Matthew

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making grace a part of your September Sunday. Happy kickoff day to those who are celebrating. If you're joining us online, wherever you are and whatever you may be doing, we are grateful for that. This morning is our own kickoff of sorts as we kick off our new series called Gentle and Lowly, titled for the book, Gentle and Lowly, that we still have available in the lobby. We got 20 more copies last week, so there's some out there. Those are available for $10 a piece. Just grab some on the honor code. You can drop cash in the acrylic boxes on the way out. You can put them in the baskets if and when they come by. You can send us a money order and I will sign for it. Whatever you want to do for your $10, you feel free. But take a book if you'd like one. We're going to be going through that this fall together. And I have found that the church always thrives. There seems to be kind of a greater pulse. We kind of come alive a little bit when we all have a shared experience, when we're doing some of the same things together. And so this is an opportunity for that. It's how we kind of, you might not know this, but at Grace on staff, for me, as I think about the year, our ministry year starts in September, and then we sprint all the way to Memorial Day, and then we kind of, we have summer extreme, then we take a breath and then we get ready for September again. So I wanted to start our ministry year on the same page together, going through this book. This is a book that the staff has gone through. Kyle, our now family pastor, recommended it to us. We went through it as a staff. It was a very impactful book. We've had a small group go through it and they really loved it. And so I thought it would be good for the whole church to move through this book as well. Now in the book, there's something like 16 chapters or maybe more. And this series is only eight weeks. So clearly I'm not going to cover every chapter. I've chosen the ones that I feel are most relevant to grace, which is by the way, one of my favorite things about being a pastor of a small church is that I feel like we know each other and I know you. So when I go through a book like this, I can pick the chapters that will probably be most relevant to us, which is something that I take. I feel a great privilege in being able to do. But if you want the full experience, then you'll need to read it on your own as we move through. We will move through the chapters chronologically, but I will not hit each one. So I would encourage you to grab that book and be reading it this fall as we go through it. As we begin the series, I want to start with a little thought experiment, okay? And now this is going to require us to activate our calcified, recalcitrant imaginations, okay, that many of you have not used in a long time. I have a four-year-old son. I'm 44. I'm too old to have a four-year-old son, especially one as imaginative as he is. That kid will talk to you for 10 minutes straight, and 85% of it is complete nonsense, untethered to reality. He's got the most active imagination, and I'm bad at imaginative play. I would have been better at 24, but not much better. Okay. I haven't used my imagination since I was three. And then I, then I, then I cut that guy off. It was like, that's useless. That's not practical in the adult world. And I moved forward. Some of us are like that. We haven't imagined anything in a long time, but I want to ask you to dust it off and imagine this with me. okay? Let's pretend, and I know, I just said pretend and you guys are like, you lost me. Let's pretend together that you're going to go see a movie. And this movie you've seen from the trailers is about a creator, a deity that builds a world. And this world, the people or the beings that inhabit it, rebel against him, do not follow his rules, do not care about his presence. Most of them live lives that essentially ignore him. And they turn themselves from him. Now, I know that this is not difficult to know where I'm going. But I do want you to depict that world in your head. There is a deity. He is the main character of the movie. He creates a universe. And the center of that universe is a world. And the people, the things occupying that world are made in his image to glorify him. And yet they don't do that. They turn against him. They rebel against him. They do not care about him. And so to rectify this deity, to rectify this creation back to himself, he sends his son and says, go fix it. He sends his son to this creation and he says, I want you to go get these, get my beings, get my creations rectified back to me, facing me, serving me, and right relationship with me. Go fix what's broken. If you're imagining that with me, it's a movie that we're going to go see, and this character is sent down to creation to rectify creation back to the creator on behalf of the Father. Let me ask you this question. How would he have the right to describe himself? How would he have the right to describe himself? How would that character be able to describe himself? This character comes down, the son of the deity comes down. He says, I'm here to rectify this and to get you facing back towards God, back towards your creator. How would that character have a right to describe himself? Angry? Authoritative? Vindictive? Powerful? Just? He would have the right to be ticked, wouldn't he? He would have the right to bow up and say, you are humans, I am deity. I'm more important than you. I'm a bigger deal than you. If you don't listen to me, I'm going to get you right. Wouldn't he have every right to come down here, to be angry, to go down there, sorry, and be angry and be upset with the inhabitants and get right and say, you better cower in front of me because I'm not a problem that you want to have. And right now you do. If we imagine that movie and we imagine that character, I think it's very easy to imagine how that character might describe himself when asked. The parallel is very simple and very easy, and you guys spotted it as soon as I started the idea. But this is what Jesus does. This is the movie that we live in. God created us. He populated at the center of the universe. He populated this world with people that were made in his own image. And those people have rejected their God. And so God sends his son to rectify the situation and to turn creation back to him. He sends his son Jesus and says, go fix it. And then we ask, how would this person have the right to describe themselves? What would make sense? How would you describe yourself? How would you expect him to describe himself? And this, to me, is the arresting principle of the book Gentle and Lowly. Because according to the author, Dane Ortlund, there is but one place in Scripture where Jesus describes himself. There is but one place where Jesus gives a description of himself. In the Gospels, he's described many, many times, but it's always by his followers. It's always by the people around him. Jesus never goes on about himself. He never describes himself. He's very humble like that. But we have one place where he does. And this to me is the arresting principle of the book. What is the one place in scripture where Jesus describes himself and what does he say about himself given how he has the right to describe himself, which is any way that he wants, given what his attitude, what we would expect it to be if we were watching that movie. Given all of that, Jesus describes himself in one place. How does he do it? Matthew 11, 28 through 30. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. This is the one way that our Savior describes himself. And I memorized this verse as a kid in the King's English. So to me, it's still, come to me all ye who are weary and heavy laden, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. For I am gentle and lowly in heart. This is the one descriptor Jesus gives of himself. And it is profound in myriad ways. So this morning, I want us to sit in these words and reflect on what they mean with the goal of launching us into a series in which we will marvel at our unexpected Savior. That's where we want to end today. But where we begin is with the words of Christ when he describes himself. And the first thing he says is, Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden. And as I thought about that, this occurred to me. We come to Jesus when we come to Jesus, we are exhausted. Have you ever thought about that? When we in our lives reach a place where we reach out for Christ, where we turn our countenance towards him, where we say, God, I need you. Jesus, I need you. Jesus, I welcome you. Jesus, I'm done with this. Whether it's for the first time, and maybe there's those of you in here who would not yet call yourself a Christian, but you're kicking the tires because spirituality seems important to you right now. And you're not quite sure, and you might not have all the answers, and you might not be totally on board with have all the answers and you might not be totally on board with this church thing and you might not be totally on board with this Bible thing, but you know that you need something. So here you sit in church curious about spirituality. And so maybe for the first time in your life you're considering reaching out to Jesus. Or maybe like most of us, you're here and you've had times in your life when you've reached to Jesus. You've had times in your life when you've forgotten. Times in your life when you held him at arm's reach. Times in your life when you allowed yourself to get too busy and you didn't prioritize him in your life. But something happens to bring you back to him. To cause you to reach out for him, to cause you to recognize your need for him and to be relieved by him. And do you know what we have in common, whether it's for the first time or for the 12th time, when we reach out to Jesus, do you know what's common about that that I think is remarkable? Every time you do it, you're tired. We reach to Jesus when we are exhausted. I've never known anyone who is crushing it. Their days are good. Their burden is light. Everything's going well. They're in cruise control. Their kids are awesome. Their marriage is happy. Business is good. Everything around me is great. That person doesn't tend to go, you know what I need? Jesus. That person just tends to love the goodness of life. But the people that I see in my life, again, whether it's for the first time or for the 12th time, who are reaching for Jesus, you know what they have in common? They're tired. Life feels heavy. It feels hard. There's this latent unhappiness or discontent that I can't seem to shake. Every now and again, we'll have a good day and we'll have a good smile and we'll have a good interaction and that feels nice. But then when we just kind of get back to ourselves, we just kind of shrink back in because we're exhausted and we're tired. And so I think, and I don't know this to be sure, I cannot interpret the intentions of Jesus himself, but it would make sense to me that Jesus says, come to me. When he invites people, come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden. Come to me, those who are exhausted, because I think it's possible that Jesus knows there's no other way that we go to him until we are exhausted, until we have worn ourselves out, forgetting about him and going about our lives however we want. And then there's an emptiness in that that causes us dissatisfaction. And eventually, in that exhaustion, Jesus in his goodness invites us to him. And so I think he says, come to me all you who are exhausted because that's the only way we go. Energized people don't run to him. They think they're fine. And so maybe simply today, if you have been crushing it and you have been cruising, maybe today we don't drop something on the ground and wait for it to break to start asking Jesus to pick up the pieces. Maybe today we go to him before we get tired. Maybe this fall, as we commit to this series, and we commit to going through this together as a church, maybe September isn't just the start of our ministry year here. Maybe it's a renewal of the fervency of your faith. Maybe you are tired. Maybe you are exhausted. Maybe it doesn't feel like summer was long enough, or if you have young kids, it feels like it was way too long. And maybe you are just catapulting into September and all the things and you're already tired. You need a vacation from your vacation. Let this, this verse, Jesus's invitation, be a lighthouse to us, beckoning us in to go to Jesus this fall, to reconnect with Jesus this fall, especially if we are tired, especially if we are burdened. Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden. If that's you, let's go to Jesus this fall. If we're tired, let's turn to him. He beckons us. But he doesn't stop there. He follows it with this interesting statement. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light, which is an interesting, oh yeah, this is what that means, which is an interesting thought. It's an interesting verbal flourish, right? Come to me all ye who are weary and heavy laden for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. It's, we kind of get the connotation. We understand that a yoke, at least I hope you do, if this is new information to you, your school failed you at some point, but a yoke is the thing that goes across the back of the ox so that they can pull the plow or they can pull the cart or whatever it is. It's the thing that goes over the animals so that they can pull it and be used. So he says, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And so we kind of understand that imagery on a visceral level already. But here's what you may not know about that word yoke and what it means. In Jesus's time and in the times in Israel prior to, rabbis were the teachers. And I'm not going to go through what it takes to become a rabbi, but there wasn't a lot of them. It was like making the NFL. And the rabbis, they were the religious teachers. They were the ones charged with teaching God's people about God's word. But there was differences in interpretation. And different rabbis would see things differently. One easy example of this is, it's said in scripture that you should remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. You were not to work on the Sabbath day, which for them was Friday night to Saturday night, those 24 hours. And some rabbis looked at that and interpreted very, very strictly and very piously. And they said, if you have sandals that use a nail to fasten the leather to the sole of the sandals, those sandals have metal in them, and you can't wear them because it's requiring more of your body to pick up your foot, and that counts as work. So you cannot wear those sandals on the Sabbath. And other rabbis went, that's absurd, wear whatever you want, right? Those would be our rabbis, right? Nobody in this room is like, I'm pro-nail guy. That's the one I want. There was disagreements. If your donkey falls in a ditch on the Sabbath, can you pull it out or do you have to leave it there until Monday? When you tithe, what do you tithe? When the laws contradict each other, do I lie and protect somebody or do I tell the truth and get them in trouble? When the laws contradict each other and you don't know which way to go, that's what the rabbis were for. And so they had, they each had a way of understanding all understanding and applying and teaching all of the rules and the law and the old Testament. And that way of understanding those things was called their yoke. So when you would follow a rabbi, you would take their yoke upon you and follow the rules their way, which is not very much different than our current day denominations. Some people think that we should sprinkle water on a head of a baby, and that's baptism. Some people think that baptism is you get maximum wet, and it's for professing believers. We have difference of opinion on that. So we started the Presbyterians and the Baptists, right? Methodists have different ways that they interpret things. Lutherans, Pentecostals, we have these different things. And so back to this point, and now we can put it back up there, Laura, yoke equals religion. Yoke equals religion. It's not just an image. It's not just a metaphor. It really does mean religion. Way of thinking about faith. Way of following the rules. Way of living up to the standards of God. And so Jesus says, and this is what makes it remarkable, come to me you who are exhausted for my yoke, my religion, my way of living out your faith is easy, and my burden is light. And here's the way he makes it easy. Jesus does not seek to encumber us with rules, but to liberate us with relationship. He does not seek to encumber us with rules, but to liberate us with relationship. He says, at one point in his ministry, somebody asked him, what's the greatest commandment? And he asked it back to them, what do you say it is? And the person answers, to love your Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, amen, and to love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus says, you have spoken wisely. On these hang the whole law and the prophets. And what Jesus meant in that statement is, if you'll simply love God and love others, you will capture all the Old Testament. You will live out the truth and the rules that are found in the Old Testament law. The 630 something rules that Moses brought down the mountain. If you will simply love God and love others, you will fulfill those things. And then he further simplifies it in the upper room discourse in John 14 through 17. We spent a spring there one time. They're, to me, the greatest collection of chapters in the Bible. It's God's, it's Jesus's final instructions to his disciples. And he says in John 14, this new command I give you, this new command I give you, do you know what it is? Go love others as I have loved you. He drops off the God part. And he says, this one command, you live by this one command, this one rule, this one thing encumbering the yoke. And that's what I'm asking you to do. And it might feel odd that he leaves off the God part, but what Jesus knows is there is no possible way for us to love others sacrificially unless Jesus himself is the one empowering and infusing that love. I cannot love you the way that I'm supposed to love you the way that Jesus loved you. I can't even sniff at it unless I am actively, adamantly, and ferociously loving God first. Then I can love you. That's why Jesus sums it up this way. And he does not encumber us with rules. Because rules are tricky anyways, aren't they? Think about one of the most basic rules. Honor your father and mother in the Lord for this is right. Great. What if your dad's a degenerate? What if he left the family? What if your mom's abusive? What does it look like then to honor them? What if they tell you to do things that are actively wrong? What does it look like to honor them? Maybe you have great parents. What does it look like to honor them when you're eight? And what does it look like to honor them when you're 48? That simple rule, honor your father and mother, gets tricky. And so you know what Jesus says? Let's not worry about the pedantics of that. Let's simply love others as I have loved you. How did he love? Sacrificially. He gave of himself. Always. Always patient. He was always gracious. He was always kind. And in this way, he forces us into relationships. This is why we say at Grace that we exist to connect people to Jesus and connect people to people. Because our faith necessarily presses us into relationship with Jesus and then into relationship with others as we are tasked with loving one another as Jesus loves us. So when he says, come to me if you're tired, my yoke is easy and my burden is light, it's not to encumber us with rules. It's not to encumber us with do's and don'ts. It's simply to love your neighbor. We can make a rule that you shouldn't flip somebody off in traffic when they cut you off. We could make that rule. We could write it down. We could agree to it. We could abide by it. We could probably find something in Scripture that would lend itself to this idea that hanging your finger out the window is probably not a great idea in traffic. We could do that rule. But doesn't just love of our neighbor dictate that we would never do that anyways? And in this love, doesn't it make the relationship more genuine? What if every Monday, Jen sent me an email, and she said, this is what I need you to do for me to feel loved this week. And it was just a to-do list. And that was the basis of our marriage. And I did the things, and by Thursday, I'm lovable. I did them all. We good? Yes. She gives me a big hug and a kiss. Yes. Great. Now, here's the thing that she and I both know. I wouldn't do it. I'd want to. I'd really be up for it. I kind of like that policy. That makes things a lot simpler, doesn't it? But that's not how relationships work. So that's not how our relationship with Jesus works. So if we're compelled to go to him, it's not a list of do's and don'ts. It's a relationship that we lean further into with him, and then we lean outward into others. And the love of Jesus is what makes those relationships possible and makes us able to love well. So I would say if we are tired and we're not loving others well, maybe it's because we haven't been fueled by Jesus in a long time, and we should again choose to go to him. Now, that sentence is hugely important for who to know who he's inviting and what he intends for us. Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. We go to him for relief. But this is the part where he describes himself. And what's remarkable is he describes himself as gentle and lowly. But it's important to understand Jesus is required to be neither gentle nor lowly. Jesus is required to be neither gentle nor lowly. Do you understand that? He doesn't have to do that. If we go back to the movie and think about what that character might be who comes down from on high to rectify creation, what attitude might he be carrying with him? Again, how would he have the right to describe himself? And we don't actually have to imagine this very much. There's actually an example of this movie in scripture. If we keep turning the pages of Matthew, eventually we'll get to this parable that Jesus tells. And it's a picture of the Old Testament prophets and Israel's reaction to Christ. And he says there was this owner of the vineyard, and he rented it to some workers with the agreement that they would give him an allocated amount of the profits, of the goods goods they would take, they would take some of the harvest. He would take a big portion of the harvest. And so when harvest season came, he sent some representatives, the owner of the vineyard sent some representatives to the workers, three of them. And it said, okay, it's time for us to collect the owner's share of the harvest. And the workers killed one, beat one up and st stoned the other one, and sent the two back to tell the owner, get lost. And so the owner sends some more of his representatives, and they do the same thing. And they tell him to get lost. And so then the owner says, I'm going to send my son. Surely they will respect him and give me my profits. And then when his son shows up, they kill him. Because now we can claim the inheritance for ourselves. This is a picture of the prophets that God sent to the Hebrew people in the Old Testament. They rejected them and they stoned them and they beat them up. And then eventually sending Christ. But again, if you're the son going to these ungrateful workers, what would your attitude towards them be? How might you feel towards them? What might you want to say? I remember I was playing a pickup soccer game in South Africa one time. And my dad and I were playing together. And dad he dad was I think was playing in goal and somebody was coming approaching the goal we're playing indoors and they kicked the ball and they kicked it as hard as they could and it hit my dad right in the face and snapped his snapped him back and it was like point blank it's from like me to Tom and it's indoor and we're all having fun there's's no reason to kick the ball that hard. And when that ball hit my dad's face, I saw red. I like, and I, it couldn't be helped. As soon as play started again, I ran into that guy as hard as I could. And I took him out in front of all the kids and in front of the people that we took there. I was one of the leaders of the trip. He was one of the people that we were ministering to. He was one of the camp leads. I flew 10 days to minister to him out of the overflow of the goodness of my heart. And when that ball hit my dad's face, I didn't care who he was. And after I did it, I was like, well, that's probably not the best way to handle this. How might that son feel going to that vineyard to rectify those people back to his father? Angry, entitled, knowing that he could squash him like a bug if he wanted to. And yet, gentle and lowly in heart. And I don't do this often, but that Greek word heart that's used in the text means center of your person, essence of your being. It is who you are in character to your core. And our Savior, who has every right to be angry. Who has every right to chide us for our betrayal. Who has every right to squash us under his thumb. Who has every right to say, I am here and you better come to me for I am fierce and I am angry and I am powerful and you've got about three seconds to cower before I prove it. Instead, he says, I am gentle and lowly at my core. It is the essence of who I am. And that word gentle is so interesting. Have you ever experienced the gentle conviction of Christ? Have you ever experienced the gentleness of God and how he works to turn our hearts towards him? Where there's something in your life that you know doesn't need to be there. You know it's wrong. You know that attitude or that behavior or that pattern is unacceptable to God. You know that. And yet you persist. And God has every right to crack you over the head with a two-by-four, to come running at you and knock you over in the middle of a soccer field. He has every right to just sweep your legs out from under you and force you in your humiliation to see the errors of your ways and begin to walk right. Doesn't he? But he almost never does. Gently, humbly, graciously, he massages the areas of our life as he cradles us and offers us comfort and walks us humbly into a profound submission and conviction of our sins. Have you ever experienced the gentle conviction of Christ? Maybe you're experiencing it now, this morning, as you hear Jesus calling you back to him. And maybe it's not some big thing. Your life's not going to blow up. He's not going to hit you with a two-by-four, but maybe this morning he's gently urging you back towards him. Jesus describes himself as gentle, and I don't think that we often enough marvel at how profound and meaningful that is. Because he didn't have to. And then he said, he's lowly in heart. He's humble. And this morning, what I want us to understand is that to be lowly is to be accessible. To be lowly, the way that Jesus is talking about, is to be accessible. And now, imagine, let's go back to the movie. This deity comes down from on high to right the wrongs and to rectify us back to our creator. Do you think you're going to get a face-to-face with that person? Like, do you think you're going to get to talk to them? Who's going to talk to that person? Who's going to talk to that entity that comes down? World leaders? The Pope? Rich people? Let me tell you what I'm sure of. That person comes down tomorrow to rectify the world back to the Creator. He's not taking a meeting with any of you. Years ago, and I still kick myself to it because it was a complete waste of time. Years ago, I emailed a United States Senator. I'm not going to tell you which one, and I'm not going to tell you what about. But I emailed a Senator because there was something happening that concerned me, and I wanted to express it. And here's what I know happened. Some 23-year-old intern read it and went, this is dumb, and deleted it and never told a soul about it. I wrote an email to an unnamed intern is what I did. It was a complete waste of time. We understand accessibility. This person who comes down from heaven is not someone that is accessible to the likes of us, unless, he says, I am lowly and gentle. I am meek. I am accessible. And we learn that he is accessible through his Holy Spirit. And we learn that where two or more are gathered in his name, that Jesus is there also. Jesus' presence is with us now in this room today. He offers that to us. He makes himself accessible. So that when we pray, when I pray in a few minutes, if you pray with me, the Holy Spirit is uttering things too deep for words to God to tell him what I really mean through the heart of my prayers. And Jesus himself is sitting at the right hand of the Father as he offers us his presence and he is interjecting to the Father on our behalf. He is that accessible. So here's what I want us to do this fall. Here's what I want us to do with gentle and lowly. Let us this fall marvel together at this unexpected Savior. Let us just take these eight weeks and read through this book and learn more about who our Jesus is and let us collectively marvel together at this unexpected Savior who comes down and he says, are you tired? Then you're who I'm looking for. Are the rules hard? Let me invite you into relationship. And let me tell you about myself. I am gentle. I don't have to be. But I am gentle at my very core. I am accessible and lowly at my very core. I hold on to none of the rights and privileges that you might impugn upon me. I am the most unexpected of saviors. And so this fall, what I want us to do is marvel at him together. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for who you are. Thank you for your son and how he loves us, how he shows up for us. Jesus, thank you for being gentle when so often that gentleness is not what we deserve. Thank you for being humble and lowly and accessible that we might come to you. Thank you for being an unexpected Savior. Father, thank you for sending him to us. Jesus, thank you for leaving us with your spirit. I pray that we would together marvel at you, Jesus, and who you are, and that we would be more desirous of you with each week that goes by and that for those of us who are tired that we would use this morning as a reminder to run to you and seek rest. Jesus, it's in your name that we ask these things as you advocate for us to the Father. Amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making grace a part of your September Sunday. Happy kickoff day to those who are celebrating. If you're joining us online, wherever you are and whatever you may be doing, we are grateful for that. This morning is our own kickoff of sorts as we kick off our new series called Gentle and Lowly, titled for the book, Gentle and Lowly, that we still have available in the lobby. We got 20 more copies last week, so there's some out there. Those are available for $10 a piece. Just grab some on the honor code. You can drop cash in the acrylic boxes on the way out. You can put them in the baskets if and when they come by. You can send us a money order and I will sign for it. Whatever you want to do for your $10, you feel free. But take a book if you'd like one. We're going to be going through that this fall together. And I have found that the church always thrives. There seems to be kind of a greater pulse. We kind of come alive a little bit when we all have a shared experience, when we're doing some of the same things together. And so this is an opportunity for that. It's how we kind of, you might not know this, but at Grace on staff, for me, as I think about the year, our ministry year starts in September, and then we sprint all the way to Memorial Day, and then we kind of, we have summer extreme, then we take a breath and then we get ready for September again. So I wanted to start our ministry year on the same page together, going through this book. This is a book that the staff has gone through. Kyle, our now family pastor, recommended it to us. We went through it as a staff. It was a very impactful book. We've had a small group go through it and they really loved it. And so I thought it would be good for the whole church to move through this book as well. Now in the book, there's something like 16 chapters or maybe more. And this series is only eight weeks. So clearly I'm not going to cover every chapter. I've chosen the ones that I feel are most relevant to grace, which is by the way, one of my favorite things about being a pastor of a small church is that I feel like we know each other and I know you. So when I go through a book like this, I can pick the chapters that will probably be most relevant to us, which is something that I take. I feel a great privilege in being able to do. But if you want the full experience, then you'll need to read it on your own as we move through. We will move through the chapters chronologically, but I will not hit each one. So I would encourage you to grab that book and be reading it this fall as we go through it. As we begin the series, I want to start with a little thought experiment, okay? And now this is going to require us to activate our calcified, recalcitrant imaginations, okay, that many of you have not used in a long time. I have a four-year-old son. I'm 44. I'm too old to have a four-year-old son, especially one as imaginative as he is. That kid will talk to you for 10 minutes straight, and 85% of it is complete nonsense, untethered to reality. He's got the most active imagination, and I'm bad at imaginative play. I would have been better at 24, but not much better. Okay. I haven't used my imagination since I was three. And then I, then I, then I cut that guy off. It was like, that's useless. That's not practical in the adult world. And I moved forward. Some of us are like that. We haven't imagined anything in a long time, but I want to ask you to dust it off and imagine this with me. okay? Let's pretend, and I know, I just said pretend and you guys are like, you lost me. Let's pretend together that you're going to go see a movie. And this movie you've seen from the trailers is about a creator, a deity that builds a world. And this world, the people or the beings that inhabit it, rebel against him, do not follow his rules, do not care about his presence. Most of them live lives that essentially ignore him. And they turn themselves from him. Now, I know that this is not difficult to know where I'm going. But I do want you to depict that world in your head. There is a deity. He is the main character of the movie. He creates a universe. And the center of that universe is a world. And the people, the things occupying that world are made in his image to glorify him. And yet they don't do that. They turn against him. They rebel against him. They do not care about him. And so to rectify this deity, to rectify this creation back to himself, he sends his son and says, go fix it. He sends his son to this creation and he says, I want you to go get these, get my beings, get my creations rectified back to me, facing me, serving me, and right relationship with me. Go fix what's broken. If you're imagining that with me, it's a movie that we're going to go see, and this character is sent down to creation to rectify creation back to the creator on behalf of the Father. Let me ask you this question. How would he have the right to describe himself? How would he have the right to describe himself? How would that character be able to describe himself? This character comes down, the son of the deity comes down. He says, I'm here to rectify this and to get you facing back towards God, back towards your creator. How would that character have a right to describe himself? Angry? Authoritative? Vindictive? Powerful? Just? He would have the right to be ticked, wouldn't he? He would have the right to bow up and say, you are humans, I am deity. I'm more important than you. I'm a bigger deal than you. If you don't listen to me, I'm going to get you right. Wouldn't he have every right to come down here, to be angry, to go down there, sorry, and be angry and be upset with the inhabitants and get right and say, you better cower in front of me because I'm not a problem that you want to have. And right now you do. If we imagine that movie and we imagine that character, I think it's very easy to imagine how that character might describe himself when asked. The parallel is very simple and very easy, and you guys spotted it as soon as I started the idea. But this is what Jesus does. This is the movie that we live in. God created us. He populated at the center of the universe. He populated this world with people that were made in his own image. And those people have rejected their God. And so God sends his son to rectify the situation and to turn creation back to him. He sends his son Jesus and says, go fix it. And then we ask, how would this person have the right to describe themselves? What would make sense? How would you describe yourself? How would you expect him to describe himself? And this, to me, is the arresting principle of the book Gentle and Lowly. Because according to the author, Dane Ortlund, there is but one place in Scripture where Jesus describes himself. There is but one place where Jesus gives a description of himself. In the Gospels, he's described many, many times, but it's always by his followers. It's always by the people around him. Jesus never goes on about himself. He never describes himself. He's very humble like that. But we have one place where he does. And this to me is the arresting principle of the book. What is the one place in scripture where Jesus describes himself and what does he say about himself given how he has the right to describe himself, which is any way that he wants, given what his attitude, what we would expect it to be if we were watching that movie. Given all of that, Jesus describes himself in one place. How does he do it? Matthew 11, 28 through 30. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. This is the one way that our Savior describes himself. And I memorized this verse as a kid in the King's English. So to me, it's still, come to me all ye who are weary and heavy laden, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. For I am gentle and lowly in heart. This is the one descriptor Jesus gives of himself. And it is profound in myriad ways. So this morning, I want us to sit in these words and reflect on what they mean with the goal of launching us into a series in which we will marvel at our unexpected Savior. That's where we want to end today. But where we begin is with the words of Christ when he describes himself. And the first thing he says is, Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden. And as I thought about that, this occurred to me. We come to Jesus when we come to Jesus, we are exhausted. Have you ever thought about that? When we in our lives reach a place where we reach out for Christ, where we turn our countenance towards him, where we say, God, I need you. Jesus, I need you. Jesus, I welcome you. Jesus, I'm done with this. Whether it's for the first time, and maybe there's those of you in here who would not yet call yourself a Christian, but you're kicking the tires because spirituality seems important to you right now. And you're not quite sure, and you might not have all the answers, and you might not be totally on board with have all the answers and you might not be totally on board with this church thing and you might not be totally on board with this Bible thing, but you know that you need something. So here you sit in church curious about spirituality. And so maybe for the first time in your life you're considering reaching out to Jesus. Or maybe like most of us, you're here and you've had times in your life when you've reached to Jesus. You've had times in your life when you've forgotten. Times in your life when you held him at arm's reach. Times in your life when you allowed yourself to get too busy and you didn't prioritize him in your life. But something happens to bring you back to him. To cause you to reach out for him, to cause you to recognize your need for him and to be relieved by him. And do you know what we have in common, whether it's for the first time or for the 12th time, when we reach out to Jesus, do you know what's common about that that I think is remarkable? Every time you do it, you're tired. We reach to Jesus when we are exhausted. I've never known anyone who is crushing it. Their days are good. Their burden is light. Everything's going well. They're in cruise control. Their kids are awesome. Their marriage is happy. Business is good. Everything around me is great. That person doesn't tend to go, you know what I need? Jesus. That person just tends to love the goodness of life. But the people that I see in my life, again, whether it's for the first time or for the 12th time, who are reaching for Jesus, you know what they have in common? They're tired. Life feels heavy. It feels hard. There's this latent unhappiness or discontent that I can't seem to shake. Every now and again, we'll have a good day and we'll have a good smile and we'll have a good interaction and that feels nice. But then when we just kind of get back to ourselves, we just kind of shrink back in because we're exhausted and we're tired. And so I think, and I don't know this to be sure, I cannot interpret the intentions of Jesus himself, but it would make sense to me that Jesus says, come to me. When he invites people, come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden. Come to me, those who are exhausted, because I think it's possible that Jesus knows there's no other way that we go to him until we are exhausted, until we have worn ourselves out, forgetting about him and going about our lives however we want. And then there's an emptiness in that that causes us dissatisfaction. And eventually, in that exhaustion, Jesus in his goodness invites us to him. And so I think he says, come to me all you who are exhausted because that's the only way we go. Energized people don't run to him. They think they're fine. And so maybe simply today, if you have been crushing it and you have been cruising, maybe today we don't drop something on the ground and wait for it to break to start asking Jesus to pick up the pieces. Maybe today we go to him before we get tired. Maybe this fall, as we commit to this series, and we commit to going through this together as a church, maybe September isn't just the start of our ministry year here. Maybe it's a renewal of the fervency of your faith. Maybe you are tired. Maybe you are exhausted. Maybe it doesn't feel like summer was long enough, or if you have young kids, it feels like it was way too long. And maybe you are just catapulting into September and all the things and you're already tired. You need a vacation from your vacation. Let this, this verse, Jesus's invitation, be a lighthouse to us, beckoning us in to go to Jesus this fall, to reconnect with Jesus this fall, especially if we are tired, especially if we are burdened. Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden. If that's you, let's go to Jesus this fall. If we're tired, let's turn to him. He beckons us. But he doesn't stop there. He follows it with this interesting statement. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light, which is an interesting, oh yeah, this is what that means, which is an interesting thought. It's an interesting verbal flourish, right? Come to me all ye who are weary and heavy laden for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. It's, we kind of get the connotation. We understand that a yoke, at least I hope you do, if this is new information to you, your school failed you at some point, but a yoke is the thing that goes across the back of the ox so that they can pull the plow or they can pull the cart or whatever it is. It's the thing that goes over the animals so that they can pull it and be used. So he says, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And so we kind of understand that imagery on a visceral level already. But here's what you may not know about that word yoke and what it means. In Jesus's time and in the times in Israel prior to, rabbis were the teachers. And I'm not going to go through what it takes to become a rabbi, but there wasn't a lot of them. It was like making the NFL. And the rabbis, they were the religious teachers. They were the ones charged with teaching God's people about God's word. But there was differences in interpretation. And different rabbis would see things differently. One easy example of this is, it's said in scripture that you should remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. You were not to work on the Sabbath day, which for them was Friday night to Saturday night, those 24 hours. And some rabbis looked at that and interpreted very, very strictly and very piously. And they said, if you have sandals that use a nail to fasten the leather to the sole of the sandals, those sandals have metal in them, and you can't wear them because it's requiring more of your body to pick up your foot, and that counts as work. So you cannot wear those sandals on the Sabbath. And other rabbis went, that's absurd, wear whatever you want, right? Those would be our rabbis, right? Nobody in this room is like, I'm pro-nail guy. That's the one I want. There was disagreements. If your donkey falls in a ditch on the Sabbath, can you pull it out or do you have to leave it there until Monday? When you tithe, what do you tithe? When the laws contradict each other, do I lie and protect somebody or do I tell the truth and get them in trouble? When the laws contradict each other and you don't know which way to go, that's what the rabbis were for. And so they had, they each had a way of understanding all understanding and applying and teaching all of the rules and the law and the old Testament. And that way of understanding those things was called their yoke. So when you would follow a rabbi, you would take their yoke upon you and follow the rules their way, which is not very much different than our current day denominations. Some people think that we should sprinkle water on a head of a baby, and that's baptism. Some people think that baptism is you get maximum wet, and it's for professing believers. We have difference of opinion on that. So we started the Presbyterians and the Baptists, right? Methodists have different ways that they interpret things. Lutherans, Pentecostals, we have these different things. And so back to this point, and now we can put it back up there, Laura, yoke equals religion. Yoke equals religion. It's not just an image. It's not just a metaphor. It really does mean religion. Way of thinking about faith. Way of following the rules. Way of living up to the standards of God. And so Jesus says, and this is what makes it remarkable, come to me you who are exhausted for my yoke, my religion, my way of living out your faith is easy, and my burden is light. And here's the way he makes it easy. Jesus does not seek to encumber us with rules, but to liberate us with relationship. He does not seek to encumber us with rules, but to liberate us with relationship. He says, at one point in his ministry, somebody asked him, what's the greatest commandment? And he asked it back to them, what do you say it is? And the person answers, to love your Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, amen, and to love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus says, you have spoken wisely. On these hang the whole law and the prophets. And what Jesus meant in that statement is, if you'll simply love God and love others, you will capture all the Old Testament. You will live out the truth and the rules that are found in the Old Testament law. The 630 something rules that Moses brought down the mountain. If you will simply love God and love others, you will fulfill those things. And then he further simplifies it in the upper room discourse in John 14 through 17. We spent a spring there one time. They're, to me, the greatest collection of chapters in the Bible. It's God's, it's Jesus's final instructions to his disciples. And he says in John 14, this new command I give you, this new command I give you, do you know what it is? Go love others as I have loved you. He drops off the God part. And he says, this one command, you live by this one command, this one rule, this one thing encumbering the yoke. And that's what I'm asking you to do. And it might feel odd that he leaves off the God part, but what Jesus knows is there is no possible way for us to love others sacrificially unless Jesus himself is the one empowering and infusing that love. I cannot love you the way that I'm supposed to love you the way that Jesus loved you. I can't even sniff at it unless I am actively, adamantly, and ferociously loving God first. Then I can love you. That's why Jesus sums it up this way. And he does not encumber us with rules. Because rules are tricky anyways, aren't they? Think about one of the most basic rules. Honor your father and mother in the Lord for this is right. Great. What if your dad's a degenerate? What if he left the family? What if your mom's abusive? What does it look like then to honor them? What if they tell you to do things that are actively wrong? What does it look like to honor them? Maybe you have great parents. What does it look like to honor them when you're eight? And what does it look like to honor them when you're 48? That simple rule, honor your father and mother, gets tricky. And so you know what Jesus says? Let's not worry about the pedantics of that. Let's simply love others as I have loved you. How did he love? Sacrificially. He gave of himself. Always. Always patient. He was always gracious. He was always kind. And in this way, he forces us into relationships. This is why we say at Grace that we exist to connect people to Jesus and connect people to people. Because our faith necessarily presses us into relationship with Jesus and then into relationship with others as we are tasked with loving one another as Jesus loves us. So when he says, come to me if you're tired, my yoke is easy and my burden is light, it's not to encumber us with rules. It's not to encumber us with do's and don'ts. It's simply to love your neighbor. We can make a rule that you shouldn't flip somebody off in traffic when they cut you off. We could make that rule. We could write it down. We could agree to it. We could abide by it. We could probably find something in Scripture that would lend itself to this idea that hanging your finger out the window is probably not a great idea in traffic. We could do that rule. But doesn't just love of our neighbor dictate that we would never do that anyways? And in this love, doesn't it make the relationship more genuine? What if every Monday, Jen sent me an email, and she said, this is what I need you to do for me to feel loved this week. And it was just a to-do list. And that was the basis of our marriage. And I did the things, and by Thursday, I'm lovable. I did them all. We good? Yes. She gives me a big hug and a kiss. Yes. Great. Now, here's the thing that she and I both know. I wouldn't do it. I'd want to. I'd really be up for it. I kind of like that policy. That makes things a lot simpler, doesn't it? But that's not how relationships work. So that's not how our relationship with Jesus works. So if we're compelled to go to him, it's not a list of do's and don'ts. It's a relationship that we lean further into with him, and then we lean outward into others. And the love of Jesus is what makes those relationships possible and makes us able to love well. So I would say if we are tired and we're not loving others well, maybe it's because we haven't been fueled by Jesus in a long time, and we should again choose to go to him. Now, that sentence is hugely important for who to know who he's inviting and what he intends for us. Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. We go to him for relief. But this is the part where he describes himself. And what's remarkable is he describes himself as gentle and lowly. But it's important to understand Jesus is required to be neither gentle nor lowly. Jesus is required to be neither gentle nor lowly. Do you understand that? He doesn't have to do that. If we go back to the movie and think about what that character might be who comes down from on high to rectify creation, what attitude might he be carrying with him? Again, how would he have the right to describe himself? And we don't actually have to imagine this very much. There's actually an example of this movie in scripture. If we keep turning the pages of Matthew, eventually we'll get to this parable that Jesus tells. And it's a picture of the Old Testament prophets and Israel's reaction to Christ. And he says there was this owner of the vineyard, and he rented it to some workers with the agreement that they would give him an allocated amount of the profits, of the goods goods they would take, they would take some of the harvest. He would take a big portion of the harvest. And so when harvest season came, he sent some representatives, the owner of the vineyard sent some representatives to the workers, three of them. And it said, okay, it's time for us to collect the owner's share of the harvest. And the workers killed one, beat one up and st stoned the other one, and sent the two back to tell the owner, get lost. And so the owner sends some more of his representatives, and they do the same thing. And they tell him to get lost. And so then the owner says, I'm going to send my son. Surely they will respect him and give me my profits. And then when his son shows up, they kill him. Because now we can claim the inheritance for ourselves. This is a picture of the prophets that God sent to the Hebrew people in the Old Testament. They rejected them and they stoned them and they beat them up. And then eventually sending Christ. But again, if you're the son going to these ungrateful workers, what would your attitude towards them be? How might you feel towards them? What might you want to say? I remember I was playing a pickup soccer game in South Africa one time. And my dad and I were playing together. And dad he dad was I think was playing in goal and somebody was coming approaching the goal we're playing indoors and they kicked the ball and they kicked it as hard as they could and it hit my dad right in the face and snapped his snapped him back and it was like point blank it's from like me to Tom and it's indoor and we're all having fun there's's no reason to kick the ball that hard. And when that ball hit my dad's face, I saw red. I like, and I, it couldn't be helped. As soon as play started again, I ran into that guy as hard as I could. And I took him out in front of all the kids and in front of the people that we took there. I was one of the leaders of the trip. He was one of the people that we were ministering to. He was one of the camp leads. I flew 10 days to minister to him out of the overflow of the goodness of my heart. And when that ball hit my dad's face, I didn't care who he was. And after I did it, I was like, well, that's probably not the best way to handle this. How might that son feel going to that vineyard to rectify those people back to his father? Angry, entitled, knowing that he could squash him like a bug if he wanted to. And yet, gentle and lowly in heart. And I don't do this often, but that Greek word heart that's used in the text means center of your person, essence of your being. It is who you are in character to your core. And our Savior, who has every right to be angry. Who has every right to chide us for our betrayal. Who has every right to squash us under his thumb. Who has every right to say, I am here and you better come to me for I am fierce and I am angry and I am powerful and you've got about three seconds to cower before I prove it. Instead, he says, I am gentle and lowly at my core. It is the essence of who I am. And that word gentle is so interesting. Have you ever experienced the gentle conviction of Christ? Have you ever experienced the gentleness of God and how he works to turn our hearts towards him? Where there's something in your life that you know doesn't need to be there. You know it's wrong. You know that attitude or that behavior or that pattern is unacceptable to God. You know that. And yet you persist. And God has every right to crack you over the head with a two-by-four, to come running at you and knock you over in the middle of a soccer field. He has every right to just sweep your legs out from under you and force you in your humiliation to see the errors of your ways and begin to walk right. Doesn't he? But he almost never does. Gently, humbly, graciously, he massages the areas of our life as he cradles us and offers us comfort and walks us humbly into a profound submission and conviction of our sins. Have you ever experienced the gentle conviction of Christ? Maybe you're experiencing it now, this morning, as you hear Jesus calling you back to him. And maybe it's not some big thing. Your life's not going to blow up. He's not going to hit you with a two-by-four, but maybe this morning he's gently urging you back towards him. Jesus describes himself as gentle, and I don't think that we often enough marvel at how profound and meaningful that is. Because he didn't have to. And then he said, he's lowly in heart. He's humble. And this morning, what I want us to understand is that to be lowly is to be accessible. To be lowly, the way that Jesus is talking about, is to be accessible. And now, imagine, let's go back to the movie. This deity comes down from on high to right the wrongs and to rectify us back to our creator. Do you think you're going to get a face-to-face with that person? Like, do you think you're going to get to talk to them? Who's going to talk to that person? Who's going to talk to that entity that comes down? World leaders? The Pope? Rich people? Let me tell you what I'm sure of. That person comes down tomorrow to rectify the world back to the Creator. He's not taking a meeting with any of you. Years ago, and I still kick myself to it because it was a complete waste of time. Years ago, I emailed a United States Senator. I'm not going to tell you which one, and I'm not going to tell you what about. But I emailed a Senator because there was something happening that concerned me, and I wanted to express it. And here's what I know happened. Some 23-year-old intern read it and went, this is dumb, and deleted it and never told a soul about it. I wrote an email to an unnamed intern is what I did. It was a complete waste of time. We understand accessibility. This person who comes down from heaven is not someone that is accessible to the likes of us, unless, he says, I am lowly and gentle. I am meek. I am accessible. And we learn that he is accessible through his Holy Spirit. And we learn that where two or more are gathered in his name, that Jesus is there also. Jesus' presence is with us now in this room today. He offers that to us. He makes himself accessible. So that when we pray, when I pray in a few minutes, if you pray with me, the Holy Spirit is uttering things too deep for words to God to tell him what I really mean through the heart of my prayers. And Jesus himself is sitting at the right hand of the Father as he offers us his presence and he is interjecting to the Father on our behalf. He is that accessible. So here's what I want us to do this fall. Here's what I want us to do with gentle and lowly. Let us this fall marvel together at this unexpected Savior. Let us just take these eight weeks and read through this book and learn more about who our Jesus is and let us collectively marvel together at this unexpected Savior who comes down and he says, are you tired? Then you're who I'm looking for. Are the rules hard? Let me invite you into relationship. And let me tell you about myself. I am gentle. I don't have to be. But I am gentle at my very core. I am accessible and lowly at my very core. I hold on to none of the rights and privileges that you might impugn upon me. I am the most unexpected of saviors. And so this fall, what I want us to do is marvel at him together. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for who you are. Thank you for your son and how he loves us, how he shows up for us. Jesus, thank you for being gentle when so often that gentleness is not what we deserve. Thank you for being humble and lowly and accessible that we might come to you. Thank you for being an unexpected Savior. Father, thank you for sending him to us. Jesus, thank you for leaving us with your spirit. I pray that we would together marvel at you, Jesus, and who you are, and that we would be more desirous of you with each week that goes by and that for those of us who are tired that we would use this morning as a reminder to run to you and seek rest. Jesus, it's in your name that we ask these things as you advocate for us to the Father. Amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making grace a part of your September Sunday. Happy kickoff day to those who are celebrating. If you're joining us online, wherever you are and whatever you may be doing, we are grateful for that. This morning is our own kickoff of sorts as we kick off our new series called Gentle and Lowly, titled for the book, Gentle and Lowly, that we still have available in the lobby. We got 20 more copies last week, so there's some out there. Those are available for $10 a piece. Just grab some on the honor code. You can drop cash in the acrylic boxes on the way out. You can put them in the baskets if and when they come by. You can send us a money order and I will sign for it. Whatever you want to do for your $10, you feel free. But take a book if you'd like one. We're going to be going through that this fall together. And I have found that the church always thrives. There seems to be kind of a greater pulse. We kind of come alive a little bit when we all have a shared experience, when we're doing some of the same things together. And so this is an opportunity for that. It's how we kind of, you might not know this, but at Grace on staff, for me, as I think about the year, our ministry year starts in September, and then we sprint all the way to Memorial Day, and then we kind of, we have summer extreme, then we take a breath and then we get ready for September again. So I wanted to start our ministry year on the same page together, going through this book. This is a book that the staff has gone through. Kyle, our now family pastor, recommended it to us. We went through it as a staff. It was a very impactful book. We've had a small group go through it and they really loved it. And so I thought it would be good for the whole church to move through this book as well. Now in the book, there's something like 16 chapters or maybe more. And this series is only eight weeks. So clearly I'm not going to cover every chapter. I've chosen the ones that I feel are most relevant to grace, which is by the way, one of my favorite things about being a pastor of a small church is that I feel like we know each other and I know you. So when I go through a book like this, I can pick the chapters that will probably be most relevant to us, which is something that I take. I feel a great privilege in being able to do. But if you want the full experience, then you'll need to read it on your own as we move through. We will move through the chapters chronologically, but I will not hit each one. So I would encourage you to grab that book and be reading it this fall as we go through it. As we begin the series, I want to start with a little thought experiment, okay? And now this is going to require us to activate our calcified, recalcitrant imaginations, okay, that many of you have not used in a long time. I have a four-year-old son. I'm 44. I'm too old to have a four-year-old son, especially one as imaginative as he is. That kid will talk to you for 10 minutes straight, and 85% of it is complete nonsense, untethered to reality. He's got the most active imagination, and I'm bad at imaginative play. I would have been better at 24, but not much better. Okay. I haven't used my imagination since I was three. And then I, then I, then I cut that guy off. It was like, that's useless. That's not practical in the adult world. And I moved forward. Some of us are like that. We haven't imagined anything in a long time, but I want to ask you to dust it off and imagine this with me. okay? Let's pretend, and I know, I just said pretend and you guys are like, you lost me. Let's pretend together that you're going to go see a movie. And this movie you've seen from the trailers is about a creator, a deity that builds a world. And this world, the people or the beings that inhabit it, rebel against him, do not follow his rules, do not care about his presence. Most of them live lives that essentially ignore him. And they turn themselves from him. Now, I know that this is not difficult to know where I'm going. But I do want you to depict that world in your head. There is a deity. He is the main character of the movie. He creates a universe. And the center of that universe is a world. And the people, the things occupying that world are made in his image to glorify him. And yet they don't do that. They turn against him. They rebel against him. They do not care about him. And so to rectify this deity, to rectify this creation back to himself, he sends his son and says, go fix it. He sends his son to this creation and he says, I want you to go get these, get my beings, get my creations rectified back to me, facing me, serving me, and right relationship with me. Go fix what's broken. If you're imagining that with me, it's a movie that we're going to go see, and this character is sent down to creation to rectify creation back to the creator on behalf of the Father. Let me ask you this question. How would he have the right to describe himself? How would he have the right to describe himself? How would that character be able to describe himself? This character comes down, the son of the deity comes down. He says, I'm here to rectify this and to get you facing back towards God, back towards your creator. How would that character have a right to describe himself? Angry? Authoritative? Vindictive? Powerful? Just? He would have the right to be ticked, wouldn't he? He would have the right to bow up and say, you are humans, I am deity. I'm more important than you. I'm a bigger deal than you. If you don't listen to me, I'm going to get you right. Wouldn't he have every right to come down here, to be angry, to go down there, sorry, and be angry and be upset with the inhabitants and get right and say, you better cower in front of me because I'm not a problem that you want to have. And right now you do. If we imagine that movie and we imagine that character, I think it's very easy to imagine how that character might describe himself when asked. The parallel is very simple and very easy, and you guys spotted it as soon as I started the idea. But this is what Jesus does. This is the movie that we live in. God created us. He populated at the center of the universe. He populated this world with people that were made in his own image. And those people have rejected their God. And so God sends his son to rectify the situation and to turn creation back to him. He sends his son Jesus and says, go fix it. And then we ask, how would this person have the right to describe themselves? What would make sense? How would you describe yourself? How would you expect him to describe himself? And this, to me, is the arresting principle of the book Gentle and Lowly. Because according to the author, Dane Ortlund, there is but one place in Scripture where Jesus describes himself. There is but one place where Jesus gives a description of himself. In the Gospels, he's described many, many times, but it's always by his followers. It's always by the people around him. Jesus never goes on about himself. He never describes himself. He's very humble like that. But we have one place where he does. And this to me is the arresting principle of the book. What is the one place in scripture where Jesus describes himself and what does he say about himself given how he has the right to describe himself, which is any way that he wants, given what his attitude, what we would expect it to be if we were watching that movie. Given all of that, Jesus describes himself in one place. How does he do it? Matthew 11, 28 through 30. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. This is the one way that our Savior describes himself. And I memorized this verse as a kid in the King's English. So to me, it's still, come to me all ye who are weary and heavy laden, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. For I am gentle and lowly in heart. This is the one descriptor Jesus gives of himself. And it is profound in myriad ways. So this morning, I want us to sit in these words and reflect on what they mean with the goal of launching us into a series in which we will marvel at our unexpected Savior. That's where we want to end today. But where we begin is with the words of Christ when he describes himself. And the first thing he says is, Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden. And as I thought about that, this occurred to me. We come to Jesus when we come to Jesus, we are exhausted. Have you ever thought about that? When we in our lives reach a place where we reach out for Christ, where we turn our countenance towards him, where we say, God, I need you. Jesus, I need you. Jesus, I welcome you. Jesus, I'm done with this. Whether it's for the first time, and maybe there's those of you in here who would not yet call yourself a Christian, but you're kicking the tires because spirituality seems important to you right now. And you're not quite sure, and you might not have all the answers, and you might not be totally on board with have all the answers and you might not be totally on board with this church thing and you might not be totally on board with this Bible thing, but you know that you need something. So here you sit in church curious about spirituality. And so maybe for the first time in your life you're considering reaching out to Jesus. Or maybe like most of us, you're here and you've had times in your life when you've reached to Jesus. You've had times in your life when you've forgotten. Times in your life when you held him at arm's reach. Times in your life when you allowed yourself to get too busy and you didn't prioritize him in your life. But something happens to bring you back to him. To cause you to reach out for him, to cause you to recognize your need for him and to be relieved by him. And do you know what we have in common, whether it's for the first time or for the 12th time, when we reach out to Jesus, do you know what's common about that that I think is remarkable? Every time you do it, you're tired. We reach to Jesus when we are exhausted. I've never known anyone who is crushing it. Their days are good. Their burden is light. Everything's going well. They're in cruise control. Their kids are awesome. Their marriage is happy. Business is good. Everything around me is great. That person doesn't tend to go, you know what I need? Jesus. That person just tends to love the goodness of life. But the people that I see in my life, again, whether it's for the first time or for the 12th time, who are reaching for Jesus, you know what they have in common? They're tired. Life feels heavy. It feels hard. There's this latent unhappiness or discontent that I can't seem to shake. Every now and again, we'll have a good day and we'll have a good smile and we'll have a good interaction and that feels nice. But then when we just kind of get back to ourselves, we just kind of shrink back in because we're exhausted and we're tired. And so I think, and I don't know this to be sure, I cannot interpret the intentions of Jesus himself, but it would make sense to me that Jesus says, come to me. When he invites people, come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden. Come to me, those who are exhausted, because I think it's possible that Jesus knows there's no other way that we go to him until we are exhausted, until we have worn ourselves out, forgetting about him and going about our lives however we want. And then there's an emptiness in that that causes us dissatisfaction. And eventually, in that exhaustion, Jesus in his goodness invites us to him. And so I think he says, come to me all you who are exhausted because that's the only way we go. Energized people don't run to him. They think they're fine. And so maybe simply today, if you have been crushing it and you have been cruising, maybe today we don't drop something on the ground and wait for it to break to start asking Jesus to pick up the pieces. Maybe today we go to him before we get tired. Maybe this fall, as we commit to this series, and we commit to going through this together as a church, maybe September isn't just the start of our ministry year here. Maybe it's a renewal of the fervency of your faith. Maybe you are tired. Maybe you are exhausted. Maybe it doesn't feel like summer was long enough, or if you have young kids, it feels like it was way too long. And maybe you are just catapulting into September and all the things and you're already tired. You need a vacation from your vacation. Let this, this verse, Jesus's invitation, be a lighthouse to us, beckoning us in to go to Jesus this fall, to reconnect with Jesus this fall, especially if we are tired, especially if we are burdened. Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden. If that's you, let's go to Jesus this fall. If we're tired, let's turn to him. He beckons us. But he doesn't stop there. He follows it with this interesting statement. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light, which is an interesting, oh yeah, this is what that means, which is an interesting thought. It's an interesting verbal flourish, right? Come to me all ye who are weary and heavy laden for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. It's, we kind of get the connotation. We understand that a yoke, at least I hope you do, if this is new information to you, your school failed you at some point, but a yoke is the thing that goes across the back of the ox so that they can pull the plow or they can pull the cart or whatever it is. It's the thing that goes over the animals so that they can pull it and be used. So he says, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And so we kind of understand that imagery on a visceral level already. But here's what you may not know about that word yoke and what it means. In Jesus's time and in the times in Israel prior to, rabbis were the teachers. And I'm not going to go through what it takes to become a rabbi, but there wasn't a lot of them. It was like making the NFL. And the rabbis, they were the religious teachers. They were the ones charged with teaching God's people about God's word. But there was differences in interpretation. And different rabbis would see things differently. One easy example of this is, it's said in scripture that you should remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. You were not to work on the Sabbath day, which for them was Friday night to Saturday night, those 24 hours. And some rabbis looked at that and interpreted very, very strictly and very piously. And they said, if you have sandals that use a nail to fasten the leather to the sole of the sandals, those sandals have metal in them, and you can't wear them because it's requiring more of your body to pick up your foot, and that counts as work. So you cannot wear those sandals on the Sabbath. And other rabbis went, that's absurd, wear whatever you want, right? Those would be our rabbis, right? Nobody in this room is like, I'm pro-nail guy. That's the one I want. There was disagreements. If your donkey falls in a ditch on the Sabbath, can you pull it out or do you have to leave it there until Monday? When you tithe, what do you tithe? When the laws contradict each other, do I lie and protect somebody or do I tell the truth and get them in trouble? When the laws contradict each other and you don't know which way to go, that's what the rabbis were for. And so they had, they each had a way of understanding all understanding and applying and teaching all of the rules and the law and the old Testament. And that way of understanding those things was called their yoke. So when you would follow a rabbi, you would take their yoke upon you and follow the rules their way, which is not very much different than our current day denominations. Some people think that we should sprinkle water on a head of a baby, and that's baptism. Some people think that baptism is you get maximum wet, and it's for professing believers. We have difference of opinion on that. So we started the Presbyterians and the Baptists, right? Methodists have different ways that they interpret things. Lutherans, Pentecostals, we have these different things. And so back to this point, and now we can put it back up there, Laura, yoke equals religion. Yoke equals religion. It's not just an image. It's not just a metaphor. It really does mean religion. Way of thinking about faith. Way of following the rules. Way of living up to the standards of God. And so Jesus says, and this is what makes it remarkable, come to me you who are exhausted for my yoke, my religion, my way of living out your faith is easy, and my burden is light. And here's the way he makes it easy. Jesus does not seek to encumber us with rules, but to liberate us with relationship. He does not seek to encumber us with rules, but to liberate us with relationship. He says, at one point in his ministry, somebody asked him, what's the greatest commandment? And he asked it back to them, what do you say it is? And the person answers, to love your Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, amen, and to love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus says, you have spoken wisely. On these hang the whole law and the prophets. And what Jesus meant in that statement is, if you'll simply love God and love others, you will capture all the Old Testament. You will live out the truth and the rules that are found in the Old Testament law. The 630 something rules that Moses brought down the mountain. If you will simply love God and love others, you will fulfill those things. And then he further simplifies it in the upper room discourse in John 14 through 17. We spent a spring there one time. They're, to me, the greatest collection of chapters in the Bible. It's God's, it's Jesus's final instructions to his disciples. And he says in John 14, this new command I give you, this new command I give you, do you know what it is? Go love others as I have loved you. He drops off the God part. And he says, this one command, you live by this one command, this one rule, this one thing encumbering the yoke. And that's what I'm asking you to do. And it might feel odd that he leaves off the God part, but what Jesus knows is there is no possible way for us to love others sacrificially unless Jesus himself is the one empowering and infusing that love. I cannot love you the way that I'm supposed to love you the way that Jesus loved you. I can't even sniff at it unless I am actively, adamantly, and ferociously loving God first. Then I can love you. That's why Jesus sums it up this way. And he does not encumber us with rules. Because rules are tricky anyways, aren't they? Think about one of the most basic rules. Honor your father and mother in the Lord for this is right. Great. What if your dad's a degenerate? What if he left the family? What if your mom's abusive? What does it look like then to honor them? What if they tell you to do things that are actively wrong? What does it look like to honor them? Maybe you have great parents. What does it look like to honor them when you're eight? And what does it look like to honor them when you're 48? That simple rule, honor your father and mother, gets tricky. And so you know what Jesus says? Let's not worry about the pedantics of that. Let's simply love others as I have loved you. How did he love? Sacrificially. He gave of himself. Always. Always patient. He was always gracious. He was always kind. And in this way, he forces us into relationships. This is why we say at Grace that we exist to connect people to Jesus and connect people to people. Because our faith necessarily presses us into relationship with Jesus and then into relationship with others as we are tasked with loving one another as Jesus loves us. So when he says, come to me if you're tired, my yoke is easy and my burden is light, it's not to encumber us with rules. It's not to encumber us with do's and don'ts. It's simply to love your neighbor. We can make a rule that you shouldn't flip somebody off in traffic when they cut you off. We could make that rule. We could write it down. We could agree to it. We could abide by it. We could probably find something in Scripture that would lend itself to this idea that hanging your finger out the window is probably not a great idea in traffic. We could do that rule. But doesn't just love of our neighbor dictate that we would never do that anyways? And in this love, doesn't it make the relationship more genuine? What if every Monday, Jen sent me an email, and she said, this is what I need you to do for me to feel loved this week. And it was just a to-do list. And that was the basis of our marriage. And I did the things, and by Thursday, I'm lovable. I did them all. We good? Yes. She gives me a big hug and a kiss. Yes. Great. Now, here's the thing that she and I both know. I wouldn't do it. I'd want to. I'd really be up for it. I kind of like that policy. That makes things a lot simpler, doesn't it? But that's not how relationships work. So that's not how our relationship with Jesus works. So if we're compelled to go to him, it's not a list of do's and don'ts. It's a relationship that we lean further into with him, and then we lean outward into others. And the love of Jesus is what makes those relationships possible and makes us able to love well. So I would say if we are tired and we're not loving others well, maybe it's because we haven't been fueled by Jesus in a long time, and we should again choose to go to him. Now, that sentence is hugely important for who to know who he's inviting and what he intends for us. Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. We go to him for relief. But this is the part where he describes himself. And what's remarkable is he describes himself as gentle and lowly. But it's important to understand Jesus is required to be neither gentle nor lowly. Jesus is required to be neither gentle nor lowly. Do you understand that? He doesn't have to do that. If we go back to the movie and think about what that character might be who comes down from on high to rectify creation, what attitude might he be carrying with him? Again, how would he have the right to describe himself? And we don't actually have to imagine this very much. There's actually an example of this movie in scripture. If we keep turning the pages of Matthew, eventually we'll get to this parable that Jesus tells. And it's a picture of the Old Testament prophets and Israel's reaction to Christ. And he says there was this owner of the vineyard, and he rented it to some workers with the agreement that they would give him an allocated amount of the profits, of the goods goods they would take, they would take some of the harvest. He would take a big portion of the harvest. And so when harvest season came, he sent some representatives, the owner of the vineyard sent some representatives to the workers, three of them. And it said, okay, it's time for us to collect the owner's share of the harvest. And the workers killed one, beat one up and st stoned the other one, and sent the two back to tell the owner, get lost. And so the owner sends some more of his representatives, and they do the same thing. And they tell him to get lost. And so then the owner says, I'm going to send my son. Surely they will respect him and give me my profits. And then when his son shows up, they kill him. Because now we can claim the inheritance for ourselves. This is a picture of the prophets that God sent to the Hebrew people in the Old Testament. They rejected them and they stoned them and they beat them up. And then eventually sending Christ. But again, if you're the son going to these ungrateful workers, what would your attitude towards them be? How might you feel towards them? What might you want to say? I remember I was playing a pickup soccer game in South Africa one time. And my dad and I were playing together. And dad he dad was I think was playing in goal and somebody was coming approaching the goal we're playing indoors and they kicked the ball and they kicked it as hard as they could and it hit my dad right in the face and snapped his snapped him back and it was like point blank it's from like me to Tom and it's indoor and we're all having fun there's's no reason to kick the ball that hard. And when that ball hit my dad's face, I saw red. I like, and I, it couldn't be helped. As soon as play started again, I ran into that guy as hard as I could. And I took him out in front of all the kids and in front of the people that we took there. I was one of the leaders of the trip. He was one of the people that we were ministering to. He was one of the camp leads. I flew 10 days to minister to him out of the overflow of the goodness of my heart. And when that ball hit my dad's face, I didn't care who he was. And after I did it, I was like, well, that's probably not the best way to handle this. How might that son feel going to that vineyard to rectify those people back to his father? Angry, entitled, knowing that he could squash him like a bug if he wanted to. And yet, gentle and lowly in heart. And I don't do this often, but that Greek word heart that's used in the text means center of your person, essence of your being. It is who you are in character to your core. And our Savior, who has every right to be angry. Who has every right to chide us for our betrayal. Who has every right to squash us under his thumb. Who has every right to say, I am here and you better come to me for I am fierce and I am angry and I am powerful and you've got about three seconds to cower before I prove it. Instead, he says, I am gentle and lowly at my core. It is the essence of who I am. And that word gentle is so interesting. Have you ever experienced the gentle conviction of Christ? Have you ever experienced the gentleness of God and how he works to turn our hearts towards him? Where there's something in your life that you know doesn't need to be there. You know it's wrong. You know that attitude or that behavior or that pattern is unacceptable to God. You know that. And yet you persist. And God has every right to crack you over the head with a two-by-four, to come running at you and knock you over in the middle of a soccer field. He has every right to just sweep your legs out from under you and force you in your humiliation to see the errors of your ways and begin to walk right. Doesn't he? But he almost never does. Gently, humbly, graciously, he massages the areas of our life as he cradles us and offers us comfort and walks us humbly into a profound submission and conviction of our sins. Have you ever experienced the gentle conviction of Christ? Maybe you're experiencing it now, this morning, as you hear Jesus calling you back to him. And maybe it's not some big thing. Your life's not going to blow up. He's not going to hit you with a two-by-four, but maybe this morning he's gently urging you back towards him. Jesus describes himself as gentle, and I don't think that we often enough marvel at how profound and meaningful that is. Because he didn't have to. And then he said, he's lowly in heart. He's humble. And this morning, what I want us to understand is that to be lowly is to be accessible. To be lowly, the way that Jesus is talking about, is to be accessible. And now, imagine, let's go back to the movie. This deity comes down from on high to right the wrongs and to rectify us back to our creator. Do you think you're going to get a face-to-face with that person? Like, do you think you're going to get to talk to them? Who's going to talk to that person? Who's going to talk to that entity that comes down? World leaders? The Pope? Rich people? Let me tell you what I'm sure of. That person comes down tomorrow to rectify the world back to the Creator. He's not taking a meeting with any of you. Years ago, and I still kick myself to it because it was a complete waste of time. Years ago, I emailed a United States Senator. I'm not going to tell you which one, and I'm not going to tell you what about. But I emailed a Senator because there was something happening that concerned me, and I wanted to express it. And here's what I know happened. Some 23-year-old intern read it and went, this is dumb, and deleted it and never told a soul about it. I wrote an email to an unnamed intern is what I did. It was a complete waste of time. We understand accessibility. This person who comes down from heaven is not someone that is accessible to the likes of us, unless, he says, I am lowly and gentle. I am meek. I am accessible. And we learn that he is accessible through his Holy Spirit. And we learn that where two or more are gathered in his name, that Jesus is there also. Jesus' presence is with us now in this room today. He offers that to us. He makes himself accessible. So that when we pray, when I pray in a few minutes, if you pray with me, the Holy Spirit is uttering things too deep for words to God to tell him what I really mean through the heart of my prayers. And Jesus himself is sitting at the right hand of the Father as he offers us his presence and he is interjecting to the Father on our behalf. He is that accessible. So here's what I want us to do this fall. Here's what I want us to do with gentle and lowly. Let us this fall marvel together at this unexpected Savior. Let us just take these eight weeks and read through this book and learn more about who our Jesus is and let us collectively marvel together at this unexpected Savior who comes down and he says, are you tired? Then you're who I'm looking for. Are the rules hard? Let me invite you into relationship. And let me tell you about myself. I am gentle. I don't have to be. But I am gentle at my very core. I am accessible and lowly at my very core. I hold on to none of the rights and privileges that you might impugn upon me. I am the most unexpected of saviors. And so this fall, what I want us to do is marvel at him together. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for who you are. Thank you for your son and how he loves us, how he shows up for us. Jesus, thank you for being gentle when so often that gentleness is not what we deserve. Thank you for being humble and lowly and accessible that we might come to you. Thank you for being an unexpected Savior. Father, thank you for sending him to us. Jesus, thank you for leaving us with your spirit. I pray that we would together marvel at you, Jesus, and who you are, and that we would be more desirous of you with each week that goes by and that for those of us who are tired that we would use this morning as a reminder to run to you and seek rest. Jesus, it's in your name that we ask these things as you advocate for us to the Father. Amen.

Yo, it's not September yet. What are you all doing here? We're supposed to have more space than this in the middle of August. It's good to see everybody. Thank you so much for coming. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten to meet you, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service, only because now is inconvenient. But just a couple of things behind the scenes I feel like I need to tell you. Rob, our bass player, walked by me and he said, go get him, pal. And I said, well, that's very nice. And then I was setting up up here and our worship leader, Aaron, tapped me on the shoulder, which is not typical. Normally he doesn't speak to me because my mental fragility is such that I can't handle it before a sermon. But he tapped me on the shoulder and I leaned back and he said, hey, just do good. And I, thanks buddy. Thanks for that. So we will do our best. This morning we are continuing in our series on the life of Moses. Last week, I kind of paused in the narrative because it had brought us to this place where the presence of God rested on Mount Sinai, and I felt like it was really important for us to also pause. There's this word in Psalms that we learn, this Hebrew word called shalom, and shalom just means kind of a holy pause. And I felt like it was important last week to just kind of take a shalom and pause on this part of the narrative that causes us to fear God, which is a good thing. And we focus on the fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom. But the reason that the presence of God rested on Mount Sinai was to give the law to his people. So what happens is the presence of God, and this is in Exodus chapter 19, and I'll just tell you this up front, okay? I want you to understand this, and I want to acknowledge this for you. I'm not going to read verses this week. This is, I hate to say this, this is just here for show this week. I'm not going to open it and read to you, all right? And I feel badly about that. But I'm resting in the fact that what I'm talking to you about is in Exodus 19. And I'm resting in the fact that I'm going to refer to passages in Romans and Galatians and Acts and John and Matthew so that we are. This is going to be a biblical sermon, but I just, there was nothing that I found in my preparation that zeroed in on what I wanted to say enough that I felt like it was worth sharing. So we will be in scripture this week, but I'm not going to open it. And I know that I'm not doing that, but hopefully we'll get to the end of the sermon and you'll think, yeah, that counts as a sermon. That's the goal. But this week it's Exodus 19. And in Exodus 19, we get the law. And when I say the law, we often think of the Ten Commandments. And if you're to open your Bible and read it, I think a lot of us understand what was happening when Moses received the Ten Commandments. But we tend to think, I believe, that Moses got these two tablets of stone and God etched onto them the Ten Commandments and he walked down the mountain with those tablets of stone with the Ten Commandments on them. And that is true. But what we might not pick up from the story, at least I didn't for decades of being a believer, is that all the other laws were etched on those tablets too. There's 630 something laws in Old Testament law, in the Old Testament for the Hebrew person. And so when God gave the law, it wasn't just 10 commandments. It was 10 commandments and the other 6 hundred and twenty. OK, that's what was on the tablets. And so when Moses comes back down the mountain, he has the law in his hands and he's sharing it with the Hebrew people. And here's what I think is really interesting about this point in history. And I'm going to take some liberties here. But I wonder, why did God give the law to his people at this time? And I don't know if you've ever thought about that. But let me kind of help you with that process. When God created Adam and Eve, he made one law. He said, do whatever you want. Don't eat from the fruit of that tree. That's the only rule. Do whatever you want. Go nuts. Do whatever you want. Don't eat of the fruit of that tree. That was it. That was the only law. And then they broke it because they wanted to be like God. They forgot to fear the Lord. God could have at that point said, okay, you screwed up. Now there's sin. Now the fall has happened. Let me give you the rules. Let me tell you what you need to do to be right with me. You messed up. Let me give you the rules. He didn't do that. Have you ever noticed that? He didn't do that. He just said, now you're going to have to work for your food. Life's going to be a little bit more difficult. Things between you and I will never be the same. But he didn't give him the rules. Then, a little while later, he hit reset on the entire earth by flooding it. And he allowed Noah and Ham, Shem and Japheth and their wives to be the new Adam and Eve that repopulated the earth. And the reason that he did it is because he looked across the earth and he said, this is evil and no one follows me. And I'm, I'm, I'm saddened that I've created this. And so he hit the reset button. When he hit the reset button, did he then give Noah the rules? No. He could have. He didn't. He could have said, listen, I gave you guys a chance. You messed it up. So moving forward, here are the rules for following me. He didn't do that. Then there was the Tower of Babel. After he dispersed the nations and gave them different languages, could he have also given them the rules? Yes, he could have. Did he? No. Then, a while later, I know that this is hard for you guys because you haven't thought about this before, but I've thought about this for years. Then a while later, he calls Abraham from the land of Ur of the Chaldeans, the Sumerian dynasty. And he says, hey, Abraham, I know this is going to sound weird. I want you to pick up everything that you own and I want you to move and I'm going to show you where you're going to move as you get there. It would be like you selling your house, packing a U-Haul, and just driving in the general direction of Utah, trusting God to show you where to go. That's what he did for Abraham. And when he did that, and when in Genesis 12, he made his promises to Abraham, I'm going to bless you with people and with blessing, and one of your descendants is going to bless the whole earth. And your descendants will be like the stars in the sky. This is God we know now in retrospect, founding the nation of Israel. It's the very foundation of this people that God has chosen to love and center out amongst all of humankind. He starts it with Abraham. And he could have, at that point, said, by the way, Abraham, here are the rules. But he didn't. He could have said with his son Isaac, here are the rules. He could have said with his grandson Jacob, who was then later named Israel, by the way, as the father of this nation, I am founding on your faith. Here are the rules. And he never did it. He never did it. He waited for some reason until Moses was leading his people through the desert to finally give them the rules. So I think it's a really interesting question to wonder, God, why did you wait that long? Why now? Why here? And all I can say about that is this. In the past, I have paused a sermon and I've moved over here. And I've said, some of you will remember, Jeffy does, I heard him laugh. Some of you will remember, this is my reckless speculation box. When I'm here, I'm speaking to you from what I believe to be the authority of Scripture. And I would I would tell you candidly, it's my best understanding of what Scripture is. It's not the authority of Nate or the authority of God. It's just when I read it, this is how I understand it. And I'm sharing that with you. OK, but when I step over here. I'm reckless, man. They're like, this is just what I think. This is just what I suppose. This is not here. Here, I feel like I have some authority. Here, I'm just being an honest adult with you and saying this is what I think, but I can't back this up with paperwork. Do we understand the difference? Here, when I answer the question, why does God wait so long to give the law? What I actually believe in my core is that he gave it begrudgingly. I do not think he wanted to. And I think we have an example of this when he gives Moses divorce laws. And he says, I don't really want to give you divorce laws because I don't want this to be a part of your life. But practically speaking, I see the necessity of it. So here are some ramifications and some parameters for that practice. I believe that God gave the law begrudgingly. And here's why I believe this. And this is where I'll step back here. Because I do think that there's some scriptural authority for this. All God ever wanted was for us to trust him. All God ever wanted was for us to trust him and obey him. Why didn't he give Adam the law? Because he didn't want to. Because all he asked of Adam is just obey me. Just trust me. Just let me be the creator and you be the creation. Just obey me. Just trust me. Why didn't he give Noah the law? Because just trust me. Just obey me. Scholars believe Job predates Noah and all the others as well. Why didn't he give Job the law? Because just trust me. Just obey me. Why didn't he give it to Moses? Why didn't he give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob? Because I believe with all my heart that all God has ever wanted from us is to just trust him and obey him. But for some reason, the Hebrew people found that to be difficult. And for some reason, we found it to be difficult. And two separate times, God allowed the human experiment to exist with this impetus of trusting and obeying him. And it ended in the flood and it ended in the Tower of Babel. And then it came to his Hebrew people and he said, in my opinion, fine, here. Here's the law. And the law says, you want a path to my approval? Here it is. That's what the law says. When Moses comes down the mountain in Exodus 19 and he's got the tablets there, what God is saying is, do you want a path to salvation? To heaven? To eternity? To right standing before me? Is that what you want? Here. This is it. Follow the law. Go ahead. You want to know what the rules are? Here are the rules. And he gives them 630 rules. This is the path to be right with me. I've asked you over and over and over again, and here's what's so important, I think, for us. We feel this pull in our own lives, right? Just trust me. Just obey me. You don't have to all the way understand me. Just trust. We feel that pull, right? But God says, okay, you want law. This is the path. I've asked you to trust me. You've decided not to do that. You need to know the rules. Here are the rules. Here's the thing about the rules. And here's the thing about the law. And this is why I would be honest with you and tell you that this morning's sermon was really difficult to write because I've often said that the most difficult thing in preparing a sermon is deciding what not to say. And this morning, there's so much to say about the law and its import and how much it matters across the span of Scripture. I do not think you can overstate the importance of the law and its impact on the rest of faith and on what it was to be a New Testament Christian and even on how we understand our faith. If you want to be a Christian at all, with any knowledge of the Bible, with any knowledge of how your faith works, you've got to understand the importance of the law. I actually think it works this way. This is going to sound ludicrous. I believe in my email to the staff when I sent them my notes. I said, these seem unhinged, but just go with me. And even as I ran through them this morning, Zach, who's doing our slides, said, you're going to have to explain this one a little bit. And I said, yeah, I know. Okay, but here you go. The law equals Luke Skywalker's genealogy. Deal with it. I'm not even going to explain that. I'm just going to go on to the next point. No, here's the thing, and I've thought this a long time, and this is probably an outdated analogy, but I hope that it can hold up. I grew up, I was born in 1981. That makes some of you feel very young and others feel very old. I don't care. I was born in 1981. I was actually talking to a friend of mine this week. This is Jermaine to nothing, but I was talking to a friend of mine this week that I worked for when I was 19 and I think he was 22 and we were doing the same ministry together. And we both kind of had this realization at the same time, like we're the old dogs now, like we're both in our mid forties. We've been doing this for 25 years. We can't, we're not, we're not young anymore, which means frankly, I should be better at this than I am, but you know, here we are. I've thought for a long time, when I was growing up, Luke Skywalker and Star Wars hit me just in the exact right spot. He was a hero growing up. Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Leia, they shaped my childhood. And if you don't know who they are and you don't understand this, I'm sorry for you. Do some work because it's worth it. In Star Wars, there's three movies. There's the first one, which is just called Star Wars. There's other movies that they've made since then with like J.J. Abrams. Who cares? Jar Jar Binks, get out of here. Nobody cares about those. Thank you, Jeff. The good ones. We're getting really close to an amen. I feel one coming. Maybe this service. Maybe so. That's right. I've never gotten an amen in the history of preaching at Grace, but if I denounce Jar Jar Binks and get one, that would be actually super funny. Sorry, I'm down the road really far on this Star Wars thing. There's three movies. It's Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, and then Return of the Jedi, right? And at the end of Empire Strikes Back, at the very end of the movie, Luke Skywalker is like hanging off of this Death Star thing and he's having a confrontation with Darth Vader. And Darth Vader says the most famous line in movies, which is actually misquoted and not famous. We all quote it as, Luke, I am your father. That is not the line. The line is, no, I am your father. And if you have not watched Star Wars and the first two and a half hours of The Empire Strikes Back, when Darth Vader says, no, I am your father, it doesn't mean anything to you. But if you have, it means everything. And so I've often thought that trying to understand our faith by beginning in the New Testament and not understanding the Old Testament and the law is like trying to appreciate the impact of the greatest line in cinematic history without having watched the first two movies. Do you understand your Bible? The first two thirds of it are the Old Testament. When we start in the New Testament and our understanding of faith, we cheapen and shortchange our ability to understand that faith. And that an understanding of the import of the law is fundamental to it. Do you understand that the book of Galatians, the whole book, is about how to reconcile the law? And that if you don't understand what the law is, you can't possibly understand the book of Galatians? Do you understand that literally half of the book of Acts is an exercise in the New Testament church trying to figure out how to wrestle the law to the ground and what to expect of the Gentile converts into their Jewish faith. Do you understand that you can't understand Romans oratory and revolutionary the ministry of Jesus was if you do not understand the law? And so this morning, as we arrive at Exodus 19, and I think about myself as your pastor, and I have a responsibility to make sure we understand the import of the law. Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts. Because it's a big deal. It's important in how we understand scripture. And here's the greatest trick of the law. This one's pretty good. And this is another one that you're going to be like, dude, what are you doing? But just hear me out. The law sees dead people. A lot of you, I know, like to fill out your notes before I do the blanks. And I've decided a long time ago, I don't care. I'm not going to try to trick you. I'm not really thinking about that. I don't think anybody had this. I think I got you on this one. The law sees dead people. In 1999, here's another. At least it's not the 80s. I moved 20 years forward. In 1999, there was this movie. Gosh, I forget the name of it now. I even looked it up this morning, so I wouldn't. What was it? Sixth Sense. Thank you. Guy I don't know on the first row helping me out on his very first visit. Thank you very much, buddy. That's great. Come back any time. Sixth Sense. It had Bruce Willis. And there was this kid who plays the main character. And Sixth Sense stands out, and we all know it. We know what it is. Because it's like the greatest switcheroo in cinematic history. It's really amazing that at the beginning of the movie, they tell you that Bruce Willis is dead. And you are watching it in real time and you're like, no, he's not. He seems to be talking. He's fine. And you don't process it. And then at the end of the movie, so they've done this whole movie. And the kid who I think is Haley Jo Osmond, I think that's who plays him, thank you, I knew Liz Roberg would know that, that's why I looked over there, says that iconic line, I see dead people. And you realize, the last two hours of my life, I've misunderstood what was going on. And you realize Bruce Willis really did die at the beginning of the movie. And he's been playing a ghost this whole time. And when you watch Sixth Sense, I'm sorry a little bit if this is a spoiler alert. It's also been 25 years, so you make your choices. But when you watch that movie fresh and you realize at the end what you've actually been watching for two hours, it's kind of this moment where you go, oh my goodness, I didn't understand that. And it kind of blows your mind a little bit. That's what the law is. Because when God gave the law to his people, it was, if you want to be right with me, here's what you have to do. If you want a path to heaven. Here's the path. And so we took it for millennia to be the path. And the Hebrew people organized a religion around it. Saying we're going to be the best followers of this law that has ever been. And we're going to help everyone. When you break the law, here's what you do to restore yourself. And then you return yourself to trying to follow the law. Here's what we do. And they built a whole faith around that premise. If you want to be right with me, here's how you be right with me. And then Jesus comes along and he does the greatest switcheroo in history. And he shows us that the law sees dead people. And Jesus comes along and he says this about the law. You've heard it said that a man should not commit adultery. But I say to you that if you have looked at a woman with lust in your heart, you are guilty of that sin. And let's be very clear about this. I'm not making a joke right now. That makes every man in this room an adulterer. Okay? That's the law. Yeah, have you passed the test of not having actual intercourse with another person's wife? Great. But let me redefine this in such a way that you really understand the heart of the law. If you've left it after someone else, you're guilty. Whoa. That's a different standard. Jesus said, you've heard it said that you shouldn't kill someone else. You shouldn't murder. But I say to you that if you have hate in your heart for a brother, you are guilty of that sin. Which makes a portion of this room murderers. And so he comes and he doesn't. And I want to be very clear about this. Jesus does not redefine the law. He simply correctly defines it. And he shows us in his definition our inability to follow it. And what we find in Jesus's discussion of the law is that the whole law, and we find this in Galatians and we find this in Romans and we find this in Acts and we find this in Corinthians. This is everywhere, replete throughout the New Testament, that the entire point of the law is to show you that you can't follow it. That's the whole point. You think it's to show you how to be right before God, and really the point of it is to show you your inadequacy before God and your need for that. That's the law. The law sees dead people. It's not here to make a pathway for you to get right with God. The law exists so that you will know that you are incapable of following that pathway and will claim your need for Jesus who came and lived a perfect life and followed that law perfectly for you and died a perfect death to make a bridge to a God that you would never have access to if he did not come and perfectly fulfill that law for you. That's the point of the law. Jesus fulfilled the law and earned God's approval for you. The point of the law, friends, is to remind us of our need for Jesus. The point of God's standards is to show us that we can't meet them. The point of the cross is to remind us of the necessity of it. So when we arrive at this text in Exodus chapter 19, and we see the law brought down the mountain by Moses. And we understand it as a momentous occasion in the history of the Hebrew people and even in our faith. And we see that law as God providing a pathway to approval from him. Please understand that it is momentous. It does echo throughout the millennia. It is incredibly important. But it's incredibly important because its intent has always been to show you that you can't keep it. Its intent has always been to show you your inadequacy and your reliance on the perfect life and death of Jesus. And that the entire point of the law throughout all of history is to orient your gaze towards the cross and not towards yourself and your ability to obey rules. It's to surrender before God and say, I am not capable of that. I need this. That's the whole point. So please, church, when we think about the law, let's see it for what it is. Let's appreciate its import. But let us always, always allow it to direct our gaze towards the necessity of the cross and grow our spirit of gratitude for it. Yes? Let's pray. Father, you're good to us. We are so very sorry for inadequately following you. We're sorry for the ways that we let ourselves down as we think we're letting you down. We're so grateful for the grace that you show us in those moments. God, I pray that we would see this momentous occasion in Exodus as one that echoes throughout the centuries, but as one that is intended to point us towards you and towards your grace and towards your goodness and towards your mercy and towards your sacrifice. May the law forever point us towards the cross. May the law forever make us grateful of our Savior. And may the law forever make us grateful of what you did to make a path to be with you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Yo, it's not September yet. What are you all doing here? We're supposed to have more space than this in the middle of August. It's good to see everybody. Thank you so much for coming. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten to meet you, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service, only because now is inconvenient. But just a couple of things behind the scenes I feel like I need to tell you. Rob, our bass player, walked by me and he said, go get him, pal. And I said, well, that's very nice. And then I was setting up up here and our worship leader, Aaron, tapped me on the shoulder, which is not typical. Normally he doesn't speak to me because my mental fragility is such that I can't handle it before a sermon. But he tapped me on the shoulder and I leaned back and he said, hey, just do good. And I, thanks buddy. Thanks for that. So we will do our best. This morning we are continuing in our series on the life of Moses. Last week, I kind of paused in the narrative because it had brought us to this place where the presence of God rested on Mount Sinai, and I felt like it was really important for us to also pause. There's this word in Psalms that we learn, this Hebrew word called shalom, and shalom just means kind of a holy pause. And I felt like it was important last week to just kind of take a shalom and pause on this part of the narrative that causes us to fear God, which is a good thing. And we focus on the fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom. But the reason that the presence of God rested on Mount Sinai was to give the law to his people. So what happens is the presence of God, and this is in Exodus chapter 19, and I'll just tell you this up front, okay? I want you to understand this, and I want to acknowledge this for you. I'm not going to read verses this week. This is, I hate to say this, this is just here for show this week. I'm not going to open it and read to you, all right? And I feel badly about that. But I'm resting in the fact that what I'm talking to you about is in Exodus 19. And I'm resting in the fact that I'm going to refer to passages in Romans and Galatians and Acts and John and Matthew so that we are. This is going to be a biblical sermon, but I just, there was nothing that I found in my preparation that zeroed in on what I wanted to say enough that I felt like it was worth sharing. So we will be in scripture this week, but I'm not going to open it. And I know that I'm not doing that, but hopefully we'll get to the end of the sermon and you'll think, yeah, that counts as a sermon. That's the goal. But this week it's Exodus 19. And in Exodus 19, we get the law. And when I say the law, we often think of the Ten Commandments. And if you're to open your Bible and read it, I think a lot of us understand what was happening when Moses received the Ten Commandments. But we tend to think, I believe, that Moses got these two tablets of stone and God etched onto them the Ten Commandments and he walked down the mountain with those tablets of stone with the Ten Commandments on them. And that is true. But what we might not pick up from the story, at least I didn't for decades of being a believer, is that all the other laws were etched on those tablets too. There's 630 something laws in Old Testament law, in the Old Testament for the Hebrew person. And so when God gave the law, it wasn't just 10 commandments. It was 10 commandments and the other 6 hundred and twenty. OK, that's what was on the tablets. And so when Moses comes back down the mountain, he has the law in his hands and he's sharing it with the Hebrew people. And here's what I think is really interesting about this point in history. And I'm going to take some liberties here. But I wonder, why did God give the law to his people at this time? And I don't know if you've ever thought about that. But let me kind of help you with that process. When God created Adam and Eve, he made one law. He said, do whatever you want. Don't eat from the fruit of that tree. That's the only rule. Do whatever you want. Go nuts. Do whatever you want. Don't eat of the fruit of that tree. That was it. That was the only law. And then they broke it because they wanted to be like God. They forgot to fear the Lord. God could have at that point said, okay, you screwed up. Now there's sin. Now the fall has happened. Let me give you the rules. Let me tell you what you need to do to be right with me. You messed up. Let me give you the rules. He didn't do that. Have you ever noticed that? He didn't do that. He just said, now you're going to have to work for your food. Life's going to be a little bit more difficult. Things between you and I will never be the same. But he didn't give him the rules. Then, a little while later, he hit reset on the entire earth by flooding it. And he allowed Noah and Ham, Shem and Japheth and their wives to be the new Adam and Eve that repopulated the earth. And the reason that he did it is because he looked across the earth and he said, this is evil and no one follows me. And I'm, I'm, I'm saddened that I've created this. And so he hit the reset button. When he hit the reset button, did he then give Noah the rules? No. He could have. He didn't. He could have said, listen, I gave you guys a chance. You messed it up. So moving forward, here are the rules for following me. He didn't do that. Then there was the Tower of Babel. After he dispersed the nations and gave them different languages, could he have also given them the rules? Yes, he could have. Did he? No. Then, a while later, I know that this is hard for you guys because you haven't thought about this before, but I've thought about this for years. Then a while later, he calls Abraham from the land of Ur of the Chaldeans, the Sumerian dynasty. And he says, hey, Abraham, I know this is going to sound weird. I want you to pick up everything that you own and I want you to move and I'm going to show you where you're going to move as you get there. It would be like you selling your house, packing a U-Haul, and just driving in the general direction of Utah, trusting God to show you where to go. That's what he did for Abraham. And when he did that, and when in Genesis 12, he made his promises to Abraham, I'm going to bless you with people and with blessing, and one of your descendants is going to bless the whole earth. And your descendants will be like the stars in the sky. This is God we know now in retrospect, founding the nation of Israel. It's the very foundation of this people that God has chosen to love and center out amongst all of humankind. He starts it with Abraham. And he could have, at that point, said, by the way, Abraham, here are the rules. But he didn't. He could have said with his son Isaac, here are the rules. He could have said with his grandson Jacob, who was then later named Israel, by the way, as the father of this nation, I am founding on your faith. Here are the rules. And he never did it. He never did it. He waited for some reason until Moses was leading his people through the desert to finally give them the rules. So I think it's a really interesting question to wonder, God, why did you wait that long? Why now? Why here? And all I can say about that is this. In the past, I have paused a sermon and I've moved over here. And I've said, some of you will remember, Jeffy does, I heard him laugh. Some of you will remember, this is my reckless speculation box. When I'm here, I'm speaking to you from what I believe to be the authority of Scripture. And I would I would tell you candidly, it's my best understanding of what Scripture is. It's not the authority of Nate or the authority of God. It's just when I read it, this is how I understand it. And I'm sharing that with you. OK, but when I step over here. I'm reckless, man. They're like, this is just what I think. This is just what I suppose. This is not here. Here, I feel like I have some authority. Here, I'm just being an honest adult with you and saying this is what I think, but I can't back this up with paperwork. Do we understand the difference? Here, when I answer the question, why does God wait so long to give the law? What I actually believe in my core is that he gave it begrudgingly. I do not think he wanted to. And I think we have an example of this when he gives Moses divorce laws. And he says, I don't really want to give you divorce laws because I don't want this to be a part of your life. But practically speaking, I see the necessity of it. So here are some ramifications and some parameters for that practice. I believe that God gave the law begrudgingly. And here's why I believe this. And this is where I'll step back here. Because I do think that there's some scriptural authority for this. All God ever wanted was for us to trust him. All God ever wanted was for us to trust him and obey him. Why didn't he give Adam the law? Because he didn't want to. Because all he asked of Adam is just obey me. Just trust me. Just let me be the creator and you be the creation. Just obey me. Just trust me. Why didn't he give Noah the law? Because just trust me. Just obey me. Scholars believe Job predates Noah and all the others as well. Why didn't he give Job the law? Because just trust me. Just obey me. Why didn't he give it to Moses? Why didn't he give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob? Because I believe with all my heart that all God has ever wanted from us is to just trust him and obey him. But for some reason, the Hebrew people found that to be difficult. And for some reason, we found it to be difficult. And two separate times, God allowed the human experiment to exist with this impetus of trusting and obeying him. And it ended in the flood and it ended in the Tower of Babel. And then it came to his Hebrew people and he said, in my opinion, fine, here. Here's the law. And the law says, you want a path to my approval? Here it is. That's what the law says. When Moses comes down the mountain in Exodus 19 and he's got the tablets there, what God is saying is, do you want a path to salvation? To heaven? To eternity? To right standing before me? Is that what you want? Here. This is it. Follow the law. Go ahead. You want to know what the rules are? Here are the rules. And he gives them 630 rules. This is the path to be right with me. I've asked you over and over and over again, and here's what's so important, I think, for us. We feel this pull in our own lives, right? Just trust me. Just obey me. You don't have to all the way understand me. Just trust. We feel that pull, right? But God says, okay, you want law. This is the path. I've asked you to trust me. You've decided not to do that. You need to know the rules. Here are the rules. Here's the thing about the rules. And here's the thing about the law. And this is why I would be honest with you and tell you that this morning's sermon was really difficult to write because I've often said that the most difficult thing in preparing a sermon is deciding what not to say. And this morning, there's so much to say about the law and its import and how much it matters across the span of Scripture. I do not think you can overstate the importance of the law and its impact on the rest of faith and on what it was to be a New Testament Christian and even on how we understand our faith. If you want to be a Christian at all, with any knowledge of the Bible, with any knowledge of how your faith works, you've got to understand the importance of the law. I actually think it works this way. This is going to sound ludicrous. I believe in my email to the staff when I sent them my notes. I said, these seem unhinged, but just go with me. And even as I ran through them this morning, Zach, who's doing our slides, said, you're going to have to explain this one a little bit. And I said, yeah, I know. Okay, but here you go. The law equals Luke Skywalker's genealogy. Deal with it. I'm not even going to explain that. I'm just going to go on to the next point. No, here's the thing, and I've thought this a long time, and this is probably an outdated analogy, but I hope that it can hold up. I grew up, I was born in 1981. That makes some of you feel very young and others feel very old. I don't care. I was born in 1981. I was actually talking to a friend of mine this week. This is Jermaine to nothing, but I was talking to a friend of mine this week that I worked for when I was 19 and I think he was 22 and we were doing the same ministry together. And we both kind of had this realization at the same time, like we're the old dogs now, like we're both in our mid forties. We've been doing this for 25 years. We can't, we're not, we're not young anymore, which means frankly, I should be better at this than I am, but you know, here we are. I've thought for a long time, when I was growing up, Luke Skywalker and Star Wars hit me just in the exact right spot. He was a hero growing up. Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Leia, they shaped my childhood. And if you don't know who they are and you don't understand this, I'm sorry for you. Do some work because it's worth it. In Star Wars, there's three movies. There's the first one, which is just called Star Wars. There's other movies that they've made since then with like J.J. Abrams. Who cares? Jar Jar Binks, get out of here. Nobody cares about those. Thank you, Jeff. The good ones. We're getting really close to an amen. I feel one coming. Maybe this service. Maybe so. That's right. I've never gotten an amen in the history of preaching at Grace, but if I denounce Jar Jar Binks and get one, that would be actually super funny. Sorry, I'm down the road really far on this Star Wars thing. There's three movies. It's Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, and then Return of the Jedi, right? And at the end of Empire Strikes Back, at the very end of the movie, Luke Skywalker is like hanging off of this Death Star thing and he's having a confrontation with Darth Vader. And Darth Vader says the most famous line in movies, which is actually misquoted and not famous. We all quote it as, Luke, I am your father. That is not the line. The line is, no, I am your father. And if you have not watched Star Wars and the first two and a half hours of The Empire Strikes Back, when Darth Vader says, no, I am your father, it doesn't mean anything to you. But if you have, it means everything. And so I've often thought that trying to understand our faith by beginning in the New Testament and not understanding the Old Testament and the law is like trying to appreciate the impact of the greatest line in cinematic history without having watched the first two movies. Do you understand your Bible? The first two thirds of it are the Old Testament. When we start in the New Testament and our understanding of faith, we cheapen and shortchange our ability to understand that faith. And that an understanding of the import of the law is fundamental to it. Do you understand that the book of Galatians, the whole book, is about how to reconcile the law? And that if you don't understand what the law is, you can't possibly understand the book of Galatians? Do you understand that literally half of the book of Acts is an exercise in the New Testament church trying to figure out how to wrestle the law to the ground and what to expect of the Gentile converts into their Jewish faith. Do you understand that you can't understand Romans oratory and revolutionary the ministry of Jesus was if you do not understand the law? And so this morning, as we arrive at Exodus 19, and I think about myself as your pastor, and I have a responsibility to make sure we understand the import of the law. Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts. Because it's a big deal. It's important in how we understand scripture. And here's the greatest trick of the law. This one's pretty good. And this is another one that you're going to be like, dude, what are you doing? But just hear me out. The law sees dead people. A lot of you, I know, like to fill out your notes before I do the blanks. And I've decided a long time ago, I don't care. I'm not going to try to trick you. I'm not really thinking about that. I don't think anybody had this. I think I got you on this one. The law sees dead people. In 1999, here's another. At least it's not the 80s. I moved 20 years forward. In 1999, there was this movie. Gosh, I forget the name of it now. I even looked it up this morning, so I wouldn't. What was it? Sixth Sense. Thank you. Guy I don't know on the first row helping me out on his very first visit. Thank you very much, buddy. That's great. Come back any time. Sixth Sense. It had Bruce Willis. And there was this kid who plays the main character. And Sixth Sense stands out, and we all know it. We know what it is. Because it's like the greatest switcheroo in cinematic history. It's really amazing that at the beginning of the movie, they tell you that Bruce Willis is dead. And you are watching it in real time and you're like, no, he's not. He seems to be talking. He's fine. And you don't process it. And then at the end of the movie, so they've done this whole movie. And the kid who I think is Haley Jo Osmond, I think that's who plays him, thank you, I knew Liz Roberg would know that, that's why I looked over there, says that iconic line, I see dead people. And you realize, the last two hours of my life, I've misunderstood what was going on. And you realize Bruce Willis really did die at the beginning of the movie. And he's been playing a ghost this whole time. And when you watch Sixth Sense, I'm sorry a little bit if this is a spoiler alert. It's also been 25 years, so you make your choices. But when you watch that movie fresh and you realize at the end what you've actually been watching for two hours, it's kind of this moment where you go, oh my goodness, I didn't understand that. And it kind of blows your mind a little bit. That's what the law is. Because when God gave the law to his people, it was, if you want to be right with me, here's what you have to do. If you want a path to heaven. Here's the path. And so we took it for millennia to be the path. And the Hebrew people organized a religion around it. Saying we're going to be the best followers of this law that has ever been. And we're going to help everyone. When you break the law, here's what you do to restore yourself. And then you return yourself to trying to follow the law. Here's what we do. And they built a whole faith around that premise. If you want to be right with me, here's how you be right with me. And then Jesus comes along and he does the greatest switcheroo in history. And he shows us that the law sees dead people. And Jesus comes along and he says this about the law. You've heard it said that a man should not commit adultery. But I say to you that if you have looked at a woman with lust in your heart, you are guilty of that sin. And let's be very clear about this. I'm not making a joke right now. That makes every man in this room an adulterer. Okay? That's the law. Yeah, have you passed the test of not having actual intercourse with another person's wife? Great. But let me redefine this in such a way that you really understand the heart of the law. If you've left it after someone else, you're guilty. Whoa. That's a different standard. Jesus said, you've heard it said that you shouldn't kill someone else. You shouldn't murder. But I say to you that if you have hate in your heart for a brother, you are guilty of that sin. Which makes a portion of this room murderers. And so he comes and he doesn't. And I want to be very clear about this. Jesus does not redefine the law. He simply correctly defines it. And he shows us in his definition our inability to follow it. And what we find in Jesus's discussion of the law is that the whole law, and we find this in Galatians and we find this in Romans and we find this in Acts and we find this in Corinthians. This is everywhere, replete throughout the New Testament, that the entire point of the law is to show you that you can't follow it. That's the whole point. You think it's to show you how to be right before God, and really the point of it is to show you your inadequacy before God and your need for that. That's the law. The law sees dead people. It's not here to make a pathway for you to get right with God. The law exists so that you will know that you are incapable of following that pathway and will claim your need for Jesus who came and lived a perfect life and followed that law perfectly for you and died a perfect death to make a bridge to a God that you would never have access to if he did not come and perfectly fulfill that law for you. That's the point of the law. Jesus fulfilled the law and earned God's approval for you. The point of the law, friends, is to remind us of our need for Jesus. The point of God's standards is to show us that we can't meet them. The point of the cross is to remind us of the necessity of it. So when we arrive at this text in Exodus chapter 19, and we see the law brought down the mountain by Moses. And we understand it as a momentous occasion in the history of the Hebrew people and even in our faith. And we see that law as God providing a pathway to approval from him. Please understand that it is momentous. It does echo throughout the millennia. It is incredibly important. But it's incredibly important because its intent has always been to show you that you can't keep it. Its intent has always been to show you your inadequacy and your reliance on the perfect life and death of Jesus. And that the entire point of the law throughout all of history is to orient your gaze towards the cross and not towards yourself and your ability to obey rules. It's to surrender before God and say, I am not capable of that. I need this. That's the whole point. So please, church, when we think about the law, let's see it for what it is. Let's appreciate its import. But let us always, always allow it to direct our gaze towards the necessity of the cross and grow our spirit of gratitude for it. Yes? Let's pray. Father, you're good to us. We are so very sorry for inadequately following you. We're sorry for the ways that we let ourselves down as we think we're letting you down. We're so grateful for the grace that you show us in those moments. God, I pray that we would see this momentous occasion in Exodus as one that echoes throughout the centuries, but as one that is intended to point us towards you and towards your grace and towards your goodness and towards your mercy and towards your sacrifice. May the law forever point us towards the cross. May the law forever make us grateful of our Savior. And may the law forever make us grateful of what you did to make a path to be with you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Yo, it's not September yet. What are you all doing here? We're supposed to have more space than this in the middle of August. It's good to see everybody. Thank you so much for coming. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten to meet you, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service, only because now is inconvenient. But just a couple of things behind the scenes I feel like I need to tell you. Rob, our bass player, walked by me and he said, go get him, pal. And I said, well, that's very nice. And then I was setting up up here and our worship leader, Aaron, tapped me on the shoulder, which is not typical. Normally he doesn't speak to me because my mental fragility is such that I can't handle it before a sermon. But he tapped me on the shoulder and I leaned back and he said, hey, just do good. And I, thanks buddy. Thanks for that. So we will do our best. This morning we are continuing in our series on the life of Moses. Last week, I kind of paused in the narrative because it had brought us to this place where the presence of God rested on Mount Sinai, and I felt like it was really important for us to also pause. There's this word in Psalms that we learn, this Hebrew word called shalom, and shalom just means kind of a holy pause. And I felt like it was important last week to just kind of take a shalom and pause on this part of the narrative that causes us to fear God, which is a good thing. And we focus on the fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom. But the reason that the presence of God rested on Mount Sinai was to give the law to his people. So what happens is the presence of God, and this is in Exodus chapter 19, and I'll just tell you this up front, okay? I want you to understand this, and I want to acknowledge this for you. I'm not going to read verses this week. This is, I hate to say this, this is just here for show this week. I'm not going to open it and read to you, all right? And I feel badly about that. But I'm resting in the fact that what I'm talking to you about is in Exodus 19. And I'm resting in the fact that I'm going to refer to passages in Romans and Galatians and Acts and John and Matthew so that we are. This is going to be a biblical sermon, but I just, there was nothing that I found in my preparation that zeroed in on what I wanted to say enough that I felt like it was worth sharing. So we will be in scripture this week, but I'm not going to open it. And I know that I'm not doing that, but hopefully we'll get to the end of the sermon and you'll think, yeah, that counts as a sermon. That's the goal. But this week it's Exodus 19. And in Exodus 19, we get the law. And when I say the law, we often think of the Ten Commandments. And if you're to open your Bible and read it, I think a lot of us understand what was happening when Moses received the Ten Commandments. But we tend to think, I believe, that Moses got these two tablets of stone and God etched onto them the Ten Commandments and he walked down the mountain with those tablets of stone with the Ten Commandments on them. And that is true. But what we might not pick up from the story, at least I didn't for decades of being a believer, is that all the other laws were etched on those tablets too. There's 630 something laws in Old Testament law, in the Old Testament for the Hebrew person. And so when God gave the law, it wasn't just 10 commandments. It was 10 commandments and the other 6 hundred and twenty. OK, that's what was on the tablets. And so when Moses comes back down the mountain, he has the law in his hands and he's sharing it with the Hebrew people. And here's what I think is really interesting about this point in history. And I'm going to take some liberties here. But I wonder, why did God give the law to his people at this time? And I don't know if you've ever thought about that. But let me kind of help you with that process. When God created Adam and Eve, he made one law. He said, do whatever you want. Don't eat from the fruit of that tree. That's the only rule. Do whatever you want. Go nuts. Do whatever you want. Don't eat of the fruit of that tree. That was it. That was the only law. And then they broke it because they wanted to be like God. They forgot to fear the Lord. God could have at that point said, okay, you screwed up. Now there's sin. Now the fall has happened. Let me give you the rules. Let me tell you what you need to do to be right with me. You messed up. Let me give you the rules. He didn't do that. Have you ever noticed that? He didn't do that. He just said, now you're going to have to work for your food. Life's going to be a little bit more difficult. Things between you and I will never be the same. But he didn't give him the rules. Then, a little while later, he hit reset on the entire earth by flooding it. And he allowed Noah and Ham, Shem and Japheth and their wives to be the new Adam and Eve that repopulated the earth. And the reason that he did it is because he looked across the earth and he said, this is evil and no one follows me. And I'm, I'm, I'm saddened that I've created this. And so he hit the reset button. When he hit the reset button, did he then give Noah the rules? No. He could have. He didn't. He could have said, listen, I gave you guys a chance. You messed it up. So moving forward, here are the rules for following me. He didn't do that. Then there was the Tower of Babel. After he dispersed the nations and gave them different languages, could he have also given them the rules? Yes, he could have. Did he? No. Then, a while later, I know that this is hard for you guys because you haven't thought about this before, but I've thought about this for years. Then a while later, he calls Abraham from the land of Ur of the Chaldeans, the Sumerian dynasty. And he says, hey, Abraham, I know this is going to sound weird. I want you to pick up everything that you own and I want you to move and I'm going to show you where you're going to move as you get there. It would be like you selling your house, packing a U-Haul, and just driving in the general direction of Utah, trusting God to show you where to go. That's what he did for Abraham. And when he did that, and when in Genesis 12, he made his promises to Abraham, I'm going to bless you with people and with blessing, and one of your descendants is going to bless the whole earth. And your descendants will be like the stars in the sky. This is God we know now in retrospect, founding the nation of Israel. It's the very foundation of this people that God has chosen to love and center out amongst all of humankind. He starts it with Abraham. And he could have, at that point, said, by the way, Abraham, here are the rules. But he didn't. He could have said with his son Isaac, here are the rules. He could have said with his grandson Jacob, who was then later named Israel, by the way, as the father of this nation, I am founding on your faith. Here are the rules. And he never did it. He never did it. He waited for some reason until Moses was leading his people through the desert to finally give them the rules. So I think it's a really interesting question to wonder, God, why did you wait that long? Why now? Why here? And all I can say about that is this. In the past, I have paused a sermon and I've moved over here. And I've said, some of you will remember, Jeffy does, I heard him laugh. Some of you will remember, this is my reckless speculation box. When I'm here, I'm speaking to you from what I believe to be the authority of Scripture. And I would I would tell you candidly, it's my best understanding of what Scripture is. It's not the authority of Nate or the authority of God. It's just when I read it, this is how I understand it. And I'm sharing that with you. OK, but when I step over here. I'm reckless, man. They're like, this is just what I think. This is just what I suppose. This is not here. Here, I feel like I have some authority. Here, I'm just being an honest adult with you and saying this is what I think, but I can't back this up with paperwork. Do we understand the difference? Here, when I answer the question, why does God wait so long to give the law? What I actually believe in my core is that he gave it begrudgingly. I do not think he wanted to. And I think we have an example of this when he gives Moses divorce laws. And he says, I don't really want to give you divorce laws because I don't want this to be a part of your life. But practically speaking, I see the necessity of it. So here are some ramifications and some parameters for that practice. I believe that God gave the law begrudgingly. And here's why I believe this. And this is where I'll step back here. Because I do think that there's some scriptural authority for this. All God ever wanted was for us to trust him. All God ever wanted was for us to trust him and obey him. Why didn't he give Adam the law? Because he didn't want to. Because all he asked of Adam is just obey me. Just trust me. Just let me be the creator and you be the creation. Just obey me. Just trust me. Why didn't he give Noah the law? Because just trust me. Just obey me. Scholars believe Job predates Noah and all the others as well. Why didn't he give Job the law? Because just trust me. Just obey me. Why didn't he give it to Moses? Why didn't he give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob? Because I believe with all my heart that all God has ever wanted from us is to just trust him and obey him. But for some reason, the Hebrew people found that to be difficult. And for some reason, we found it to be difficult. And two separate times, God allowed the human experiment to exist with this impetus of trusting and obeying him. And it ended in the flood and it ended in the Tower of Babel. And then it came to his Hebrew people and he said, in my opinion, fine, here. Here's the law. And the law says, you want a path to my approval? Here it is. That's what the law says. When Moses comes down the mountain in Exodus 19 and he's got the tablets there, what God is saying is, do you want a path to salvation? To heaven? To eternity? To right standing before me? Is that what you want? Here. This is it. Follow the law. Go ahead. You want to know what the rules are? Here are the rules. And he gives them 630 rules. This is the path to be right with me. I've asked you over and over and over again, and here's what's so important, I think, for us. We feel this pull in our own lives, right? Just trust me. Just obey me. You don't have to all the way understand me. Just trust. We feel that pull, right? But God says, okay, you want law. This is the path. I've asked you to trust me. You've decided not to do that. You need to know the rules. Here are the rules. Here's the thing about the rules. And here's the thing about the law. And this is why I would be honest with you and tell you that this morning's sermon was really difficult to write because I've often said that the most difficult thing in preparing a sermon is deciding what not to say. And this morning, there's so much to say about the law and its import and how much it matters across the span of Scripture. I do not think you can overstate the importance of the law and its impact on the rest of faith and on what it was to be a New Testament Christian and even on how we understand our faith. If you want to be a Christian at all, with any knowledge of the Bible, with any knowledge of how your faith works, you've got to understand the importance of the law. I actually think it works this way. This is going to sound ludicrous. I believe in my email to the staff when I sent them my notes. I said, these seem unhinged, but just go with me. And even as I ran through them this morning, Zach, who's doing our slides, said, you're going to have to explain this one a little bit. And I said, yeah, I know. Okay, but here you go. The law equals Luke Skywalker's genealogy. Deal with it. I'm not even going to explain that. I'm just going to go on to the next point. No, here's the thing, and I've thought this a long time, and this is probably an outdated analogy, but I hope that it can hold up. I grew up, I was born in 1981. That makes some of you feel very young and others feel very old. I don't care. I was born in 1981. I was actually talking to a friend of mine this week. This is Jermaine to nothing, but I was talking to a friend of mine this week that I worked for when I was 19 and I think he was 22 and we were doing the same ministry together. And we both kind of had this realization at the same time, like we're the old dogs now, like we're both in our mid forties. We've been doing this for 25 years. We can't, we're not, we're not young anymore, which means frankly, I should be better at this than I am, but you know, here we are. I've thought for a long time, when I was growing up, Luke Skywalker and Star Wars hit me just in the exact right spot. He was a hero growing up. Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Leia, they shaped my childhood. And if you don't know who they are and you don't understand this, I'm sorry for you. Do some work because it's worth it. In Star Wars, there's three movies. There's the first one, which is just called Star Wars. There's other movies that they've made since then with like J.J. Abrams. Who cares? Jar Jar Binks, get out of here. Nobody cares about those. Thank you, Jeff. The good ones. We're getting really close to an amen. I feel one coming. Maybe this service. Maybe so. That's right. I've never gotten an amen in the history of preaching at Grace, but if I denounce Jar Jar Binks and get one, that would be actually super funny. Sorry, I'm down the road really far on this Star Wars thing. There's three movies. It's Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, and then Return of the Jedi, right? And at the end of Empire Strikes Back, at the very end of the movie, Luke Skywalker is like hanging off of this Death Star thing and he's having a confrontation with Darth Vader. And Darth Vader says the most famous line in movies, which is actually misquoted and not famous. We all quote it as, Luke, I am your father. That is not the line. The line is, no, I am your father. And if you have not watched Star Wars and the first two and a half hours of The Empire Strikes Back, when Darth Vader says, no, I am your father, it doesn't mean anything to you. But if you have, it means everything. And so I've often thought that trying to understand our faith by beginning in the New Testament and not understanding the Old Testament and the law is like trying to appreciate the impact of the greatest line in cinematic history without having watched the first two movies. Do you understand your Bible? The first two thirds of it are the Old Testament. When we start in the New Testament and our understanding of faith, we cheapen and shortchange our ability to understand that faith. And that an understanding of the import of the law is fundamental to it. Do you understand that the book of Galatians, the whole book, is about how to reconcile the law? And that if you don't understand what the law is, you can't possibly understand the book of Galatians? Do you understand that literally half of the book of Acts is an exercise in the New Testament church trying to figure out how to wrestle the law to the ground and what to expect of the Gentile converts into their Jewish faith. Do you understand that you can't understand Romans oratory and revolutionary the ministry of Jesus was if you do not understand the law? And so this morning, as we arrive at Exodus 19, and I think about myself as your pastor, and I have a responsibility to make sure we understand the import of the law. Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts. Because it's a big deal. It's important in how we understand scripture. And here's the greatest trick of the law. This one's pretty good. And this is another one that you're going to be like, dude, what are you doing? But just hear me out. The law sees dead people. A lot of you, I know, like to fill out your notes before I do the blanks. And I've decided a long time ago, I don't care. I'm not going to try to trick you. I'm not really thinking about that. I don't think anybody had this. I think I got you on this one. The law sees dead people. In 1999, here's another. At least it's not the 80s. I moved 20 years forward. In 1999, there was this movie. Gosh, I forget the name of it now. I even looked it up this morning, so I wouldn't. What was it? Sixth Sense. Thank you. Guy I don't know on the first row helping me out on his very first visit. Thank you very much, buddy. That's great. Come back any time. Sixth Sense. It had Bruce Willis. And there was this kid who plays the main character. And Sixth Sense stands out, and we all know it. We know what it is. Because it's like the greatest switcheroo in cinematic history. It's really amazing that at the beginning of the movie, they tell you that Bruce Willis is dead. And you are watching it in real time and you're like, no, he's not. He seems to be talking. He's fine. And you don't process it. And then at the end of the movie, so they've done this whole movie. And the kid who I think is Haley Jo Osmond, I think that's who plays him, thank you, I knew Liz Roberg would know that, that's why I looked over there, says that iconic line, I see dead people. And you realize, the last two hours of my life, I've misunderstood what was going on. And you realize Bruce Willis really did die at the beginning of the movie. And he's been playing a ghost this whole time. And when you watch Sixth Sense, I'm sorry a little bit if this is a spoiler alert. It's also been 25 years, so you make your choices. But when you watch that movie fresh and you realize at the end what you've actually been watching for two hours, it's kind of this moment where you go, oh my goodness, I didn't understand that. And it kind of blows your mind a little bit. That's what the law is. Because when God gave the law to his people, it was, if you want to be right with me, here's what you have to do. If you want a path to heaven. Here's the path. And so we took it for millennia to be the path. And the Hebrew people organized a religion around it. Saying we're going to be the best followers of this law that has ever been. And we're going to help everyone. When you break the law, here's what you do to restore yourself. And then you return yourself to trying to follow the law. Here's what we do. And they built a whole faith around that premise. If you want to be right with me, here's how you be right with me. And then Jesus comes along and he does the greatest switcheroo in history. And he shows us that the law sees dead people. And Jesus comes along and he says this about the law. You've heard it said that a man should not commit adultery. But I say to you that if you have looked at a woman with lust in your heart, you are guilty of that sin. And let's be very clear about this. I'm not making a joke right now. That makes every man in this room an adulterer. Okay? That's the law. Yeah, have you passed the test of not having actual intercourse with another person's wife? Great. But let me redefine this in such a way that you really understand the heart of the law. If you've left it after someone else, you're guilty. Whoa. That's a different standard. Jesus said, you've heard it said that you shouldn't kill someone else. You shouldn't murder. But I say to you that if you have hate in your heart for a brother, you are guilty of that sin. Which makes a portion of this room murderers. And so he comes and he doesn't. And I want to be very clear about this. Jesus does not redefine the law. He simply correctly defines it. And he shows us in his definition our inability to follow it. And what we find in Jesus's discussion of the law is that the whole law, and we find this in Galatians and we find this in Romans and we find this in Acts and we find this in Corinthians. This is everywhere, replete throughout the New Testament, that the entire point of the law is to show you that you can't follow it. That's the whole point. You think it's to show you how to be right before God, and really the point of it is to show you your inadequacy before God and your need for that. That's the law. The law sees dead people. It's not here to make a pathway for you to get right with God. The law exists so that you will know that you are incapable of following that pathway and will claim your need for Jesus who came and lived a perfect life and followed that law perfectly for you and died a perfect death to make a bridge to a God that you would never have access to if he did not come and perfectly fulfill that law for you. That's the point of the law. Jesus fulfilled the law and earned God's approval for you. The point of the law, friends, is to remind us of our need for Jesus. The point of God's standards is to show us that we can't meet them. The point of the cross is to remind us of the necessity of it. So when we arrive at this text in Exodus chapter 19, and we see the law brought down the mountain by Moses. And we understand it as a momentous occasion in the history of the Hebrew people and even in our faith. And we see that law as God providing a pathway to approval from him. Please understand that it is momentous. It does echo throughout the millennia. It is incredibly important. But it's incredibly important because its intent has always been to show you that you can't keep it. Its intent has always been to show you your inadequacy and your reliance on the perfect life and death of Jesus. And that the entire point of the law throughout all of history is to orient your gaze towards the cross and not towards yourself and your ability to obey rules. It's to surrender before God and say, I am not capable of that. I need this. That's the whole point. So please, church, when we think about the law, let's see it for what it is. Let's appreciate its import. But let us always, always allow it to direct our gaze towards the necessity of the cross and grow our spirit of gratitude for it. Yes? Let's pray. Father, you're good to us. We are so very sorry for inadequately following you. We're sorry for the ways that we let ourselves down as we think we're letting you down. We're so grateful for the grace that you show us in those moments. God, I pray that we would see this momentous occasion in Exodus as one that echoes throughout the centuries, but as one that is intended to point us towards you and towards your grace and towards your goodness and towards your mercy and towards your sacrifice. May the law forever point us towards the cross. May the law forever make us grateful of our Savior. And may the law forever make us grateful of what you did to make a path to be with you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Yo, it's not September yet. What are you all doing here? We're supposed to have more space than this in the middle of August. It's good to see everybody. Thank you so much for coming. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten to meet you, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service, only because now is inconvenient. But just a couple of things behind the scenes I feel like I need to tell you. Rob, our bass player, walked by me and he said, go get him, pal. And I said, well, that's very nice. And then I was setting up up here and our worship leader, Aaron, tapped me on the shoulder, which is not typical. Normally he doesn't speak to me because my mental fragility is such that I can't handle it before a sermon. But he tapped me on the shoulder and I leaned back and he said, hey, just do good. And I, thanks buddy. Thanks for that. So we will do our best. This morning we are continuing in our series on the life of Moses. Last week, I kind of paused in the narrative because it had brought us to this place where the presence of God rested on Mount Sinai, and I felt like it was really important for us to also pause. There's this word in Psalms that we learn, this Hebrew word called shalom, and shalom just means kind of a holy pause. And I felt like it was important last week to just kind of take a shalom and pause on this part of the narrative that causes us to fear God, which is a good thing. And we focus on the fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom. But the reason that the presence of God rested on Mount Sinai was to give the law to his people. So what happens is the presence of God, and this is in Exodus chapter 19, and I'll just tell you this up front, okay? I want you to understand this, and I want to acknowledge this for you. I'm not going to read verses this week. This is, I hate to say this, this is just here for show this week. I'm not going to open it and read to you, all right? And I feel badly about that. But I'm resting in the fact that what I'm talking to you about is in Exodus 19. And I'm resting in the fact that I'm going to refer to passages in Romans and Galatians and Acts and John and Matthew so that we are. This is going to be a biblical sermon, but I just, there was nothing that I found in my preparation that zeroed in on what I wanted to say enough that I felt like it was worth sharing. So we will be in scripture this week, but I'm not going to open it. And I know that I'm not doing that, but hopefully we'll get to the end of the sermon and you'll think, yeah, that counts as a sermon. That's the goal. But this week it's Exodus 19. And in Exodus 19, we get the law. And when I say the law, we often think of the Ten Commandments. And if you're to open your Bible and read it, I think a lot of us understand what was happening when Moses received the Ten Commandments. But we tend to think, I believe, that Moses got these two tablets of stone and God etched onto them the Ten Commandments and he walked down the mountain with those tablets of stone with the Ten Commandments on them. And that is true. But what we might not pick up from the story, at least I didn't for decades of being a believer, is that all the other laws were etched on those tablets too. There's 630 something laws in Old Testament law, in the Old Testament for the Hebrew person. And so when God gave the law, it wasn't just 10 commandments. It was 10 commandments and the other 6 hundred and twenty. OK, that's what was on the tablets. And so when Moses comes back down the mountain, he has the law in his hands and he's sharing it with the Hebrew people. And here's what I think is really interesting about this point in history. And I'm going to take some liberties here. But I wonder, why did God give the law to his people at this time? And I don't know if you've ever thought about that. But let me kind of help you with that process. When God created Adam and Eve, he made one law. He said, do whatever you want. Don't eat from the fruit of that tree. That's the only rule. Do whatever you want. Go nuts. Do whatever you want. Don't eat of the fruit of that tree. That was it. That was the only law. And then they broke it because they wanted to be like God. They forgot to fear the Lord. God could have at that point said, okay, you screwed up. Now there's sin. Now the fall has happened. Let me give you the rules. Let me tell you what you need to do to be right with me. You messed up. Let me give you the rules. He didn't do that. Have you ever noticed that? He didn't do that. He just said, now you're going to have to work for your food. Life's going to be a little bit more difficult. Things between you and I will never be the same. But he didn't give him the rules. Then, a little while later, he hit reset on the entire earth by flooding it. And he allowed Noah and Ham, Shem and Japheth and their wives to be the new Adam and Eve that repopulated the earth. And the reason that he did it is because he looked across the earth and he said, this is evil and no one follows me. And I'm, I'm, I'm saddened that I've created this. And so he hit the reset button. When he hit the reset button, did he then give Noah the rules? No. He could have. He didn't. He could have said, listen, I gave you guys a chance. You messed it up. So moving forward, here are the rules for following me. He didn't do that. Then there was the Tower of Babel. After he dispersed the nations and gave them different languages, could he have also given them the rules? Yes, he could have. Did he? No. Then, a while later, I know that this is hard for you guys because you haven't thought about this before, but I've thought about this for years. Then a while later, he calls Abraham from the land of Ur of the Chaldeans, the Sumerian dynasty. And he says, hey, Abraham, I know this is going to sound weird. I want you to pick up everything that you own and I want you to move and I'm going to show you where you're going to move as you get there. It would be like you selling your house, packing a U-Haul, and just driving in the general direction of Utah, trusting God to show you where to go. That's what he did for Abraham. And when he did that, and when in Genesis 12, he made his promises to Abraham, I'm going to bless you with people and with blessing, and one of your descendants is going to bless the whole earth. And your descendants will be like the stars in the sky. This is God we know now in retrospect, founding the nation of Israel. It's the very foundation of this people that God has chosen to love and center out amongst all of humankind. He starts it with Abraham. And he could have, at that point, said, by the way, Abraham, here are the rules. But he didn't. He could have said with his son Isaac, here are the rules. He could have said with his grandson Jacob, who was then later named Israel, by the way, as the father of this nation, I am founding on your faith. Here are the rules. And he never did it. He never did it. He waited for some reason until Moses was leading his people through the desert to finally give them the rules. So I think it's a really interesting question to wonder, God, why did you wait that long? Why now? Why here? And all I can say about that is this. In the past, I have paused a sermon and I've moved over here. And I've said, some of you will remember, Jeffy does, I heard him laugh. Some of you will remember, this is my reckless speculation box. When I'm here, I'm speaking to you from what I believe to be the authority of Scripture. And I would I would tell you candidly, it's my best understanding of what Scripture is. It's not the authority of Nate or the authority of God. It's just when I read it, this is how I understand it. And I'm sharing that with you. OK, but when I step over here. I'm reckless, man. They're like, this is just what I think. This is just what I suppose. This is not here. Here, I feel like I have some authority. Here, I'm just being an honest adult with you and saying this is what I think, but I can't back this up with paperwork. Do we understand the difference? Here, when I answer the question, why does God wait so long to give the law? What I actually believe in my core is that he gave it begrudgingly. I do not think he wanted to. And I think we have an example of this when he gives Moses divorce laws. And he says, I don't really want to give you divorce laws because I don't want this to be a part of your life. But practically speaking, I see the necessity of it. So here are some ramifications and some parameters for that practice. I believe that God gave the law begrudgingly. And here's why I believe this. And this is where I'll step back here. Because I do think that there's some scriptural authority for this. All God ever wanted was for us to trust him. All God ever wanted was for us to trust him and obey him. Why didn't he give Adam the law? Because he didn't want to. Because all he asked of Adam is just obey me. Just trust me. Just let me be the creator and you be the creation. Just obey me. Just trust me. Why didn't he give Noah the law? Because just trust me. Just obey me. Scholars believe Job predates Noah and all the others as well. Why didn't he give Job the law? Because just trust me. Just obey me. Why didn't he give it to Moses? Why didn't he give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob? Because I believe with all my heart that all God has ever wanted from us is to just trust him and obey him. But for some reason, the Hebrew people found that to be difficult. And for some reason, we found it to be difficult. And two separate times, God allowed the human experiment to exist with this impetus of trusting and obeying him. And it ended in the flood and it ended in the Tower of Babel. And then it came to his Hebrew people and he said, in my opinion, fine, here. Here's the law. And the law says, you want a path to my approval? Here it is. That's what the law says. When Moses comes down the mountain in Exodus 19 and he's got the tablets there, what God is saying is, do you want a path to salvation? To heaven? To eternity? To right standing before me? Is that what you want? Here. This is it. Follow the law. Go ahead. You want to know what the rules are? Here are the rules. And he gives them 630 rules. This is the path to be right with me. I've asked you over and over and over again, and here's what's so important, I think, for us. We feel this pull in our own lives, right? Just trust me. Just obey me. You don't have to all the way understand me. Just trust. We feel that pull, right? But God says, okay, you want law. This is the path. I've asked you to trust me. You've decided not to do that. You need to know the rules. Here are the rules. Here's the thing about the rules. And here's the thing about the law. And this is why I would be honest with you and tell you that this morning's sermon was really difficult to write because I've often said that the most difficult thing in preparing a sermon is deciding what not to say. And this morning, there's so much to say about the law and its import and how much it matters across the span of Scripture. I do not think you can overstate the importance of the law and its impact on the rest of faith and on what it was to be a New Testament Christian and even on how we understand our faith. If you want to be a Christian at all, with any knowledge of the Bible, with any knowledge of how your faith works, you've got to understand the importance of the law. I actually think it works this way. This is going to sound ludicrous. I believe in my email to the staff when I sent them my notes. I said, these seem unhinged, but just go with me. And even as I ran through them this morning, Zach, who's doing our slides, said, you're going to have to explain this one a little bit. And I said, yeah, I know. Okay, but here you go. The law equals Luke Skywalker's genealogy. Deal with it. I'm not even going to explain that. I'm just going to go on to the next point. No, here's the thing, and I've thought this a long time, and this is probably an outdated analogy, but I hope that it can hold up. I grew up, I was born in 1981. That makes some of you feel very young and others feel very old. I don't care. I was born in 1981. I was actually talking to a friend of mine this week. This is Jermaine to nothing, but I was talking to a friend of mine this week that I worked for when I was 19 and I think he was 22 and we were doing the same ministry together. And we both kind of had this realization at the same time, like we're the old dogs now, like we're both in our mid forties. We've been doing this for 25 years. We can't, we're not, we're not young anymore, which means frankly, I should be better at this than I am, but you know, here we are. I've thought for a long time, when I was growing up, Luke Skywalker and Star Wars hit me just in the exact right spot. He was a hero growing up. Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Leia, they shaped my childhood. And if you don't know who they are and you don't understand this, I'm sorry for you. Do some work because it's worth it. In Star Wars, there's three movies. There's the first one, which is just called Star Wars. There's other movies that they've made since then with like J.J. Abrams. Who cares? Jar Jar Binks, get out of here. Nobody cares about those. Thank you, Jeff. The good ones. We're getting really close to an amen. I feel one coming. Maybe this service. Maybe so. That's right. I've never gotten an amen in the history of preaching at Grace, but if I denounce Jar Jar Binks and get one, that would be actually super funny. Sorry, I'm down the road really far on this Star Wars thing. There's three movies. It's Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, and then Return of the Jedi, right? And at the end of Empire Strikes Back, at the very end of the movie, Luke Skywalker is like hanging off of this Death Star thing and he's having a confrontation with Darth Vader. And Darth Vader says the most famous line in movies, which is actually misquoted and not famous. We all quote it as, Luke, I am your father. That is not the line. The line is, no, I am your father. And if you have not watched Star Wars and the first two and a half hours of The Empire Strikes Back, when Darth Vader says, no, I am your father, it doesn't mean anything to you. But if you have, it means everything. And so I've often thought that trying to understand our faith by beginning in the New Testament and not understanding the Old Testament and the law is like trying to appreciate the impact of the greatest line in cinematic history without having watched the first two movies. Do you understand your Bible? The first two thirds of it are the Old Testament. When we start in the New Testament and our understanding of faith, we cheapen and shortchange our ability to understand that faith. And that an understanding of the import of the law is fundamental to it. Do you understand that the book of Galatians, the whole book, is about how to reconcile the law? And that if you don't understand what the law is, you can't possibly understand the book of Galatians? Do you understand that literally half of the book of Acts is an exercise in the New Testament church trying to figure out how to wrestle the law to the ground and what to expect of the Gentile converts into their Jewish faith. Do you understand that you can't understand Romans oratory and revolutionary the ministry of Jesus was if you do not understand the law? And so this morning, as we arrive at Exodus 19, and I think about myself as your pastor, and I have a responsibility to make sure we understand the import of the law. Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts. Because it's a big deal. It's important in how we understand scripture. And here's the greatest trick of the law. This one's pretty good. And this is another one that you're going to be like, dude, what are you doing? But just hear me out. The law sees dead people. A lot of you, I know, like to fill out your notes before I do the blanks. And I've decided a long time ago, I don't care. I'm not going to try to trick you. I'm not really thinking about that. I don't think anybody had this. I think I got you on this one. The law sees dead people. In 1999, here's another. At least it's not the 80s. I moved 20 years forward. In 1999, there was this movie. Gosh, I forget the name of it now. I even looked it up this morning, so I wouldn't. What was it? Sixth Sense. Thank you. Guy I don't know on the first row helping me out on his very first visit. Thank you very much, buddy. That's great. Come back any time. Sixth Sense. It had Bruce Willis. And there was this kid who plays the main character. And Sixth Sense stands out, and we all know it. We know what it is. Because it's like the greatest switcheroo in cinematic history. It's really amazing that at the beginning of the movie, they tell you that Bruce Willis is dead. And you are watching it in real time and you're like, no, he's not. He seems to be talking. He's fine. And you don't process it. And then at the end of the movie, so they've done this whole movie. And the kid who I think is Haley Jo Osmond, I think that's who plays him, thank you, I knew Liz Roberg would know that, that's why I looked over there, says that iconic line, I see dead people. And you realize, the last two hours of my life, I've misunderstood what was going on. And you realize Bruce Willis really did die at the beginning of the movie. And he's been playing a ghost this whole time. And when you watch Sixth Sense, I'm sorry a little bit if this is a spoiler alert. It's also been 25 years, so you make your choices. But when you watch that movie fresh and you realize at the end what you've actually been watching for two hours, it's kind of this moment where you go, oh my goodness, I didn't understand that. And it kind of blows your mind a little bit. That's what the law is. Because when God gave the law to his people, it was, if you want to be right with me, here's what you have to do. If you want a path to heaven. Here's the path. And so we took it for millennia to be the path. And the Hebrew people organized a religion around it. Saying we're going to be the best followers of this law that has ever been. And we're going to help everyone. When you break the law, here's what you do to restore yourself. And then you return yourself to trying to follow the law. Here's what we do. And they built a whole faith around that premise. If you want to be right with me, here's how you be right with me. And then Jesus comes along and he does the greatest switcheroo in history. And he shows us that the law sees dead people. And Jesus comes along and he says this about the law. You've heard it said that a man should not commit adultery. But I say to you that if you have looked at a woman with lust in your heart, you are guilty of that sin. And let's be very clear about this. I'm not making a joke right now. That makes every man in this room an adulterer. Okay? That's the law. Yeah, have you passed the test of not having actual intercourse with another person's wife? Great. But let me redefine this in such a way that you really understand the heart of the law. If you've left it after someone else, you're guilty. Whoa. That's a different standard. Jesus said, you've heard it said that you shouldn't kill someone else. You shouldn't murder. But I say to you that if you have hate in your heart for a brother, you are guilty of that sin. Which makes a portion of this room murderers. And so he comes and he doesn't. And I want to be very clear about this. Jesus does not redefine the law. He simply correctly defines it. And he shows us in his definition our inability to follow it. And what we find in Jesus's discussion of the law is that the whole law, and we find this in Galatians and we find this in Romans and we find this in Acts and we find this in Corinthians. This is everywhere, replete throughout the New Testament, that the entire point of the law is to show you that you can't follow it. That's the whole point. You think it's to show you how to be right before God, and really the point of it is to show you your inadequacy before God and your need for that. That's the law. The law sees dead people. It's not here to make a pathway for you to get right with God. The law exists so that you will know that you are incapable of following that pathway and will claim your need for Jesus who came and lived a perfect life and followed that law perfectly for you and died a perfect death to make a bridge to a God that you would never have access to if he did not come and perfectly fulfill that law for you. That's the point of the law. Jesus fulfilled the law and earned God's approval for you. The point of the law, friends, is to remind us of our need for Jesus. The point of God's standards is to show us that we can't meet them. The point of the cross is to remind us of the necessity of it. So when we arrive at this text in Exodus chapter 19, and we see the law brought down the mountain by Moses. And we understand it as a momentous occasion in the history of the Hebrew people and even in our faith. And we see that law as God providing a pathway to approval from him. Please understand that it is momentous. It does echo throughout the millennia. It is incredibly important. But it's incredibly important because its intent has always been to show you that you can't keep it. Its intent has always been to show you your inadequacy and your reliance on the perfect life and death of Jesus. And that the entire point of the law throughout all of history is to orient your gaze towards the cross and not towards yourself and your ability to obey rules. It's to surrender before God and say, I am not capable of that. I need this. That's the whole point. So please, church, when we think about the law, let's see it for what it is. Let's appreciate its import. But let us always, always allow it to direct our gaze towards the necessity of the cross and grow our spirit of gratitude for it. Yes? Let's pray. Father, you're good to us. We are so very sorry for inadequately following you. We're sorry for the ways that we let ourselves down as we think we're letting you down. We're so grateful for the grace that you show us in those moments. God, I pray that we would see this momentous occasion in Exodus as one that echoes throughout the centuries, but as one that is intended to point us towards you and towards your grace and towards your goodness and towards your mercy and towards your sacrifice. May the law forever point us towards the cross. May the law forever make us grateful of our Savior. And may the law forever make us grateful of what you did to make a path to be with you. In Jesus' name, amen.

I was going to say it's an enormous privilege to be here and speak this morning. However, now that the cat's out of the bag and you realize that this entire morning is about service and missions, those of you who know me, when you saw me walk up here, might have immediately thought to yourselves, huh, he's an odd choice to speak this morning. He's never struck me as one of those super sweet, unselfish, salt-to-the-earth, missions-type people, always concerned about others, rarely thinking of themselves, always busy, busy, busy collecting things in the foyer, taking people meals, building habitat for humanity homes. On the contrary, whenever I've dealt with the guy, he's always seemed pretty self-absorbed. Now, if you did have these thoughts, I'm not going to ask for a show of hands. I don't blame you. Sadly, I'm not any of those things. Yet, strange as it may seem, I'm not that odd a messenger at all. First though, let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for all these people. Thank you for this morning. Just help me and use this morning to shake and stir our hearts as you see fit. And again, thank you for the extravagant lengths you went to to make it possible for us to be yours and it's in Jesus name we pray amen to begin let's look at four passages from Scripture which I'll read and we will come back to them Matthew the first ones Matthew 6 19 through 21 do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal Verse 21. There your heart will be also. The second is from Psalm 34. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man or woman who takes refuge in him. And then from Isaiah 58. Is not this the type of fasting I have chosen? To loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke. To set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter when you see the naked to clothe him and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear. I'm going to have to raise this because I keep losing my place. Then your righteousness will go before you and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call and the Lord will answer. You will cry for help and he will say, here I am. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noon day. And finally, from 1 Timothy, command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant and put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age so that they may take hold of life that is truly life. Those are all beautiful, profound passages which we will come back to. But first, I'm going to make an assertion, which I don't think is particularly controversial, although you might. Most Christians, certainly including me, don't follow Christ with all our hearts because we aren't completely convinced that it leads to the richest, most satisfying, and joy-filled life. I'll repeat that. Most Christians, including me, don't follow Christ with all our hearts because we aren't completely convinced that it leads to the richest, most satisfying, and joy-filled life. Let me explain. Raised in a conservative Midwestern Bible church, my earliest conceptions of faith could be summed up with one verse, John 3, 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. That was really good news to me, but also indelibly etched upon my young mind was its corollary, that having accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, I was supposed to be as good as possible from now on. And as I understood it, being good meant doing a bunch of things I didn't really want to do, as well as not doing a bunch of things that I wouldn't mind doing and that other kids had no problem doing. This sense that the Christian life was largely one of deprivation and opportunity costs only became more pronounced as I grew older. This all simmered on a low boil until I got to college in the mid-1970s, which is when the levies gave way, and I wandered far off the reservation for the next dozen years or so. Billy Joel had a hit song at the time, Only the Good Die Young, whose lyrics perhaps best captured my mindset. They showed you a statue and told you to pray. They built you a temple and locked you away, but they never told you the price that you pay for the things that you might have done. Only the good die young. They say there's a heaven for those who will wait. Some say it's better, but I say it ain't. I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. Sinners are much more fun, and only the good die young. But as edgy and rebellious as I might have thought myself, I was not breaking any new ground. In fact, the notion I was wrestling with, that God wants to put us in a straight jacket and walk the straight and narrow and denying ourselves of otherwise good things, goes all the way back to the original sin in the Garden of Eden. It's exactly the approach taken by the serpent, the devil himself, when he tempted Adam and Eve. The serpent preyed upon Eve by suggesting that God, in fact, did not want the very best for her, but was holding something back, something potentially good, and that the boundary God had set for humankind, not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not a loving one established for our own protection and well-being, but was oppressive and a constraint on our own pursuit of happiness and fulfillment. This idea that God doesn't want the absolute best for us was a lie back in the garden, it was a lie when I was in college, and it's still a lie today. Nevertheless, a nagging doubt was planted in Eve's mind about God's goodness and gracious intentions, one that she was unable to shake. Convinced that she might know better, Eve and Adam opted to trust in their own judgment and their own understanding of what was good for them, what was bad, what was in their best interest, and what was not. In other words, they wanted to decide for themselves what made the most sense. And that's exactly what they did, as has every human being since. The legacy of Satan's first lie to humankind, the one I fell for in my late teens, still echoes and reverberates today, even among the most genuine and faithful followers of Christ. Perhaps the most subtle yet insidious form of this lie manifests itself in this pervasive view among believers that being a Christian requires us to be utterly and completely selfless in all we do, always placing the interests of others above our own. As with most effective and pernicious lies, there's a lot of truth embedded in it. After all, self-giving love is the fundamental tenet of Jesus' entire mission and ministry. And we, as his followers, are repeatedly called to imitate his example by denying ourselves, taking up our crosses, losing our lives to save them. Whoever wants to be first must be last and the servant of all, and on and on. But the genius of this lie and why it's still such an effective tactic in Satan's efforts to mess with us and keep us from experiencing the fullness of life in Christ is that it's only a half-truth telling only half the story. It focuses entirely on the unselfish part of the Christian experience and the self-sacrificing love we're to show others, but entirely avoids any mention of what following and becoming more like Christ might offer to us in this life and beyond. Let's be honest. For me, at least, it paints a grim picture of the life of faith, a long, slow slog in which I, against all odds, must risk my teeth and persevere, hanging on to the very end, give, give, give, and no take until finally, exhausted and spent, I'm rewarded in heaven when I die. I would bet for most of us, at a minimum, it results in an attitude toward mission and service derived more out of a sense of obligation, a must-do or a should-do, rather than of an opportunity, privilege, and joy. It makes the Christian life just not that appealing or motivating, which is its whole point. It's a lie designed to diminish, undersell, and underwhelm. And the lie is in what it omits, how it does not reflect the full testimony of scripture, which is actually brimming with all sorts of lavish promises of the good that will accrue to us if we seek it with all our hearts. We are consistently encouraged to relentlessly follow Christ and be more like him precisely because it is in our own best selfish interest. So in truth, and perhaps surprisingly, despite all the teachings in scripture about self-sacrificial love, the reality is that most of us are not selfish enough, not self-serving enough, not self-interested enough to seek all that a life in Christ has to offer. Rather, because we aren't completely convinced that it leads to the richest, most satisfying, and joy-filled life, we remain trapped in the land of the lukewarm and the half-hearted. This is by no means a new insight. In his sermon entitled The Weight of Glory, delivered at Oxford University in 1941, the author, scholar, and theologian C.S. Lewis stated the following, and I quote, The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ, and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea, we are far too easily pleased. End quote. Unquote. End quote. Unquote. What's the expression? End of quote. End of quote. It's locked in now. But a tragic consequence of our fallen nature is that it's left us with a constricted and impoverished view of God's goodness and what he desires for us, both in this life and beyond. Our field of vision is far too narrow and our view way too small. We are, as C.S. Lewis described, playing in filthy, muddy puddles, thinking it's great, when all the while there's a gorgeous Caribbean beach vacation just waiting for us. This maligned and diseased view of God's goodness so profoundly limits our imaginations as to what life following Christ could be like that it tempers our pursuit of him, making it so much easier and more likely that we get sidetracked and lured away. By so completely underestimating the joy, satisfaction, and fulfillment that a life wholeheartedly following Christ offers, we make trusting in our own judgment much more appealing and tempting by comparison. And that, of course, leads us to prioritize other things. So, if that's all true, where does it leave us? If the real surprise is not that we expect too much from this life, but settle for so little. If our struggle to take God's extravagant promises of truly abundant life at face value leads us to never pursuing or experiencing those promises to the full. What is the remedy? What are we to do? How do we overcome our constrained view of God's goodness enough to want to go all in on following Christ? How do we move all our chips, or at least more of them, to the center of the table? We need help. Thankfully, God, in his remarkable love, grace, mercy, and wisdom, does not leave us to our own devices. It comes to our rescue, once again, with what I'm going to call a secret formula. Although it's not very secret, just overlooked and underutilized. Since the advent of the smartphone, I've become somewhat of a sucker for shortcuts and secret formulas. Always intrigued when someone touts a quick and supposedly effective way to become smarter, healthier, financially more secure, better looking, a better spouse, a better parent, a better gardener, etc. Because I am a sucker, my phone is now bombarded unceasingly with tempting prompts carefully curated just for me. For example, I recently discovered the one fruit I should eat every day. It's the kiwi. The three thoughts truly happy people think each day. The five must-have perennials for any southern garden. The seven behaviors to say goodbye to if you want your kids to appreciate you as they get older, to name a few. But the one hook that never fails to grab my attention, drawing me like a moth to flame, is belly fat. Or more precisely, any sight purporting to know how to lose one's belly fat. That is my holy grail. And as I refuse to consider any changes to my heating, eating, or drinking habits, I'm basically just left with exercise. Downloaded on my phone, I would show you, but it's too small, is the app Lose Your Belly Fat, a six-pack in 30 days. Let me tell you something. If not completely false, this app is certainly misleading. And I've even become a bit disillusioned. Now well into my fourth year, roughly... Seriously, roughly 1,200 days in, not 30 days, 1,200 days, there is no six-pack to be seen, not even the faint glimmer of one on the far-off horizon. But unlike my app, there's no false or misleading advertising with God's secret formula, which is revealed in those three short verses from the book of Matthew that we read earlier. treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal for where your treasure is there your heart will be also we are called to follow Christ and become more like him so that's what we try to do but if you're anything like me it is a struggle not only are we hamstrung with a maligned and far too small view of God's goodness, which makes it that much easier to want to trust in our own judgment, as we've discussed, there is also the problem that it's hard to make yourself feel something that you don't. As the great country singer Bonnie Raitt lamented in her song, I Can't Make You Love Me, she observes, because I can't make you love me if you don't. You can't make your heart feel something it won't. Absolutely one of the most gorgeous, honest, and sad songs ever written. It acknowledges a fundamental truth about the human condition. It's hard to genuinely make yourself more loving, more forgiving, more tolerant, more generous, more kind. I've been a Christian a long time, and Christlike is not the self-description that first comes to my mind. Knucklehead, yes. Christlike, not so much. But in these three verses in Matthew, Jesus cuts straight to the chase by essentially saying, you're doing it all wrong. Of course you can't make yourself feel a certain way. You can't manufacture that on your own. But I'll tell you what you can do. You can start moving your treasure. That's the ticket to becoming more like me and having a heart like mine. We worship a God of great mystery, one who is far beyond our full comprehension. But that does not mean we are somehow mysterious to him. Having conceived of us, created us, and imbued us with life, he knows exactly what makes us tick, which is why Matthew 6.21 is so powerful and potentially life-changing. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The beauty and the power of it, the secret formula part of it, is that you don't have to feel a certain way to begin. You just begin moving your treasure, never mind how you feel about it, or if you're ready. The feelings will ultimately take care of themselves. When we start spending our time, our energy, our financial resources on the things that God thinks are most important, as night follows day, our hearts will follow. And that means so will our priorities, our passions, our hopes, and our joy. When we take steps to invest our treasure in more lasting and eternal things, we inevitably become more like Christ as we increasingly view things as he does and care about the things he cares about. We also begin to remedy and rehabilitate our fallen nature's view of God's goodness by experiencing it firsthand. Perhaps Psalm 34.8 captures this dynamic best. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man or woman who takes refuge in him. By moving our treasure, even in small ways, we place ourselves in a position to taste and see God's goodness, which in turn helps us to take another step. Ideally, our time on earth becomes a lifelong journey of tasting and seeing that the Lord is good, transforming our hearts along the way to become more like Christ, caring for what he cares most about. And when we do put ourselves out there, tasting and seeing the Lord's goodness, we begin to grasp how the inherent contradictions of scripture's lavish promises, that on the one hand, we are to love sacrificially and be the servant of all, yet on the other hand, that very posture is the best thing that could possibly happen to us, can both be true at once. And the more we move our treasure, the more we taste and see God's goodness, the more we experience this paradoxical truth that giving of oneself leads to life. Far from being all give and no take, the promises contained in such sweeping passages as found in Isaiah 58 become more credible and real to us. Is not this the type of fasting I have chosen? To loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke? To set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter? When you see the naked, to clothe him and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood. Then your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear. Then your righteousness will go before you and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call and the Lord will answer. You will cry for help and he will say, here I am. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noonday. In closing, God, in his love, grace, and wisdom, offers each of us the life and eternity-changing privilege to transform our human hearts and begin to experience life to the full. Moving our treasure surely looks a bit different for each of us. What I do know is that it's a process incomparably worthwhile embracing and that there is no better time than the present. As we most resemble our Savior. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age so that they may take hold of life that is truly life. Let's take hold of life that is truly life. Thanks so much for listening.

I was going to say it's an enormous privilege to be here and speak this morning. However, now that the cat's out of the bag and you realize that this entire morning is about service and missions, those of you who know me, when you saw me walk up here, might have immediately thought to yourselves, huh, he's an odd choice to speak this morning. He's never struck me as one of those super sweet, unselfish, salt-to-the-earth, missions-type people, always concerned about others, rarely thinking of themselves, always busy, busy, busy collecting things in the foyer, taking people meals, building habitat for humanity homes. On the contrary, whenever I've dealt with the guy, he's always seemed pretty self-absorbed. Now, if you did have these thoughts, I'm not going to ask for a show of hands. I don't blame you. Sadly, I'm not any of those things. Yet, strange as it may seem, I'm not that odd a messenger at all. First though, let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for all these people. Thank you for this morning. Just help me and use this morning to shake and stir our hearts as you see fit. And again, thank you for the extravagant lengths you went to to make it possible for us to be yours and it's in Jesus name we pray amen to begin let's look at four passages from Scripture which I'll read and we will come back to them Matthew the first ones Matthew 6 19 through 21 do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal Verse 21. There your heart will be also. The second is from Psalm 34. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man or woman who takes refuge in him. And then from Isaiah 58. Is not this the type of fasting I have chosen? To loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke. To set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter when you see the naked to clothe him and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear. I'm going to have to raise this because I keep losing my place. Then your righteousness will go before you and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call and the Lord will answer. You will cry for help and he will say, here I am. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noon day. And finally, from 1 Timothy, command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant and put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age so that they may take hold of life that is truly life. Those are all beautiful, profound passages which we will come back to. But first, I'm going to make an assertion, which I don't think is particularly controversial, although you might. Most Christians, certainly including me, don't follow Christ with all our hearts because we aren't completely convinced that it leads to the richest, most satisfying, and joy-filled life. I'll repeat that. Most Christians, including me, don't follow Christ with all our hearts because we aren't completely convinced that it leads to the richest, most satisfying, and joy-filled life. Let me explain. Raised in a conservative Midwestern Bible church, my earliest conceptions of faith could be summed up with one verse, John 3, 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. That was really good news to me, but also indelibly etched upon my young mind was its corollary, that having accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, I was supposed to be as good as possible from now on. And as I understood it, being good meant doing a bunch of things I didn't really want to do, as well as not doing a bunch of things that I wouldn't mind doing and that other kids had no problem doing. This sense that the Christian life was largely one of deprivation and opportunity costs only became more pronounced as I grew older. This all simmered on a low boil until I got to college in the mid-1970s, which is when the levies gave way, and I wandered far off the reservation for the next dozen years or so. Billy Joel had a hit song at the time, Only the Good Die Young, whose lyrics perhaps best captured my mindset. They showed you a statue and told you to pray. They built you a temple and locked you away, but they never told you the price that you pay for the things that you might have done. Only the good die young. They say there's a heaven for those who will wait. Some say it's better, but I say it ain't. I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. Sinners are much more fun, and only the good die young. But as edgy and rebellious as I might have thought myself, I was not breaking any new ground. In fact, the notion I was wrestling with, that God wants to put us in a straight jacket and walk the straight and narrow and denying ourselves of otherwise good things, goes all the way back to the original sin in the Garden of Eden. It's exactly the approach taken by the serpent, the devil himself, when he tempted Adam and Eve. The serpent preyed upon Eve by suggesting that God, in fact, did not want the very best for her, but was holding something back, something potentially good, and that the boundary God had set for humankind, not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not a loving one established for our own protection and well-being, but was oppressive and a constraint on our own pursuit of happiness and fulfillment. This idea that God doesn't want the absolute best for us was a lie back in the garden, it was a lie when I was in college, and it's still a lie today. Nevertheless, a nagging doubt was planted in Eve's mind about God's goodness and gracious intentions, one that she was unable to shake. Convinced that she might know better, Eve and Adam opted to trust in their own judgment and their own understanding of what was good for them, what was bad, what was in their best interest, and what was not. In other words, they wanted to decide for themselves what made the most sense. And that's exactly what they did, as has every human being since. The legacy of Satan's first lie to humankind, the one I fell for in my late teens, still echoes and reverberates today, even among the most genuine and faithful followers of Christ. Perhaps the most subtle yet insidious form of this lie manifests itself in this pervasive view among believers that being a Christian requires us to be utterly and completely selfless in all we do, always placing the interests of others above our own. As with most effective and pernicious lies, there's a lot of truth embedded in it. After all, self-giving love is the fundamental tenet of Jesus' entire mission and ministry. And we, as his followers, are repeatedly called to imitate his example by denying ourselves, taking up our crosses, losing our lives to save them. Whoever wants to be first must be last and the servant of all, and on and on. But the genius of this lie and why it's still such an effective tactic in Satan's efforts to mess with us and keep us from experiencing the fullness of life in Christ is that it's only a half-truth telling only half the story. It focuses entirely on the unselfish part of the Christian experience and the self-sacrificing love we're to show others, but entirely avoids any mention of what following and becoming more like Christ might offer to us in this life and beyond. Let's be honest. For me, at least, it paints a grim picture of the life of faith, a long, slow slog in which I, against all odds, must risk my teeth and persevere, hanging on to the very end, give, give, give, and no take until finally, exhausted and spent, I'm rewarded in heaven when I die. I would bet for most of us, at a minimum, it results in an attitude toward mission and service derived more out of a sense of obligation, a must-do or a should-do, rather than of an opportunity, privilege, and joy. It makes the Christian life just not that appealing or motivating, which is its whole point. It's a lie designed to diminish, undersell, and underwhelm. And the lie is in what it omits, how it does not reflect the full testimony of scripture, which is actually brimming with all sorts of lavish promises of the good that will accrue to us if we seek it with all our hearts. We are consistently encouraged to relentlessly follow Christ and be more like him precisely because it is in our own best selfish interest. So in truth, and perhaps surprisingly, despite all the teachings in scripture about self-sacrificial love, the reality is that most of us are not selfish enough, not self-serving enough, not self-interested enough to seek all that a life in Christ has to offer. Rather, because we aren't completely convinced that it leads to the richest, most satisfying, and joy-filled life, we remain trapped in the land of the lukewarm and the half-hearted. This is by no means a new insight. In his sermon entitled The Weight of Glory, delivered at Oxford University in 1941, the author, scholar, and theologian C.S. Lewis stated the following, and I quote, The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ, and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea, we are far too easily pleased. End quote. Unquote. End quote. Unquote. What's the expression? End of quote. End of quote. It's locked in now. But a tragic consequence of our fallen nature is that it's left us with a constricted and impoverished view of God's goodness and what he desires for us, both in this life and beyond. Our field of vision is far too narrow and our view way too small. We are, as C.S. Lewis described, playing in filthy, muddy puddles, thinking it's great, when all the while there's a gorgeous Caribbean beach vacation just waiting for us. This maligned and diseased view of God's goodness so profoundly limits our imaginations as to what life following Christ could be like that it tempers our pursuit of him, making it so much easier and more likely that we get sidetracked and lured away. By so completely underestimating the joy, satisfaction, and fulfillment that a life wholeheartedly following Christ offers, we make trusting in our own judgment much more appealing and tempting by comparison. And that, of course, leads us to prioritize other things. So, if that's all true, where does it leave us? If the real surprise is not that we expect too much from this life, but settle for so little. If our struggle to take God's extravagant promises of truly abundant life at face value leads us to never pursuing or experiencing those promises to the full. What is the remedy? What are we to do? How do we overcome our constrained view of God's goodness enough to want to go all in on following Christ? How do we move all our chips, or at least more of them, to the center of the table? We need help. Thankfully, God, in his remarkable love, grace, mercy, and wisdom, does not leave us to our own devices. It comes to our rescue, once again, with what I'm going to call a secret formula. Although it's not very secret, just overlooked and underutilized. Since the advent of the smartphone, I've become somewhat of a sucker for shortcuts and secret formulas. Always intrigued when someone touts a quick and supposedly effective way to become smarter, healthier, financially more secure, better looking, a better spouse, a better parent, a better gardener, etc. Because I am a sucker, my phone is now bombarded unceasingly with tempting prompts carefully curated just for me. For example, I recently discovered the one fruit I should eat every day. It's the kiwi. The three thoughts truly happy people think each day. The five must-have perennials for any southern garden. The seven behaviors to say goodbye to if you want your kids to appreciate you as they get older, to name a few. But the one hook that never fails to grab my attention, drawing me like a moth to flame, is belly fat. Or more precisely, any sight purporting to know how to lose one's belly fat. That is my holy grail. And as I refuse to consider any changes to my heating, eating, or drinking habits, I'm basically just left with exercise. Downloaded on my phone, I would show you, but it's too small, is the app Lose Your Belly Fat, a six-pack in 30 days. Let me tell you something. If not completely false, this app is certainly misleading. And I've even become a bit disillusioned. Now well into my fourth year, roughly... Seriously, roughly 1,200 days in, not 30 days, 1,200 days, there is no six-pack to be seen, not even the faint glimmer of one on the far-off horizon. But unlike my app, there's no false or misleading advertising with God's secret formula, which is revealed in those three short verses from the book of Matthew that we read earlier. treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal for where your treasure is there your heart will be also we are called to follow Christ and become more like him so that's what we try to do but if you're anything like me it is a struggle not only are we hamstrung with a maligned and far too small view of God's goodness, which makes it that much easier to want to trust in our own judgment, as we've discussed, there is also the problem that it's hard to make yourself feel something that you don't. As the great country singer Bonnie Raitt lamented in her song, I Can't Make You Love Me, she observes, because I can't make you love me if you don't. You can't make your heart feel something it won't. Absolutely one of the most gorgeous, honest, and sad songs ever written. It acknowledges a fundamental truth about the human condition. It's hard to genuinely make yourself more loving, more forgiving, more tolerant, more generous, more kind. I've been a Christian a long time, and Christlike is not the self-description that first comes to my mind. Knucklehead, yes. Christlike, not so much. But in these three verses in Matthew, Jesus cuts straight to the chase by essentially saying, you're doing it all wrong. Of course you can't make yourself feel a certain way. You can't manufacture that on your own. But I'll tell you what you can do. You can start moving your treasure. That's the ticket to becoming more like me and having a heart like mine. We worship a God of great mystery, one who is far beyond our full comprehension. But that does not mean we are somehow mysterious to him. Having conceived of us, created us, and imbued us with life, he knows exactly what makes us tick, which is why Matthew 6.21 is so powerful and potentially life-changing. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The beauty and the power of it, the secret formula part of it, is that you don't have to feel a certain way to begin. You just begin moving your treasure, never mind how you feel about it, or if you're ready. The feelings will ultimately take care of themselves. When we start spending our time, our energy, our financial resources on the things that God thinks are most important, as night follows day, our hearts will follow. And that means so will our priorities, our passions, our hopes, and our joy. When we take steps to invest our treasure in more lasting and eternal things, we inevitably become more like Christ as we increasingly view things as he does and care about the things he cares about. We also begin to remedy and rehabilitate our fallen nature's view of God's goodness by experiencing it firsthand. Perhaps Psalm 34.8 captures this dynamic best. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man or woman who takes refuge in him. By moving our treasure, even in small ways, we place ourselves in a position to taste and see God's goodness, which in turn helps us to take another step. Ideally, our time on earth becomes a lifelong journey of tasting and seeing that the Lord is good, transforming our hearts along the way to become more like Christ, caring for what he cares most about. And when we do put ourselves out there, tasting and seeing the Lord's goodness, we begin to grasp how the inherent contradictions of scripture's lavish promises, that on the one hand, we are to love sacrificially and be the servant of all, yet on the other hand, that very posture is the best thing that could possibly happen to us, can both be true at once. And the more we move our treasure, the more we taste and see God's goodness, the more we experience this paradoxical truth that giving of oneself leads to life. Far from being all give and no take, the promises contained in such sweeping passages as found in Isaiah 58 become more credible and real to us. Is not this the type of fasting I have chosen? To loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke? To set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter? When you see the naked, to clothe him and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood. Then your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear. Then your righteousness will go before you and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call and the Lord will answer. You will cry for help and he will say, here I am. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noonday. In closing, God, in his love, grace, and wisdom, offers each of us the life and eternity-changing privilege to transform our human hearts and begin to experience life to the full. Moving our treasure surely looks a bit different for each of us. What I do know is that it's a process incomparably worthwhile embracing and that there is no better time than the present. As we most resemble our Savior. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age so that they may take hold of life that is truly life. Let's take hold of life that is truly life. Thanks so much for listening.

I was going to say it's an enormous privilege to be here and speak this morning. However, now that the cat's out of the bag and you realize that this entire morning is about service and missions, those of you who know me, when you saw me walk up here, might have immediately thought to yourselves, huh, he's an odd choice to speak this morning. He's never struck me as one of those super sweet, unselfish, salt-to-the-earth, missions-type people, always concerned about others, rarely thinking of themselves, always busy, busy, busy collecting things in the foyer, taking people meals, building habitat for humanity homes. On the contrary, whenever I've dealt with the guy, he's always seemed pretty self-absorbed. Now, if you did have these thoughts, I'm not going to ask for a show of hands. I don't blame you. Sadly, I'm not any of those things. Yet, strange as it may seem, I'm not that odd a messenger at all. First though, let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for all these people. Thank you for this morning. Just help me and use this morning to shake and stir our hearts as you see fit. And again, thank you for the extravagant lengths you went to to make it possible for us to be yours and it's in Jesus name we pray amen to begin let's look at four passages from Scripture which I'll read and we will come back to them Matthew the first ones Matthew 6 19 through 21 do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal Verse 21. There your heart will be also. The second is from Psalm 34. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man or woman who takes refuge in him. And then from Isaiah 58. Is not this the type of fasting I have chosen? To loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke. To set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter when you see the naked to clothe him and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear. I'm going to have to raise this because I keep losing my place. Then your righteousness will go before you and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call and the Lord will answer. You will cry for help and he will say, here I am. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noon day. And finally, from 1 Timothy, command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant and put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age so that they may take hold of life that is truly life. Those are all beautiful, profound passages which we will come back to. But first, I'm going to make an assertion, which I don't think is particularly controversial, although you might. Most Christians, certainly including me, don't follow Christ with all our hearts because we aren't completely convinced that it leads to the richest, most satisfying, and joy-filled life. I'll repeat that. Most Christians, including me, don't follow Christ with all our hearts because we aren't completely convinced that it leads to the richest, most satisfying, and joy-filled life. Let me explain. Raised in a conservative Midwestern Bible church, my earliest conceptions of faith could be summed up with one verse, John 3, 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. That was really good news to me, but also indelibly etched upon my young mind was its corollary, that having accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, I was supposed to be as good as possible from now on. And as I understood it, being good meant doing a bunch of things I didn't really want to do, as well as not doing a bunch of things that I wouldn't mind doing and that other kids had no problem doing. This sense that the Christian life was largely one of deprivation and opportunity costs only became more pronounced as I grew older. This all simmered on a low boil until I got to college in the mid-1970s, which is when the levies gave way, and I wandered far off the reservation for the next dozen years or so. Billy Joel had a hit song at the time, Only the Good Die Young, whose lyrics perhaps best captured my mindset. They showed you a statue and told you to pray. They built you a temple and locked you away, but they never told you the price that you pay for the things that you might have done. Only the good die young. They say there's a heaven for those who will wait. Some say it's better, but I say it ain't. I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. Sinners are much more fun, and only the good die young. But as edgy and rebellious as I might have thought myself, I was not breaking any new ground. In fact, the notion I was wrestling with, that God wants to put us in a straight jacket and walk the straight and narrow and denying ourselves of otherwise good things, goes all the way back to the original sin in the Garden of Eden. It's exactly the approach taken by the serpent, the devil himself, when he tempted Adam and Eve. The serpent preyed upon Eve by suggesting that God, in fact, did not want the very best for her, but was holding something back, something potentially good, and that the boundary God had set for humankind, not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not a loving one established for our own protection and well-being, but was oppressive and a constraint on our own pursuit of happiness and fulfillment. This idea that God doesn't want the absolute best for us was a lie back in the garden, it was a lie when I was in college, and it's still a lie today. Nevertheless, a nagging doubt was planted in Eve's mind about God's goodness and gracious intentions, one that she was unable to shake. Convinced that she might know better, Eve and Adam opted to trust in their own judgment and their own understanding of what was good for them, what was bad, what was in their best interest, and what was not. In other words, they wanted to decide for themselves what made the most sense. And that's exactly what they did, as has every human being since. The legacy of Satan's first lie to humankind, the one I fell for in my late teens, still echoes and reverberates today, even among the most genuine and faithful followers of Christ. Perhaps the most subtle yet insidious form of this lie manifests itself in this pervasive view among believers that being a Christian requires us to be utterly and completely selfless in all we do, always placing the interests of others above our own. As with most effective and pernicious lies, there's a lot of truth embedded in it. After all, self-giving love is the fundamental tenet of Jesus' entire mission and ministry. And we, as his followers, are repeatedly called to imitate his example by denying ourselves, taking up our crosses, losing our lives to save them. Whoever wants to be first must be last and the servant of all, and on and on. But the genius of this lie and why it's still such an effective tactic in Satan's efforts to mess with us and keep us from experiencing the fullness of life in Christ is that it's only a half-truth telling only half the story. It focuses entirely on the unselfish part of the Christian experience and the self-sacrificing love we're to show others, but entirely avoids any mention of what following and becoming more like Christ might offer to us in this life and beyond. Let's be honest. For me, at least, it paints a grim picture of the life of faith, a long, slow slog in which I, against all odds, must risk my teeth and persevere, hanging on to the very end, give, give, give, and no take until finally, exhausted and spent, I'm rewarded in heaven when I die. I would bet for most of us, at a minimum, it results in an attitude toward mission and service derived more out of a sense of obligation, a must-do or a should-do, rather than of an opportunity, privilege, and joy. It makes the Christian life just not that appealing or motivating, which is its whole point. It's a lie designed to diminish, undersell, and underwhelm. And the lie is in what it omits, how it does not reflect the full testimony of scripture, which is actually brimming with all sorts of lavish promises of the good that will accrue to us if we seek it with all our hearts. We are consistently encouraged to relentlessly follow Christ and be more like him precisely because it is in our own best selfish interest. So in truth, and perhaps surprisingly, despite all the teachings in scripture about self-sacrificial love, the reality is that most of us are not selfish enough, not self-serving enough, not self-interested enough to seek all that a life in Christ has to offer. Rather, because we aren't completely convinced that it leads to the richest, most satisfying, and joy-filled life, we remain trapped in the land of the lukewarm and the half-hearted. This is by no means a new insight. In his sermon entitled The Weight of Glory, delivered at Oxford University in 1941, the author, scholar, and theologian C.S. Lewis stated the following, and I quote, The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ, and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea, we are far too easily pleased. End quote. Unquote. End quote. Unquote. What's the expression? End of quote. End of quote. It's locked in now. But a tragic consequence of our fallen nature is that it's left us with a constricted and impoverished view of God's goodness and what he desires for us, both in this life and beyond. Our field of vision is far too narrow and our view way too small. We are, as C.S. Lewis described, playing in filthy, muddy puddles, thinking it's great, when all the while there's a gorgeous Caribbean beach vacation just waiting for us. This maligned and diseased view of God's goodness so profoundly limits our imaginations as to what life following Christ could be like that it tempers our pursuit of him, making it so much easier and more likely that we get sidetracked and lured away. By so completely underestimating the joy, satisfaction, and fulfillment that a life wholeheartedly following Christ offers, we make trusting in our own judgment much more appealing and tempting by comparison. And that, of course, leads us to prioritize other things. So, if that's all true, where does it leave us? If the real surprise is not that we expect too much from this life, but settle for so little. If our struggle to take God's extravagant promises of truly abundant life at face value leads us to never pursuing or experiencing those promises to the full. What is the remedy? What are we to do? How do we overcome our constrained view of God's goodness enough to want to go all in on following Christ? How do we move all our chips, or at least more of them, to the center of the table? We need help. Thankfully, God, in his remarkable love, grace, mercy, and wisdom, does not leave us to our own devices. It comes to our rescue, once again, with what I'm going to call a secret formula. Although it's not very secret, just overlooked and underutilized. Since the advent of the smartphone, I've become somewhat of a sucker for shortcuts and secret formulas. Always intrigued when someone touts a quick and supposedly effective way to become smarter, healthier, financially more secure, better looking, a better spouse, a better parent, a better gardener, etc. Because I am a sucker, my phone is now bombarded unceasingly with tempting prompts carefully curated just for me. For example, I recently discovered the one fruit I should eat every day. It's the kiwi. The three thoughts truly happy people think each day. The five must-have perennials for any southern garden. The seven behaviors to say goodbye to if you want your kids to appreciate you as they get older, to name a few. But the one hook that never fails to grab my attention, drawing me like a moth to flame, is belly fat. Or more precisely, any sight purporting to know how to lose one's belly fat. That is my holy grail. And as I refuse to consider any changes to my heating, eating, or drinking habits, I'm basically just left with exercise. Downloaded on my phone, I would show you, but it's too small, is the app Lose Your Belly Fat, a six-pack in 30 days. Let me tell you something. If not completely false, this app is certainly misleading. And I've even become a bit disillusioned. Now well into my fourth year, roughly... Seriously, roughly 1,200 days in, not 30 days, 1,200 days, there is no six-pack to be seen, not even the faint glimmer of one on the far-off horizon. But unlike my app, there's no false or misleading advertising with God's secret formula, which is revealed in those three short verses from the book of Matthew that we read earlier. treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal for where your treasure is there your heart will be also we are called to follow Christ and become more like him so that's what we try to do but if you're anything like me it is a struggle not only are we hamstrung with a maligned and far too small view of God's goodness, which makes it that much easier to want to trust in our own judgment, as we've discussed, there is also the problem that it's hard to make yourself feel something that you don't. As the great country singer Bonnie Raitt lamented in her song, I Can't Make You Love Me, she observes, because I can't make you love me if you don't. You can't make your heart feel something it won't. Absolutely one of the most gorgeous, honest, and sad songs ever written. It acknowledges a fundamental truth about the human condition. It's hard to genuinely make yourself more loving, more forgiving, more tolerant, more generous, more kind. I've been a Christian a long time, and Christlike is not the self-description that first comes to my mind. Knucklehead, yes. Christlike, not so much. But in these three verses in Matthew, Jesus cuts straight to the chase by essentially saying, you're doing it all wrong. Of course you can't make yourself feel a certain way. You can't manufacture that on your own. But I'll tell you what you can do. You can start moving your treasure. That's the ticket to becoming more like me and having a heart like mine. We worship a God of great mystery, one who is far beyond our full comprehension. But that does not mean we are somehow mysterious to him. Having conceived of us, created us, and imbued us with life, he knows exactly what makes us tick, which is why Matthew 6.21 is so powerful and potentially life-changing. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The beauty and the power of it, the secret formula part of it, is that you don't have to feel a certain way to begin. You just begin moving your treasure, never mind how you feel about it, or if you're ready. The feelings will ultimately take care of themselves. When we start spending our time, our energy, our financial resources on the things that God thinks are most important, as night follows day, our hearts will follow. And that means so will our priorities, our passions, our hopes, and our joy. When we take steps to invest our treasure in more lasting and eternal things, we inevitably become more like Christ as we increasingly view things as he does and care about the things he cares about. We also begin to remedy and rehabilitate our fallen nature's view of God's goodness by experiencing it firsthand. Perhaps Psalm 34.8 captures this dynamic best. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man or woman who takes refuge in him. By moving our treasure, even in small ways, we place ourselves in a position to taste and see God's goodness, which in turn helps us to take another step. Ideally, our time on earth becomes a lifelong journey of tasting and seeing that the Lord is good, transforming our hearts along the way to become more like Christ, caring for what he cares most about. And when we do put ourselves out there, tasting and seeing the Lord's goodness, we begin to grasp how the inherent contradictions of scripture's lavish promises, that on the one hand, we are to love sacrificially and be the servant of all, yet on the other hand, that very posture is the best thing that could possibly happen to us, can both be true at once. And the more we move our treasure, the more we taste and see God's goodness, the more we experience this paradoxical truth that giving of oneself leads to life. Far from being all give and no take, the promises contained in such sweeping passages as found in Isaiah 58 become more credible and real to us. Is not this the type of fasting I have chosen? To loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke? To set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter? When you see the naked, to clothe him and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood. Then your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear. Then your righteousness will go before you and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call and the Lord will answer. You will cry for help and he will say, here I am. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noonday. In closing, God, in his love, grace, and wisdom, offers each of us the life and eternity-changing privilege to transform our human hearts and begin to experience life to the full. Moving our treasure surely looks a bit different for each of us. What I do know is that it's a process incomparably worthwhile embracing and that there is no better time than the present. As we most resemble our Savior. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age so that they may take hold of life that is truly life. Let's take hold of life that is truly life. Thanks so much for listening.