song or sing from the songs this morning. I want us to know what we're singing. So let's look. The first verse, the first words, O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful your name. That comes directly out of verse 1. Directly out of verse 1. We're singing that right back to God. And then the words right after that in the song are your glory on display. The works of your hands show us who you are. That's verses 2 and 3. Do you see? That's verses two and three when it says the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. We're singing those words back to God. That's where they're pulled from. On down we see verse three highlighted again where it says, O Lord, our Lord, you light up our world, the sun, moon, and stars. Declare who you are. Declare who you are. And then finally, we see verse 4, and O who am I, unworthy one, that you would give your only son? Who are you to care for me? Amazing love, how can it be? That's where directly out of verse 4, we wonder and marvel at the love that God has for us, that he would notice us and care about us. And then the whole psalm declares the glory of Jesus. Anytime we sing about Jesus, who am I that you would send your only son? That's Jesus. That's who we're singing about. And then we say and we declare, tell the story. As we sing, God use me to tell your story of creation. I would remind you, all of creation was made to tell the story of God and declare praise for him. We're the only part of that creation that was given a voice to praise him. So let's use it together as we close out in these songs together. I'm going to pray and then Aaron and the band's going to come and we're going to sing together. Father, you are worthy of our praise. You are worthy of our adoration. Our words and our praise and our declarations are insufficient for you. They are inadequate for you and who you are. We admit that, God, as we look to sing to you. Lord, would you fill our lungs with praise for you? Would you fill our hearts with your grace and your goodness and your love that we might pour it back out to you? Would what we experience as we sing now not simply be something that makes our Sunday morning better, but will it carry us on a wave of praise into our weeks and maybe wash back up on these shores next week ready to praise again. God, fill our hearts with praise. Fill our hearts with joy. And let us do now, God, what you created us to do, to sing your praises back to you. In Jesus' name, amen.
My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. This is the second part of our series called The Songs We Sing. Last week, we opened up and we did Graves in the Gardens. I gave you kind of a background of worship, and I started to, it's kind of trickled into me some good feedback that you guys are excited about this series, looking forward to it, looking forward to seeing what we've been singing in the Bible, what we will be singing in the Bible. And so I am thrilled to be going through this series with you because like I said, it's one that I've been wanting to do for a while. And last week when I got done preaching and we sang together, I was so encouraged at the voices being lifted up. And this morning we'll have the same opportunity. I'm going to preach about the song that we just sang because it's pulled straight out of Psalm chapter 8. And then we'll sing it again, knowing it better, having a better understanding of what it means in a full-throated, open-hearted way. And then we'll sing some other songs that are really special to us. And then we'll go into our week. So I'm feeling really good about this Sunday. And I just feel like it's worth saying sometimes that I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful for my church. I'm so grateful for the love and the community that we experience here, for the handshakes and hugs and laughter and the lobby for the stories of the team coming back from Mexico I'm just grateful for y'all I'm grateful to be here and I'm excited to teach to you out of the book of Psalms this morning now to do a series focused on worship and to not have at least one morning out of the book of Psalms would be sacrilegious. It would be absolutely awful because Psalms is the hymn book of the Old Testament. It is the hymn book of the Hebrew people. It is intended to be sung. A vast majority of the Psalms are intended to be sung. And sometimes there's even instructions about it at the beginning of eight. You don't have to look there yet, but the very first thing it says is to the choir master, according to the Giddeth, nobody knows what that is, a Psalm of David, but they think it's a certain tune to which it's supposed to be sung. So David is even giving this to the choir master. I wrote this to praise our God. Let's sing it to this tune. Let's sing it together. A vast majority of the Psalms were written with the intention of God's body of believers singing them his words back to him, which I think is remarkable. And Psalms is a remarkable book. It sits in the dead center of our Bible. It's the longest book in the Bible with 150 chapters. It's divided into five separate books within the book of Psalms. It has the longest chapter in the Bible in Psalm 119, which comes in at, I believe, 176 verses. It's a super long chapter of the Bible because it's a beautiful Hebrew poem. There's 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and Psalm 119 has 22 stanzas, and each stanza, every line begins with that letter of the alphabet as the psalmist moves through. It's the one thing in the Bible that really makes me want to learn original Hebrew so I could hear that psalm read and sung in the original language in which it was intended because I've got a feeling that it is beautiful. I'll just wait until I get to heaven. I'm not actually going to do the work to learn Hebrew. That seems super hard. The seminary I chose, I chose it so I didn't have to learn original languages, so I'm not about to reverse course now, you know? But it's the longest book with the longest chapter, and it's filled with songs. And they're not all praise songs. They're divided up in different ways depending on who you ask and who's doing the dividing. You can find some people that divide them into five different types of Psalms, some as many as 20 and everything in between. But just a few examples of the types of Psalms that you can find in your Bible as you read through Psalms. And shame on me, I realize I haven't done a series in Psalms in the six and a half years I've been here. Shame on me for that. So I am promising you that coming up, we will do a series in Psalms at some point. But if you want to know some of the divisions of the book of Psalms, the different types that we have, there's Psalms of praise. Obviously, there's royal Psalms, Psalms of lament. And we're actually going to talk about those next week. I'm so grateful that our Bible has Psalms of lament, expressions of sadness and grief. There's what's called imprecatory psalms or psalms that are prayed and sung to seek vengeance over our enemies. David had a lot of reason to sing those. You probably don't. You probably don't have many enemies that you should sing imprecatory songs over, but they're in there. Psalms of enthronement and then psalms of pilgrimage. And I think these psalms of pilgrimage are really interesting. And I want to actually point you towards a book for my people who are readers. There's this book by a pastor named Eugene Peterson. Eugene Peterson is the pastor that faithfully translated the message to make scriptures a little bit more approachable for people who have never encountered them before. I read his biography last year, and I think it was an autobiography, a memoir, and it was one of the more moving books I've read in a long time. I was really, really touched by the heart of Eugene Peterson. And probably his most famous book is a book called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. And A Long Obedience in the Same Direction actually moves through what's called the Psalms of Ascent, this group of pilgrimage psalms And I've wanted to, that may be the Psalm series that we do. I'm either going to do it as a series as we walk through the book together, or I'm going to do it as like a Wednesday night course where those that want to come and we move through it together. But if you're a reader, I would highly encourage you to go grab or write down or put in your Goodreads, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. But in the book of Psalms, we have all these different categories. We have all these different verses. And one of the things we see that I think is remarkable is that a majority of them are written by David. They're not all written by David. There's some authors that are just referred to as the sons of Asaph. And Asaph was, I believe, the choir master, the worship leader. And then these are his sons that he has passed this responsibility down to. And they've written their own Psalms in there. But one of the remarkable things about the book of Psalms is to see the heart of David just kind of filleted open on the table for you. And I love that God in his goodness includes the Psalms to offset the other stories of David. Because if you read the story of David in 1 and 2 Samuel, you can also see the stories in 1st Kings but more of details of the story are in 1st and 2nd Samuel and if you read the story of David you see this traditionally masculine macho guy who's fighting and killing and he kills Goliath and he fights lions and bears with his bare hands which you know who hasn't and then there's a song about him him. David has killed his tens of thousands. Saul has killed his thousands. It's just like, yeah, spear-throwing, meat-eating dude. And then you open Psalms, and here's a guy that's brokenhearted. Here's a guy that's highly emotional, highly vulnerable, who displays his tears and his lament and his repentance and his hopes and his fears and his deepest prayers for all of time to see. And the juxtaposition of Psalms and 1 and 2 Samuel kind of brings together this vision of what we can be as people and how multifaceted we can be. So I'm grateful that Psalms reads almost like a prayer journal of David at times. But to me, the most remarkable thing about the book of Psalms is that when we sing the Psalms, we join in the ancient chorus of all the saints. When we sing the Psalms, we join in the ancient chorus of all the saints. And you can sing the Psalms. Write this down if you want to, if you want something else to listen to. There's this, I don't know, I guess they're just a duet, a duo, I don't know the rules, a band, Shane and Shane. And they have an album called Psalms, where they have set the Psalms to music, and it's one of my favorites. I love it. I've loved it for years and years. You can go find it. It's on Spotify. It's on all the things. And you can sing the Psalms. I would highly recommend it. When we sing the Psalms, understand this, we are joining in to an ancient chorus of all the saints. I spoke last week about how when we worship, when we praise, when we sing out, that we join our brothers and sisters in Christ in unity. It unifies us according to the high priestly prayer of Jesus in John chapter 17. When we sing together, it unifies us in this remarkable way. When we walk in Republican and Democrat, we walk in 80 and 20. We walk in stressed and not stressed, successful and not successful in a season of plenty and a season of need. And we lay all of those things down and we praise our God together and it unifies us. And I've just, I just got to tell you, I shared this with the band and the tech team before the service. But this is just a, just such a good picture of how it unifies us. if I don't say it I might die a little on the inside. So I'm just gonna have to Yesterday I was at the funeral for a friend of mine's wife 40 years old perfectly healthy Went on a girl's trip Heart heart attack, died in the bathroom. No other explanation. Incredibly sad thing. Two kids, sixth grader, third grader. So I drive down, I go to the funeral, and the husband's name, my buddy's name is Jeff. There's about 750 people in the room. And in between speakers, they put up a slideshow of Jodi and her family. And they started playing under that slideshow a song called Gratitude. We've sang it here a couple of times. It's going to be the last song that we sing this morning. They started playing Gratitude. And when that song started, Jeff, the husband who lost his wife a week ago, stood up and raised his hands in worship. And so, if you're at a funeral and the husband of the deceased woman stands up and raises his hands, you stand up and you raise your hands. So 750 people stand up and raise their hands to this song too. And then they spontaneously started singing it. And I'm six hours away from my church family, with my old church family, singing a song with myriad other church families, with our hands raised, choosing to praise in a moment of grief, and it just unifies you in a way that nothing else can. It was a remarkable moment. And when we sing it this morning, we join them and their praises to a God in spite of grief. We join Jeff in our prayers for him. We join the other congregations that sing that too. So when we sing the Psalms, we join into the ancient chorus of all the saints. Do you understand? When we sing in a few minutes, Psalm 8, back to God, we are singing it with David. We are singing it with the generations of David and Solomon and the faithful generations of Jeroboam and Rehoboam. We're singing it with Hezekiah and King Asa. We are singing it with the faithful generations, with the remnant that gets taken to Babylon. We are singing these psalms with Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego. We are singing these psalms with the Maccabees who lit the menorah in Roman oppression. We are singing these psalms with the generations that cried out in the 400 years of silence between Malachi and Matthew We are singing these songs with Jesus himself and with the disciples And with the early churches that met in the basements in Rome when we sing the Psalms We are joining with the underground churches in China and in Lebanon and in Istanbul, singing God's songs back to him. One of my favorite quotes about the Psalms is by Charles Spurgeon, and I'll tell you why he deserves to be the one who writes this in a second. Also, I'm just going to compose myself. We've got a long way to go here. This is premature. I can't afford this. I only have one tissue. Jen's laughing at me the hardest, she knows. It's been an emotional weekend. Back off. All right. Spurgeon writes this, the book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. I love that. The book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. That when we sing Psalms, we are mounted on wings of eagles and we soar in the presence of God. Now let me tell you why Spurgeon has a right to write that sentence and should rightly be pointed out in any sermon on Psalms. If you don't know who Charles Haddon Spurgeon is, he was a preacher. He was loud. He had combed back hair and a beard and a belly, and he suffered from gout, and he liked to drink whiskey. So, just saying, he was called. He was and is called the Prince of Preachers. He holds the world record for preaching to the most people in one space at one time without a microphone and being heard. One time he was preaching in an auditorium. This is in the late 1800s in London. He was preaching in an auditorium, going through what he wanted to say, and some janitor in a hallway that he couldn't see bowed on his knees right there and accepted Jesus listening to Charles go through his sermon. It's an amazing story. The volume of work of Charles Spurgeon is unbelievable. The amount of books that he wrote. You can look up any of his sermons online, and they're long, wordy, lengthy sermons. And it was said of him that people would come from all over the world to hear him preach, and what they would say is, yeah, the sermon's great, but you need to listen to the man pray. He was known all over the world. He wrote tons of books. He ran a seminary out of his church. He wrote books for the seminarians that I have, that I refer to regularly, that still help me and my approach to pastoring and preaching and all the things. But his whole life, he worked on one book that became a three-volume set called The Treasury of David. It's a commentary on the book of Psalms. And he carried it with him wherever he went. He worked on it for decades. He would work on it for a bit. He'd put it back down, he'd pick it back up. You better believe that I've got the treasury of David in my office. And that every time I preach out of a psalm, that's the first place I go. If you're someone who appreciates materials like that, go get it. It's not like super expensive. Find it on Amazon with a cheesy cover. And he writes in the intro to his magnum opus, the book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. The book of Psalms is worthy of our study and it's worthy of our singing. And we ought to acknowledge when we're singing it back to God because when we do, we join into that ancient chorus of all the saints through all the decades. Now this morning, we're going to be in Psalm chapter 8. So if you have a Bible with you, I would encourage you to turn there. And I'm going to say this this morning. I don't try to get you to do a lot of stuff because I want it to matter when I ask you to do something. So I intentionally don't try to put pressure on you to do things. I just want you to be a good Christian adult and do what you want to do and do as the Spirit moves you. But I'm going to encourage us as a church to begin to bring our Bibles to church for Sunday mornings. Some of you like to read through apps. That's fine. Read your app. Bring it. Have your phone out. I'm giving you permission to have your phone out in church. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not scrolling something that you shouldn't be scrolling during a church service. And if you are someone who likes to read the Bible on your phone, that's fine to have it out. Just make sure that the screen is visible to the people next to you, okay? So that they can smack you if you're cheating and you're checking a score or something. But let's be people who bring our Bible to church. Because here's what I want for you. I want you to sit, and I want you to have your Bible open. And when something strikes you, I want you to be able to write a note. When you see a verse that you like, that you want to remember, I want you to be able to highlight it. I want your Bibles to serve you as kind of these spiritual journals where when you flip through them, you see where you've been. You know that God's spoken to you there before. When you go to different places, you have notes on the sides and you have dates and you have prayers so that as you flip through your Bible years from now, you see times when God was faithful. I can't tell you how many passages I have written beside them. What does this mean? God help me understand. And then I'll hear sermon on it, or I'll hear somebody teach about it. I'll read a book on it, and I'll turn to that passage, and I'll go, oh, I think I understand this now. Thank you, God, for your faithfulness. I want to encourage you to bring your Bible to church. Open it up. Make notes about what I'm saying or what God is saying to you. And then let me just tell you this. If things get boring, as they often do, you can start flipping through your Bible like you're source checking me or you're just interested in something. And then you look double spiritual. The people in your row are going to be like, yo, they're cross-referencing Nate. That's, look at, look at them. That's super spiritual. So just bring it, man. We'll probably make you an elder if you start doing that stuff. And you're just doing it because you're bored. It's so many benefits. Let's start bringing our Bibles if we don't already. But right now, what I want you to do is grab the Bible. If you don't have one, grab the one in front of you and let's read Psalm 8 together. It's only nine verses and I thought it would be well worth it to spend some time reading it together this morning. Find Psalm 8. It says this. When I look at your heavens, the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. Verse 9, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. What a wonderful, declarative psalm of praise. This is the psalm that we sing from. This is the psalm that when I'm done talking, we will sing from again. And as we look through it and we go through it together and see what it has to offer, I think there's such depth of wisdom and goodness here. I love the way that the psalm starts. Verse 1, if you look at it in your Bibles, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name and all the earth. What I love about this, and this is a point that Spurgeon made, not me. What I love about this is the inadequacy of that declaration. This is a psalm that is clearly meant to glorify the majesty of God, that is clearly meant to frame him up among the stars, that is clearly meant to swoop us up and to carry us away into a reverent awe of the majesty of God. This is a big deal psalm. This needs to resound through the generations. And so we would expect some honorifics to go along with the Lord's name, wouldn't we? We would expect some more adjectives to be there. How majestic and all of your grandeur and the worthiness of your ways and whatever else. We would expect it to be this grand entrance as we open this declaration about God. And yet it's not that. It's this humble, oh Lord, our Lord. That's the best David could muster. Oh Lord, our Lord. It feels so inadequate for the moment, but that's why it's so good. Because to start a majestic psalm that way, so humbly, is to confess without even having to say it out loud, my words are inadequate for your greatness, oh God. What else could David say but oh Lord, our Lord? What else is fitting? What honorifics should he put there that would adequately capture who our creator God is? There's nothing worthy enough of writing. So he just humbly puts, oh Lord, our Lord. And so when we sing those words in a few minutes, when we say, oh Lord, our Lord, how wonderful your name, we are admitting in that song and in that declaration and with our voices and in our hearts that we are inadequate to adequately title God's glory and goodness. We are inadequate to adequately express and explain and capture who he is. And so we surrender to the simple, humble, oh Lord, our Lord. How majestic is your name. It's such a good beginning of the psalm to start it with humility and with simplicity as we confess through our words and our spirits, our inadequacy to capture who our creator God is. Verse two, we're actually going to look at in a second. That becomes important when we start to think about how Jesus employed this psalm. But verse 3, I love, when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. Psalm 8 proclaims that God has told the story of himself through his creation. The song that we are singing based out of Psalm 8 is called Tell the Story. And it talks about how creation tells the story of God and how we participate in that. When we look at creation, when we look at a sunset or a sunrise, when we're on a plane and we can look out and get that unique view of God's creation and his earth, when we hike and we see beautiful things, when we look into the heavens and we marvel at God, when we get away from the city and we can actually see the stars, when we do those things, the heavens are declaring the glory of God. They're preaching to us about the presence of God. The purpose of creation is to tell the story of the creator. And since you are his creation and you are the only one imbued with a voice and entrusted with a voice, then it is our responsibility to cry out to God in ways that the rest of creation cannot do. It is our responsibility to make sure that the rocks don't have to cry out to our God because we're going to do that because we are the part of his creation that was made to praise him. And so we do it loudly. We do it vigorously. We do it openheartedly. And I'm reminded in verse three, as it points to God's creation, kind of declaring who he is of Romans one, Paul writes about this. Paul in Romans 1 says that the Lord has revealed himself in creation so that no man is without excuse. Through the millennia, men and women and children have looked at God's creation and marveled at the creator. The sun, the moon, and the stars tell the story of our God and who he is. And then we move into verses four and following what could be a little bit of a confusing portion. Because as I read it earlier, you may have picked up on the difference. If you were following along in an NIV, if you're using one of our Bibles this morning, then you're reading an N NIV maybe you pulled up an NIV on your app or that's what you carried in this morning but what you saw is in verse 4 when it says what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him your version says them so the ESV and some other versions say him and your version and some other versions say them. And so the question becomes, why is there a difference there? Why does that matter? Why is that important? Well, the Hebrew word there can be translated either way. And so some translations choose to say them because clearly some of these verses are referring to us, to humankind. I mean, when we read it, especially verse 4, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? That's not talking about Jesus. Who is Jesus that you would care about him, that you are mindful of him? Obviously, it's not talking about Jesus. It's us. Who are we that you would care about us? And to this point, just to bring this home, I do like that verse. I'm going to pause here. We're going to get back to him and them. But I like this thought, who am I that you would care for me? Why do I matter to you? I don't know if you've ever experienced someone singling you out in a way that made you feel special. You're like, why are you paying attention to me? Years ago, a few months before I moved to Raleigh, my pastor growing up died. He had had an aortic aneurysm, survived for a few years, developed an infection, and he passed away. He was very old, though. He was about 62, I think. He was too young. And his church had grown pretty significantly, and they had started other churches. So the people who were there were in the thousands. There was so many people who wanted to pay their respects for Pastor Buddy that they had to have a visitation the night before at the church. And the line was over an hour long to talk to the family. And when I got there, I hadn't been going to that church in years. I worked at another church. I grew up with, I grew up at that church and Buddy has three kids, Gabe, Joy, and Spring. Joy's my age. Gabe's a few years older than me. But Gabe and I, we were buddies growing up. We played Goldeneye together. He was my Goldeneye buddy. I don't know if that resonates with any of you. Like four of you, they're like, yes, Goldeneye buddies. But we weren't like super tight. And I really didn't expect to talk to anybody. I was just showing up because I have a lot of respect for Buddy and I love that family. And before I could get in line, I heard Gabe call my name. And I'm like, cool, I get to skip the line, which I love doing. And I go up to Gabe, and he hugs me, and he says, it's such a funny question. He goes, dude, what are you doing? Like, you got anything going on? I'm like, I'm at your dad's visitation, man. This is what I'm doing. You know, like, I didn't say that, but I said, no, I'm not busy. And he goes, come on. And so he leaves the line, and he takes me back to a hospitality room where there's Zaxby's. I'd love to say it was Chick-fil-A. It wasn't. There's Zaxby's. And he sits down, and he just wants to talk with me. And I just remember thinking, why are you talking with me of all these people why do i why am i the one that gets your time why are you treating me like this and in that case i really do think it was because i knew him when we remember growing up we we were at the church running around together we were the ones running around in in the service after it was over before there was thousands of people going there. And I guess nobody else kind of knew the family like I did. But the whole time I'm sitting there, I just felt such privilege of why in the world do you care about talking to me right now? And I feel like that's what the author of Psalms, David, is describing. God, why do you even notice us? Why are you calling me out in a crowd? Why do we matter to you? That should not be something that's lost on us, that God sees us, that he calls our name, and he says, hey, come here, let's talk. That's a remarkable thing. And so back to the he, him, and them. There are some verses that are very clearly talking about humankind, us. But there are some verses that are very clearly talking about Jesus. Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You gave him dominion over the works of your hand. You have put all things under his feet. Clearly that's talking about Jesus. And so the question becomes in Psalm chapter 8, in verse 5, is the psalmist talking about us or Jesus? Yes. He's talking about both things. He's talking about both us and Christ. Again, because clearly there are some verses here that could not apply to Christ. Who is Christ that you should consider him? That doesn't really work out. He's part of the Trinity. So that has to be for us. But he has not put everything under our feet. He's put everything under Jesus' feet. So clearly that's for Jesus. And I'll tell you how I know that's for Jesus, because Jesus, Paul, and the author of Hebrews also thought that it was for Jesus. If you turn to Hebrews, you'll see, I forget the chapter. I think maybe I wrote it down somewhere. Yeah, chapter 2. The author of Hebrews is comparing Jesus to the angels, saying that he's superior to the angels. To do that, he quotes Psalm 8 and uses it to point back to Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15, verses 25 through 27, this is one of the times that you could flip and check me if you're bored and you'd look super spiritual. Paul is talking about Jesus and he's telling the people this is who Jesus is. He's the one that Psalm 8 was referring to. He's the Messiah that we are waiting on. The whole earth is in subjection to him. That is who we serve. And then Jesus himself uses this psalm to prove to a group of Pharisees that he's actually Jesus. He uses it to tick them off, which, you know, I'm a fan of. But this is what he says. Matthew 21 verses 15 and 16. I cheated. I had it marked. So I got there extra fast. Jesus says this, well, this isn't Jesus yet, but he'll talk soon. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant. Now they're indignant because for, for someone to declare Hosanna to the Son of David is to declare them the Messiah. It is to declare them God incarnate. And they were not willing to accept that about Jesus. So the children acknowledged who Jesus was before the adults were willing to acknowledge it. They were indignant. Verse 16. And they said to him, Do you hear what these are saying? Like, you need to tell them to be quiet if you have any sense. And Jesus said to them, Yes. Have you never read? Which is hilarious. Have you never read? That's like asking a Tennessee fan if they don't know that they got their tails kicked yesterday. Yes, of course they know that. Of course they do. Have you never read? It's ridiculous. Have you never read? Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise. It is a direct reference to Psalm chapter 8, where Jesus says, yeah, have you not read that Psalm? It's about me. So how can I be sure that Psalm 8 is about us and Jesus? Because Jesus told me. He uses it as a proof text to say, yeah, I am Hosanna, the son of David. And so what this means, what all this means, and I don't want you guys to miss this. When we sing Psalm 8, we declare the majesty of God, our wonder at his love for us, and the glory of our risen Savior. When we sing Psalm 8, we declare the majesty of our God, our wonder at his love for us, and the glory of our risen Savior. That's what's packed into these nine verses. We declare the majesty of God. Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. We declare God is grand. God is big. God is huge. We declare it along with the churches down through the centuries. We declare glory unto God. We marvel at his wonder for us. Who are we that you should pick us out of a crowd, that you should call us, that you should talk to us, that you should care about us, that you should know us, that you would want my praise. Who am I that I matter to you, God? Why in the world did you send your son for me? So we marvel at God's love as we sing. And then, and then we declared glory for the risen Savior. We shine him in glory, understanding that Psalm 8 is also a messianic psalm that talks about Jesus and declares his glory and puts him in dominion and says the world is under his feet and we are in that world so we are subservient to him. So in this psalm, as we sing it and as we move through it, we declare the glory of God. We wonder at his love for us and we declare the glory of our risen Savior all in those nine verses. And if this all doesn't stir your soul to sing, I can't help but think I must be a terrible pastor. Because as I studied this, as I prepared this morning, as I thought through this, I couldn't wait to sing with you guys. If I were you, I would want me to shut up so I could start singing. That's what I would want right now. And so I'm going to do that right before I do. I just want to show you the words we're about to sing. And I want to show you the verses that they come from. So when we sing this song together, when we, in a few minutes, join the ancient chorus of believers who have been singing this song through the centuries. When we join the churches all over the world who have been singing this song and who might even sing this song or sing from the songs this morning. I want us to know what we're singing. So let's look. The first verse, the first words, O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful your name. That comes directly out of verse 1. Directly out of verse 1. We're singing that right back to God. And then the words right after that in the song are your glory on display. The works of your hands show us who you are. That's verses 2 and 3. Do you see? That's verses two and three when it says the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. We're singing those words back to God. That's where they're pulled from. On down we see verse three highlighted again where it says, O Lord, our Lord, you light up our world, the sun, moon, and stars. Declare who you are. Declare who you are. And then finally, we see verse 4, and O who am I, unworthy one, that you would give your only son? Who are you to care for me? Amazing love, how can it be? That's where directly out of verse 4, we wonder and marvel at the love that God has for us, that he would notice us and care about us. And then the whole psalm declares the glory of Jesus. Anytime we sing about Jesus, who am I that you would send your only son? That's Jesus. That's who we're singing about. And then we say and we declare, tell the story. As we sing, God use me to tell your story of creation. I would remind you, all of creation was made to tell the story of God and declare praise for him. We're the only part of that creation that was given a voice to praise him. So let's use it together as we close out in these songs together. I'm going to pray and then Aaron and the band's going to come and we're going to sing together. Father, you are worthy of our praise. You are worthy of our adoration. Our words and our praise and our declarations are insufficient for you. They are inadequate for you and who you are. We admit that, God, as we look to sing to you. Lord, would you fill our lungs with praise for you? Would you fill our hearts with your grace and your goodness and your love that we might pour it back out to you? Would what we experience as we sing now not simply be something that makes our Sunday morning better, but will it carry us on a wave of praise into our weeks and maybe wash back up on these shores next week ready to praise again. God, fill our hearts with praise. Fill our hearts with joy. And let us do now, God, what you created us to do, to sing your praises back to you. In Jesus' name, amen.
My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. This is the second part of our series called The Songs We Sing. Last week, we opened up and we did Graves in the Gardens. I gave you kind of a background of worship, and I started to, it's kind of trickled into me some good feedback that you guys are excited about this series, looking forward to it, looking forward to seeing what we've been singing in the Bible, what we will be singing in the Bible. And so I am thrilled to be going through this series with you because like I said, it's one that I've been wanting to do for a while. And last week when I got done preaching and we sang together, I was so encouraged at the voices being lifted up. And this morning we'll have the same opportunity. I'm going to preach about the song that we just sang because it's pulled straight out of Psalm chapter 8. And then we'll sing it again, knowing it better, having a better understanding of what it means in a full-throated, open-hearted way. And then we'll sing some other songs that are really special to us. And then we'll go into our week. So I'm feeling really good about this Sunday. And I just feel like it's worth saying sometimes that I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful for my church. I'm so grateful for the love and the community that we experience here, for the handshakes and hugs and laughter and the lobby for the stories of the team coming back from Mexico I'm just grateful for y'all I'm grateful to be here and I'm excited to teach to you out of the book of Psalms this morning now to do a series focused on worship and to not have at least one morning out of the book of Psalms would be sacrilegious. It would be absolutely awful because Psalms is the hymn book of the Old Testament. It is the hymn book of the Hebrew people. It is intended to be sung. A vast majority of the Psalms are intended to be sung. And sometimes there's even instructions about it at the beginning of eight. You don't have to look there yet, but the very first thing it says is to the choir master, according to the Giddeth, nobody knows what that is, a Psalm of David, but they think it's a certain tune to which it's supposed to be sung. So David is even giving this to the choir master. I wrote this to praise our God. Let's sing it to this tune. Let's sing it together. A vast majority of the Psalms were written with the intention of God's body of believers singing them his words back to him, which I think is remarkable. And Psalms is a remarkable book. It sits in the dead center of our Bible. It's the longest book in the Bible with 150 chapters. It's divided into five separate books within the book of Psalms. It has the longest chapter in the Bible in Psalm 119, which comes in at, I believe, 176 verses. It's a super long chapter of the Bible because it's a beautiful Hebrew poem. There's 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and Psalm 119 has 22 stanzas, and each stanza, every line begins with that letter of the alphabet as the psalmist moves through. It's the one thing in the Bible that really makes me want to learn original Hebrew so I could hear that psalm read and sung in the original language in which it was intended because I've got a feeling that it is beautiful. I'll just wait until I get to heaven. I'm not actually going to do the work to learn Hebrew. That seems super hard. The seminary I chose, I chose it so I didn't have to learn original languages, so I'm not about to reverse course now, you know? But it's the longest book with the longest chapter, and it's filled with songs. And they're not all praise songs. They're divided up in different ways depending on who you ask and who's doing the dividing. You can find some people that divide them into five different types of Psalms, some as many as 20 and everything in between. But just a few examples of the types of Psalms that you can find in your Bible as you read through Psalms. And shame on me, I realize I haven't done a series in Psalms in the six and a half years I've been here. Shame on me for that. So I am promising you that coming up, we will do a series in Psalms at some point. But if you want to know some of the divisions of the book of Psalms, the different types that we have, there's Psalms of praise. Obviously, there's royal Psalms, Psalms of lament. And we're actually going to talk about those next week. I'm so grateful that our Bible has Psalms of lament, expressions of sadness and grief. There's what's called imprecatory psalms or psalms that are prayed and sung to seek vengeance over our enemies. David had a lot of reason to sing those. You probably don't. You probably don't have many enemies that you should sing imprecatory songs over, but they're in there. Psalms of enthronement and then psalms of pilgrimage. And I think these psalms of pilgrimage are really interesting. And I want to actually point you towards a book for my people who are readers. There's this book by a pastor named Eugene Peterson. Eugene Peterson is the pastor that faithfully translated the message to make scriptures a little bit more approachable for people who have never encountered them before. I read his biography last year, and I think it was an autobiography, a memoir, and it was one of the more moving books I've read in a long time. I was really, really touched by the heart of Eugene Peterson. And probably his most famous book is a book called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. And A Long Obedience in the Same Direction actually moves through what's called the Psalms of Ascent, this group of pilgrimage psalms And I've wanted to, that may be the Psalm series that we do. I'm either going to do it as a series as we walk through the book together, or I'm going to do it as like a Wednesday night course where those that want to come and we move through it together. But if you're a reader, I would highly encourage you to go grab or write down or put in your Goodreads, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. But in the book of Psalms, we have all these different categories. We have all these different verses. And one of the things we see that I think is remarkable is that a majority of them are written by David. They're not all written by David. There's some authors that are just referred to as the sons of Asaph. And Asaph was, I believe, the choir master, the worship leader. And then these are his sons that he has passed this responsibility down to. And they've written their own Psalms in there. But one of the remarkable things about the book of Psalms is to see the heart of David just kind of filleted open on the table for you. And I love that God in his goodness includes the Psalms to offset the other stories of David. Because if you read the story of David in 1 and 2 Samuel, you can also see the stories in 1st Kings but more of details of the story are in 1st and 2nd Samuel and if you read the story of David you see this traditionally masculine macho guy who's fighting and killing and he kills Goliath and he fights lions and bears with his bare hands which you know who hasn't and then there's a song about him him. David has killed his tens of thousands. Saul has killed his thousands. It's just like, yeah, spear-throwing, meat-eating dude. And then you open Psalms, and here's a guy that's brokenhearted. Here's a guy that's highly emotional, highly vulnerable, who displays his tears and his lament and his repentance and his hopes and his fears and his deepest prayers for all of time to see. And the juxtaposition of Psalms and 1 and 2 Samuel kind of brings together this vision of what we can be as people and how multifaceted we can be. So I'm grateful that Psalms reads almost like a prayer journal of David at times. But to me, the most remarkable thing about the book of Psalms is that when we sing the Psalms, we join in the ancient chorus of all the saints. When we sing the Psalms, we join in the ancient chorus of all the saints. And you can sing the Psalms. Write this down if you want to, if you want something else to listen to. There's this, I don't know, I guess they're just a duet, a duo, I don't know the rules, a band, Shane and Shane. And they have an album called Psalms, where they have set the Psalms to music, and it's one of my favorites. I love it. I've loved it for years and years. You can go find it. It's on Spotify. It's on all the things. And you can sing the Psalms. I would highly recommend it. When we sing the Psalms, understand this, we are joining in to an ancient chorus of all the saints. I spoke last week about how when we worship, when we praise, when we sing out, that we join our brothers and sisters in Christ in unity. It unifies us according to the high priestly prayer of Jesus in John chapter 17. When we sing together, it unifies us in this remarkable way. When we walk in Republican and Democrat, we walk in 80 and 20. We walk in stressed and not stressed, successful and not successful in a season of plenty and a season of need. And we lay all of those things down and we praise our God together and it unifies us. And I've just, I just got to tell you, I shared this with the band and the tech team before the service. But this is just a, just such a good picture of how it unifies us. if I don't say it I might die a little on the inside. So I'm just gonna have to Yesterday I was at the funeral for a friend of mine's wife 40 years old perfectly healthy Went on a girl's trip Heart heart attack, died in the bathroom. No other explanation. Incredibly sad thing. Two kids, sixth grader, third grader. So I drive down, I go to the funeral, and the husband's name, my buddy's name is Jeff. There's about 750 people in the room. And in between speakers, they put up a slideshow of Jodi and her family. And they started playing under that slideshow a song called Gratitude. We've sang it here a couple of times. It's going to be the last song that we sing this morning. They started playing Gratitude. And when that song started, Jeff, the husband who lost his wife a week ago, stood up and raised his hands in worship. And so, if you're at a funeral and the husband of the deceased woman stands up and raises his hands, you stand up and you raise your hands. So 750 people stand up and raise their hands to this song too. And then they spontaneously started singing it. And I'm six hours away from my church family, with my old church family, singing a song with myriad other church families, with our hands raised, choosing to praise in a moment of grief, and it just unifies you in a way that nothing else can. It was a remarkable moment. And when we sing it this morning, we join them and their praises to a God in spite of grief. We join Jeff in our prayers for him. We join the other congregations that sing that too. So when we sing the Psalms, we join into the ancient chorus of all the saints. Do you understand? When we sing in a few minutes, Psalm 8, back to God, we are singing it with David. We are singing it with the generations of David and Solomon and the faithful generations of Jeroboam and Rehoboam. We're singing it with Hezekiah and King Asa. We are singing it with the faithful generations, with the remnant that gets taken to Babylon. We are singing these psalms with Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego. We are singing these psalms with the Maccabees who lit the menorah in Roman oppression. We are singing these psalms with the generations that cried out in the 400 years of silence between Malachi and Matthew We are singing these songs with Jesus himself and with the disciples And with the early churches that met in the basements in Rome when we sing the Psalms We are joining with the underground churches in China and in Lebanon and in Istanbul, singing God's songs back to him. One of my favorite quotes about the Psalms is by Charles Spurgeon, and I'll tell you why he deserves to be the one who writes this in a second. Also, I'm just going to compose myself. We've got a long way to go here. This is premature. I can't afford this. I only have one tissue. Jen's laughing at me the hardest, she knows. It's been an emotional weekend. Back off. All right. Spurgeon writes this, the book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. I love that. The book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. That when we sing Psalms, we are mounted on wings of eagles and we soar in the presence of God. Now let me tell you why Spurgeon has a right to write that sentence and should rightly be pointed out in any sermon on Psalms. If you don't know who Charles Haddon Spurgeon is, he was a preacher. He was loud. He had combed back hair and a beard and a belly, and he suffered from gout, and he liked to drink whiskey. So, just saying, he was called. He was and is called the Prince of Preachers. He holds the world record for preaching to the most people in one space at one time without a microphone and being heard. One time he was preaching in an auditorium. This is in the late 1800s in London. He was preaching in an auditorium, going through what he wanted to say, and some janitor in a hallway that he couldn't see bowed on his knees right there and accepted Jesus listening to Charles go through his sermon. It's an amazing story. The volume of work of Charles Spurgeon is unbelievable. The amount of books that he wrote. You can look up any of his sermons online, and they're long, wordy, lengthy sermons. And it was said of him that people would come from all over the world to hear him preach, and what they would say is, yeah, the sermon's great, but you need to listen to the man pray. He was known all over the world. He wrote tons of books. He ran a seminary out of his church. He wrote books for the seminarians that I have, that I refer to regularly, that still help me and my approach to pastoring and preaching and all the things. But his whole life, he worked on one book that became a three-volume set called The Treasury of David. It's a commentary on the book of Psalms. And he carried it with him wherever he went. He worked on it for decades. He would work on it for a bit. He'd put it back down, he'd pick it back up. You better believe that I've got the treasury of David in my office. And that every time I preach out of a psalm, that's the first place I go. If you're someone who appreciates materials like that, go get it. It's not like super expensive. Find it on Amazon with a cheesy cover. And he writes in the intro to his magnum opus, the book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. The book of Psalms is worthy of our study and it's worthy of our singing. And we ought to acknowledge when we're singing it back to God because when we do, we join into that ancient chorus of all the saints through all the decades. Now this morning, we're going to be in Psalm chapter 8. So if you have a Bible with you, I would encourage you to turn there. And I'm going to say this this morning. I don't try to get you to do a lot of stuff because I want it to matter when I ask you to do something. So I intentionally don't try to put pressure on you to do things. I just want you to be a good Christian adult and do what you want to do and do as the Spirit moves you. But I'm going to encourage us as a church to begin to bring our Bibles to church for Sunday mornings. Some of you like to read through apps. That's fine. Read your app. Bring it. Have your phone out. I'm giving you permission to have your phone out in church. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not scrolling something that you shouldn't be scrolling during a church service. And if you are someone who likes to read the Bible on your phone, that's fine to have it out. Just make sure that the screen is visible to the people next to you, okay? So that they can smack you if you're cheating and you're checking a score or something. But let's be people who bring our Bible to church. Because here's what I want for you. I want you to sit, and I want you to have your Bible open. And when something strikes you, I want you to be able to write a note. When you see a verse that you like, that you want to remember, I want you to be able to highlight it. I want your Bibles to serve you as kind of these spiritual journals where when you flip through them, you see where you've been. You know that God's spoken to you there before. When you go to different places, you have notes on the sides and you have dates and you have prayers so that as you flip through your Bible years from now, you see times when God was faithful. I can't tell you how many passages I have written beside them. What does this mean? God help me understand. And then I'll hear sermon on it, or I'll hear somebody teach about it. I'll read a book on it, and I'll turn to that passage, and I'll go, oh, I think I understand this now. Thank you, God, for your faithfulness. I want to encourage you to bring your Bible to church. Open it up. Make notes about what I'm saying or what God is saying to you. And then let me just tell you this. If things get boring, as they often do, you can start flipping through your Bible like you're source checking me or you're just interested in something. And then you look double spiritual. The people in your row are going to be like, yo, they're cross-referencing Nate. That's, look at, look at them. That's super spiritual. So just bring it, man. We'll probably make you an elder if you start doing that stuff. And you're just doing it because you're bored. It's so many benefits. Let's start bringing our Bibles if we don't already. But right now, what I want you to do is grab the Bible. If you don't have one, grab the one in front of you and let's read Psalm 8 together. It's only nine verses and I thought it would be well worth it to spend some time reading it together this morning. Find Psalm 8. It says this. When I look at your heavens, the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. Verse 9, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. What a wonderful, declarative psalm of praise. This is the psalm that we sing from. This is the psalm that when I'm done talking, we will sing from again. And as we look through it and we go through it together and see what it has to offer, I think there's such depth of wisdom and goodness here. I love the way that the psalm starts. Verse 1, if you look at it in your Bibles, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name and all the earth. What I love about this, and this is a point that Spurgeon made, not me. What I love about this is the inadequacy of that declaration. This is a psalm that is clearly meant to glorify the majesty of God, that is clearly meant to frame him up among the stars, that is clearly meant to swoop us up and to carry us away into a reverent awe of the majesty of God. This is a big deal psalm. This needs to resound through the generations. And so we would expect some honorifics to go along with the Lord's name, wouldn't we? We would expect some more adjectives to be there. How majestic and all of your grandeur and the worthiness of your ways and whatever else. We would expect it to be this grand entrance as we open this declaration about God. And yet it's not that. It's this humble, oh Lord, our Lord. That's the best David could muster. Oh Lord, our Lord. It feels so inadequate for the moment, but that's why it's so good. Because to start a majestic psalm that way, so humbly, is to confess without even having to say it out loud, my words are inadequate for your greatness, oh God. What else could David say but oh Lord, our Lord? What else is fitting? What honorifics should he put there that would adequately capture who our creator God is? There's nothing worthy enough of writing. So he just humbly puts, oh Lord, our Lord. And so when we sing those words in a few minutes, when we say, oh Lord, our Lord, how wonderful your name, we are admitting in that song and in that declaration and with our voices and in our hearts that we are inadequate to adequately title God's glory and goodness. We are inadequate to adequately express and explain and capture who he is. And so we surrender to the simple, humble, oh Lord, our Lord. How majestic is your name. It's such a good beginning of the psalm to start it with humility and with simplicity as we confess through our words and our spirits, our inadequacy to capture who our creator God is. Verse two, we're actually going to look at in a second. That becomes important when we start to think about how Jesus employed this psalm. But verse 3, I love, when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. Psalm 8 proclaims that God has told the story of himself through his creation. The song that we are singing based out of Psalm 8 is called Tell the Story. And it talks about how creation tells the story of God and how we participate in that. When we look at creation, when we look at a sunset or a sunrise, when we're on a plane and we can look out and get that unique view of God's creation and his earth, when we hike and we see beautiful things, when we look into the heavens and we marvel at God, when we get away from the city and we can actually see the stars, when we do those things, the heavens are declaring the glory of God. They're preaching to us about the presence of God. The purpose of creation is to tell the story of the creator. And since you are his creation and you are the only one imbued with a voice and entrusted with a voice, then it is our responsibility to cry out to God in ways that the rest of creation cannot do. It is our responsibility to make sure that the rocks don't have to cry out to our God because we're going to do that because we are the part of his creation that was made to praise him. And so we do it loudly. We do it vigorously. We do it openheartedly. And I'm reminded in verse three, as it points to God's creation, kind of declaring who he is of Romans one, Paul writes about this. Paul in Romans 1 says that the Lord has revealed himself in creation so that no man is without excuse. Through the millennia, men and women and children have looked at God's creation and marveled at the creator. The sun, the moon, and the stars tell the story of our God and who he is. And then we move into verses four and following what could be a little bit of a confusing portion. Because as I read it earlier, you may have picked up on the difference. If you were following along in an NIV, if you're using one of our Bibles this morning, then you're reading an N NIV maybe you pulled up an NIV on your app or that's what you carried in this morning but what you saw is in verse 4 when it says what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him your version says them so the ESV and some other versions say him and your version and some other versions say them. And so the question becomes, why is there a difference there? Why does that matter? Why is that important? Well, the Hebrew word there can be translated either way. And so some translations choose to say them because clearly some of these verses are referring to us, to humankind. I mean, when we read it, especially verse 4, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? That's not talking about Jesus. Who is Jesus that you would care about him, that you are mindful of him? Obviously, it's not talking about Jesus. It's us. Who are we that you would care about us? And to this point, just to bring this home, I do like that verse. I'm going to pause here. We're going to get back to him and them. But I like this thought, who am I that you would care for me? Why do I matter to you? I don't know if you've ever experienced someone singling you out in a way that made you feel special. You're like, why are you paying attention to me? Years ago, a few months before I moved to Raleigh, my pastor growing up died. He had had an aortic aneurysm, survived for a few years, developed an infection, and he passed away. He was very old, though. He was about 62, I think. He was too young. And his church had grown pretty significantly, and they had started other churches. So the people who were there were in the thousands. There was so many people who wanted to pay their respects for Pastor Buddy that they had to have a visitation the night before at the church. And the line was over an hour long to talk to the family. And when I got there, I hadn't been going to that church in years. I worked at another church. I grew up with, I grew up at that church and Buddy has three kids, Gabe, Joy, and Spring. Joy's my age. Gabe's a few years older than me. But Gabe and I, we were buddies growing up. We played Goldeneye together. He was my Goldeneye buddy. I don't know if that resonates with any of you. Like four of you, they're like, yes, Goldeneye buddies. But we weren't like super tight. And I really didn't expect to talk to anybody. I was just showing up because I have a lot of respect for Buddy and I love that family. And before I could get in line, I heard Gabe call my name. And I'm like, cool, I get to skip the line, which I love doing. And I go up to Gabe, and he hugs me, and he says, it's such a funny question. He goes, dude, what are you doing? Like, you got anything going on? I'm like, I'm at your dad's visitation, man. This is what I'm doing. You know, like, I didn't say that, but I said, no, I'm not busy. And he goes, come on. And so he leaves the line, and he takes me back to a hospitality room where there's Zaxby's. I'd love to say it was Chick-fil-A. It wasn't. There's Zaxby's. And he sits down, and he just wants to talk with me. And I just remember thinking, why are you talking with me of all these people why do i why am i the one that gets your time why are you treating me like this and in that case i really do think it was because i knew him when we remember growing up we we were at the church running around together we were the ones running around in in the service after it was over before there was thousands of people going there. And I guess nobody else kind of knew the family like I did. But the whole time I'm sitting there, I just felt such privilege of why in the world do you care about talking to me right now? And I feel like that's what the author of Psalms, David, is describing. God, why do you even notice us? Why are you calling me out in a crowd? Why do we matter to you? That should not be something that's lost on us, that God sees us, that he calls our name, and he says, hey, come here, let's talk. That's a remarkable thing. And so back to the he, him, and them. There are some verses that are very clearly talking about humankind, us. But there are some verses that are very clearly talking about Jesus. Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You gave him dominion over the works of your hand. You have put all things under his feet. Clearly that's talking about Jesus. And so the question becomes in Psalm chapter 8, in verse 5, is the psalmist talking about us or Jesus? Yes. He's talking about both things. He's talking about both us and Christ. Again, because clearly there are some verses here that could not apply to Christ. Who is Christ that you should consider him? That doesn't really work out. He's part of the Trinity. So that has to be for us. But he has not put everything under our feet. He's put everything under Jesus' feet. So clearly that's for Jesus. And I'll tell you how I know that's for Jesus, because Jesus, Paul, and the author of Hebrews also thought that it was for Jesus. If you turn to Hebrews, you'll see, I forget the chapter. I think maybe I wrote it down somewhere. Yeah, chapter 2. The author of Hebrews is comparing Jesus to the angels, saying that he's superior to the angels. To do that, he quotes Psalm 8 and uses it to point back to Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15, verses 25 through 27, this is one of the times that you could flip and check me if you're bored and you'd look super spiritual. Paul is talking about Jesus and he's telling the people this is who Jesus is. He's the one that Psalm 8 was referring to. He's the Messiah that we are waiting on. The whole earth is in subjection to him. That is who we serve. And then Jesus himself uses this psalm to prove to a group of Pharisees that he's actually Jesus. He uses it to tick them off, which, you know, I'm a fan of. But this is what he says. Matthew 21 verses 15 and 16. I cheated. I had it marked. So I got there extra fast. Jesus says this, well, this isn't Jesus yet, but he'll talk soon. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant. Now they're indignant because for, for someone to declare Hosanna to the Son of David is to declare them the Messiah. It is to declare them God incarnate. And they were not willing to accept that about Jesus. So the children acknowledged who Jesus was before the adults were willing to acknowledge it. They were indignant. Verse 16. And they said to him, Do you hear what these are saying? Like, you need to tell them to be quiet if you have any sense. And Jesus said to them, Yes. Have you never read? Which is hilarious. Have you never read? That's like asking a Tennessee fan if they don't know that they got their tails kicked yesterday. Yes, of course they know that. Of course they do. Have you never read? It's ridiculous. Have you never read? Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise. It is a direct reference to Psalm chapter 8, where Jesus says, yeah, have you not read that Psalm? It's about me. So how can I be sure that Psalm 8 is about us and Jesus? Because Jesus told me. He uses it as a proof text to say, yeah, I am Hosanna, the son of David. And so what this means, what all this means, and I don't want you guys to miss this. When we sing Psalm 8, we declare the majesty of God, our wonder at his love for us, and the glory of our risen Savior. When we sing Psalm 8, we declare the majesty of our God, our wonder at his love for us, and the glory of our risen Savior. That's what's packed into these nine verses. We declare the majesty of God. Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. We declare God is grand. God is big. God is huge. We declare it along with the churches down through the centuries. We declare glory unto God. We marvel at his wonder for us. Who are we that you should pick us out of a crowd, that you should call us, that you should talk to us, that you should care about us, that you should know us, that you would want my praise. Who am I that I matter to you, God? Why in the world did you send your son for me? So we marvel at God's love as we sing. And then, and then we declared glory for the risen Savior. We shine him in glory, understanding that Psalm 8 is also a messianic psalm that talks about Jesus and declares his glory and puts him in dominion and says the world is under his feet and we are in that world so we are subservient to him. So in this psalm, as we sing it and as we move through it, we declare the glory of God. We wonder at his love for us and we declare the glory of our risen Savior all in those nine verses. And if this all doesn't stir your soul to sing, I can't help but think I must be a terrible pastor. Because as I studied this, as I prepared this morning, as I thought through this, I couldn't wait to sing with you guys. If I were you, I would want me to shut up so I could start singing. That's what I would want right now. And so I'm going to do that right before I do. I just want to show you the words we're about to sing. And I want to show you the verses that they come from. So when we sing this song together, when we, in a few minutes, join the ancient chorus of believers who have been singing this song through the centuries. When we join the churches all over the world who have been singing this song and who might even sing this song or sing from the songs this morning. I want us to know what we're singing. So let's look. The first verse, the first words, O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful your name. That comes directly out of verse 1. Directly out of verse 1. We're singing that right back to God. And then the words right after that in the song are your glory on display. The works of your hands show us who you are. That's verses 2 and 3. Do you see? That's verses two and three when it says the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. We're singing those words back to God. That's where they're pulled from. On down we see verse three highlighted again where it says, O Lord, our Lord, you light up our world, the sun, moon, and stars. Declare who you are. Declare who you are. And then finally, we see verse 4, and O who am I, unworthy one, that you would give your only son? Who are you to care for me? Amazing love, how can it be? That's where directly out of verse 4, we wonder and marvel at the love that God has for us, that he would notice us and care about us. And then the whole psalm declares the glory of Jesus. Anytime we sing about Jesus, who am I that you would send your only son? That's Jesus. That's who we're singing about. And then we say and we declare, tell the story. As we sing, God use me to tell your story of creation. I would remind you, all of creation was made to tell the story of God and declare praise for him. We're the only part of that creation that was given a voice to praise him. So let's use it together as we close out in these songs together. I'm going to pray and then Aaron and the band's going to come and we're going to sing together. Father, you are worthy of our praise. You are worthy of our adoration. Our words and our praise and our declarations are insufficient for you. They are inadequate for you and who you are. We admit that, God, as we look to sing to you. Lord, would you fill our lungs with praise for you? Would you fill our hearts with your grace and your goodness and your love that we might pour it back out to you? Would what we experience as we sing now not simply be something that makes our Sunday morning better, but will it carry us on a wave of praise into our weeks and maybe wash back up on these shores next week ready to praise again. God, fill our hearts with praise. Fill our hearts with joy. And let us do now, God, what you created us to do, to sing your praises back to you. In Jesus' name, amen.
My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here this Sunday. I am acutely aware that for many of you, you were not here for this, you were here for that. And so we're so glad that you are here. And if you're a grandparent, thank you for trusting us with your babies and your grandbabies. It's an honor and a privilege to do that. I've been talking a lot about how our children's ministry is growing and burgeoning, and I thought it would be, we thought it would be really good to highlight that on a Sunday and for you guys to be able to see physically all that God is doing and bringing, and that was great. If you're wondering who the pastor's kid was in the first, in the preschool one, it was the boy in the white sweater and red pants that looked like he hated everything in the world. So he's got somebody leaned over to me here and said he's got a real future. Yeah, I think so. I think so. This morning we are in the third part of our series called Foretold, where we are looking at prophecies from the Old Testament, messianic prophecies. And a messianic prophecy is simply a prophecy that tells about the coming Christ, the coming Messiah, who we know of as Jesus. And so in the first week, we looked at Jeremiah 31, where it said this coming Messiah will bring a new covenant. And so we talked about what that new covenant was. Last week we looked at Isaiah chapter 9, the most famous Christmas prophecy that his name will be called, that he will be called Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And we talked about what those names mean. And it's right and good to focus on these prophecies about the coming Messiah at Christmastime because Christmas is when we celebrate the arrival of the Messiah and the fulfillment of these prophecies. So this morning, we arrive at a prophecy in the book of Zechariah. Zechariah chapter 9, verse 9. So if you have a Bible, go ahead and start trying to zero in on Zechariah. It's a tough one. It's a minor prophet towards the end of the Old Testament. If you need to use your table of contents for this, please do. I'd also like to just point out, because I can do this and they are friends, Tom and Linda Sartorius and their daughter Kristen thought that this week was Family Jammy Sunday. So make sure you say hey to them in the lobby. They are a delight this morning. I've been told to blame this on Kristen, but at this point it really doesn't matter. It's just fun all the way around. Steven and Maddie, they avoided it. They're another part of the family, son and daughter-in-law. but the rest of them look like suckers, and it's great. It's great. In Zechariah chapter 9, what we have is not a prophecy about the first arrival of Christ. It's a prophecy about the arrival of Christ as king, and it's a profoundly important one, and I think it's worth reflecting on this morning. So I'm going to read you the prophecy from Zechariah. We're going to talk about the context of that. And then we're going to look at its fulfillment in Matthew chapter 21. So read with me, if you will, Zechariah chapter 9, verse 9. Rejoice greatly, daughter Zion. Shout, daughter Jerusalem. See your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. This is the prophecy from Zechariah. And we're going to turn to Matthew 21, but if you're following along in your Bible, keep something noted in Zechariah because we're going to come back to verse 10, and I don't want you to have to find it again. But to understand what happens in Matthew 21 and the fulfillment of this prophecy, we need to understand the context of what this one implies. In ancient times, and even in the times of Christ, really up until World War I, we figured out we should kind of knock this off. Kings went out and conquered. That's what they did. The only major nation that hasn't figured out that we should knock it off on trying to conquer other nations is Russia. They keep dabbling in it since World War I. But everyone else has figured out not to do that. But in this time, it was very regular for kings to go out and conquer. It's what they did. If you were a king, this is what you did. And we know this because when David sins with Bathsheba, that story begins in Samuel. It was spring at the time when kings went off to war. So this is what they did. And when a king would enter a city to assume control of that city, there was two ways that he entered. One was on a war horse, symbolizing that he had conquered the city. He was coming in as the conquering hero to his people and the conquering king to these people. That he had conquered this city. He would ride in on his war horse once everything, all the dust had settled from the battle. The other way for a king to enter a city that was less, less, uh, it didn't happen as often, but it did happen. And it did mean something was for a king to come in on a donkey. When a king would come into a city on a donkey, he was symbolizing peace. He was symbolizing. I did not have to conquer this city. This city willfully gave itself over to me. And because of that, I'm not coming in to kill. I'm not coming in to conquer. I'm not coming in to hurt or to subdue. I am coming into this city in peace and I intend to peacefully take over this city. And then the prophecy of Zechariah takes it a step further because not only is he entering as a peaceful King on a donkey, but on the cult, the foal of a donkey on a bay, on a little baby donkey to be humble, to communicate in every way. And it says humble and lowly to communicate in every way that Jesus doesn't come as a conquering King for the city. He comes as a king who's already conquered and is now entering into the city peacefully. So there's great, it's not just random that he's entering into a donkey and that this is how Zechariah prophesies that he's going to become the king of Jerusalem. Because to become a king of the city, you basically got to go take it over. And Zechariah says, no, he's not going to do it like that. Jerusalem is going to welcome him with open arms. He will enter on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey, gentle, humble, and lowly. That's the context that we need to understand what's happening in Matthew chapter 21 when he fulfills it. So, if you don't mind, turn over to Matthew chapter 21. In the preceding verses, Matthew has said, I'm not going to read, there's a whole passage here, I'm just going to read a portion of it. I'm going to begin in verse 7 and go through 11. But in the preceding verses, Jesus has told the disciples on their way to Jerusalem, beginning the last week of his life, Holy Week. This is Palm Sunday. This is the story where we get Palm Sunday. He tells the disciples, I want you to go into town and I want you to get a donkey. I want you to get a colt, the foal of a donkey, and I'm going to ride that into Jerusalem. And then Matthew says, this is to fulfill what was said by the prophet Zechariah. And he quotes Zechariah. A wonderful aside about the gospel of Matthew is that the gospel of Matthew was written in the first century A.D. to convince skeptical Jewish people that Jesus was the actual Messiah that you learned about for all those generations. And so very often throughout the Gospel of Matthew, you'll see the narrative stop. There'll be a bracket in it, and it will say this is to fulfill the prophecy of, and then there's a bracket, and then it's the prophecy to show how Jesus really was the Messiah that the Old Testament talked about. So, for us New Testament believers, reading the book of Matthew is a great way to begin to tether the Old and New Testaments together to bring us to a greater depth of understanding. So, Jesus says, go get this. This is to go get this donkey. This is to fulfill this prophecy. And then this happens. Verse 7, they brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest heaven. When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, who is this? Who is this? So Jesus shows up at Jerusalem. At this point in his ministry, he's been doing ministry for three years. He knows that when he goes into Jerusalem, he's going to stir up a hornet's nest of conflict that's going to ultimately lead to his crucifixion. But he also knows that he's entering Jerusalem as a conquering king, as a king who has conquered. And so he enters in as king on a donkey. And I think about the crowds in this story because I think those are who we relate to the most. And I think in this story, there are really kind of three crowds that we see. The first crowd is the most obvious crowd is the crowd that welcomed him. The crowd that showed up, that heard about it. I don't know exactly how word spreads in Jerusalem in zero AD or whenever 33 AD, whenever this was. But it was word of mouth. It was people seeing, there was stirring up, there was a commotion and everybody just kind of goes to see what's going on. And these people were so excited at who Jesus is. They believe that he was the king that Zechariah had prophesied about. Now they believe, full disclosure, they believe that Jesus was showing up in Jerusalem to overthrow Herod, to overthrow Roman rule, to take over the kingdom of Israel, to make it independent and to make it an international superpower and rise it to prominence. That's what they're expecting Jesus to do. They don't yet know that that's far too small a goal for our Jesus and that he came to establish an eternal and universal kingdom that makes an international power like the Roman Empire at the time look like peanuts. He's not interested in that. But they came because they believed that Jesus was coming in to be the king. And so when the king arrives, they take off their cloaks, they throw it on the ground as a sign of respect and celebration and adoration and worship. And then they go and they cut off the palm leaves or the palm branches and they place those on the ground, a sign of respect and adoration and worship. And they sing to him, Hosanna, the son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest heaven. They're praising him as he enters into the city. This crowd welcomes Jesus into their kingdom, welcomes Jesus into their life. And here's the implication here. And I'm going to talk more about this in a minute. Jesus came, he did not come to conquer, but he did come to rule. He did not come to take anything over, but his expectation is absolutely that he's going to be in charge. His expectation is absolutely that I'm going to reign and you are going to submit. And the people celebrating in this crowd, they know that. They're gleefully, gladly, and gratefully accepting the incoming king. Yes, we will serve you. Yes, we will submit to you. Yes, not only will we submit to your reign, but we desire your reign. That's why we're laying our cloaks down on the ground because we want to follow you and serve you and submit to you. That's the first crowd. We'll call them the Sunday crowd because that's Palm Sunday. Five days later, there's another crowd. We'll call them the Friday crowd. This is the crowd of people that gathered around the fortress that Pilate, the Roman governor, was in, who yelled at Pilate, give us Barabbas and crucify Christ. And Pilate says, I find no fault in the man. He's done nothing wrong. There's no reason to crucify him. He might be a little delusional, but he has done absolutely nothing worthy of capital punishment. And they said, the crowd said back, kill him, his blood be on our hands and on the hands of our children. And they were so adamantly against Jesus that they crucified him. That's the Friday crowd. No, we do not accept that king. No, we do not accept his rule. We will fight back with our lives to not have to accept that rule. As a matter of fact, let's kill him. Completely anti-Jesus. But I think that there's a third crowd that's not mentioned anywhere in the Bible explicitly. But if you'll allow me this license, I think we can all admit that they've existed in every generation. I'm going to call this the Wednesday crowd. This is the crowd that's apathetic towards the whole thing. This is the crowd of people that went, hey, on Sunday, they went, what's that commotion? And they went, this is Jesus. He's the coming king. And they're like, maybe for you. I've got things to do today. I have cabinets to make and bread to deliver. I got stuff to do. So not super interested. He can be your king, not going to be my king. I got to get along with my day. And didn't go over to the commotion and just kept going about their lives as if Jesus didn't exist. And then on Friday, the Wednesday crowd sees the Friday crowd getting all worked up and says, what are you doing? They're like, this Jesus is full of crud. We don't like him. We're going to kill him. He's like, all right, seems like a waste of time to me, but go ahead. I have things to do. I don't care that much. And I think we would tend, I think we would tend to say in the way we do our moral judgments that the Friday crowd, the anti-Jesus crowd, was worse than the Wednesday crowd. Obviously, Sunday crowd's the best crowd. We know that. But Friday crowd, worse than Wednesday crowd, because Friday crowd killed Jesus. Wednesday just decided they didn't care. But I heard someone really smart one time say that the opposite of love is not hate. It's apathy. Because in hatred and in love, there are a lot of the same emotions just poured out differently. But in apathy, there's none. And I would argue that the apathetic crowd is just as guilty of what happened on Friday as the Friday crowd. And that that may be the most dangerous one. So I think as we walk through those crowds, that there's one question that becomes really obvious for everyone, and hopefully you started asking yourself this question already. What crowd are you in? Which one is it? Are you in the Sunday crowd when Jesus shows up in your life? Are you in the Sunday crowd that lays down your cloak and gladly and gleefully and willingly accepts his rule in your life? Yes. Not only will I allow you to rule, I desire it. Come in. Are you the Friday crowd? And I doubt on a Sunday morning we have very many, if any, people at all who will admit to being in the Friday crowd and radically anti-Jesus. You're in church on Sunday. But because we've got a bunch of visitors here, maybe that is you. And if it is, thank you for coming and putting up with us. I will try to go faster. You're being very nice. But I bet there's some people in the Wednesday crowd. I bet there's some people who treat the arrival of Christ in their life with apathy. Like it doesn't have anything to do with us. And so as I ask, which crowd are you in? I think most Christian minds go to the idea of salvation. How did I respond to Jesus when he showed up in my life? I'm a Christian. I've accepted Christ as my savior. I've prayed to ask him into my heart. I am a believer. Whatever your nomenclature is, you would call yourself a follower of Jesus and believe that you are saved. I'm not here to negate that belief. But I think our Christian mind, when we ask, how do we receive Jesus when he shows up in our life? We go, well, I'm a Christian. So clearly Sunday crowd laid down my cloak. Come in. I'll gleefully follow you. I think that's where we go. But I would argue with you that Jesus doesn't just show up once in our life. That there's more to this question than simply, have you accepted Christ as your Savior or not? And I think to actually answer this question, what crowd are you in? That we first have to decide what it looks like when Jesus shows up in your life. So let's talk about that for a second. What does it look like when I say when Jesus shows up in your life, what do I mean? What does that look like? And I was trying to think through a succinct description of this to help us grab onto it. But the reality of it is that Jesus shows up in myriad ways. Yes, of course he shows up as our savior and he invites us to repent and to follow him. And the fundamental repentance of all Christianity is to repent of whoever you thought Jesus was before you believed in him as your savior. We, all of us in here have different ideas about Christ. And if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, you, you also have an idea about Christ. He's somebody that somebody made up. He was a good teacher, but he's not a savior. He was a good man, but we're going overboard with the God thing. He existed, but he doesn't matter. You have an opinion about Jesus. And to become a Christian, the fundamental repentance is to say, I was wrong about what I thought about Christ, and I now agree with him about who he says he is, what he said he did, and what he said he's going to do. I now have aligned my thoughts and actions by agreeing with Jesus about who he says he is. That's what it is to become a Christian. So when we think about what crowd we're in, we've got to think about how he shows up. And I don't think he just shows up at that moment of salvation. I think that Jesus shows up every day, every hour, and sometimes moment to moment, depending on the circumstances. Jesus can show up. I thought about how does he show up? When does he arrive? When does he make himself known? He shows up in sermons. You've come to church this morning. I'm saying his name a lot. He's come up. He's shown up. He's here. How will you respond to what you hear today? Jesus is showing up. How will you respond to what you sing when you sing a worship song riding down the road? And it's about Christ. How will you respond to that? Jesus is showing up. You could be riding down the road innocuously listening to Christmas music, not expecting to have a Jesus moment. And all of a sudden, no holy night comes on. And if you're paying attention, the words are about Christ. And so Jesus has shown up. You can be in a conversation with a friend that you're just talking to about life. And then they'll start to reference scripture or point towards prayer or point towards something that God has been teaching them. Jesus is now showing up in this conversation. You can be doing something that you know you have no business doing. That you could be somewhere where you should never be. And there will be this prick of conviction, this realization in the moment, I don't need to be here. This isn't good. This isn't what's best for me. That's Jesus showing up through the Holy Spirit of conviction. He can show up in the midst of sin. He can show up on a billboard that you see that flashes a memory and makes you think of something. He can show up in a terrible circumstance where you've just received terrible news. Someone is very sick, someone is very hurt, something that's very sad has happened and the right friend or the right person puts their arm around you and shows up for you and is the presence of God in that moment for you, Jesus is showing up. And so when I tried to answer the question, what does it look like when Jesus shows up? I think the only real practical answer is Jesus shows up whenever you let him. Jesus shows up whenever you let him. Whenever you're willing to pay attention and acknowledge that he's trying to get your attention, that's when he shows up. Whenever you're willing to stop all the other things going on in your day and in your head and acknowledge that he's just arrived. And what does he want me to do with this? We don't have to ask if Jesus is going to show up in our life. We just have to pay attention and realize that he is. And because that's how Jesus shows up every hour of every day, inviting you into his presence and under his lordship, inviting you to allow him to be the Lord of that moment or that role or that conversation or that habit or that discipline or that decision. Because that's how Jesus shows up, I will ask you again. When Jesus shows up in your life, which crowd are you in? Because I think this is a daily decision, Christians. It's a daily decision to decide today, this morning, at work, with my children, with my spouse, with my friends, with my habits, with my disciplines, with what I consume. I am going to be a part of the Sunday crowd. I'm going to lay down my cloak and I'm going to gladly, gleefully, and gratefully usher Jesus into my life and receive him today. I'm going to willingly submit to his lordship and his rule today. When Jesus shows up in a conversation, do we allow the conversation to go there and engage or do we steer away because it makes us uncomfortable? When he comes up in a worship song, are we going to stop and welcome him in and praise him in our car or are we going to turn it down and focus on something else? When the conviction stirs and our hearts are pricked, are we going to respond to that by allowing Jesus to come into our life and become Lord over that and move away from that sin and repent of it in that moment? How do we respond to Jesus when he shows up in our life? Maybe, hopefully, we can all claim from time to time to be part of the Sunday crowd. I said earlier, I don't think in a church service on a Sunday morning there's going to be very many of us that are part of the Friday crowd. No, Jesus, get out of here. I'd rather kill you. No thanks. But I do think that there are plenty of us in this room who are regularly a part of that Wednesday crowd. I do think there are plenty of us in this room and on this stage, and I don't have any company up here, who regularly are part of the Wednesday crowd. When Jesus shows up in our life and says, are you going to give me lordship over that? We go, listen, you're my savior. Okay, I'd like to go to heaven, but I'd also like to do this thing. So not today. I've got bread to deliver. Not today. I've got things to do. Am I your savior? Yes, absolutely. Am I your king? No, I got the crown. And we respond to Jesus, not with acceptance, not with rejection, but with apathy, as if he doesn't show up. And when we do this, when we respond, when we join the Wednesday crowd at the arrival of Christ and we decide not to care, do you know what that stops us from doing? Noticing the other times that he's shown up. If I asked, hey, how does Jesus show up in your life? And you're like, I don't know. Is that because you've been a part of the Wednesday crowd for a while? Because when you get in the habit of going, yeah, Jesus, I'm not giving you that thing today. I'm not giving you that relationship today. I'm not accepting your lordship in that action or in that sin today. I'm going to do my own thing. It gets a lot easier to be a part of the Wednesday crowd the next day. It gets a lot easier to choose apathy the next day. And then eventually, I know this from experience, you choose to be apathetic enough days in a row, and you're going to say things like, you know what, you're not going to say it out loud. You're never going to admit this. But you're going to take on a mindset of, yeah, not this week. We don't have to do the daily check-ins. Not this week. Not this month. Not this season. And we become deeply apathetic Christians who are part of the Wednesday crowd, neither accepting nor rejecting Christ, just going about our lives as if he doesn't exist. And if it's true that hate is not the opposite of love, but apathy is, then there is no greater sin that we could commit and no greater offense that we could offer to our Savior Jesus, to our King who offers us His Lordship. There is no greater offense to Him than an apathetic response towards His arrival. And I think, if I'm being honest, I know that I could just stop the sermon right there and send us home, and we would have enough to think about. Because I think apathy might be the most pernicious and sinister sin in the American church now. Yeah, I'm good. I've accepted you as Savior. But I don't really want you to be king every day. And I don't want to feel bad like I've rejected you. So I'm just going to pretend like I don't notice. I'm going to go about my life. But here's the thing. Here's the thing that tells us that not only is it wrong to choose apathy, but we literally can't. We cannot continue to choose to be apathetic Christians because those phrases are oxymoronic. They do not go together. They are impossible together. The Bible does not make space for apathetic Christians because make no mistake about it. When Jesus shows up, when he arrives, when he tells us, I stand at the door and knock. When we open the door and we let Jesus into our life, he fully, listen to me, he fully expects to take charge. Jesus' expectations when he shows up somewhere is, yeah, I'm going to show up on a donkey, but when you let me in, I'm the boss. I'm going to show up humble. But when you let me in, I'm the ruler. I'm in charge. You submit to me and you do what I say. And Jesus will settle for nothing less. This is why I said we're going to turn back to Zechariah chapter 9. After he says I'm going to show up humble and lowly, this is what he says after that in verse 10. I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the war horses from Jerusalem and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. When Jesus shows up, he's not doing it to be your vice president. He's not doing it to only be your savior. He's doing it to be your king. Those words do not sound like the words of someone who intends to do nothing. I'm going to break the battle bows. I'm going to get rid of the chariots. I'm going to get rid of the war horses. And my empire will extend from end to end and from sea to sea. I'm going to be in charge. So here's the thing that I think is profoundly important for us to understand about the arrival of Christ in our life. Jesus insists on ruling, but refuses to conquer. He insists on ruling you. He will not conquer you. Do you understand why that's so important? He will not force you into being a Christian. He will not force you into being a believer. He will not force you into submission. I think of the story of Joshua wrestling with Jesus, Jacob wrestling with Jesus. And it teaches us that if you want to wrestle with Jesus, you're going to win. If you want to defy his will, he's not going to force it on you. He will not conquer you. And I know this to be true because in the young zeal of my faith in my twenties, I prayed on multiple occasions. This is true. On multiple occasions, I got on my knees and I said, God, I want to be an automaton. I do not want my free will. It does not serve me. I have no use for it. I know that without it, I cannot offer you a greater love, but I no longer want my free will. It doesn't serve me. I just want to do whatever you want me to do every day. Please take it from me. And I can tell you at 43, he did not answer that prayer. I still very much have it. Much to my chagrin. Oh, wretched man that I am who will deliver me from this body of death. Jesus insists on ruling you. He will not conquer you. He will not make you do it. He only comes into your life through invitation. He only comes into those moments when you let him. He does not force his way in. And what's even better about this, listen, when he comes to Israel and he takes over as king, it's not that he's never conquered anything. It's just he's already conquered what he wants to conquer. And now, listen, he wants to come into your life and share with you the spoils of his wars that he's already won. Do you understand? He doesn't want what you have. He wants to come into your life and give you the victories that he's already won. He wanted to come into Israel, not to conquer Jerusalem, but to offer them the kingdom that he won outside of Jerusalem. How profound is that? That when Jesus says, hey, would you invite me in? He's not trying to conquer you. Listen, he'll pursue you. We're told that Jesus leaves the 99 who have let him in and is pursuing the hundredth that won't. So even if you're here this morning and you would not call yourself a believer, I want you to know that Jesus is still with you and following you every minute of every day. And I hope and pray, if I'm speaking to you right now, that you feel him hot on your heels. You can turn around and let him in anytime you want. And when you do, he's not going to conquer you. He's going to offer you the spoils of the wars and the battles that he's already fought. I love this song, this old hymn called See the Conqueror. Nobody's heard of it. It's nerdy, but I really like it. And in that song, there's lyrics. It talks about see the conqueror mounted in triumph and how Jesus ushers into heaven. But it was like here, it says, he has vanquished sin and Satan. He by death has spoiled his foes. He's conquered sin and death for us. Oh, sin, where are your shackles? Oh, death, where is your sting? He's conquered death and disease for us already. He's conquered that sin for you already. He's conquered that anxiety already. He's conquered that relationship already. He's conquered that life issue already. He's conquered the temporary nature of life already. He's conquered the loss of people already. Do you understand? He's already conquered it and he's not looking to conquer you. He's looking to be invited into your life to rule as king and to offer you the spoils of the wars that he's already fought. That's what it means when he arrives in your life on a donkey. He just wants to offer you the victories that he's already won. So at Grace, we talk a lot about the fact that we are step-takers. To be a step-taker is to simply acknowledge that God has a step of obedience for everyone to take, and it's your job to figure out what's my step of obedience and how do I take it. And so this morning, I think we have in front of us an opportunity to be a step-taker. And I think it comes in this form. Let me ask it this way. What would it look like to hand over lordship in a place where Jesus is showing up? The idea of, for those of us who have grown apathetic, and we're not even really paying attention to when Jesus shows up, the idea of handing over every moment of every day to him is something that seems so far off that it's almost so impossible that maybe we won't even start the journey. But I think if we can just look at the journey as one step of obedience, just one thing, not all the things, just one thing. Where is Jesus showing up in your life where you can be a part of the Sunday crowd and usher him in and submit to his lordship and experience the spoils of the victory that he's already won over that thing? Is it in a relationship? A marriage that you haven't focused on in a while and you know you need to? Is it in the way you parent? Not that I know this from experience, but maybe as a parent you've fallen into parenting the children towards just not being annoying to you instead of towards Jesus himself and loving him? Is it in the way that you go about work forgetting that it's your ministry, not your profession? Is Jesus convicting you in the way that you talk to others, treat other people? Is he convicting you to worship more? Is he convicting you to acknowledge him? Is he inviting you into his presence in times when you're refusing it? In response to this sermon, if you'll intellectually acknowledge with me that Jesus is showing up in our lives daily, hourly, maybe even momentarily, then where is he pressing on you the most? At what door is he standing and knocking, saying, are you going to let me in now? I'm going to pray. And as I pray, the band's going to come up and they're going to sing. And as they sing, they're going to offer you the opportunity to just continue to sit as they sing over us. I would invite you to use the next few minutes to spend time in prayer and go before God and say, Jesus, where are you pressing? Where are you showing up? Help me to see you and give me the strength to lay my cloak on the ground and invite you in as Lord and allow you to rule me there. Can we do that together? Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for the kiddos, the joy that they bring, the laughter that they cause, and the blessings that they represent. God, we pray that we would be good parents and grandparents to them. We pray that we would be good spiritual parents and grandparents to them. I pray that they would be good friends to one another. Jesus, we thank you for showing up on a donkey. We thank you that you don't conquer us. That for some reason, unique in world history and in the span of all religions, you simply wait for us to let you in. And you do not insist, and you do not force. So God, I pray this morning that we would let you in. And that when we did, we would know that you do that to rule us, not to partner with us. Not to simply usher us into heaven, but to share with us the spoils of the victories that you've already won. Jesus, we love you. We thank you for winning those victories and we thank you for being a good king that we can celebrate this Christmas. In Jesus' name, amen.
My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here this Sunday. I am acutely aware that for many of you, you were not here for this, you were here for that. And so we're so glad that you are here. And if you're a grandparent, thank you for trusting us with your babies and your grandbabies. It's an honor and a privilege to do that. I've been talking a lot about how our children's ministry is growing and burgeoning, and I thought it would be, we thought it would be really good to highlight that on a Sunday and for you guys to be able to see physically all that God is doing and bringing, and that was great. If you're wondering who the pastor's kid was in the first, in the preschool one, it was the boy in the white sweater and red pants that looked like he hated everything in the world. So he's got somebody leaned over to me here and said he's got a real future. Yeah, I think so. I think so. This morning we are in the third part of our series called Foretold, where we are looking at prophecies from the Old Testament, messianic prophecies. And a messianic prophecy is simply a prophecy that tells about the coming Christ, the coming Messiah, who we know of as Jesus. And so in the first week, we looked at Jeremiah 31, where it said this coming Messiah will bring a new covenant. And so we talked about what that new covenant was. Last week we looked at Isaiah chapter 9, the most famous Christmas prophecy that his name will be called, that he will be called Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And we talked about what those names mean. And it's right and good to focus on these prophecies about the coming Messiah at Christmastime because Christmas is when we celebrate the arrival of the Messiah and the fulfillment of these prophecies. So this morning, we arrive at a prophecy in the book of Zechariah. Zechariah chapter 9, verse 9. So if you have a Bible, go ahead and start trying to zero in on Zechariah. It's a tough one. It's a minor prophet towards the end of the Old Testament. If you need to use your table of contents for this, please do. I'd also like to just point out, because I can do this and they are friends, Tom and Linda Sartorius and their daughter Kristen thought that this week was Family Jammy Sunday. So make sure you say hey to them in the lobby. They are a delight this morning. I've been told to blame this on Kristen, but at this point it really doesn't matter. It's just fun all the way around. Steven and Maddie, they avoided it. They're another part of the family, son and daughter-in-law. but the rest of them look like suckers, and it's great. It's great. In Zechariah chapter 9, what we have is not a prophecy about the first arrival of Christ. It's a prophecy about the arrival of Christ as king, and it's a profoundly important one, and I think it's worth reflecting on this morning. So I'm going to read you the prophecy from Zechariah. We're going to talk about the context of that. And then we're going to look at its fulfillment in Matthew chapter 21. So read with me, if you will, Zechariah chapter 9, verse 9. Rejoice greatly, daughter Zion. Shout, daughter Jerusalem. See your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. This is the prophecy from Zechariah. And we're going to turn to Matthew 21, but if you're following along in your Bible, keep something noted in Zechariah because we're going to come back to verse 10, and I don't want you to have to find it again. But to understand what happens in Matthew 21 and the fulfillment of this prophecy, we need to understand the context of what this one implies. In ancient times, and even in the times of Christ, really up until World War I, we figured out we should kind of knock this off. Kings went out and conquered. That's what they did. The only major nation that hasn't figured out that we should knock it off on trying to conquer other nations is Russia. They keep dabbling in it since World War I. But everyone else has figured out not to do that. But in this time, it was very regular for kings to go out and conquer. It's what they did. If you were a king, this is what you did. And we know this because when David sins with Bathsheba, that story begins in Samuel. It was spring at the time when kings went off to war. So this is what they did. And when a king would enter a city to assume control of that city, there was two ways that he entered. One was on a war horse, symbolizing that he had conquered the city. He was coming in as the conquering hero to his people and the conquering king to these people. That he had conquered this city. He would ride in on his war horse once everything, all the dust had settled from the battle. The other way for a king to enter a city that was less, less, uh, it didn't happen as often, but it did happen. And it did mean something was for a king to come in on a donkey. When a king would come into a city on a donkey, he was symbolizing peace. He was symbolizing. I did not have to conquer this city. This city willfully gave itself over to me. And because of that, I'm not coming in to kill. I'm not coming in to conquer. I'm not coming in to hurt or to subdue. I am coming into this city in peace and I intend to peacefully take over this city. And then the prophecy of Zechariah takes it a step further because not only is he entering as a peaceful King on a donkey, but on the cult, the foal of a donkey on a bay, on a little baby donkey to be humble, to communicate in every way. And it says humble and lowly to communicate in every way that Jesus doesn't come as a conquering King for the city. He comes as a king who's already conquered and is now entering into the city peacefully. So there's great, it's not just random that he's entering into a donkey and that this is how Zechariah prophesies that he's going to become the king of Jerusalem. Because to become a king of the city, you basically got to go take it over. And Zechariah says, no, he's not going to do it like that. Jerusalem is going to welcome him with open arms. He will enter on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey, gentle, humble, and lowly. That's the context that we need to understand what's happening in Matthew chapter 21 when he fulfills it. So, if you don't mind, turn over to Matthew chapter 21. In the preceding verses, Matthew has said, I'm not going to read, there's a whole passage here, I'm just going to read a portion of it. I'm going to begin in verse 7 and go through 11. But in the preceding verses, Jesus has told the disciples on their way to Jerusalem, beginning the last week of his life, Holy Week. This is Palm Sunday. This is the story where we get Palm Sunday. He tells the disciples, I want you to go into town and I want you to get a donkey. I want you to get a colt, the foal of a donkey, and I'm going to ride that into Jerusalem. And then Matthew says, this is to fulfill what was said by the prophet Zechariah. And he quotes Zechariah. A wonderful aside about the gospel of Matthew is that the gospel of Matthew was written in the first century A.D. to convince skeptical Jewish people that Jesus was the actual Messiah that you learned about for all those generations. And so very often throughout the Gospel of Matthew, you'll see the narrative stop. There'll be a bracket in it, and it will say this is to fulfill the prophecy of, and then there's a bracket, and then it's the prophecy to show how Jesus really was the Messiah that the Old Testament talked about. So, for us New Testament believers, reading the book of Matthew is a great way to begin to tether the Old and New Testaments together to bring us to a greater depth of understanding. So, Jesus says, go get this. This is to go get this donkey. This is to fulfill this prophecy. And then this happens. Verse 7, they brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest heaven. When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, who is this? Who is this? So Jesus shows up at Jerusalem. At this point in his ministry, he's been doing ministry for three years. He knows that when he goes into Jerusalem, he's going to stir up a hornet's nest of conflict that's going to ultimately lead to his crucifixion. But he also knows that he's entering Jerusalem as a conquering king, as a king who has conquered. And so he enters in as king on a donkey. And I think about the crowds in this story because I think those are who we relate to the most. And I think in this story, there are really kind of three crowds that we see. The first crowd is the most obvious crowd is the crowd that welcomed him. The crowd that showed up, that heard about it. I don't know exactly how word spreads in Jerusalem in zero AD or whenever 33 AD, whenever this was. But it was word of mouth. It was people seeing, there was stirring up, there was a commotion and everybody just kind of goes to see what's going on. And these people were so excited at who Jesus is. They believe that he was the king that Zechariah had prophesied about. Now they believe, full disclosure, they believe that Jesus was showing up in Jerusalem to overthrow Herod, to overthrow Roman rule, to take over the kingdom of Israel, to make it independent and to make it an international superpower and rise it to prominence. That's what they're expecting Jesus to do. They don't yet know that that's far too small a goal for our Jesus and that he came to establish an eternal and universal kingdom that makes an international power like the Roman Empire at the time look like peanuts. He's not interested in that. But they came because they believed that Jesus was coming in to be the king. And so when the king arrives, they take off their cloaks, they throw it on the ground as a sign of respect and celebration and adoration and worship. And then they go and they cut off the palm leaves or the palm branches and they place those on the ground, a sign of respect and adoration and worship. And they sing to him, Hosanna, the son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest heaven. They're praising him as he enters into the city. This crowd welcomes Jesus into their kingdom, welcomes Jesus into their life. And here's the implication here. And I'm going to talk more about this in a minute. Jesus came, he did not come to conquer, but he did come to rule. He did not come to take anything over, but his expectation is absolutely that he's going to be in charge. His expectation is absolutely that I'm going to reign and you are going to submit. And the people celebrating in this crowd, they know that. They're gleefully, gladly, and gratefully accepting the incoming king. Yes, we will serve you. Yes, we will submit to you. Yes, not only will we submit to your reign, but we desire your reign. That's why we're laying our cloaks down on the ground because we want to follow you and serve you and submit to you. That's the first crowd. We'll call them the Sunday crowd because that's Palm Sunday. Five days later, there's another crowd. We'll call them the Friday crowd. This is the crowd of people that gathered around the fortress that Pilate, the Roman governor, was in, who yelled at Pilate, give us Barabbas and crucify Christ. And Pilate says, I find no fault in the man. He's done nothing wrong. There's no reason to crucify him. He might be a little delusional, but he has done absolutely nothing worthy of capital punishment. And they said, the crowd said back, kill him, his blood be on our hands and on the hands of our children. And they were so adamantly against Jesus that they crucified him. That's the Friday crowd. No, we do not accept that king. No, we do not accept his rule. We will fight back with our lives to not have to accept that rule. As a matter of fact, let's kill him. Completely anti-Jesus. But I think that there's a third crowd that's not mentioned anywhere in the Bible explicitly. But if you'll allow me this license, I think we can all admit that they've existed in every generation. I'm going to call this the Wednesday crowd. This is the crowd that's apathetic towards the whole thing. This is the crowd of people that went, hey, on Sunday, they went, what's that commotion? And they went, this is Jesus. He's the coming king. And they're like, maybe for you. I've got things to do today. I have cabinets to make and bread to deliver. I got stuff to do. So not super interested. He can be your king, not going to be my king. I got to get along with my day. And didn't go over to the commotion and just kept going about their lives as if Jesus didn't exist. And then on Friday, the Wednesday crowd sees the Friday crowd getting all worked up and says, what are you doing? They're like, this Jesus is full of crud. We don't like him. We're going to kill him. He's like, all right, seems like a waste of time to me, but go ahead. I have things to do. I don't care that much. And I think we would tend, I think we would tend to say in the way we do our moral judgments that the Friday crowd, the anti-Jesus crowd, was worse than the Wednesday crowd. Obviously, Sunday crowd's the best crowd. We know that. But Friday crowd, worse than Wednesday crowd, because Friday crowd killed Jesus. Wednesday just decided they didn't care. But I heard someone really smart one time say that the opposite of love is not hate. It's apathy. Because in hatred and in love, there are a lot of the same emotions just poured out differently. But in apathy, there's none. And I would argue that the apathetic crowd is just as guilty of what happened on Friday as the Friday crowd. And that that may be the most dangerous one. So I think as we walk through those crowds, that there's one question that becomes really obvious for everyone, and hopefully you started asking yourself this question already. What crowd are you in? Which one is it? Are you in the Sunday crowd when Jesus shows up in your life? Are you in the Sunday crowd that lays down your cloak and gladly and gleefully and willingly accepts his rule in your life? Yes. Not only will I allow you to rule, I desire it. Come in. Are you the Friday crowd? And I doubt on a Sunday morning we have very many, if any, people at all who will admit to being in the Friday crowd and radically anti-Jesus. You're in church on Sunday. But because we've got a bunch of visitors here, maybe that is you. And if it is, thank you for coming and putting up with us. I will try to go faster. You're being very nice. But I bet there's some people in the Wednesday crowd. I bet there's some people who treat the arrival of Christ in their life with apathy. Like it doesn't have anything to do with us. And so as I ask, which crowd are you in? I think most Christian minds go to the idea of salvation. How did I respond to Jesus when he showed up in my life? I'm a Christian. I've accepted Christ as my savior. I've prayed to ask him into my heart. I am a believer. Whatever your nomenclature is, you would call yourself a follower of Jesus and believe that you are saved. I'm not here to negate that belief. But I think our Christian mind, when we ask, how do we receive Jesus when he shows up in our life? We go, well, I'm a Christian. So clearly Sunday crowd laid down my cloak. Come in. I'll gleefully follow you. I think that's where we go. But I would argue with you that Jesus doesn't just show up once in our life. That there's more to this question than simply, have you accepted Christ as your Savior or not? And I think to actually answer this question, what crowd are you in? That we first have to decide what it looks like when Jesus shows up in your life. So let's talk about that for a second. What does it look like when I say when Jesus shows up in your life, what do I mean? What does that look like? And I was trying to think through a succinct description of this to help us grab onto it. But the reality of it is that Jesus shows up in myriad ways. Yes, of course he shows up as our savior and he invites us to repent and to follow him. And the fundamental repentance of all Christianity is to repent of whoever you thought Jesus was before you believed in him as your savior. We, all of us in here have different ideas about Christ. And if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, you, you also have an idea about Christ. He's somebody that somebody made up. He was a good teacher, but he's not a savior. He was a good man, but we're going overboard with the God thing. He existed, but he doesn't matter. You have an opinion about Jesus. And to become a Christian, the fundamental repentance is to say, I was wrong about what I thought about Christ, and I now agree with him about who he says he is, what he said he did, and what he said he's going to do. I now have aligned my thoughts and actions by agreeing with Jesus about who he says he is. That's what it is to become a Christian. So when we think about what crowd we're in, we've got to think about how he shows up. And I don't think he just shows up at that moment of salvation. I think that Jesus shows up every day, every hour, and sometimes moment to moment, depending on the circumstances. Jesus can show up. I thought about how does he show up? When does he arrive? When does he make himself known? He shows up in sermons. You've come to church this morning. I'm saying his name a lot. He's come up. He's shown up. He's here. How will you respond to what you hear today? Jesus is showing up. How will you respond to what you sing when you sing a worship song riding down the road? And it's about Christ. How will you respond to that? Jesus is showing up. You could be riding down the road innocuously listening to Christmas music, not expecting to have a Jesus moment. And all of a sudden, no holy night comes on. And if you're paying attention, the words are about Christ. And so Jesus has shown up. You can be in a conversation with a friend that you're just talking to about life. And then they'll start to reference scripture or point towards prayer or point towards something that God has been teaching them. Jesus is now showing up in this conversation. You can be doing something that you know you have no business doing. That you could be somewhere where you should never be. And there will be this prick of conviction, this realization in the moment, I don't need to be here. This isn't good. This isn't what's best for me. That's Jesus showing up through the Holy Spirit of conviction. He can show up in the midst of sin. He can show up on a billboard that you see that flashes a memory and makes you think of something. He can show up in a terrible circumstance where you've just received terrible news. Someone is very sick, someone is very hurt, something that's very sad has happened and the right friend or the right person puts their arm around you and shows up for you and is the presence of God in that moment for you, Jesus is showing up. And so when I tried to answer the question, what does it look like when Jesus shows up? I think the only real practical answer is Jesus shows up whenever you let him. Jesus shows up whenever you let him. Whenever you're willing to pay attention and acknowledge that he's trying to get your attention, that's when he shows up. Whenever you're willing to stop all the other things going on in your day and in your head and acknowledge that he's just arrived. And what does he want me to do with this? We don't have to ask if Jesus is going to show up in our life. We just have to pay attention and realize that he is. And because that's how Jesus shows up every hour of every day, inviting you into his presence and under his lordship, inviting you to allow him to be the Lord of that moment or that role or that conversation or that habit or that discipline or that decision. Because that's how Jesus shows up, I will ask you again. When Jesus shows up in your life, which crowd are you in? Because I think this is a daily decision, Christians. It's a daily decision to decide today, this morning, at work, with my children, with my spouse, with my friends, with my habits, with my disciplines, with what I consume. I am going to be a part of the Sunday crowd. I'm going to lay down my cloak and I'm going to gladly, gleefully, and gratefully usher Jesus into my life and receive him today. I'm going to willingly submit to his lordship and his rule today. When Jesus shows up in a conversation, do we allow the conversation to go there and engage or do we steer away because it makes us uncomfortable? When he comes up in a worship song, are we going to stop and welcome him in and praise him in our car or are we going to turn it down and focus on something else? When the conviction stirs and our hearts are pricked, are we going to respond to that by allowing Jesus to come into our life and become Lord over that and move away from that sin and repent of it in that moment? How do we respond to Jesus when he shows up in our life? Maybe, hopefully, we can all claim from time to time to be part of the Sunday crowd. I said earlier, I don't think in a church service on a Sunday morning there's going to be very many of us that are part of the Friday crowd. No, Jesus, get out of here. I'd rather kill you. No thanks. But I do think that there are plenty of us in this room who are regularly a part of that Wednesday crowd. I do think there are plenty of us in this room and on this stage, and I don't have any company up here, who regularly are part of the Wednesday crowd. When Jesus shows up in our life and says, are you going to give me lordship over that? We go, listen, you're my savior. Okay, I'd like to go to heaven, but I'd also like to do this thing. So not today. I've got bread to deliver. Not today. I've got things to do. Am I your savior? Yes, absolutely. Am I your king? No, I got the crown. And we respond to Jesus, not with acceptance, not with rejection, but with apathy, as if he doesn't show up. And when we do this, when we respond, when we join the Wednesday crowd at the arrival of Christ and we decide not to care, do you know what that stops us from doing? Noticing the other times that he's shown up. If I asked, hey, how does Jesus show up in your life? And you're like, I don't know. Is that because you've been a part of the Wednesday crowd for a while? Because when you get in the habit of going, yeah, Jesus, I'm not giving you that thing today. I'm not giving you that relationship today. I'm not accepting your lordship in that action or in that sin today. I'm going to do my own thing. It gets a lot easier to be a part of the Wednesday crowd the next day. It gets a lot easier to choose apathy the next day. And then eventually, I know this from experience, you choose to be apathetic enough days in a row, and you're going to say things like, you know what, you're not going to say it out loud. You're never going to admit this. But you're going to take on a mindset of, yeah, not this week. We don't have to do the daily check-ins. Not this week. Not this month. Not this season. And we become deeply apathetic Christians who are part of the Wednesday crowd, neither accepting nor rejecting Christ, just going about our lives as if he doesn't exist. And if it's true that hate is not the opposite of love, but apathy is, then there is no greater sin that we could commit and no greater offense that we could offer to our Savior Jesus, to our King who offers us His Lordship. There is no greater offense to Him than an apathetic response towards His arrival. And I think, if I'm being honest, I know that I could just stop the sermon right there and send us home, and we would have enough to think about. Because I think apathy might be the most pernicious and sinister sin in the American church now. Yeah, I'm good. I've accepted you as Savior. But I don't really want you to be king every day. And I don't want to feel bad like I've rejected you. So I'm just going to pretend like I don't notice. I'm going to go about my life. But here's the thing. Here's the thing that tells us that not only is it wrong to choose apathy, but we literally can't. We cannot continue to choose to be apathetic Christians because those phrases are oxymoronic. They do not go together. They are impossible together. The Bible does not make space for apathetic Christians because make no mistake about it. When Jesus shows up, when he arrives, when he tells us, I stand at the door and knock. When we open the door and we let Jesus into our life, he fully, listen to me, he fully expects to take charge. Jesus' expectations when he shows up somewhere is, yeah, I'm going to show up on a donkey, but when you let me in, I'm the boss. I'm going to show up humble. But when you let me in, I'm the ruler. I'm in charge. You submit to me and you do what I say. And Jesus will settle for nothing less. This is why I said we're going to turn back to Zechariah chapter 9. After he says I'm going to show up humble and lowly, this is what he says after that in verse 10. I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the war horses from Jerusalem and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. When Jesus shows up, he's not doing it to be your vice president. He's not doing it to only be your savior. He's doing it to be your king. Those words do not sound like the words of someone who intends to do nothing. I'm going to break the battle bows. I'm going to get rid of the chariots. I'm going to get rid of the war horses. And my empire will extend from end to end and from sea to sea. I'm going to be in charge. So here's the thing that I think is profoundly important for us to understand about the arrival of Christ in our life. Jesus insists on ruling, but refuses to conquer. He insists on ruling you. He will not conquer you. Do you understand why that's so important? He will not force you into being a Christian. He will not force you into being a believer. He will not force you into submission. I think of the story of Joshua wrestling with Jesus, Jacob wrestling with Jesus. And it teaches us that if you want to wrestle with Jesus, you're going to win. If you want to defy his will, he's not going to force it on you. He will not conquer you. And I know this to be true because in the young zeal of my faith in my twenties, I prayed on multiple occasions. This is true. On multiple occasions, I got on my knees and I said, God, I want to be an automaton. I do not want my free will. It does not serve me. I have no use for it. I know that without it, I cannot offer you a greater love, but I no longer want my free will. It doesn't serve me. I just want to do whatever you want me to do every day. Please take it from me. And I can tell you at 43, he did not answer that prayer. I still very much have it. Much to my chagrin. Oh, wretched man that I am who will deliver me from this body of death. Jesus insists on ruling you. He will not conquer you. He will not make you do it. He only comes into your life through invitation. He only comes into those moments when you let him. He does not force his way in. And what's even better about this, listen, when he comes to Israel and he takes over as king, it's not that he's never conquered anything. It's just he's already conquered what he wants to conquer. And now, listen, he wants to come into your life and share with you the spoils of his wars that he's already won. Do you understand? He doesn't want what you have. He wants to come into your life and give you the victories that he's already won. He wanted to come into Israel, not to conquer Jerusalem, but to offer them the kingdom that he won outside of Jerusalem. How profound is that? That when Jesus says, hey, would you invite me in? He's not trying to conquer you. Listen, he'll pursue you. We're told that Jesus leaves the 99 who have let him in and is pursuing the hundredth that won't. So even if you're here this morning and you would not call yourself a believer, I want you to know that Jesus is still with you and following you every minute of every day. And I hope and pray, if I'm speaking to you right now, that you feel him hot on your heels. You can turn around and let him in anytime you want. And when you do, he's not going to conquer you. He's going to offer you the spoils of the wars and the battles that he's already fought. I love this song, this old hymn called See the Conqueror. Nobody's heard of it. It's nerdy, but I really like it. And in that song, there's lyrics. It talks about see the conqueror mounted in triumph and how Jesus ushers into heaven. But it was like here, it says, he has vanquished sin and Satan. He by death has spoiled his foes. He's conquered sin and death for us. Oh, sin, where are your shackles? Oh, death, where is your sting? He's conquered death and disease for us already. He's conquered that sin for you already. He's conquered that anxiety already. He's conquered that relationship already. He's conquered that life issue already. He's conquered the temporary nature of life already. He's conquered the loss of people already. Do you understand? He's already conquered it and he's not looking to conquer you. He's looking to be invited into your life to rule as king and to offer you the spoils of the wars that he's already fought. That's what it means when he arrives in your life on a donkey. He just wants to offer you the victories that he's already won. So at Grace, we talk a lot about the fact that we are step-takers. To be a step-taker is to simply acknowledge that God has a step of obedience for everyone to take, and it's your job to figure out what's my step of obedience and how do I take it. And so this morning, I think we have in front of us an opportunity to be a step-taker. And I think it comes in this form. Let me ask it this way. What would it look like to hand over lordship in a place where Jesus is showing up? The idea of, for those of us who have grown apathetic, and we're not even really paying attention to when Jesus shows up, the idea of handing over every moment of every day to him is something that seems so far off that it's almost so impossible that maybe we won't even start the journey. But I think if we can just look at the journey as one step of obedience, just one thing, not all the things, just one thing. Where is Jesus showing up in your life where you can be a part of the Sunday crowd and usher him in and submit to his lordship and experience the spoils of the victory that he's already won over that thing? Is it in a relationship? A marriage that you haven't focused on in a while and you know you need to? Is it in the way you parent? Not that I know this from experience, but maybe as a parent you've fallen into parenting the children towards just not being annoying to you instead of towards Jesus himself and loving him? Is it in the way that you go about work forgetting that it's your ministry, not your profession? Is Jesus convicting you in the way that you talk to others, treat other people? Is he convicting you to worship more? Is he convicting you to acknowledge him? Is he inviting you into his presence in times when you're refusing it? In response to this sermon, if you'll intellectually acknowledge with me that Jesus is showing up in our lives daily, hourly, maybe even momentarily, then where is he pressing on you the most? At what door is he standing and knocking, saying, are you going to let me in now? I'm going to pray. And as I pray, the band's going to come up and they're going to sing. And as they sing, they're going to offer you the opportunity to just continue to sit as they sing over us. I would invite you to use the next few minutes to spend time in prayer and go before God and say, Jesus, where are you pressing? Where are you showing up? Help me to see you and give me the strength to lay my cloak on the ground and invite you in as Lord and allow you to rule me there. Can we do that together? Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for the kiddos, the joy that they bring, the laughter that they cause, and the blessings that they represent. God, we pray that we would be good parents and grandparents to them. We pray that we would be good spiritual parents and grandparents to them. I pray that they would be good friends to one another. Jesus, we thank you for showing up on a donkey. We thank you that you don't conquer us. That for some reason, unique in world history and in the span of all religions, you simply wait for us to let you in. And you do not insist, and you do not force. So God, I pray this morning that we would let you in. And that when we did, we would know that you do that to rule us, not to partner with us. Not to simply usher us into heaven, but to share with us the spoils of the victories that you've already won. Jesus, we love you. We thank you for winning those victories and we thank you for being a good king that we can celebrate this Christmas. In Jesus' name, amen.
My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here this Sunday. I am acutely aware that for many of you, you were not here for this, you were here for that. And so we're so glad that you are here. And if you're a grandparent, thank you for trusting us with your babies and your grandbabies. It's an honor and a privilege to do that. I've been talking a lot about how our children's ministry is growing and burgeoning, and I thought it would be, we thought it would be really good to highlight that on a Sunday and for you guys to be able to see physically all that God is doing and bringing, and that was great. If you're wondering who the pastor's kid was in the first, in the preschool one, it was the boy in the white sweater and red pants that looked like he hated everything in the world. So he's got somebody leaned over to me here and said he's got a real future. Yeah, I think so. I think so. This morning we are in the third part of our series called Foretold, where we are looking at prophecies from the Old Testament, messianic prophecies. And a messianic prophecy is simply a prophecy that tells about the coming Christ, the coming Messiah, who we know of as Jesus. And so in the first week, we looked at Jeremiah 31, where it said this coming Messiah will bring a new covenant. And so we talked about what that new covenant was. Last week we looked at Isaiah chapter 9, the most famous Christmas prophecy that his name will be called, that he will be called Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And we talked about what those names mean. And it's right and good to focus on these prophecies about the coming Messiah at Christmastime because Christmas is when we celebrate the arrival of the Messiah and the fulfillment of these prophecies. So this morning, we arrive at a prophecy in the book of Zechariah. Zechariah chapter 9, verse 9. So if you have a Bible, go ahead and start trying to zero in on Zechariah. It's a tough one. It's a minor prophet towards the end of the Old Testament. If you need to use your table of contents for this, please do. I'd also like to just point out, because I can do this and they are friends, Tom and Linda Sartorius and their daughter Kristen thought that this week was Family Jammy Sunday. So make sure you say hey to them in the lobby. They are a delight this morning. I've been told to blame this on Kristen, but at this point it really doesn't matter. It's just fun all the way around. Steven and Maddie, they avoided it. They're another part of the family, son and daughter-in-law. but the rest of them look like suckers, and it's great. It's great. In Zechariah chapter 9, what we have is not a prophecy about the first arrival of Christ. It's a prophecy about the arrival of Christ as king, and it's a profoundly important one, and I think it's worth reflecting on this morning. So I'm going to read you the prophecy from Zechariah. We're going to talk about the context of that. And then we're going to look at its fulfillment in Matthew chapter 21. So read with me, if you will, Zechariah chapter 9, verse 9. Rejoice greatly, daughter Zion. Shout, daughter Jerusalem. See your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. This is the prophecy from Zechariah. And we're going to turn to Matthew 21, but if you're following along in your Bible, keep something noted in Zechariah because we're going to come back to verse 10, and I don't want you to have to find it again. But to understand what happens in Matthew 21 and the fulfillment of this prophecy, we need to understand the context of what this one implies. In ancient times, and even in the times of Christ, really up until World War I, we figured out we should kind of knock this off. Kings went out and conquered. That's what they did. The only major nation that hasn't figured out that we should knock it off on trying to conquer other nations is Russia. They keep dabbling in it since World War I. But everyone else has figured out not to do that. But in this time, it was very regular for kings to go out and conquer. It's what they did. If you were a king, this is what you did. And we know this because when David sins with Bathsheba, that story begins in Samuel. It was spring at the time when kings went off to war. So this is what they did. And when a king would enter a city to assume control of that city, there was two ways that he entered. One was on a war horse, symbolizing that he had conquered the city. He was coming in as the conquering hero to his people and the conquering king to these people. That he had conquered this city. He would ride in on his war horse once everything, all the dust had settled from the battle. The other way for a king to enter a city that was less, less, uh, it didn't happen as often, but it did happen. And it did mean something was for a king to come in on a donkey. When a king would come into a city on a donkey, he was symbolizing peace. He was symbolizing. I did not have to conquer this city. This city willfully gave itself over to me. And because of that, I'm not coming in to kill. I'm not coming in to conquer. I'm not coming in to hurt or to subdue. I am coming into this city in peace and I intend to peacefully take over this city. And then the prophecy of Zechariah takes it a step further because not only is he entering as a peaceful King on a donkey, but on the cult, the foal of a donkey on a bay, on a little baby donkey to be humble, to communicate in every way. And it says humble and lowly to communicate in every way that Jesus doesn't come as a conquering King for the city. He comes as a king who's already conquered and is now entering into the city peacefully. So there's great, it's not just random that he's entering into a donkey and that this is how Zechariah prophesies that he's going to become the king of Jerusalem. Because to become a king of the city, you basically got to go take it over. And Zechariah says, no, he's not going to do it like that. Jerusalem is going to welcome him with open arms. He will enter on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey, gentle, humble, and lowly. That's the context that we need to understand what's happening in Matthew chapter 21 when he fulfills it. So, if you don't mind, turn over to Matthew chapter 21. In the preceding verses, Matthew has said, I'm not going to read, there's a whole passage here, I'm just going to read a portion of it. I'm going to begin in verse 7 and go through 11. But in the preceding verses, Jesus has told the disciples on their way to Jerusalem, beginning the last week of his life, Holy Week. This is Palm Sunday. This is the story where we get Palm Sunday. He tells the disciples, I want you to go into town and I want you to get a donkey. I want you to get a colt, the foal of a donkey, and I'm going to ride that into Jerusalem. And then Matthew says, this is to fulfill what was said by the prophet Zechariah. And he quotes Zechariah. A wonderful aside about the gospel of Matthew is that the gospel of Matthew was written in the first century A.D. to convince skeptical Jewish people that Jesus was the actual Messiah that you learned about for all those generations. And so very often throughout the Gospel of Matthew, you'll see the narrative stop. There'll be a bracket in it, and it will say this is to fulfill the prophecy of, and then there's a bracket, and then it's the prophecy to show how Jesus really was the Messiah that the Old Testament talked about. So, for us New Testament believers, reading the book of Matthew is a great way to begin to tether the Old and New Testaments together to bring us to a greater depth of understanding. So, Jesus says, go get this. This is to go get this donkey. This is to fulfill this prophecy. And then this happens. Verse 7, they brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest heaven. When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, who is this? Who is this? So Jesus shows up at Jerusalem. At this point in his ministry, he's been doing ministry for three years. He knows that when he goes into Jerusalem, he's going to stir up a hornet's nest of conflict that's going to ultimately lead to his crucifixion. But he also knows that he's entering Jerusalem as a conquering king, as a king who has conquered. And so he enters in as king on a donkey. And I think about the crowds in this story because I think those are who we relate to the most. And I think in this story, there are really kind of three crowds that we see. The first crowd is the most obvious crowd is the crowd that welcomed him. The crowd that showed up, that heard about it. I don't know exactly how word spreads in Jerusalem in zero AD or whenever 33 AD, whenever this was. But it was word of mouth. It was people seeing, there was stirring up, there was a commotion and everybody just kind of goes to see what's going on. And these people were so excited at who Jesus is. They believe that he was the king that Zechariah had prophesied about. Now they believe, full disclosure, they believe that Jesus was showing up in Jerusalem to overthrow Herod, to overthrow Roman rule, to take over the kingdom of Israel, to make it independent and to make it an international superpower and rise it to prominence. That's what they're expecting Jesus to do. They don't yet know that that's far too small a goal for our Jesus and that he came to establish an eternal and universal kingdom that makes an international power like the Roman Empire at the time look like peanuts. He's not interested in that. But they came because they believed that Jesus was coming in to be the king. And so when the king arrives, they take off their cloaks, they throw it on the ground as a sign of respect and celebration and adoration and worship. And then they go and they cut off the palm leaves or the palm branches and they place those on the ground, a sign of respect and adoration and worship. And they sing to him, Hosanna, the son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest heaven. They're praising him as he enters into the city. This crowd welcomes Jesus into their kingdom, welcomes Jesus into their life. And here's the implication here. And I'm going to talk more about this in a minute. Jesus came, he did not come to conquer, but he did come to rule. He did not come to take anything over, but his expectation is absolutely that he's going to be in charge. His expectation is absolutely that I'm going to reign and you are going to submit. And the people celebrating in this crowd, they know that. They're gleefully, gladly, and gratefully accepting the incoming king. Yes, we will serve you. Yes, we will submit to you. Yes, not only will we submit to your reign, but we desire your reign. That's why we're laying our cloaks down on the ground because we want to follow you and serve you and submit to you. That's the first crowd. We'll call them the Sunday crowd because that's Palm Sunday. Five days later, there's another crowd. We'll call them the Friday crowd. This is the crowd of people that gathered around the fortress that Pilate, the Roman governor, was in, who yelled at Pilate, give us Barabbas and crucify Christ. And Pilate says, I find no fault in the man. He's done nothing wrong. There's no reason to crucify him. He might be a little delusional, but he has done absolutely nothing worthy of capital punishment. And they said, the crowd said back, kill him, his blood be on our hands and on the hands of our children. And they were so adamantly against Jesus that they crucified him. That's the Friday crowd. No, we do not accept that king. No, we do not accept his rule. We will fight back with our lives to not have to accept that rule. As a matter of fact, let's kill him. Completely anti-Jesus. But I think that there's a third crowd that's not mentioned anywhere in the Bible explicitly. But if you'll allow me this license, I think we can all admit that they've existed in every generation. I'm going to call this the Wednesday crowd. This is the crowd that's apathetic towards the whole thing. This is the crowd of people that went, hey, on Sunday, they went, what's that commotion? And they went, this is Jesus. He's the coming king. And they're like, maybe for you. I've got things to do today. I have cabinets to make and bread to deliver. I got stuff to do. So not super interested. He can be your king, not going to be my king. I got to get along with my day. And didn't go over to the commotion and just kept going about their lives as if Jesus didn't exist. And then on Friday, the Wednesday crowd sees the Friday crowd getting all worked up and says, what are you doing? They're like, this Jesus is full of crud. We don't like him. We're going to kill him. He's like, all right, seems like a waste of time to me, but go ahead. I have things to do. I don't care that much. And I think we would tend, I think we would tend to say in the way we do our moral judgments that the Friday crowd, the anti-Jesus crowd, was worse than the Wednesday crowd. Obviously, Sunday crowd's the best crowd. We know that. But Friday crowd, worse than Wednesday crowd, because Friday crowd killed Jesus. Wednesday just decided they didn't care. But I heard someone really smart one time say that the opposite of love is not hate. It's apathy. Because in hatred and in love, there are a lot of the same emotions just poured out differently. But in apathy, there's none. And I would argue that the apathetic crowd is just as guilty of what happened on Friday as the Friday crowd. And that that may be the most dangerous one. So I think as we walk through those crowds, that there's one question that becomes really obvious for everyone, and hopefully you started asking yourself this question already. What crowd are you in? Which one is it? Are you in the Sunday crowd when Jesus shows up in your life? Are you in the Sunday crowd that lays down your cloak and gladly and gleefully and willingly accepts his rule in your life? Yes. Not only will I allow you to rule, I desire it. Come in. Are you the Friday crowd? And I doubt on a Sunday morning we have very many, if any, people at all who will admit to being in the Friday crowd and radically anti-Jesus. You're in church on Sunday. But because we've got a bunch of visitors here, maybe that is you. And if it is, thank you for coming and putting up with us. I will try to go faster. You're being very nice. But I bet there's some people in the Wednesday crowd. I bet there's some people who treat the arrival of Christ in their life with apathy. Like it doesn't have anything to do with us. And so as I ask, which crowd are you in? I think most Christian minds go to the idea of salvation. How did I respond to Jesus when he showed up in my life? I'm a Christian. I've accepted Christ as my savior. I've prayed to ask him into my heart. I am a believer. Whatever your nomenclature is, you would call yourself a follower of Jesus and believe that you are saved. I'm not here to negate that belief. But I think our Christian mind, when we ask, how do we receive Jesus when he shows up in our life? We go, well, I'm a Christian. So clearly Sunday crowd laid down my cloak. Come in. I'll gleefully follow you. I think that's where we go. But I would argue with you that Jesus doesn't just show up once in our life. That there's more to this question than simply, have you accepted Christ as your Savior or not? And I think to actually answer this question, what crowd are you in? That we first have to decide what it looks like when Jesus shows up in your life. So let's talk about that for a second. What does it look like when I say when Jesus shows up in your life, what do I mean? What does that look like? And I was trying to think through a succinct description of this to help us grab onto it. But the reality of it is that Jesus shows up in myriad ways. Yes, of course he shows up as our savior and he invites us to repent and to follow him. And the fundamental repentance of all Christianity is to repent of whoever you thought Jesus was before you believed in him as your savior. We, all of us in here have different ideas about Christ. And if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, you, you also have an idea about Christ. He's somebody that somebody made up. He was a good teacher, but he's not a savior. He was a good man, but we're going overboard with the God thing. He existed, but he doesn't matter. You have an opinion about Jesus. And to become a Christian, the fundamental repentance is to say, I was wrong about what I thought about Christ, and I now agree with him about who he says he is, what he said he did, and what he said he's going to do. I now have aligned my thoughts and actions by agreeing with Jesus about who he says he is. That's what it is to become a Christian. So when we think about what crowd we're in, we've got to think about how he shows up. And I don't think he just shows up at that moment of salvation. I think that Jesus shows up every day, every hour, and sometimes moment to moment, depending on the circumstances. Jesus can show up. I thought about how does he show up? When does he arrive? When does he make himself known? He shows up in sermons. You've come to church this morning. I'm saying his name a lot. He's come up. He's shown up. He's here. How will you respond to what you hear today? Jesus is showing up. How will you respond to what you sing when you sing a worship song riding down the road? And it's about Christ. How will you respond to that? Jesus is showing up. You could be riding down the road innocuously listening to Christmas music, not expecting to have a Jesus moment. And all of a sudden, no holy night comes on. And if you're paying attention, the words are about Christ. And so Jesus has shown up. You can be in a conversation with a friend that you're just talking to about life. And then they'll start to reference scripture or point towards prayer or point towards something that God has been teaching them. Jesus is now showing up in this conversation. You can be doing something that you know you have no business doing. That you could be somewhere where you should never be. And there will be this prick of conviction, this realization in the moment, I don't need to be here. This isn't good. This isn't what's best for me. That's Jesus showing up through the Holy Spirit of conviction. He can show up in the midst of sin. He can show up on a billboard that you see that flashes a memory and makes you think of something. He can show up in a terrible circumstance where you've just received terrible news. Someone is very sick, someone is very hurt, something that's very sad has happened and the right friend or the right person puts their arm around you and shows up for you and is the presence of God in that moment for you, Jesus is showing up. And so when I tried to answer the question, what does it look like when Jesus shows up? I think the only real practical answer is Jesus shows up whenever you let him. Jesus shows up whenever you let him. Whenever you're willing to pay attention and acknowledge that he's trying to get your attention, that's when he shows up. Whenever you're willing to stop all the other things going on in your day and in your head and acknowledge that he's just arrived. And what does he want me to do with this? We don't have to ask if Jesus is going to show up in our life. We just have to pay attention and realize that he is. And because that's how Jesus shows up every hour of every day, inviting you into his presence and under his lordship, inviting you to allow him to be the Lord of that moment or that role or that conversation or that habit or that discipline or that decision. Because that's how Jesus shows up, I will ask you again. When Jesus shows up in your life, which crowd are you in? Because I think this is a daily decision, Christians. It's a daily decision to decide today, this morning, at work, with my children, with my spouse, with my friends, with my habits, with my disciplines, with what I consume. I am going to be a part of the Sunday crowd. I'm going to lay down my cloak and I'm going to gladly, gleefully, and gratefully usher Jesus into my life and receive him today. I'm going to willingly submit to his lordship and his rule today. When Jesus shows up in a conversation, do we allow the conversation to go there and engage or do we steer away because it makes us uncomfortable? When he comes up in a worship song, are we going to stop and welcome him in and praise him in our car or are we going to turn it down and focus on something else? When the conviction stirs and our hearts are pricked, are we going to respond to that by allowing Jesus to come into our life and become Lord over that and move away from that sin and repent of it in that moment? How do we respond to Jesus when he shows up in our life? Maybe, hopefully, we can all claim from time to time to be part of the Sunday crowd. I said earlier, I don't think in a church service on a Sunday morning there's going to be very many of us that are part of the Friday crowd. No, Jesus, get out of here. I'd rather kill you. No thanks. But I do think that there are plenty of us in this room who are regularly a part of that Wednesday crowd. I do think there are plenty of us in this room and on this stage, and I don't have any company up here, who regularly are part of the Wednesday crowd. When Jesus shows up in our life and says, are you going to give me lordship over that? We go, listen, you're my savior. Okay, I'd like to go to heaven, but I'd also like to do this thing. So not today. I've got bread to deliver. Not today. I've got things to do. Am I your savior? Yes, absolutely. Am I your king? No, I got the crown. And we respond to Jesus, not with acceptance, not with rejection, but with apathy, as if he doesn't show up. And when we do this, when we respond, when we join the Wednesday crowd at the arrival of Christ and we decide not to care, do you know what that stops us from doing? Noticing the other times that he's shown up. If I asked, hey, how does Jesus show up in your life? And you're like, I don't know. Is that because you've been a part of the Wednesday crowd for a while? Because when you get in the habit of going, yeah, Jesus, I'm not giving you that thing today. I'm not giving you that relationship today. I'm not accepting your lordship in that action or in that sin today. I'm going to do my own thing. It gets a lot easier to be a part of the Wednesday crowd the next day. It gets a lot easier to choose apathy the next day. And then eventually, I know this from experience, you choose to be apathetic enough days in a row, and you're going to say things like, you know what, you're not going to say it out loud. You're never going to admit this. But you're going to take on a mindset of, yeah, not this week. We don't have to do the daily check-ins. Not this week. Not this month. Not this season. And we become deeply apathetic Christians who are part of the Wednesday crowd, neither accepting nor rejecting Christ, just going about our lives as if he doesn't exist. And if it's true that hate is not the opposite of love, but apathy is, then there is no greater sin that we could commit and no greater offense that we could offer to our Savior Jesus, to our King who offers us His Lordship. There is no greater offense to Him than an apathetic response towards His arrival. And I think, if I'm being honest, I know that I could just stop the sermon right there and send us home, and we would have enough to think about. Because I think apathy might be the most pernicious and sinister sin in the American church now. Yeah, I'm good. I've accepted you as Savior. But I don't really want you to be king every day. And I don't want to feel bad like I've rejected you. So I'm just going to pretend like I don't notice. I'm going to go about my life. But here's the thing. Here's the thing that tells us that not only is it wrong to choose apathy, but we literally can't. We cannot continue to choose to be apathetic Christians because those phrases are oxymoronic. They do not go together. They are impossible together. The Bible does not make space for apathetic Christians because make no mistake about it. When Jesus shows up, when he arrives, when he tells us, I stand at the door and knock. When we open the door and we let Jesus into our life, he fully, listen to me, he fully expects to take charge. Jesus' expectations when he shows up somewhere is, yeah, I'm going to show up on a donkey, but when you let me in, I'm the boss. I'm going to show up humble. But when you let me in, I'm the ruler. I'm in charge. You submit to me and you do what I say. And Jesus will settle for nothing less. This is why I said we're going to turn back to Zechariah chapter 9. After he says I'm going to show up humble and lowly, this is what he says after that in verse 10. I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the war horses from Jerusalem and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. When Jesus shows up, he's not doing it to be your vice president. He's not doing it to only be your savior. He's doing it to be your king. Those words do not sound like the words of someone who intends to do nothing. I'm going to break the battle bows. I'm going to get rid of the chariots. I'm going to get rid of the war horses. And my empire will extend from end to end and from sea to sea. I'm going to be in charge. So here's the thing that I think is profoundly important for us to understand about the arrival of Christ in our life. Jesus insists on ruling, but refuses to conquer. He insists on ruling you. He will not conquer you. Do you understand why that's so important? He will not force you into being a Christian. He will not force you into being a believer. He will not force you into submission. I think of the story of Joshua wrestling with Jesus, Jacob wrestling with Jesus. And it teaches us that if you want to wrestle with Jesus, you're going to win. If you want to defy his will, he's not going to force it on you. He will not conquer you. And I know this to be true because in the young zeal of my faith in my twenties, I prayed on multiple occasions. This is true. On multiple occasions, I got on my knees and I said, God, I want to be an automaton. I do not want my free will. It does not serve me. I have no use for it. I know that without it, I cannot offer you a greater love, but I no longer want my free will. It doesn't serve me. I just want to do whatever you want me to do every day. Please take it from me. And I can tell you at 43, he did not answer that prayer. I still very much have it. Much to my chagrin. Oh, wretched man that I am who will deliver me from this body of death. Jesus insists on ruling you. He will not conquer you. He will not make you do it. He only comes into your life through invitation. He only comes into those moments when you let him. He does not force his way in. And what's even better about this, listen, when he comes to Israel and he takes over as king, it's not that he's never conquered anything. It's just he's already conquered what he wants to conquer. And now, listen, he wants to come into your life and share with you the spoils of his wars that he's already won. Do you understand? He doesn't want what you have. He wants to come into your life and give you the victories that he's already won. He wanted to come into Israel, not to conquer Jerusalem, but to offer them the kingdom that he won outside of Jerusalem. How profound is that? That when Jesus says, hey, would you invite me in? He's not trying to conquer you. Listen, he'll pursue you. We're told that Jesus leaves the 99 who have let him in and is pursuing the hundredth that won't. So even if you're here this morning and you would not call yourself a believer, I want you to know that Jesus is still with you and following you every minute of every day. And I hope and pray, if I'm speaking to you right now, that you feel him hot on your heels. You can turn around and let him in anytime you want. And when you do, he's not going to conquer you. He's going to offer you the spoils of the wars and the battles that he's already fought. I love this song, this old hymn called See the Conqueror. Nobody's heard of it. It's nerdy, but I really like it. And in that song, there's lyrics. It talks about see the conqueror mounted in triumph and how Jesus ushers into heaven. But it was like here, it says, he has vanquished sin and Satan. He by death has spoiled his foes. He's conquered sin and death for us. Oh, sin, where are your shackles? Oh, death, where is your sting? He's conquered death and disease for us already. He's conquered that sin for you already. He's conquered that anxiety already. He's conquered that relationship already. He's conquered that life issue already. He's conquered the temporary nature of life already. He's conquered the loss of people already. Do you understand? He's already conquered it and he's not looking to conquer you. He's looking to be invited into your life to rule as king and to offer you the spoils of the wars that he's already fought. That's what it means when he arrives in your life on a donkey. He just wants to offer you the victories that he's already won. So at Grace, we talk a lot about the fact that we are step-takers. To be a step-taker is to simply acknowledge that God has a step of obedience for everyone to take, and it's your job to figure out what's my step of obedience and how do I take it. And so this morning, I think we have in front of us an opportunity to be a step-taker. And I think it comes in this form. Let me ask it this way. What would it look like to hand over lordship in a place where Jesus is showing up? The idea of, for those of us who have grown apathetic, and we're not even really paying attention to when Jesus shows up, the idea of handing over every moment of every day to him is something that seems so far off that it's almost so impossible that maybe we won't even start the journey. But I think if we can just look at the journey as one step of obedience, just one thing, not all the things, just one thing. Where is Jesus showing up in your life where you can be a part of the Sunday crowd and usher him in and submit to his lordship and experience the spoils of the victory that he's already won over that thing? Is it in a relationship? A marriage that you haven't focused on in a while and you know you need to? Is it in the way you parent? Not that I know this from experience, but maybe as a parent you've fallen into parenting the children towards just not being annoying to you instead of towards Jesus himself and loving him? Is it in the way that you go about work forgetting that it's your ministry, not your profession? Is Jesus convicting you in the way that you talk to others, treat other people? Is he convicting you to worship more? Is he convicting you to acknowledge him? Is he inviting you into his presence in times when you're refusing it? In response to this sermon, if you'll intellectually acknowledge with me that Jesus is showing up in our lives daily, hourly, maybe even momentarily, then where is he pressing on you the most? At what door is he standing and knocking, saying, are you going to let me in now? I'm going to pray. And as I pray, the band's going to come up and they're going to sing. And as they sing, they're going to offer you the opportunity to just continue to sit as they sing over us. I would invite you to use the next few minutes to spend time in prayer and go before God and say, Jesus, where are you pressing? Where are you showing up? Help me to see you and give me the strength to lay my cloak on the ground and invite you in as Lord and allow you to rule me there. Can we do that together? Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for the kiddos, the joy that they bring, the laughter that they cause, and the blessings that they represent. God, we pray that we would be good parents and grandparents to them. We pray that we would be good spiritual parents and grandparents to them. I pray that they would be good friends to one another. Jesus, we thank you for showing up on a donkey. We thank you that you don't conquer us. That for some reason, unique in world history and in the span of all religions, you simply wait for us to let you in. And you do not insist, and you do not force. So God, I pray this morning that we would let you in. And that when we did, we would know that you do that to rule us, not to partner with us. Not to simply usher us into heaven, but to share with us the spoils of the victories that you've already won. Jesus, we love you. We thank you for winning those victories and we thank you for being a good king that we can celebrate this Christmas. In Jesus' name, amen.
My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here this Sunday. I am acutely aware that for many of you, you were not here for this, you were here for that. And so we're so glad that you are here. And if you're a grandparent, thank you for trusting us with your babies and your grandbabies. It's an honor and a privilege to do that. I've been talking a lot about how our children's ministry is growing and burgeoning, and I thought it would be, we thought it would be really good to highlight that on a Sunday and for you guys to be able to see physically all that God is doing and bringing, and that was great. If you're wondering who the pastor's kid was in the first, in the preschool one, it was the boy in the white sweater and red pants that looked like he hated everything in the world. So he's got somebody leaned over to me here and said he's got a real future. Yeah, I think so. I think so. This morning we are in the third part of our series called Foretold, where we are looking at prophecies from the Old Testament, messianic prophecies. And a messianic prophecy is simply a prophecy that tells about the coming Christ, the coming Messiah, who we know of as Jesus. And so in the first week, we looked at Jeremiah 31, where it said this coming Messiah will bring a new covenant. And so we talked about what that new covenant was. Last week we looked at Isaiah chapter 9, the most famous Christmas prophecy that his name will be called, that he will be called Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And we talked about what those names mean. And it's right and good to focus on these prophecies about the coming Messiah at Christmastime because Christmas is when we celebrate the arrival of the Messiah and the fulfillment of these prophecies. So this morning, we arrive at a prophecy in the book of Zechariah. Zechariah chapter 9, verse 9. So if you have a Bible, go ahead and start trying to zero in on Zechariah. It's a tough one. It's a minor prophet towards the end of the Old Testament. If you need to use your table of contents for this, please do. I'd also like to just point out, because I can do this and they are friends, Tom and Linda Sartorius and their daughter Kristen thought that this week was Family Jammy Sunday. So make sure you say hey to them in the lobby. They are a delight this morning. I've been told to blame this on Kristen, but at this point it really doesn't matter. It's just fun all the way around. Steven and Maddie, they avoided it. They're another part of the family, son and daughter-in-law. but the rest of them look like suckers, and it's great. It's great. In Zechariah chapter 9, what we have is not a prophecy about the first arrival of Christ. It's a prophecy about the arrival of Christ as king, and it's a profoundly important one, and I think it's worth reflecting on this morning. So I'm going to read you the prophecy from Zechariah. We're going to talk about the context of that. And then we're going to look at its fulfillment in Matthew chapter 21. So read with me, if you will, Zechariah chapter 9, verse 9. Rejoice greatly, daughter Zion. Shout, daughter Jerusalem. See your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. This is the prophecy from Zechariah. And we're going to turn to Matthew 21, but if you're following along in your Bible, keep something noted in Zechariah because we're going to come back to verse 10, and I don't want you to have to find it again. But to understand what happens in Matthew 21 and the fulfillment of this prophecy, we need to understand the context of what this one implies. In ancient times, and even in the times of Christ, really up until World War I, we figured out we should kind of knock this off. Kings went out and conquered. That's what they did. The only major nation that hasn't figured out that we should knock it off on trying to conquer other nations is Russia. They keep dabbling in it since World War I. But everyone else has figured out not to do that. But in this time, it was very regular for kings to go out and conquer. It's what they did. If you were a king, this is what you did. And we know this because when David sins with Bathsheba, that story begins in Samuel. It was spring at the time when kings went off to war. So this is what they did. And when a king would enter a city to assume control of that city, there was two ways that he entered. One was on a war horse, symbolizing that he had conquered the city. He was coming in as the conquering hero to his people and the conquering king to these people. That he had conquered this city. He would ride in on his war horse once everything, all the dust had settled from the battle. The other way for a king to enter a city that was less, less, uh, it didn't happen as often, but it did happen. And it did mean something was for a king to come in on a donkey. When a king would come into a city on a donkey, he was symbolizing peace. He was symbolizing. I did not have to conquer this city. This city willfully gave itself over to me. And because of that, I'm not coming in to kill. I'm not coming in to conquer. I'm not coming in to hurt or to subdue. I am coming into this city in peace and I intend to peacefully take over this city. And then the prophecy of Zechariah takes it a step further because not only is he entering as a peaceful King on a donkey, but on the cult, the foal of a donkey on a bay, on a little baby donkey to be humble, to communicate in every way. And it says humble and lowly to communicate in every way that Jesus doesn't come as a conquering King for the city. He comes as a king who's already conquered and is now entering into the city peacefully. So there's great, it's not just random that he's entering into a donkey and that this is how Zechariah prophesies that he's going to become the king of Jerusalem. Because to become a king of the city, you basically got to go take it over. And Zechariah says, no, he's not going to do it like that. Jerusalem is going to welcome him with open arms. He will enter on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey, gentle, humble, and lowly. That's the context that we need to understand what's happening in Matthew chapter 21 when he fulfills it. So, if you don't mind, turn over to Matthew chapter 21. In the preceding verses, Matthew has said, I'm not going to read, there's a whole passage here, I'm just going to read a portion of it. I'm going to begin in verse 7 and go through 11. But in the preceding verses, Jesus has told the disciples on their way to Jerusalem, beginning the last week of his life, Holy Week. This is Palm Sunday. This is the story where we get Palm Sunday. He tells the disciples, I want you to go into town and I want you to get a donkey. I want you to get a colt, the foal of a donkey, and I'm going to ride that into Jerusalem. And then Matthew says, this is to fulfill what was said by the prophet Zechariah. And he quotes Zechariah. A wonderful aside about the gospel of Matthew is that the gospel of Matthew was written in the first century A.D. to convince skeptical Jewish people that Jesus was the actual Messiah that you learned about for all those generations. And so very often throughout the Gospel of Matthew, you'll see the narrative stop. There'll be a bracket in it, and it will say this is to fulfill the prophecy of, and then there's a bracket, and then it's the prophecy to show how Jesus really was the Messiah that the Old Testament talked about. So, for us New Testament believers, reading the book of Matthew is a great way to begin to tether the Old and New Testaments together to bring us to a greater depth of understanding. So, Jesus says, go get this. This is to go get this donkey. This is to fulfill this prophecy. And then this happens. Verse 7, they brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest heaven. When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, who is this? Who is this? So Jesus shows up at Jerusalem. At this point in his ministry, he's been doing ministry for three years. He knows that when he goes into Jerusalem, he's going to stir up a hornet's nest of conflict that's going to ultimately lead to his crucifixion. But he also knows that he's entering Jerusalem as a conquering king, as a king who has conquered. And so he enters in as king on a donkey. And I think about the crowds in this story because I think those are who we relate to the most. And I think in this story, there are really kind of three crowds that we see. The first crowd is the most obvious crowd is the crowd that welcomed him. The crowd that showed up, that heard about it. I don't know exactly how word spreads in Jerusalem in zero AD or whenever 33 AD, whenever this was. But it was word of mouth. It was people seeing, there was stirring up, there was a commotion and everybody just kind of goes to see what's going on. And these people were so excited at who Jesus is. They believe that he was the king that Zechariah had prophesied about. Now they believe, full disclosure, they believe that Jesus was showing up in Jerusalem to overthrow Herod, to overthrow Roman rule, to take over the kingdom of Israel, to make it independent and to make it an international superpower and rise it to prominence. That's what they're expecting Jesus to do. They don't yet know that that's far too small a goal for our Jesus and that he came to establish an eternal and universal kingdom that makes an international power like the Roman Empire at the time look like peanuts. He's not interested in that. But they came because they believed that Jesus was coming in to be the king. And so when the king arrives, they take off their cloaks, they throw it on the ground as a sign of respect and celebration and adoration and worship. And then they go and they cut off the palm leaves or the palm branches and they place those on the ground, a sign of respect and adoration and worship. And they sing to him, Hosanna, the son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest heaven. They're praising him as he enters into the city. This crowd welcomes Jesus into their kingdom, welcomes Jesus into their life. And here's the implication here. And I'm going to talk more about this in a minute. Jesus came, he did not come to conquer, but he did come to rule. He did not come to take anything over, but his expectation is absolutely that he's going to be in charge. His expectation is absolutely that I'm going to reign and you are going to submit. And the people celebrating in this crowd, they know that. They're gleefully, gladly, and gratefully accepting the incoming king. Yes, we will serve you. Yes, we will submit to you. Yes, not only will we submit to your reign, but we desire your reign. That's why we're laying our cloaks down on the ground because we want to follow you and serve you and submit to you. That's the first crowd. We'll call them the Sunday crowd because that's Palm Sunday. Five days later, there's another crowd. We'll call them the Friday crowd. This is the crowd of people that gathered around the fortress that Pilate, the Roman governor, was in, who yelled at Pilate, give us Barabbas and crucify Christ. And Pilate says, I find no fault in the man. He's done nothing wrong. There's no reason to crucify him. He might be a little delusional, but he has done absolutely nothing worthy of capital punishment. And they said, the crowd said back, kill him, his blood be on our hands and on the hands of our children. And they were so adamantly against Jesus that they crucified him. That's the Friday crowd. No, we do not accept that king. No, we do not accept his rule. We will fight back with our lives to not have to accept that rule. As a matter of fact, let's kill him. Completely anti-Jesus. But I think that there's a third crowd that's not mentioned anywhere in the Bible explicitly. But if you'll allow me this license, I think we can all admit that they've existed in every generation. I'm going to call this the Wednesday crowd. This is the crowd that's apathetic towards the whole thing. This is the crowd of people that went, hey, on Sunday, they went, what's that commotion? And they went, this is Jesus. He's the coming king. And they're like, maybe for you. I've got things to do today. I have cabinets to make and bread to deliver. I got stuff to do. So not super interested. He can be your king, not going to be my king. I got to get along with my day. And didn't go over to the commotion and just kept going about their lives as if Jesus didn't exist. And then on Friday, the Wednesday crowd sees the Friday crowd getting all worked up and says, what are you doing? They're like, this Jesus is full of crud. We don't like him. We're going to kill him. He's like, all right, seems like a waste of time to me, but go ahead. I have things to do. I don't care that much. And I think we would tend, I think we would tend to say in the way we do our moral judgments that the Friday crowd, the anti-Jesus crowd, was worse than the Wednesday crowd. Obviously, Sunday crowd's the best crowd. We know that. But Friday crowd, worse than Wednesday crowd, because Friday crowd killed Jesus. Wednesday just decided they didn't care. But I heard someone really smart one time say that the opposite of love is not hate. It's apathy. Because in hatred and in love, there are a lot of the same emotions just poured out differently. But in apathy, there's none. And I would argue that the apathetic crowd is just as guilty of what happened on Friday as the Friday crowd. And that that may be the most dangerous one. So I think as we walk through those crowds, that there's one question that becomes really obvious for everyone, and hopefully you started asking yourself this question already. What crowd are you in? Which one is it? Are you in the Sunday crowd when Jesus shows up in your life? Are you in the Sunday crowd that lays down your cloak and gladly and gleefully and willingly accepts his rule in your life? Yes. Not only will I allow you to rule, I desire it. Come in. Are you the Friday crowd? And I doubt on a Sunday morning we have very many, if any, people at all who will admit to being in the Friday crowd and radically anti-Jesus. You're in church on Sunday. But because we've got a bunch of visitors here, maybe that is you. And if it is, thank you for coming and putting up with us. I will try to go faster. You're being very nice. But I bet there's some people in the Wednesday crowd. I bet there's some people who treat the arrival of Christ in their life with apathy. Like it doesn't have anything to do with us. And so as I ask, which crowd are you in? I think most Christian minds go to the idea of salvation. How did I respond to Jesus when he showed up in my life? I'm a Christian. I've accepted Christ as my savior. I've prayed to ask him into my heart. I am a believer. Whatever your nomenclature is, you would call yourself a follower of Jesus and believe that you are saved. I'm not here to negate that belief. But I think our Christian mind, when we ask, how do we receive Jesus when he shows up in our life? We go, well, I'm a Christian. So clearly Sunday crowd laid down my cloak. Come in. I'll gleefully follow you. I think that's where we go. But I would argue with you that Jesus doesn't just show up once in our life. That there's more to this question than simply, have you accepted Christ as your Savior or not? And I think to actually answer this question, what crowd are you in? That we first have to decide what it looks like when Jesus shows up in your life. So let's talk about that for a second. What does it look like when I say when Jesus shows up in your life, what do I mean? What does that look like? And I was trying to think through a succinct description of this to help us grab onto it. But the reality of it is that Jesus shows up in myriad ways. Yes, of course he shows up as our savior and he invites us to repent and to follow him. And the fundamental repentance of all Christianity is to repent of whoever you thought Jesus was before you believed in him as your savior. We, all of us in here have different ideas about Christ. And if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, you, you also have an idea about Christ. He's somebody that somebody made up. He was a good teacher, but he's not a savior. He was a good man, but we're going overboard with the God thing. He existed, but he doesn't matter. You have an opinion about Jesus. And to become a Christian, the fundamental repentance is to say, I was wrong about what I thought about Christ, and I now agree with him about who he says he is, what he said he did, and what he said he's going to do. I now have aligned my thoughts and actions by agreeing with Jesus about who he says he is. That's what it is to become a Christian. So when we think about what crowd we're in, we've got to think about how he shows up. And I don't think he just shows up at that moment of salvation. I think that Jesus shows up every day, every hour, and sometimes moment to moment, depending on the circumstances. Jesus can show up. I thought about how does he show up? When does he arrive? When does he make himself known? He shows up in sermons. You've come to church this morning. I'm saying his name a lot. He's come up. He's shown up. He's here. How will you respond to what you hear today? Jesus is showing up. How will you respond to what you sing when you sing a worship song riding down the road? And it's about Christ. How will you respond to that? Jesus is showing up. You could be riding down the road innocuously listening to Christmas music, not expecting to have a Jesus moment. And all of a sudden, no holy night comes on. And if you're paying attention, the words are about Christ. And so Jesus has shown up. You can be in a conversation with a friend that you're just talking to about life. And then they'll start to reference scripture or point towards prayer or point towards something that God has been teaching them. Jesus is now showing up in this conversation. You can be doing something that you know you have no business doing. That you could be somewhere where you should never be. And there will be this prick of conviction, this realization in the moment, I don't need to be here. This isn't good. This isn't what's best for me. That's Jesus showing up through the Holy Spirit of conviction. He can show up in the midst of sin. He can show up on a billboard that you see that flashes a memory and makes you think of something. He can show up in a terrible circumstance where you've just received terrible news. Someone is very sick, someone is very hurt, something that's very sad has happened and the right friend or the right person puts their arm around you and shows up for you and is the presence of God in that moment for you, Jesus is showing up. And so when I tried to answer the question, what does it look like when Jesus shows up? I think the only real practical answer is Jesus shows up whenever you let him. Jesus shows up whenever you let him. Whenever you're willing to pay attention and acknowledge that he's trying to get your attention, that's when he shows up. Whenever you're willing to stop all the other things going on in your day and in your head and acknowledge that he's just arrived. And what does he want me to do with this? We don't have to ask if Jesus is going to show up in our life. We just have to pay attention and realize that he is. And because that's how Jesus shows up every hour of every day, inviting you into his presence and under his lordship, inviting you to allow him to be the Lord of that moment or that role or that conversation or that habit or that discipline or that decision. Because that's how Jesus shows up, I will ask you again. When Jesus shows up in your life, which crowd are you in? Because I think this is a daily decision, Christians. It's a daily decision to decide today, this morning, at work, with my children, with my spouse, with my friends, with my habits, with my disciplines, with what I consume. I am going to be a part of the Sunday crowd. I'm going to lay down my cloak and I'm going to gladly, gleefully, and gratefully usher Jesus into my life and receive him today. I'm going to willingly submit to his lordship and his rule today. When Jesus shows up in a conversation, do we allow the conversation to go there and engage or do we steer away because it makes us uncomfortable? When he comes up in a worship song, are we going to stop and welcome him in and praise him in our car or are we going to turn it down and focus on something else? When the conviction stirs and our hearts are pricked, are we going to respond to that by allowing Jesus to come into our life and become Lord over that and move away from that sin and repent of it in that moment? How do we respond to Jesus when he shows up in our life? Maybe, hopefully, we can all claim from time to time to be part of the Sunday crowd. I said earlier, I don't think in a church service on a Sunday morning there's going to be very many of us that are part of the Friday crowd. No, Jesus, get out of here. I'd rather kill you. No thanks. But I do think that there are plenty of us in this room who are regularly a part of that Wednesday crowd. I do think there are plenty of us in this room and on this stage, and I don't have any company up here, who regularly are part of the Wednesday crowd. When Jesus shows up in our life and says, are you going to give me lordship over that? We go, listen, you're my savior. Okay, I'd like to go to heaven, but I'd also like to do this thing. So not today. I've got bread to deliver. Not today. I've got things to do. Am I your savior? Yes, absolutely. Am I your king? No, I got the crown. And we respond to Jesus, not with acceptance, not with rejection, but with apathy, as if he doesn't show up. And when we do this, when we respond, when we join the Wednesday crowd at the arrival of Christ and we decide not to care, do you know what that stops us from doing? Noticing the other times that he's shown up. If I asked, hey, how does Jesus show up in your life? And you're like, I don't know. Is that because you've been a part of the Wednesday crowd for a while? Because when you get in the habit of going, yeah, Jesus, I'm not giving you that thing today. I'm not giving you that relationship today. I'm not accepting your lordship in that action or in that sin today. I'm going to do my own thing. It gets a lot easier to be a part of the Wednesday crowd the next day. It gets a lot easier to choose apathy the next day. And then eventually, I know this from experience, you choose to be apathetic enough days in a row, and you're going to say things like, you know what, you're not going to say it out loud. You're never going to admit this. But you're going to take on a mindset of, yeah, not this week. We don't have to do the daily check-ins. Not this week. Not this month. Not this season. And we become deeply apathetic Christians who are part of the Wednesday crowd, neither accepting nor rejecting Christ, just going about our lives as if he doesn't exist. And if it's true that hate is not the opposite of love, but apathy is, then there is no greater sin that we could commit and no greater offense that we could offer to our Savior Jesus, to our King who offers us His Lordship. There is no greater offense to Him than an apathetic response towards His arrival. And I think, if I'm being honest, I know that I could just stop the sermon right there and send us home, and we would have enough to think about. Because I think apathy might be the most pernicious and sinister sin in the American church now. Yeah, I'm good. I've accepted you as Savior. But I don't really want you to be king every day. And I don't want to feel bad like I've rejected you. So I'm just going to pretend like I don't notice. I'm going to go about my life. But here's the thing. Here's the thing that tells us that not only is it wrong to choose apathy, but we literally can't. We cannot continue to choose to be apathetic Christians because those phrases are oxymoronic. They do not go together. They are impossible together. The Bible does not make space for apathetic Christians because make no mistake about it. When Jesus shows up, when he arrives, when he tells us, I stand at the door and knock. When we open the door and we let Jesus into our life, he fully, listen to me, he fully expects to take charge. Jesus' expectations when he shows up somewhere is, yeah, I'm going to show up on a donkey, but when you let me in, I'm the boss. I'm going to show up humble. But when you let me in, I'm the ruler. I'm in charge. You submit to me and you do what I say. And Jesus will settle for nothing less. This is why I said we're going to turn back to Zechariah chapter 9. After he says I'm going to show up humble and lowly, this is what he says after that in verse 10. I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the war horses from Jerusalem and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. When Jesus shows up, he's not doing it to be your vice president. He's not doing it to only be your savior. He's doing it to be your king. Those words do not sound like the words of someone who intends to do nothing. I'm going to break the battle bows. I'm going to get rid of the chariots. I'm going to get rid of the war horses. And my empire will extend from end to end and from sea to sea. I'm going to be in charge. So here's the thing that I think is profoundly important for us to understand about the arrival of Christ in our life. Jesus insists on ruling, but refuses to conquer. He insists on ruling you. He will not conquer you. Do you understand why that's so important? He will not force you into being a Christian. He will not force you into being a believer. He will not force you into submission. I think of the story of Joshua wrestling with Jesus, Jacob wrestling with Jesus. And it teaches us that if you want to wrestle with Jesus, you're going to win. If you want to defy his will, he's not going to force it on you. He will not conquer you. And I know this to be true because in the young zeal of my faith in my twenties, I prayed on multiple occasions. This is true. On multiple occasions, I got on my knees and I said, God, I want to be an automaton. I do not want my free will. It does not serve me. I have no use for it. I know that without it, I cannot offer you a greater love, but I no longer want my free will. It doesn't serve me. I just want to do whatever you want me to do every day. Please take it from me. And I can tell you at 43, he did not answer that prayer. I still very much have it. Much to my chagrin. Oh, wretched man that I am who will deliver me from this body of death. Jesus insists on ruling you. He will not conquer you. He will not make you do it. He only comes into your life through invitation. He only comes into those moments when you let him. He does not force his way in. And what's even better about this, listen, when he comes to Israel and he takes over as king, it's not that he's never conquered anything. It's just he's already conquered what he wants to conquer. And now, listen, he wants to come into your life and share with you the spoils of his wars that he's already won. Do you understand? He doesn't want what you have. He wants to come into your life and give you the victories that he's already won. He wanted to come into Israel, not to conquer Jerusalem, but to offer them the kingdom that he won outside of Jerusalem. How profound is that? That when Jesus says, hey, would you invite me in? He's not trying to conquer you. Listen, he'll pursue you. We're told that Jesus leaves the 99 who have let him in and is pursuing the hundredth that won't. So even if you're here this morning and you would not call yourself a believer, I want you to know that Jesus is still with you and following you every minute of every day. And I hope and pray, if I'm speaking to you right now, that you feel him hot on your heels. You can turn around and let him in anytime you want. And when you do, he's not going to conquer you. He's going to offer you the spoils of the wars and the battles that he's already fought. I love this song, this old hymn called See the Conqueror. Nobody's heard of it. It's nerdy, but I really like it. And in that song, there's lyrics. It talks about see the conqueror mounted in triumph and how Jesus ushers into heaven. But it was like here, it says, he has vanquished sin and Satan. He by death has spoiled his foes. He's conquered sin and death for us. Oh, sin, where are your shackles? Oh, death, where is your sting? He's conquered death and disease for us already. He's conquered that sin for you already. He's conquered that anxiety already. He's conquered that relationship already. He's conquered that life issue already. He's conquered the temporary nature of life already. He's conquered the loss of people already. Do you understand? He's already conquered it and he's not looking to conquer you. He's looking to be invited into your life to rule as king and to offer you the spoils of the wars that he's already fought. That's what it means when he arrives in your life on a donkey. He just wants to offer you the victories that he's already won. So at Grace, we talk a lot about the fact that we are step-takers. To be a step-taker is to simply acknowledge that God has a step of obedience for everyone to take, and it's your job to figure out what's my step of obedience and how do I take it. And so this morning, I think we have in front of us an opportunity to be a step-taker. And I think it comes in this form. Let me ask it this way. What would it look like to hand over lordship in a place where Jesus is showing up? The idea of, for those of us who have grown apathetic, and we're not even really paying attention to when Jesus shows up, the idea of handing over every moment of every day to him is something that seems so far off that it's almost so impossible that maybe we won't even start the journey. But I think if we can just look at the journey as one step of obedience, just one thing, not all the things, just one thing. Where is Jesus showing up in your life where you can be a part of the Sunday crowd and usher him in and submit to his lordship and experience the spoils of the victory that he's already won over that thing? Is it in a relationship? A marriage that you haven't focused on in a while and you know you need to? Is it in the way you parent? Not that I know this from experience, but maybe as a parent you've fallen into parenting the children towards just not being annoying to you instead of towards Jesus himself and loving him? Is it in the way that you go about work forgetting that it's your ministry, not your profession? Is Jesus convicting you in the way that you talk to others, treat other people? Is he convicting you to worship more? Is he convicting you to acknowledge him? Is he inviting you into his presence in times when you're refusing it? In response to this sermon, if you'll intellectually acknowledge with me that Jesus is showing up in our lives daily, hourly, maybe even momentarily, then where is he pressing on you the most? At what door is he standing and knocking, saying, are you going to let me in now? I'm going to pray. And as I pray, the band's going to come up and they're going to sing. And as they sing, they're going to offer you the opportunity to just continue to sit as they sing over us. I would invite you to use the next few minutes to spend time in prayer and go before God and say, Jesus, where are you pressing? Where are you showing up? Help me to see you and give me the strength to lay my cloak on the ground and invite you in as Lord and allow you to rule me there. Can we do that together? Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for the kiddos, the joy that they bring, the laughter that they cause, and the blessings that they represent. God, we pray that we would be good parents and grandparents to them. We pray that we would be good spiritual parents and grandparents to them. I pray that they would be good friends to one another. Jesus, we thank you for showing up on a donkey. We thank you that you don't conquer us. That for some reason, unique in world history and in the span of all religions, you simply wait for us to let you in. And you do not insist, and you do not force. So God, I pray this morning that we would let you in. And that when we did, we would know that you do that to rule us, not to partner with us. Not to simply usher us into heaven, but to share with us the spoils of the victories that you've already won. Jesus, we love you. We thank you for winning those victories and we thank you for being a good king that we can celebrate this Christmas. In Jesus' name, amen.
