Matthew

Sometimes in life, we simply need to pause. We need to stop and sit and rest and think and reflect. In these moments of rest, often what we need most is for God to refresh us. We need Him to speak to us and breathe fresh life into us. We need for God to move and restore and encourage. This is why we observe Lent. It is a moment for us amidst all the busyness of our years to pause and focus on Jesus. Lent reminds us of what Jesus has done for us, how much he loves us and how he relentlessly pursues us. So let us together right now, be still and set our collective focus on Jesus, This morning's reading is from Philipp earthly things, but our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await for a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. All right. Thank you, Alex. Do you guys, just before we get started, have you guys ever experienced spending the better part of two weeks, really just most of all of your time of the last two weeks, to prepare a sermon on fasting, and then the person who's supposed to be singing decides she's going to say something that is far more elegant and far more beautiful than anything that you have to say about fasting? I don't know if you guys have experienced that, but I am currently resting within that experience, right, as we speak. But no, for those who don't know me, my name is Kyle. I'd love to meet you if I don't know you, so please come up and say hello. I'm the student pastor here at Grace, and as always, I am just so thankful for the opportunity to be able to just share a little bit of my heart for the Lord with you guys this morning. Last week, we began in our Holy Pause series, a series that we are going through through the entirety of Lent. Last Sunday, Nate basically gave an introduction to, hey, here's the background of Lent. Here's what Lent is. Here is why it's important. And here is why, Nate, we as a church feel like it can be important and it can be beneficial for us as a church to walk through Lent together, to give up something, to fast of something, to spend some time in devotionals written by the grace body together. And he did a great job. He did an awesome job. And so for the next few weeks, leading all the way up into Easter, we are going to be looking at a different spiritual discipline. And we're going to be just talking about and focusing on how might that spiritual discipline allow us and our hearts to be more connected to the heart of Christ. And so this morning, I have the joy of being able to talk to you guys about fasting. And so naturally, I'd like to begin by telling you guys my history with coffee. So for a long time, I've been around a lot of people who really like, who really love coffee. They drink it all the time. I think it's disgusting. I did think it's disgusting. Let me go ahead and say that because honestly, I'm not a big acquired taste guy. I don't know. Some people are great about like, oh, I should probably do this. I should probably drink this. I should probably eat this. It's healthy, whatever. So I'm just going to do it. That's not really me. You know, if I don't like something, I'm not really trying to eat it. I'm not really trying to drink it. And so, you know, I tried coffee and I was like, cool, there's dirt in this water. That's awesome. You know, like, and it's great. And then you also, you deal with like, for any of you guys, for every, all of us don't like something. And all of us have been promised by someone who does like that something, hey, I promise you, when you try this one, it'll be better. And I don't think I've heard that any more than I've heard it with everybody and their coffee. It's like, hey, guess what? Every other coffee in the entire land is garbage except for this cup right here. So why don't you go ahead and give this a try? I was like, okay, cool. It's still dirt and water. Like, as you guys can see, I prefer my water without dirt. But what made coffee a little different is because I was like, man, it smells so good. You know, like with vegetables, it's like vegetables smell as gross as they taste. You know, they smell gross, they taste gross. There's no reason to consume vegetables, which is not true. I'm actually coming around on those, so you guys should be proud of me. Like, no need to applaud, but I mean, I'm eating some vegetables now at the ripe age of 28. But for coffee, it just smells so good, man. And like, when I would go to my grandparents' house and my granddad would make coffee or my brother would make coffee in the morning, I'm like, gosh, that smells so good. Like I know it tastes like garbage, but man, it just seems really nice to be able to make some coffee in the morning and then just sip along with it. And as we all know, it's fun drinking hot drinks with friends, you know? And not only that, but there's only a number of times that you can go to a cool coffee shop and everyone's ordering their fancy black coffees, and then you order your fancy brown hot chocolates that you don't feel a little bit embarrassed. And so at about 26, I decided I'm going to try to give coffee a shot. And honestly, those are goofy, funny reasons. But the real reason is because I realized that my health needed it. Because if I had a long car trip, if I woke up early in the morning and I need to get energized and get going for the day, or if there was a time where I needed to stay up late or whatever, I mean, from high school on, what I turned to was Mountain Dew. I mean, just absolutely pounding Mountain Dews so that I could stay awake for whatever I needed to do. Like, if you look at the marketing data for Mountain Dew, Kyle needing to stay awake always increased heavily the sales of Mountain Dew. There was like this innate sense of me, I need to keep them in business because I have to wake up right now. And honestly, as you guys know, Mountain Dew is straight up poison. Not only is it disgusting, but it is poison and it is terrible for you. And so at some point I looked in the mirror and I said, Kyle, it's time to get off the Mountain Dews, brother. And so I decided to turn to coffee as a healthier alternative. So I drank it a little bit, and as you acquire tastes, as you start eating or drinking something more, you start enjoying it a little bit better. You start liking it a little bit more. And so that was happening. I would go on a trip, a long trip, and I'd maybe get a couple cups of coffee. And I wasn't drinking it real fast. I didn't love it, but it was what it was. And so obviously my family was elated. They all love coffee and I always just roasted them about it. And now they are allowing me to roast coffee. Because for Christmas, because they were so excited, they got me a Keurig thing, coffee maker. And so I was like, well, you know what? If they're going to make me this, then why don't I just start drinking it? Like, you know, I was kind of just drinking it when I needed it because it's like helps me stay up, gives me some good caffeine, all of that stuff. But maybe if I start drinking it more often, then like these other people who really do actually really like coffee, enjoy the taste, all that stuff, maybe, just maybe, I'll feel the same way. So I started making it more on my own. Well, fast forward into quarantine. And in quarantine, I don't know, for those of you who don't know me, I'm a big rules guy. If you give me a rule, I'm just going to say, okay, I'm going to follow it. So like early quarantine was like, hey, you should not leave your front door. Like you should not go outside at all, if humanly possible. Like there was a time where it was, like, banned to walk on sidewalks. Like, it was insane, you know? And so, being a single guy who lives in an apartment alone, I was just not doing very many things. I mean, I was, like, you know, we would do our streams, and I would FaceTime the kids or whatever, but mostly I'm, like, watching TVs, and I'm playing TVs. I'm watching TV. I'm, like, watching TVs. I'm watching TV. I'm playing Xbox, all that stuff. But there is literally nothing to do except for those two to three times a day where I was like, you know what I could do? I could make some coffee right now. And so for all of you who know Keurigs, you know, you walk over and you got to turn it on because you got to heat up that water. So you got to turn it on first. And as you're heating it up, sometimes you have to add water. That was like a joyous occasion when I got to even add the water to it. So you'd add the water, you'd heat it up, and then it would just drizzle down. And all this whole process, getting it into the cup, takes like five minutes. And then you got to blow it. And that was another thing I got to do. Blowing the coffee because it's too hot, you know. And then for about five more minutes, it's still too hot to like just chug down. So you drink it, you know, you sip it or whatever, and that was 10 to 15 minutes where I felt like I was actually doing a thing, and it was joyous, but all that to say that as I started doing that, I started really liking coffee a lot. I enjoyed it a lot more. I started drinking a lot more. As stuff started opening up, as we came back into the office, I got a membership over at Panera to where I could get free. And so I'd stop by, I'd grab a free coffee, head over here, maybe get iced coffee for lunch, whatever it was. And it was like, great, this is awesome. I'm finally at the place where it's like, ah, it's not just something I have to do because I need it. It's like, I don't even need this anymore. Like, I don't really feel the caffeine doing much. It just tastes good. So I like doing it. Well, fast forward again to a few months ago when I was set to preach on a Sunday. And on Monday, I had an ear infection. And it didn't feel great. So I went to the doctor, got an antibiotic. Next morning, take the antibiotic, head over to Panera, get like a scone and a coffee and do that stuff. About an hour later, I started feeling super sick. I felt terrible. My stomach felt awful. I didn't know what was going on. I was like, is this COVID? You know, like first the ear infection, now I have COVID. This is awful. And I went home. And as I went home, I'm like, well, I do at least feel a little hungry. And so I start eating. And as I start eating, I start feeling better. So all you guys now are now, all you parents are now nodding. You're like, yeah, you just need to eat more when you take antibiotics, dummy. And that was it. Literally the only thing that made me sick was the antibiotic. But as any of you know, if you get sick around something that you eat or something that you drink, you're not really excited to eat or drink that thing the next day. And so on Wednesday, after I had just survived two ailments, on Wednesday, I do not at all want scones. I don't want any coffee. I had no taste for coffee anymore, which had become foreign to me to not have a taste for. And I go about half the day, and ailment number three comes as my head starts pounding. Like it hurts so bad. My eyes are just like, like it just, I don't want, I don't want my eyes to be open. It just, all of it. And I'm just like, am I dying? You know, like I just, because it's now three times where I have no idea what's going on. It's the third different type of sick I was or whatever until I finally realized, as all of you veteran coffee savants know, is my body had grown so accustomed to having that coffee that when it didn't have it and when that caffeine intake didn't come, my head was pounding because my body was trying to let me know, Kyle, we need this. And it was the first time where I'm like, oh, my coffee intake has not been healthy. Something that I thought was like good, and I thought was actually a healthy alternative, and therefore I was doing something smart and right, had turned into something that I was completely abusing. Something that literally was giving my body a negative, painful reaction if I went a day without it. And the crazy thing was, I had no idea. I just thought I liked coffee, so I was drinking it. But until that first day that I didn't have a coffee that morning, I had no idea the hold that it had over me and the hold that it had over my body. And if you'll permit me, I'm going to pause there. I'm not going to finish that point because I want to backtrack a little bit, and I want to talk a little bit more about Lent. Wednesday is when Lent started. If you guys have joined us in our devotionals, you know that. If you've joined us by deciding that you want to fast of something and replace that with focusing on and loving Jesus more and growing closer to Him, then you know that Lent started Wednesday. Here's my trivia question for you. Do you know what that Wednesday is called, the first Wednesday of Lent? Ash Wednesday, yes. Points to everyone who said that. Congrats. I saw all of you, so I've made a mental note of everyone who has points now. It's called Ash Wednesday. I'm not going to take the time to talk to you about all of the history of Ash Wednesday and to tell you all about the service of Ash Wednesday, but I would say if you've never been a part of an Ash Wednesday service, it's worth it. Check it out next year. Obviously, it is come and gone at this point, but check it out next year because it is really interesting and it's a cool service to be a part of. But Ash Wednesday partly derives its name from the words of God in Genesis when he says, from dust you came and to dust you shall return. If you've been a part of an Ash Wednesday service, you've heard that repeated over and over. And if you've ever seen someone who's been a part of an Ash Wednesday service, you've probably seen them with a cross drawn with ashes on their forehead. And when that cross is drawn on their forehead, they say, from dust you came, and to dust you shall return. The point of an Ash Wednesday service, and the point of Ash Wednesday is this. It's to remind us of our humanity and to remind us of our mortality. That just as one day we're here, one day we'll be gone. That one day our bodies will return once again to Ash just as they came. One day the things that we have, everything that we've built up in this life, the good things, the bad things, the neutral things, all of the things one day will pass away and they will return to dust. And as that reminder is set in, we kick off a 40-day fast. And that 40-day fast, as we talked about last week, and as Nate talked about, and as Carter read about, comes from the 40-day fast that we find in Matthew 4, from Jesus. Before Jesus sets off on his journey and on his time on earth where he is ministering and he's healing and he's loving and he's serving, he spends 40 days fasting in a desert. And after those days, Satan comes to him. And when he does, he tempts him. He tempts him three times. And the first one is he basically says, Jesus, I know you're hungry, and I know that you can turn that rock right there to bread. So why not go ahead and do so? You're super hungry. Just do it. The fast doesn't, it's not that important. It's not that meaningful. And Jesus's response, I think, is within the same vein as the response of Ash Wednesday, the response of God to the people of, dust you came and to dust you will return. And in Matthew 4, he says, man does not live on bread alone, but by every word spoken from the Father, from God. And I believe that those two reminders are coupled to remind us, one, not only that one day we will be gone, not only one day we will return to dust, but to remind us that while we're here, what ultimately is the most important and the most beneficial thing that we can intake is the word of God. And as we transition, obviously Jesus says this, but then Jesus, we know, goes on. He lives a life and he goes on and he takes the cross for us. And when he does so, what that means is now we, our souls, our hearts, get to rest upon the knowledge and the truth that Jesus did this for us, that we are freely able to experience a relationship with our Creator and our Father because He died and was raised to life for us. And so through Lent, we take time. We fast, we give something up. With the whole and sole purpose and mission of setting our hearts a little bit better on the Father, setting our hearts on the things above, taking to heart the reminder that Jesus gives when he talks to Satan by saying, hey, as much as our bodies need food, that much more our souls need the word of God. But as Paul writes, as a lot of us know and a lot of us see, and as Paul writes, this is something that's gone on forever. There are a lot of people alive. There are a lot of people around that have missed this truth, have missed this goodness of God, have missed this good news of Jesus as our Savior, because they're ignorant of the fact that it's offered to them. And they're so, as he taught, I'll just read it. As Alex read out of Philippians 3, the first half of what he read is talking about, and he refers to these people as enemies of the cross. It literally brings him to tears to talk about that these enemies of the cross are people whose stomachs are their gods and also whose minds and hearts are consumed by earthly things. There are people around that have not been able to experience the truth and the joy of the realization that we have this Jesus Christ who came to live and to die for us. And if they live their lives ignorant of this fact, if they live their lives not being able to recognize and understand and come to know this Savior for themselves, then they end up being an enemy of the cross. And while I don't read that and I don't want to talk about that scripture to say, hey, all of you guys who are Christians, if you ever allow yourself to care more about earthly things than about heavenly things, it means you're an enemy of the cross. That, I don't think, is the point, because if our hearts belong to God, then our hearts belong to God. But I do think that if we allow distractions to enter in, if the worldly becomes our ultimate, if it becomes everything that is in front of us, everything that surrounds us, what I do think happens is we hold God and we hold Christ at arm's length. As God and as Christ is trying to bring us into their embrace, trying to rain down the blessing and the joy of who they are in a relationship with them, we become so consumed by the things of this world. Our belly becomes our gods, our minds and our hearts are set to the earthly things, and we hold God's promises, and we hold the Word of God at arm's length. And so the goal of fasting is to shift that. To paraphrase Brad Gwynn's devotional from Wednesday of the Grace devotional, he talks about fasting as basically we have these things, these things that get in our way, these things that distract us from the goodness and the glory of God, we find and we take hold of those things and we replace them with the presence of Jesus, submitting to him and letting him sustain us. And I know that fasting seems and is maybe a bit of a big step to take, you know, like, hey, like, if there are distractions, if there are things that are around me that are distracting me, then I'm just gonna, you know, switch it up. I'm just gonna, like, you know, just let God take over that. But why I would argue that fasting might be the best and ultimate way that we are able to eliminate distractions and things getting in the way of us and God is because I don't really think that we understand the way that distractions take us away from God. I don't think we really understand the full scope and the full grasp that these things, these things of the world, these distractions that are all around us, the full grasp that they have on our lives. As an example, I would say most of us would probably say that at times we allow our phones to be a bit of a distraction. We pull them out. It's very easy to scroll, to continue to be on them, all that stuff. And when we do so, ultimately, we're saying, hey, Lord, I don't, like right now, I just want this to be my time. But I would contend that most of you aren't making that choice in your head. I would say that for the most part, you're not like, man, you know what, God? You're not worth my time right now because I got to check Instagram again. I don't think we're making those decisions. I don't think we're trying to be maniacal about like, God, you're not getting this amount of time. You're not getting this ride home because there's a podcast to listen to. I don't think any of us are making those decisions, but those decisions get made for us because they're so readily available and because we're so used to them. The author David Matthews says it this way. He says, That's about the best quote I'm going to read today, so I'm going to read it again. I had no idea it was a negative. I had no idea I was addicted to it. I had no idea that my body literally needed it or else it was going to go haywire and really turn on me while I'm trying to write a sermon. I had no idea of any of those things until I took a day and I didn't drink it. In the same way. Look at the distractions of our life. I bet a lot of you guys gave something up for Lent. I bet if you gave up your phone, you probably grabbed your phone a lot of times and was like, oh. Or if you gave up social media, you grabbed your phone and looked and couldn't find the Instagram app a lot of times. I actually last week decided to fast from food, to take a day with no food. Honestly, I don't know if I could tell you that I've done it before. I hate to admit, but it is what it is. And I don't know about you guys, but in my life, I never allow myself to experience hunger. I mean, if I'm at home, I'm eating. I've got snacks in between if I need. When I'm here, when I'm at church, I'll eat breakfast and then I get to church, I'm like, I could eat something. Julie's got Fig Newton stocked. I can have a Figgy Newton literally whenever I want a Figgy Newton. And so one, we love Julie for that. Shout out to Julie for being the realist MVP for always having Fig Newtons for me. But I say all that to say that literally, like, I just, I have built a life that never allows my body to need food, never allows my body to actually hunger for food, because I just scratch it before it gets there. And so when I fasted, you can imagine that my body was not thrilled. I was really hungry. My stomach hurt. My chest hurt. My body got like actual achy, actually achy. And I was astounded as I thought about because I was fasting after doing a lot of research. And so luckily I was kind of aware of what I should be looking for, and I was astounded at the thought that we're called to hunger for the Lord in that way. When we are called to hunger and to yearn for God, it is a literal hunger, a literal yearning for God. In the Beatitudes, it says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. It is a literal hunger, a literal life support thirst for God. I don't think I even knew what that felt like until I took time to fast from food. If we're honest, outside of food, I would say there's a thousand other things that we could fast from as well that would give us similar experiences. So I would say that food is far from the only thing that we turn to that distracts us from God's glory. As Pastor John Piper says about fasting, he says, fasting reveals not only food's mastery over us, but also televisions, computers, phones, or whatever else we submit to again and again to conceal the weakness of our hunger for God. Every single thing that conceals the weakness for our hunger for God. That's the point of Lent. To find that one big thing, to find those 10 small things, to get rid of them, to replace them, to realize the hold that they have on our body and to somehow shift our mindset and to shift the way that we live of like, instead of every time I grab my phone, it's every time I look here and say, God, I'm just going to pray for this person now. I gave up social media for Lent. I gave up social media and I kind of just gave up, I told my small group, like excess. There's, I would say, zero seconds in a day that I'm not like intaking. In the morning, I wake up, I play Wordle very well. And then post-Wordle, I scroll Instagram, I scroll Twitter, I do all that stuff. And then as I finally get up after I've laid in my bed for an hour looking at my phone, I go and I make breakfast. And when I make breakfast, like, I can't just be making breakfast until I have the TV on, because obviously. I make my breakfast and I eat it while I'm still watching TV, then I get in the car and I turn on a podcast. And then for the rest of the day, it's all of that. If I'm sitting, I'm working, every single time I take a quick second, like if my hands move away from my computer or something, then boom, boom, got it. Got to go to the bathroom, got to grab my phone. Like literally like, I know we've all done it before. I know we've all gone to the bathroom and then go, oh, and then run back. It's like, hey, I promise you it's not like a physical necessity to have your phone. Like you can still go to the bathroom without it, which I guess I promised you. I don't even remember the last time I tried. But every second of every day is consumption for me. And almost none of that consumption is being consumed by Christ. And if you're like me, there's a lot of those things. And then I have the audacity at the end of the day as I take stock of the day or those times where I get a little bit mindful of what's going on. And I have the audacity to say, well, I didn't spend much time with Jesus today, but I was pretty busy. I think we all have that. And not that we're always lying to ourselves. There are days where we are so busy. But fasting allows us to realize that there are a lot of natural reactions that we have. Natural times that we turn to so many other things that make the shield around us to where we hold God's promises and we hold God's truths and we hold the joys of Christ at arm's length because we're so invested into these small little things. And these trivial distractions have just become so a part of our day we don't even realize them. Until we take some time where we don't deal with them. Until we take time where we cut them off and we begin to turn our affections to God instead. John Piper continues and he says, fasting remedies by intensifying the earnestness of our prayer and saying with our whole bodies what prayer says with our heart, I long to be satisfied in God alone. So through fasting and through that prayer, that intense prayer that follows with our whole hearts and our whole bodies, we allow Jesus to rightly adjust our priorities. And as Katie Davis reminds us in Thursday's devotional from Matthew 6.33, we're reminded to seek first God's kingdom, seek first God's righteousness, and then we allow him to fill in all the details. And we allow him to faithfully provide for us, just as he always has. As the Lord becomes more and more part of our days, as our fasting continues through Lent, and the Lord becomes ever and ever present in our days. As our hearts experience his glory and his goodness more and more, our hearts begin to grow closer to and to resemble his. We're better able to worship. We're better, excuse me, we're better able to find rest in him. and our hearts are more tuned to see and to sing his grace. That's not it. Because as Gary Green reminds us in Friday's Lent devotional, that as Isaiah 58 talks about, which I'm just going to step away for a second. Gary Green's devotional was awesome. He talks about a set number of verses within Isaiah 58. If you didn't take the time to read all of Isaiah 58, I don't think that there's anything better written about fasting than Isaiah 58. So one, thank you, Gary, for letting me realize how awesome that is. Two, that's your homework assignment. Go home and read all of Isaiah 58. Let me come back over here. In Isaiah 58, as Gary reminds us, our hearts begin to reflect Christ not only inwardly, but outwardly. Our natural posture becomes one of love and of service for the people around us, and especially, especially those that are in need. The orphans, the widows, the sick, the homeless, the oppressed. The people who live, the people whose lives are in hunger of the luxuries, are in hunger of the needs, that we are taking a small amount of time to give up. The last time I got to preach, I was asked to simply answer the question, why should our lives be consumed by Christ? And the answer that we arrived at is because Christ's life is consumed with us. Not only in the past where he literally lived a life, lived a perfect life, took on the cross, and died so that we could have a relationship with him, and so that we don't have to settle for dust we shall return as our ending, but we now have a soul that is able to enter into a perfect eternity. Not only did Christ provide that for us in the past, but he is now living, sitting on the right hand of God as our high priest. And he's praying for us. And his whole goal, every second of every day, is to draw us closer and closer into the love of God and to bring us further and further into this perfect redemption that he offers us. And when we fast, we get to experience that just a little bit more. And I don't know if I know any other better reason than that. So will you bow with me as we pray. Lord, fasting is weird. It's a little bit foreign. It takes on many meanings. It takes on many definitions. But Lord, ultimately, fasting allows us to rid ourselves of distractions, to see and understand need a little bit better, and to allow us to witness you a little bit more. Lord, I just pray that anyone who has embarked on fasting through Lent, Lord, that you bring them strength and you allow them to see your goodness just as you have promised that you would. For those who are pondering, Lord, I pray that you would work in their hearts and maybe offer them too. And Lord, if anyone in here says, you know what, I want to take it to the next step. I want to try a food fast. Just to experience a little bit more of you. And Lord, I pray that you give them the strength to do that. Lord, we are so thankful for your goodness, always and forever. Amen.

If you're like a lot of us, then this jar kind of looks like your life as we entered the pandemic. Lots of things in our life that are really important to us, big deals, things that we definitely want to prioritize, but maybe sometimes we have a hard time finding time for, and then other things in our life that are probably important, but maybe not essential, and we'd love to give our time to them, but we probably don't need to make big priorities out of them. But what happens in the end when we get so busy is that we don't have time for everything, right? But then with the pandemic, life, well it kind of hit the reset button. And we spent most of last year with nothing but time on our hands. And now, as we face moving back into what feels like normal, I think that we have this unique opportunity to reassemble our lives. And as we have this opportunity, I thought it would be appropriate for Grace to stop and really think critically about well, what are our big rocks? What are the things in our life that are the most important to us? What are the things that we want to prioritize above and beyond everything else and what would our life look like if we actually identified our big rocks and prioritized our time around those things? What if we put these rocks in first and made sure that there was space in our life for the things that were most important and then around those things we allowed all the other little things to kind of fill in the rest of our time and priorities? What would it look like if we were to hit the reset button on our life and reassemble it in such a way that we had time and space for what was important to us and we didn't have to worry at all about the other things that just at the end of the day, they're not nearly as big of a deal. What are our big rocks? And how do we make space for them as we enter into a new normal? Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. A little confession, after we shot that video in the back corner, I was on my hands and knees for about 15 minutes picking up all those rocks. So I'm really glad we got it there on that first take, and I didn't have to do that again. Thank you for being here. Like I said, I'm the senior pastor here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you, I would love to do that. We got a full crew here this morning. That is exciting and good. So thanks for being here. Thanks for joining us online, particularly if you're on vacation and you're still choosing to make this a part of your Sunday. We are grateful for that. I'm really looking forward to the rest of this series as we talk about exactly what I addressed in the video. This idea of coming kind of back to life, the world feeling normal again, or at least approaching it. If we can avoid this Delta variant, but that's a whole different conversation. But it feels like we're approaching that. And as we do it, we have this unique opportunity to kind of reconstruct our life around the things that are most important to us. And really, we have this opportunity to reconstruct our life around Jesus. So for the next four weeks, we're going to talk about what our big rocks are. What are the things that are the most important to us and how do we orchestrate those things around Jesus and around this pursuit of God the Father. And I said specifically that I'm looking forward to the rest of the weeks of the series because I'm not looking forward to this morning in this series. I did not wake up this morning excited for this sermon. Some Sundays I wake up and I'm really, really, I can't wait to share with you what God has laid on my heart. Last Sunday is a great example of that. This Sunday, I'm preaching about money. So when I got up this morning, it wasn't like, yes, the tithe, here we come. Nor did you get up hoping that this would be the Sunday that I talked about money. So listen, I'll just confess up front. I'm no more interested in preaching this than you are in hearing it. Okay, but we're here now. So this is what we're going to do. And really, the reason that we're talking about this is first of all, first and foremost, I don't talk about this very much at Grace. The last time we talked about this was in February of 2020, and I didn't even do it. It was Doug Bergeson, all right? So we don't do it a whole lot, but this topic is all throughout the Bible. Scripture is replete with instructions on giving about big rocks in life, if we're going to talk about the things that matter most to us and how to prioritize those around Jesus, then we have to talk about finances. We have to ask the question, what does God want us to do with our resources and with our money? And the Bible talks about it so much that it would be irresponsible as a church and I'd be irresponsible as a pastor if we didn't revisit it with some regularity. So we arrive at it this morning and as we arrive at it, I'm kind of approaching it like this. This is why I'm sitting down for this one at a table instead of standing and gesticulating and walking around wildly and trying to keep calm and not yell at you because I'm approaching this as if you and I could have a conversation about it. If you and I were able to meet for lunch or if you could come to the office or we meet somewhere and we could talk and your question was, what does the Bible have to say about giving anyways? Or maybe even, why does God want me to give? Then this is the conversation that I would want to have with you. So I'm staying seated to remind me that this is what I would like to say to each of you if we had the opportunity to sit down and talk about this together. And as we do that, I would even say to you this, that as I wrote and approached this sermon, I really had in mind the person who is new to church. Maybe you are someone who, for the first time in a long time, church is important to you again. For the first time in a long time, spiritual health is important to you again. And so maybe you're kind of trying to get reengaged spiritually. Maybe you haven't been in church a lot for the past five, 10 years, and so you're kind of starting to re-engage and maybe have never really thought critically about giving and what the Bible has to say about it. This is for the new and the non-believers, for those of us who hear that we should give in church, who probably understand that the Bible tells us to do it, but maybe we don't know all the whys around it and maybe we don't have a developed theology of why we should be generous. So this sermon in particular is for you. Now I know that at Grace, and I see the evidence of it over and over again, we have plenty of you who have a really good theology of giving, who understand tithing and being generous and why we do it. And so for you, I hope that we hit on some things that are encouraging, particularly the first point that I make. I think we should apply it to everything, not just giving. And so I hope that there's some encouraging ways to think about it. But this is really for folks who, if I sat you down and I said, what does the Bible say about giving or why should we give? This is for you if you feel like, gosh, I'm not sure how well I would answer that. So like I said, I'm approaching it as a conversation and I want to approach the conversation with what the Bible even has to say about it. And as I sought that out this week, you know, the Old Testament has a lot of very specific instructions that we are to give. The Old Testament introduces this idea of giving in generosity like a new idea. Leave the corners of your field for the sojourners, for the poor, for the widow, for the aliens, for the people who don't yet have a home. We're told to bring our tithe to the storehouse in the Old Testament. We're told there's a whole portion in Leviticus that tells us exactly, tells the children of Israel exactly how they are to give. So in the Old Testament, it's given as an instruction. It's introduced almost as a new idea. But what you find in the New Testament, if you want to read New Testament verses about giving, and the New Testament is simply the part of the Bible that comes during Jesus's life and after. And Jesus kind of changes everything. So what does the Bible have to say about giving once Jesus gets on the scene? Well, once Jesus arrives, the instructions about giving become a little bit presumptive, as if this is a thing that we already know. This is actually what Jesus says about it in the Sermon on the Mount. If you have a Bible, you can turn to Matthew chapter 6. I'm going to read you verses 1 through 4. The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus' first recorded public address. It's the first time he talks. And he has performed miracles and those people began to follow them and then he begins to preach to them and he hits on myriad topics. But then he lands on giving for a different directions. But the interesting part to me about this verse, if you want to ask what does the New Testament teach about giving, is the two uses of the word when. When you give. When you give to the needy. Jesus is talking to the huddled masses. Talking to thousands of people in the middle of the day, presumably jobless folks for the most part. And he still assumes that they know, without ever introducing giving as a new idea, he assumes that they know that they should give. He assumes that they know that God expects them to be generous people. And so he says, when you do it, do it in such a way that you're not doing it in a showy way. Do it in secret. Be discreet about it. And there's a whole teaching there. But again, what's interesting to me is when you give, when you do it. And I bring that up because I think that that's how familiar a lot of us are with giving. We might not know why we're supposed to do it. We might not know what for. We might not know how we should be compelled to do it. We just know that we are supposed to. And so the interesting question is why? Why are we supposed to give? Why does God ask us in the Old Testament when he's setting everything up and then just assume of us that we know that we ought to in the New Testament? Why does God do that? And so we're going to spend the rest of the morning kind of answering that question, and this is the conversational piece of it. Why does God want me to give? The most important reason, the most important reason and most underrated reason we give is because God tells us to. The most important, and this is key, most underrated reason that we give is because God tells us to. Now, listen, here's why I say this. When my mom was growing up, she grew up in the 60s and 70s, and Linda, her mom, my mom, all wonderful woman, she ruled with an iron fist, man. This was back in the good old days, all right, when it was nice to be a parent. You rule with an iron fist. That was a funny slip. You ruled with an iron fist. Kids are to be seen and not heard. When the company comes over, you go upstairs. You do not interrupt. And when my mom would get out of line when she was told to do something, and she said, why? She had the audacity to say, why do I have to clean your room? Why? Because I told you to. Fire would burn in Linda's eyes, right? And mom would know. She better do whatever it was she was asked to do, even if it makes no sense at all to her, because there is going to be some serious repercussions if she doesn't. She saw the fire, and so she got right. And so when my mom grew up, because I told you to, was all the reason that a child needed. Well, when that's the only reason you get, that develops in you a little bit of resentment, right? This heart of resentment because my mom is kind and sweet and not rebellious like me and really was asking genuinely why I don't understand. Why do you want me to do that right now? It seems like I should be doing something else. Why do you want me to do that? But she wasn't allowed to ask that. And so that left her frustrated and resentful. So when she had children, she decided that because I said so is never a reason. I will always take the time to explain to my children why I'm asking them to do something. And to her credit, she did that. But when you're raising Nate, that becomes a real hassle. And I was always allowed to ask why. And I love that quote. There's some quote I picked up years ago that a reason is an invitation for an argument. And that's very true. And so I was always invited into that argument. Why? Go clean your room. Why do I have to do that right now? Go mow the grass. Why? And listen, if the why wasn't good enough, well, I didn't have to do it. In my head, if the why is not good enough, if it can't justify the request, well, then your request is dumb. And so what I learned in that environment is asking why before we obey manifests a sense of entitlement. It does. Asking why before we obey manifests a sense of entitlement. It does. Asking why before we obey manifests a sense of entitlement. It manifests this idea of, okay, I understand what you want me to do, but I'm not going to do that until your reason justifies your request. And if it doesn't, if it falls short of King Nate's gauntlet of reasons, then you can forget it, buddy. So in our house, our response with Lily and then with John, which John can't talk yet. And I remember when Lily couldn't talk and people were like, just be grateful for these times. And I thought, you're jerks. You're not jerks. That makes sense to me now. John can't talk yet, but Lily can, and she likes to ask why. Lily's my daughter, for those of you who don't know me, not just some girl I talk about. But she likes to ask why. But the policy that we've adopted in our house is, first you obey, then you ask why. And this is gonna be what solves it forever. She'll have no issues when she's a parent. She'll replicate this exactly, right? But first you obey and then you ask why. First show that you're gonna be obedient. First show that you're going to submit. First show that the question is genuine and not an attempt to get out of it. And then come and we'll talk to you forever when you have a good attitude about the whys of why we should do something. And I bring this up because I think it's really important as we think about how we respond to the instructions of God. I know that very often when we are met with a teaching from Scripture that we should give, that we should read the Bible, that we should be selfless, that we should forgive as we are forgiven, that we should be generous to others, that we should turn the other cheek, that whenever it is possible for us, as far as it concerns us, that we should seek peace in others when peace is just not the thing that we want right now. Often in my life, and maybe yours too, we want to know the why before we offer our obedience. We want it to make sense to us before King Nate deigns to obey the instructions that I find here. And I will confess to you this, as I thought about this this week. This is not so much an indictment on your attitude, that's up to you, as it is sometimes an indictment on my preaching. Because when I preach and I give us instructions from the word, I always start with a why. Because I don't want to paint God as this ruthless dictator who sits in heaven giving you rules. I always want you to understand why it's what's best for you. But when we jump straight to the why before obedience, I think that begats in us this sense of entitlement. That if God's whys don't stack up for me, then I'm not going to engage in that behavior until they do. And I think it's important for us as believers to accept that the most important and underrated reason why we give is because our Father in heaven told us to. And I think this applies to everything. I think this applies to our quiet times. This applies to our grace with other people. This applies to any challenge that we would face. Anytime God's word tells us to do something, the first and most important reason we do it is because God told us to. Proverbs tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And I think that sometimes for me, I walk through life entitled as if I am owed a why, and God does not owe us that. So an important reason to apply to everything in our life is because our Father in Heaven told us to. Now once we accept that, and we adopt that posture of obedience, and I also want to be very clear, when I say that, I'm talking only to the Christians in the room. If you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, you've never signed up for this. You've never said, I submit my life to God. You've never said, you're the Lord of my life. I'm second. I'm going to do what you want. You've never said that. And so to you, I wouldn't say that you even need to give. And I definitely wouldn't say it's because God told you to. You haven't signed up for this yet and said, I'm going to submit myself to God's word. But if you are a Christian, then you have. So first we adopt a posture of obedience. And what we understand in that posture of obedience is that God wants what's best for us. This is what we talked about last week. What we believe is the verse I preached last week, that God actually leads us to paths of life, that in his presence there is fullness of joy. At his right hand there are pleasures forevermore. We actually believe that our God in heaven wants what's best for us and takes us to the best possible places. And so if he tells us to do something, it must be what's best for us. So we trust that about giving too. So the question really becomes this morning, not why does God want me to give, but why is giving best for me? That's really the question that we are asking this morning. Once we adopt this posture of obedience and say, yes, Father, I am a Christian, and because I am, I am submitted to you, and I will be a person who is a giving, generous person. But I also understand that as I do that, it's what's best for me, and I'd love to understand why it's what's best for me. So I've got a few reasons for you that we're just going to kind of go through. The first thing I would say to you when you ask why is giving what's best for me, I would say it's because God is generous to the generous. God is generous to generous people. Now, I have to be careful with this because this is how you get to health and wealth, right? This is how you get to me preaching to you. If you give, God's going to give back to you a hundredfold. If you give to the church this much, God's going to give you this much. Meanwhile, I'm asking you to fund my private jet and you can't figure out how to pay for a civic, okay? So that's, I don't want to go there. I'm not preaching health and wealth. I'm not telling you that the more you give to God, the more money he's going to give to you. However, this principle that God is generous to the generous is unavoidable in scripture. Jesus talks about this in Luke chapter 6, verse 38, when he says this, give and it will be given to you. Good measure pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. Corinthians says, he who sows little reaps little and he who sows much reaps much. There is a principle in the Bible that is unavoidable, that God is generous to the generous. And I'm lying to you and dishonest as a pastor if I don't say that's one of the reasons it's what's best for you. Because when we're generous to others, God is generous to us. Now what it doesn't say anywhere is that God is generous to us monetarily. What it doesn't say anywhere is that the blessings that God is going to be generous with are ones that are going to fill up our bank account. It does not say that. It just says God will be generous to you. And God's generosity comes in forms that is so much better than money. You understand? When you are generous with your resources, God is generous with his. It's an unavoidable truth of scripture. So God's generosity looks like good, rich, and deep, spiritually nourishing, life-giving friendships. God's generosity looks like a marriage that's seen some seasons but is hanging in there and loving one another. God's generosity is good relationships with your children. God's generosity is a place to go every day that you don't hate. God's generosity is when you're walking through a hard season but you know that there is a good season coming because your God is good and you know that every day won't feel like this day. God's generosity doesn't always come in the form of money. I know a family, I know a couple who they have living with them right now, a family member, and this is a family member that should not be living with them, okay? They shouldn't be there. They should be able to live on their own, but they're not. And it is really, they are expressing a great deal of generosity to this family member. And one of their friends learned about this and happens to have a cabin, a nice one, and said, go, stay at our cabin for a weekend. You need that. That's God's generosity being expressed to someone who's being generous. Do you see that? It's not always a one-for-one reciprocal return of money, but God is generous towards the generous, and so it behooves us to be generous. The next thing I would tell you is that giving acknowledges stewardship. Why is giving what's best for me? Well, because when we give, we acknowledge this concept of stewardship. Stewardship, the whole sermon could be about stewardship. The whole sermon could be about all four of the points that I'm making. But stewardship in particular is this idea that once we are believers, we understand that the things that we have in our life are not our own. They're God's. And he's entrusted them to us. To use them for the purposes of advancing his kingdom in the most effective way possible. Back in May on Mother's Day, we did a child dedication. And we had 11 children that we dedicated that day. It was great, super exciting day for Grace. And part of the dedication of the children is for the parents to acknowledge, both literally and symbolically, that this child is not mine. He is yours. She is yours. We are raising them in our home, but they belong to you, God. They are your children, Jesus. And we are raising them the best we can in the way that they should go according to your standards. But these children are not my children. John and Lily do not belong to Nate and Jen. They belong to God. And he has entrusted them to us because he believes that we have a unique capacity to form them and shape them into who they need to be for Jesus so that they move through life advancing his kingdom. They're not our kids. They're God's kids. Your house is not your house. It's God's house. Your finances are not your finances. They're God's finances. And once we realize that, that we are stewards of the things that God has given to us, then it becomes incredibly important. The primary question we ask about all the things with which we have been entrusted is, Jesus, how do I use these to further your name? How do I use these things to bring attention to you? How would you have me organize this part of my life? And so when we give, when we write the check weekly or we click the button monthly or we set it up or whatever it is we do, when we are generous and we give, it reminds us. Every time we see that come out of our account or hit our credit card, whatever it is, that's a reminder. None of this is mine anyways. It's God's. It's God's to use as he sees fit. And if he wants more, he can have more. So giving reminds us that we are stewards, not just with our money, but in everything in our life. Another thing I would say to you is that giving allows us to participate in what God is doing by being a part of the body of Christ. Giving allows us to participate in what is happening in the church, in the kingdom, in the body of Christ by being a part of the body of Christ. I love 1 Corinthians 12. I've never preached on it here, and I need to do a whole series on it because I think it's just an amazing teaching. But in 1 Corinthians 12, Paul lays out this idea that the church is a body and that everyone who's a part of the church has a part to play. The body has arms and legs and feet and hands and it has all kinds of things that are incredibly important. It has lungs that nobody ever sees, but if we don't have lungs, then the rest of it doesn't work. And it all intricately works together to get things accomplished. And I love this teaching because it reminds me as a pastor, I'm just the mouth. That's it. But y'all are the hands that touch people who need it. Y'all are the arms that are wrapped around folks who are struggling. Y'all are the feet that take the good news of the gospel into work. Y'all are the lungs that make this thing go. None of us, none of us, not me, not an elder, not somebody who's been here 30 years, none of us are more important to what's happening at Grace than anybody else. We simply have our part to play. My part is to run my mouth. Sometimes I wish somebody else would take that part. Because maybe I'd like to be the ear sometimes. But everybody has a part. And I think our part of being in the body of Christ, a church in an affluent suburb is to use our resources to serve the greater body of Christ. And when we do that as a church, we get to participate in things going on just outside of grace as well. And so to me, it's a wonderful picture of why as a church we should want to have a generous heart. Right now, we give 10% of everything that we get to ministries going on outside the walls of grace. It is one of my big long-term goals for the church to see that percentage increase a lot so that we play our part in God's greater body and who we are. But not just as we think about reaching outside of the walls of grace, but as we think about what happens within grace and how when we give, we are part of the celebrations that God allows for us here. We are part of the victories that Jesus wins here. We participate in that by giving and doing our part and being a part of the body of Christ. I think back to October of 2017. That was the first time I got to go down to Reynosa to go see the folks at Faith Ministry. Colleen of Faith Ministry fame is with us this morning. Hello, Colleen. That's a ministry in Mexico that builds houses for people who otherwise would not be able to have them. And Grace has been partners with them since before Grace existed. So more than 20 years. And I got to go down there in October of 2017 to see it for the first time. And it was a really great experience. And I'll never forget, we're sitting there and I wanted to say it's the parking lot, but that's generous. It's the place where the cars go. And we're sitting in the van and we're waiting to pull out. And I hear a car crank up and and it was as if that poor thing was being tortured. Like, it did not, every noise it made was, please, please don't make me do this. Like, and I turn around, and the bumper is in shatters. It's being held with bungee cords, and to say that it was a beater is generous to beaters, and it was being driven by the pastor down there, a younger guy named Pastor Carlos. And Pastor Carlos, he works 10 times harder than me. I could not do what he does. I asked him one time what his weekly schedule was and just the Bible studies that he has and the different towns and stuff that he touches on and the different people in his orbit. He needs a good car. He's shuttling kids back and forth. He works so hard. This is not what he should be driving. And so I kind of leaned over to some folks that were on the trip and I said, hey, I think Grace could raise enough money to buy him a truck. Can we do that? And I talked to the folks at Faith Ministry. Would it be cool if we bought him a truck? He seems to need it. And everybody was good with it. And so I came back to Grace and I said, hey, this is, as we enter Christmas, this is the thing we want to do. We want to have enough money to buy a truck for Pastor Carlos. And we did. What kind of car did we buy him? Do you remember? Yeah, Ford Escape or Ranger or something like that. But it was nice and new and way better than what he had. And some of our folks from Grace got to go down and deliver it to him. And when I watched the video, I had tears in my eyes because he was so grateful. And so blown away by the generosity of the church. And it was a really sweet moment. And the next time I went down there, the first thing Carlos wanted me to do is come see his truck and say thank you again for it. Now listen, if you were here and you gave to that Christmas offering in 2017, that joy is your joy. That happiness is your happiness. That's not watching other people do a good thing like when we watch on the internet and our heart is warmed and then we scroll to the next thing. That's your joy. You did that. You participated in that. You made that possible. That was God using your gifts and your finances making you a part of the body of Christ so that you could participate in the good work that he was doing. That joy was your joy. If you give to grace, those 11 kids that were up here being dedicated, that's your joy. When we baptize somebody, that's your joy. When you see somebody come into the church, that's your joy. We have, I think, nine people coming to Discover Grace after church today coming out of a pandemic. That's your joy that those people are becoming a part of what we're doing here at Grace. Every win that Jesus claims here at this church, when we give, we are a part of that. Because those wins don't happen if we don't give. So we give because we are a part of the body of Christ. And that allows us to participate in the work that Jesus is doing, wherever he's doing work. The last point that I would make about why it's best for us to give is that giving invites us to mirror the generosity of God that's lavished upon us. It invites us to mirror the generosity that God has given us. Now, this too could be a whole sermon, and it was. The last time we talked about giving, Doug Bergeson, one of our elders, preached on it in February of 2020, and I don't do things like this, but it's the best sermon on giving I've ever heard. If you haven't heard it, and you'd like to explore this idea more, go back into the archives. It was Grace's Going Home series, February of 2020. Find the Doug Bergeson sermon. It's an excellent one on what I'm talking about right here, How we participate in God's generosity when we give. But what I would say to you this morning is simply this, that this is to me the most compelling reason to give. Because the longer you are a believer, the deeper you grow in gratitude to the Father. There's no two ways about it. You might think that if you've lived a life however you want it, in total selfishness, in total depravity, you've done all the bad things that anybody could do. You can check off all the boxes and and then at like 35, you come to know God, and you're amazed that he's wiped the slate clean, and he's accepted you into his kingdom, that that moment is maximum gratitude for God's generosity and forgiveness. No, it's not. Because to walk with God is to understand that when you become a Christian, he doesn't just forgive you for all the stuff that you did up to that moment. He forgives you for all the crap that you're going to do too. He knows every terrible thought that you're going to have. When you get saved, whatever your lowest point is after that, whatever rock bottom looks like after you become a Christian, God was already in that moment whispering to you that he loves you and he forgives you and he wants you to come back to him. He's already in that moment. Whether that moment's behind you or ahead of you, God was in it telling you already, I've covered this too. So to walk with God and to fall short again and again and again, to arrive at that place that Paul arrives at in Romans 7 that is to me the most redemptive verse in scripture, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death. To arrive there and be refreshed anew with God's overwhelming forgiveness and generosity to us. For it to hit us like a wave again that Jesus condescended, took on human flesh, lived with us in the muck and the mire, died on the cross for us, knowing that we would crud on that very death over and over and over again in our life only to require his forgiveness yet again and then he offers and then he goes about, once he dies for us, ascending to the right hand of the Father to advocate for us and to whisper in God's ear that, yes, I've covered that too. When we sit daily in the realization of the gospel and we let the waves of Jesus' forgiveness wash over us and God's generosity flood us, we cannot help but grow in our gratitude towards God. Whatever gratitude we experienced at salvation is the starting point for how it grows through our life. And so we give as an expression of that gratitude. We give because something so incredible is happening to us that we want to find a way to be conduits of that generosity that God has given us. God has given so much to me. God has given so much to us. God has enriched our lives so much that we can't help but want to desire to enrich the lives of others. We can't help but want to express the generosity that God has lavished upon us. And so giving in his best, most pure state is simply a reaction to the overflow of God's giving in our life. That's why Paul teaches in Corinthians that God loves a cheerful giver. Don't give out of compulsion, but give because you want to. And how can we grow our want to in giving? By focusing on the face of Jesus and remembering the generosity and the forgiveness that he offers us every day. And so giving is what's best for us because it reorients us to the gospel. It reorients us towards God's goodness in our life. God has been good to me and provided me this. I am going to give this portion of this, understanding that he can replace it or he can't, but God has been so generous to me that I want to be generous to others. That's why we give. I love this verse in 2 Corinthians 9-11 says, you will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. There's this part of the Sermon on the Mount that I find incredibly intimidating, where Jesus says, let others see your good deeds, see your good works, and shine for the Father so that your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that when people come into and out of your orbit in your life, they should simply see the way that you act and want more of your Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that when people come into and out of your orbit in your life, they should simply see the way that you act and want more of your father who is in heaven. And I always think to myself, how do you act like that? A really easy way is to be generous. That's what Corinthians tells us. That God has enriched us. He's given us resources in every way. Why? So that we might enrich others. And then both you and them will turn that to thanksgiving to God. And it will point us back to the Father and our Savior Jesus. That's why giving is what's best for us. It's good for us. It develops a spirit of generosity that constantly, constantly orients us back to Jesus. So I would end this morning with a simple challenge for you. Trust God and give. Trust God and his word and give. How much should I give? Just a little bit more than you are. That's always the answer. 10%? No, that's an Old Testament thing. How much do we give in the New Testament? Just a little bit more than we are. Whatever that means for you. Who do I give to? I'll be the first to tell you. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that you have to give all of your giving to the local church. I've sat in churches, I've heard pastors say, your first 10% goes to this church and then on top of that, other places. That's not in the Bible. I'm not going to sit here and teach you that. I'm not preaching this as a self-serving thing for grace. If you believe in grace and what's happening here and you feel compelled to participate in the victories that Jesus is winning here, then give to grace. But you give wherever God is advancing his kingdom. Wherever God is working and Jesus is moving, you give there. Just give. Trust God and do it. I have never talked to a single person in my whole life who has said, you know what? I heard what the pastor said about giving and I decided to start being more generous. That was a huge mistake. I really regret it. Wish I could have that back. Never heard anybody say that. So this morning, it's simple. If you and I could have a conversation, I would simply end it by saying, just trust God. Obey Him. Be a person who's generous. Let's give together. Let me pray for us. Father, we do love you. We are so grateful for the goodness and the gifts that you've lavished upon us. God, I pray first and foremost that we would let those wash over us. I pray more than anything else that we would simply leave here increasingly overwhelmed with your goodness to us. Father, for those of us who need this, who need to think about this in our own lives, I pray that because you said so would be all the reason that we ever need. I pray that we would trust that and walk in that. Knowing that even when we don't understand obedience sometimes, that it is going to lead us to a path of life. God, give us the heart and the gratitude and the spirit to be people who are generous. I pray that each one of us would leave here determined to be just a little bit more generous than we were when we walked in today. And God, for those of us who are obedient and who respond and who give. Would we find you there, please? Would you show us yourself in that giving? Can we ask that through the generosity that you compel us to that we are brought closer to your son and so inspired and enlivened to continue to be generous. It's in his name, the one who died for us and who advocates for us, that we pray. Amen.

If you're like a lot of us, then this jar kind of looks like your life as we entered the pandemic. Lots of things in our life that are really important to us, big deals, things that we definitely want to prioritize, but maybe sometimes we have a hard time finding time for, and then other things in our life that are probably important, but maybe not essential, and we'd love to give our time to them, but we probably don't need to make big priorities out of them. But what happens in the end when we get so busy is that we don't have time for everything, right? But then with the pandemic, life, well it kind of hit the reset button. And we spent most of last year with nothing but time on our hands. And now, as we face moving back into what feels like normal, I think that we have this unique opportunity to reassemble our lives. And as we have this opportunity, I thought it would be appropriate for Grace to stop and really think critically about well, what are our big rocks? What are the things in our life that are the most important to us? What are the things that we want to prioritize above and beyond everything else and what would our life look like if we actually identified our big rocks and prioritized our time around those things? What if we put these rocks in first and made sure that there was space in our life for the things that were most important and then around those things we allowed all the other little things to kind of fill in the rest of our time and priorities? What would it look like if we were to hit the reset button on our life and reassemble it in such a way that we had time and space for what was important to us and we didn't have to worry at all about the other things that just at the end of the day, they're not nearly as big of a deal. What are our big rocks? And how do we make space for them as we enter into a new normal? Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. A little confession, after we shot that video in the back corner, I was on my hands and knees for about 15 minutes picking up all those rocks. So I'm really glad we got it there on that first take, and I didn't have to do that again. Thank you for being here. Like I said, I'm the senior pastor here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you, I would love to do that. We got a full crew here this morning. That is exciting and good. So thanks for being here. Thanks for joining us online, particularly if you're on vacation and you're still choosing to make this a part of your Sunday. We are grateful for that. I'm really looking forward to the rest of this series as we talk about exactly what I addressed in the video. This idea of coming kind of back to life, the world feeling normal again, or at least approaching it. If we can avoid this Delta variant, but that's a whole different conversation. But it feels like we're approaching that. And as we do it, we have this unique opportunity to kind of reconstruct our life around the things that are most important to us. And really, we have this opportunity to reconstruct our life around Jesus. So for the next four weeks, we're going to talk about what our big rocks are. What are the things that are the most important to us and how do we orchestrate those things around Jesus and around this pursuit of God the Father. And I said specifically that I'm looking forward to the rest of the weeks of the series because I'm not looking forward to this morning in this series. I did not wake up this morning excited for this sermon. Some Sundays I wake up and I'm really, really, I can't wait to share with you what God has laid on my heart. Last Sunday is a great example of that. This Sunday, I'm preaching about money. So when I got up this morning, it wasn't like, yes, the tithe, here we come. Nor did you get up hoping that this would be the Sunday that I talked about money. So listen, I'll just confess up front. I'm no more interested in preaching this than you are in hearing it. Okay, but we're here now. So this is what we're going to do. And really, the reason that we're talking about this is first of all, first and foremost, I don't talk about this very much at Grace. The last time we talked about this was in February of 2020, and I didn't even do it. It was Doug Bergeson, all right? So we don't do it a whole lot, but this topic is all throughout the Bible. Scripture is replete with instructions on giving about big rocks in life, if we're going to talk about the things that matter most to us and how to prioritize those around Jesus, then we have to talk about finances. We have to ask the question, what does God want us to do with our resources and with our money? And the Bible talks about it so much that it would be irresponsible as a church and I'd be irresponsible as a pastor if we didn't revisit it with some regularity. So we arrive at it this morning and as we arrive at it, I'm kind of approaching it like this. This is why I'm sitting down for this one at a table instead of standing and gesticulating and walking around wildly and trying to keep calm and not yell at you because I'm approaching this as if you and I could have a conversation about it. If you and I were able to meet for lunch or if you could come to the office or we meet somewhere and we could talk and your question was, what does the Bible have to say about giving anyways? Or maybe even, why does God want me to give? Then this is the conversation that I would want to have with you. So I'm staying seated to remind me that this is what I would like to say to each of you if we had the opportunity to sit down and talk about this together. And as we do that, I would even say to you this, that as I wrote and approached this sermon, I really had in mind the person who is new to church. Maybe you are someone who, for the first time in a long time, church is important to you again. For the first time in a long time, spiritual health is important to you again. And so maybe you're kind of trying to get reengaged spiritually. Maybe you haven't been in church a lot for the past five, 10 years, and so you're kind of starting to re-engage and maybe have never really thought critically about giving and what the Bible has to say about it. This is for the new and the non-believers, for those of us who hear that we should give in church, who probably understand that the Bible tells us to do it, but maybe we don't know all the whys around it and maybe we don't have a developed theology of why we should be generous. So this sermon in particular is for you. Now I know that at Grace, and I see the evidence of it over and over again, we have plenty of you who have a really good theology of giving, who understand tithing and being generous and why we do it. And so for you, I hope that we hit on some things that are encouraging, particularly the first point that I make. I think we should apply it to everything, not just giving. And so I hope that there's some encouraging ways to think about it. But this is really for folks who, if I sat you down and I said, what does the Bible say about giving or why should we give? This is for you if you feel like, gosh, I'm not sure how well I would answer that. So like I said, I'm approaching it as a conversation and I want to approach the conversation with what the Bible even has to say about it. And as I sought that out this week, you know, the Old Testament has a lot of very specific instructions that we are to give. The Old Testament introduces this idea of giving in generosity like a new idea. Leave the corners of your field for the sojourners, for the poor, for the widow, for the aliens, for the people who don't yet have a home. We're told to bring our tithe to the storehouse in the Old Testament. We're told there's a whole portion in Leviticus that tells us exactly, tells the children of Israel exactly how they are to give. So in the Old Testament, it's given as an instruction. It's introduced almost as a new idea. But what you find in the New Testament, if you want to read New Testament verses about giving, and the New Testament is simply the part of the Bible that comes during Jesus's life and after. And Jesus kind of changes everything. So what does the Bible have to say about giving once Jesus gets on the scene? Well, once Jesus arrives, the instructions about giving become a little bit presumptive, as if this is a thing that we already know. This is actually what Jesus says about it in the Sermon on the Mount. If you have a Bible, you can turn to Matthew chapter 6. I'm going to read you verses 1 through 4. The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus' first recorded public address. It's the first time he talks. And he has performed miracles and those people began to follow them and then he begins to preach to them and he hits on myriad topics. But then he lands on giving for a different directions. But the interesting part to me about this verse, if you want to ask what does the New Testament teach about giving, is the two uses of the word when. When you give. When you give to the needy. Jesus is talking to the huddled masses. Talking to thousands of people in the middle of the day, presumably jobless folks for the most part. And he still assumes that they know, without ever introducing giving as a new idea, he assumes that they know that they should give. He assumes that they know that God expects them to be generous people. And so he says, when you do it, do it in such a way that you're not doing it in a showy way. Do it in secret. Be discreet about it. And there's a whole teaching there. But again, what's interesting to me is when you give, when you do it. And I bring that up because I think that that's how familiar a lot of us are with giving. We might not know why we're supposed to do it. We might not know what for. We might not know how we should be compelled to do it. We just know that we are supposed to. And so the interesting question is why? Why are we supposed to give? Why does God ask us in the Old Testament when he's setting everything up and then just assume of us that we know that we ought to in the New Testament? Why does God do that? And so we're going to spend the rest of the morning kind of answering that question, and this is the conversational piece of it. Why does God want me to give? The most important reason, the most important reason and most underrated reason we give is because God tells us to. The most important, and this is key, most underrated reason that we give is because God tells us to. Now, listen, here's why I say this. When my mom was growing up, she grew up in the 60s and 70s, and Linda, her mom, my mom, all wonderful woman, she ruled with an iron fist, man. This was back in the good old days, all right, when it was nice to be a parent. You rule with an iron fist. That was a funny slip. You ruled with an iron fist. Kids are to be seen and not heard. When the company comes over, you go upstairs. You do not interrupt. And when my mom would get out of line when she was told to do something, and she said, why? She had the audacity to say, why do I have to clean your room? Why? Because I told you to. Fire would burn in Linda's eyes, right? And mom would know. She better do whatever it was she was asked to do, even if it makes no sense at all to her, because there is going to be some serious repercussions if she doesn't. She saw the fire, and so she got right. And so when my mom grew up, because I told you to, was all the reason that a child needed. Well, when that's the only reason you get, that develops in you a little bit of resentment, right? This heart of resentment because my mom is kind and sweet and not rebellious like me and really was asking genuinely why I don't understand. Why do you want me to do that right now? It seems like I should be doing something else. Why do you want me to do that? But she wasn't allowed to ask that. And so that left her frustrated and resentful. So when she had children, she decided that because I said so is never a reason. I will always take the time to explain to my children why I'm asking them to do something. And to her credit, she did that. But when you're raising Nate, that becomes a real hassle. And I was always allowed to ask why. And I love that quote. There's some quote I picked up years ago that a reason is an invitation for an argument. And that's very true. And so I was always invited into that argument. Why? Go clean your room. Why do I have to do that right now? Go mow the grass. Why? And listen, if the why wasn't good enough, well, I didn't have to do it. In my head, if the why is not good enough, if it can't justify the request, well, then your request is dumb. And so what I learned in that environment is asking why before we obey manifests a sense of entitlement. It does. Asking why before we obey manifests a sense of entitlement. It does. Asking why before we obey manifests a sense of entitlement. It manifests this idea of, okay, I understand what you want me to do, but I'm not going to do that until your reason justifies your request. And if it doesn't, if it falls short of King Nate's gauntlet of reasons, then you can forget it, buddy. So in our house, our response with Lily and then with John, which John can't talk yet. And I remember when Lily couldn't talk and people were like, just be grateful for these times. And I thought, you're jerks. You're not jerks. That makes sense to me now. John can't talk yet, but Lily can, and she likes to ask why. Lily's my daughter, for those of you who don't know me, not just some girl I talk about. But she likes to ask why. But the policy that we've adopted in our house is, first you obey, then you ask why. And this is gonna be what solves it forever. She'll have no issues when she's a parent. She'll replicate this exactly, right? But first you obey and then you ask why. First show that you're gonna be obedient. First show that you're going to submit. First show that the question is genuine and not an attempt to get out of it. And then come and we'll talk to you forever when you have a good attitude about the whys of why we should do something. And I bring this up because I think it's really important as we think about how we respond to the instructions of God. I know that very often when we are met with a teaching from Scripture that we should give, that we should read the Bible, that we should be selfless, that we should forgive as we are forgiven, that we should be generous to others, that we should turn the other cheek, that whenever it is possible for us, as far as it concerns us, that we should seek peace in others when peace is just not the thing that we want right now. Often in my life, and maybe yours too, we want to know the why before we offer our obedience. We want it to make sense to us before King Nate deigns to obey the instructions that I find here. And I will confess to you this, as I thought about this this week. This is not so much an indictment on your attitude, that's up to you, as it is sometimes an indictment on my preaching. Because when I preach and I give us instructions from the word, I always start with a why. Because I don't want to paint God as this ruthless dictator who sits in heaven giving you rules. I always want you to understand why it's what's best for you. But when we jump straight to the why before obedience, I think that begats in us this sense of entitlement. That if God's whys don't stack up for me, then I'm not going to engage in that behavior until they do. And I think it's important for us as believers to accept that the most important and underrated reason why we give is because our Father in heaven told us to. And I think this applies to everything. I think this applies to our quiet times. This applies to our grace with other people. This applies to any challenge that we would face. Anytime God's word tells us to do something, the first and most important reason we do it is because God told us to. Proverbs tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And I think that sometimes for me, I walk through life entitled as if I am owed a why, and God does not owe us that. So an important reason to apply to everything in our life is because our Father in Heaven told us to. Now once we accept that, and we adopt that posture of obedience, and I also want to be very clear, when I say that, I'm talking only to the Christians in the room. If you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, you've never signed up for this. You've never said, I submit my life to God. You've never said, you're the Lord of my life. I'm second. I'm going to do what you want. You've never said that. And so to you, I wouldn't say that you even need to give. And I definitely wouldn't say it's because God told you to. You haven't signed up for this yet and said, I'm going to submit myself to God's word. But if you are a Christian, then you have. So first we adopt a posture of obedience. And what we understand in that posture of obedience is that God wants what's best for us. This is what we talked about last week. What we believe is the verse I preached last week, that God actually leads us to paths of life, that in his presence there is fullness of joy. At his right hand there are pleasures forevermore. We actually believe that our God in heaven wants what's best for us and takes us to the best possible places. And so if he tells us to do something, it must be what's best for us. So we trust that about giving too. So the question really becomes this morning, not why does God want me to give, but why is giving best for me? That's really the question that we are asking this morning. Once we adopt this posture of obedience and say, yes, Father, I am a Christian, and because I am, I am submitted to you, and I will be a person who is a giving, generous person. But I also understand that as I do that, it's what's best for me, and I'd love to understand why it's what's best for me. So I've got a few reasons for you that we're just going to kind of go through. The first thing I would say to you when you ask why is giving what's best for me, I would say it's because God is generous to the generous. God is generous to generous people. Now, I have to be careful with this because this is how you get to health and wealth, right? This is how you get to me preaching to you. If you give, God's going to give back to you a hundredfold. If you give to the church this much, God's going to give you this much. Meanwhile, I'm asking you to fund my private jet and you can't figure out how to pay for a civic, okay? So that's, I don't want to go there. I'm not preaching health and wealth. I'm not telling you that the more you give to God, the more money he's going to give to you. However, this principle that God is generous to the generous is unavoidable in scripture. Jesus talks about this in Luke chapter 6, verse 38, when he says this, give and it will be given to you. Good measure pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. Corinthians says, he who sows little reaps little and he who sows much reaps much. There is a principle in the Bible that is unavoidable, that God is generous to the generous. And I'm lying to you and dishonest as a pastor if I don't say that's one of the reasons it's what's best for you. Because when we're generous to others, God is generous to us. Now what it doesn't say anywhere is that God is generous to us monetarily. What it doesn't say anywhere is that the blessings that God is going to be generous with are ones that are going to fill up our bank account. It does not say that. It just says God will be generous to you. And God's generosity comes in forms that is so much better than money. You understand? When you are generous with your resources, God is generous with his. It's an unavoidable truth of scripture. So God's generosity looks like good, rich, and deep, spiritually nourishing, life-giving friendships. God's generosity looks like a marriage that's seen some seasons but is hanging in there and loving one another. God's generosity is good relationships with your children. God's generosity is a place to go every day that you don't hate. God's generosity is when you're walking through a hard season but you know that there is a good season coming because your God is good and you know that every day won't feel like this day. God's generosity doesn't always come in the form of money. I know a family, I know a couple who they have living with them right now, a family member, and this is a family member that should not be living with them, okay? They shouldn't be there. They should be able to live on their own, but they're not. And it is really, they are expressing a great deal of generosity to this family member. And one of their friends learned about this and happens to have a cabin, a nice one, and said, go, stay at our cabin for a weekend. You need that. That's God's generosity being expressed to someone who's being generous. Do you see that? It's not always a one-for-one reciprocal return of money, but God is generous towards the generous, and so it behooves us to be generous. The next thing I would tell you is that giving acknowledges stewardship. Why is giving what's best for me? Well, because when we give, we acknowledge this concept of stewardship. Stewardship, the whole sermon could be about stewardship. The whole sermon could be about all four of the points that I'm making. But stewardship in particular is this idea that once we are believers, we understand that the things that we have in our life are not our own. They're God's. And he's entrusted them to us. To use them for the purposes of advancing his kingdom in the most effective way possible. Back in May on Mother's Day, we did a child dedication. And we had 11 children that we dedicated that day. It was great, super exciting day for Grace. And part of the dedication of the children is for the parents to acknowledge, both literally and symbolically, that this child is not mine. He is yours. She is yours. We are raising them in our home, but they belong to you, God. They are your children, Jesus. And we are raising them the best we can in the way that they should go according to your standards. But these children are not my children. John and Lily do not belong to Nate and Jen. They belong to God. And he has entrusted them to us because he believes that we have a unique capacity to form them and shape them into who they need to be for Jesus so that they move through life advancing his kingdom. They're not our kids. They're God's kids. Your house is not your house. It's God's house. Your finances are not your finances. They're God's finances. And once we realize that, that we are stewards of the things that God has given to us, then it becomes incredibly important. The primary question we ask about all the things with which we have been entrusted is, Jesus, how do I use these to further your name? How do I use these things to bring attention to you? How would you have me organize this part of my life? And so when we give, when we write the check weekly or we click the button monthly or we set it up or whatever it is we do, when we are generous and we give, it reminds us. Every time we see that come out of our account or hit our credit card, whatever it is, that's a reminder. None of this is mine anyways. It's God's. It's God's to use as he sees fit. And if he wants more, he can have more. So giving reminds us that we are stewards, not just with our money, but in everything in our life. Another thing I would say to you is that giving allows us to participate in what God is doing by being a part of the body of Christ. Giving allows us to participate in what is happening in the church, in the kingdom, in the body of Christ by being a part of the body of Christ. I love 1 Corinthians 12. I've never preached on it here, and I need to do a whole series on it because I think it's just an amazing teaching. But in 1 Corinthians 12, Paul lays out this idea that the church is a body and that everyone who's a part of the church has a part to play. The body has arms and legs and feet and hands and it has all kinds of things that are incredibly important. It has lungs that nobody ever sees, but if we don't have lungs, then the rest of it doesn't work. And it all intricately works together to get things accomplished. And I love this teaching because it reminds me as a pastor, I'm just the mouth. That's it. But y'all are the hands that touch people who need it. Y'all are the arms that are wrapped around folks who are struggling. Y'all are the feet that take the good news of the gospel into work. Y'all are the lungs that make this thing go. None of us, none of us, not me, not an elder, not somebody who's been here 30 years, none of us are more important to what's happening at Grace than anybody else. We simply have our part to play. My part is to run my mouth. Sometimes I wish somebody else would take that part. Because maybe I'd like to be the ear sometimes. But everybody has a part. And I think our part of being in the body of Christ, a church in an affluent suburb is to use our resources to serve the greater body of Christ. And when we do that as a church, we get to participate in things going on just outside of grace as well. And so to me, it's a wonderful picture of why as a church we should want to have a generous heart. Right now, we give 10% of everything that we get to ministries going on outside the walls of grace. It is one of my big long-term goals for the church to see that percentage increase a lot so that we play our part in God's greater body and who we are. But not just as we think about reaching outside of the walls of grace, but as we think about what happens within grace and how when we give, we are part of the celebrations that God allows for us here. We are part of the victories that Jesus wins here. We participate in that by giving and doing our part and being a part of the body of Christ. I think back to October of 2017. That was the first time I got to go down to Reynosa to go see the folks at Faith Ministry. Colleen of Faith Ministry fame is with us this morning. Hello, Colleen. That's a ministry in Mexico that builds houses for people who otherwise would not be able to have them. And Grace has been partners with them since before Grace existed. So more than 20 years. And I got to go down there in October of 2017 to see it for the first time. And it was a really great experience. And I'll never forget, we're sitting there and I wanted to say it's the parking lot, but that's generous. It's the place where the cars go. And we're sitting in the van and we're waiting to pull out. And I hear a car crank up and and it was as if that poor thing was being tortured. Like, it did not, every noise it made was, please, please don't make me do this. Like, and I turn around, and the bumper is in shatters. It's being held with bungee cords, and to say that it was a beater is generous to beaters, and it was being driven by the pastor down there, a younger guy named Pastor Carlos. And Pastor Carlos, he works 10 times harder than me. I could not do what he does. I asked him one time what his weekly schedule was and just the Bible studies that he has and the different towns and stuff that he touches on and the different people in his orbit. He needs a good car. He's shuttling kids back and forth. He works so hard. This is not what he should be driving. And so I kind of leaned over to some folks that were on the trip and I said, hey, I think Grace could raise enough money to buy him a truck. Can we do that? And I talked to the folks at Faith Ministry. Would it be cool if we bought him a truck? He seems to need it. And everybody was good with it. And so I came back to Grace and I said, hey, this is, as we enter Christmas, this is the thing we want to do. We want to have enough money to buy a truck for Pastor Carlos. And we did. What kind of car did we buy him? Do you remember? Yeah, Ford Escape or Ranger or something like that. But it was nice and new and way better than what he had. And some of our folks from Grace got to go down and deliver it to him. And when I watched the video, I had tears in my eyes because he was so grateful. And so blown away by the generosity of the church. And it was a really sweet moment. And the next time I went down there, the first thing Carlos wanted me to do is come see his truck and say thank you again for it. Now listen, if you were here and you gave to that Christmas offering in 2017, that joy is your joy. That happiness is your happiness. That's not watching other people do a good thing like when we watch on the internet and our heart is warmed and then we scroll to the next thing. That's your joy. You did that. You participated in that. You made that possible. That was God using your gifts and your finances making you a part of the body of Christ so that you could participate in the good work that he was doing. That joy was your joy. If you give to grace, those 11 kids that were up here being dedicated, that's your joy. When we baptize somebody, that's your joy. When you see somebody come into the church, that's your joy. We have, I think, nine people coming to Discover Grace after church today coming out of a pandemic. That's your joy that those people are becoming a part of what we're doing here at Grace. Every win that Jesus claims here at this church, when we give, we are a part of that. Because those wins don't happen if we don't give. So we give because we are a part of the body of Christ. And that allows us to participate in the work that Jesus is doing, wherever he's doing work. The last point that I would make about why it's best for us to give is that giving invites us to mirror the generosity of God that's lavished upon us. It invites us to mirror the generosity that God has given us. Now, this too could be a whole sermon, and it was. The last time we talked about giving, Doug Bergeson, one of our elders, preached on it in February of 2020, and I don't do things like this, but it's the best sermon on giving I've ever heard. If you haven't heard it, and you'd like to explore this idea more, go back into the archives. It was Grace's Going Home series, February of 2020. Find the Doug Bergeson sermon. It's an excellent one on what I'm talking about right here, How we participate in God's generosity when we give. But what I would say to you this morning is simply this, that this is to me the most compelling reason to give. Because the longer you are a believer, the deeper you grow in gratitude to the Father. There's no two ways about it. You might think that if you've lived a life however you want it, in total selfishness, in total depravity, you've done all the bad things that anybody could do. You can check off all the boxes and and then at like 35, you come to know God, and you're amazed that he's wiped the slate clean, and he's accepted you into his kingdom, that that moment is maximum gratitude for God's generosity and forgiveness. No, it's not. Because to walk with God is to understand that when you become a Christian, he doesn't just forgive you for all the stuff that you did up to that moment. He forgives you for all the crap that you're going to do too. He knows every terrible thought that you're going to have. When you get saved, whatever your lowest point is after that, whatever rock bottom looks like after you become a Christian, God was already in that moment whispering to you that he loves you and he forgives you and he wants you to come back to him. He's already in that moment. Whether that moment's behind you or ahead of you, God was in it telling you already, I've covered this too. So to walk with God and to fall short again and again and again, to arrive at that place that Paul arrives at in Romans 7 that is to me the most redemptive verse in scripture, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death. To arrive there and be refreshed anew with God's overwhelming forgiveness and generosity to us. For it to hit us like a wave again that Jesus condescended, took on human flesh, lived with us in the muck and the mire, died on the cross for us, knowing that we would crud on that very death over and over and over again in our life only to require his forgiveness yet again and then he offers and then he goes about, once he dies for us, ascending to the right hand of the Father to advocate for us and to whisper in God's ear that, yes, I've covered that too. When we sit daily in the realization of the gospel and we let the waves of Jesus' forgiveness wash over us and God's generosity flood us, we cannot help but grow in our gratitude towards God. Whatever gratitude we experienced at salvation is the starting point for how it grows through our life. And so we give as an expression of that gratitude. We give because something so incredible is happening to us that we want to find a way to be conduits of that generosity that God has given us. God has given so much to me. God has given so much to us. God has enriched our lives so much that we can't help but want to desire to enrich the lives of others. We can't help but want to express the generosity that God has lavished upon us. And so giving in his best, most pure state is simply a reaction to the overflow of God's giving in our life. That's why Paul teaches in Corinthians that God loves a cheerful giver. Don't give out of compulsion, but give because you want to. And how can we grow our want to in giving? By focusing on the face of Jesus and remembering the generosity and the forgiveness that he offers us every day. And so giving is what's best for us because it reorients us to the gospel. It reorients us towards God's goodness in our life. God has been good to me and provided me this. I am going to give this portion of this, understanding that he can replace it or he can't, but God has been so generous to me that I want to be generous to others. That's why we give. I love this verse in 2 Corinthians 9-11 says, you will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. There's this part of the Sermon on the Mount that I find incredibly intimidating, where Jesus says, let others see your good deeds, see your good works, and shine for the Father so that your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that when people come into and out of your orbit in your life, they should simply see the way that you act and want more of your Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that when people come into and out of your orbit in your life, they should simply see the way that you act and want more of your father who is in heaven. And I always think to myself, how do you act like that? A really easy way is to be generous. That's what Corinthians tells us. That God has enriched us. He's given us resources in every way. Why? So that we might enrich others. And then both you and them will turn that to thanksgiving to God. And it will point us back to the Father and our Savior Jesus. That's why giving is what's best for us. It's good for us. It develops a spirit of generosity that constantly, constantly orients us back to Jesus. So I would end this morning with a simple challenge for you. Trust God and give. Trust God and his word and give. How much should I give? Just a little bit more than you are. That's always the answer. 10%? No, that's an Old Testament thing. How much do we give in the New Testament? Just a little bit more than we are. Whatever that means for you. Who do I give to? I'll be the first to tell you. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that you have to give all of your giving to the local church. I've sat in churches, I've heard pastors say, your first 10% goes to this church and then on top of that, other places. That's not in the Bible. I'm not going to sit here and teach you that. I'm not preaching this as a self-serving thing for grace. If you believe in grace and what's happening here and you feel compelled to participate in the victories that Jesus is winning here, then give to grace. But you give wherever God is advancing his kingdom. Wherever God is working and Jesus is moving, you give there. Just give. Trust God and do it. I have never talked to a single person in my whole life who has said, you know what? I heard what the pastor said about giving and I decided to start being more generous. That was a huge mistake. I really regret it. Wish I could have that back. Never heard anybody say that. So this morning, it's simple. If you and I could have a conversation, I would simply end it by saying, just trust God. Obey Him. Be a person who's generous. Let's give together. Let me pray for us. Father, we do love you. We are so grateful for the goodness and the gifts that you've lavished upon us. God, I pray first and foremost that we would let those wash over us. I pray more than anything else that we would simply leave here increasingly overwhelmed with your goodness to us. Father, for those of us who need this, who need to think about this in our own lives, I pray that because you said so would be all the reason that we ever need. I pray that we would trust that and walk in that. Knowing that even when we don't understand obedience sometimes, that it is going to lead us to a path of life. God, give us the heart and the gratitude and the spirit to be people who are generous. I pray that each one of us would leave here determined to be just a little bit more generous than we were when we walked in today. And God, for those of us who are obedient and who respond and who give. Would we find you there, please? Would you show us yourself in that giving? Can we ask that through the generosity that you compel us to that we are brought closer to your son and so inspired and enlivened to continue to be generous. It's in his name, the one who died for us and who advocates for us, that we pray. Amen.

If you're like a lot of us, then this jar kind of looks like your life as we entered the pandemic. Lots of things in our life that are really important to us, big deals, things that we definitely want to prioritize, but maybe sometimes we have a hard time finding time for, and then other things in our life that are probably important, but maybe not essential, and we'd love to give our time to them, but we probably don't need to make big priorities out of them. But what happens in the end when we get so busy is that we don't have time for everything, right? But then with the pandemic, life, well it kind of hit the reset button. And we spent most of last year with nothing but time on our hands. And now, as we face moving back into what feels like normal, I think that we have this unique opportunity to reassemble our lives. And as we have this opportunity, I thought it would be appropriate for Grace to stop and really think critically about well, what are our big rocks? What are the things in our life that are the most important to us? What are the things that we want to prioritize above and beyond everything else and what would our life look like if we actually identified our big rocks and prioritized our time around those things? What if we put these rocks in first and made sure that there was space in our life for the things that were most important and then around those things we allowed all the other little things to kind of fill in the rest of our time and priorities? What would it look like if we were to hit the reset button on our life and reassemble it in such a way that we had time and space for what was important to us and we didn't have to worry at all about the other things that just at the end of the day, they're not nearly as big of a deal. What are our big rocks? And how do we make space for them as we enter into a new normal? Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. A little confession, after we shot that video in the back corner, I was on my hands and knees for about 15 minutes picking up all those rocks. So I'm really glad we got it there on that first take, and I didn't have to do that again. Thank you for being here. Like I said, I'm the senior pastor here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you, I would love to do that. We got a full crew here this morning. That is exciting and good. So thanks for being here. Thanks for joining us online, particularly if you're on vacation and you're still choosing to make this a part of your Sunday. We are grateful for that. I'm really looking forward to the rest of this series as we talk about exactly what I addressed in the video. This idea of coming kind of back to life, the world feeling normal again, or at least approaching it. If we can avoid this Delta variant, but that's a whole different conversation. But it feels like we're approaching that. And as we do it, we have this unique opportunity to kind of reconstruct our life around the things that are most important to us. And really, we have this opportunity to reconstruct our life around Jesus. So for the next four weeks, we're going to talk about what our big rocks are. What are the things that are the most important to us and how do we orchestrate those things around Jesus and around this pursuit of God the Father. And I said specifically that I'm looking forward to the rest of the weeks of the series because I'm not looking forward to this morning in this series. I did not wake up this morning excited for this sermon. Some Sundays I wake up and I'm really, really, I can't wait to share with you what God has laid on my heart. Last Sunday is a great example of that. This Sunday, I'm preaching about money. So when I got up this morning, it wasn't like, yes, the tithe, here we come. Nor did you get up hoping that this would be the Sunday that I talked about money. So listen, I'll just confess up front. I'm no more interested in preaching this than you are in hearing it. Okay, but we're here now. So this is what we're going to do. And really, the reason that we're talking about this is first of all, first and foremost, I don't talk about this very much at Grace. The last time we talked about this was in February of 2020, and I didn't even do it. It was Doug Bergeson, all right? So we don't do it a whole lot, but this topic is all throughout the Bible. Scripture is replete with instructions on giving about big rocks in life, if we're going to talk about the things that matter most to us and how to prioritize those around Jesus, then we have to talk about finances. We have to ask the question, what does God want us to do with our resources and with our money? And the Bible talks about it so much that it would be irresponsible as a church and I'd be irresponsible as a pastor if we didn't revisit it with some regularity. So we arrive at it this morning and as we arrive at it, I'm kind of approaching it like this. This is why I'm sitting down for this one at a table instead of standing and gesticulating and walking around wildly and trying to keep calm and not yell at you because I'm approaching this as if you and I could have a conversation about it. If you and I were able to meet for lunch or if you could come to the office or we meet somewhere and we could talk and your question was, what does the Bible have to say about giving anyways? Or maybe even, why does God want me to give? Then this is the conversation that I would want to have with you. So I'm staying seated to remind me that this is what I would like to say to each of you if we had the opportunity to sit down and talk about this together. And as we do that, I would even say to you this, that as I wrote and approached this sermon, I really had in mind the person who is new to church. Maybe you are someone who, for the first time in a long time, church is important to you again. For the first time in a long time, spiritual health is important to you again. And so maybe you're kind of trying to get reengaged spiritually. Maybe you haven't been in church a lot for the past five, 10 years, and so you're kind of starting to re-engage and maybe have never really thought critically about giving and what the Bible has to say about it. This is for the new and the non-believers, for those of us who hear that we should give in church, who probably understand that the Bible tells us to do it, but maybe we don't know all the whys around it and maybe we don't have a developed theology of why we should be generous. So this sermon in particular is for you. Now I know that at Grace, and I see the evidence of it over and over again, we have plenty of you who have a really good theology of giving, who understand tithing and being generous and why we do it. And so for you, I hope that we hit on some things that are encouraging, particularly the first point that I make. I think we should apply it to everything, not just giving. And so I hope that there's some encouraging ways to think about it. But this is really for folks who, if I sat you down and I said, what does the Bible say about giving or why should we give? This is for you if you feel like, gosh, I'm not sure how well I would answer that. So like I said, I'm approaching it as a conversation and I want to approach the conversation with what the Bible even has to say about it. And as I sought that out this week, you know, the Old Testament has a lot of very specific instructions that we are to give. The Old Testament introduces this idea of giving in generosity like a new idea. Leave the corners of your field for the sojourners, for the poor, for the widow, for the aliens, for the people who don't yet have a home. We're told to bring our tithe to the storehouse in the Old Testament. We're told there's a whole portion in Leviticus that tells us exactly, tells the children of Israel exactly how they are to give. So in the Old Testament, it's given as an instruction. It's introduced almost as a new idea. But what you find in the New Testament, if you want to read New Testament verses about giving, and the New Testament is simply the part of the Bible that comes during Jesus's life and after. And Jesus kind of changes everything. So what does the Bible have to say about giving once Jesus gets on the scene? Well, once Jesus arrives, the instructions about giving become a little bit presumptive, as if this is a thing that we already know. This is actually what Jesus says about it in the Sermon on the Mount. If you have a Bible, you can turn to Matthew chapter 6. I'm going to read you verses 1 through 4. The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus' first recorded public address. It's the first time he talks. And he has performed miracles and those people began to follow them and then he begins to preach to them and he hits on myriad topics. But then he lands on giving for a different directions. But the interesting part to me about this verse, if you want to ask what does the New Testament teach about giving, is the two uses of the word when. When you give. When you give to the needy. Jesus is talking to the huddled masses. Talking to thousands of people in the middle of the day, presumably jobless folks for the most part. And he still assumes that they know, without ever introducing giving as a new idea, he assumes that they know that they should give. He assumes that they know that God expects them to be generous people. And so he says, when you do it, do it in such a way that you're not doing it in a showy way. Do it in secret. Be discreet about it. And there's a whole teaching there. But again, what's interesting to me is when you give, when you do it. And I bring that up because I think that that's how familiar a lot of us are with giving. We might not know why we're supposed to do it. We might not know what for. We might not know how we should be compelled to do it. We just know that we are supposed to. And so the interesting question is why? Why are we supposed to give? Why does God ask us in the Old Testament when he's setting everything up and then just assume of us that we know that we ought to in the New Testament? Why does God do that? And so we're going to spend the rest of the morning kind of answering that question, and this is the conversational piece of it. Why does God want me to give? The most important reason, the most important reason and most underrated reason we give is because God tells us to. The most important, and this is key, most underrated reason that we give is because God tells us to. Now, listen, here's why I say this. When my mom was growing up, she grew up in the 60s and 70s, and Linda, her mom, my mom, all wonderful woman, she ruled with an iron fist, man. This was back in the good old days, all right, when it was nice to be a parent. You rule with an iron fist. That was a funny slip. You ruled with an iron fist. Kids are to be seen and not heard. When the company comes over, you go upstairs. You do not interrupt. And when my mom would get out of line when she was told to do something, and she said, why? She had the audacity to say, why do I have to clean your room? Why? Because I told you to. Fire would burn in Linda's eyes, right? And mom would know. She better do whatever it was she was asked to do, even if it makes no sense at all to her, because there is going to be some serious repercussions if she doesn't. She saw the fire, and so she got right. And so when my mom grew up, because I told you to, was all the reason that a child needed. Well, when that's the only reason you get, that develops in you a little bit of resentment, right? This heart of resentment because my mom is kind and sweet and not rebellious like me and really was asking genuinely why I don't understand. Why do you want me to do that right now? It seems like I should be doing something else. Why do you want me to do that? But she wasn't allowed to ask that. And so that left her frustrated and resentful. So when she had children, she decided that because I said so is never a reason. I will always take the time to explain to my children why I'm asking them to do something. And to her credit, she did that. But when you're raising Nate, that becomes a real hassle. And I was always allowed to ask why. And I love that quote. There's some quote I picked up years ago that a reason is an invitation for an argument. And that's very true. And so I was always invited into that argument. Why? Go clean your room. Why do I have to do that right now? Go mow the grass. Why? And listen, if the why wasn't good enough, well, I didn't have to do it. In my head, if the why is not good enough, if it can't justify the request, well, then your request is dumb. And so what I learned in that environment is asking why before we obey manifests a sense of entitlement. It does. Asking why before we obey manifests a sense of entitlement. It does. Asking why before we obey manifests a sense of entitlement. It manifests this idea of, okay, I understand what you want me to do, but I'm not going to do that until your reason justifies your request. And if it doesn't, if it falls short of King Nate's gauntlet of reasons, then you can forget it, buddy. So in our house, our response with Lily and then with John, which John can't talk yet. And I remember when Lily couldn't talk and people were like, just be grateful for these times. And I thought, you're jerks. You're not jerks. That makes sense to me now. John can't talk yet, but Lily can, and she likes to ask why. Lily's my daughter, for those of you who don't know me, not just some girl I talk about. But she likes to ask why. But the policy that we've adopted in our house is, first you obey, then you ask why. And this is gonna be what solves it forever. She'll have no issues when she's a parent. She'll replicate this exactly, right? But first you obey and then you ask why. First show that you're gonna be obedient. First show that you're going to submit. First show that the question is genuine and not an attempt to get out of it. And then come and we'll talk to you forever when you have a good attitude about the whys of why we should do something. And I bring this up because I think it's really important as we think about how we respond to the instructions of God. I know that very often when we are met with a teaching from Scripture that we should give, that we should read the Bible, that we should be selfless, that we should forgive as we are forgiven, that we should be generous to others, that we should turn the other cheek, that whenever it is possible for us, as far as it concerns us, that we should seek peace in others when peace is just not the thing that we want right now. Often in my life, and maybe yours too, we want to know the why before we offer our obedience. We want it to make sense to us before King Nate deigns to obey the instructions that I find here. And I will confess to you this, as I thought about this this week. This is not so much an indictment on your attitude, that's up to you, as it is sometimes an indictment on my preaching. Because when I preach and I give us instructions from the word, I always start with a why. Because I don't want to paint God as this ruthless dictator who sits in heaven giving you rules. I always want you to understand why it's what's best for you. But when we jump straight to the why before obedience, I think that begats in us this sense of entitlement. That if God's whys don't stack up for me, then I'm not going to engage in that behavior until they do. And I think it's important for us as believers to accept that the most important and underrated reason why we give is because our Father in heaven told us to. And I think this applies to everything. I think this applies to our quiet times. This applies to our grace with other people. This applies to any challenge that we would face. Anytime God's word tells us to do something, the first and most important reason we do it is because God told us to. Proverbs tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And I think that sometimes for me, I walk through life entitled as if I am owed a why, and God does not owe us that. So an important reason to apply to everything in our life is because our Father in Heaven told us to. Now once we accept that, and we adopt that posture of obedience, and I also want to be very clear, when I say that, I'm talking only to the Christians in the room. If you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, you've never signed up for this. You've never said, I submit my life to God. You've never said, you're the Lord of my life. I'm second. I'm going to do what you want. You've never said that. And so to you, I wouldn't say that you even need to give. And I definitely wouldn't say it's because God told you to. You haven't signed up for this yet and said, I'm going to submit myself to God's word. But if you are a Christian, then you have. So first we adopt a posture of obedience. And what we understand in that posture of obedience is that God wants what's best for us. This is what we talked about last week. What we believe is the verse I preached last week, that God actually leads us to paths of life, that in his presence there is fullness of joy. At his right hand there are pleasures forevermore. We actually believe that our God in heaven wants what's best for us and takes us to the best possible places. And so if he tells us to do something, it must be what's best for us. So we trust that about giving too. So the question really becomes this morning, not why does God want me to give, but why is giving best for me? That's really the question that we are asking this morning. Once we adopt this posture of obedience and say, yes, Father, I am a Christian, and because I am, I am submitted to you, and I will be a person who is a giving, generous person. But I also understand that as I do that, it's what's best for me, and I'd love to understand why it's what's best for me. So I've got a few reasons for you that we're just going to kind of go through. The first thing I would say to you when you ask why is giving what's best for me, I would say it's because God is generous to the generous. God is generous to generous people. Now, I have to be careful with this because this is how you get to health and wealth, right? This is how you get to me preaching to you. If you give, God's going to give back to you a hundredfold. If you give to the church this much, God's going to give you this much. Meanwhile, I'm asking you to fund my private jet and you can't figure out how to pay for a civic, okay? So that's, I don't want to go there. I'm not preaching health and wealth. I'm not telling you that the more you give to God, the more money he's going to give to you. However, this principle that God is generous to the generous is unavoidable in scripture. Jesus talks about this in Luke chapter 6, verse 38, when he says this, give and it will be given to you. Good measure pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. Corinthians says, he who sows little reaps little and he who sows much reaps much. There is a principle in the Bible that is unavoidable, that God is generous to the generous. And I'm lying to you and dishonest as a pastor if I don't say that's one of the reasons it's what's best for you. Because when we're generous to others, God is generous to us. Now what it doesn't say anywhere is that God is generous to us monetarily. What it doesn't say anywhere is that the blessings that God is going to be generous with are ones that are going to fill up our bank account. It does not say that. It just says God will be generous to you. And God's generosity comes in forms that is so much better than money. You understand? When you are generous with your resources, God is generous with his. It's an unavoidable truth of scripture. So God's generosity looks like good, rich, and deep, spiritually nourishing, life-giving friendships. God's generosity looks like a marriage that's seen some seasons but is hanging in there and loving one another. God's generosity is good relationships with your children. God's generosity is a place to go every day that you don't hate. God's generosity is when you're walking through a hard season but you know that there is a good season coming because your God is good and you know that every day won't feel like this day. God's generosity doesn't always come in the form of money. I know a family, I know a couple who they have living with them right now, a family member, and this is a family member that should not be living with them, okay? They shouldn't be there. They should be able to live on their own, but they're not. And it is really, they are expressing a great deal of generosity to this family member. And one of their friends learned about this and happens to have a cabin, a nice one, and said, go, stay at our cabin for a weekend. You need that. That's God's generosity being expressed to someone who's being generous. Do you see that? It's not always a one-for-one reciprocal return of money, but God is generous towards the generous, and so it behooves us to be generous. The next thing I would tell you is that giving acknowledges stewardship. Why is giving what's best for me? Well, because when we give, we acknowledge this concept of stewardship. Stewardship, the whole sermon could be about stewardship. The whole sermon could be about all four of the points that I'm making. But stewardship in particular is this idea that once we are believers, we understand that the things that we have in our life are not our own. They're God's. And he's entrusted them to us. To use them for the purposes of advancing his kingdom in the most effective way possible. Back in May on Mother's Day, we did a child dedication. And we had 11 children that we dedicated that day. It was great, super exciting day for Grace. And part of the dedication of the children is for the parents to acknowledge, both literally and symbolically, that this child is not mine. He is yours. She is yours. We are raising them in our home, but they belong to you, God. They are your children, Jesus. And we are raising them the best we can in the way that they should go according to your standards. But these children are not my children. John and Lily do not belong to Nate and Jen. They belong to God. And he has entrusted them to us because he believes that we have a unique capacity to form them and shape them into who they need to be for Jesus so that they move through life advancing his kingdom. They're not our kids. They're God's kids. Your house is not your house. It's God's house. Your finances are not your finances. They're God's finances. And once we realize that, that we are stewards of the things that God has given to us, then it becomes incredibly important. The primary question we ask about all the things with which we have been entrusted is, Jesus, how do I use these to further your name? How do I use these things to bring attention to you? How would you have me organize this part of my life? And so when we give, when we write the check weekly or we click the button monthly or we set it up or whatever it is we do, when we are generous and we give, it reminds us. Every time we see that come out of our account or hit our credit card, whatever it is, that's a reminder. None of this is mine anyways. It's God's. It's God's to use as he sees fit. And if he wants more, he can have more. So giving reminds us that we are stewards, not just with our money, but in everything in our life. Another thing I would say to you is that giving allows us to participate in what God is doing by being a part of the body of Christ. Giving allows us to participate in what is happening in the church, in the kingdom, in the body of Christ by being a part of the body of Christ. I love 1 Corinthians 12. I've never preached on it here, and I need to do a whole series on it because I think it's just an amazing teaching. But in 1 Corinthians 12, Paul lays out this idea that the church is a body and that everyone who's a part of the church has a part to play. The body has arms and legs and feet and hands and it has all kinds of things that are incredibly important. It has lungs that nobody ever sees, but if we don't have lungs, then the rest of it doesn't work. And it all intricately works together to get things accomplished. And I love this teaching because it reminds me as a pastor, I'm just the mouth. That's it. But y'all are the hands that touch people who need it. Y'all are the arms that are wrapped around folks who are struggling. Y'all are the feet that take the good news of the gospel into work. Y'all are the lungs that make this thing go. None of us, none of us, not me, not an elder, not somebody who's been here 30 years, none of us are more important to what's happening at Grace than anybody else. We simply have our part to play. My part is to run my mouth. Sometimes I wish somebody else would take that part. Because maybe I'd like to be the ear sometimes. But everybody has a part. And I think our part of being in the body of Christ, a church in an affluent suburb is to use our resources to serve the greater body of Christ. And when we do that as a church, we get to participate in things going on just outside of grace as well. And so to me, it's a wonderful picture of why as a church we should want to have a generous heart. Right now, we give 10% of everything that we get to ministries going on outside the walls of grace. It is one of my big long-term goals for the church to see that percentage increase a lot so that we play our part in God's greater body and who we are. But not just as we think about reaching outside of the walls of grace, but as we think about what happens within grace and how when we give, we are part of the celebrations that God allows for us here. We are part of the victories that Jesus wins here. We participate in that by giving and doing our part and being a part of the body of Christ. I think back to October of 2017. That was the first time I got to go down to Reynosa to go see the folks at Faith Ministry. Colleen of Faith Ministry fame is with us this morning. Hello, Colleen. That's a ministry in Mexico that builds houses for people who otherwise would not be able to have them. And Grace has been partners with them since before Grace existed. So more than 20 years. And I got to go down there in October of 2017 to see it for the first time. And it was a really great experience. And I'll never forget, we're sitting there and I wanted to say it's the parking lot, but that's generous. It's the place where the cars go. And we're sitting in the van and we're waiting to pull out. And I hear a car crank up and and it was as if that poor thing was being tortured. Like, it did not, every noise it made was, please, please don't make me do this. Like, and I turn around, and the bumper is in shatters. It's being held with bungee cords, and to say that it was a beater is generous to beaters, and it was being driven by the pastor down there, a younger guy named Pastor Carlos. And Pastor Carlos, he works 10 times harder than me. I could not do what he does. I asked him one time what his weekly schedule was and just the Bible studies that he has and the different towns and stuff that he touches on and the different people in his orbit. He needs a good car. He's shuttling kids back and forth. He works so hard. This is not what he should be driving. And so I kind of leaned over to some folks that were on the trip and I said, hey, I think Grace could raise enough money to buy him a truck. Can we do that? And I talked to the folks at Faith Ministry. Would it be cool if we bought him a truck? He seems to need it. And everybody was good with it. And so I came back to Grace and I said, hey, this is, as we enter Christmas, this is the thing we want to do. We want to have enough money to buy a truck for Pastor Carlos. And we did. What kind of car did we buy him? Do you remember? Yeah, Ford Escape or Ranger or something like that. But it was nice and new and way better than what he had. And some of our folks from Grace got to go down and deliver it to him. And when I watched the video, I had tears in my eyes because he was so grateful. And so blown away by the generosity of the church. And it was a really sweet moment. And the next time I went down there, the first thing Carlos wanted me to do is come see his truck and say thank you again for it. Now listen, if you were here and you gave to that Christmas offering in 2017, that joy is your joy. That happiness is your happiness. That's not watching other people do a good thing like when we watch on the internet and our heart is warmed and then we scroll to the next thing. That's your joy. You did that. You participated in that. You made that possible. That was God using your gifts and your finances making you a part of the body of Christ so that you could participate in the good work that he was doing. That joy was your joy. If you give to grace, those 11 kids that were up here being dedicated, that's your joy. When we baptize somebody, that's your joy. When you see somebody come into the church, that's your joy. We have, I think, nine people coming to Discover Grace after church today coming out of a pandemic. That's your joy that those people are becoming a part of what we're doing here at Grace. Every win that Jesus claims here at this church, when we give, we are a part of that. Because those wins don't happen if we don't give. So we give because we are a part of the body of Christ. And that allows us to participate in the work that Jesus is doing, wherever he's doing work. The last point that I would make about why it's best for us to give is that giving invites us to mirror the generosity of God that's lavished upon us. It invites us to mirror the generosity that God has given us. Now, this too could be a whole sermon, and it was. The last time we talked about giving, Doug Bergeson, one of our elders, preached on it in February of 2020, and I don't do things like this, but it's the best sermon on giving I've ever heard. If you haven't heard it, and you'd like to explore this idea more, go back into the archives. It was Grace's Going Home series, February of 2020. Find the Doug Bergeson sermon. It's an excellent one on what I'm talking about right here, How we participate in God's generosity when we give. But what I would say to you this morning is simply this, that this is to me the most compelling reason to give. Because the longer you are a believer, the deeper you grow in gratitude to the Father. There's no two ways about it. You might think that if you've lived a life however you want it, in total selfishness, in total depravity, you've done all the bad things that anybody could do. You can check off all the boxes and and then at like 35, you come to know God, and you're amazed that he's wiped the slate clean, and he's accepted you into his kingdom, that that moment is maximum gratitude for God's generosity and forgiveness. No, it's not. Because to walk with God is to understand that when you become a Christian, he doesn't just forgive you for all the stuff that you did up to that moment. He forgives you for all the crap that you're going to do too. He knows every terrible thought that you're going to have. When you get saved, whatever your lowest point is after that, whatever rock bottom looks like after you become a Christian, God was already in that moment whispering to you that he loves you and he forgives you and he wants you to come back to him. He's already in that moment. Whether that moment's behind you or ahead of you, God was in it telling you already, I've covered this too. So to walk with God and to fall short again and again and again, to arrive at that place that Paul arrives at in Romans 7 that is to me the most redemptive verse in scripture, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death. To arrive there and be refreshed anew with God's overwhelming forgiveness and generosity to us. For it to hit us like a wave again that Jesus condescended, took on human flesh, lived with us in the muck and the mire, died on the cross for us, knowing that we would crud on that very death over and over and over again in our life only to require his forgiveness yet again and then he offers and then he goes about, once he dies for us, ascending to the right hand of the Father to advocate for us and to whisper in God's ear that, yes, I've covered that too. When we sit daily in the realization of the gospel and we let the waves of Jesus' forgiveness wash over us and God's generosity flood us, we cannot help but grow in our gratitude towards God. Whatever gratitude we experienced at salvation is the starting point for how it grows through our life. And so we give as an expression of that gratitude. We give because something so incredible is happening to us that we want to find a way to be conduits of that generosity that God has given us. God has given so much to me. God has given so much to us. God has enriched our lives so much that we can't help but want to desire to enrich the lives of others. We can't help but want to express the generosity that God has lavished upon us. And so giving in his best, most pure state is simply a reaction to the overflow of God's giving in our life. That's why Paul teaches in Corinthians that God loves a cheerful giver. Don't give out of compulsion, but give because you want to. And how can we grow our want to in giving? By focusing on the face of Jesus and remembering the generosity and the forgiveness that he offers us every day. And so giving is what's best for us because it reorients us to the gospel. It reorients us towards God's goodness in our life. God has been good to me and provided me this. I am going to give this portion of this, understanding that he can replace it or he can't, but God has been so generous to me that I want to be generous to others. That's why we give. I love this verse in 2 Corinthians 9-11 says, you will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. There's this part of the Sermon on the Mount that I find incredibly intimidating, where Jesus says, let others see your good deeds, see your good works, and shine for the Father so that your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that when people come into and out of your orbit in your life, they should simply see the way that you act and want more of your Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that when people come into and out of your orbit in your life, they should simply see the way that you act and want more of your father who is in heaven. And I always think to myself, how do you act like that? A really easy way is to be generous. That's what Corinthians tells us. That God has enriched us. He's given us resources in every way. Why? So that we might enrich others. And then both you and them will turn that to thanksgiving to God. And it will point us back to the Father and our Savior Jesus. That's why giving is what's best for us. It's good for us. It develops a spirit of generosity that constantly, constantly orients us back to Jesus. So I would end this morning with a simple challenge for you. Trust God and give. Trust God and his word and give. How much should I give? Just a little bit more than you are. That's always the answer. 10%? No, that's an Old Testament thing. How much do we give in the New Testament? Just a little bit more than we are. Whatever that means for you. Who do I give to? I'll be the first to tell you. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that you have to give all of your giving to the local church. I've sat in churches, I've heard pastors say, your first 10% goes to this church and then on top of that, other places. That's not in the Bible. I'm not going to sit here and teach you that. I'm not preaching this as a self-serving thing for grace. If you believe in grace and what's happening here and you feel compelled to participate in the victories that Jesus is winning here, then give to grace. But you give wherever God is advancing his kingdom. Wherever God is working and Jesus is moving, you give there. Just give. Trust God and do it. I have never talked to a single person in my whole life who has said, you know what? I heard what the pastor said about giving and I decided to start being more generous. That was a huge mistake. I really regret it. Wish I could have that back. Never heard anybody say that. So this morning, it's simple. If you and I could have a conversation, I would simply end it by saying, just trust God. Obey Him. Be a person who's generous. Let's give together. Let me pray for us. Father, we do love you. We are so grateful for the goodness and the gifts that you've lavished upon us. God, I pray first and foremost that we would let those wash over us. I pray more than anything else that we would simply leave here increasingly overwhelmed with your goodness to us. Father, for those of us who need this, who need to think about this in our own lives, I pray that because you said so would be all the reason that we ever need. I pray that we would trust that and walk in that. Knowing that even when we don't understand obedience sometimes, that it is going to lead us to a path of life. God, give us the heart and the gratitude and the spirit to be people who are generous. I pray that each one of us would leave here determined to be just a little bit more generous than we were when we walked in today. And God, for those of us who are obedient and who respond and who give. Would we find you there, please? Would you show us yourself in that giving? Can we ask that through the generosity that you compel us to that we are brought closer to your son and so inspired and enlivened to continue to be generous. It's in his name, the one who died for us and who advocates for us, that we pray. Amen.

If you're like a lot of us, then this jar kind of looks like your life as we entered the pandemic. Lots of things in our life that are really important to us, big deals, things that we definitely want to prioritize, but maybe sometimes we have a hard time finding time for, and then other things in our life that are probably important, but maybe not essential, and we'd love to give our time to them, but we probably don't need to make big priorities out of them. But what happens in the end when we get so busy is that we don't have time for everything, right? But then with the pandemic, life, well it kind of hit the reset button. And we spent most of last year with nothing but time on our hands. And now, as we face moving back into what feels like normal, I think that we have this unique opportunity to reassemble our lives. And as we have this opportunity, I thought it would be appropriate for Grace to stop and really think critically about well, what are our big rocks? What are the things in our life that are the most important to us? What are the things that we want to prioritize above and beyond everything else and what would our life look like if we actually identified our big rocks and prioritized our time around those things? What if we put these rocks in first and made sure that there was space in our life for the things that were most important and then around those things we allowed all the other little things to kind of fill in the rest of our time and priorities? What would it look like if we were to hit the reset button on our life and reassemble it in such a way that we had time and space for what was important to us and we didn't have to worry at all about the other things that just at the end of the day, they're not nearly as big of a deal. What are our big rocks? And how do we make space for them as we enter into a new normal? Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. A little confession, after we shot that video in the back corner, I was on my hands and knees for about 15 minutes picking up all those rocks. So I'm really glad we got it there on that first take, and I didn't have to do that again. Thank you for being here. Like I said, I'm the senior pastor here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you, I would love to do that. We got a full crew here this morning. That is exciting and good. So thanks for being here. Thanks for joining us online, particularly if you're on vacation and you're still choosing to make this a part of your Sunday. We are grateful for that. I'm really looking forward to the rest of this series as we talk about exactly what I addressed in the video. This idea of coming kind of back to life, the world feeling normal again, or at least approaching it. If we can avoid this Delta variant, but that's a whole different conversation. But it feels like we're approaching that. And as we do it, we have this unique opportunity to kind of reconstruct our life around the things that are most important to us. And really, we have this opportunity to reconstruct our life around Jesus. So for the next four weeks, we're going to talk about what our big rocks are. What are the things that are the most important to us and how do we orchestrate those things around Jesus and around this pursuit of God the Father. And I said specifically that I'm looking forward to the rest of the weeks of the series because I'm not looking forward to this morning in this series. I did not wake up this morning excited for this sermon. Some Sundays I wake up and I'm really, really, I can't wait to share with you what God has laid on my heart. Last Sunday is a great example of that. This Sunday, I'm preaching about money. So when I got up this morning, it wasn't like, yes, the tithe, here we come. Nor did you get up hoping that this would be the Sunday that I talked about money. So listen, I'll just confess up front. I'm no more interested in preaching this than you are in hearing it. Okay, but we're here now. So this is what we're going to do. And really, the reason that we're talking about this is first of all, first and foremost, I don't talk about this very much at Grace. The last time we talked about this was in February of 2020, and I didn't even do it. It was Doug Bergeson, all right? So we don't do it a whole lot, but this topic is all throughout the Bible. Scripture is replete with instructions on giving about big rocks in life, if we're going to talk about the things that matter most to us and how to prioritize those around Jesus, then we have to talk about finances. We have to ask the question, what does God want us to do with our resources and with our money? And the Bible talks about it so much that it would be irresponsible as a church and I'd be irresponsible as a pastor if we didn't revisit it with some regularity. So we arrive at it this morning and as we arrive at it, I'm kind of approaching it like this. This is why I'm sitting down for this one at a table instead of standing and gesticulating and walking around wildly and trying to keep calm and not yell at you because I'm approaching this as if you and I could have a conversation about it. If you and I were able to meet for lunch or if you could come to the office or we meet somewhere and we could talk and your question was, what does the Bible have to say about giving anyways? Or maybe even, why does God want me to give? Then this is the conversation that I would want to have with you. So I'm staying seated to remind me that this is what I would like to say to each of you if we had the opportunity to sit down and talk about this together. And as we do that, I would even say to you this, that as I wrote and approached this sermon, I really had in mind the person who is new to church. Maybe you are someone who, for the first time in a long time, church is important to you again. For the first time in a long time, spiritual health is important to you again. And so maybe you're kind of trying to get reengaged spiritually. Maybe you haven't been in church a lot for the past five, 10 years, and so you're kind of starting to re-engage and maybe have never really thought critically about giving and what the Bible has to say about it. This is for the new and the non-believers, for those of us who hear that we should give in church, who probably understand that the Bible tells us to do it, but maybe we don't know all the whys around it and maybe we don't have a developed theology of why we should be generous. So this sermon in particular is for you. Now I know that at Grace, and I see the evidence of it over and over again, we have plenty of you who have a really good theology of giving, who understand tithing and being generous and why we do it. And so for you, I hope that we hit on some things that are encouraging, particularly the first point that I make. I think we should apply it to everything, not just giving. And so I hope that there's some encouraging ways to think about it. But this is really for folks who, if I sat you down and I said, what does the Bible say about giving or why should we give? This is for you if you feel like, gosh, I'm not sure how well I would answer that. So like I said, I'm approaching it as a conversation and I want to approach the conversation with what the Bible even has to say about it. And as I sought that out this week, you know, the Old Testament has a lot of very specific instructions that we are to give. The Old Testament introduces this idea of giving in generosity like a new idea. Leave the corners of your field for the sojourners, for the poor, for the widow, for the aliens, for the people who don't yet have a home. We're told to bring our tithe to the storehouse in the Old Testament. We're told there's a whole portion in Leviticus that tells us exactly, tells the children of Israel exactly how they are to give. So in the Old Testament, it's given as an instruction. It's introduced almost as a new idea. But what you find in the New Testament, if you want to read New Testament verses about giving, and the New Testament is simply the part of the Bible that comes during Jesus's life and after. And Jesus kind of changes everything. So what does the Bible have to say about giving once Jesus gets on the scene? Well, once Jesus arrives, the instructions about giving become a little bit presumptive, as if this is a thing that we already know. This is actually what Jesus says about it in the Sermon on the Mount. If you have a Bible, you can turn to Matthew chapter 6. I'm going to read you verses 1 through 4. The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus' first recorded public address. It's the first time he talks. And he has performed miracles and those people began to follow them and then he begins to preach to them and he hits on myriad topics. But then he lands on giving for a different directions. But the interesting part to me about this verse, if you want to ask what does the New Testament teach about giving, is the two uses of the word when. When you give. When you give to the needy. Jesus is talking to the huddled masses. Talking to thousands of people in the middle of the day, presumably jobless folks for the most part. And he still assumes that they know, without ever introducing giving as a new idea, he assumes that they know that they should give. He assumes that they know that God expects them to be generous people. And so he says, when you do it, do it in such a way that you're not doing it in a showy way. Do it in secret. Be discreet about it. And there's a whole teaching there. But again, what's interesting to me is when you give, when you do it. And I bring that up because I think that that's how familiar a lot of us are with giving. We might not know why we're supposed to do it. We might not know what for. We might not know how we should be compelled to do it. We just know that we are supposed to. And so the interesting question is why? Why are we supposed to give? Why does God ask us in the Old Testament when he's setting everything up and then just assume of us that we know that we ought to in the New Testament? Why does God do that? And so we're going to spend the rest of the morning kind of answering that question, and this is the conversational piece of it. Why does God want me to give? The most important reason, the most important reason and most underrated reason we give is because God tells us to. The most important, and this is key, most underrated reason that we give is because God tells us to. Now, listen, here's why I say this. When my mom was growing up, she grew up in the 60s and 70s, and Linda, her mom, my mom, all wonderful woman, she ruled with an iron fist, man. This was back in the good old days, all right, when it was nice to be a parent. You rule with an iron fist. That was a funny slip. You ruled with an iron fist. Kids are to be seen and not heard. When the company comes over, you go upstairs. You do not interrupt. And when my mom would get out of line when she was told to do something, and she said, why? She had the audacity to say, why do I have to clean your room? Why? Because I told you to. Fire would burn in Linda's eyes, right? And mom would know. She better do whatever it was she was asked to do, even if it makes no sense at all to her, because there is going to be some serious repercussions if she doesn't. She saw the fire, and so she got right. And so when my mom grew up, because I told you to, was all the reason that a child needed. Well, when that's the only reason you get, that develops in you a little bit of resentment, right? This heart of resentment because my mom is kind and sweet and not rebellious like me and really was asking genuinely why I don't understand. Why do you want me to do that right now? It seems like I should be doing something else. Why do you want me to do that? But she wasn't allowed to ask that. And so that left her frustrated and resentful. So when she had children, she decided that because I said so is never a reason. I will always take the time to explain to my children why I'm asking them to do something. And to her credit, she did that. But when you're raising Nate, that becomes a real hassle. And I was always allowed to ask why. And I love that quote. There's some quote I picked up years ago that a reason is an invitation for an argument. And that's very true. And so I was always invited into that argument. Why? Go clean your room. Why do I have to do that right now? Go mow the grass. Why? And listen, if the why wasn't good enough, well, I didn't have to do it. In my head, if the why is not good enough, if it can't justify the request, well, then your request is dumb. And so what I learned in that environment is asking why before we obey manifests a sense of entitlement. It does. Asking why before we obey manifests a sense of entitlement. It does. Asking why before we obey manifests a sense of entitlement. It manifests this idea of, okay, I understand what you want me to do, but I'm not going to do that until your reason justifies your request. And if it doesn't, if it falls short of King Nate's gauntlet of reasons, then you can forget it, buddy. So in our house, our response with Lily and then with John, which John can't talk yet. And I remember when Lily couldn't talk and people were like, just be grateful for these times. And I thought, you're jerks. You're not jerks. That makes sense to me now. John can't talk yet, but Lily can, and she likes to ask why. Lily's my daughter, for those of you who don't know me, not just some girl I talk about. But she likes to ask why. But the policy that we've adopted in our house is, first you obey, then you ask why. And this is gonna be what solves it forever. She'll have no issues when she's a parent. She'll replicate this exactly, right? But first you obey and then you ask why. First show that you're gonna be obedient. First show that you're going to submit. First show that the question is genuine and not an attempt to get out of it. And then come and we'll talk to you forever when you have a good attitude about the whys of why we should do something. And I bring this up because I think it's really important as we think about how we respond to the instructions of God. I know that very often when we are met with a teaching from Scripture that we should give, that we should read the Bible, that we should be selfless, that we should forgive as we are forgiven, that we should be generous to others, that we should turn the other cheek, that whenever it is possible for us, as far as it concerns us, that we should seek peace in others when peace is just not the thing that we want right now. Often in my life, and maybe yours too, we want to know the why before we offer our obedience. We want it to make sense to us before King Nate deigns to obey the instructions that I find here. And I will confess to you this, as I thought about this this week. This is not so much an indictment on your attitude, that's up to you, as it is sometimes an indictment on my preaching. Because when I preach and I give us instructions from the word, I always start with a why. Because I don't want to paint God as this ruthless dictator who sits in heaven giving you rules. I always want you to understand why it's what's best for you. But when we jump straight to the why before obedience, I think that begats in us this sense of entitlement. That if God's whys don't stack up for me, then I'm not going to engage in that behavior until they do. And I think it's important for us as believers to accept that the most important and underrated reason why we give is because our Father in heaven told us to. And I think this applies to everything. I think this applies to our quiet times. This applies to our grace with other people. This applies to any challenge that we would face. Anytime God's word tells us to do something, the first and most important reason we do it is because God told us to. Proverbs tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And I think that sometimes for me, I walk through life entitled as if I am owed a why, and God does not owe us that. So an important reason to apply to everything in our life is because our Father in Heaven told us to. Now once we accept that, and we adopt that posture of obedience, and I also want to be very clear, when I say that, I'm talking only to the Christians in the room. If you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, you've never signed up for this. You've never said, I submit my life to God. You've never said, you're the Lord of my life. I'm second. I'm going to do what you want. You've never said that. And so to you, I wouldn't say that you even need to give. And I definitely wouldn't say it's because God told you to. You haven't signed up for this yet and said, I'm going to submit myself to God's word. But if you are a Christian, then you have. So first we adopt a posture of obedience. And what we understand in that posture of obedience is that God wants what's best for us. This is what we talked about last week. What we believe is the verse I preached last week, that God actually leads us to paths of life, that in his presence there is fullness of joy. At his right hand there are pleasures forevermore. We actually believe that our God in heaven wants what's best for us and takes us to the best possible places. And so if he tells us to do something, it must be what's best for us. So we trust that about giving too. So the question really becomes this morning, not why does God want me to give, but why is giving best for me? That's really the question that we are asking this morning. Once we adopt this posture of obedience and say, yes, Father, I am a Christian, and because I am, I am submitted to you, and I will be a person who is a giving, generous person. But I also understand that as I do that, it's what's best for me, and I'd love to understand why it's what's best for me. So I've got a few reasons for you that we're just going to kind of go through. The first thing I would say to you when you ask why is giving what's best for me, I would say it's because God is generous to the generous. God is generous to generous people. Now, I have to be careful with this because this is how you get to health and wealth, right? This is how you get to me preaching to you. If you give, God's going to give back to you a hundredfold. If you give to the church this much, God's going to give you this much. Meanwhile, I'm asking you to fund my private jet and you can't figure out how to pay for a civic, okay? So that's, I don't want to go there. I'm not preaching health and wealth. I'm not telling you that the more you give to God, the more money he's going to give to you. However, this principle that God is generous to the generous is unavoidable in scripture. Jesus talks about this in Luke chapter 6, verse 38, when he says this, give and it will be given to you. Good measure pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. Corinthians says, he who sows little reaps little and he who sows much reaps much. There is a principle in the Bible that is unavoidable, that God is generous to the generous. And I'm lying to you and dishonest as a pastor if I don't say that's one of the reasons it's what's best for you. Because when we're generous to others, God is generous to us. Now what it doesn't say anywhere is that God is generous to us monetarily. What it doesn't say anywhere is that the blessings that God is going to be generous with are ones that are going to fill up our bank account. It does not say that. It just says God will be generous to you. And God's generosity comes in forms that is so much better than money. You understand? When you are generous with your resources, God is generous with his. It's an unavoidable truth of scripture. So God's generosity looks like good, rich, and deep, spiritually nourishing, life-giving friendships. God's generosity looks like a marriage that's seen some seasons but is hanging in there and loving one another. God's generosity is good relationships with your children. God's generosity is a place to go every day that you don't hate. God's generosity is when you're walking through a hard season but you know that there is a good season coming because your God is good and you know that every day won't feel like this day. God's generosity doesn't always come in the form of money. I know a family, I know a couple who they have living with them right now, a family member, and this is a family member that should not be living with them, okay? They shouldn't be there. They should be able to live on their own, but they're not. And it is really, they are expressing a great deal of generosity to this family member. And one of their friends learned about this and happens to have a cabin, a nice one, and said, go, stay at our cabin for a weekend. You need that. That's God's generosity being expressed to someone who's being generous. Do you see that? It's not always a one-for-one reciprocal return of money, but God is generous towards the generous, and so it behooves us to be generous. The next thing I would tell you is that giving acknowledges stewardship. Why is giving what's best for me? Well, because when we give, we acknowledge this concept of stewardship. Stewardship, the whole sermon could be about stewardship. The whole sermon could be about all four of the points that I'm making. But stewardship in particular is this idea that once we are believers, we understand that the things that we have in our life are not our own. They're God's. And he's entrusted them to us. To use them for the purposes of advancing his kingdom in the most effective way possible. Back in May on Mother's Day, we did a child dedication. And we had 11 children that we dedicated that day. It was great, super exciting day for Grace. And part of the dedication of the children is for the parents to acknowledge, both literally and symbolically, that this child is not mine. He is yours. She is yours. We are raising them in our home, but they belong to you, God. They are your children, Jesus. And we are raising them the best we can in the way that they should go according to your standards. But these children are not my children. John and Lily do not belong to Nate and Jen. They belong to God. And he has entrusted them to us because he believes that we have a unique capacity to form them and shape them into who they need to be for Jesus so that they move through life advancing his kingdom. They're not our kids. They're God's kids. Your house is not your house. It's God's house. Your finances are not your finances. They're God's finances. And once we realize that, that we are stewards of the things that God has given to us, then it becomes incredibly important. The primary question we ask about all the things with which we have been entrusted is, Jesus, how do I use these to further your name? How do I use these things to bring attention to you? How would you have me organize this part of my life? And so when we give, when we write the check weekly or we click the button monthly or we set it up or whatever it is we do, when we are generous and we give, it reminds us. Every time we see that come out of our account or hit our credit card, whatever it is, that's a reminder. None of this is mine anyways. It's God's. It's God's to use as he sees fit. And if he wants more, he can have more. So giving reminds us that we are stewards, not just with our money, but in everything in our life. Another thing I would say to you is that giving allows us to participate in what God is doing by being a part of the body of Christ. Giving allows us to participate in what is happening in the church, in the kingdom, in the body of Christ by being a part of the body of Christ. I love 1 Corinthians 12. I've never preached on it here, and I need to do a whole series on it because I think it's just an amazing teaching. But in 1 Corinthians 12, Paul lays out this idea that the church is a body and that everyone who's a part of the church has a part to play. The body has arms and legs and feet and hands and it has all kinds of things that are incredibly important. It has lungs that nobody ever sees, but if we don't have lungs, then the rest of it doesn't work. And it all intricately works together to get things accomplished. And I love this teaching because it reminds me as a pastor, I'm just the mouth. That's it. But y'all are the hands that touch people who need it. Y'all are the arms that are wrapped around folks who are struggling. Y'all are the feet that take the good news of the gospel into work. Y'all are the lungs that make this thing go. None of us, none of us, not me, not an elder, not somebody who's been here 30 years, none of us are more important to what's happening at Grace than anybody else. We simply have our part to play. My part is to run my mouth. Sometimes I wish somebody else would take that part. Because maybe I'd like to be the ear sometimes. But everybody has a part. And I think our part of being in the body of Christ, a church in an affluent suburb is to use our resources to serve the greater body of Christ. And when we do that as a church, we get to participate in things going on just outside of grace as well. And so to me, it's a wonderful picture of why as a church we should want to have a generous heart. Right now, we give 10% of everything that we get to ministries going on outside the walls of grace. It is one of my big long-term goals for the church to see that percentage increase a lot so that we play our part in God's greater body and who we are. But not just as we think about reaching outside of the walls of grace, but as we think about what happens within grace and how when we give, we are part of the celebrations that God allows for us here. We are part of the victories that Jesus wins here. We participate in that by giving and doing our part and being a part of the body of Christ. I think back to October of 2017. That was the first time I got to go down to Reynosa to go see the folks at Faith Ministry. Colleen of Faith Ministry fame is with us this morning. Hello, Colleen. That's a ministry in Mexico that builds houses for people who otherwise would not be able to have them. And Grace has been partners with them since before Grace existed. So more than 20 years. And I got to go down there in October of 2017 to see it for the first time. And it was a really great experience. And I'll never forget, we're sitting there and I wanted to say it's the parking lot, but that's generous. It's the place where the cars go. And we're sitting in the van and we're waiting to pull out. And I hear a car crank up and and it was as if that poor thing was being tortured. Like, it did not, every noise it made was, please, please don't make me do this. Like, and I turn around, and the bumper is in shatters. It's being held with bungee cords, and to say that it was a beater is generous to beaters, and it was being driven by the pastor down there, a younger guy named Pastor Carlos. And Pastor Carlos, he works 10 times harder than me. I could not do what he does. I asked him one time what his weekly schedule was and just the Bible studies that he has and the different towns and stuff that he touches on and the different people in his orbit. He needs a good car. He's shuttling kids back and forth. He works so hard. This is not what he should be driving. And so I kind of leaned over to some folks that were on the trip and I said, hey, I think Grace could raise enough money to buy him a truck. Can we do that? And I talked to the folks at Faith Ministry. Would it be cool if we bought him a truck? He seems to need it. And everybody was good with it. And so I came back to Grace and I said, hey, this is, as we enter Christmas, this is the thing we want to do. We want to have enough money to buy a truck for Pastor Carlos. And we did. What kind of car did we buy him? Do you remember? Yeah, Ford Escape or Ranger or something like that. But it was nice and new and way better than what he had. And some of our folks from Grace got to go down and deliver it to him. And when I watched the video, I had tears in my eyes because he was so grateful. And so blown away by the generosity of the church. And it was a really sweet moment. And the next time I went down there, the first thing Carlos wanted me to do is come see his truck and say thank you again for it. Now listen, if you were here and you gave to that Christmas offering in 2017, that joy is your joy. That happiness is your happiness. That's not watching other people do a good thing like when we watch on the internet and our heart is warmed and then we scroll to the next thing. That's your joy. You did that. You participated in that. You made that possible. That was God using your gifts and your finances making you a part of the body of Christ so that you could participate in the good work that he was doing. That joy was your joy. If you give to grace, those 11 kids that were up here being dedicated, that's your joy. When we baptize somebody, that's your joy. When you see somebody come into the church, that's your joy. We have, I think, nine people coming to Discover Grace after church today coming out of a pandemic. That's your joy that those people are becoming a part of what we're doing here at Grace. Every win that Jesus claims here at this church, when we give, we are a part of that. Because those wins don't happen if we don't give. So we give because we are a part of the body of Christ. And that allows us to participate in the work that Jesus is doing, wherever he's doing work. The last point that I would make about why it's best for us to give is that giving invites us to mirror the generosity of God that's lavished upon us. It invites us to mirror the generosity that God has given us. Now, this too could be a whole sermon, and it was. The last time we talked about giving, Doug Bergeson, one of our elders, preached on it in February of 2020, and I don't do things like this, but it's the best sermon on giving I've ever heard. If you haven't heard it, and you'd like to explore this idea more, go back into the archives. It was Grace's Going Home series, February of 2020. Find the Doug Bergeson sermon. It's an excellent one on what I'm talking about right here, How we participate in God's generosity when we give. But what I would say to you this morning is simply this, that this is to me the most compelling reason to give. Because the longer you are a believer, the deeper you grow in gratitude to the Father. There's no two ways about it. You might think that if you've lived a life however you want it, in total selfishness, in total depravity, you've done all the bad things that anybody could do. You can check off all the boxes and and then at like 35, you come to know God, and you're amazed that he's wiped the slate clean, and he's accepted you into his kingdom, that that moment is maximum gratitude for God's generosity and forgiveness. No, it's not. Because to walk with God is to understand that when you become a Christian, he doesn't just forgive you for all the stuff that you did up to that moment. He forgives you for all the crap that you're going to do too. He knows every terrible thought that you're going to have. When you get saved, whatever your lowest point is after that, whatever rock bottom looks like after you become a Christian, God was already in that moment whispering to you that he loves you and he forgives you and he wants you to come back to him. He's already in that moment. Whether that moment's behind you or ahead of you, God was in it telling you already, I've covered this too. So to walk with God and to fall short again and again and again, to arrive at that place that Paul arrives at in Romans 7 that is to me the most redemptive verse in scripture, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death. To arrive there and be refreshed anew with God's overwhelming forgiveness and generosity to us. For it to hit us like a wave again that Jesus condescended, took on human flesh, lived with us in the muck and the mire, died on the cross for us, knowing that we would crud on that very death over and over and over again in our life only to require his forgiveness yet again and then he offers and then he goes about, once he dies for us, ascending to the right hand of the Father to advocate for us and to whisper in God's ear that, yes, I've covered that too. When we sit daily in the realization of the gospel and we let the waves of Jesus' forgiveness wash over us and God's generosity flood us, we cannot help but grow in our gratitude towards God. Whatever gratitude we experienced at salvation is the starting point for how it grows through our life. And so we give as an expression of that gratitude. We give because something so incredible is happening to us that we want to find a way to be conduits of that generosity that God has given us. God has given so much to me. God has given so much to us. God has enriched our lives so much that we can't help but want to desire to enrich the lives of others. We can't help but want to express the generosity that God has lavished upon us. And so giving in his best, most pure state is simply a reaction to the overflow of God's giving in our life. That's why Paul teaches in Corinthians that God loves a cheerful giver. Don't give out of compulsion, but give because you want to. And how can we grow our want to in giving? By focusing on the face of Jesus and remembering the generosity and the forgiveness that he offers us every day. And so giving is what's best for us because it reorients us to the gospel. It reorients us towards God's goodness in our life. God has been good to me and provided me this. I am going to give this portion of this, understanding that he can replace it or he can't, but God has been so generous to me that I want to be generous to others. That's why we give. I love this verse in 2 Corinthians 9-11 says, you will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. There's this part of the Sermon on the Mount that I find incredibly intimidating, where Jesus says, let others see your good deeds, see your good works, and shine for the Father so that your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that when people come into and out of your orbit in your life, they should simply see the way that you act and want more of your Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that when people come into and out of your orbit in your life, they should simply see the way that you act and want more of your father who is in heaven. And I always think to myself, how do you act like that? A really easy way is to be generous. That's what Corinthians tells us. That God has enriched us. He's given us resources in every way. Why? So that we might enrich others. And then both you and them will turn that to thanksgiving to God. And it will point us back to the Father and our Savior Jesus. That's why giving is what's best for us. It's good for us. It develops a spirit of generosity that constantly, constantly orients us back to Jesus. So I would end this morning with a simple challenge for you. Trust God and give. Trust God and his word and give. How much should I give? Just a little bit more than you are. That's always the answer. 10%? No, that's an Old Testament thing. How much do we give in the New Testament? Just a little bit more than we are. Whatever that means for you. Who do I give to? I'll be the first to tell you. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that you have to give all of your giving to the local church. I've sat in churches, I've heard pastors say, your first 10% goes to this church and then on top of that, other places. That's not in the Bible. I'm not going to sit here and teach you that. I'm not preaching this as a self-serving thing for grace. If you believe in grace and what's happening here and you feel compelled to participate in the victories that Jesus is winning here, then give to grace. But you give wherever God is advancing his kingdom. Wherever God is working and Jesus is moving, you give there. Just give. Trust God and do it. I have never talked to a single person in my whole life who has said, you know what? I heard what the pastor said about giving and I decided to start being more generous. That was a huge mistake. I really regret it. Wish I could have that back. Never heard anybody say that. So this morning, it's simple. If you and I could have a conversation, I would simply end it by saying, just trust God. Obey Him. Be a person who's generous. Let's give together. Let me pray for us. Father, we do love you. We are so grateful for the goodness and the gifts that you've lavished upon us. God, I pray first and foremost that we would let those wash over us. I pray more than anything else that we would simply leave here increasingly overwhelmed with your goodness to us. Father, for those of us who need this, who need to think about this in our own lives, I pray that because you said so would be all the reason that we ever need. I pray that we would trust that and walk in that. Knowing that even when we don't understand obedience sometimes, that it is going to lead us to a path of life. God, give us the heart and the gratitude and the spirit to be people who are generous. I pray that each one of us would leave here determined to be just a little bit more generous than we were when we walked in today. And God, for those of us who are obedient and who respond and who give. Would we find you there, please? Would you show us yourself in that giving? Can we ask that through the generosity that you compel us to that we are brought closer to your son and so inspired and enlivened to continue to be generous. It's in his name, the one who died for us and who advocates for us, that we pray. Amen.

If you're like a lot of us, then this jar kind of looks like your life as we entered the pandemic. Lots of things in our life that are really important to us, big deals, things that we definitely want to prioritize, but maybe sometimes we have a hard time finding time for, and then other things in our life that are probably important, but maybe not essential, and we'd love to give our time to them, but we probably don't need to make big priorities out of them. But what happens in the end when we get so busy is that we don't have time for everything, right? But then with the pandemic, life, well it kind of hit the reset button. And we spent most of last year with nothing but time on our hands. And now, as we face moving back into what feels like normal, I think that we have this unique opportunity to reassemble our lives. And as we have this opportunity, I thought it would be appropriate for Grace to stop and really think critically about well, what are our big rocks? What are the things in our life that are the most important to us? What are the things that we want to prioritize above and beyond everything else and what would our life look like if we actually identified our big rocks and prioritized our time around those things? What if we put these rocks in first and made sure that there was space in our life for the things that were most important and then around those things we allowed all the other little things to kind of fill in the rest of our time and priorities? What would it look like if we were to hit the reset button on our life and reassemble it in such a way that we had time and space for what was important to us and we didn't have to worry at all about the other things that just at the end of the day, they're not nearly as big of a deal. What are our big rocks? And how do we make space for them as we enter into a new normal? Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. A little confession, after we shot that video in the back corner, I was on my hands and knees for about 15 minutes picking up all those rocks. So I'm really glad we got it there on that first take, and I didn't have to do that again. Thank you for being here. Like I said, I'm the senior pastor here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you, I would love to do that. We got a full crew here this morning. That is exciting and good. So thanks for being here. Thanks for joining us online, particularly if you're on vacation and you're still choosing to make this a part of your Sunday. We are grateful for that. I'm really looking forward to the rest of this series as we talk about exactly what I addressed in the video. This idea of coming kind of back to life, the world feeling normal again, or at least approaching it. If we can avoid this Delta variant, but that's a whole different conversation. But it feels like we're approaching that. And as we do it, we have this unique opportunity to kind of reconstruct our life around the things that are most important to us. And really, we have this opportunity to reconstruct our life around Jesus. So for the next four weeks, we're going to talk about what our big rocks are. What are the things that are the most important to us and how do we orchestrate those things around Jesus and around this pursuit of God the Father. And I said specifically that I'm looking forward to the rest of the weeks of the series because I'm not looking forward to this morning in this series. I did not wake up this morning excited for this sermon. Some Sundays I wake up and I'm really, really, I can't wait to share with you what God has laid on my heart. Last Sunday is a great example of that. This Sunday, I'm preaching about money. So when I got up this morning, it wasn't like, yes, the tithe, here we come. Nor did you get up hoping that this would be the Sunday that I talked about money. So listen, I'll just confess up front. I'm no more interested in preaching this than you are in hearing it. Okay, but we're here now. So this is what we're going to do. And really, the reason that we're talking about this is first of all, first and foremost, I don't talk about this very much at Grace. The last time we talked about this was in February of 2020, and I didn't even do it. It was Doug Bergeson, all right? So we don't do it a whole lot, but this topic is all throughout the Bible. Scripture is replete with instructions on giving about big rocks in life, if we're going to talk about the things that matter most to us and how to prioritize those around Jesus, then we have to talk about finances. We have to ask the question, what does God want us to do with our resources and with our money? And the Bible talks about it so much that it would be irresponsible as a church and I'd be irresponsible as a pastor if we didn't revisit it with some regularity. So we arrive at it this morning and as we arrive at it, I'm kind of approaching it like this. This is why I'm sitting down for this one at a table instead of standing and gesticulating and walking around wildly and trying to keep calm and not yell at you because I'm approaching this as if you and I could have a conversation about it. If you and I were able to meet for lunch or if you could come to the office or we meet somewhere and we could talk and your question was, what does the Bible have to say about giving anyways? Or maybe even, why does God want me to give? Then this is the conversation that I would want to have with you. So I'm staying seated to remind me that this is what I would like to say to each of you if we had the opportunity to sit down and talk about this together. And as we do that, I would even say to you this, that as I wrote and approached this sermon, I really had in mind the person who is new to church. Maybe you are someone who, for the first time in a long time, church is important to you again. For the first time in a long time, spiritual health is important to you again. And so maybe you're kind of trying to get reengaged spiritually. Maybe you haven't been in church a lot for the past five, 10 years, and so you're kind of starting to re-engage and maybe have never really thought critically about giving and what the Bible has to say about it. This is for the new and the non-believers, for those of us who hear that we should give in church, who probably understand that the Bible tells us to do it, but maybe we don't know all the whys around it and maybe we don't have a developed theology of why we should be generous. So this sermon in particular is for you. Now I know that at Grace, and I see the evidence of it over and over again, we have plenty of you who have a really good theology of giving, who understand tithing and being generous and why we do it. And so for you, I hope that we hit on some things that are encouraging, particularly the first point that I make. I think we should apply it to everything, not just giving. And so I hope that there's some encouraging ways to think about it. But this is really for folks who, if I sat you down and I said, what does the Bible say about giving or why should we give? This is for you if you feel like, gosh, I'm not sure how well I would answer that. So like I said, I'm approaching it as a conversation and I want to approach the conversation with what the Bible even has to say about it. And as I sought that out this week, you know, the Old Testament has a lot of very specific instructions that we are to give. The Old Testament introduces this idea of giving in generosity like a new idea. Leave the corners of your field for the sojourners, for the poor, for the widow, for the aliens, for the people who don't yet have a home. We're told to bring our tithe to the storehouse in the Old Testament. We're told there's a whole portion in Leviticus that tells us exactly, tells the children of Israel exactly how they are to give. So in the Old Testament, it's given as an instruction. It's introduced almost as a new idea. But what you find in the New Testament, if you want to read New Testament verses about giving, and the New Testament is simply the part of the Bible that comes during Jesus's life and after. And Jesus kind of changes everything. So what does the Bible have to say about giving once Jesus gets on the scene? Well, once Jesus arrives, the instructions about giving become a little bit presumptive, as if this is a thing that we already know. This is actually what Jesus says about it in the Sermon on the Mount. If you have a Bible, you can turn to Matthew chapter 6. I'm going to read you verses 1 through 4. The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus' first recorded public address. It's the first time he talks. And he has performed miracles and those people began to follow them and then he begins to preach to them and he hits on myriad topics. But then he lands on giving for a different directions. But the interesting part to me about this verse, if you want to ask what does the New Testament teach about giving, is the two uses of the word when. When you give. When you give to the needy. Jesus is talking to the huddled masses. Talking to thousands of people in the middle of the day, presumably jobless folks for the most part. And he still assumes that they know, without ever introducing giving as a new idea, he assumes that they know that they should give. He assumes that they know that God expects them to be generous people. And so he says, when you do it, do it in such a way that you're not doing it in a showy way. Do it in secret. Be discreet about it. And there's a whole teaching there. But again, what's interesting to me is when you give, when you do it. And I bring that up because I think that that's how familiar a lot of us are with giving. We might not know why we're supposed to do it. We might not know what for. We might not know how we should be compelled to do it. We just know that we are supposed to. And so the interesting question is why? Why are we supposed to give? Why does God ask us in the Old Testament when he's setting everything up and then just assume of us that we know that we ought to in the New Testament? Why does God do that? And so we're going to spend the rest of the morning kind of answering that question, and this is the conversational piece of it. Why does God want me to give? The most important reason, the most important reason and most underrated reason we give is because God tells us to. The most important, and this is key, most underrated reason that we give is because God tells us to. Now, listen, here's why I say this. When my mom was growing up, she grew up in the 60s and 70s, and Linda, her mom, my mom, all wonderful woman, she ruled with an iron fist, man. This was back in the good old days, all right, when it was nice to be a parent. You rule with an iron fist. That was a funny slip. You ruled with an iron fist. Kids are to be seen and not heard. When the company comes over, you go upstairs. You do not interrupt. And when my mom would get out of line when she was told to do something, and she said, why? She had the audacity to say, why do I have to clean your room? Why? Because I told you to. Fire would burn in Linda's eyes, right? And mom would know. She better do whatever it was she was asked to do, even if it makes no sense at all to her, because there is going to be some serious repercussions if she doesn't. She saw the fire, and so she got right. And so when my mom grew up, because I told you to, was all the reason that a child needed. Well, when that's the only reason you get, that develops in you a little bit of resentment, right? This heart of resentment because my mom is kind and sweet and not rebellious like me and really was asking genuinely why I don't understand. Why do you want me to do that right now? It seems like I should be doing something else. Why do you want me to do that? But she wasn't allowed to ask that. And so that left her frustrated and resentful. So when she had children, she decided that because I said so is never a reason. I will always take the time to explain to my children why I'm asking them to do something. And to her credit, she did that. But when you're raising Nate, that becomes a real hassle. And I was always allowed to ask why. And I love that quote. There's some quote I picked up years ago that a reason is an invitation for an argument. And that's very true. And so I was always invited into that argument. Why? Go clean your room. Why do I have to do that right now? Go mow the grass. Why? And listen, if the why wasn't good enough, well, I didn't have to do it. In my head, if the why is not good enough, if it can't justify the request, well, then your request is dumb. And so what I learned in that environment is asking why before we obey manifests a sense of entitlement. It does. Asking why before we obey manifests a sense of entitlement. It does. Asking why before we obey manifests a sense of entitlement. It manifests this idea of, okay, I understand what you want me to do, but I'm not going to do that until your reason justifies your request. And if it doesn't, if it falls short of King Nate's gauntlet of reasons, then you can forget it, buddy. So in our house, our response with Lily and then with John, which John can't talk yet. And I remember when Lily couldn't talk and people were like, just be grateful for these times. And I thought, you're jerks. You're not jerks. That makes sense to me now. John can't talk yet, but Lily can, and she likes to ask why. Lily's my daughter, for those of you who don't know me, not just some girl I talk about. But she likes to ask why. But the policy that we've adopted in our house is, first you obey, then you ask why. And this is gonna be what solves it forever. She'll have no issues when she's a parent. She'll replicate this exactly, right? But first you obey and then you ask why. First show that you're gonna be obedient. First show that you're going to submit. First show that the question is genuine and not an attempt to get out of it. And then come and we'll talk to you forever when you have a good attitude about the whys of why we should do something. And I bring this up because I think it's really important as we think about how we respond to the instructions of God. I know that very often when we are met with a teaching from Scripture that we should give, that we should read the Bible, that we should be selfless, that we should forgive as we are forgiven, that we should be generous to others, that we should turn the other cheek, that whenever it is possible for us, as far as it concerns us, that we should seek peace in others when peace is just not the thing that we want right now. Often in my life, and maybe yours too, we want to know the why before we offer our obedience. We want it to make sense to us before King Nate deigns to obey the instructions that I find here. And I will confess to you this, as I thought about this this week. This is not so much an indictment on your attitude, that's up to you, as it is sometimes an indictment on my preaching. Because when I preach and I give us instructions from the word, I always start with a why. Because I don't want to paint God as this ruthless dictator who sits in heaven giving you rules. I always want you to understand why it's what's best for you. But when we jump straight to the why before obedience, I think that begats in us this sense of entitlement. That if God's whys don't stack up for me, then I'm not going to engage in that behavior until they do. And I think it's important for us as believers to accept that the most important and underrated reason why we give is because our Father in heaven told us to. And I think this applies to everything. I think this applies to our quiet times. This applies to our grace with other people. This applies to any challenge that we would face. Anytime God's word tells us to do something, the first and most important reason we do it is because God told us to. Proverbs tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And I think that sometimes for me, I walk through life entitled as if I am owed a why, and God does not owe us that. So an important reason to apply to everything in our life is because our Father in Heaven told us to. Now once we accept that, and we adopt that posture of obedience, and I also want to be very clear, when I say that, I'm talking only to the Christians in the room. If you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, you've never signed up for this. You've never said, I submit my life to God. You've never said, you're the Lord of my life. I'm second. I'm going to do what you want. You've never said that. And so to you, I wouldn't say that you even need to give. And I definitely wouldn't say it's because God told you to. You haven't signed up for this yet and said, I'm going to submit myself to God's word. But if you are a Christian, then you have. So first we adopt a posture of obedience. And what we understand in that posture of obedience is that God wants what's best for us. This is what we talked about last week. What we believe is the verse I preached last week, that God actually leads us to paths of life, that in his presence there is fullness of joy. At his right hand there are pleasures forevermore. We actually believe that our God in heaven wants what's best for us and takes us to the best possible places. And so if he tells us to do something, it must be what's best for us. So we trust that about giving too. So the question really becomes this morning, not why does God want me to give, but why is giving best for me? That's really the question that we are asking this morning. Once we adopt this posture of obedience and say, yes, Father, I am a Christian, and because I am, I am submitted to you, and I will be a person who is a giving, generous person. But I also understand that as I do that, it's what's best for me, and I'd love to understand why it's what's best for me. So I've got a few reasons for you that we're just going to kind of go through. The first thing I would say to you when you ask why is giving what's best for me, I would say it's because God is generous to the generous. God is generous to generous people. Now, I have to be careful with this because this is how you get to health and wealth, right? This is how you get to me preaching to you. If you give, God's going to give back to you a hundredfold. If you give to the church this much, God's going to give you this much. Meanwhile, I'm asking you to fund my private jet and you can't figure out how to pay for a civic, okay? So that's, I don't want to go there. I'm not preaching health and wealth. I'm not telling you that the more you give to God, the more money he's going to give to you. However, this principle that God is generous to the generous is unavoidable in scripture. Jesus talks about this in Luke chapter 6, verse 38, when he says this, give and it will be given to you. Good measure pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. Corinthians says, he who sows little reaps little and he who sows much reaps much. There is a principle in the Bible that is unavoidable, that God is generous to the generous. And I'm lying to you and dishonest as a pastor if I don't say that's one of the reasons it's what's best for you. Because when we're generous to others, God is generous to us. Now what it doesn't say anywhere is that God is generous to us monetarily. What it doesn't say anywhere is that the blessings that God is going to be generous with are ones that are going to fill up our bank account. It does not say that. It just says God will be generous to you. And God's generosity comes in forms that is so much better than money. You understand? When you are generous with your resources, God is generous with his. It's an unavoidable truth of scripture. So God's generosity looks like good, rich, and deep, spiritually nourishing, life-giving friendships. God's generosity looks like a marriage that's seen some seasons but is hanging in there and loving one another. God's generosity is good relationships with your children. God's generosity is a place to go every day that you don't hate. God's generosity is when you're walking through a hard season but you know that there is a good season coming because your God is good and you know that every day won't feel like this day. God's generosity doesn't always come in the form of money. I know a family, I know a couple who they have living with them right now, a family member, and this is a family member that should not be living with them, okay? They shouldn't be there. They should be able to live on their own, but they're not. And it is really, they are expressing a great deal of generosity to this family member. And one of their friends learned about this and happens to have a cabin, a nice one, and said, go, stay at our cabin for a weekend. You need that. That's God's generosity being expressed to someone who's being generous. Do you see that? It's not always a one-for-one reciprocal return of money, but God is generous towards the generous, and so it behooves us to be generous. The next thing I would tell you is that giving acknowledges stewardship. Why is giving what's best for me? Well, because when we give, we acknowledge this concept of stewardship. Stewardship, the whole sermon could be about stewardship. The whole sermon could be about all four of the points that I'm making. But stewardship in particular is this idea that once we are believers, we understand that the things that we have in our life are not our own. They're God's. And he's entrusted them to us. To use them for the purposes of advancing his kingdom in the most effective way possible. Back in May on Mother's Day, we did a child dedication. And we had 11 children that we dedicated that day. It was great, super exciting day for Grace. And part of the dedication of the children is for the parents to acknowledge, both literally and symbolically, that this child is not mine. He is yours. She is yours. We are raising them in our home, but they belong to you, God. They are your children, Jesus. And we are raising them the best we can in the way that they should go according to your standards. But these children are not my children. John and Lily do not belong to Nate and Jen. They belong to God. And he has entrusted them to us because he believes that we have a unique capacity to form them and shape them into who they need to be for Jesus so that they move through life advancing his kingdom. They're not our kids. They're God's kids. Your house is not your house. It's God's house. Your finances are not your finances. They're God's finances. And once we realize that, that we are stewards of the things that God has given to us, then it becomes incredibly important. The primary question we ask about all the things with which we have been entrusted is, Jesus, how do I use these to further your name? How do I use these things to bring attention to you? How would you have me organize this part of my life? And so when we give, when we write the check weekly or we click the button monthly or we set it up or whatever it is we do, when we are generous and we give, it reminds us. Every time we see that come out of our account or hit our credit card, whatever it is, that's a reminder. None of this is mine anyways. It's God's. It's God's to use as he sees fit. And if he wants more, he can have more. So giving reminds us that we are stewards, not just with our money, but in everything in our life. Another thing I would say to you is that giving allows us to participate in what God is doing by being a part of the body of Christ. Giving allows us to participate in what is happening in the church, in the kingdom, in the body of Christ by being a part of the body of Christ. I love 1 Corinthians 12. I've never preached on it here, and I need to do a whole series on it because I think it's just an amazing teaching. But in 1 Corinthians 12, Paul lays out this idea that the church is a body and that everyone who's a part of the church has a part to play. The body has arms and legs and feet and hands and it has all kinds of things that are incredibly important. It has lungs that nobody ever sees, but if we don't have lungs, then the rest of it doesn't work. And it all intricately works together to get things accomplished. And I love this teaching because it reminds me as a pastor, I'm just the mouth. That's it. But y'all are the hands that touch people who need it. Y'all are the arms that are wrapped around folks who are struggling. Y'all are the feet that take the good news of the gospel into work. Y'all are the lungs that make this thing go. None of us, none of us, not me, not an elder, not somebody who's been here 30 years, none of us are more important to what's happening at Grace than anybody else. We simply have our part to play. My part is to run my mouth. Sometimes I wish somebody else would take that part. Because maybe I'd like to be the ear sometimes. But everybody has a part. And I think our part of being in the body of Christ, a church in an affluent suburb is to use our resources to serve the greater body of Christ. And when we do that as a church, we get to participate in things going on just outside of grace as well. And so to me, it's a wonderful picture of why as a church we should want to have a generous heart. Right now, we give 10% of everything that we get to ministries going on outside the walls of grace. It is one of my big long-term goals for the church to see that percentage increase a lot so that we play our part in God's greater body and who we are. But not just as we think about reaching outside of the walls of grace, but as we think about what happens within grace and how when we give, we are part of the celebrations that God allows for us here. We are part of the victories that Jesus wins here. We participate in that by giving and doing our part and being a part of the body of Christ. I think back to October of 2017. That was the first time I got to go down to Reynosa to go see the folks at Faith Ministry. Colleen of Faith Ministry fame is with us this morning. Hello, Colleen. That's a ministry in Mexico that builds houses for people who otherwise would not be able to have them. And Grace has been partners with them since before Grace existed. So more than 20 years. And I got to go down there in October of 2017 to see it for the first time. And it was a really great experience. And I'll never forget, we're sitting there and I wanted to say it's the parking lot, but that's generous. It's the place where the cars go. And we're sitting in the van and we're waiting to pull out. And I hear a car crank up and and it was as if that poor thing was being tortured. Like, it did not, every noise it made was, please, please don't make me do this. Like, and I turn around, and the bumper is in shatters. It's being held with bungee cords, and to say that it was a beater is generous to beaters, and it was being driven by the pastor down there, a younger guy named Pastor Carlos. And Pastor Carlos, he works 10 times harder than me. I could not do what he does. I asked him one time what his weekly schedule was and just the Bible studies that he has and the different towns and stuff that he touches on and the different people in his orbit. He needs a good car. He's shuttling kids back and forth. He works so hard. This is not what he should be driving. And so I kind of leaned over to some folks that were on the trip and I said, hey, I think Grace could raise enough money to buy him a truck. Can we do that? And I talked to the folks at Faith Ministry. Would it be cool if we bought him a truck? He seems to need it. And everybody was good with it. And so I came back to Grace and I said, hey, this is, as we enter Christmas, this is the thing we want to do. We want to have enough money to buy a truck for Pastor Carlos. And we did. What kind of car did we buy him? Do you remember? Yeah, Ford Escape or Ranger or something like that. But it was nice and new and way better than what he had. And some of our folks from Grace got to go down and deliver it to him. And when I watched the video, I had tears in my eyes because he was so grateful. And so blown away by the generosity of the church. And it was a really sweet moment. And the next time I went down there, the first thing Carlos wanted me to do is come see his truck and say thank you again for it. Now listen, if you were here and you gave to that Christmas offering in 2017, that joy is your joy. That happiness is your happiness. That's not watching other people do a good thing like when we watch on the internet and our heart is warmed and then we scroll to the next thing. That's your joy. You did that. You participated in that. You made that possible. That was God using your gifts and your finances making you a part of the body of Christ so that you could participate in the good work that he was doing. That joy was your joy. If you give to grace, those 11 kids that were up here being dedicated, that's your joy. When we baptize somebody, that's your joy. When you see somebody come into the church, that's your joy. We have, I think, nine people coming to Discover Grace after church today coming out of a pandemic. That's your joy that those people are becoming a part of what we're doing here at Grace. Every win that Jesus claims here at this church, when we give, we are a part of that. Because those wins don't happen if we don't give. So we give because we are a part of the body of Christ. And that allows us to participate in the work that Jesus is doing, wherever he's doing work. The last point that I would make about why it's best for us to give is that giving invites us to mirror the generosity of God that's lavished upon us. It invites us to mirror the generosity that God has given us. Now, this too could be a whole sermon, and it was. The last time we talked about giving, Doug Bergeson, one of our elders, preached on it in February of 2020, and I don't do things like this, but it's the best sermon on giving I've ever heard. If you haven't heard it, and you'd like to explore this idea more, go back into the archives. It was Grace's Going Home series, February of 2020. Find the Doug Bergeson sermon. It's an excellent one on what I'm talking about right here, How we participate in God's generosity when we give. But what I would say to you this morning is simply this, that this is to me the most compelling reason to give. Because the longer you are a believer, the deeper you grow in gratitude to the Father. There's no two ways about it. You might think that if you've lived a life however you want it, in total selfishness, in total depravity, you've done all the bad things that anybody could do. You can check off all the boxes and and then at like 35, you come to know God, and you're amazed that he's wiped the slate clean, and he's accepted you into his kingdom, that that moment is maximum gratitude for God's generosity and forgiveness. No, it's not. Because to walk with God is to understand that when you become a Christian, he doesn't just forgive you for all the stuff that you did up to that moment. He forgives you for all the crap that you're going to do too. He knows every terrible thought that you're going to have. When you get saved, whatever your lowest point is after that, whatever rock bottom looks like after you become a Christian, God was already in that moment whispering to you that he loves you and he forgives you and he wants you to come back to him. He's already in that moment. Whether that moment's behind you or ahead of you, God was in it telling you already, I've covered this too. So to walk with God and to fall short again and again and again, to arrive at that place that Paul arrives at in Romans 7 that is to me the most redemptive verse in scripture, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death. To arrive there and be refreshed anew with God's overwhelming forgiveness and generosity to us. For it to hit us like a wave again that Jesus condescended, took on human flesh, lived with us in the muck and the mire, died on the cross for us, knowing that we would crud on that very death over and over and over again in our life only to require his forgiveness yet again and then he offers and then he goes about, once he dies for us, ascending to the right hand of the Father to advocate for us and to whisper in God's ear that, yes, I've covered that too. When we sit daily in the realization of the gospel and we let the waves of Jesus' forgiveness wash over us and God's generosity flood us, we cannot help but grow in our gratitude towards God. Whatever gratitude we experienced at salvation is the starting point for how it grows through our life. And so we give as an expression of that gratitude. We give because something so incredible is happening to us that we want to find a way to be conduits of that generosity that God has given us. God has given so much to me. God has given so much to us. God has enriched our lives so much that we can't help but want to desire to enrich the lives of others. We can't help but want to express the generosity that God has lavished upon us. And so giving in his best, most pure state is simply a reaction to the overflow of God's giving in our life. That's why Paul teaches in Corinthians that God loves a cheerful giver. Don't give out of compulsion, but give because you want to. And how can we grow our want to in giving? By focusing on the face of Jesus and remembering the generosity and the forgiveness that he offers us every day. And so giving is what's best for us because it reorients us to the gospel. It reorients us towards God's goodness in our life. God has been good to me and provided me this. I am going to give this portion of this, understanding that he can replace it or he can't, but God has been so generous to me that I want to be generous to others. That's why we give. I love this verse in 2 Corinthians 9-11 says, you will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. There's this part of the Sermon on the Mount that I find incredibly intimidating, where Jesus says, let others see your good deeds, see your good works, and shine for the Father so that your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that when people come into and out of your orbit in your life, they should simply see the way that you act and want more of your Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that when people come into and out of your orbit in your life, they should simply see the way that you act and want more of your father who is in heaven. And I always think to myself, how do you act like that? A really easy way is to be generous. That's what Corinthians tells us. That God has enriched us. He's given us resources in every way. Why? So that we might enrich others. And then both you and them will turn that to thanksgiving to God. And it will point us back to the Father and our Savior Jesus. That's why giving is what's best for us. It's good for us. It develops a spirit of generosity that constantly, constantly orients us back to Jesus. So I would end this morning with a simple challenge for you. Trust God and give. Trust God and his word and give. How much should I give? Just a little bit more than you are. That's always the answer. 10%? No, that's an Old Testament thing. How much do we give in the New Testament? Just a little bit more than we are. Whatever that means for you. Who do I give to? I'll be the first to tell you. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that you have to give all of your giving to the local church. I've sat in churches, I've heard pastors say, your first 10% goes to this church and then on top of that, other places. That's not in the Bible. I'm not going to sit here and teach you that. I'm not preaching this as a self-serving thing for grace. If you believe in grace and what's happening here and you feel compelled to participate in the victories that Jesus is winning here, then give to grace. But you give wherever God is advancing his kingdom. Wherever God is working and Jesus is moving, you give there. Just give. Trust God and do it. I have never talked to a single person in my whole life who has said, you know what? I heard what the pastor said about giving and I decided to start being more generous. That was a huge mistake. I really regret it. Wish I could have that back. Never heard anybody say that. So this morning, it's simple. If you and I could have a conversation, I would simply end it by saying, just trust God. Obey Him. Be a person who's generous. Let's give together. Let me pray for us. Father, we do love you. We are so grateful for the goodness and the gifts that you've lavished upon us. God, I pray first and foremost that we would let those wash over us. I pray more than anything else that we would simply leave here increasingly overwhelmed with your goodness to us. Father, for those of us who need this, who need to think about this in our own lives, I pray that because you said so would be all the reason that we ever need. I pray that we would trust that and walk in that. Knowing that even when we don't understand obedience sometimes, that it is going to lead us to a path of life. God, give us the heart and the gratitude and the spirit to be people who are generous. I pray that each one of us would leave here determined to be just a little bit more generous than we were when we walked in today. And God, for those of us who are obedient and who respond and who give. Would we find you there, please? Would you show us yourself in that giving? Can we ask that through the generosity that you compel us to that we are brought closer to your son and so inspired and enlivened to continue to be generous. It's in his name, the one who died for us and who advocates for us, that we pray. Amen.

If you're like a lot of us, then this jar kind of looks like your life as we entered the pandemic. Lots of things in our life that are really important to us, big deals, things that we definitely want to prioritize, but maybe sometimes we have a hard time finding time for, and then other things in our life that are probably important, but maybe not essential, and we'd love to give our time to them, but we probably don't need to make big priorities out of them. But what happens in the end when we get so busy is that we don't have time for everything, right? But then with the pandemic, life, well it kind of hit the reset button. And we spent most of last year with nothing but time on our hands. And now, as we face moving back into what feels like normal, I think that we have this unique opportunity to reassemble our lives. And as we have this opportunity, I thought it would be appropriate for Grace to stop and really think critically about well, what are our big rocks? What are the things in our life that are the most important to us? What are the things that we want to prioritize above and beyond everything else and what would our life look like if we actually identified our big rocks and prioritized our time around those things? What if we put these rocks in first and made sure that there was space in our life for the things that were most important and then around those things we allowed all the other little things to kind of fill in the rest of our time and priorities? What would it look like if we were to hit the reset button on our life and reassemble it in such a way that we had time and space for what was important to us and we didn't have to worry at all about the other things that just at the end of the day, they're not nearly as big of a deal. What are our big rocks? And how do we make space for them as we enter into a new normal? Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. A little confession, after we shot that video in the back corner, I was on my hands and knees for about 15 minutes picking up all those rocks. So I'm really glad we got it there on that first take, and I didn't have to do that again. Thank you for being here. Like I said, I'm the senior pastor here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you, I would love to do that. We got a full crew here this morning. That is exciting and good. So thanks for being here. Thanks for joining us online, particularly if you're on vacation and you're still choosing to make this a part of your Sunday. We are grateful for that. I'm really looking forward to the rest of this series as we talk about exactly what I addressed in the video. This idea of coming kind of back to life, the world feeling normal again, or at least approaching it. If we can avoid this Delta variant, but that's a whole different conversation. But it feels like we're approaching that. And as we do it, we have this unique opportunity to kind of reconstruct our life around the things that are most important to us. And really, we have this opportunity to reconstruct our life around Jesus. So for the next four weeks, we're going to talk about what our big rocks are. What are the things that are the most important to us and how do we orchestrate those things around Jesus and around this pursuit of God the Father. And I said specifically that I'm looking forward to the rest of the weeks of the series because I'm not looking forward to this morning in this series. I did not wake up this morning excited for this sermon. Some Sundays I wake up and I'm really, really, I can't wait to share with you what God has laid on my heart. Last Sunday is a great example of that. This Sunday, I'm preaching about money. So when I got up this morning, it wasn't like, yes, the tithe, here we come. Nor did you get up hoping that this would be the Sunday that I talked about money. So listen, I'll just confess up front. I'm no more interested in preaching this than you are in hearing it. Okay, but we're here now. So this is what we're going to do. And really, the reason that we're talking about this is first of all, first and foremost, I don't talk about this very much at Grace. The last time we talked about this was in February of 2020, and I didn't even do it. It was Doug Bergeson, all right? So we don't do it a whole lot, but this topic is all throughout the Bible. Scripture is replete with instructions on giving about big rocks in life, if we're going to talk about the things that matter most to us and how to prioritize those around Jesus, then we have to talk about finances. We have to ask the question, what does God want us to do with our resources and with our money? And the Bible talks about it so much that it would be irresponsible as a church and I'd be irresponsible as a pastor if we didn't revisit it with some regularity. So we arrive at it this morning and as we arrive at it, I'm kind of approaching it like this. This is why I'm sitting down for this one at a table instead of standing and gesticulating and walking around wildly and trying to keep calm and not yell at you because I'm approaching this as if you and I could have a conversation about it. If you and I were able to meet for lunch or if you could come to the office or we meet somewhere and we could talk and your question was, what does the Bible have to say about giving anyways? Or maybe even, why does God want me to give? Then this is the conversation that I would want to have with you. So I'm staying seated to remind me that this is what I would like to say to each of you if we had the opportunity to sit down and talk about this together. And as we do that, I would even say to you this, that as I wrote and approached this sermon, I really had in mind the person who is new to church. Maybe you are someone who, for the first time in a long time, church is important to you again. For the first time in a long time, spiritual health is important to you again. And so maybe you're kind of trying to get reengaged spiritually. Maybe you haven't been in church a lot for the past five, 10 years, and so you're kind of starting to re-engage and maybe have never really thought critically about giving and what the Bible has to say about it. This is for the new and the non-believers, for those of us who hear that we should give in church, who probably understand that the Bible tells us to do it, but maybe we don't know all the whys around it and maybe we don't have a developed theology of why we should be generous. So this sermon in particular is for you. Now I know that at Grace, and I see the evidence of it over and over again, we have plenty of you who have a really good theology of giving, who understand tithing and being generous and why we do it. And so for you, I hope that we hit on some things that are encouraging, particularly the first point that I make. I think we should apply it to everything, not just giving. And so I hope that there's some encouraging ways to think about it. But this is really for folks who, if I sat you down and I said, what does the Bible say about giving or why should we give? This is for you if you feel like, gosh, I'm not sure how well I would answer that. So like I said, I'm approaching it as a conversation and I want to approach the conversation with what the Bible even has to say about it. And as I sought that out this week, you know, the Old Testament has a lot of very specific instructions that we are to give. The Old Testament introduces this idea of giving in generosity like a new idea. Leave the corners of your field for the sojourners, for the poor, for the widow, for the aliens, for the people who don't yet have a home. We're told to bring our tithe to the storehouse in the Old Testament. We're told there's a whole portion in Leviticus that tells us exactly, tells the children of Israel exactly how they are to give. So in the Old Testament, it's given as an instruction. It's introduced almost as a new idea. But what you find in the New Testament, if you want to read New Testament verses about giving, and the New Testament is simply the part of the Bible that comes during Jesus's life and after. And Jesus kind of changes everything. So what does the Bible have to say about giving once Jesus gets on the scene? Well, once Jesus arrives, the instructions about giving become a little bit presumptive, as if this is a thing that we already know. This is actually what Jesus says about it in the Sermon on the Mount. If you have a Bible, you can turn to Matthew chapter 6. I'm going to read you verses 1 through 4. The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus' first recorded public address. It's the first time he talks. And he has performed miracles and those people began to follow them and then he begins to preach to them and he hits on myriad topics. But then he lands on giving for a different directions. But the interesting part to me about this verse, if you want to ask what does the New Testament teach about giving, is the two uses of the word when. When you give. When you give to the needy. Jesus is talking to the huddled masses. Talking to thousands of people in the middle of the day, presumably jobless folks for the most part. And he still assumes that they know, without ever introducing giving as a new idea, he assumes that they know that they should give. He assumes that they know that God expects them to be generous people. And so he says, when you do it, do it in such a way that you're not doing it in a showy way. Do it in secret. Be discreet about it. And there's a whole teaching there. But again, what's interesting to me is when you give, when you do it. And I bring that up because I think that that's how familiar a lot of us are with giving. We might not know why we're supposed to do it. We might not know what for. We might not know how we should be compelled to do it. We just know that we are supposed to. And so the interesting question is why? Why are we supposed to give? Why does God ask us in the Old Testament when he's setting everything up and then just assume of us that we know that we ought to in the New Testament? Why does God do that? And so we're going to spend the rest of the morning kind of answering that question, and this is the conversational piece of it. Why does God want me to give? The most important reason, the most important reason and most underrated reason we give is because God tells us to. The most important, and this is key, most underrated reason that we give is because God tells us to. Now, listen, here's why I say this. When my mom was growing up, she grew up in the 60s and 70s, and Linda, her mom, my mom, all wonderful woman, she ruled with an iron fist, man. This was back in the good old days, all right, when it was nice to be a parent. You rule with an iron fist. That was a funny slip. You ruled with an iron fist. Kids are to be seen and not heard. When the company comes over, you go upstairs. You do not interrupt. And when my mom would get out of line when she was told to do something, and she said, why? She had the audacity to say, why do I have to clean your room? Why? Because I told you to. Fire would burn in Linda's eyes, right? And mom would know. She better do whatever it was she was asked to do, even if it makes no sense at all to her, because there is going to be some serious repercussions if she doesn't. She saw the fire, and so she got right. And so when my mom grew up, because I told you to, was all the reason that a child needed. Well, when that's the only reason you get, that develops in you a little bit of resentment, right? This heart of resentment because my mom is kind and sweet and not rebellious like me and really was asking genuinely why I don't understand. Why do you want me to do that right now? It seems like I should be doing something else. Why do you want me to do that? But she wasn't allowed to ask that. And so that left her frustrated and resentful. So when she had children, she decided that because I said so is never a reason. I will always take the time to explain to my children why I'm asking them to do something. And to her credit, she did that. But when you're raising Nate, that becomes a real hassle. And I was always allowed to ask why. And I love that quote. There's some quote I picked up years ago that a reason is an invitation for an argument. And that's very true. And so I was always invited into that argument. Why? Go clean your room. Why do I have to do that right now? Go mow the grass. Why? And listen, if the why wasn't good enough, well, I didn't have to do it. In my head, if the why is not good enough, if it can't justify the request, well, then your request is dumb. And so what I learned in that environment is asking why before we obey manifests a sense of entitlement. It does. Asking why before we obey manifests a sense of entitlement. It does. Asking why before we obey manifests a sense of entitlement. It manifests this idea of, okay, I understand what you want me to do, but I'm not going to do that until your reason justifies your request. And if it doesn't, if it falls short of King Nate's gauntlet of reasons, then you can forget it, buddy. So in our house, our response with Lily and then with John, which John can't talk yet. And I remember when Lily couldn't talk and people were like, just be grateful for these times. And I thought, you're jerks. You're not jerks. That makes sense to me now. John can't talk yet, but Lily can, and she likes to ask why. Lily's my daughter, for those of you who don't know me, not just some girl I talk about. But she likes to ask why. But the policy that we've adopted in our house is, first you obey, then you ask why. And this is gonna be what solves it forever. She'll have no issues when she's a parent. She'll replicate this exactly, right? But first you obey and then you ask why. First show that you're gonna be obedient. First show that you're going to submit. First show that the question is genuine and not an attempt to get out of it. And then come and we'll talk to you forever when you have a good attitude about the whys of why we should do something. And I bring this up because I think it's really important as we think about how we respond to the instructions of God. I know that very often when we are met with a teaching from Scripture that we should give, that we should read the Bible, that we should be selfless, that we should forgive as we are forgiven, that we should be generous to others, that we should turn the other cheek, that whenever it is possible for us, as far as it concerns us, that we should seek peace in others when peace is just not the thing that we want right now. Often in my life, and maybe yours too, we want to know the why before we offer our obedience. We want it to make sense to us before King Nate deigns to obey the instructions that I find here. And I will confess to you this, as I thought about this this week. This is not so much an indictment on your attitude, that's up to you, as it is sometimes an indictment on my preaching. Because when I preach and I give us instructions from the word, I always start with a why. Because I don't want to paint God as this ruthless dictator who sits in heaven giving you rules. I always want you to understand why it's what's best for you. But when we jump straight to the why before obedience, I think that begats in us this sense of entitlement. That if God's whys don't stack up for me, then I'm not going to engage in that behavior until they do. And I think it's important for us as believers to accept that the most important and underrated reason why we give is because our Father in heaven told us to. And I think this applies to everything. I think this applies to our quiet times. This applies to our grace with other people. This applies to any challenge that we would face. Anytime God's word tells us to do something, the first and most important reason we do it is because God told us to. Proverbs tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And I think that sometimes for me, I walk through life entitled as if I am owed a why, and God does not owe us that. So an important reason to apply to everything in our life is because our Father in Heaven told us to. Now once we accept that, and we adopt that posture of obedience, and I also want to be very clear, when I say that, I'm talking only to the Christians in the room. If you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, you've never signed up for this. You've never said, I submit my life to God. You've never said, you're the Lord of my life. I'm second. I'm going to do what you want. You've never said that. And so to you, I wouldn't say that you even need to give. And I definitely wouldn't say it's because God told you to. You haven't signed up for this yet and said, I'm going to submit myself to God's word. But if you are a Christian, then you have. So first we adopt a posture of obedience. And what we understand in that posture of obedience is that God wants what's best for us. This is what we talked about last week. What we believe is the verse I preached last week, that God actually leads us to paths of life, that in his presence there is fullness of joy. At his right hand there are pleasures forevermore. We actually believe that our God in heaven wants what's best for us and takes us to the best possible places. And so if he tells us to do something, it must be what's best for us. So we trust that about giving too. So the question really becomes this morning, not why does God want me to give, but why is giving best for me? That's really the question that we are asking this morning. Once we adopt this posture of obedience and say, yes, Father, I am a Christian, and because I am, I am submitted to you, and I will be a person who is a giving, generous person. But I also understand that as I do that, it's what's best for me, and I'd love to understand why it's what's best for me. So I've got a few reasons for you that we're just going to kind of go through. The first thing I would say to you when you ask why is giving what's best for me, I would say it's because God is generous to the generous. God is generous to generous people. Now, I have to be careful with this because this is how you get to health and wealth, right? This is how you get to me preaching to you. If you give, God's going to give back to you a hundredfold. If you give to the church this much, God's going to give you this much. Meanwhile, I'm asking you to fund my private jet and you can't figure out how to pay for a civic, okay? So that's, I don't want to go there. I'm not preaching health and wealth. I'm not telling you that the more you give to God, the more money he's going to give to you. However, this principle that God is generous to the generous is unavoidable in scripture. Jesus talks about this in Luke chapter 6, verse 38, when he says this, give and it will be given to you. Good measure pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. Corinthians says, he who sows little reaps little and he who sows much reaps much. There is a principle in the Bible that is unavoidable, that God is generous to the generous. And I'm lying to you and dishonest as a pastor if I don't say that's one of the reasons it's what's best for you. Because when we're generous to others, God is generous to us. Now what it doesn't say anywhere is that God is generous to us monetarily. What it doesn't say anywhere is that the blessings that God is going to be generous with are ones that are going to fill up our bank account. It does not say that. It just says God will be generous to you. And God's generosity comes in forms that is so much better than money. You understand? When you are generous with your resources, God is generous with his. It's an unavoidable truth of scripture. So God's generosity looks like good, rich, and deep, spiritually nourishing, life-giving friendships. God's generosity looks like a marriage that's seen some seasons but is hanging in there and loving one another. God's generosity is good relationships with your children. God's generosity is a place to go every day that you don't hate. God's generosity is when you're walking through a hard season but you know that there is a good season coming because your God is good and you know that every day won't feel like this day. God's generosity doesn't always come in the form of money. I know a family, I know a couple who they have living with them right now, a family member, and this is a family member that should not be living with them, okay? They shouldn't be there. They should be able to live on their own, but they're not. And it is really, they are expressing a great deal of generosity to this family member. And one of their friends learned about this and happens to have a cabin, a nice one, and said, go, stay at our cabin for a weekend. You need that. That's God's generosity being expressed to someone who's being generous. Do you see that? It's not always a one-for-one reciprocal return of money, but God is generous towards the generous, and so it behooves us to be generous. The next thing I would tell you is that giving acknowledges stewardship. Why is giving what's best for me? Well, because when we give, we acknowledge this concept of stewardship. Stewardship, the whole sermon could be about stewardship. The whole sermon could be about all four of the points that I'm making. But stewardship in particular is this idea that once we are believers, we understand that the things that we have in our life are not our own. They're God's. And he's entrusted them to us. To use them for the purposes of advancing his kingdom in the most effective way possible. Back in May on Mother's Day, we did a child dedication. And we had 11 children that we dedicated that day. It was great, super exciting day for Grace. And part of the dedication of the children is for the parents to acknowledge, both literally and symbolically, that this child is not mine. He is yours. She is yours. We are raising them in our home, but they belong to you, God. They are your children, Jesus. And we are raising them the best we can in the way that they should go according to your standards. But these children are not my children. John and Lily do not belong to Nate and Jen. They belong to God. And he has entrusted them to us because he believes that we have a unique capacity to form them and shape them into who they need to be for Jesus so that they move through life advancing his kingdom. They're not our kids. They're God's kids. Your house is not your house. It's God's house. Your finances are not your finances. They're God's finances. And once we realize that, that we are stewards of the things that God has given to us, then it becomes incredibly important. The primary question we ask about all the things with which we have been entrusted is, Jesus, how do I use these to further your name? How do I use these things to bring attention to you? How would you have me organize this part of my life? And so when we give, when we write the check weekly or we click the button monthly or we set it up or whatever it is we do, when we are generous and we give, it reminds us. Every time we see that come out of our account or hit our credit card, whatever it is, that's a reminder. None of this is mine anyways. It's God's. It's God's to use as he sees fit. And if he wants more, he can have more. So giving reminds us that we are stewards, not just with our money, but in everything in our life. Another thing I would say to you is that giving allows us to participate in what God is doing by being a part of the body of Christ. Giving allows us to participate in what is happening in the church, in the kingdom, in the body of Christ by being a part of the body of Christ. I love 1 Corinthians 12. I've never preached on it here, and I need to do a whole series on it because I think it's just an amazing teaching. But in 1 Corinthians 12, Paul lays out this idea that the church is a body and that everyone who's a part of the church has a part to play. The body has arms and legs and feet and hands and it has all kinds of things that are incredibly important. It has lungs that nobody ever sees, but if we don't have lungs, then the rest of it doesn't work. And it all intricately works together to get things accomplished. And I love this teaching because it reminds me as a pastor, I'm just the mouth. That's it. But y'all are the hands that touch people who need it. Y'all are the arms that are wrapped around folks who are struggling. Y'all are the feet that take the good news of the gospel into work. Y'all are the lungs that make this thing go. None of us, none of us, not me, not an elder, not somebody who's been here 30 years, none of us are more important to what's happening at Grace than anybody else. We simply have our part to play. My part is to run my mouth. Sometimes I wish somebody else would take that part. Because maybe I'd like to be the ear sometimes. But everybody has a part. And I think our part of being in the body of Christ, a church in an affluent suburb is to use our resources to serve the greater body of Christ. And when we do that as a church, we get to participate in things going on just outside of grace as well. And so to me, it's a wonderful picture of why as a church we should want to have a generous heart. Right now, we give 10% of everything that we get to ministries going on outside the walls of grace. It is one of my big long-term goals for the church to see that percentage increase a lot so that we play our part in God's greater body and who we are. But not just as we think about reaching outside of the walls of grace, but as we think about what happens within grace and how when we give, we are part of the celebrations that God allows for us here. We are part of the victories that Jesus wins here. We participate in that by giving and doing our part and being a part of the body of Christ. I think back to October of 2017. That was the first time I got to go down to Reynosa to go see the folks at Faith Ministry. Colleen of Faith Ministry fame is with us this morning. Hello, Colleen. That's a ministry in Mexico that builds houses for people who otherwise would not be able to have them. And Grace has been partners with them since before Grace existed. So more than 20 years. And I got to go down there in October of 2017 to see it for the first time. And it was a really great experience. And I'll never forget, we're sitting there and I wanted to say it's the parking lot, but that's generous. It's the place where the cars go. And we're sitting in the van and we're waiting to pull out. And I hear a car crank up and and it was as if that poor thing was being tortured. Like, it did not, every noise it made was, please, please don't make me do this. Like, and I turn around, and the bumper is in shatters. It's being held with bungee cords, and to say that it was a beater is generous to beaters, and it was being driven by the pastor down there, a younger guy named Pastor Carlos. And Pastor Carlos, he works 10 times harder than me. I could not do what he does. I asked him one time what his weekly schedule was and just the Bible studies that he has and the different towns and stuff that he touches on and the different people in his orbit. He needs a good car. He's shuttling kids back and forth. He works so hard. This is not what he should be driving. And so I kind of leaned over to some folks that were on the trip and I said, hey, I think Grace could raise enough money to buy him a truck. Can we do that? And I talked to the folks at Faith Ministry. Would it be cool if we bought him a truck? He seems to need it. And everybody was good with it. And so I came back to Grace and I said, hey, this is, as we enter Christmas, this is the thing we want to do. We want to have enough money to buy a truck for Pastor Carlos. And we did. What kind of car did we buy him? Do you remember? Yeah, Ford Escape or Ranger or something like that. But it was nice and new and way better than what he had. And some of our folks from Grace got to go down and deliver it to him. And when I watched the video, I had tears in my eyes because he was so grateful. And so blown away by the generosity of the church. And it was a really sweet moment. And the next time I went down there, the first thing Carlos wanted me to do is come see his truck and say thank you again for it. Now listen, if you were here and you gave to that Christmas offering in 2017, that joy is your joy. That happiness is your happiness. That's not watching other people do a good thing like when we watch on the internet and our heart is warmed and then we scroll to the next thing. That's your joy. You did that. You participated in that. You made that possible. That was God using your gifts and your finances making you a part of the body of Christ so that you could participate in the good work that he was doing. That joy was your joy. If you give to grace, those 11 kids that were up here being dedicated, that's your joy. When we baptize somebody, that's your joy. When you see somebody come into the church, that's your joy. We have, I think, nine people coming to Discover Grace after church today coming out of a pandemic. That's your joy that those people are becoming a part of what we're doing here at Grace. Every win that Jesus claims here at this church, when we give, we are a part of that. Because those wins don't happen if we don't give. So we give because we are a part of the body of Christ. And that allows us to participate in the work that Jesus is doing, wherever he's doing work. The last point that I would make about why it's best for us to give is that giving invites us to mirror the generosity of God that's lavished upon us. It invites us to mirror the generosity that God has given us. Now, this too could be a whole sermon, and it was. The last time we talked about giving, Doug Bergeson, one of our elders, preached on it in February of 2020, and I don't do things like this, but it's the best sermon on giving I've ever heard. If you haven't heard it, and you'd like to explore this idea more, go back into the archives. It was Grace's Going Home series, February of 2020. Find the Doug Bergeson sermon. It's an excellent one on what I'm talking about right here, How we participate in God's generosity when we give. But what I would say to you this morning is simply this, that this is to me the most compelling reason to give. Because the longer you are a believer, the deeper you grow in gratitude to the Father. There's no two ways about it. You might think that if you've lived a life however you want it, in total selfishness, in total depravity, you've done all the bad things that anybody could do. You can check off all the boxes and and then at like 35, you come to know God, and you're amazed that he's wiped the slate clean, and he's accepted you into his kingdom, that that moment is maximum gratitude for God's generosity and forgiveness. No, it's not. Because to walk with God is to understand that when you become a Christian, he doesn't just forgive you for all the stuff that you did up to that moment. He forgives you for all the crap that you're going to do too. He knows every terrible thought that you're going to have. When you get saved, whatever your lowest point is after that, whatever rock bottom looks like after you become a Christian, God was already in that moment whispering to you that he loves you and he forgives you and he wants you to come back to him. He's already in that moment. Whether that moment's behind you or ahead of you, God was in it telling you already, I've covered this too. So to walk with God and to fall short again and again and again, to arrive at that place that Paul arrives at in Romans 7 that is to me the most redemptive verse in scripture, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death. To arrive there and be refreshed anew with God's overwhelming forgiveness and generosity to us. For it to hit us like a wave again that Jesus condescended, took on human flesh, lived with us in the muck and the mire, died on the cross for us, knowing that we would crud on that very death over and over and over again in our life only to require his forgiveness yet again and then he offers and then he goes about, once he dies for us, ascending to the right hand of the Father to advocate for us and to whisper in God's ear that, yes, I've covered that too. When we sit daily in the realization of the gospel and we let the waves of Jesus' forgiveness wash over us and God's generosity flood us, we cannot help but grow in our gratitude towards God. Whatever gratitude we experienced at salvation is the starting point for how it grows through our life. And so we give as an expression of that gratitude. We give because something so incredible is happening to us that we want to find a way to be conduits of that generosity that God has given us. God has given so much to me. God has given so much to us. God has enriched our lives so much that we can't help but want to desire to enrich the lives of others. We can't help but want to express the generosity that God has lavished upon us. And so giving in his best, most pure state is simply a reaction to the overflow of God's giving in our life. That's why Paul teaches in Corinthians that God loves a cheerful giver. Don't give out of compulsion, but give because you want to. And how can we grow our want to in giving? By focusing on the face of Jesus and remembering the generosity and the forgiveness that he offers us every day. And so giving is what's best for us because it reorients us to the gospel. It reorients us towards God's goodness in our life. God has been good to me and provided me this. I am going to give this portion of this, understanding that he can replace it or he can't, but God has been so generous to me that I want to be generous to others. That's why we give. I love this verse in 2 Corinthians 9-11 says, you will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. There's this part of the Sermon on the Mount that I find incredibly intimidating, where Jesus says, let others see your good deeds, see your good works, and shine for the Father so that your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that when people come into and out of your orbit in your life, they should simply see the way that you act and want more of your Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that when people come into and out of your orbit in your life, they should simply see the way that you act and want more of your father who is in heaven. And I always think to myself, how do you act like that? A really easy way is to be generous. That's what Corinthians tells us. That God has enriched us. He's given us resources in every way. Why? So that we might enrich others. And then both you and them will turn that to thanksgiving to God. And it will point us back to the Father and our Savior Jesus. That's why giving is what's best for us. It's good for us. It develops a spirit of generosity that constantly, constantly orients us back to Jesus. So I would end this morning with a simple challenge for you. Trust God and give. Trust God and his word and give. How much should I give? Just a little bit more than you are. That's always the answer. 10%? No, that's an Old Testament thing. How much do we give in the New Testament? Just a little bit more than we are. Whatever that means for you. Who do I give to? I'll be the first to tell you. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that you have to give all of your giving to the local church. I've sat in churches, I've heard pastors say, your first 10% goes to this church and then on top of that, other places. That's not in the Bible. I'm not going to sit here and teach you that. I'm not preaching this as a self-serving thing for grace. If you believe in grace and what's happening here and you feel compelled to participate in the victories that Jesus is winning here, then give to grace. But you give wherever God is advancing his kingdom. Wherever God is working and Jesus is moving, you give there. Just give. Trust God and do it. I have never talked to a single person in my whole life who has said, you know what? I heard what the pastor said about giving and I decided to start being more generous. That was a huge mistake. I really regret it. Wish I could have that back. Never heard anybody say that. So this morning, it's simple. If you and I could have a conversation, I would simply end it by saying, just trust God. Obey Him. Be a person who's generous. Let's give together. Let me pray for us. Father, we do love you. We are so grateful for the goodness and the gifts that you've lavished upon us. God, I pray first and foremost that we would let those wash over us. I pray more than anything else that we would simply leave here increasingly overwhelmed with your goodness to us. Father, for those of us who need this, who need to think about this in our own lives, I pray that because you said so would be all the reason that we ever need. I pray that we would trust that and walk in that. Knowing that even when we don't understand obedience sometimes, that it is going to lead us to a path of life. God, give us the heart and the gratitude and the spirit to be people who are generous. I pray that each one of us would leave here determined to be just a little bit more generous than we were when we walked in today. And God, for those of us who are obedient and who respond and who give. Would we find you there, please? Would you show us yourself in that giving? Can we ask that through the generosity that you compel us to that we are brought closer to your son and so inspired and enlivened to continue to be generous. It's in his name, the one who died for us and who advocates for us, that we pray. Amen.

We always talk about the stories of Moses and Abraham and David and Paul. We know all about the boys, but what about the girls? Why don't we talk more about the people in the Bible who are like me? When I read the Bible, I see story after story of women who are amazing. I see the courage and hope of Miriam and the boldness of Mary Magdalene. I see the consistent and quiet obedience of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Ruth and Naomi teach us of love, loyalty, and perseverance. Esther becomes a queen who uses her power to save her people. And Deborah becomes a judge and general who defeats the oppressors of her nation. It turns out the girls of the Bible are pretty awesome. And when we take the time to learn their stories, we will be amazed at what God can do with someone who is consistently, humbly, and lovingly faithful. Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the lead pastor here. Thanks for joining us in person here at the First Service. Thank you for joining us online. I've had more people, maybe than ever, who have said to me this morning, oh, you look nice. What's the occasion? And I guess the occasion is that my shirt is tucked in because this shirt just needed to be tucked in, and that's what I wanted to wear today. I had no idea. I'm wearing literally the exact same thing I wear every week for four years, but I tucked it, so I guess that makes a difference. I'll have to remember that in the future. I am very excited about this series because we get to focus on some people in the Bible that we don't often stop on. We're going to focus on the women of the Bible because I think that we have some really profound lessons to learn from their faith. I was very grateful to Erin, our children's pastor, for opening up the series last week by telling the story of Esther. If you missed that, I would highly encourage you to go back and make sure you caught it because she did a great job with that story. This week, we're going to be in the New Testament in three of the four gospels talking about one of the women who may be one of the most underrated figures in the Bible. I think she's even an underrated Mary in the Bible. We all know Mary, the mother of Jesus. We know her. I think she gets her proper adulations. We probably know Mary Magdalene and the things surrounding her, and we've learned about her before. But maybe we haven't thought to focus on Mary of Bethany. Or maybe we just don't know that it's Mary of Bethany that pops up in these ways in Scripture. but I think she is one of the more underrated people in the whole Bible, if not maybe the most underrated person in the whole Bible, and we're going to learn why today. My point today isn't to show you that Mary's underrated and to have you leave and go, yeah, she really was, she's really great. My point today is to help you think through something that I think comes out of one of the stories that Mary is involved in. And this story actually points to what I believe to be one of the most haunting truths in the whole Bible. For me, I grew up a church person. My memory doesn't go back further than my church attendance. And some of us are like that. Some of us have found God more recently than that. But what I typically assume on a Sunday is that most people listening are church people. And for church people, this story from Mary of Bethany is really, to me, is really haunting. And it's something that we want to deal with. It's one of the stories that kind of freaks me out and makes me worry just consistently in my life. So I want to invite you guys into that anxiety with me so that you can be riddled with it for the rest of your life as well. So that's what we're going to do this morning. The story that highlights this, and she shows up three major times in the Gospels, and we're going to eventually highlight all three, but the one I want us to focus on is found in Matthew chapter 26. So if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn there. This is six days before the Passover on which Jesus was arrested. So roughly, this is the night before the last week of Jesus' life. And if you've ever read through your Gospels, which I would highly encourage you to do, if you've ever read through your Gospels, you know that the pacing of the Gospels is kind of, it plods along, it moves at a pretty good pace. But then when we get to this last week of Jesus' life, beginning with the triumphal injury, triumphal entry, I guess that's another name for the crucifixion. If you actually start there, it slows down and takes its time. We get a lot of details about the last week of Jesus's life. And so the night before the triumphal entry, when Jesus is riding into Jerusalem through the Eastern Gate on a donkey, a symbol of peace, They're laying down palm branches in front of him, receiving him as a king. He knows that he's going to die. Nobody else with him knows. We're going to talk about this a little bit more in a second. The day before this happens, Jesus is at what some scholars believe to be his favorite place on earth. He's in Bethany. He is at the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus. Many scholars believe that these were the closest things that Jesus had to besties. It wasn't the disciples. It was Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. They lived in this little town called Bethany. They all lived together. And just for perspective, it's kind of neat to think about it. I've seen it and it's neat to pull it together. If you were to go to Jerusalem right now and go to where the temple is, where the temple mound is, and understand where it used to face in the time of Christ, and if you were to put yourself in the Holy of Holies and take a step out and walk through the curtain that used to hang between God and his people, if you would walk through that curtain and face out, what you would see is the eastern gate and the walls of Jerusalem. On the other side of that gate is the Mount of Olives with the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed the night that he was arrested. You can see it from the Temple Mount. If you go over that hill, if you go over the Mount of Olives into the next valley, that's where Bethany is. So this is where Jesus is preparing to enter into the gate the next day. And so he's having dinner with everyone. Mary and Martha and Lazarus did what you should do. They were hospitable to him. They were throwing him a dinner, and they know that he's about to enter into Jerusalem. And at this dinner, while they're reclining at the table, Mary goes and she gets a vial of spikenard or oxnard. It's a very, very powerful perfume. We're told that it was worth about a year's wages. And we don't know that Mary and Martha and Lazarus were extravagantly wealthy. We don't know that they were poor. We don't know a whole lot about their socioeconomic status. But what we know is that this perfume was worth a year's wages, whatever that means to us. I thought about trying to summarize it, but I don't know enough about the median income in Wake County. So whatever that is, that's what it was worth, okay? And she empties the whole bottle out. You could just take a dab of it and put it where you want to put it, and that would do the job for the day, but she empties the whole bottle out on the feet of Jesus. And in some accounts, it says that the disciples were indignant. In others, it says that Judas was indignant. And he was, in any case, the ringleader. And he's thinking to himself, how can this woman do this? How can she do this? How can she open up this bottle of perfume and pour it all out on the feet of Jesus? Doesn't she know how many people we could feed with that? Doesn't she know if she would be willing to sell that for Jesus instead of being showy in her offerings here, doesn't she know how many people we could feed, the good that we could do? And Jesus, knowing that this thought existed in the room, addressed it. And he says this in Matthew all, in another gospel, we're told that Judas was a thief already and he was skimming off the top. That's why he was really mad. He could have pocketed some of this perfume money. And that's really why he was mad. But he says, you will always have the poor, which is a really interesting thing to say. We could do a whole sermon on what that means. But you won't always have me. And then he says something really profound that nobody else in the room understood yet. He said, she's preparing me for my burial. See, he had told the disciples, I'm going to go to Jerusalem and they're going to kill me. And then I'm going to be buried. And then I'm going to raise on the third day and I will have conquered sin and death and everything's going to be good. He had told the disciples this. And after he would tell the disciples this, they would kind of lean in and go, what do you think he means by that? He's not really, no one's going to kill him. He's not really going to die, right? But Mary believed him. Mary understood him. As a matter of fact, what's profound about Mary, and we see it in this moment, that she prepares him for burial. This isn't just an offering to a savior. This isn't just, I love you and you're in my house and I want you to have this extravagant gift. This is, Lord, I know that you are about to die for me. I know what's about to happen. These yahoos don't. I understand what's about to happen and I want to do my part to love you and to prepare you for the road that you're about to walk. What I want us to see is that Mary, she knew who he was and what he came to do. And I would contend with you, and I mean this, I've thought this for years. I'm deadly serious about this. I would contend with you that she was one of two people alive who understood both who Jesus was and what he came to do. I think the other person is no longer alive at this point. I think the other person is John the Baptist. I think the only two people in Jesus's life who knew who he was and what he came to do were her and John the Baptist. Some people knew who he was, but they didn't understand what he came to do. And some people didn't even acknowledge that he was who he said he was. And this should cause us to ask questions. Why was it that when Jesus comes down, when he condescends, he takes on flesh, he walks among us? Why was it that so very few people, maybe it was more than two, maybe it was four or five, maybe there's more that are not recorded, or maybe you could look in the text and make an argument that somebody besides those two did, but very few people knew who he was and what he came to do. And if that's true, why is that the case? It's so funny to me because I've heard over my lifetime people say, if God's real, why doesn't he just come down and tell us? He did. And then we wrote a book about it. And then we formed a religion around it. Like he did. And nobody believed him then. Why didn't they believe him? This question should concern us because I want to know that if Jesus were to walk through these doors this morning that I would go, that's the Messiah and I would fall at his feet. I want to know that that's true. But how can I know that's true when everybody missed it? If anybody, if anybody that was a contemporary of Jesus should have known who he was, if there were any group of people that when Jesus came on the scene should have been the ones waving the flags and pointing the fingers and saying, this is the Messiah, everyone look, come worship him. If there's any group of people who should have done that, it's absolutely the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the religious leaders of Jesus's day. They were the pastors. They were the theologians. They were the professors. They were the ones who knew the Bible. To become a Pharisee, I'm not going to get into all the details of it, but to become a Pharisee, you had to effectively memorize the entire Old Testament, the Tanakh, the 39 books that we have today. You had to effectively memorize those if you wanted to be a Pharisee. You had to know it inside and out. If you were a Pharisee, you knew by memory every messianic prophecy in the Old Testament. You knew them by heart. You could rattle them off. You knew exactly what the requirements were to be the Messiah. And yet the Messiah showed up, the one that they had been waiting for for generations. He comes to the door. He says, I'm the son of God. And the Pharisees say, no, you're not. And they should have been the ones to identify him. They should have known. They should have seen. And I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but the Pharisees were so certain that Jesus wasn't Jesus that they killed Jesus in the name of the Jesus they thought they should believe in. Do you understand that? They were so certain that he wasn't God that they killed him in the name of the God that they thought they were embracing. They missed him. And that terrifies me. Because the Pharisees are church people. The Pharisees are small group leaders. They're greeters and ushers. They teach Sunday school. They have their quiet times. They know their Bible. The Pharisees are me. They're pastors. The Pharisees didn't have a memory that went back past their church attendance. They're the church people and they missed Jesus. Why did they miss him? The Pharisees were blinded by their need for affirmation. I think the Pharisees were blinded by their need for affirmation from the Savior. I think that they had some expectations. He's going to come from the line of David, so they're watching a particular line of David. He is certainly, if he's going to be the leader of Israel, he is certainly going to come up through our ranks. We're going to know about him. We're going to see him trending on Twitter when he's eight years old. We're going to know about this kid, right? And we're going to watch him. We're going to watch him go through the educational process. We're going to see him flourish as a Pharisee. We're going to see him rise to the top of our ranks. He's going to come through the system and he's going to tell us that we've been right about him this whole time. He's going to show up and he's going to tell everybody else that even though we're this backwoods country with no future, he's going to tell everyone else that we've been right and that our God is here and that we are important. They were blinded by their need for affirmation, by their certainty that when the Messiah shows up, he's going to point to us and he's going to tell us that we've been right this whole time. He's going to point to us, and he's going to say, well done, good and faithful servant. You have led my nation well. I am so glad I entrusted them to you. And instead, he called them a brood of vipers and whitewashed tombs. And when he did that, they couldn't possibly believe that this was the Son of God, because when the Son of God shows up, he's going to tell us that we've been right and he's going to point to everyone else and say, you should listen to them more. They had a perfectly built theology of who the Messiah was going to be and when Jesus showed up, he didn't fit into their theology so they rejected him. And they didn't see him for who he was. They were blinded by their need for affirmation. The disciples, though, they knew who Jesus was. The disciples knew that Jesus was the Son of God. And if anybody should have known what he came to do, it was the disciples, right? See, everybody thought, everybody in Israel thought that when the Messiah gets here, he's going to ascend to the throne of David. He's going to sit on an earthly throne. He's going to raise Israel out of obscurity into international prominence, throw off Roman rule, and establish us as the international power of the world. That's what Jesus is going to do. He's going to be a king and a political leader and he's going to throw off our oppressors and we're going to show them. But the disciples, the disciples walk with Jesus every day. The disciples were with Jesus when people were clamoring around him, trying to usher him into Jerusalem to throw off King Herod and take over the kingdom, they saw Jesus vanish from the crowd so he couldn't be made king yet. They watched Jesus perform miracles and then say, don't tell anybody that I did that because Jesus wasn't ready for the hassle that was going to come from word getting out about his arrival. He knew that people wanted him to be the king and demurred and pushed away from that because they didn't understand what he came to do. So surely the men who ate and slept and breathed and walked and ministered with him for three years knew what he came to do. But they didn't know. They barely even knew that he was the son of God. In a minute, we're going to get to the story about raising Lazarus from the dead. And it's not the reason that Jesus waited two days and allowed Lazarus to die so that he could go and perform the miracle to raise him from the dead. It's not the reason that he did this, but a big reason that we see in scripture is Jesus allowed Lazarus to die so that he could raise him from the dead so that the disciples would begin to believe more in who he was. We see this scene that's unforgettable to me when the disciples are on the Sea of Galilee in the middle of the night and the sea starts to get incredibly rough and the storm is brewing and a bunch of old school sailors are scared for their life that they're about to drown. So it was pretty serious out there. They're so scared that they go into the hold of the ship and they wake up Jesus and they say, you got to do something. We're going to die. And Jesus walks up to the deck and he says some choice words to the disciples. And he looks out at the storm and he says, peace, be still. And the wind died down and the waves stopped and the rain subsided. And he went back down in the hole and he went back to sleep. And when he left, the disciples looked at each other and they said, who is this man that even the wind and the waves obey him? They did not yet know who he was. They hadn't fully accepted that he was the Messiah, the Son of God. They didn't get it yet. And even the day after this, this story that we're looking at in Matthew, after they have dinner in Bethany, they wake up the next day and Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the donkey as a peaceful conquering king. And they're following behind him. And they're arguing who gets to be the secretary of defense and who gets to be the vice president. Thomas, you definitely have to be the secretary of agriculture. Nobody cares about that. That's what you have to do. They're arguing about who gets to do what. So much so that James and John's mom is following behind Jesus. And I swear to goodness, if I were a disciple and Donna, my mom, was with me, she would have been the one asking this question. I love moms like this. But James and John's mom leans into Jesus and she's like, when you sit on your throne, can my boys sit next to you? Can they have a prominent spot? And he says, woman, you don't know what you're asking for. They still thought he was going to go sit on David's throne. They don't know that he's claiming a heavenly throne. They don't know that he's about to conquer sin and death and Hades. They don't know that he's about to deliver us into eternal life. They don't know. They misunderstood him. They couldn't see him. They don't understand that he's going, this is a coronation for a burial. They don't get it. Just like the Pharisees were blinded by their need for affirmation, I believe that the disciples were blinded by their aspiration. The disciples were so blinded by their aspiration, by their personal goals, by what they thought Jesus was going to do for them, that when he showed up, they couldn't see him. They were so certain that this is Jesus, he's the Messiah, I'm going to follow him. And see, they had already washed out of the educational system. I'm not going to get into the details of it, but just by the fact that he found them plying a trade, that he found them building things, that he found them fishing, that he found them collecting taxes, just by the fact that Jesus found them plying a trade tells us that they washed out of trying to become Pharisees. And so now here comes this teacher, this Messiah, the Savior of the world who believes in me and he's going to elevate us and we're going to show the Pharisees who we are. We're going to be a big deal as he ascends into international prominence. We're going to write his coattails right into importance. They were so focused on their aspirations, on what they thought Jesus was going to do for them. Because I'm following Jesus, because I'm doing it well, because I'm beating all the other disciples, because I'm the first one to answer, he's going to be proud of me. He's going to be impressed with me. He's going to give things to me. He's going to bring me with him as he ascends. They were so blinded by their aspirations that they couldn't possibly accept that this person they think is going to sit on the throne is actually about to die. They couldn't see it. And what I think is haunting is that both the disciples and the Pharisees were blinded by their selfish expectations. The two groups who should have known who Jesus was, who should have seen him for who he was, who should have believed in him, who should have understood why he was there, are the two groups that messed it up the most. And I think it was because of their selfish expectations that blinded them. It kind of works like this. Some of my golf buddies may know what these are. There's these glasses that you can buy that they sell to golfers. They're called golf ball finding goggles, I think. They're very aptly named. You put them on and they're all blue. All you can see, they turn everything blue except for white. White like glows incandescently. If you've ever spent any time at all golfing, then you have also spent time in the woods wandering around like a moron looking for the ball that you hit. Happy to pick any ball and go back out onto the fairway. With these glasses, you can put them on and you can't see anything except for everything's blue and golf balls glow white. So you can see those, you can get them as they're supposed to help you find your ball. I've never used them before. I don't lose golf balls. I'm just straight down the middle of Fairway 260 every time. I don't need them. But other people do, and I think maybe they work. But I think that the expectations that the Pharisees and the disciples had worked similarly to those goggles. That once they put those glasses on of their expectations, that the only way they're going to see Jesus is if he fits into their narrow-minded theology, is if he fits into their narrow expectations. If Jesus acts and behaves exactly as they're expecting, it's the only way that they could possibly see him. And because they insisted that Jesus had to fit into the boxes that they had created for him, they missed him. And this should haunt us. If you spend any time as a church person, this should concern you. And we should begin asking ourselves this question, is it possible that we have our own blinding expectations? Is it possible that we have expectations of who Jesus is and how he would behave and what he's come to do and what it's going to look like when he shows up in our life and what it's going to look like when he sends someone into our life to speak truth to us and what it's going to look like if he were to walk through the door or what it's going to look like to do his ministry or what it's going to look like to have his character or what it's going to look like if he were to walk through the door, or what it's going to look like to do his ministry, or what it's going to look like to have his character, or what it's going to look like when he comes back. If we have some expectations that are so rigid and so dogged, is it possible that they're actually blinding us to who he really is? Is it possible that if Jesus showed up in our midst, if the second coming of Christ happened right now, is it possible that we wouldn't recognize him for who he is? The Pharisees didn't recognize Jesus because he came from some backwoods city and he had a bunch of rednecks that were following him around. It didn't come from an educated background. It wasn't anybody that general society respected. And if Jesus showed up in the woods of Appalachia and came over here to us with his redneck followers, would we point at them and say, that can't possibly be Jesus because look at who's following him. They're not educated. They don't know anything. They're not as smart as us. They're easily duped. They're easily fooled. That's not Jesus. I feel sorry for those people. Tell me Wake County wouldn't think that. Tell me we wouldn't be that arrogant. And so it haunts me. If the second coming happened right now and Jesus showed up, would I see him? Or do I have on glasses that only allow me to see him in my way? Are we so rigid in our faith and in our expectation of Jesus that we really think that we've cornered the market on understanding him? Do we really think that the Catholics don't know anything, that they're totally wrong about everything? Do we really think that the charismatic people, the ones who actually raise their hands and participate in worship, do we actually think that they're so far off base that their Jesus isn't our Jesus? Do we actually think that when we come into grace every week, we are just nailing it? Nate is exactly right about all his theology, and everything he says is true. Man, listen, 40-year-old Nate is so embarrassed by some of the stuff that 30-year-old Nate taught. I'm just trying to say stuff now that 50-year-old Nate doesn't make fun of. I think differently about so many things now than I used to. I would even tell you I understand less now than I used to claim to understand. I'm worried that some of our theological rigidity and certainty would actually cause us to miss Jesus if he showed up and defied some of our expectations. I'm worried that some of our expectations and aspirations would actually cause us to miss Jesus. If Jesus showed up in my life, surely he would heal us. Surely we would be safe. Surely my children wouldn't run into issues that are difficult. Surely this couldn't happen to my family. Surely I would get the promotion. Surely he would shield us from this pain. And so I carry around that truth that the people who were supposed to see him didn't. And it makes me wonder, and it should make you wonder, how then did Mary do it? How did Mary see what the others didn't? Why wasn't she blinded with expectations that blinded the others? What was so different about Mary? And I think the only way to answer that question is to look at the stories where we see her. Besides this story where she anoints the feet of Jesus, we see her two other times. The most prominent one is in John chapter 11 when her brother Lazarus is sick and they send word to Jesus, your friend Lazarus, you love him, he's sick, come heal him. And Jesus waits two days and allows Lazarus to die and then comes to Bethany. And when he comes to Bethany, Martha sees Jesus and tells Mary, Jesus is here, the teacher is here. And Mary runs out and says to Jesus what you think we would all say to Jesus. She says this, John chapter 11 verse 32, Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Yeah, that's a pretty fair statement, Mary. And I wish we could get into this story. I really do. We just, we don't have time. Jesus wept with her. That's an amazing thing to have a savior who weeps with us. And then he raises Lazarus from the dead, not to just depict raising someone from the dead because he loves Lazarus, but to show us in yet another way what he came to do, to deliver him into eternity, to conquer death and sin itself. That was a picture of the resurrection that was to come. And it is a picture of what happens to our souls when we know Christ. It's a picture of salvation is the resurrection of Lazarus. And he knew that Mary didn't understand that. But what I want to point out is when she runs to Jesus and she's ready to confront him, does she stand face to face with him and say, you did not meet my expectations? She fell at his feet. She fell before him. And it's an interesting posture because the other place we see her is that famous story with her and Martha, right? Jesus is coming over to the house. Martha's scrambling around, getting everything ready. Mary's sitting at his feet, listening to him. Look, it says this in Luke 10, verses 38 and 39. Now, as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. And she had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. She encounters Jesus. Martha's rushing around trying to impress him with all that she's doing for him. She simply sits at his feet and takes him in, listens to everything that he teaches. And then we see her in the story that we're highlighting today. Interestingly enough, in this story, where is Mary? At the feet of Jesus. There's something to that posture. All three times we see Mary, she's at the feet of Jesus. In sadness because she's going to lose him, in uncertainty because she doesn't know how this resurrection thing is going to work out, she's at the feet of Jesus. In adoration when he shows up to teach because she wants more of him, because she wants to understand him, she's at the feet of Jesus. And even in frustration and disillusionment, when he has disappointed her and she doesn't know what to do with it, what does she do? She falls at the feet of Jesus. It's a humble posture. It's a posture of adoration. It's a posture of subservience and submission. And what I believe, based on the life of Mary, is that her vision was enhanced by her selfless affection. She saw Jesus for who he was and understood and accepted what he came to do because of her selfless affection for him. All she wanted was more Jesus. She didn't want to bustle around and try to impress him. She just wanted to soak him in. She didn't want to accuse him and point a finger at him and confront him. She just wanted to understand, so she fell at his feet. She knew that it would look crazy for her to pour out that whole bottle of perfume, but she understood what he had really come to do, and so she was preparing him for burial. And what's interesting to me is, in at least two of these stories, Jesus did not meet her expectations. Do you understand the significance of, he let her brother die. And she shows up to do what we would do, is point the finger and say, how'd you let that happen? And even though Jesus is, even though her experience with Jesus didn't meet up to her expectations of Jesus, she allowed her affection to shape her expectations and just fell at his feet. She, even though Jesus did not meet her expectations, she fell at his feet undeterred in affection. It's interesting to me that the only other person I think alive who knew who Jesus was and what he came to do was John the Baptist. And John the Baptist walked through that same disillusionment where he thought that when Jesus shows up, you're going to get everybody out of prison. So he sent a messenger to Jesus and he said, are you going to get me out of prison? That's kind of the deal when the Messiah shows up and Jesus quotes the passage back to him and he says, but you're not getting out of jail. Blessed are those who do not fall away on my accord. Their affection for their Savior was so great that it had room within it to adapt their expectations to who he actually was. Mary's affection for Jesus was so deep and so profound and so abiding that it gave Jesus the space to be who he actually was. Everyone else was trying to limit him with their expectations. Mary's affection for Jesus was so generous that she was willing to adjust her expectations to who she actually encountered. And I'm so fearful for us that when Jesus doesn't meet our expectations, that we are too rigid in them and we refuse to wrap our expectations around the person of Jesus and who he actually is. And instead we walk away from him because that can't possibly be my Jesus because he does not fit into my box and I cannot see him through these glasses. My hope and prayer for us is that our affection for our Savior will be so great that it will make room for him to show up however in the world he wants to show up. That it will make room for him to show up in our life in whatever person he decides to show up in, to show up in whatever ministry and in whatever truth and in whatever sermon and in whatever prayer and in whatever song that he wants to show up in. And if you've been a Christian who's paying attention for any amount of time, you know good and well that Jesus shows up in your life in the most unexpected of ways. And if we have expectations that are so rigid that we refuse to accept the ways that He shows up, then we'll be like the Pharisees and the disciples and we'll miss Him. Or we can be like Mary and have an affection for Jesus that is so great that it wraps itself around anything that he does and adjusts our expectations to who our Savior actually is and allows him to show up in deep and profound ways in our lives. I hope that's what we will do. Let me pray for us. Father, we do love you. I pray that we would love you more. God, I want to know that if you were to show up right now, if the second coming happened and this Messiah figure walked into our life, God, give us the discernment to know if it's him. When you show up in our life, give us the affection for you to allow you to show up in whatever form you want to take. May we not be so rigid in our expectations of you and what you're going to do for us and how you're going to build us up and how you're going to affirm what we've always thought. May we not be so rigid in our expectation that we don't make any room in our heart for who you actually are. Give us eyes to see you, Jesus. Give us ears to hear you, Jesus. Give us an ever-increasing affection so that the only place we want to be like Mary is at your feet. Help us see you in all the ways that you make yourself known to us. It's in your name we pray. Amen.

We always talk about the stories of Moses and Abraham and David and Paul. We know all about the boys, but what about the girls? Why don't we talk more about the people in the Bible who are like me? When I read the Bible, I see story after story of women who are amazing. I see the courage and hope of Miriam and the boldness of Mary Magdalene. I see the consistent and quiet obedience of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Ruth and Naomi teach us of love, loyalty, and perseverance. Esther becomes a queen who uses her power to save her people. And Deborah becomes a judge and general who defeats the oppressors of her nation. It turns out the girls of the Bible are pretty awesome. And when we take the time to learn their stories, we will be amazed at what God can do with someone who is consistently, humbly, and lovingly faithful. Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the lead pastor here. Thanks for joining us in person here at the First Service. Thank you for joining us online. I've had more people, maybe than ever, who have said to me this morning, oh, you look nice. What's the occasion? And I guess the occasion is that my shirt is tucked in because this shirt just needed to be tucked in, and that's what I wanted to wear today. I had no idea. I'm wearing literally the exact same thing I wear every week for four years, but I tucked it, so I guess that makes a difference. I'll have to remember that in the future. I am very excited about this series because we get to focus on some people in the Bible that we don't often stop on. We're going to focus on the women of the Bible because I think that we have some really profound lessons to learn from their faith. I was very grateful to Erin, our children's pastor, for opening up the series last week by telling the story of Esther. If you missed that, I would highly encourage you to go back and make sure you caught it because she did a great job with that story. This week, we're going to be in the New Testament in three of the four gospels talking about one of the women who may be one of the most underrated figures in the Bible. I think she's even an underrated Mary in the Bible. We all know Mary, the mother of Jesus. We know her. I think she gets her proper adulations. We probably know Mary Magdalene and the things surrounding her, and we've learned about her before. But maybe we haven't thought to focus on Mary of Bethany. Or maybe we just don't know that it's Mary of Bethany that pops up in these ways in Scripture. but I think she is one of the more underrated people in the whole Bible, if not maybe the most underrated person in the whole Bible, and we're going to learn why today. My point today isn't to show you that Mary's underrated and to have you leave and go, yeah, she really was, she's really great. My point today is to help you think through something that I think comes out of one of the stories that Mary is involved in. And this story actually points to what I believe to be one of the most haunting truths in the whole Bible. For me, I grew up a church person. My memory doesn't go back further than my church attendance. And some of us are like that. Some of us have found God more recently than that. But what I typically assume on a Sunday is that most people listening are church people. And for church people, this story from Mary of Bethany is really, to me, is really haunting. And it's something that we want to deal with. It's one of the stories that kind of freaks me out and makes me worry just consistently in my life. So I want to invite you guys into that anxiety with me so that you can be riddled with it for the rest of your life as well. So that's what we're going to do this morning. The story that highlights this, and she shows up three major times in the Gospels, and we're going to eventually highlight all three, but the one I want us to focus on is found in Matthew chapter 26. So if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn there. This is six days before the Passover on which Jesus was arrested. So roughly, this is the night before the last week of Jesus' life. And if you've ever read through your Gospels, which I would highly encourage you to do, if you've ever read through your Gospels, you know that the pacing of the Gospels is kind of, it plods along, it moves at a pretty good pace. But then when we get to this last week of Jesus' life, beginning with the triumphal injury, triumphal entry, I guess that's another name for the crucifixion. If you actually start there, it slows down and takes its time. We get a lot of details about the last week of Jesus's life. And so the night before the triumphal entry, when Jesus is riding into Jerusalem through the Eastern Gate on a donkey, a symbol of peace, They're laying down palm branches in front of him, receiving him as a king. He knows that he's going to die. Nobody else with him knows. We're going to talk about this a little bit more in a second. The day before this happens, Jesus is at what some scholars believe to be his favorite place on earth. He's in Bethany. He is at the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus. Many scholars believe that these were the closest things that Jesus had to besties. It wasn't the disciples. It was Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. They lived in this little town called Bethany. They all lived together. And just for perspective, it's kind of neat to think about it. I've seen it and it's neat to pull it together. If you were to go to Jerusalem right now and go to where the temple is, where the temple mound is, and understand where it used to face in the time of Christ, and if you were to put yourself in the Holy of Holies and take a step out and walk through the curtain that used to hang between God and his people, if you would walk through that curtain and face out, what you would see is the eastern gate and the walls of Jerusalem. On the other side of that gate is the Mount of Olives with the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed the night that he was arrested. You can see it from the Temple Mount. If you go over that hill, if you go over the Mount of Olives into the next valley, that's where Bethany is. So this is where Jesus is preparing to enter into the gate the next day. And so he's having dinner with everyone. Mary and Martha and Lazarus did what you should do. They were hospitable to him. They were throwing him a dinner, and they know that he's about to enter into Jerusalem. And at this dinner, while they're reclining at the table, Mary goes and she gets a vial of spikenard or oxnard. It's a very, very powerful perfume. We're told that it was worth about a year's wages. And we don't know that Mary and Martha and Lazarus were extravagantly wealthy. We don't know that they were poor. We don't know a whole lot about their socioeconomic status. But what we know is that this perfume was worth a year's wages, whatever that means to us. I thought about trying to summarize it, but I don't know enough about the median income in Wake County. So whatever that is, that's what it was worth, okay? And she empties the whole bottle out. You could just take a dab of it and put it where you want to put it, and that would do the job for the day, but she empties the whole bottle out on the feet of Jesus. And in some accounts, it says that the disciples were indignant. In others, it says that Judas was indignant. And he was, in any case, the ringleader. And he's thinking to himself, how can this woman do this? How can she do this? How can she open up this bottle of perfume and pour it all out on the feet of Jesus? Doesn't she know how many people we could feed with that? Doesn't she know if she would be willing to sell that for Jesus instead of being showy in her offerings here, doesn't she know how many people we could feed, the good that we could do? And Jesus, knowing that this thought existed in the room, addressed it. And he says this in Matthew all, in another gospel, we're told that Judas was a thief already and he was skimming off the top. That's why he was really mad. He could have pocketed some of this perfume money. And that's really why he was mad. But he says, you will always have the poor, which is a really interesting thing to say. We could do a whole sermon on what that means. But you won't always have me. And then he says something really profound that nobody else in the room understood yet. He said, she's preparing me for my burial. See, he had told the disciples, I'm going to go to Jerusalem and they're going to kill me. And then I'm going to be buried. And then I'm going to raise on the third day and I will have conquered sin and death and everything's going to be good. He had told the disciples this. And after he would tell the disciples this, they would kind of lean in and go, what do you think he means by that? He's not really, no one's going to kill him. He's not really going to die, right? But Mary believed him. Mary understood him. As a matter of fact, what's profound about Mary, and we see it in this moment, that she prepares him for burial. This isn't just an offering to a savior. This isn't just, I love you and you're in my house and I want you to have this extravagant gift. This is, Lord, I know that you are about to die for me. I know what's about to happen. These yahoos don't. I understand what's about to happen and I want to do my part to love you and to prepare you for the road that you're about to walk. What I want us to see is that Mary, she knew who he was and what he came to do. And I would contend with you, and I mean this, I've thought this for years. I'm deadly serious about this. I would contend with you that she was one of two people alive who understood both who Jesus was and what he came to do. I think the other person is no longer alive at this point. I think the other person is John the Baptist. I think the only two people in Jesus's life who knew who he was and what he came to do were her and John the Baptist. Some people knew who he was, but they didn't understand what he came to do. And some people didn't even acknowledge that he was who he said he was. And this should cause us to ask questions. Why was it that when Jesus comes down, when he condescends, he takes on flesh, he walks among us? Why was it that so very few people, maybe it was more than two, maybe it was four or five, maybe there's more that are not recorded, or maybe you could look in the text and make an argument that somebody besides those two did, but very few people knew who he was and what he came to do. And if that's true, why is that the case? It's so funny to me because I've heard over my lifetime people say, if God's real, why doesn't he just come down and tell us? He did. And then we wrote a book about it. And then we formed a religion around it. Like he did. And nobody believed him then. Why didn't they believe him? This question should concern us because I want to know that if Jesus were to walk through these doors this morning that I would go, that's the Messiah and I would fall at his feet. I want to know that that's true. But how can I know that's true when everybody missed it? If anybody, if anybody that was a contemporary of Jesus should have known who he was, if there were any group of people that when Jesus came on the scene should have been the ones waving the flags and pointing the fingers and saying, this is the Messiah, everyone look, come worship him. If there's any group of people who should have done that, it's absolutely the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the religious leaders of Jesus's day. They were the pastors. They were the theologians. They were the professors. They were the ones who knew the Bible. To become a Pharisee, I'm not going to get into all the details of it, but to become a Pharisee, you had to effectively memorize the entire Old Testament, the Tanakh, the 39 books that we have today. You had to effectively memorize those if you wanted to be a Pharisee. You had to know it inside and out. If you were a Pharisee, you knew by memory every messianic prophecy in the Old Testament. You knew them by heart. You could rattle them off. You knew exactly what the requirements were to be the Messiah. And yet the Messiah showed up, the one that they had been waiting for for generations. He comes to the door. He says, I'm the son of God. And the Pharisees say, no, you're not. And they should have been the ones to identify him. They should have known. They should have seen. And I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but the Pharisees were so certain that Jesus wasn't Jesus that they killed Jesus in the name of the Jesus they thought they should believe in. Do you understand that? They were so certain that he wasn't God that they killed him in the name of the God that they thought they were embracing. They missed him. And that terrifies me. Because the Pharisees are church people. The Pharisees are small group leaders. They're greeters and ushers. They teach Sunday school. They have their quiet times. They know their Bible. The Pharisees are me. They're pastors. The Pharisees didn't have a memory that went back past their church attendance. They're the church people and they missed Jesus. Why did they miss him? The Pharisees were blinded by their need for affirmation. I think the Pharisees were blinded by their need for affirmation from the Savior. I think that they had some expectations. He's going to come from the line of David, so they're watching a particular line of David. He is certainly, if he's going to be the leader of Israel, he is certainly going to come up through our ranks. We're going to know about him. We're going to see him trending on Twitter when he's eight years old. We're going to know about this kid, right? And we're going to watch him. We're going to watch him go through the educational process. We're going to see him flourish as a Pharisee. We're going to see him rise to the top of our ranks. He's going to come through the system and he's going to tell us that we've been right about him this whole time. He's going to show up and he's going to tell everybody else that even though we're this backwoods country with no future, he's going to tell everyone else that we've been right and that our God is here and that we are important. They were blinded by their need for affirmation, by their certainty that when the Messiah shows up, he's going to point to us and he's going to tell us that we've been right this whole time. He's going to point to us, and he's going to say, well done, good and faithful servant. You have led my nation well. I am so glad I entrusted them to you. And instead, he called them a brood of vipers and whitewashed tombs. And when he did that, they couldn't possibly believe that this was the Son of God, because when the Son of God shows up, he's going to tell us that we've been right and he's going to point to everyone else and say, you should listen to them more. They had a perfectly built theology of who the Messiah was going to be and when Jesus showed up, he didn't fit into their theology so they rejected him. And they didn't see him for who he was. They were blinded by their need for affirmation. The disciples, though, they knew who Jesus was. The disciples knew that Jesus was the Son of God. And if anybody should have known what he came to do, it was the disciples, right? See, everybody thought, everybody in Israel thought that when the Messiah gets here, he's going to ascend to the throne of David. He's going to sit on an earthly throne. He's going to raise Israel out of obscurity into international prominence, throw off Roman rule, and establish us as the international power of the world. That's what Jesus is going to do. He's going to be a king and a political leader and he's going to throw off our oppressors and we're going to show them. But the disciples, the disciples walk with Jesus every day. The disciples were with Jesus when people were clamoring around him, trying to usher him into Jerusalem to throw off King Herod and take over the kingdom, they saw Jesus vanish from the crowd so he couldn't be made king yet. They watched Jesus perform miracles and then say, don't tell anybody that I did that because Jesus wasn't ready for the hassle that was going to come from word getting out about his arrival. He knew that people wanted him to be the king and demurred and pushed away from that because they didn't understand what he came to do. So surely the men who ate and slept and breathed and walked and ministered with him for three years knew what he came to do. But they didn't know. They barely even knew that he was the son of God. In a minute, we're going to get to the story about raising Lazarus from the dead. And it's not the reason that Jesus waited two days and allowed Lazarus to die so that he could go and perform the miracle to raise him from the dead. It's not the reason that he did this, but a big reason that we see in scripture is Jesus allowed Lazarus to die so that he could raise him from the dead so that the disciples would begin to believe more in who he was. We see this scene that's unforgettable to me when the disciples are on the Sea of Galilee in the middle of the night and the sea starts to get incredibly rough and the storm is brewing and a bunch of old school sailors are scared for their life that they're about to drown. So it was pretty serious out there. They're so scared that they go into the hold of the ship and they wake up Jesus and they say, you got to do something. We're going to die. And Jesus walks up to the deck and he says some choice words to the disciples. And he looks out at the storm and he says, peace, be still. And the wind died down and the waves stopped and the rain subsided. And he went back down in the hole and he went back to sleep. And when he left, the disciples looked at each other and they said, who is this man that even the wind and the waves obey him? They did not yet know who he was. They hadn't fully accepted that he was the Messiah, the Son of God. They didn't get it yet. And even the day after this, this story that we're looking at in Matthew, after they have dinner in Bethany, they wake up the next day and Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the donkey as a peaceful conquering king. And they're following behind him. And they're arguing who gets to be the secretary of defense and who gets to be the vice president. Thomas, you definitely have to be the secretary of agriculture. Nobody cares about that. That's what you have to do. They're arguing about who gets to do what. So much so that James and John's mom is following behind Jesus. And I swear to goodness, if I were a disciple and Donna, my mom, was with me, she would have been the one asking this question. I love moms like this. But James and John's mom leans into Jesus and she's like, when you sit on your throne, can my boys sit next to you? Can they have a prominent spot? And he says, woman, you don't know what you're asking for. They still thought he was going to go sit on David's throne. They don't know that he's claiming a heavenly throne. They don't know that he's about to conquer sin and death and Hades. They don't know that he's about to deliver us into eternal life. They don't know. They misunderstood him. They couldn't see him. They don't understand that he's going, this is a coronation for a burial. They don't get it. Just like the Pharisees were blinded by their need for affirmation, I believe that the disciples were blinded by their aspiration. The disciples were so blinded by their aspiration, by their personal goals, by what they thought Jesus was going to do for them, that when he showed up, they couldn't see him. They were so certain that this is Jesus, he's the Messiah, I'm going to follow him. And see, they had already washed out of the educational system. I'm not going to get into the details of it, but just by the fact that he found them plying a trade, that he found them building things, that he found them fishing, that he found them collecting taxes, just by the fact that Jesus found them plying a trade tells us that they washed out of trying to become Pharisees. And so now here comes this teacher, this Messiah, the Savior of the world who believes in me and he's going to elevate us and we're going to show the Pharisees who we are. We're going to be a big deal as he ascends into international prominence. We're going to write his coattails right into importance. They were so focused on their aspirations, on what they thought Jesus was going to do for them. Because I'm following Jesus, because I'm doing it well, because I'm beating all the other disciples, because I'm the first one to answer, he's going to be proud of me. He's going to be impressed with me. He's going to give things to me. He's going to bring me with him as he ascends. They were so blinded by their aspirations that they couldn't possibly accept that this person they think is going to sit on the throne is actually about to die. They couldn't see it. And what I think is haunting is that both the disciples and the Pharisees were blinded by their selfish expectations. The two groups who should have known who Jesus was, who should have seen him for who he was, who should have believed in him, who should have understood why he was there, are the two groups that messed it up the most. And I think it was because of their selfish expectations that blinded them. It kind of works like this. Some of my golf buddies may know what these are. There's these glasses that you can buy that they sell to golfers. They're called golf ball finding goggles, I think. They're very aptly named. You put them on and they're all blue. All you can see, they turn everything blue except for white. White like glows incandescently. If you've ever spent any time at all golfing, then you have also spent time in the woods wandering around like a moron looking for the ball that you hit. Happy to pick any ball and go back out onto the fairway. With these glasses, you can put them on and you can't see anything except for everything's blue and golf balls glow white. So you can see those, you can get them as they're supposed to help you find your ball. I've never used them before. I don't lose golf balls. I'm just straight down the middle of Fairway 260 every time. I don't need them. But other people do, and I think maybe they work. But I think that the expectations that the Pharisees and the disciples had worked similarly to those goggles. That once they put those glasses on of their expectations, that the only way they're going to see Jesus is if he fits into their narrow-minded theology, is if he fits into their narrow expectations. If Jesus acts and behaves exactly as they're expecting, it's the only way that they could possibly see him. And because they insisted that Jesus had to fit into the boxes that they had created for him, they missed him. And this should haunt us. If you spend any time as a church person, this should concern you. And we should begin asking ourselves this question, is it possible that we have our own blinding expectations? Is it possible that we have expectations of who Jesus is and how he would behave and what he's come to do and what it's going to look like when he shows up in our life and what it's going to look like when he sends someone into our life to speak truth to us and what it's going to look like if he were to walk through the door or what it's going to look like to do his ministry or what it's going to look like to have his character or what it's going to look like if he were to walk through the door, or what it's going to look like to do his ministry, or what it's going to look like to have his character, or what it's going to look like when he comes back. If we have some expectations that are so rigid and so dogged, is it possible that they're actually blinding us to who he really is? Is it possible that if Jesus showed up in our midst, if the second coming of Christ happened right now, is it possible that we wouldn't recognize him for who he is? The Pharisees didn't recognize Jesus because he came from some backwoods city and he had a bunch of rednecks that were following him around. It didn't come from an educated background. It wasn't anybody that general society respected. And if Jesus showed up in the woods of Appalachia and came over here to us with his redneck followers, would we point at them and say, that can't possibly be Jesus because look at who's following him. They're not educated. They don't know anything. They're not as smart as us. They're easily duped. They're easily fooled. That's not Jesus. I feel sorry for those people. Tell me Wake County wouldn't think that. Tell me we wouldn't be that arrogant. And so it haunts me. If the second coming happened right now and Jesus showed up, would I see him? Or do I have on glasses that only allow me to see him in my way? Are we so rigid in our faith and in our expectation of Jesus that we really think that we've cornered the market on understanding him? Do we really think that the Catholics don't know anything, that they're totally wrong about everything? Do we really think that the charismatic people, the ones who actually raise their hands and participate in worship, do we actually think that they're so far off base that their Jesus isn't our Jesus? Do we actually think that when we come into grace every week, we are just nailing it? Nate is exactly right about all his theology, and everything he says is true. Man, listen, 40-year-old Nate is so embarrassed by some of the stuff that 30-year-old Nate taught. I'm just trying to say stuff now that 50-year-old Nate doesn't make fun of. I think differently about so many things now than I used to. I would even tell you I understand less now than I used to claim to understand. I'm worried that some of our theological rigidity and certainty would actually cause us to miss Jesus if he showed up and defied some of our expectations. I'm worried that some of our expectations and aspirations would actually cause us to miss Jesus. If Jesus showed up in my life, surely he would heal us. Surely we would be safe. Surely my children wouldn't run into issues that are difficult. Surely this couldn't happen to my family. Surely I would get the promotion. Surely he would shield us from this pain. And so I carry around that truth that the people who were supposed to see him didn't. And it makes me wonder, and it should make you wonder, how then did Mary do it? How did Mary see what the others didn't? Why wasn't she blinded with expectations that blinded the others? What was so different about Mary? And I think the only way to answer that question is to look at the stories where we see her. Besides this story where she anoints the feet of Jesus, we see her two other times. The most prominent one is in John chapter 11 when her brother Lazarus is sick and they send word to Jesus, your friend Lazarus, you love him, he's sick, come heal him. And Jesus waits two days and allows Lazarus to die and then comes to Bethany. And when he comes to Bethany, Martha sees Jesus and tells Mary, Jesus is here, the teacher is here. And Mary runs out and says to Jesus what you think we would all say to Jesus. She says this, John chapter 11 verse 32, Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Yeah, that's a pretty fair statement, Mary. And I wish we could get into this story. I really do. We just, we don't have time. Jesus wept with her. That's an amazing thing to have a savior who weeps with us. And then he raises Lazarus from the dead, not to just depict raising someone from the dead because he loves Lazarus, but to show us in yet another way what he came to do, to deliver him into eternity, to conquer death and sin itself. That was a picture of the resurrection that was to come. And it is a picture of what happens to our souls when we know Christ. It's a picture of salvation is the resurrection of Lazarus. And he knew that Mary didn't understand that. But what I want to point out is when she runs to Jesus and she's ready to confront him, does she stand face to face with him and say, you did not meet my expectations? She fell at his feet. She fell before him. And it's an interesting posture because the other place we see her is that famous story with her and Martha, right? Jesus is coming over to the house. Martha's scrambling around, getting everything ready. Mary's sitting at his feet, listening to him. Look, it says this in Luke 10, verses 38 and 39. Now, as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. And she had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. She encounters Jesus. Martha's rushing around trying to impress him with all that she's doing for him. She simply sits at his feet and takes him in, listens to everything that he teaches. And then we see her in the story that we're highlighting today. Interestingly enough, in this story, where is Mary? At the feet of Jesus. There's something to that posture. All three times we see Mary, she's at the feet of Jesus. In sadness because she's going to lose him, in uncertainty because she doesn't know how this resurrection thing is going to work out, she's at the feet of Jesus. In adoration when he shows up to teach because she wants more of him, because she wants to understand him, she's at the feet of Jesus. And even in frustration and disillusionment, when he has disappointed her and she doesn't know what to do with it, what does she do? She falls at the feet of Jesus. It's a humble posture. It's a posture of adoration. It's a posture of subservience and submission. And what I believe, based on the life of Mary, is that her vision was enhanced by her selfless affection. She saw Jesus for who he was and understood and accepted what he came to do because of her selfless affection for him. All she wanted was more Jesus. She didn't want to bustle around and try to impress him. She just wanted to soak him in. She didn't want to accuse him and point a finger at him and confront him. She just wanted to understand, so she fell at his feet. She knew that it would look crazy for her to pour out that whole bottle of perfume, but she understood what he had really come to do, and so she was preparing him for burial. And what's interesting to me is, in at least two of these stories, Jesus did not meet her expectations. Do you understand the significance of, he let her brother die. And she shows up to do what we would do, is point the finger and say, how'd you let that happen? And even though Jesus is, even though her experience with Jesus didn't meet up to her expectations of Jesus, she allowed her affection to shape her expectations and just fell at his feet. She, even though Jesus did not meet her expectations, she fell at his feet undeterred in affection. It's interesting to me that the only other person I think alive who knew who Jesus was and what he came to do was John the Baptist. And John the Baptist walked through that same disillusionment where he thought that when Jesus shows up, you're going to get everybody out of prison. So he sent a messenger to Jesus and he said, are you going to get me out of prison? That's kind of the deal when the Messiah shows up and Jesus quotes the passage back to him and he says, but you're not getting out of jail. Blessed are those who do not fall away on my accord. Their affection for their Savior was so great that it had room within it to adapt their expectations to who he actually was. Mary's affection for Jesus was so deep and so profound and so abiding that it gave Jesus the space to be who he actually was. Everyone else was trying to limit him with their expectations. Mary's affection for Jesus was so generous that she was willing to adjust her expectations to who she actually encountered. And I'm so fearful for us that when Jesus doesn't meet our expectations, that we are too rigid in them and we refuse to wrap our expectations around the person of Jesus and who he actually is. And instead we walk away from him because that can't possibly be my Jesus because he does not fit into my box and I cannot see him through these glasses. My hope and prayer for us is that our affection for our Savior will be so great that it will make room for him to show up however in the world he wants to show up. That it will make room for him to show up in our life in whatever person he decides to show up in, to show up in whatever ministry and in whatever truth and in whatever sermon and in whatever prayer and in whatever song that he wants to show up in. And if you've been a Christian who's paying attention for any amount of time, you know good and well that Jesus shows up in your life in the most unexpected of ways. And if we have expectations that are so rigid that we refuse to accept the ways that He shows up, then we'll be like the Pharisees and the disciples and we'll miss Him. Or we can be like Mary and have an affection for Jesus that is so great that it wraps itself around anything that he does and adjusts our expectations to who our Savior actually is and allows him to show up in deep and profound ways in our lives. I hope that's what we will do. Let me pray for us. Father, we do love you. I pray that we would love you more. God, I want to know that if you were to show up right now, if the second coming happened and this Messiah figure walked into our life, God, give us the discernment to know if it's him. When you show up in our life, give us the affection for you to allow you to show up in whatever form you want to take. May we not be so rigid in our expectations of you and what you're going to do for us and how you're going to build us up and how you're going to affirm what we've always thought. May we not be so rigid in our expectation that we don't make any room in our heart for who you actually are. Give us eyes to see you, Jesus. Give us ears to hear you, Jesus. Give us an ever-increasing affection so that the only place we want to be like Mary is at your feet. Help us see you in all the ways that you make yourself known to us. It's in your name we pray. Amen.

We always talk about the stories of Moses and Abraham and David and Paul. We know all about the boys, but what about the girls? Why don't we talk more about the people in the Bible who are like me? When I read the Bible, I see story after story of women who are amazing. I see the courage and hope of Miriam and the boldness of Mary Magdalene. I see the consistent and quiet obedience of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Ruth and Naomi teach us of love, loyalty, and perseverance. Esther becomes a queen who uses her power to save her people. And Deborah becomes a judge and general who defeats the oppressors of her nation. It turns out the girls of the Bible are pretty awesome. And when we take the time to learn their stories, we will be amazed at what God can do with someone who is consistently, humbly, and lovingly faithful. Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the lead pastor here. Thanks for joining us in person here at the First Service. Thank you for joining us online. I've had more people, maybe than ever, who have said to me this morning, oh, you look nice. What's the occasion? And I guess the occasion is that my shirt is tucked in because this shirt just needed to be tucked in, and that's what I wanted to wear today. I had no idea. I'm wearing literally the exact same thing I wear every week for four years, but I tucked it, so I guess that makes a difference. I'll have to remember that in the future. I am very excited about this series because we get to focus on some people in the Bible that we don't often stop on. We're going to focus on the women of the Bible because I think that we have some really profound lessons to learn from their faith. I was very grateful to Erin, our children's pastor, for opening up the series last week by telling the story of Esther. If you missed that, I would highly encourage you to go back and make sure you caught it because she did a great job with that story. This week, we're going to be in the New Testament in three of the four gospels talking about one of the women who may be one of the most underrated figures in the Bible. I think she's even an underrated Mary in the Bible. We all know Mary, the mother of Jesus. We know her. I think she gets her proper adulations. We probably know Mary Magdalene and the things surrounding her, and we've learned about her before. But maybe we haven't thought to focus on Mary of Bethany. Or maybe we just don't know that it's Mary of Bethany that pops up in these ways in Scripture. but I think she is one of the more underrated people in the whole Bible, if not maybe the most underrated person in the whole Bible, and we're going to learn why today. My point today isn't to show you that Mary's underrated and to have you leave and go, yeah, she really was, she's really great. My point today is to help you think through something that I think comes out of one of the stories that Mary is involved in. And this story actually points to what I believe to be one of the most haunting truths in the whole Bible. For me, I grew up a church person. My memory doesn't go back further than my church attendance. And some of us are like that. Some of us have found God more recently than that. But what I typically assume on a Sunday is that most people listening are church people. And for church people, this story from Mary of Bethany is really, to me, is really haunting. And it's something that we want to deal with. It's one of the stories that kind of freaks me out and makes me worry just consistently in my life. So I want to invite you guys into that anxiety with me so that you can be riddled with it for the rest of your life as well. So that's what we're going to do this morning. The story that highlights this, and she shows up three major times in the Gospels, and we're going to eventually highlight all three, but the one I want us to focus on is found in Matthew chapter 26. So if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn there. This is six days before the Passover on which Jesus was arrested. So roughly, this is the night before the last week of Jesus' life. And if you've ever read through your Gospels, which I would highly encourage you to do, if you've ever read through your Gospels, you know that the pacing of the Gospels is kind of, it plods along, it moves at a pretty good pace. But then when we get to this last week of Jesus' life, beginning with the triumphal injury, triumphal entry, I guess that's another name for the crucifixion. If you actually start there, it slows down and takes its time. We get a lot of details about the last week of Jesus's life. And so the night before the triumphal entry, when Jesus is riding into Jerusalem through the Eastern Gate on a donkey, a symbol of peace, They're laying down palm branches in front of him, receiving him as a king. He knows that he's going to die. Nobody else with him knows. We're going to talk about this a little bit more in a second. The day before this happens, Jesus is at what some scholars believe to be his favorite place on earth. He's in Bethany. He is at the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus. Many scholars believe that these were the closest things that Jesus had to besties. It wasn't the disciples. It was Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. They lived in this little town called Bethany. They all lived together. And just for perspective, it's kind of neat to think about it. I've seen it and it's neat to pull it together. If you were to go to Jerusalem right now and go to where the temple is, where the temple mound is, and understand where it used to face in the time of Christ, and if you were to put yourself in the Holy of Holies and take a step out and walk through the curtain that used to hang between God and his people, if you would walk through that curtain and face out, what you would see is the eastern gate and the walls of Jerusalem. On the other side of that gate is the Mount of Olives with the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed the night that he was arrested. You can see it from the Temple Mount. If you go over that hill, if you go over the Mount of Olives into the next valley, that's where Bethany is. So this is where Jesus is preparing to enter into the gate the next day. And so he's having dinner with everyone. Mary and Martha and Lazarus did what you should do. They were hospitable to him. They were throwing him a dinner, and they know that he's about to enter into Jerusalem. And at this dinner, while they're reclining at the table, Mary goes and she gets a vial of spikenard or oxnard. It's a very, very powerful perfume. We're told that it was worth about a year's wages. And we don't know that Mary and Martha and Lazarus were extravagantly wealthy. We don't know that they were poor. We don't know a whole lot about their socioeconomic status. But what we know is that this perfume was worth a year's wages, whatever that means to us. I thought about trying to summarize it, but I don't know enough about the median income in Wake County. So whatever that is, that's what it was worth, okay? And she empties the whole bottle out. You could just take a dab of it and put it where you want to put it, and that would do the job for the day, but she empties the whole bottle out on the feet of Jesus. And in some accounts, it says that the disciples were indignant. In others, it says that Judas was indignant. And he was, in any case, the ringleader. And he's thinking to himself, how can this woman do this? How can she do this? How can she open up this bottle of perfume and pour it all out on the feet of Jesus? Doesn't she know how many people we could feed with that? Doesn't she know if she would be willing to sell that for Jesus instead of being showy in her offerings here, doesn't she know how many people we could feed, the good that we could do? And Jesus, knowing that this thought existed in the room, addressed it. And he says this in Matthew all, in another gospel, we're told that Judas was a thief already and he was skimming off the top. That's why he was really mad. He could have pocketed some of this perfume money. And that's really why he was mad. But he says, you will always have the poor, which is a really interesting thing to say. We could do a whole sermon on what that means. But you won't always have me. And then he says something really profound that nobody else in the room understood yet. He said, she's preparing me for my burial. See, he had told the disciples, I'm going to go to Jerusalem and they're going to kill me. And then I'm going to be buried. And then I'm going to raise on the third day and I will have conquered sin and death and everything's going to be good. He had told the disciples this. And after he would tell the disciples this, they would kind of lean in and go, what do you think he means by that? He's not really, no one's going to kill him. He's not really going to die, right? But Mary believed him. Mary understood him. As a matter of fact, what's profound about Mary, and we see it in this moment, that she prepares him for burial. This isn't just an offering to a savior. This isn't just, I love you and you're in my house and I want you to have this extravagant gift. This is, Lord, I know that you are about to die for me. I know what's about to happen. These yahoos don't. I understand what's about to happen and I want to do my part to love you and to prepare you for the road that you're about to walk. What I want us to see is that Mary, she knew who he was and what he came to do. And I would contend with you, and I mean this, I've thought this for years. I'm deadly serious about this. I would contend with you that she was one of two people alive who understood both who Jesus was and what he came to do. I think the other person is no longer alive at this point. I think the other person is John the Baptist. I think the only two people in Jesus's life who knew who he was and what he came to do were her and John the Baptist. Some people knew who he was, but they didn't understand what he came to do. And some people didn't even acknowledge that he was who he said he was. And this should cause us to ask questions. Why was it that when Jesus comes down, when he condescends, he takes on flesh, he walks among us? Why was it that so very few people, maybe it was more than two, maybe it was four or five, maybe there's more that are not recorded, or maybe you could look in the text and make an argument that somebody besides those two did, but very few people knew who he was and what he came to do. And if that's true, why is that the case? It's so funny to me because I've heard over my lifetime people say, if God's real, why doesn't he just come down and tell us? He did. And then we wrote a book about it. And then we formed a religion around it. Like he did. And nobody believed him then. Why didn't they believe him? This question should concern us because I want to know that if Jesus were to walk through these doors this morning that I would go, that's the Messiah and I would fall at his feet. I want to know that that's true. But how can I know that's true when everybody missed it? If anybody, if anybody that was a contemporary of Jesus should have known who he was, if there were any group of people that when Jesus came on the scene should have been the ones waving the flags and pointing the fingers and saying, this is the Messiah, everyone look, come worship him. If there's any group of people who should have done that, it's absolutely the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the religious leaders of Jesus's day. They were the pastors. They were the theologians. They were the professors. They were the ones who knew the Bible. To become a Pharisee, I'm not going to get into all the details of it, but to become a Pharisee, you had to effectively memorize the entire Old Testament, the Tanakh, the 39 books that we have today. You had to effectively memorize those if you wanted to be a Pharisee. You had to know it inside and out. If you were a Pharisee, you knew by memory every messianic prophecy in the Old Testament. You knew them by heart. You could rattle them off. You knew exactly what the requirements were to be the Messiah. And yet the Messiah showed up, the one that they had been waiting for for generations. He comes to the door. He says, I'm the son of God. And the Pharisees say, no, you're not. And they should have been the ones to identify him. They should have known. They should have seen. And I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but the Pharisees were so certain that Jesus wasn't Jesus that they killed Jesus in the name of the Jesus they thought they should believe in. Do you understand that? They were so certain that he wasn't God that they killed him in the name of the God that they thought they were embracing. They missed him. And that terrifies me. Because the Pharisees are church people. The Pharisees are small group leaders. They're greeters and ushers. They teach Sunday school. They have their quiet times. They know their Bible. The Pharisees are me. They're pastors. The Pharisees didn't have a memory that went back past their church attendance. They're the church people and they missed Jesus. Why did they miss him? The Pharisees were blinded by their need for affirmation. I think the Pharisees were blinded by their need for affirmation from the Savior. I think that they had some expectations. He's going to come from the line of David, so they're watching a particular line of David. He is certainly, if he's going to be the leader of Israel, he is certainly going to come up through our ranks. We're going to know about him. We're going to see him trending on Twitter when he's eight years old. We're going to know about this kid, right? And we're going to watch him. We're going to watch him go through the educational process. We're going to see him flourish as a Pharisee. We're going to see him rise to the top of our ranks. He's going to come through the system and he's going to tell us that we've been right about him this whole time. He's going to show up and he's going to tell everybody else that even though we're this backwoods country with no future, he's going to tell everyone else that we've been right and that our God is here and that we are important. They were blinded by their need for affirmation, by their certainty that when the Messiah shows up, he's going to point to us and he's going to tell us that we've been right this whole time. He's going to point to us, and he's going to say, well done, good and faithful servant. You have led my nation well. I am so glad I entrusted them to you. And instead, he called them a brood of vipers and whitewashed tombs. And when he did that, they couldn't possibly believe that this was the Son of God, because when the Son of God shows up, he's going to tell us that we've been right and he's going to point to everyone else and say, you should listen to them more. They had a perfectly built theology of who the Messiah was going to be and when Jesus showed up, he didn't fit into their theology so they rejected him. And they didn't see him for who he was. They were blinded by their need for affirmation. The disciples, though, they knew who Jesus was. The disciples knew that Jesus was the Son of God. And if anybody should have known what he came to do, it was the disciples, right? See, everybody thought, everybody in Israel thought that when the Messiah gets here, he's going to ascend to the throne of David. He's going to sit on an earthly throne. He's going to raise Israel out of obscurity into international prominence, throw off Roman rule, and establish us as the international power of the world. That's what Jesus is going to do. He's going to be a king and a political leader and he's going to throw off our oppressors and we're going to show them. But the disciples, the disciples walk with Jesus every day. The disciples were with Jesus when people were clamoring around him, trying to usher him into Jerusalem to throw off King Herod and take over the kingdom, they saw Jesus vanish from the crowd so he couldn't be made king yet. They watched Jesus perform miracles and then say, don't tell anybody that I did that because Jesus wasn't ready for the hassle that was going to come from word getting out about his arrival. He knew that people wanted him to be the king and demurred and pushed away from that because they didn't understand what he came to do. So surely the men who ate and slept and breathed and walked and ministered with him for three years knew what he came to do. But they didn't know. They barely even knew that he was the son of God. In a minute, we're going to get to the story about raising Lazarus from the dead. And it's not the reason that Jesus waited two days and allowed Lazarus to die so that he could go and perform the miracle to raise him from the dead. It's not the reason that he did this, but a big reason that we see in scripture is Jesus allowed Lazarus to die so that he could raise him from the dead so that the disciples would begin to believe more in who he was. We see this scene that's unforgettable to me when the disciples are on the Sea of Galilee in the middle of the night and the sea starts to get incredibly rough and the storm is brewing and a bunch of old school sailors are scared for their life that they're about to drown. So it was pretty serious out there. They're so scared that they go into the hold of the ship and they wake up Jesus and they say, you got to do something. We're going to die. And Jesus walks up to the deck and he says some choice words to the disciples. And he looks out at the storm and he says, peace, be still. And the wind died down and the waves stopped and the rain subsided. And he went back down in the hole and he went back to sleep. And when he left, the disciples looked at each other and they said, who is this man that even the wind and the waves obey him? They did not yet know who he was. They hadn't fully accepted that he was the Messiah, the Son of God. They didn't get it yet. And even the day after this, this story that we're looking at in Matthew, after they have dinner in Bethany, they wake up the next day and Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the donkey as a peaceful conquering king. And they're following behind him. And they're arguing who gets to be the secretary of defense and who gets to be the vice president. Thomas, you definitely have to be the secretary of agriculture. Nobody cares about that. That's what you have to do. They're arguing about who gets to do what. So much so that James and John's mom is following behind Jesus. And I swear to goodness, if I were a disciple and Donna, my mom, was with me, she would have been the one asking this question. I love moms like this. But James and John's mom leans into Jesus and she's like, when you sit on your throne, can my boys sit next to you? Can they have a prominent spot? And he says, woman, you don't know what you're asking for. They still thought he was going to go sit on David's throne. They don't know that he's claiming a heavenly throne. They don't know that he's about to conquer sin and death and Hades. They don't know that he's about to deliver us into eternal life. They don't know. They misunderstood him. They couldn't see him. They don't understand that he's going, this is a coronation for a burial. They don't get it. Just like the Pharisees were blinded by their need for affirmation, I believe that the disciples were blinded by their aspiration. The disciples were so blinded by their aspiration, by their personal goals, by what they thought Jesus was going to do for them, that when he showed up, they couldn't see him. They were so certain that this is Jesus, he's the Messiah, I'm going to follow him. And see, they had already washed out of the educational system. I'm not going to get into the details of it, but just by the fact that he found them plying a trade, that he found them building things, that he found them fishing, that he found them collecting taxes, just by the fact that Jesus found them plying a trade tells us that they washed out of trying to become Pharisees. And so now here comes this teacher, this Messiah, the Savior of the world who believes in me and he's going to elevate us and we're going to show the Pharisees who we are. We're going to be a big deal as he ascends into international prominence. We're going to write his coattails right into importance. They were so focused on their aspirations, on what they thought Jesus was going to do for them. Because I'm following Jesus, because I'm doing it well, because I'm beating all the other disciples, because I'm the first one to answer, he's going to be proud of me. He's going to be impressed with me. He's going to give things to me. He's going to bring me with him as he ascends. They were so blinded by their aspirations that they couldn't possibly accept that this person they think is going to sit on the throne is actually about to die. They couldn't see it. And what I think is haunting is that both the disciples and the Pharisees were blinded by their selfish expectations. The two groups who should have known who Jesus was, who should have seen him for who he was, who should have believed in him, who should have understood why he was there, are the two groups that messed it up the most. And I think it was because of their selfish expectations that blinded them. It kind of works like this. Some of my golf buddies may know what these are. There's these glasses that you can buy that they sell to golfers. They're called golf ball finding goggles, I think. They're very aptly named. You put them on and they're all blue. All you can see, they turn everything blue except for white. White like glows incandescently. If you've ever spent any time at all golfing, then you have also spent time in the woods wandering around like a moron looking for the ball that you hit. Happy to pick any ball and go back out onto the fairway. With these glasses, you can put them on and you can't see anything except for everything's blue and golf balls glow white. So you can see those, you can get them as they're supposed to help you find your ball. I've never used them before. I don't lose golf balls. I'm just straight down the middle of Fairway 260 every time. I don't need them. But other people do, and I think maybe they work. But I think that the expectations that the Pharisees and the disciples had worked similarly to those goggles. That once they put those glasses on of their expectations, that the only way they're going to see Jesus is if he fits into their narrow-minded theology, is if he fits into their narrow expectations. If Jesus acts and behaves exactly as they're expecting, it's the only way that they could possibly see him. And because they insisted that Jesus had to fit into the boxes that they had created for him, they missed him. And this should haunt us. If you spend any time as a church person, this should concern you. And we should begin asking ourselves this question, is it possible that we have our own blinding expectations? Is it possible that we have expectations of who Jesus is and how he would behave and what he's come to do and what it's going to look like when he shows up in our life and what it's going to look like when he sends someone into our life to speak truth to us and what it's going to look like if he were to walk through the door or what it's going to look like to do his ministry or what it's going to look like to have his character or what it's going to look like if he were to walk through the door, or what it's going to look like to do his ministry, or what it's going to look like to have his character, or what it's going to look like when he comes back. If we have some expectations that are so rigid and so dogged, is it possible that they're actually blinding us to who he really is? Is it possible that if Jesus showed up in our midst, if the second coming of Christ happened right now, is it possible that we wouldn't recognize him for who he is? The Pharisees didn't recognize Jesus because he came from some backwoods city and he had a bunch of rednecks that were following him around. It didn't come from an educated background. It wasn't anybody that general society respected. And if Jesus showed up in the woods of Appalachia and came over here to us with his redneck followers, would we point at them and say, that can't possibly be Jesus because look at who's following him. They're not educated. They don't know anything. They're not as smart as us. They're easily duped. They're easily fooled. That's not Jesus. I feel sorry for those people. Tell me Wake County wouldn't think that. Tell me we wouldn't be that arrogant. And so it haunts me. If the second coming happened right now and Jesus showed up, would I see him? Or do I have on glasses that only allow me to see him in my way? Are we so rigid in our faith and in our expectation of Jesus that we really think that we've cornered the market on understanding him? Do we really think that the Catholics don't know anything, that they're totally wrong about everything? Do we really think that the charismatic people, the ones who actually raise their hands and participate in worship, do we actually think that they're so far off base that their Jesus isn't our Jesus? Do we actually think that when we come into grace every week, we are just nailing it? Nate is exactly right about all his theology, and everything he says is true. Man, listen, 40-year-old Nate is so embarrassed by some of the stuff that 30-year-old Nate taught. I'm just trying to say stuff now that 50-year-old Nate doesn't make fun of. I think differently about so many things now than I used to. I would even tell you I understand less now than I used to claim to understand. I'm worried that some of our theological rigidity and certainty would actually cause us to miss Jesus if he showed up and defied some of our expectations. I'm worried that some of our expectations and aspirations would actually cause us to miss Jesus. If Jesus showed up in my life, surely he would heal us. Surely we would be safe. Surely my children wouldn't run into issues that are difficult. Surely this couldn't happen to my family. Surely I would get the promotion. Surely he would shield us from this pain. And so I carry around that truth that the people who were supposed to see him didn't. And it makes me wonder, and it should make you wonder, how then did Mary do it? How did Mary see what the others didn't? Why wasn't she blinded with expectations that blinded the others? What was so different about Mary? And I think the only way to answer that question is to look at the stories where we see her. Besides this story where she anoints the feet of Jesus, we see her two other times. The most prominent one is in John chapter 11 when her brother Lazarus is sick and they send word to Jesus, your friend Lazarus, you love him, he's sick, come heal him. And Jesus waits two days and allows Lazarus to die and then comes to Bethany. And when he comes to Bethany, Martha sees Jesus and tells Mary, Jesus is here, the teacher is here. And Mary runs out and says to Jesus what you think we would all say to Jesus. She says this, John chapter 11 verse 32, Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Yeah, that's a pretty fair statement, Mary. And I wish we could get into this story. I really do. We just, we don't have time. Jesus wept with her. That's an amazing thing to have a savior who weeps with us. And then he raises Lazarus from the dead, not to just depict raising someone from the dead because he loves Lazarus, but to show us in yet another way what he came to do, to deliver him into eternity, to conquer death and sin itself. That was a picture of the resurrection that was to come. And it is a picture of what happens to our souls when we know Christ. It's a picture of salvation is the resurrection of Lazarus. And he knew that Mary didn't understand that. But what I want to point out is when she runs to Jesus and she's ready to confront him, does she stand face to face with him and say, you did not meet my expectations? She fell at his feet. She fell before him. And it's an interesting posture because the other place we see her is that famous story with her and Martha, right? Jesus is coming over to the house. Martha's scrambling around, getting everything ready. Mary's sitting at his feet, listening to him. Look, it says this in Luke 10, verses 38 and 39. Now, as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. And she had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. She encounters Jesus. Martha's rushing around trying to impress him with all that she's doing for him. She simply sits at his feet and takes him in, listens to everything that he teaches. And then we see her in the story that we're highlighting today. Interestingly enough, in this story, where is Mary? At the feet of Jesus. There's something to that posture. All three times we see Mary, she's at the feet of Jesus. In sadness because she's going to lose him, in uncertainty because she doesn't know how this resurrection thing is going to work out, she's at the feet of Jesus. In adoration when he shows up to teach because she wants more of him, because she wants to understand him, she's at the feet of Jesus. And even in frustration and disillusionment, when he has disappointed her and she doesn't know what to do with it, what does she do? She falls at the feet of Jesus. It's a humble posture. It's a posture of adoration. It's a posture of subservience and submission. And what I believe, based on the life of Mary, is that her vision was enhanced by her selfless affection. She saw Jesus for who he was and understood and accepted what he came to do because of her selfless affection for him. All she wanted was more Jesus. She didn't want to bustle around and try to impress him. She just wanted to soak him in. She didn't want to accuse him and point a finger at him and confront him. She just wanted to understand, so she fell at his feet. She knew that it would look crazy for her to pour out that whole bottle of perfume, but she understood what he had really come to do, and so she was preparing him for burial. And what's interesting to me is, in at least two of these stories, Jesus did not meet her expectations. Do you understand the significance of, he let her brother die. And she shows up to do what we would do, is point the finger and say, how'd you let that happen? And even though Jesus is, even though her experience with Jesus didn't meet up to her expectations of Jesus, she allowed her affection to shape her expectations and just fell at his feet. She, even though Jesus did not meet her expectations, she fell at his feet undeterred in affection. It's interesting to me that the only other person I think alive who knew who Jesus was and what he came to do was John the Baptist. And John the Baptist walked through that same disillusionment where he thought that when Jesus shows up, you're going to get everybody out of prison. So he sent a messenger to Jesus and he said, are you going to get me out of prison? That's kind of the deal when the Messiah shows up and Jesus quotes the passage back to him and he says, but you're not getting out of jail. Blessed are those who do not fall away on my accord. Their affection for their Savior was so great that it had room within it to adapt their expectations to who he actually was. Mary's affection for Jesus was so deep and so profound and so abiding that it gave Jesus the space to be who he actually was. Everyone else was trying to limit him with their expectations. Mary's affection for Jesus was so generous that she was willing to adjust her expectations to who she actually encountered. And I'm so fearful for us that when Jesus doesn't meet our expectations, that we are too rigid in them and we refuse to wrap our expectations around the person of Jesus and who he actually is. And instead we walk away from him because that can't possibly be my Jesus because he does not fit into my box and I cannot see him through these glasses. My hope and prayer for us is that our affection for our Savior will be so great that it will make room for him to show up however in the world he wants to show up. That it will make room for him to show up in our life in whatever person he decides to show up in, to show up in whatever ministry and in whatever truth and in whatever sermon and in whatever prayer and in whatever song that he wants to show up in. And if you've been a Christian who's paying attention for any amount of time, you know good and well that Jesus shows up in your life in the most unexpected of ways. And if we have expectations that are so rigid that we refuse to accept the ways that He shows up, then we'll be like the Pharisees and the disciples and we'll miss Him. Or we can be like Mary and have an affection for Jesus that is so great that it wraps itself around anything that he does and adjusts our expectations to who our Savior actually is and allows him to show up in deep and profound ways in our lives. I hope that's what we will do. Let me pray for us. Father, we do love you. I pray that we would love you more. God, I want to know that if you were to show up right now, if the second coming happened and this Messiah figure walked into our life, God, give us the discernment to know if it's him. When you show up in our life, give us the affection for you to allow you to show up in whatever form you want to take. May we not be so rigid in our expectations of you and what you're going to do for us and how you're going to build us up and how you're going to affirm what we've always thought. May we not be so rigid in our expectation that we don't make any room in our heart for who you actually are. Give us eyes to see you, Jesus. Give us ears to hear you, Jesus. Give us an ever-increasing affection so that the only place we want to be like Mary is at your feet. Help us see you in all the ways that you make yourself known to us. It's in your name we pray. Amen.