Philippians

We serve a God who's working through time to bring about His will and ultimately our good. We see the evidence of His sovereignty in the book of Genesis with the life of Joseph. To know and understand the story of Joseph is to get a glimpse into the very heart of God and to be assured that we can trust His plan. Last week, even though Joseph was sold into slavery, we saw that he chose to trust God and honor Him in his service to his new master, Potiphar's wife, attention that eventually forced Joseph to make a decision to run from temptation, even though running ultimately landed him in an Egyptian jail. A prisoner once again, we wonder together, will Joseph still choose to believe in his God and that in the end, he has a plan? Well, good morning. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. If I hadn't gotten a chance to meet you, I would love to do that after the service if you're not afraid of me. Thank you also for joining us online and to the people in the back right of the room, there's other rows. So you guys don't, you don't all have to sit there every week. Just, I'm just throwing that out there. There's other places if you're also not afraid of those. This is the fourth part in our series where we're moving through the life of Joseph in the Old Testament. We find the life of Joseph in basically the back third of the book of Genesis, the very first book in the Bible. And I've said from the beginning a couple of things. First of all, that the story of Joseph to me is one of the most sweeping and stunning portrayals of the sovereignty of God that I think we find in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament. I love the story of Joseph. And because it's a big, long story that points to the sovereignty of God, we are approaching this series not as seven individual sermons, but as one big long seven week sermon. So we stop and we make points along the way that are applicable to us and that help the text come alive to us. But really we're driving to the end of this narrative and the end of the series as we get to week seven and hopefully see the story in a light that maybe we haven't thought of it before. Because it's one big long sermon, and I've said that from the beginning, this week in particular highlights that. So I would tell you if you're watching online or listening online and it's not Sunday morning right now and you haven't heard week one, this would be a good place to pause and go listen to week one and then come back and listen to this. Now I know that it's ambitious of me to assume that you're willing to listen to 60 minutes of Nate in one week, but if you are, then it would be worth it to listen to week one before you consume this. If you haven't heard week one and you're just, this is fresh for you, don't worry, I'm going to bring you along, but it's going to resonate more if you really drill down into the life of Jacob like we did in the first week. So that's just an upfront for you. I'm going to assume a couple things of your knowledge of Jacob when we get to his portion of the sermon today. But like we said last week, Joseph is accused of sexual harassment in Potiphar's house and is subsequently thrown in jail. Potiphar's wife kept trying to seduce Joseph. Joseph wouldn't have it. Eventually in this scene, she grabs a hold of him. There's no one else around and he chooses to run away. And we spent a lot of time last week on what it means to run away from our temptations. He runs away and he leaves behind his outer garment because she had a hold on it and it was the only way for him to get away. And then she lets out a cry and she falsely accuses him of accosting her. When Potiphar hears this story, the master of the house, he's enraged and he has Joseph thrown in jail, which is a good place to acknowledge this idea that just because we're obeying God doesn't mean our life is going to immediately go better. Joseph chose obedience, and his life immediately got worse, circumstantially. So simply choosing to walk in obedience sometimes makes our life more difficult. Obedience is a long-term decision. It's not a short-term decision. But Joseph chose obedience. He chose to honor his God, and it lands him in jail. He gets thrown into like the royal jail where the prisoners of Pharaoh are thrown in as well. This becomes important a little bit later in the story and in this week's sermon. But he gets thrown in that jail. And when he's in the jail, he's again, Joseph has these patterns in his life where he has these dreams, right, early on that his brothers are going to bow down to him and his father and mother are going to bow down to him. And then he's sold into slavery and he's brought low. And then he ends up in Potiphar's house and slowly he ascends to second in command in Potiphar's house. And he's in this unprecedentedly high place for a Hebrew person to be. And then he gets thrown in jail and he's brought low. And spoiler alert, okay, if you don't know the story, we're gonna get into the details in the future. But then eventually he gets out of prison. He's put in Pharaoh's house where he rises to prominence again. And so Joseph's life is this constant ebbing and flowing of being brought high and then being brought low. And in these low moments being faced with the decision, am I going to choose to honor God or am I going to resent him because he's disappointed me in some way, because he's allowed these things to happen to me? And so as he's thrown in jail again, he chooses to honor God, he chooses to obey him, and his life gets harder. And again, he's faced with, do I honor God or do I do my own thing? And this is what we're told in the text at the end of Genesis 39, beginning in verse 21, which in the ancient world was kind of employee-employer relationship. And it's understandable to see that someone could rise to prominence there, but you don't really expect someone to climb up the ranks in jail, right? So much so that they're now entrusted with everything, that whatever prisoners, whatever task the jailer gave Joseph, he didn't worry about it. Joseph had total integrity. I'm sure there were systems that he could have taken advantage of. I'm sure there were things that he could have gotten away with, but his integrity wouldn't allow him to do it. And so he garnered more and more trust, even within the prison system in Egypt, which to me is remarkable. And often when we think of the story of Joseph, I know that I do this and you might as well, and maybe this is one of the things you're picking up on as we move throughout the story together, that it seems like at every turn Joseph chooses to honor God. So then in turn, God continues to honor Joseph. But one of the things that stands out to me in the text is every time I read it, every time I get to the next portion of the story where he's brought low again, what you'll notice is that God's favor always precedes Joseph's behavior. This passage starts out, but the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. So it's not that Joseph went to jail and then in his uncertainty and disillusionment, he says, you know what? I'm just going to choose to trust and obey God. And then God is there with the favor. It's important that we understand that Joseph's obedience was a response to God's favor. God's favor is not a response to Joseph's obedience. Do you see? We don't win God's favor. We don't win God's blessings by how we behave. One of the things I said in week one at the end of it is that God's commitment to his promises are not contingent upon our behavior. That works both ways. We don't lose God's promises with bad behavior, nor do we gain them, we see in Joseph's life, with good behavior. They're simply there. God's favor simply rests on us. God's love and concern for us simply rests on us. God has a plan for us and a way that he wants to use us and things that he's gifted us to do and people that he's placed in our life. And the spirit works in our hearts in mysterious ways. And he does all that despite our behavior. So we can't look at the life of Joseph and teach, look, if you honor God, God honors you. That's not the lesson. Because at every turn, God's favor precedes Joseph's behavior. So God's favor simply rested on Joseph's life. Which is why, as I was trying to plan to preach this, when we wrote the series out, when I wrote the series out months ago, this week was gonna be a lesson on obeying God where we are. Wherever you are, serve God. And I think that's a fine lesson, but I wasn't happy with it. And so Tuesday, I went on a walk. I've never done this before, but I left the little office complex and I walked all the way down to the end of the street where it stops in the woods and then I got scared and I came back. I went on a walk and I was just thinking and praying about this passage and what's going on in the life of Joseph, and it occurred to me something that's worth reflecting on. Joseph is brought high over and over again in his life because God has favor on him, because God has a plan for Joseph, because God has a plan for Joseph that echoes throughout the centuries, that is seen far beyond even what we're going to arrive at a place in chapter 7, it's going to be like, or in the seventh week, and we're going to go, oh my gosh, that's amazing. Look at how God was taking care of his brothers. But no, no, no. Look at how God was taking care of his people. And look at how it's a picture for what happens all time. So yes, God is showing favor to Joseph because he has a plan for him, but it's at this point worth stopping and reflecting on the life of his father, Jacob. Because listen to me, Jacob had that same favor. Remember? Jacob enjoyed the same favor that Joseph did. Jacob came from the same line. God had the same plan, was going to bring about the same things, was going to display his sovereignty in the same ways and in the same favor that Joseph had. And they didn't have it because of how they acted. They had it because God promised them something. And God keeps his promises. That's what his righteousness is. And so it occurred to me as I was thinking about the difference between Jacob and Joseph and kind of reflecting on their lives, that Jacob, his dad, was a person of strife. The father of Joseph, Jacob, was a person of strife. If you'll remember his story, at every turn he is scheming and he is planning and he is controlling and he is stressed and he is anxious about bringing about the life that he wants. He wanted his father's blessing. He wanted to be a claimant of the promises of Abraham. He wanted to be the one through whom the blessings would flow to future generations. He wanted to be the top guy. He saw the life that he wanted and he did everything that he could to bring it about. Even though, even though before he was born, God spoke to his mother and said, in you are two nations and the older will serve the younger. The younger will rule over the older. These promises were made before Jacob was ever born. God knew what his plan was and how he was going to bring it about. And yet Jacob chose to either not open his eyes to those promises or not trust those promises or not trust God's favor. And he spent his entire life scheming and planning to try to bring things about in his own life, and all it caused him was strife and stress. He wants his father's blessing, so he schemes up a way to get the birthright from his brother, and then he schemes up a way to get the blessing from his father that required him to lie to his dying father on his deathbed, which is a despicable thing to do. Then he has to flee to a family member where he's then deceived by Laban. And then he has to work for 21 years to be able to go out on his own. And on the way out, he has to lie and cheat and steal again. He's still a deplorable person. And then at the end of the narrative, we see him, he's going to be reunited with his brother Esau, who is coming for him. And he schemes again on how to mitigate the anger and the wrath of his brother Esau so that maybe he won't get murdered by him. And we see throughout his whole life this striving and this anxiety and this stress and this sense of control and scheming and how can I bring about the things that I want? And then at the end of his life, or at the end of the story, about halfway through his life, he wrestles all night with someone that I said humbly is possibly Jesus. But we can disagree on that and it's fine. And Jesus renames him Israel. And he says, you have striven with man and with God. And Jacob realizes that he's seen the face of God. And in that moment, he realizes all the striving that I've been doing to bring things about in my life were things that God was going to make happen anyways. If I'll just get out of the way and let him do it. And so what we see in Jacob and Joseph is two men upon whom the favor of the Lord rested. Two men with whom God had made plans, to whom God had made promises, who he had gifted, who he had blessed, and who he loved dearly, and he cared about what happened in their lives. But the contrast is that while Jacob was a person of strife, that Joseph was a person of peace. Jacob was a person of strife. Joseph was a person of peace. When you read the narrative about Jacob, you see stress and anxiety and control and worry and all these things leaping off the page and scheming and lying and manipulating and kind of being a jerk. And when I read the story of Joseph, I don't see any of that springing off the page to me. When I read the story of Joseph, I see remarkable peace and humility. I see a man that's never shaken in his faith. I see a man that seems to not worry too much about his circumstances. I see a man who humbly chooses to serve God at every turn in his life. If you continue to read down through chapter 40, and we'll talk about this in just a minute, there's two prisoners in the prison with Joseph, a baker and a cup bearer. And they go to him and they say, we've had some dreams. We've heard that you can interpret dreams. Will you tell us what they mean? And Joseph, instead of puffing himself up, says, aren't interpretations of dreams, don't those belong to the Lord? Sure, I'll listen to what you have to say, but listen, it's not me doing this. At every point, he gives the credit to God. Last week, we talked about the temptation with Potiphar's wife. And she comes to him and she tries to entice him and get him to commit sin with her. And what's his response? I've been blessed in so many ways. How could I possibly sin against my God in this way? He's humble. He's obedient. He gives God the credit. A few chapters over, we're going to see that he's brought to Pharaoh. Pharaoh's had a couple dreams and he says, I've heard you're good at interpreting dreams. Let me tell you about my dreams. And in front of Pharaoh, where he could take credit again, he could say, I'm the guy. He says, don't dreams belong to the Lord? You can tell me your dreams. Let's see what he says. With Joseph, we see this profound peace. We see this profound joy that exists through his whole life, that runs like a stream through his whole life. No matter the ebbs and the flows, as he's brought high and he's brought low, we see this stream of joy and peace that runs through the life of Joseph. And it absolutely relates to the song that we sang a few minutes ago, that we're going to have joy and we're going to sing whether we're brought high to the mountain or low to the valley. And we see this displayed in the life of Joseph. That he's this person of incredible joy who in every moment simply chooses to trust God and honor God in the moment. And know that even though I don't know how this is going to work out, it will. God loves me and cares about me. So I'm going to control the things that I can control and I'm going to love him the best I can now. And this point, I was actually, I got done with the walk and I came back and I talked to Kyle. He was sitting in his office and I was all excited. Listen to what I just thought about. I think this is really fun. And I was telling him about it. And he made this point, and I think it's a great one. That Jacob's striving prohibited his joy. If the same favor rested on both of them, if God's sovereignty rested on both of them, if God had plans for both of them that he was going to bring about regardless of their behavior, then Kyle's point was the same joy was available to them the whole time. That if you can put yourself in the place of Jacob and imagine the relief that he felt when he realized, oh my gosh, I've been striving with God my whole life and I don't have to try so hard. If you can imagine the joy and relief that he felt when he met his brother who didn't want to murder him, who actually wanted to forgive him. If you can imagine how relieving and joy-filled those days were for Jacob, the disappointing thing is that joy was available to him for his entire life. And he lived half of his life without the joy of the Lord because his striving and his control and his anxiety and his worry and his scheming blinded him to the peace of the Father and prohibited him from experiencing the joy of the Father. And you contrast that with Joseph, who saw it the whole time, whose peaceful nature, whose trust in God, whose belief that God would come through, allowed him to be joyful and calm and peaceful in the moment, no matter what happened. And what you see, really, as you juxtapose their two lives and acknowledge that the same favor rested on both, is you see what it really means to trust God. I'm not talking about believing in God. Believing is an intellectual exercise. Are there enough facts in my head that I can willing to put my faith behind God? That's an intellectual exercise. And actually, every time we see the word belief in the Bible, in the original text, it means trust. And to trust is to rely on something fully, knowing that it will hold me up. There's belief mixed in there, but trust is really an action. And the difference between Joseph and Jacob is that Joseph trusted God and Jacob didn't. He may have believed in God, but Joseph trusted him. Because Joseph trusted God, he was a person of peace. Because Joseph trusted God, there was a river of joy that flowed through his life, irrespective of the circumstances that surrounded it. Because Jacob did not trust God, he merely at times when it was for him, chose to believe God. He was a person of strife, arrested with anxiety and worry and scheming and stress. And so where the rubber meets the road here for us this morning is for us to reflect on this question. Are you Jacob or are you Joseph? In your life, in the things that matter to you most, are you Jacob? Are you a person of strife? Or are you Joseph, a person of trusting peace? When I think about this for me, I think about grace. When the pandemic started and we can't meet in person anymore, and I lead an organization that it kind of matters whether or not we meet in person. That's a pretty big part of what we do. I got really worried. And I became Jacob. And I schemed and I stressed and I controlled. Who's coming? How do we reach out to them? How do we make our online product better? How do we keep people engaged? We just had this great campaign. We had a ton of people coming. How do I keep 330 people coming online every week? This is so challenging. I haven't talked to so-and-so in a couple of weeks. Are they gone? And then the other people would, I would talk to so-and-so and they said, yeah, I saw so-and-so this week. And I would go, do they still go to Grace? Do I need to call them? And every day I would just think about Grace. How do we hold it together? How do I keep this church where it is? And I made myself feel like, without realizing it, that it was all on me. And I Jacobed the heck out of that situation. And I'm telling you, I'm telling you, it made me miserable. I didn't realize it. It made me miserable. And poor Jen, it made me grumpy at the house. She put up with some stuff. It was not good. And somewhere around four months ago, I wouldn't have used this language at the time, but somewhere around four months ago, I became Joseph about grace. And I finally realized, you know what? God loves this church. I don't know why. I don't know why he does. He just does. He loves us. And if you've been here for any number of years, you've seen him see us through time and again. God loves this place. And if he loves this place, he has a plan for this place. And if he has a plan for this place, he's going to execute it regardless of what I do. So I can keep trying to Jacob the situation and fix it and figure out what we need to do and stress out about it all the time. Or I can be Joseph. I can trust that God cares about this place and has a plan for this place that he's going to bring about regardless of my behavior. So the best possible thing I can do is to rest easy in the sovereignty of God, to choose to trust him with the church and simply humbly obey Jesus whenever the opportunity for obedience is presented to me and quit worrying about the things that I can't control. And it brought peace. Parents, with your children, are you Jacob or are you Joseph? Do you stress out about who they are and how they behave and how we can augment this behavior so they don't embarrass us in public? Do we stress out about where they're going to go to college, if they're college, what kind of decisions that they're making? Do we stress out about every little thing and be a helicopter parent and stress and scheme and worry and control and be anxious? Or are we Joseph? Do we trust and acknowledge that, you know what? God loves my kid way more than I ever could. And because God loves them, he has a plan for them. And he has a design for them. And he has promises for them. And the best thing I can possibly do for my child is to step out of the way and be Joseph and try to simply obey Jesus in the moment when the moments present themselves. But to be people of peace about our children. About your career, are you Jacob or are you Joseph? Are you constantly trying to scheme and align yourselves with the right people and form the right relationships and do the right thing and impress the right person by putting that right time stamp on the email early in the morning or late at night? Are we constantly trying to figure out how to advance ourself in our career? Or are we Joseph? I know that God loves me. And I know that he cares deeply about who I work around and what I do and my witness for him as I work with my coworkers. And so I know that if I work hard and honor him, that he's going to do with my career whatever it is he needs to do. Many in our church are facing retirement. We've recently retired. We're thinking about it. Are you Jacob about that or are you Joseph? Are you trying to control every aspect of it and think through it and plan it all out and map it out and know exactly what's going to happen or can you acknowledge, you know what, I think God loves me and he cares deeply about what I do in the rest of the years of my life. And he's going to direct me to the right place if I trust him with him. In our relationships, in our marriages that we might be trying to save, in broken relationships with friends or with family, are we Jacob or are we Joseph? Are we people of strife or are we people of peace? Are we people who are trying to arrest control from God or are we people who trust God enough to give him control? And if you are a person who's answering over and over again, gosh, I'm Jacob. I'm Jacob and I want the peace that you're talking about, but I don't know how to get it. What do I do? I would simply tell you that our peace is found in Jesus. This is why I think Paul writes in Philippians 4, 6, and 7, be anxious for nothing, but in everything with prayer and petition and with thanksgiving, present your request to God and the God of peace who transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in who? In Christ Jesus. If you're anxious, if you're controlling, if you're worried, if you're not trusting God with things, what does Paul tell you to do in the letter to the Philippians? He tells you, And you know how he's going to do that? By giving you more Jesus. By pointing you towards Christ. Hebrews writes the same thing. Run the race that's set before you. How? By focusing your eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of your faith. Jesus says the same thing in John 15. Abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit. Don't worry about all the other things. Don't worry about all the scheming. Don't worry about everything else that I'm going to do in your life. You focus on me. You abide in me. And I'll abide in you. And because of that, everything's going to work out. You're going to bear much fruit. If we want to be like Joseph, and we want to walk away from being like Jacob, then we need to acknowledge that our peace is found in Jesus. And our anxiety and our desire for control should be a reminder to us that we simply need more Jesus. That we simply need to follow him harder. That we simply need to press into him more. That we simply need to let go of something more. If you want to test this, trust him with something that's stressing you out in your life right now. Just this last week, I had a conversation with a couple in the church that I knew was going to be a hard conversation. And I had been stressed out about it for a while. The conversation happened the day after I stumbled on this lesson and this comparison of person of peace, person of strife. And I thought, all right, I'm gonna preach to myself here. Normally, when I go into a difficult conversation or a meeting, I have thought through, Jen will tell you, I have thought through every scenario. I've had every conversation in my head already. I hate being unprepared. I like to have thought through what's gonna happen so that I don't respond emotionally. I respond reasonably. I like to know that there's nothing that's going to happen that I'm not expecting. But for this one, I just chose to be Joseph. And I said, God, I know you love me. I know you love them. I know the results of this conversation matter to you. And that was good. And I went into the conversation trying to honor God with what we talked about, and so did they. And we would all tell you, the results of this conversation were far better than any of us thought they would be going into it. And the Holy Spirit was present with us that night, and he met with us that night. If this is a difficult concept for you, pick one thing that's stressing you out in your life and hand it to Jesus and watch him come through. Because here's what happens when we're people of peace and people of strife. Strife and peace permeate. Strife and peace, they bleed out onto other people. They act like my four-month-old son, John, right now. John permeates, man. He is a drool monster. Like, he wakes up. First of all, he's just drooling like crazy. I don't know what's going on in there. Jen picked him up in the living room the other day and was holding him up and smiling at him. And I saw what she couldn't, which was a bead of spit glimmering in the sunlight through the window that landed square on her forehead, and I died laughing. That is John. I did not even get her a towel. I was laughing too hard. Not only that, not only does he drool constantly, the kid wakes up, and the only thing he cares about in life is how much of his hand fits into his mouth. That's the only thing that matters to him. Nothing else. He doesn't care about a single thing else. It's just how much of this can I jam in here? And it's all he does. And it gets his hand all slobbery. So he'll wipe it on your face or he'll grab you. You'll pick him up. I picked him up yesterday. I picked him up when I was holding him and put him down and my forearm was wet from his leg, from drool that had run down and somehow his legs are really chubby. They had gotten in places and just to touch John is to have drool on you. It just is. I don't know how it happens. It just permeates. Strife and joy work the same way. When you're a person of strife and stress, it permeates, man. It bleeds. It gets on everybody around you. It gets on your spouse and it changes their days. It gets on your kids, it changes their days. It gets on your coworkers, it gets on your friends. Strife bleeds and permeates and has ripples on everyone around you. And so does peace, particularly in a world of so much strife. Normally, when people of strife are around each other, their stress starts amping everyone up, right? We kind of get into a frenzy. You're complaining about this, and I'm complaining about this, and life stinks together, and then we get all worked up about everything. But to be a person of peace that actually calms those waves of strife, well that has a calming effect on everyone around us too. To be a person of trust and for people to see this trust that Joseph had, regardless of circumstances, well that begins to bleed on other people too. So I thought it worth it to pause at this point in the story and acknowledge this idea that the same favor rests on these two men. The difference in their life is how they receive that favor. Jacob's striving made him blind to it. Joseph's trust helped him to see it. And it gave him peace and joy for his whole life that it took Jacob 40 years to experience. And so in our lives and in our situations, which ones do we want to be? Now, as Joseph is in jail, eventually Pharaoh gets angry with his cupbearer and his baker, and he throws them in jail too. And they're under the care of Joseph. While they're there, they have some dreams. And they go to Joseph and they say, we've had some dreams. We've heard that you're a good, good at interpreting dreams. Can you tell us what they mean? And Joseph again says that I'm not good at it. God is, but let's see what you got. And they tell Joseph his dreams. I'm not, their dreams. I'm not going to detail those for you. Those are in the text and you can read them if you like. I hope you will. But they say, these are our dreams. What do they mean? And he looks at the cupbearer and he's like, great news. You, here's what's going to happen. In three days, Pharaoh is going to call you back to service and you're going to serve him. And he's going to restore you to your former position. You're going to go out of prison, back to your former life. Everything's going to be good. And the cupbearer is like, that's great. What's mine mean? And Joseph's like, not as good of news. You're going to get called out of here in three days as well, but when Pharaoh calls you out of here, he's going to hang you, and you're going to die in three days. And as they're leaving, Joseph looks at the cupbearer, and he says, don't forget me. When you go, and Pharaoh restores you, remember me, that I might get out of this pit. I know I'm doing great here in jail. I don't love it. So remember me to Pharaoh that I might get out of here as well. And chapter 39 ends with the somber news that everything that Joseph said would happen did happen, except the cupbearer forgot about him. And we're going to pick up the story next week and spend the whole week on the very first sentence in the next chapter. And it may just be the best part of this whole seven-week series. So I hope that you can come for it, and I hope that we'll get to see you for the hootenanny. Let me pray, and we'll carry on next week. Father, thank you for the way that you speak to us out of Scripture. Thank you for the way that you speak to us through circumstances. Lord, I just pray that... I pray that we would be sensitive to those things. God, give us ears to hear. We know, we know and we've seen over and over again that the same spirit that speaks to Joseph, that spoke to Jacob, that speaks to me, speaks to us. So God, speak to grace and move in grace and press on the hearts of grace for what you would have us do and where you would have us go. Give us the faith to trust you even when we can't fully see the results of that trust yet. Give us the peace that comes from trusting you. Let us this week, those of us who are Jacobs, experience just a taste of the joy that comes when we trust you with a stressful situation and watch you come through in the way that only you can. Father, help us to trust you in all things, to acknowledge that you care about the details of our life even more than we do, and that you have a plan for us that is better than any we could ever come up with. Help us to walk in trust of you, and in turn, walk in peace and influence the people around us. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

We serve a God who's working through time to bring about His will and ultimately our good. We see the evidence of His sovereignty in the book of Genesis with the life of Joseph. To know and understand the story of Joseph is to get a glimpse into the very heart of God and to be assured that we can trust His plan. Last week, even though Joseph was sold into slavery, we saw that he chose to trust God and honor Him in his service to his new master, Potiphar's wife, attention that eventually forced Joseph to make a decision to run from temptation, even though running ultimately landed him in an Egyptian jail. A prisoner once again, we wonder together, will Joseph still choose to believe in his God and that in the end, he has a plan? Well, good morning. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. If I hadn't gotten a chance to meet you, I would love to do that after the service if you're not afraid of me. Thank you also for joining us online and to the people in the back right of the room, there's other rows. So you guys don't, you don't all have to sit there every week. Just, I'm just throwing that out there. There's other places if you're also not afraid of those. This is the fourth part in our series where we're moving through the life of Joseph in the Old Testament. We find the life of Joseph in basically the back third of the book of Genesis, the very first book in the Bible. And I've said from the beginning a couple of things. First of all, that the story of Joseph to me is one of the most sweeping and stunning portrayals of the sovereignty of God that I think we find in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament. I love the story of Joseph. And because it's a big, long story that points to the sovereignty of God, we are approaching this series not as seven individual sermons, but as one big long seven week sermon. So we stop and we make points along the way that are applicable to us and that help the text come alive to us. But really we're driving to the end of this narrative and the end of the series as we get to week seven and hopefully see the story in a light that maybe we haven't thought of it before. Because it's one big long sermon, and I've said that from the beginning, this week in particular highlights that. So I would tell you if you're watching online or listening online and it's not Sunday morning right now and you haven't heard week one, this would be a good place to pause and go listen to week one and then come back and listen to this. Now I know that it's ambitious of me to assume that you're willing to listen to 60 minutes of Nate in one week, but if you are, then it would be worth it to listen to week one before you consume this. If you haven't heard week one and you're just, this is fresh for you, don't worry, I'm going to bring you along, but it's going to resonate more if you really drill down into the life of Jacob like we did in the first week. So that's just an upfront for you. I'm going to assume a couple things of your knowledge of Jacob when we get to his portion of the sermon today. But like we said last week, Joseph is accused of sexual harassment in Potiphar's house and is subsequently thrown in jail. Potiphar's wife kept trying to seduce Joseph. Joseph wouldn't have it. Eventually in this scene, she grabs a hold of him. There's no one else around and he chooses to run away. And we spent a lot of time last week on what it means to run away from our temptations. He runs away and he leaves behind his outer garment because she had a hold on it and it was the only way for him to get away. And then she lets out a cry and she falsely accuses him of accosting her. When Potiphar hears this story, the master of the house, he's enraged and he has Joseph thrown in jail, which is a good place to acknowledge this idea that just because we're obeying God doesn't mean our life is going to immediately go better. Joseph chose obedience, and his life immediately got worse, circumstantially. So simply choosing to walk in obedience sometimes makes our life more difficult. Obedience is a long-term decision. It's not a short-term decision. But Joseph chose obedience. He chose to honor his God, and it lands him in jail. He gets thrown into like the royal jail where the prisoners of Pharaoh are thrown in as well. This becomes important a little bit later in the story and in this week's sermon. But he gets thrown in that jail. And when he's in the jail, he's again, Joseph has these patterns in his life where he has these dreams, right, early on that his brothers are going to bow down to him and his father and mother are going to bow down to him. And then he's sold into slavery and he's brought low. And then he ends up in Potiphar's house and slowly he ascends to second in command in Potiphar's house. And he's in this unprecedentedly high place for a Hebrew person to be. And then he gets thrown in jail and he's brought low. And spoiler alert, okay, if you don't know the story, we're gonna get into the details in the future. But then eventually he gets out of prison. He's put in Pharaoh's house where he rises to prominence again. And so Joseph's life is this constant ebbing and flowing of being brought high and then being brought low. And in these low moments being faced with the decision, am I going to choose to honor God or am I going to resent him because he's disappointed me in some way, because he's allowed these things to happen to me? And so as he's thrown in jail again, he chooses to honor God, he chooses to obey him, and his life gets harder. And again, he's faced with, do I honor God or do I do my own thing? And this is what we're told in the text at the end of Genesis 39, beginning in verse 21, which in the ancient world was kind of employee-employer relationship. And it's understandable to see that someone could rise to prominence there, but you don't really expect someone to climb up the ranks in jail, right? So much so that they're now entrusted with everything, that whatever prisoners, whatever task the jailer gave Joseph, he didn't worry about it. Joseph had total integrity. I'm sure there were systems that he could have taken advantage of. I'm sure there were things that he could have gotten away with, but his integrity wouldn't allow him to do it. And so he garnered more and more trust, even within the prison system in Egypt, which to me is remarkable. And often when we think of the story of Joseph, I know that I do this and you might as well, and maybe this is one of the things you're picking up on as we move throughout the story together, that it seems like at every turn Joseph chooses to honor God. So then in turn, God continues to honor Joseph. But one of the things that stands out to me in the text is every time I read it, every time I get to the next portion of the story where he's brought low again, what you'll notice is that God's favor always precedes Joseph's behavior. This passage starts out, but the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. So it's not that Joseph went to jail and then in his uncertainty and disillusionment, he says, you know what? I'm just going to choose to trust and obey God. And then God is there with the favor. It's important that we understand that Joseph's obedience was a response to God's favor. God's favor is not a response to Joseph's obedience. Do you see? We don't win God's favor. We don't win God's blessings by how we behave. One of the things I said in week one at the end of it is that God's commitment to his promises are not contingent upon our behavior. That works both ways. We don't lose God's promises with bad behavior, nor do we gain them, we see in Joseph's life, with good behavior. They're simply there. God's favor simply rests on us. God's love and concern for us simply rests on us. God has a plan for us and a way that he wants to use us and things that he's gifted us to do and people that he's placed in our life. And the spirit works in our hearts in mysterious ways. And he does all that despite our behavior. So we can't look at the life of Joseph and teach, look, if you honor God, God honors you. That's not the lesson. Because at every turn, God's favor precedes Joseph's behavior. So God's favor simply rested on Joseph's life. Which is why, as I was trying to plan to preach this, when we wrote the series out, when I wrote the series out months ago, this week was gonna be a lesson on obeying God where we are. Wherever you are, serve God. And I think that's a fine lesson, but I wasn't happy with it. And so Tuesday, I went on a walk. I've never done this before, but I left the little office complex and I walked all the way down to the end of the street where it stops in the woods and then I got scared and I came back. I went on a walk and I was just thinking and praying about this passage and what's going on in the life of Joseph, and it occurred to me something that's worth reflecting on. Joseph is brought high over and over again in his life because God has favor on him, because God has a plan for Joseph, because God has a plan for Joseph that echoes throughout the centuries, that is seen far beyond even what we're going to arrive at a place in chapter 7, it's going to be like, or in the seventh week, and we're going to go, oh my gosh, that's amazing. Look at how God was taking care of his brothers. But no, no, no. Look at how God was taking care of his people. And look at how it's a picture for what happens all time. So yes, God is showing favor to Joseph because he has a plan for him, but it's at this point worth stopping and reflecting on the life of his father, Jacob. Because listen to me, Jacob had that same favor. Remember? Jacob enjoyed the same favor that Joseph did. Jacob came from the same line. God had the same plan, was going to bring about the same things, was going to display his sovereignty in the same ways and in the same favor that Joseph had. And they didn't have it because of how they acted. They had it because God promised them something. And God keeps his promises. That's what his righteousness is. And so it occurred to me as I was thinking about the difference between Jacob and Joseph and kind of reflecting on their lives, that Jacob, his dad, was a person of strife. The father of Joseph, Jacob, was a person of strife. If you'll remember his story, at every turn he is scheming and he is planning and he is controlling and he is stressed and he is anxious about bringing about the life that he wants. He wanted his father's blessing. He wanted to be a claimant of the promises of Abraham. He wanted to be the one through whom the blessings would flow to future generations. He wanted to be the top guy. He saw the life that he wanted and he did everything that he could to bring it about. Even though, even though before he was born, God spoke to his mother and said, in you are two nations and the older will serve the younger. The younger will rule over the older. These promises were made before Jacob was ever born. God knew what his plan was and how he was going to bring it about. And yet Jacob chose to either not open his eyes to those promises or not trust those promises or not trust God's favor. And he spent his entire life scheming and planning to try to bring things about in his own life, and all it caused him was strife and stress. He wants his father's blessing, so he schemes up a way to get the birthright from his brother, and then he schemes up a way to get the blessing from his father that required him to lie to his dying father on his deathbed, which is a despicable thing to do. Then he has to flee to a family member where he's then deceived by Laban. And then he has to work for 21 years to be able to go out on his own. And on the way out, he has to lie and cheat and steal again. He's still a deplorable person. And then at the end of the narrative, we see him, he's going to be reunited with his brother Esau, who is coming for him. And he schemes again on how to mitigate the anger and the wrath of his brother Esau so that maybe he won't get murdered by him. And we see throughout his whole life this striving and this anxiety and this stress and this sense of control and scheming and how can I bring about the things that I want? And then at the end of his life, or at the end of the story, about halfway through his life, he wrestles all night with someone that I said humbly is possibly Jesus. But we can disagree on that and it's fine. And Jesus renames him Israel. And he says, you have striven with man and with God. And Jacob realizes that he's seen the face of God. And in that moment, he realizes all the striving that I've been doing to bring things about in my life were things that God was going to make happen anyways. If I'll just get out of the way and let him do it. And so what we see in Jacob and Joseph is two men upon whom the favor of the Lord rested. Two men with whom God had made plans, to whom God had made promises, who he had gifted, who he had blessed, and who he loved dearly, and he cared about what happened in their lives. But the contrast is that while Jacob was a person of strife, that Joseph was a person of peace. Jacob was a person of strife. Joseph was a person of peace. When you read the narrative about Jacob, you see stress and anxiety and control and worry and all these things leaping off the page and scheming and lying and manipulating and kind of being a jerk. And when I read the story of Joseph, I don't see any of that springing off the page to me. When I read the story of Joseph, I see remarkable peace and humility. I see a man that's never shaken in his faith. I see a man that seems to not worry too much about his circumstances. I see a man who humbly chooses to serve God at every turn in his life. If you continue to read down through chapter 40, and we'll talk about this in just a minute, there's two prisoners in the prison with Joseph, a baker and a cup bearer. And they go to him and they say, we've had some dreams. We've heard that you can interpret dreams. Will you tell us what they mean? And Joseph, instead of puffing himself up, says, aren't interpretations of dreams, don't those belong to the Lord? Sure, I'll listen to what you have to say, but listen, it's not me doing this. At every point, he gives the credit to God. Last week, we talked about the temptation with Potiphar's wife. And she comes to him and she tries to entice him and get him to commit sin with her. And what's his response? I've been blessed in so many ways. How could I possibly sin against my God in this way? He's humble. He's obedient. He gives God the credit. A few chapters over, we're going to see that he's brought to Pharaoh. Pharaoh's had a couple dreams and he says, I've heard you're good at interpreting dreams. Let me tell you about my dreams. And in front of Pharaoh, where he could take credit again, he could say, I'm the guy. He says, don't dreams belong to the Lord? You can tell me your dreams. Let's see what he says. With Joseph, we see this profound peace. We see this profound joy that exists through his whole life, that runs like a stream through his whole life. No matter the ebbs and the flows, as he's brought high and he's brought low, we see this stream of joy and peace that runs through the life of Joseph. And it absolutely relates to the song that we sang a few minutes ago, that we're going to have joy and we're going to sing whether we're brought high to the mountain or low to the valley. And we see this displayed in the life of Joseph. That he's this person of incredible joy who in every moment simply chooses to trust God and honor God in the moment. And know that even though I don't know how this is going to work out, it will. God loves me and cares about me. So I'm going to control the things that I can control and I'm going to love him the best I can now. And this point, I was actually, I got done with the walk and I came back and I talked to Kyle. He was sitting in his office and I was all excited. Listen to what I just thought about. I think this is really fun. And I was telling him about it. And he made this point, and I think it's a great one. That Jacob's striving prohibited his joy. If the same favor rested on both of them, if God's sovereignty rested on both of them, if God had plans for both of them that he was going to bring about regardless of their behavior, then Kyle's point was the same joy was available to them the whole time. That if you can put yourself in the place of Jacob and imagine the relief that he felt when he realized, oh my gosh, I've been striving with God my whole life and I don't have to try so hard. If you can imagine the joy and relief that he felt when he met his brother who didn't want to murder him, who actually wanted to forgive him. If you can imagine how relieving and joy-filled those days were for Jacob, the disappointing thing is that joy was available to him for his entire life. And he lived half of his life without the joy of the Lord because his striving and his control and his anxiety and his worry and his scheming blinded him to the peace of the Father and prohibited him from experiencing the joy of the Father. And you contrast that with Joseph, who saw it the whole time, whose peaceful nature, whose trust in God, whose belief that God would come through, allowed him to be joyful and calm and peaceful in the moment, no matter what happened. And what you see, really, as you juxtapose their two lives and acknowledge that the same favor rested on both, is you see what it really means to trust God. I'm not talking about believing in God. Believing is an intellectual exercise. Are there enough facts in my head that I can willing to put my faith behind God? That's an intellectual exercise. And actually, every time we see the word belief in the Bible, in the original text, it means trust. And to trust is to rely on something fully, knowing that it will hold me up. There's belief mixed in there, but trust is really an action. And the difference between Joseph and Jacob is that Joseph trusted God and Jacob didn't. He may have believed in God, but Joseph trusted him. Because Joseph trusted God, he was a person of peace. Because Joseph trusted God, there was a river of joy that flowed through his life, irrespective of the circumstances that surrounded it. Because Jacob did not trust God, he merely at times when it was for him, chose to believe God. He was a person of strife, arrested with anxiety and worry and scheming and stress. And so where the rubber meets the road here for us this morning is for us to reflect on this question. Are you Jacob or are you Joseph? In your life, in the things that matter to you most, are you Jacob? Are you a person of strife? Or are you Joseph, a person of trusting peace? When I think about this for me, I think about grace. When the pandemic started and we can't meet in person anymore, and I lead an organization that it kind of matters whether or not we meet in person. That's a pretty big part of what we do. I got really worried. And I became Jacob. And I schemed and I stressed and I controlled. Who's coming? How do we reach out to them? How do we make our online product better? How do we keep people engaged? We just had this great campaign. We had a ton of people coming. How do I keep 330 people coming online every week? This is so challenging. I haven't talked to so-and-so in a couple of weeks. Are they gone? And then the other people would, I would talk to so-and-so and they said, yeah, I saw so-and-so this week. And I would go, do they still go to Grace? Do I need to call them? And every day I would just think about Grace. How do we hold it together? How do I keep this church where it is? And I made myself feel like, without realizing it, that it was all on me. And I Jacobed the heck out of that situation. And I'm telling you, I'm telling you, it made me miserable. I didn't realize it. It made me miserable. And poor Jen, it made me grumpy at the house. She put up with some stuff. It was not good. And somewhere around four months ago, I wouldn't have used this language at the time, but somewhere around four months ago, I became Joseph about grace. And I finally realized, you know what? God loves this church. I don't know why. I don't know why he does. He just does. He loves us. And if you've been here for any number of years, you've seen him see us through time and again. God loves this place. And if he loves this place, he has a plan for this place. And if he has a plan for this place, he's going to execute it regardless of what I do. So I can keep trying to Jacob the situation and fix it and figure out what we need to do and stress out about it all the time. Or I can be Joseph. I can trust that God cares about this place and has a plan for this place that he's going to bring about regardless of my behavior. So the best possible thing I can do is to rest easy in the sovereignty of God, to choose to trust him with the church and simply humbly obey Jesus whenever the opportunity for obedience is presented to me and quit worrying about the things that I can't control. And it brought peace. Parents, with your children, are you Jacob or are you Joseph? Do you stress out about who they are and how they behave and how we can augment this behavior so they don't embarrass us in public? Do we stress out about where they're going to go to college, if they're college, what kind of decisions that they're making? Do we stress out about every little thing and be a helicopter parent and stress and scheme and worry and control and be anxious? Or are we Joseph? Do we trust and acknowledge that, you know what? God loves my kid way more than I ever could. And because God loves them, he has a plan for them. And he has a design for them. And he has promises for them. And the best thing I can possibly do for my child is to step out of the way and be Joseph and try to simply obey Jesus in the moment when the moments present themselves. But to be people of peace about our children. About your career, are you Jacob or are you Joseph? Are you constantly trying to scheme and align yourselves with the right people and form the right relationships and do the right thing and impress the right person by putting that right time stamp on the email early in the morning or late at night? Are we constantly trying to figure out how to advance ourself in our career? Or are we Joseph? I know that God loves me. And I know that he cares deeply about who I work around and what I do and my witness for him as I work with my coworkers. And so I know that if I work hard and honor him, that he's going to do with my career whatever it is he needs to do. Many in our church are facing retirement. We've recently retired. We're thinking about it. Are you Jacob about that or are you Joseph? Are you trying to control every aspect of it and think through it and plan it all out and map it out and know exactly what's going to happen or can you acknowledge, you know what, I think God loves me and he cares deeply about what I do in the rest of the years of my life. And he's going to direct me to the right place if I trust him with him. In our relationships, in our marriages that we might be trying to save, in broken relationships with friends or with family, are we Jacob or are we Joseph? Are we people of strife or are we people of peace? Are we people who are trying to arrest control from God or are we people who trust God enough to give him control? And if you are a person who's answering over and over again, gosh, I'm Jacob. I'm Jacob and I want the peace that you're talking about, but I don't know how to get it. What do I do? I would simply tell you that our peace is found in Jesus. This is why I think Paul writes in Philippians 4, 6, and 7, be anxious for nothing, but in everything with prayer and petition and with thanksgiving, present your request to God and the God of peace who transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in who? In Christ Jesus. If you're anxious, if you're controlling, if you're worried, if you're not trusting God with things, what does Paul tell you to do in the letter to the Philippians? He tells you, And you know how he's going to do that? By giving you more Jesus. By pointing you towards Christ. Hebrews writes the same thing. Run the race that's set before you. How? By focusing your eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of your faith. Jesus says the same thing in John 15. Abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit. Don't worry about all the other things. Don't worry about all the scheming. Don't worry about everything else that I'm going to do in your life. You focus on me. You abide in me. And I'll abide in you. And because of that, everything's going to work out. You're going to bear much fruit. If we want to be like Joseph, and we want to walk away from being like Jacob, then we need to acknowledge that our peace is found in Jesus. And our anxiety and our desire for control should be a reminder to us that we simply need more Jesus. That we simply need to follow him harder. That we simply need to press into him more. That we simply need to let go of something more. If you want to test this, trust him with something that's stressing you out in your life right now. Just this last week, I had a conversation with a couple in the church that I knew was going to be a hard conversation. And I had been stressed out about it for a while. The conversation happened the day after I stumbled on this lesson and this comparison of person of peace, person of strife. And I thought, all right, I'm gonna preach to myself here. Normally, when I go into a difficult conversation or a meeting, I have thought through, Jen will tell you, I have thought through every scenario. I've had every conversation in my head already. I hate being unprepared. I like to have thought through what's gonna happen so that I don't respond emotionally. I respond reasonably. I like to know that there's nothing that's going to happen that I'm not expecting. But for this one, I just chose to be Joseph. And I said, God, I know you love me. I know you love them. I know the results of this conversation matter to you. And that was good. And I went into the conversation trying to honor God with what we talked about, and so did they. And we would all tell you, the results of this conversation were far better than any of us thought they would be going into it. And the Holy Spirit was present with us that night, and he met with us that night. If this is a difficult concept for you, pick one thing that's stressing you out in your life and hand it to Jesus and watch him come through. Because here's what happens when we're people of peace and people of strife. Strife and peace permeate. Strife and peace, they bleed out onto other people. They act like my four-month-old son, John, right now. John permeates, man. He is a drool monster. Like, he wakes up. First of all, he's just drooling like crazy. I don't know what's going on in there. Jen picked him up in the living room the other day and was holding him up and smiling at him. And I saw what she couldn't, which was a bead of spit glimmering in the sunlight through the window that landed square on her forehead, and I died laughing. That is John. I did not even get her a towel. I was laughing too hard. Not only that, not only does he drool constantly, the kid wakes up, and the only thing he cares about in life is how much of his hand fits into his mouth. That's the only thing that matters to him. Nothing else. He doesn't care about a single thing else. It's just how much of this can I jam in here? And it's all he does. And it gets his hand all slobbery. So he'll wipe it on your face or he'll grab you. You'll pick him up. I picked him up yesterday. I picked him up when I was holding him and put him down and my forearm was wet from his leg, from drool that had run down and somehow his legs are really chubby. They had gotten in places and just to touch John is to have drool on you. It just is. I don't know how it happens. It just permeates. Strife and joy work the same way. When you're a person of strife and stress, it permeates, man. It bleeds. It gets on everybody around you. It gets on your spouse and it changes their days. It gets on your kids, it changes their days. It gets on your coworkers, it gets on your friends. Strife bleeds and permeates and has ripples on everyone around you. And so does peace, particularly in a world of so much strife. Normally, when people of strife are around each other, their stress starts amping everyone up, right? We kind of get into a frenzy. You're complaining about this, and I'm complaining about this, and life stinks together, and then we get all worked up about everything. But to be a person of peace that actually calms those waves of strife, well that has a calming effect on everyone around us too. To be a person of trust and for people to see this trust that Joseph had, regardless of circumstances, well that begins to bleed on other people too. So I thought it worth it to pause at this point in the story and acknowledge this idea that the same favor rests on these two men. The difference in their life is how they receive that favor. Jacob's striving made him blind to it. Joseph's trust helped him to see it. And it gave him peace and joy for his whole life that it took Jacob 40 years to experience. And so in our lives and in our situations, which ones do we want to be? Now, as Joseph is in jail, eventually Pharaoh gets angry with his cupbearer and his baker, and he throws them in jail too. And they're under the care of Joseph. While they're there, they have some dreams. And they go to Joseph and they say, we've had some dreams. We've heard that you're a good, good at interpreting dreams. Can you tell us what they mean? And Joseph again says that I'm not good at it. God is, but let's see what you got. And they tell Joseph his dreams. I'm not, their dreams. I'm not going to detail those for you. Those are in the text and you can read them if you like. I hope you will. But they say, these are our dreams. What do they mean? And he looks at the cupbearer and he's like, great news. You, here's what's going to happen. In three days, Pharaoh is going to call you back to service and you're going to serve him. And he's going to restore you to your former position. You're going to go out of prison, back to your former life. Everything's going to be good. And the cupbearer is like, that's great. What's mine mean? And Joseph's like, not as good of news. You're going to get called out of here in three days as well, but when Pharaoh calls you out of here, he's going to hang you, and you're going to die in three days. And as they're leaving, Joseph looks at the cupbearer, and he says, don't forget me. When you go, and Pharaoh restores you, remember me, that I might get out of this pit. I know I'm doing great here in jail. I don't love it. So remember me to Pharaoh that I might get out of here as well. And chapter 39 ends with the somber news that everything that Joseph said would happen did happen, except the cupbearer forgot about him. And we're going to pick up the story next week and spend the whole week on the very first sentence in the next chapter. And it may just be the best part of this whole seven-week series. So I hope that you can come for it, and I hope that we'll get to see you for the hootenanny. Let me pray, and we'll carry on next week. Father, thank you for the way that you speak to us out of Scripture. Thank you for the way that you speak to us through circumstances. Lord, I just pray that... I pray that we would be sensitive to those things. God, give us ears to hear. We know, we know and we've seen over and over again that the same spirit that speaks to Joseph, that spoke to Jacob, that speaks to me, speaks to us. So God, speak to grace and move in grace and press on the hearts of grace for what you would have us do and where you would have us go. Give us the faith to trust you even when we can't fully see the results of that trust yet. Give us the peace that comes from trusting you. Let us this week, those of us who are Jacobs, experience just a taste of the joy that comes when we trust you with a stressful situation and watch you come through in the way that only you can. Father, help us to trust you in all things, to acknowledge that you care about the details of our life even more than we do, and that you have a plan for us that is better than any we could ever come up with. Help us to walk in trust of you, and in turn, walk in peace and influence the people around us. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

We serve a God who's working through time to bring about His will and ultimately our good. We see the evidence of His sovereignty in the book of Genesis with the life of Joseph. To know and understand the story of Joseph is to get a glimpse into the very heart of God and to be assured that we can trust His plan. Last week, even though Joseph was sold into slavery, we saw that he chose to trust God and honor Him in his service to his new master, Potiphar's wife, attention that eventually forced Joseph to make a decision to run from temptation, even though running ultimately landed him in an Egyptian jail. A prisoner once again, we wonder together, will Joseph still choose to believe in his God and that in the end, he has a plan? Well, good morning. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. If I hadn't gotten a chance to meet you, I would love to do that after the service if you're not afraid of me. Thank you also for joining us online and to the people in the back right of the room, there's other rows. So you guys don't, you don't all have to sit there every week. Just, I'm just throwing that out there. There's other places if you're also not afraid of those. This is the fourth part in our series where we're moving through the life of Joseph in the Old Testament. We find the life of Joseph in basically the back third of the book of Genesis, the very first book in the Bible. And I've said from the beginning a couple of things. First of all, that the story of Joseph to me is one of the most sweeping and stunning portrayals of the sovereignty of God that I think we find in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament. I love the story of Joseph. And because it's a big, long story that points to the sovereignty of God, we are approaching this series not as seven individual sermons, but as one big long seven week sermon. So we stop and we make points along the way that are applicable to us and that help the text come alive to us. But really we're driving to the end of this narrative and the end of the series as we get to week seven and hopefully see the story in a light that maybe we haven't thought of it before. Because it's one big long sermon, and I've said that from the beginning, this week in particular highlights that. So I would tell you if you're watching online or listening online and it's not Sunday morning right now and you haven't heard week one, this would be a good place to pause and go listen to week one and then come back and listen to this. Now I know that it's ambitious of me to assume that you're willing to listen to 60 minutes of Nate in one week, but if you are, then it would be worth it to listen to week one before you consume this. If you haven't heard week one and you're just, this is fresh for you, don't worry, I'm going to bring you along, but it's going to resonate more if you really drill down into the life of Jacob like we did in the first week. So that's just an upfront for you. I'm going to assume a couple things of your knowledge of Jacob when we get to his portion of the sermon today. But like we said last week, Joseph is accused of sexual harassment in Potiphar's house and is subsequently thrown in jail. Potiphar's wife kept trying to seduce Joseph. Joseph wouldn't have it. Eventually in this scene, she grabs a hold of him. There's no one else around and he chooses to run away. And we spent a lot of time last week on what it means to run away from our temptations. He runs away and he leaves behind his outer garment because she had a hold on it and it was the only way for him to get away. And then she lets out a cry and she falsely accuses him of accosting her. When Potiphar hears this story, the master of the house, he's enraged and he has Joseph thrown in jail, which is a good place to acknowledge this idea that just because we're obeying God doesn't mean our life is going to immediately go better. Joseph chose obedience, and his life immediately got worse, circumstantially. So simply choosing to walk in obedience sometimes makes our life more difficult. Obedience is a long-term decision. It's not a short-term decision. But Joseph chose obedience. He chose to honor his God, and it lands him in jail. He gets thrown into like the royal jail where the prisoners of Pharaoh are thrown in as well. This becomes important a little bit later in the story and in this week's sermon. But he gets thrown in that jail. And when he's in the jail, he's again, Joseph has these patterns in his life where he has these dreams, right, early on that his brothers are going to bow down to him and his father and mother are going to bow down to him. And then he's sold into slavery and he's brought low. And then he ends up in Potiphar's house and slowly he ascends to second in command in Potiphar's house. And he's in this unprecedentedly high place for a Hebrew person to be. And then he gets thrown in jail and he's brought low. And spoiler alert, okay, if you don't know the story, we're gonna get into the details in the future. But then eventually he gets out of prison. He's put in Pharaoh's house where he rises to prominence again. And so Joseph's life is this constant ebbing and flowing of being brought high and then being brought low. And in these low moments being faced with the decision, am I going to choose to honor God or am I going to resent him because he's disappointed me in some way, because he's allowed these things to happen to me? And so as he's thrown in jail again, he chooses to honor God, he chooses to obey him, and his life gets harder. And again, he's faced with, do I honor God or do I do my own thing? And this is what we're told in the text at the end of Genesis 39, beginning in verse 21, which in the ancient world was kind of employee-employer relationship. And it's understandable to see that someone could rise to prominence there, but you don't really expect someone to climb up the ranks in jail, right? So much so that they're now entrusted with everything, that whatever prisoners, whatever task the jailer gave Joseph, he didn't worry about it. Joseph had total integrity. I'm sure there were systems that he could have taken advantage of. I'm sure there were things that he could have gotten away with, but his integrity wouldn't allow him to do it. And so he garnered more and more trust, even within the prison system in Egypt, which to me is remarkable. And often when we think of the story of Joseph, I know that I do this and you might as well, and maybe this is one of the things you're picking up on as we move throughout the story together, that it seems like at every turn Joseph chooses to honor God. So then in turn, God continues to honor Joseph. But one of the things that stands out to me in the text is every time I read it, every time I get to the next portion of the story where he's brought low again, what you'll notice is that God's favor always precedes Joseph's behavior. This passage starts out, but the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. So it's not that Joseph went to jail and then in his uncertainty and disillusionment, he says, you know what? I'm just going to choose to trust and obey God. And then God is there with the favor. It's important that we understand that Joseph's obedience was a response to God's favor. God's favor is not a response to Joseph's obedience. Do you see? We don't win God's favor. We don't win God's blessings by how we behave. One of the things I said in week one at the end of it is that God's commitment to his promises are not contingent upon our behavior. That works both ways. We don't lose God's promises with bad behavior, nor do we gain them, we see in Joseph's life, with good behavior. They're simply there. God's favor simply rests on us. God's love and concern for us simply rests on us. God has a plan for us and a way that he wants to use us and things that he's gifted us to do and people that he's placed in our life. And the spirit works in our hearts in mysterious ways. And he does all that despite our behavior. So we can't look at the life of Joseph and teach, look, if you honor God, God honors you. That's not the lesson. Because at every turn, God's favor precedes Joseph's behavior. So God's favor simply rested on Joseph's life. Which is why, as I was trying to plan to preach this, when we wrote the series out, when I wrote the series out months ago, this week was gonna be a lesson on obeying God where we are. Wherever you are, serve God. And I think that's a fine lesson, but I wasn't happy with it. And so Tuesday, I went on a walk. I've never done this before, but I left the little office complex and I walked all the way down to the end of the street where it stops in the woods and then I got scared and I came back. I went on a walk and I was just thinking and praying about this passage and what's going on in the life of Joseph, and it occurred to me something that's worth reflecting on. Joseph is brought high over and over again in his life because God has favor on him, because God has a plan for Joseph, because God has a plan for Joseph that echoes throughout the centuries, that is seen far beyond even what we're going to arrive at a place in chapter 7, it's going to be like, or in the seventh week, and we're going to go, oh my gosh, that's amazing. Look at how God was taking care of his brothers. But no, no, no. Look at how God was taking care of his people. And look at how it's a picture for what happens all time. So yes, God is showing favor to Joseph because he has a plan for him, but it's at this point worth stopping and reflecting on the life of his father, Jacob. Because listen to me, Jacob had that same favor. Remember? Jacob enjoyed the same favor that Joseph did. Jacob came from the same line. God had the same plan, was going to bring about the same things, was going to display his sovereignty in the same ways and in the same favor that Joseph had. And they didn't have it because of how they acted. They had it because God promised them something. And God keeps his promises. That's what his righteousness is. And so it occurred to me as I was thinking about the difference between Jacob and Joseph and kind of reflecting on their lives, that Jacob, his dad, was a person of strife. The father of Joseph, Jacob, was a person of strife. If you'll remember his story, at every turn he is scheming and he is planning and he is controlling and he is stressed and he is anxious about bringing about the life that he wants. He wanted his father's blessing. He wanted to be a claimant of the promises of Abraham. He wanted to be the one through whom the blessings would flow to future generations. He wanted to be the top guy. He saw the life that he wanted and he did everything that he could to bring it about. Even though, even though before he was born, God spoke to his mother and said, in you are two nations and the older will serve the younger. The younger will rule over the older. These promises were made before Jacob was ever born. God knew what his plan was and how he was going to bring it about. And yet Jacob chose to either not open his eyes to those promises or not trust those promises or not trust God's favor. And he spent his entire life scheming and planning to try to bring things about in his own life, and all it caused him was strife and stress. He wants his father's blessing, so he schemes up a way to get the birthright from his brother, and then he schemes up a way to get the blessing from his father that required him to lie to his dying father on his deathbed, which is a despicable thing to do. Then he has to flee to a family member where he's then deceived by Laban. And then he has to work for 21 years to be able to go out on his own. And on the way out, he has to lie and cheat and steal again. He's still a deplorable person. And then at the end of the narrative, we see him, he's going to be reunited with his brother Esau, who is coming for him. And he schemes again on how to mitigate the anger and the wrath of his brother Esau so that maybe he won't get murdered by him. And we see throughout his whole life this striving and this anxiety and this stress and this sense of control and scheming and how can I bring about the things that I want? And then at the end of his life, or at the end of the story, about halfway through his life, he wrestles all night with someone that I said humbly is possibly Jesus. But we can disagree on that and it's fine. And Jesus renames him Israel. And he says, you have striven with man and with God. And Jacob realizes that he's seen the face of God. And in that moment, he realizes all the striving that I've been doing to bring things about in my life were things that God was going to make happen anyways. If I'll just get out of the way and let him do it. And so what we see in Jacob and Joseph is two men upon whom the favor of the Lord rested. Two men with whom God had made plans, to whom God had made promises, who he had gifted, who he had blessed, and who he loved dearly, and he cared about what happened in their lives. But the contrast is that while Jacob was a person of strife, that Joseph was a person of peace. Jacob was a person of strife. Joseph was a person of peace. When you read the narrative about Jacob, you see stress and anxiety and control and worry and all these things leaping off the page and scheming and lying and manipulating and kind of being a jerk. And when I read the story of Joseph, I don't see any of that springing off the page to me. When I read the story of Joseph, I see remarkable peace and humility. I see a man that's never shaken in his faith. I see a man that seems to not worry too much about his circumstances. I see a man who humbly chooses to serve God at every turn in his life. If you continue to read down through chapter 40, and we'll talk about this in just a minute, there's two prisoners in the prison with Joseph, a baker and a cup bearer. And they go to him and they say, we've had some dreams. We've heard that you can interpret dreams. Will you tell us what they mean? And Joseph, instead of puffing himself up, says, aren't interpretations of dreams, don't those belong to the Lord? Sure, I'll listen to what you have to say, but listen, it's not me doing this. At every point, he gives the credit to God. Last week, we talked about the temptation with Potiphar's wife. And she comes to him and she tries to entice him and get him to commit sin with her. And what's his response? I've been blessed in so many ways. How could I possibly sin against my God in this way? He's humble. He's obedient. He gives God the credit. A few chapters over, we're going to see that he's brought to Pharaoh. Pharaoh's had a couple dreams and he says, I've heard you're good at interpreting dreams. Let me tell you about my dreams. And in front of Pharaoh, where he could take credit again, he could say, I'm the guy. He says, don't dreams belong to the Lord? You can tell me your dreams. Let's see what he says. With Joseph, we see this profound peace. We see this profound joy that exists through his whole life, that runs like a stream through his whole life. No matter the ebbs and the flows, as he's brought high and he's brought low, we see this stream of joy and peace that runs through the life of Joseph. And it absolutely relates to the song that we sang a few minutes ago, that we're going to have joy and we're going to sing whether we're brought high to the mountain or low to the valley. And we see this displayed in the life of Joseph. That he's this person of incredible joy who in every moment simply chooses to trust God and honor God in the moment. And know that even though I don't know how this is going to work out, it will. God loves me and cares about me. So I'm going to control the things that I can control and I'm going to love him the best I can now. And this point, I was actually, I got done with the walk and I came back and I talked to Kyle. He was sitting in his office and I was all excited. Listen to what I just thought about. I think this is really fun. And I was telling him about it. And he made this point, and I think it's a great one. That Jacob's striving prohibited his joy. If the same favor rested on both of them, if God's sovereignty rested on both of them, if God had plans for both of them that he was going to bring about regardless of their behavior, then Kyle's point was the same joy was available to them the whole time. That if you can put yourself in the place of Jacob and imagine the relief that he felt when he realized, oh my gosh, I've been striving with God my whole life and I don't have to try so hard. If you can imagine the joy and relief that he felt when he met his brother who didn't want to murder him, who actually wanted to forgive him. If you can imagine how relieving and joy-filled those days were for Jacob, the disappointing thing is that joy was available to him for his entire life. And he lived half of his life without the joy of the Lord because his striving and his control and his anxiety and his worry and his scheming blinded him to the peace of the Father and prohibited him from experiencing the joy of the Father. And you contrast that with Joseph, who saw it the whole time, whose peaceful nature, whose trust in God, whose belief that God would come through, allowed him to be joyful and calm and peaceful in the moment, no matter what happened. And what you see, really, as you juxtapose their two lives and acknowledge that the same favor rested on both, is you see what it really means to trust God. I'm not talking about believing in God. Believing is an intellectual exercise. Are there enough facts in my head that I can willing to put my faith behind God? That's an intellectual exercise. And actually, every time we see the word belief in the Bible, in the original text, it means trust. And to trust is to rely on something fully, knowing that it will hold me up. There's belief mixed in there, but trust is really an action. And the difference between Joseph and Jacob is that Joseph trusted God and Jacob didn't. He may have believed in God, but Joseph trusted him. Because Joseph trusted God, he was a person of peace. Because Joseph trusted God, there was a river of joy that flowed through his life, irrespective of the circumstances that surrounded it. Because Jacob did not trust God, he merely at times when it was for him, chose to believe God. He was a person of strife, arrested with anxiety and worry and scheming and stress. And so where the rubber meets the road here for us this morning is for us to reflect on this question. Are you Jacob or are you Joseph? In your life, in the things that matter to you most, are you Jacob? Are you a person of strife? Or are you Joseph, a person of trusting peace? When I think about this for me, I think about grace. When the pandemic started and we can't meet in person anymore, and I lead an organization that it kind of matters whether or not we meet in person. That's a pretty big part of what we do. I got really worried. And I became Jacob. And I schemed and I stressed and I controlled. Who's coming? How do we reach out to them? How do we make our online product better? How do we keep people engaged? We just had this great campaign. We had a ton of people coming. How do I keep 330 people coming online every week? This is so challenging. I haven't talked to so-and-so in a couple of weeks. Are they gone? And then the other people would, I would talk to so-and-so and they said, yeah, I saw so-and-so this week. And I would go, do they still go to Grace? Do I need to call them? And every day I would just think about Grace. How do we hold it together? How do I keep this church where it is? And I made myself feel like, without realizing it, that it was all on me. And I Jacobed the heck out of that situation. And I'm telling you, I'm telling you, it made me miserable. I didn't realize it. It made me miserable. And poor Jen, it made me grumpy at the house. She put up with some stuff. It was not good. And somewhere around four months ago, I wouldn't have used this language at the time, but somewhere around four months ago, I became Joseph about grace. And I finally realized, you know what? God loves this church. I don't know why. I don't know why he does. He just does. He loves us. And if you've been here for any number of years, you've seen him see us through time and again. God loves this place. And if he loves this place, he has a plan for this place. And if he has a plan for this place, he's going to execute it regardless of what I do. So I can keep trying to Jacob the situation and fix it and figure out what we need to do and stress out about it all the time. Or I can be Joseph. I can trust that God cares about this place and has a plan for this place that he's going to bring about regardless of my behavior. So the best possible thing I can do is to rest easy in the sovereignty of God, to choose to trust him with the church and simply humbly obey Jesus whenever the opportunity for obedience is presented to me and quit worrying about the things that I can't control. And it brought peace. Parents, with your children, are you Jacob or are you Joseph? Do you stress out about who they are and how they behave and how we can augment this behavior so they don't embarrass us in public? Do we stress out about where they're going to go to college, if they're college, what kind of decisions that they're making? Do we stress out about every little thing and be a helicopter parent and stress and scheme and worry and control and be anxious? Or are we Joseph? Do we trust and acknowledge that, you know what? God loves my kid way more than I ever could. And because God loves them, he has a plan for them. And he has a design for them. And he has promises for them. And the best thing I can possibly do for my child is to step out of the way and be Joseph and try to simply obey Jesus in the moment when the moments present themselves. But to be people of peace about our children. About your career, are you Jacob or are you Joseph? Are you constantly trying to scheme and align yourselves with the right people and form the right relationships and do the right thing and impress the right person by putting that right time stamp on the email early in the morning or late at night? Are we constantly trying to figure out how to advance ourself in our career? Or are we Joseph? I know that God loves me. And I know that he cares deeply about who I work around and what I do and my witness for him as I work with my coworkers. And so I know that if I work hard and honor him, that he's going to do with my career whatever it is he needs to do. Many in our church are facing retirement. We've recently retired. We're thinking about it. Are you Jacob about that or are you Joseph? Are you trying to control every aspect of it and think through it and plan it all out and map it out and know exactly what's going to happen or can you acknowledge, you know what, I think God loves me and he cares deeply about what I do in the rest of the years of my life. And he's going to direct me to the right place if I trust him with him. In our relationships, in our marriages that we might be trying to save, in broken relationships with friends or with family, are we Jacob or are we Joseph? Are we people of strife or are we people of peace? Are we people who are trying to arrest control from God or are we people who trust God enough to give him control? And if you are a person who's answering over and over again, gosh, I'm Jacob. I'm Jacob and I want the peace that you're talking about, but I don't know how to get it. What do I do? I would simply tell you that our peace is found in Jesus. This is why I think Paul writes in Philippians 4, 6, and 7, be anxious for nothing, but in everything with prayer and petition and with thanksgiving, present your request to God and the God of peace who transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in who? In Christ Jesus. If you're anxious, if you're controlling, if you're worried, if you're not trusting God with things, what does Paul tell you to do in the letter to the Philippians? He tells you, And you know how he's going to do that? By giving you more Jesus. By pointing you towards Christ. Hebrews writes the same thing. Run the race that's set before you. How? By focusing your eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of your faith. Jesus says the same thing in John 15. Abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit. Don't worry about all the other things. Don't worry about all the scheming. Don't worry about everything else that I'm going to do in your life. You focus on me. You abide in me. And I'll abide in you. And because of that, everything's going to work out. You're going to bear much fruit. If we want to be like Joseph, and we want to walk away from being like Jacob, then we need to acknowledge that our peace is found in Jesus. And our anxiety and our desire for control should be a reminder to us that we simply need more Jesus. That we simply need to follow him harder. That we simply need to press into him more. That we simply need to let go of something more. If you want to test this, trust him with something that's stressing you out in your life right now. Just this last week, I had a conversation with a couple in the church that I knew was going to be a hard conversation. And I had been stressed out about it for a while. The conversation happened the day after I stumbled on this lesson and this comparison of person of peace, person of strife. And I thought, all right, I'm gonna preach to myself here. Normally, when I go into a difficult conversation or a meeting, I have thought through, Jen will tell you, I have thought through every scenario. I've had every conversation in my head already. I hate being unprepared. I like to have thought through what's gonna happen so that I don't respond emotionally. I respond reasonably. I like to know that there's nothing that's going to happen that I'm not expecting. But for this one, I just chose to be Joseph. And I said, God, I know you love me. I know you love them. I know the results of this conversation matter to you. And that was good. And I went into the conversation trying to honor God with what we talked about, and so did they. And we would all tell you, the results of this conversation were far better than any of us thought they would be going into it. And the Holy Spirit was present with us that night, and he met with us that night. If this is a difficult concept for you, pick one thing that's stressing you out in your life and hand it to Jesus and watch him come through. Because here's what happens when we're people of peace and people of strife. Strife and peace permeate. Strife and peace, they bleed out onto other people. They act like my four-month-old son, John, right now. John permeates, man. He is a drool monster. Like, he wakes up. First of all, he's just drooling like crazy. I don't know what's going on in there. Jen picked him up in the living room the other day and was holding him up and smiling at him. And I saw what she couldn't, which was a bead of spit glimmering in the sunlight through the window that landed square on her forehead, and I died laughing. That is John. I did not even get her a towel. I was laughing too hard. Not only that, not only does he drool constantly, the kid wakes up, and the only thing he cares about in life is how much of his hand fits into his mouth. That's the only thing that matters to him. Nothing else. He doesn't care about a single thing else. It's just how much of this can I jam in here? And it's all he does. And it gets his hand all slobbery. So he'll wipe it on your face or he'll grab you. You'll pick him up. I picked him up yesterday. I picked him up when I was holding him and put him down and my forearm was wet from his leg, from drool that had run down and somehow his legs are really chubby. They had gotten in places and just to touch John is to have drool on you. It just is. I don't know how it happens. It just permeates. Strife and joy work the same way. When you're a person of strife and stress, it permeates, man. It bleeds. It gets on everybody around you. It gets on your spouse and it changes their days. It gets on your kids, it changes their days. It gets on your coworkers, it gets on your friends. Strife bleeds and permeates and has ripples on everyone around you. And so does peace, particularly in a world of so much strife. Normally, when people of strife are around each other, their stress starts amping everyone up, right? We kind of get into a frenzy. You're complaining about this, and I'm complaining about this, and life stinks together, and then we get all worked up about everything. But to be a person of peace that actually calms those waves of strife, well that has a calming effect on everyone around us too. To be a person of trust and for people to see this trust that Joseph had, regardless of circumstances, well that begins to bleed on other people too. So I thought it worth it to pause at this point in the story and acknowledge this idea that the same favor rests on these two men. The difference in their life is how they receive that favor. Jacob's striving made him blind to it. Joseph's trust helped him to see it. And it gave him peace and joy for his whole life that it took Jacob 40 years to experience. And so in our lives and in our situations, which ones do we want to be? Now, as Joseph is in jail, eventually Pharaoh gets angry with his cupbearer and his baker, and he throws them in jail too. And they're under the care of Joseph. While they're there, they have some dreams. And they go to Joseph and they say, we've had some dreams. We've heard that you're a good, good at interpreting dreams. Can you tell us what they mean? And Joseph again says that I'm not good at it. God is, but let's see what you got. And they tell Joseph his dreams. I'm not, their dreams. I'm not going to detail those for you. Those are in the text and you can read them if you like. I hope you will. But they say, these are our dreams. What do they mean? And he looks at the cupbearer and he's like, great news. You, here's what's going to happen. In three days, Pharaoh is going to call you back to service and you're going to serve him. And he's going to restore you to your former position. You're going to go out of prison, back to your former life. Everything's going to be good. And the cupbearer is like, that's great. What's mine mean? And Joseph's like, not as good of news. You're going to get called out of here in three days as well, but when Pharaoh calls you out of here, he's going to hang you, and you're going to die in three days. And as they're leaving, Joseph looks at the cupbearer, and he says, don't forget me. When you go, and Pharaoh restores you, remember me, that I might get out of this pit. I know I'm doing great here in jail. I don't love it. So remember me to Pharaoh that I might get out of here as well. And chapter 39 ends with the somber news that everything that Joseph said would happen did happen, except the cupbearer forgot about him. And we're going to pick up the story next week and spend the whole week on the very first sentence in the next chapter. And it may just be the best part of this whole seven-week series. So I hope that you can come for it, and I hope that we'll get to see you for the hootenanny. Let me pray, and we'll carry on next week. Father, thank you for the way that you speak to us out of Scripture. Thank you for the way that you speak to us through circumstances. Lord, I just pray that... I pray that we would be sensitive to those things. God, give us ears to hear. We know, we know and we've seen over and over again that the same spirit that speaks to Joseph, that spoke to Jacob, that speaks to me, speaks to us. So God, speak to grace and move in grace and press on the hearts of grace for what you would have us do and where you would have us go. Give us the faith to trust you even when we can't fully see the results of that trust yet. Give us the peace that comes from trusting you. Let us this week, those of us who are Jacobs, experience just a taste of the joy that comes when we trust you with a stressful situation and watch you come through in the way that only you can. Father, help us to trust you in all things, to acknowledge that you care about the details of our life even more than we do, and that you have a plan for us that is better than any we could ever come up with. Help us to walk in trust of you, and in turn, walk in peace and influence the people around us. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

I wonder, pals, how long's it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kids' stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along. And that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks, mailman Kyle. Today, Jesus calms the storm. We'll be right back. here, and I would love to get to meet you after the service. I'm so glad that you guys chose to make Grace a part of your Sunday, whether you're watching online or here in person, braving the elements. We are very, very grateful for that. We've got two more parts of this series, Kids Stories for Grownups. Today is Jesus Calms the Storm, and next week is Moses and the Ten Commandments, and I'm really excited to share that sermon with you that God's laid on my heart for next week. But this week, we look at what is one of my daughter Lily's most favorite stories in the Bible. I've told you guys before, sometimes at night, she'll ask me to tell her Bible stories. And I love to do that. And this one, Jesus Calming the Storm, is one of her favorites. And, you know, I'm not really sure why that is. I think that this story, if you know it, is one that captures your imagination from the very beginning, from a very young age, the idea of this Jesus, this man who was 100% man and 100% God at the same time was able to calm the wind and the waves. The sky and the sea obey him. And that just captures our imagination, I think. And so it's fun to revisit that story and reflect. And as we do and as we go through that story and we reflect on what we can learn from it and what Jesus has for us in this story and maybe hopefully what he would have us glean from that story. I just wanted to impress upon you that I kind of feel bad every week when I get up, when the worship stops and then you have to start listening to me because I just want to keep worshiping. And one of my favorite things to do is to lay out and listen to my church worship. And as I hear all of you cry out, it's your breath in our lungs. So we pour out our praise. We pour out our praise. And you say, great are you, Lord. I'm reminded that you are God's children and he is in pursuit of your hearts. And so let's let this message and where we go and where we lean into, let's make space for the Holy Spirit to speak to us no matter why we're here this morning and give him the opportunity to draw us closer to the Father, closer to the Spirit, closer to Jesus. So Jesus calming the storm takes place in the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and they are beginning Jesus's ministry. So it's important to put this story in the context of the timeline. For those that don't know, Jesus spent about 33 years on this earth. We think he started his public ministry around the age of 30, and that he spent about three years going around Israel and ministering in the various villages and cities, and then eventually in Jerusalem. And we get that timing from Passovers and things like that in the New Testament, or in the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So at about 30, Jesus begins to call the disciples. So if you open up to any of those books that I just mentioned, you'll see at the very beginning, Jesus starts to call the disciples to them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men, that kind of thing. And a lot of us know those stories. Well, that marks the beginning of Jesus's public ministry. And then obviously his crucifixion and resurrection marks the end of his public ministry. And so in that first year, early on, this story takes place. So the disciples have just started following Jesus. We'll see from the story that they don't fully know him yet. They really don't know who this man is that they're following. They haven't fully realized who this Jesus guy is just yet. And we'll see that come out in the story, but it's important to place it at the beginning of Jesus's ministry. If for no other reason than we can empathize with the disciples and their ignorance in this particular story. On a night after they had gotten done ministering and preaching, Jesus tells the disciples, hey, let's load up in the boat and go across the Sea of Galilee and we'll spend the night in a town over there on the opposite coast. Because when you pay attention to the life of Jesus, what you notice is that it's this always fluctuating balance of being with the people, surrounded by people, people pressing onto him, asking for miracles, listening for teachings, trying to trip him up and stump him and trick him and all those things. And then Jesus retreating for respite and rest so that he can gather his wits like we all need to do before he goes and faces the angry throngs the next day who want more things from him. Kind of like being a mom. So Jesus says, let's go across the Sea of Galilee and we'll rest there. And so that's what they do. Bless you. That's what they do. And they get in the boat and they begin to go across the Sea of Galilee. And as they go across the Sea of Galilee, it begins to get pretty turbulent. The wind picks up and the waves start to pick up and it begins to get pretty hectic in the Sea of Galilee. And I've had the opportunity myself to be on the Sea of Galilee because I'm a pastor. And if you're a pastor, you have to do that. So I went to Israel and I was on a boat in the Sea of Galilee. And I remember being surprised by how wavy and choppy it was and how much the boat was bouncing during totally clear blue skies with very little wind. And some of the waves did crash up over the side of the boat, not in a dangerous way, but just in that way that gets your rear end wet enough to make you uncomfortable for the rest of the day that you're trekking around Israel. And so it became believable to me that a storm could stir up and really make a trip across the Sea of Galilee feel pretty unsafe. And that's what happened that night. And so the Bible tells us in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and we're going to look at the depiction in Mark, that the waves started to pick up. The wind really started to blow. And the waves were crashing over the boat, not in the way that just makes you inconveniently wet, but in the way that makes you scared for your life. And the disciples became very fearful. And it would take something for the disciples to be fearful because many of you know that the disciples were fishermen. Peter, James, and John. James and John were called the sons of thunder. That was their nickname, okay? They were not sissies like Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector. He was an accountant. All right, my dad's an accountant. They are sissies, man. They cannot be trusted on open waters. I'm just kidding. Dad's great. I get seasick. He does not. I'm a pastor. I'm even worse. Anyway, talking about requisite toughness. But you've got James and John and Peter, and they're starting to freak out. They're getting legitimately scared. And so we pick up the story in Mark chapter 4, verse 38, and I'm going to read 38 through 41. This is what they do. It says, And I love that story. It's a simple one. It's a short one, but it's a powerful one. And one of the things that's so neat to me is that the disciples sense that they were in danger. And the hull of the ship is a guy that's older than them. They were not yet in their 30s. They were younger than him, presumably early 20s or maybe even younger than that. It could have been, some scholars think, upper high school boys that Jesus was giving the keys of the kingdom to. And they get scared and they know they're scared. They know they can't do anything about the weather. And so they go to Jesus. And it's clear from the text, they don't know what Jesus was going to do about it because when Jesus does what he does, they're shocked. So they weren't expecting him to calm the wind and to calm the rain and to calm the waves. They weren't thinking that was coming next. They just knew they were in trouble and they needed to go to Jesus. They didn't know what he was going to do. They didn't know how he was going to solve it. They just knew my soul's in fear. I'm going to run to Jesus. And I think that's such a great lesson for us. If nothing else, even when we don't know what he's going to do, run to Jesus when we're scared, run to Jesus when we don't feel safe, run to Jesus when we feel we need shelter. So they run to Jesus and Jesus wakes up. He's annoyed. He's clearly from the text. He was, he was, he was having a good snooze down there. He was out of the rain. He was nice and dry. Maybe it was working as like a little bit of like rock-a-bye baby white noise for Jesus. I don't know. Dude may have been hardcore. But he was sleeping. And I know, I happen to know from personal experience that even the sweetest people in the world, when they are awoken at 3.30 in the morning in the middle of the night and they don't want to be, they're not kind about that. And so Jesus clearly is annoyed with the disciples. He goes up on the deck and he looks at the wind and the waves and he says, peace, be still. And they do. And I've often thought, man, that would be a really cool moment in history to be in. If you could go back to one spot that's got to be in the running. Can you imagine, those of you who know me, how smug I would be on the deck of that ship with my popcorn? If you could time travel also popcorn with you, smart food, white cheddar, please. I would sit there and look at the disciples and be the least scared person laughing at them, be like, you're gonna be fine, just watch. Can you imagine how smug I would be knowing what was going to happen, just waiting for Jesus to come up on the hull of the ship, on the deck of the ship and say, peace, be still. And then it happens and you're like, see, I told you guys. It would be so easy to be peaceful in that moment because we know how the story ends, but they didn't. And so they were scared. And he comes out and he says, peace, be still. And peace, be still. When I hear people cover this story, talk about the story, preach on this story, peace, be still usually gets the focus. That's usually the phrase we stop on is the power of Jesus. And that's a good place to focus. But that's never really caught my attention as something else in the story. The next thing that catches my attention a little bit more is the disciples marveling at who this Jesus was. He goes back down into the stern of the ship, presumably to go back to sleep, this time peacefully, without his white noise. And the disciples look at each other and they were fearful and they said, who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him. See, when they went down into the ship to get him, they called him teacher, rabbi, pastor. They didn't know yet what Jesus was or who he was. They didn't call him Lord. They didn't call him Savior. They called him teacher. They were ignorant as to the nature of Christ just yet. And so they knew that guy could do some stuff. They knew that he could perform some miracles and cast out demons. They had seen a little bit of things. They knew that he possessed a wisdom that was unique in their generation. But they didn't know he could do this. So they marveled at who he was. And sometimes we focus on that. But for me, as far back as my memory goes from hearing this story, the thing that's always captured my attention is Jesus's incredulity with the disciples. He's incredulous with them. He's frustrated. And to me, because look at the text. He says, why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith? Oh, you of little faith. Like, what's the matter, guys? Why are you being so scared? Like, just chill out. It's going to be all right. And it's never made sense to me that this would be Jesus' response because we're taught about Jesus that he's meek and mild. We see him being abundant in patience and grace and love. And from a very young age, it's always seemed out of step with the character of Christ that this would be his chosen response to his disciples at their very reasonable fear. Again, Peter and James and John, the fishermen in the group, they're scared too. When the flight attendant on the plane starts to freak out, it's time for you to get scared as well. So I don't really care what Matthew's doing, but I'm looking at Peter. This is the guy that walks on water a little bit later in his life. And he's scared. So there's not anybody listening to my voice who wouldn't have been scared on that boat too. And to that very legitimate fear, Jesus goes, what's the matter with you? What's the matter with you? Why are you scared? What, you have no faith? Come on. He's frustrated with them. And it's always puzzled me. Why was Jesus frustrated with the disciples? And I want to propose to you two reasons. The first reason that I'm about to share is not the reason. It's a reason, and I think it's worth talking about. But really, the first reason provides a bridge to the second reason that I'm going to get to at the end of the sermon that I think really is why Jesus was internally frustrated with the disciples. But we can't get there without going through the first reason first. So the first reason I would like to submit to you that Jesus was frustrated with the disciples is the disciples underestimated Jesus' power, plan, and love for them. I think very simply the disciples underestimated Jesus. They underestimated Jesus' power. They ran to him because they knew he could do something, but they didn't know that he could do that. And apparently Jesus felt like he had revealed enough to them and instructed them enough that they ought to have known. They ought to have known that he had this special connection with God the Father and that everything was going to be okay. But they underestimated his power and his efficacy and his ability to be able to bring about the change or the provision that they needed. So they underestimated the power of Jesus. They underestimated the plan of Jesus. See, the disciples got called by a rabbi, and in those days, if you understand how that worked, that was kind of going to seminary back in the day. That was preparatory school for being released as a pastor or a rabbi into the wild. And so their expectation is most likely we're going to follow this man for a little while, however many years it takes, four, five, eight, 10 years. And then eventually we're going to be released out into the wild to do, to lead our own ministry. A lot like a young pastor going to seminary, expecting to graduate with a degree that says, I know all the things about theology I'll ever need to know. There's no questions that will ever stump me. And I have good categories for everything that's ever going to happen in my life. And then going to church and starting real ministry and finding out those categories are going to be pretty challenging, pal. You're going to have to learn to adjust those. But that's what a seminarian does. They go to school, they get a degree, and then they're released to church. And so that's what the disciples presumably thought they were going to be doing. Training with this man, learning how to be a rabbi, eventually they'd be released to be rabbis on their own. What they had no idea about was the scope of Jesus's plan for their lives. Jesus wasn't going to release them into the various cities and towns within Israel to do their own personal ministries. No, these were the foundational rocks upon which the church of God was being built. They were the kingdom of God on earth. They were being entrusted with the keys to the kingdom. Two and a half years after this moment, Jesus was going to die on a cross. He was going to raise himself from the dead, conquering death and sin. Then he was going to spend 40 days with them and then go into heaven and say, wait for the Holy Spirit to come. He's going to tell you what you need. And then they were going to launch the movement of God on earth, the intersection of the physical and the spiritual in the temporal God's church, his kingdom here. He had big plans for the disciples. And listen, it's 2,000 years later. We're on a different continent talking about their Jesus. They did a pretty good job. It was a pretty good plan. They did not realize, the disciples, that they were plans A, B, C, D, E, all the way to Z of God starting his kingdom here on earth, of transferring it from the nation of Israel to the kingdom, God's church, the bride of Christ, of which we are a part. See, they underestimated Jesus's plan for them. Pay attention to this. Because they reduced it to what they could envision for themselves. They underestimated Jesus' plan for them because they reduced it to what they could envision for themselves. They didn't make space for what Jesus could possibly be envisioning for them. And then they underestimated the love of Christ. That Jesus actually loved them enough to execute that plan. Because the plan involves Jesus dying the most painful death that that era of humanity could cook up. Suffering through the torment of hell and being resurrected on the third day, conquering death and sin. The plan involved Jesus being separated from his God. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me is one of the things he mutters on the cross. It was the first time in all of time that Jesus and God had been separated even for a little bit. And Jesus endured that. He endured the sufferings on the cross for us, for you and for me, because he loves us. Because the Bible says that love is in that while we were yet sinners, Christ dies for us. That's what love is. And what the disciples did not know and did not understand is that two and a half years from now, he's going to be hanging on a cross and we're going to feel like we've failed and he's failed, but that's the necessary thing that has to happen because he is winning for us a seat at the banquet table for all of eternity. That through living his perfect life, through leaving the keys of the kingdom with us, through dying on the cross, through raising from the dead and leaving that tomb empty, that Jesus was conquering death and hell for all of eternity and there was going to come a day, spoiler alert, when he would calm all storms for all time. But that was going to require an excruciating death. That was going to require limitless forgiveness over and over and over again as he watches us, you and me, trample on that death with our willful actions and our willful rebellion and our decision to not honor the death of Jesus on the cross and our decision on a weekly and daily basis to put ourself as Lord of our life and not Jesus as Lord of our life. And he knew that he was going to die on the cross, that he was going to offer you his love, that we were going to trample on that, and yet still he was going to offer us grace and invite us to a seat at the banquet table in heaven one day where we will be in harmony with our God for all of eternity. The disciples did not know that Jesus loved them that much. They did not know his plan was that big and that his power was that great, and so they underestimated him. And it makes me wonder, do we underestimate Jesus too? Do we forget how powerful he is? Do we sit in a circumstance and render it hopeless as though prayer can't possibly help because Jesus can move mountains, but not that one. Jesus can fix other relationships, but not this one. Jesus can empower other people facing temptation, but not me and not mine. Do we underestimate his power? Do we underestimate Jesus' plan for us by reducing it to what we can envision for ourselves? Can I just tell you, you have no idea what Jesus wants to do with you. You have no clue what Jesus wants to do with a single faithful heart who will be consistent. I see over and over again people who are convinced that they have no gifting, there's nothing special about them or outstanding about them. And so when they hear pastors like me talk about plans that Jesus has for them, they think, certainly that's not me. That's for other people. And it just reminds me of my mama. I've told you guys this story plenty of times. She died of ovarian cancer at 74 or 75 years old, and she was a woman who would sit in sermons like this, and she would think, I have nothing to offer the kingdom of God. I have no talents. I have no skills. Everyone around me is more important and better liked than I am. And yet, because she loved God, she just faithfully loved others her entire life. And when she passed away at 75, there was over 400 people at that funeral. All a testament to how Linda had loved them so well throughout the course of her life. And I gotta tell you, I've done plenty of funerals for people around that age and older. It's not often there's 400 people there. And she's one that throughout her life would have sat in a sermon like this and thought, God doesn't really have a plan for me. Yes, he does. Yes, he does. You have no idea who you're raising. You think Billy Graham's parents and Mother Teresa's parents knew who they were raising? You have no idea who you're friends with and who you're loving on. You have no idea how much an email or a prayer or a phone call or a late night conversation can mean to somebody. You have no idea. Just walk faithfully in Jesus' plan and you let him do what he's going to do. So often we underestimate Jesus' plan for us by writing off ourselves and limiting that plan to what we can envision. And he has such a bigger picture for us. Do we underestimate his love for us? Do we think that we've trampled on his grace one too many times and he's probably fed up with me now? No, he's not. Do we forget that he's promised us in Hebrews that he's at the right hand of the Father interceding for us? Do we, like the disciples, underestimate our Jesus? I think one of the reasons that we do that is because we fail to remember, as the disciples are a good example for in this story, that Jesus has depth just like anyone else. And knowing him takes time. I don't know if you've ever thought about it this way, but very clearly in the story, the disciples simply didn't know Jesus enough yet. Jesus felt like he had revealed enough of himself that they should have faith in him by now, that they should know by now, but they simply didn't know who he was. They simply didn't know by then. And so they doubted him and they were scared and they were anxious and they worried and they were fearful. And so they underestimated him, I believe, because they didn't fully know him yet. And we've got to acknowledge that getting to know Jesus is just like getting to know anyone else. There's depth there. There's layers. I think of one of my favorite people that I've ever met in my entire life, Harris Winston. No, I'm just kidding around. It's not Harris. It's this guy that I used to teach with. It's really not Harris. It's this guy that I used to teach with named Coach McCready, Robert W. McCready. When I started teaching school, thanks Harris for being the punchline for that joke. Anybody could have done it. When I started teaching school, I was in a previous life, my late 20s. I taught high school Bible and was a school chaplain at a small private school outside of Atlanta. In my first year there, I got hired at the same time as this new science teacher and the football coach, Coach McCready. And when I met him, I learned about him that he was a tailback at Auburn in the 60s. And so tough, Southern, good old boy from Alabama. He didn't, actually he did chew tobacco all the time. Now I think about it, he always had to dip in, that guy, teaching at a private Christian high school. Everybody just looks the other way, right? That was Coach McCready, just tough as nails. And he calls me out. The first week, he starts calling me Coach Rector. I'm not the coach of anything, but he just brings me to practice, and he makes me the special teams coach because I know how to kick a ball because I have a soccer background, and he did not because he has a football background. And so I was the special teams coordinator. And he called everybody baby, and he called buses cheese wagons, and he was just a character, man. I could tell you some very colorful stories with colorful language about Coach McCready and some of the things I heard that man say. But then I find out that he was also a Vietnam veteran and that he led 100 Marines during his first tour in Vietnam to the jungles of Vietnam. That'll do something to you. He did such a good job with it that the Marine Corps honored him with a nice, easy assignment doing recruiting in Alabama so he wouldn't have to risk his neck anymore and could wait out the war that way. And Coach McCready hated that idea. So he bugged his CO over and over and over again until he could find a path to get back to Vietnam. And the only way to do it was to go to training to become a recon Marine. So he went back to Vietnam as a recon Marine crawling through the tunnels of the Viet Cong shirtless with a Bowie knife and a pistol. I'm not making that up. That's Rambo stuff, man. That's a tough son of a gun. And he was all of that. He dripped that toughness. He could look at you in a way and no one's ever made me that scared in my whole life. But you get to know him. And I had the opportunity to do that. Seventh period, I was free. He taught seniors a class that he didn't care about who were on the football team, and he just let them sit in the back and do whatever they wanted. It was a really great school. And me and Coach would sit in the front, and we would just have a conversation for an hour. And we'd talk about everything, and we'd talk about life, and he didn't know it at the time, but he was discipling me, and mentoring me, and counseling me, and helping me in my marriage, and helping me learn to be a man, and helping me learn to follow God well, and showing me different ways that faith could look, and I learned about his heart, and I saw him tear up with something special that happened for the boys. The last year I was at that school, he and his wife, by his request, got a little toy poodle, black one, named Pepper. And Coach McCready's policy was if Pepper's not invited, then neither am I. And it never went anywhere that Pepper was not invited. Took him to stores before emotional support dogs were a thing and just dared people to tell him to get out of there because you wouldn't. And I bet over those three years, I got to know Coach McCready better than anybody else at that school. And if I saw him this afternoon, we could stop and we could have a four-hour conversation and it would not be enough. We were thick as thieves, man. But that knowledge of him and who he was and his heart, that came over time. It came over investment. It came over going to see him every day when I didn't have to and us wanting to spend that time together. You have those friendships too. Why would your relationship with Jesus be any different? How can we come to church once a week, sing about Jesus, hear about Jesus, go home and don't think about Jesus for a week, and then show up the next week and think, why am I not closer to Jesus? It's a pursuit. It's a getting to know him. It's exploring him. It's mining the depths of who he is in his word. Learning more about our God. Reading the gospels over and over and over again and printinging on ourselves the character and the heart of Jesus, pursuing him in prayer, spending time with him that we don't have to passionately following after Jesus so that we get to know him, so that we get to trust him, so that we get to love him. And then what happens when we do this, when we pursue Jesus and we know his heart, we get to watch him come through over and over and over again. And we get to watch him calm the storms over and over and over again. We get to see how he's going to do that. I've had that experience to do that as the pastor of grace. When I got here, we were in a heck of a storm. And I'm not going to recount all of that for everyone present, but it was not good times. But I saw Jesus come through. I could tell you a story about a Memorial Day offering that was supernatural that first month that I was here, where God said, hey, I care about this place. How God has had the right people show up at the right times to just affirm for us, I care about this place. This place matters to me. And frankly, I've weathered enough storms with grace, and some of you have too, that we're now just the people on the boat eating the smart pop popcorn with the white cheddar going, this is going to be fun. Look at what God's going to do. The more you know Jesus, the more you trust him, and the less you doubt he will come through. And I asked the question earlier, have you underestimated Jesus? And I would tell you that a pretty good indicator for that is how much we worry, how much we give into anxiety and fear and stress. Now listen, I'm not talking about clinical anxiety that's treated by medications. I'm not talking about an actual chemical imbalance that causes that. I'm talking about your regular, everyday, run-of-the-mill worry. Is my kid gonna get the right teacher? Maybe if I stay up a couple more hours tonight worrying about it, then that will help the situation. And they will definitely get the teacher they're supposed to. Will the deal close? Is my kid going to make good decisions at college? No, but they'll learn from them. Will my son or my daughter meet the right person that they're supposed to marry? Am I going to like them? I don't know. But listen, God is over all of those things. And the longer we walk with Jesus, the less worrisome those things are because we know he's got it. And so a good indicator of whether or not we're underestimating Jesus in our own lives is how much fear and anxiety and worry and stress we carry about the things that only he can control. And this, I think, is the real reason that Jesus was frustrated with the disciples that night. Because the disciples were focused on the outer storm while Jesus was focused on the inner storm. The disciples were focused on the storm out there, things beyond their control. And Jesus is sitting there sleeping in the stern going, guys, if you'll just trust me, you could be asleep now too. If you'll just trust me, you don't have to be scared right now. You don't have to be fearful right now. You don't have to be anxious right now. See, Jesus comes to us and we often miss this and he offers to calm the storms in here. And so often we're like the disciples and we're like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm fine in here. Can you calm the storms out there? Can you make that go away and that go away and that go away and that go away? Can you heal here, here, and here? Can you handle all of those things so that I don't feel any stress? And Jesus is like, I'm offering you my perfect peace so that you don't have to stress at all. I'm offering you my perfect peace so that you can be calm in here and not have to worry about all the things going on out there. Because let me tell you something. To live this life is to experience storms. When Jesus calmed that storm in the Sea of Galilee, how long was it until the next one? Did they just stop altogether? When Jesus fixes that bad news, you've lived life long enough, there's more coming. We've weathered storms at grace. We're in a fun season right now. You think there's not more coming? Maybe you're in the midst of a storm right now, and we want desperately for Jesus to calm it. Maybe we're in a peaceful time right now. Either way, we know that there's more coming, but here's what Jesus offers to us, that he will give us such an internal peace and calm this internal storm in such a way that none of those will ever have an impact on us again. He gives us the option to trust him and walk in perfect peace. Maybe this is what Paul was talking about in Philippians. When he says, be anxious for nothing but in everything through prayer, petition, and with thanksgiving, present your request to God and the God of peace who transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. He's offering to calm the inner storm. Because on this side of eternity, in this broken world where sin pervades, there will always be storms. And there's coming a day in Revelation 19 and in Revelation 21 where Jesus calms all the storms forever and there's no more storms. And until then, and between now and then, there's gonna be storms out there, but he's offering you peace in here if you'll get to know him and trust him and love him and walk with him. And so that's the invitation to us. That's the invitation that we see as a result of this story. This story is an invitation to know Jesus more. This story is an invitation to go deeper with him, into his word, to pursue him in prayer, to swallows me up, even if that storm is the storm that swallows up someone I love so much, that Jesus has gone to where that storm is and he's conquered that too. And one day I'll exist on the other side of eternity and I'll be with that person again. That's the storm that Jesus has calmed for us. He's won that for us. So let's not look at the story of Jesus calming the storm as a simple story that displays the power of Jesus and the ignorance of the disciples, but let's look at it as a story that beckons our hearts to go deeper with him, to know him more, to trust him more, to walk with more peace and more humility and more grace as we see him come through again and again and again. Let's allow Jesus to calm the storm in here and we won't be so concerned with the storms out there. Let's pray. Father, God, we thank you for calming our storms. Lord, for the folks in here who are walking through them. There are waves crashing over their boat, man. They don't know how they're going to make it out of this one. God, I do pray that you would calm those. But more than that, I pray that you would calm them. Calm their anxious hearts. God, for those of us here who don't know you, who don't know your son, with the depth that we would like to, would you beckon us towards you? Would you call us into your presence? God, give us a daily desire to meet with you, to hear from you, to talk to you, to listen, to praise. God, would you be a part of our conversation? Would you be a part of our friendships? Would you be a part of the way we work and the way we operate and the way we think, be a part of our car rides and our walks and our workouts. Jesus, we invite you into our lives that we might know you more, that we might trust you more, that we might trust your heart more, that you might calm the storms that rage in us from time to time. And we thank you for being the one who calms the storms once and for all. It's in your name that we pray these things. Amen.

I wonder, pals, how long's it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kids' stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along. And that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks, mailman Kyle. Today, Jesus calms the storm. We'll be right back. here, and I would love to get to meet you after the service. I'm so glad that you guys chose to make Grace a part of your Sunday, whether you're watching online or here in person, braving the elements. We are very, very grateful for that. We've got two more parts of this series, Kids Stories for Grownups. Today is Jesus Calms the Storm, and next week is Moses and the Ten Commandments, and I'm really excited to share that sermon with you that God's laid on my heart for next week. But this week, we look at what is one of my daughter Lily's most favorite stories in the Bible. I've told you guys before, sometimes at night, she'll ask me to tell her Bible stories. And I love to do that. And this one, Jesus Calming the Storm, is one of her favorites. And, you know, I'm not really sure why that is. I think that this story, if you know it, is one that captures your imagination from the very beginning, from a very young age, the idea of this Jesus, this man who was 100% man and 100% God at the same time was able to calm the wind and the waves. The sky and the sea obey him. And that just captures our imagination, I think. And so it's fun to revisit that story and reflect. And as we do and as we go through that story and we reflect on what we can learn from it and what Jesus has for us in this story and maybe hopefully what he would have us glean from that story. I just wanted to impress upon you that I kind of feel bad every week when I get up, when the worship stops and then you have to start listening to me because I just want to keep worshiping. And one of my favorite things to do is to lay out and listen to my church worship. And as I hear all of you cry out, it's your breath in our lungs. So we pour out our praise. We pour out our praise. And you say, great are you, Lord. I'm reminded that you are God's children and he is in pursuit of your hearts. And so let's let this message and where we go and where we lean into, let's make space for the Holy Spirit to speak to us no matter why we're here this morning and give him the opportunity to draw us closer to the Father, closer to the Spirit, closer to Jesus. So Jesus calming the storm takes place in the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and they are beginning Jesus's ministry. So it's important to put this story in the context of the timeline. For those that don't know, Jesus spent about 33 years on this earth. We think he started his public ministry around the age of 30, and that he spent about three years going around Israel and ministering in the various villages and cities, and then eventually in Jerusalem. And we get that timing from Passovers and things like that in the New Testament, or in the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So at about 30, Jesus begins to call the disciples. So if you open up to any of those books that I just mentioned, you'll see at the very beginning, Jesus starts to call the disciples to them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men, that kind of thing. And a lot of us know those stories. Well, that marks the beginning of Jesus's public ministry. And then obviously his crucifixion and resurrection marks the end of his public ministry. And so in that first year, early on, this story takes place. So the disciples have just started following Jesus. We'll see from the story that they don't fully know him yet. They really don't know who this man is that they're following. They haven't fully realized who this Jesus guy is just yet. And we'll see that come out in the story, but it's important to place it at the beginning of Jesus's ministry. If for no other reason than we can empathize with the disciples and their ignorance in this particular story. On a night after they had gotten done ministering and preaching, Jesus tells the disciples, hey, let's load up in the boat and go across the Sea of Galilee and we'll spend the night in a town over there on the opposite coast. Because when you pay attention to the life of Jesus, what you notice is that it's this always fluctuating balance of being with the people, surrounded by people, people pressing onto him, asking for miracles, listening for teachings, trying to trip him up and stump him and trick him and all those things. And then Jesus retreating for respite and rest so that he can gather his wits like we all need to do before he goes and faces the angry throngs the next day who want more things from him. Kind of like being a mom. So Jesus says, let's go across the Sea of Galilee and we'll rest there. And so that's what they do. Bless you. That's what they do. And they get in the boat and they begin to go across the Sea of Galilee. And as they go across the Sea of Galilee, it begins to get pretty turbulent. The wind picks up and the waves start to pick up and it begins to get pretty hectic in the Sea of Galilee. And I've had the opportunity myself to be on the Sea of Galilee because I'm a pastor. And if you're a pastor, you have to do that. So I went to Israel and I was on a boat in the Sea of Galilee. And I remember being surprised by how wavy and choppy it was and how much the boat was bouncing during totally clear blue skies with very little wind. And some of the waves did crash up over the side of the boat, not in a dangerous way, but just in that way that gets your rear end wet enough to make you uncomfortable for the rest of the day that you're trekking around Israel. And so it became believable to me that a storm could stir up and really make a trip across the Sea of Galilee feel pretty unsafe. And that's what happened that night. And so the Bible tells us in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and we're going to look at the depiction in Mark, that the waves started to pick up. The wind really started to blow. And the waves were crashing over the boat, not in the way that just makes you inconveniently wet, but in the way that makes you scared for your life. And the disciples became very fearful. And it would take something for the disciples to be fearful because many of you know that the disciples were fishermen. Peter, James, and John. James and John were called the sons of thunder. That was their nickname, okay? They were not sissies like Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector. He was an accountant. All right, my dad's an accountant. They are sissies, man. They cannot be trusted on open waters. I'm just kidding. Dad's great. I get seasick. He does not. I'm a pastor. I'm even worse. Anyway, talking about requisite toughness. But you've got James and John and Peter, and they're starting to freak out. They're getting legitimately scared. And so we pick up the story in Mark chapter 4, verse 38, and I'm going to read 38 through 41. This is what they do. It says, And I love that story. It's a simple one. It's a short one, but it's a powerful one. And one of the things that's so neat to me is that the disciples sense that they were in danger. And the hull of the ship is a guy that's older than them. They were not yet in their 30s. They were younger than him, presumably early 20s or maybe even younger than that. It could have been, some scholars think, upper high school boys that Jesus was giving the keys of the kingdom to. And they get scared and they know they're scared. They know they can't do anything about the weather. And so they go to Jesus. And it's clear from the text, they don't know what Jesus was going to do about it because when Jesus does what he does, they're shocked. So they weren't expecting him to calm the wind and to calm the rain and to calm the waves. They weren't thinking that was coming next. They just knew they were in trouble and they needed to go to Jesus. They didn't know what he was going to do. They didn't know how he was going to solve it. They just knew my soul's in fear. I'm going to run to Jesus. And I think that's such a great lesson for us. If nothing else, even when we don't know what he's going to do, run to Jesus when we're scared, run to Jesus when we don't feel safe, run to Jesus when we feel we need shelter. So they run to Jesus and Jesus wakes up. He's annoyed. He's clearly from the text. He was, he was, he was having a good snooze down there. He was out of the rain. He was nice and dry. Maybe it was working as like a little bit of like rock-a-bye baby white noise for Jesus. I don't know. Dude may have been hardcore. But he was sleeping. And I know, I happen to know from personal experience that even the sweetest people in the world, when they are awoken at 3.30 in the morning in the middle of the night and they don't want to be, they're not kind about that. And so Jesus clearly is annoyed with the disciples. He goes up on the deck and he looks at the wind and the waves and he says, peace, be still. And they do. And I've often thought, man, that would be a really cool moment in history to be in. If you could go back to one spot that's got to be in the running. Can you imagine, those of you who know me, how smug I would be on the deck of that ship with my popcorn? If you could time travel also popcorn with you, smart food, white cheddar, please. I would sit there and look at the disciples and be the least scared person laughing at them, be like, you're gonna be fine, just watch. Can you imagine how smug I would be knowing what was going to happen, just waiting for Jesus to come up on the hull of the ship, on the deck of the ship and say, peace, be still. And then it happens and you're like, see, I told you guys. It would be so easy to be peaceful in that moment because we know how the story ends, but they didn't. And so they were scared. And he comes out and he says, peace, be still. And peace, be still. When I hear people cover this story, talk about the story, preach on this story, peace, be still usually gets the focus. That's usually the phrase we stop on is the power of Jesus. And that's a good place to focus. But that's never really caught my attention as something else in the story. The next thing that catches my attention a little bit more is the disciples marveling at who this Jesus was. He goes back down into the stern of the ship, presumably to go back to sleep, this time peacefully, without his white noise. And the disciples look at each other and they were fearful and they said, who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him. See, when they went down into the ship to get him, they called him teacher, rabbi, pastor. They didn't know yet what Jesus was or who he was. They didn't call him Lord. They didn't call him Savior. They called him teacher. They were ignorant as to the nature of Christ just yet. And so they knew that guy could do some stuff. They knew that he could perform some miracles and cast out demons. They had seen a little bit of things. They knew that he possessed a wisdom that was unique in their generation. But they didn't know he could do this. So they marveled at who he was. And sometimes we focus on that. But for me, as far back as my memory goes from hearing this story, the thing that's always captured my attention is Jesus's incredulity with the disciples. He's incredulous with them. He's frustrated. And to me, because look at the text. He says, why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith? Oh, you of little faith. Like, what's the matter, guys? Why are you being so scared? Like, just chill out. It's going to be all right. And it's never made sense to me that this would be Jesus' response because we're taught about Jesus that he's meek and mild. We see him being abundant in patience and grace and love. And from a very young age, it's always seemed out of step with the character of Christ that this would be his chosen response to his disciples at their very reasonable fear. Again, Peter and James and John, the fishermen in the group, they're scared too. When the flight attendant on the plane starts to freak out, it's time for you to get scared as well. So I don't really care what Matthew's doing, but I'm looking at Peter. This is the guy that walks on water a little bit later in his life. And he's scared. So there's not anybody listening to my voice who wouldn't have been scared on that boat too. And to that very legitimate fear, Jesus goes, what's the matter with you? What's the matter with you? Why are you scared? What, you have no faith? Come on. He's frustrated with them. And it's always puzzled me. Why was Jesus frustrated with the disciples? And I want to propose to you two reasons. The first reason that I'm about to share is not the reason. It's a reason, and I think it's worth talking about. But really, the first reason provides a bridge to the second reason that I'm going to get to at the end of the sermon that I think really is why Jesus was internally frustrated with the disciples. But we can't get there without going through the first reason first. So the first reason I would like to submit to you that Jesus was frustrated with the disciples is the disciples underestimated Jesus' power, plan, and love for them. I think very simply the disciples underestimated Jesus. They underestimated Jesus' power. They ran to him because they knew he could do something, but they didn't know that he could do that. And apparently Jesus felt like he had revealed enough to them and instructed them enough that they ought to have known. They ought to have known that he had this special connection with God the Father and that everything was going to be okay. But they underestimated his power and his efficacy and his ability to be able to bring about the change or the provision that they needed. So they underestimated the power of Jesus. They underestimated the plan of Jesus. See, the disciples got called by a rabbi, and in those days, if you understand how that worked, that was kind of going to seminary back in the day. That was preparatory school for being released as a pastor or a rabbi into the wild. And so their expectation is most likely we're going to follow this man for a little while, however many years it takes, four, five, eight, 10 years. And then eventually we're going to be released out into the wild to do, to lead our own ministry. A lot like a young pastor going to seminary, expecting to graduate with a degree that says, I know all the things about theology I'll ever need to know. There's no questions that will ever stump me. And I have good categories for everything that's ever going to happen in my life. And then going to church and starting real ministry and finding out those categories are going to be pretty challenging, pal. You're going to have to learn to adjust those. But that's what a seminarian does. They go to school, they get a degree, and then they're released to church. And so that's what the disciples presumably thought they were going to be doing. Training with this man, learning how to be a rabbi, eventually they'd be released to be rabbis on their own. What they had no idea about was the scope of Jesus's plan for their lives. Jesus wasn't going to release them into the various cities and towns within Israel to do their own personal ministries. No, these were the foundational rocks upon which the church of God was being built. They were the kingdom of God on earth. They were being entrusted with the keys to the kingdom. Two and a half years after this moment, Jesus was going to die on a cross. He was going to raise himself from the dead, conquering death and sin. Then he was going to spend 40 days with them and then go into heaven and say, wait for the Holy Spirit to come. He's going to tell you what you need. And then they were going to launch the movement of God on earth, the intersection of the physical and the spiritual in the temporal God's church, his kingdom here. He had big plans for the disciples. And listen, it's 2,000 years later. We're on a different continent talking about their Jesus. They did a pretty good job. It was a pretty good plan. They did not realize, the disciples, that they were plans A, B, C, D, E, all the way to Z of God starting his kingdom here on earth, of transferring it from the nation of Israel to the kingdom, God's church, the bride of Christ, of which we are a part. See, they underestimated Jesus's plan for them. Pay attention to this. Because they reduced it to what they could envision for themselves. They underestimated Jesus' plan for them because they reduced it to what they could envision for themselves. They didn't make space for what Jesus could possibly be envisioning for them. And then they underestimated the love of Christ. That Jesus actually loved them enough to execute that plan. Because the plan involves Jesus dying the most painful death that that era of humanity could cook up. Suffering through the torment of hell and being resurrected on the third day, conquering death and sin. The plan involved Jesus being separated from his God. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me is one of the things he mutters on the cross. It was the first time in all of time that Jesus and God had been separated even for a little bit. And Jesus endured that. He endured the sufferings on the cross for us, for you and for me, because he loves us. Because the Bible says that love is in that while we were yet sinners, Christ dies for us. That's what love is. And what the disciples did not know and did not understand is that two and a half years from now, he's going to be hanging on a cross and we're going to feel like we've failed and he's failed, but that's the necessary thing that has to happen because he is winning for us a seat at the banquet table for all of eternity. That through living his perfect life, through leaving the keys of the kingdom with us, through dying on the cross, through raising from the dead and leaving that tomb empty, that Jesus was conquering death and hell for all of eternity and there was going to come a day, spoiler alert, when he would calm all storms for all time. But that was going to require an excruciating death. That was going to require limitless forgiveness over and over and over again as he watches us, you and me, trample on that death with our willful actions and our willful rebellion and our decision to not honor the death of Jesus on the cross and our decision on a weekly and daily basis to put ourself as Lord of our life and not Jesus as Lord of our life. And he knew that he was going to die on the cross, that he was going to offer you his love, that we were going to trample on that, and yet still he was going to offer us grace and invite us to a seat at the banquet table in heaven one day where we will be in harmony with our God for all of eternity. The disciples did not know that Jesus loved them that much. They did not know his plan was that big and that his power was that great, and so they underestimated him. And it makes me wonder, do we underestimate Jesus too? Do we forget how powerful he is? Do we sit in a circumstance and render it hopeless as though prayer can't possibly help because Jesus can move mountains, but not that one. Jesus can fix other relationships, but not this one. Jesus can empower other people facing temptation, but not me and not mine. Do we underestimate his power? Do we underestimate Jesus' plan for us by reducing it to what we can envision for ourselves? Can I just tell you, you have no idea what Jesus wants to do with you. You have no clue what Jesus wants to do with a single faithful heart who will be consistent. I see over and over again people who are convinced that they have no gifting, there's nothing special about them or outstanding about them. And so when they hear pastors like me talk about plans that Jesus has for them, they think, certainly that's not me. That's for other people. And it just reminds me of my mama. I've told you guys this story plenty of times. She died of ovarian cancer at 74 or 75 years old, and she was a woman who would sit in sermons like this, and she would think, I have nothing to offer the kingdom of God. I have no talents. I have no skills. Everyone around me is more important and better liked than I am. And yet, because she loved God, she just faithfully loved others her entire life. And when she passed away at 75, there was over 400 people at that funeral. All a testament to how Linda had loved them so well throughout the course of her life. And I gotta tell you, I've done plenty of funerals for people around that age and older. It's not often there's 400 people there. And she's one that throughout her life would have sat in a sermon like this and thought, God doesn't really have a plan for me. Yes, he does. Yes, he does. You have no idea who you're raising. You think Billy Graham's parents and Mother Teresa's parents knew who they were raising? You have no idea who you're friends with and who you're loving on. You have no idea how much an email or a prayer or a phone call or a late night conversation can mean to somebody. You have no idea. Just walk faithfully in Jesus' plan and you let him do what he's going to do. So often we underestimate Jesus' plan for us by writing off ourselves and limiting that plan to what we can envision. And he has such a bigger picture for us. Do we underestimate his love for us? Do we think that we've trampled on his grace one too many times and he's probably fed up with me now? No, he's not. Do we forget that he's promised us in Hebrews that he's at the right hand of the Father interceding for us? Do we, like the disciples, underestimate our Jesus? I think one of the reasons that we do that is because we fail to remember, as the disciples are a good example for in this story, that Jesus has depth just like anyone else. And knowing him takes time. I don't know if you've ever thought about it this way, but very clearly in the story, the disciples simply didn't know Jesus enough yet. Jesus felt like he had revealed enough of himself that they should have faith in him by now, that they should know by now, but they simply didn't know who he was. They simply didn't know by then. And so they doubted him and they were scared and they were anxious and they worried and they were fearful. And so they underestimated him, I believe, because they didn't fully know him yet. And we've got to acknowledge that getting to know Jesus is just like getting to know anyone else. There's depth there. There's layers. I think of one of my favorite people that I've ever met in my entire life, Harris Winston. No, I'm just kidding around. It's not Harris. It's this guy that I used to teach with. It's really not Harris. It's this guy that I used to teach with named Coach McCready, Robert W. McCready. When I started teaching school, thanks Harris for being the punchline for that joke. Anybody could have done it. When I started teaching school, I was in a previous life, my late 20s. I taught high school Bible and was a school chaplain at a small private school outside of Atlanta. In my first year there, I got hired at the same time as this new science teacher and the football coach, Coach McCready. And when I met him, I learned about him that he was a tailback at Auburn in the 60s. And so tough, Southern, good old boy from Alabama. He didn't, actually he did chew tobacco all the time. Now I think about it, he always had to dip in, that guy, teaching at a private Christian high school. Everybody just looks the other way, right? That was Coach McCready, just tough as nails. And he calls me out. The first week, he starts calling me Coach Rector. I'm not the coach of anything, but he just brings me to practice, and he makes me the special teams coach because I know how to kick a ball because I have a soccer background, and he did not because he has a football background. And so I was the special teams coordinator. And he called everybody baby, and he called buses cheese wagons, and he was just a character, man. I could tell you some very colorful stories with colorful language about Coach McCready and some of the things I heard that man say. But then I find out that he was also a Vietnam veteran and that he led 100 Marines during his first tour in Vietnam to the jungles of Vietnam. That'll do something to you. He did such a good job with it that the Marine Corps honored him with a nice, easy assignment doing recruiting in Alabama so he wouldn't have to risk his neck anymore and could wait out the war that way. And Coach McCready hated that idea. So he bugged his CO over and over and over again until he could find a path to get back to Vietnam. And the only way to do it was to go to training to become a recon Marine. So he went back to Vietnam as a recon Marine crawling through the tunnels of the Viet Cong shirtless with a Bowie knife and a pistol. I'm not making that up. That's Rambo stuff, man. That's a tough son of a gun. And he was all of that. He dripped that toughness. He could look at you in a way and no one's ever made me that scared in my whole life. But you get to know him. And I had the opportunity to do that. Seventh period, I was free. He taught seniors a class that he didn't care about who were on the football team, and he just let them sit in the back and do whatever they wanted. It was a really great school. And me and Coach would sit in the front, and we would just have a conversation for an hour. And we'd talk about everything, and we'd talk about life, and he didn't know it at the time, but he was discipling me, and mentoring me, and counseling me, and helping me in my marriage, and helping me learn to be a man, and helping me learn to follow God well, and showing me different ways that faith could look, and I learned about his heart, and I saw him tear up with something special that happened for the boys. The last year I was at that school, he and his wife, by his request, got a little toy poodle, black one, named Pepper. And Coach McCready's policy was if Pepper's not invited, then neither am I. And it never went anywhere that Pepper was not invited. Took him to stores before emotional support dogs were a thing and just dared people to tell him to get out of there because you wouldn't. And I bet over those three years, I got to know Coach McCready better than anybody else at that school. And if I saw him this afternoon, we could stop and we could have a four-hour conversation and it would not be enough. We were thick as thieves, man. But that knowledge of him and who he was and his heart, that came over time. It came over investment. It came over going to see him every day when I didn't have to and us wanting to spend that time together. You have those friendships too. Why would your relationship with Jesus be any different? How can we come to church once a week, sing about Jesus, hear about Jesus, go home and don't think about Jesus for a week, and then show up the next week and think, why am I not closer to Jesus? It's a pursuit. It's a getting to know him. It's exploring him. It's mining the depths of who he is in his word. Learning more about our God. Reading the gospels over and over and over again and printinging on ourselves the character and the heart of Jesus, pursuing him in prayer, spending time with him that we don't have to passionately following after Jesus so that we get to know him, so that we get to trust him, so that we get to love him. And then what happens when we do this, when we pursue Jesus and we know his heart, we get to watch him come through over and over and over again. And we get to watch him calm the storms over and over and over again. We get to see how he's going to do that. I've had that experience to do that as the pastor of grace. When I got here, we were in a heck of a storm. And I'm not going to recount all of that for everyone present, but it was not good times. But I saw Jesus come through. I could tell you a story about a Memorial Day offering that was supernatural that first month that I was here, where God said, hey, I care about this place. How God has had the right people show up at the right times to just affirm for us, I care about this place. This place matters to me. And frankly, I've weathered enough storms with grace, and some of you have too, that we're now just the people on the boat eating the smart pop popcorn with the white cheddar going, this is going to be fun. Look at what God's going to do. The more you know Jesus, the more you trust him, and the less you doubt he will come through. And I asked the question earlier, have you underestimated Jesus? And I would tell you that a pretty good indicator for that is how much we worry, how much we give into anxiety and fear and stress. Now listen, I'm not talking about clinical anxiety that's treated by medications. I'm not talking about an actual chemical imbalance that causes that. I'm talking about your regular, everyday, run-of-the-mill worry. Is my kid gonna get the right teacher? Maybe if I stay up a couple more hours tonight worrying about it, then that will help the situation. And they will definitely get the teacher they're supposed to. Will the deal close? Is my kid going to make good decisions at college? No, but they'll learn from them. Will my son or my daughter meet the right person that they're supposed to marry? Am I going to like them? I don't know. But listen, God is over all of those things. And the longer we walk with Jesus, the less worrisome those things are because we know he's got it. And so a good indicator of whether or not we're underestimating Jesus in our own lives is how much fear and anxiety and worry and stress we carry about the things that only he can control. And this, I think, is the real reason that Jesus was frustrated with the disciples that night. Because the disciples were focused on the outer storm while Jesus was focused on the inner storm. The disciples were focused on the storm out there, things beyond their control. And Jesus is sitting there sleeping in the stern going, guys, if you'll just trust me, you could be asleep now too. If you'll just trust me, you don't have to be scared right now. You don't have to be fearful right now. You don't have to be anxious right now. See, Jesus comes to us and we often miss this and he offers to calm the storms in here. And so often we're like the disciples and we're like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm fine in here. Can you calm the storms out there? Can you make that go away and that go away and that go away and that go away? Can you heal here, here, and here? Can you handle all of those things so that I don't feel any stress? And Jesus is like, I'm offering you my perfect peace so that you don't have to stress at all. I'm offering you my perfect peace so that you can be calm in here and not have to worry about all the things going on out there. Because let me tell you something. To live this life is to experience storms. When Jesus calmed that storm in the Sea of Galilee, how long was it until the next one? Did they just stop altogether? When Jesus fixes that bad news, you've lived life long enough, there's more coming. We've weathered storms at grace. We're in a fun season right now. You think there's not more coming? Maybe you're in the midst of a storm right now, and we want desperately for Jesus to calm it. Maybe we're in a peaceful time right now. Either way, we know that there's more coming, but here's what Jesus offers to us, that he will give us such an internal peace and calm this internal storm in such a way that none of those will ever have an impact on us again. He gives us the option to trust him and walk in perfect peace. Maybe this is what Paul was talking about in Philippians. When he says, be anxious for nothing but in everything through prayer, petition, and with thanksgiving, present your request to God and the God of peace who transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. He's offering to calm the inner storm. Because on this side of eternity, in this broken world where sin pervades, there will always be storms. And there's coming a day in Revelation 19 and in Revelation 21 where Jesus calms all the storms forever and there's no more storms. And until then, and between now and then, there's gonna be storms out there, but he's offering you peace in here if you'll get to know him and trust him and love him and walk with him. And so that's the invitation to us. That's the invitation that we see as a result of this story. This story is an invitation to know Jesus more. This story is an invitation to go deeper with him, into his word, to pursue him in prayer, to swallows me up, even if that storm is the storm that swallows up someone I love so much, that Jesus has gone to where that storm is and he's conquered that too. And one day I'll exist on the other side of eternity and I'll be with that person again. That's the storm that Jesus has calmed for us. He's won that for us. So let's not look at the story of Jesus calming the storm as a simple story that displays the power of Jesus and the ignorance of the disciples, but let's look at it as a story that beckons our hearts to go deeper with him, to know him more, to trust him more, to walk with more peace and more humility and more grace as we see him come through again and again and again. Let's allow Jesus to calm the storm in here and we won't be so concerned with the storms out there. Let's pray. Father, God, we thank you for calming our storms. Lord, for the folks in here who are walking through them. There are waves crashing over their boat, man. They don't know how they're going to make it out of this one. God, I do pray that you would calm those. But more than that, I pray that you would calm them. Calm their anxious hearts. God, for those of us here who don't know you, who don't know your son, with the depth that we would like to, would you beckon us towards you? Would you call us into your presence? God, give us a daily desire to meet with you, to hear from you, to talk to you, to listen, to praise. God, would you be a part of our conversation? Would you be a part of our friendships? Would you be a part of the way we work and the way we operate and the way we think, be a part of our car rides and our walks and our workouts. Jesus, we invite you into our lives that we might know you more, that we might trust you more, that we might trust your heart more, that you might calm the storms that rage in us from time to time. And we thank you for being the one who calms the storms once and for all. It's in your name that we pray these things. Amen.

I wonder, pals, how long's it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kids' stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along. And that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks, mailman Kyle. Today, Jesus calms the storm. We'll be right back. here, and I would love to get to meet you after the service. I'm so glad that you guys chose to make Grace a part of your Sunday, whether you're watching online or here in person, braving the elements. We are very, very grateful for that. We've got two more parts of this series, Kids Stories for Grownups. Today is Jesus Calms the Storm, and next week is Moses and the Ten Commandments, and I'm really excited to share that sermon with you that God's laid on my heart for next week. But this week, we look at what is one of my daughter Lily's most favorite stories in the Bible. I've told you guys before, sometimes at night, she'll ask me to tell her Bible stories. And I love to do that. And this one, Jesus Calming the Storm, is one of her favorites. And, you know, I'm not really sure why that is. I think that this story, if you know it, is one that captures your imagination from the very beginning, from a very young age, the idea of this Jesus, this man who was 100% man and 100% God at the same time was able to calm the wind and the waves. The sky and the sea obey him. And that just captures our imagination, I think. And so it's fun to revisit that story and reflect. And as we do and as we go through that story and we reflect on what we can learn from it and what Jesus has for us in this story and maybe hopefully what he would have us glean from that story. I just wanted to impress upon you that I kind of feel bad every week when I get up, when the worship stops and then you have to start listening to me because I just want to keep worshiping. And one of my favorite things to do is to lay out and listen to my church worship. And as I hear all of you cry out, it's your breath in our lungs. So we pour out our praise. We pour out our praise. And you say, great are you, Lord. I'm reminded that you are God's children and he is in pursuit of your hearts. And so let's let this message and where we go and where we lean into, let's make space for the Holy Spirit to speak to us no matter why we're here this morning and give him the opportunity to draw us closer to the Father, closer to the Spirit, closer to Jesus. So Jesus calming the storm takes place in the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and they are beginning Jesus's ministry. So it's important to put this story in the context of the timeline. For those that don't know, Jesus spent about 33 years on this earth. We think he started his public ministry around the age of 30, and that he spent about three years going around Israel and ministering in the various villages and cities, and then eventually in Jerusalem. And we get that timing from Passovers and things like that in the New Testament, or in the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So at about 30, Jesus begins to call the disciples. So if you open up to any of those books that I just mentioned, you'll see at the very beginning, Jesus starts to call the disciples to them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men, that kind of thing. And a lot of us know those stories. Well, that marks the beginning of Jesus's public ministry. And then obviously his crucifixion and resurrection marks the end of his public ministry. And so in that first year, early on, this story takes place. So the disciples have just started following Jesus. We'll see from the story that they don't fully know him yet. They really don't know who this man is that they're following. They haven't fully realized who this Jesus guy is just yet. And we'll see that come out in the story, but it's important to place it at the beginning of Jesus's ministry. If for no other reason than we can empathize with the disciples and their ignorance in this particular story. On a night after they had gotten done ministering and preaching, Jesus tells the disciples, hey, let's load up in the boat and go across the Sea of Galilee and we'll spend the night in a town over there on the opposite coast. Because when you pay attention to the life of Jesus, what you notice is that it's this always fluctuating balance of being with the people, surrounded by people, people pressing onto him, asking for miracles, listening for teachings, trying to trip him up and stump him and trick him and all those things. And then Jesus retreating for respite and rest so that he can gather his wits like we all need to do before he goes and faces the angry throngs the next day who want more things from him. Kind of like being a mom. So Jesus says, let's go across the Sea of Galilee and we'll rest there. And so that's what they do. Bless you. That's what they do. And they get in the boat and they begin to go across the Sea of Galilee. And as they go across the Sea of Galilee, it begins to get pretty turbulent. The wind picks up and the waves start to pick up and it begins to get pretty hectic in the Sea of Galilee. And I've had the opportunity myself to be on the Sea of Galilee because I'm a pastor. And if you're a pastor, you have to do that. So I went to Israel and I was on a boat in the Sea of Galilee. And I remember being surprised by how wavy and choppy it was and how much the boat was bouncing during totally clear blue skies with very little wind. And some of the waves did crash up over the side of the boat, not in a dangerous way, but just in that way that gets your rear end wet enough to make you uncomfortable for the rest of the day that you're trekking around Israel. And so it became believable to me that a storm could stir up and really make a trip across the Sea of Galilee feel pretty unsafe. And that's what happened that night. And so the Bible tells us in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and we're going to look at the depiction in Mark, that the waves started to pick up. The wind really started to blow. And the waves were crashing over the boat, not in the way that just makes you inconveniently wet, but in the way that makes you scared for your life. And the disciples became very fearful. And it would take something for the disciples to be fearful because many of you know that the disciples were fishermen. Peter, James, and John. James and John were called the sons of thunder. That was their nickname, okay? They were not sissies like Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector. He was an accountant. All right, my dad's an accountant. They are sissies, man. They cannot be trusted on open waters. I'm just kidding. Dad's great. I get seasick. He does not. I'm a pastor. I'm even worse. Anyway, talking about requisite toughness. But you've got James and John and Peter, and they're starting to freak out. They're getting legitimately scared. And so we pick up the story in Mark chapter 4, verse 38, and I'm going to read 38 through 41. This is what they do. It says, And I love that story. It's a simple one. It's a short one, but it's a powerful one. And one of the things that's so neat to me is that the disciples sense that they were in danger. And the hull of the ship is a guy that's older than them. They were not yet in their 30s. They were younger than him, presumably early 20s or maybe even younger than that. It could have been, some scholars think, upper high school boys that Jesus was giving the keys of the kingdom to. And they get scared and they know they're scared. They know they can't do anything about the weather. And so they go to Jesus. And it's clear from the text, they don't know what Jesus was going to do about it because when Jesus does what he does, they're shocked. So they weren't expecting him to calm the wind and to calm the rain and to calm the waves. They weren't thinking that was coming next. They just knew they were in trouble and they needed to go to Jesus. They didn't know what he was going to do. They didn't know how he was going to solve it. They just knew my soul's in fear. I'm going to run to Jesus. And I think that's such a great lesson for us. If nothing else, even when we don't know what he's going to do, run to Jesus when we're scared, run to Jesus when we don't feel safe, run to Jesus when we feel we need shelter. So they run to Jesus and Jesus wakes up. He's annoyed. He's clearly from the text. He was, he was, he was having a good snooze down there. He was out of the rain. He was nice and dry. Maybe it was working as like a little bit of like rock-a-bye baby white noise for Jesus. I don't know. Dude may have been hardcore. But he was sleeping. And I know, I happen to know from personal experience that even the sweetest people in the world, when they are awoken at 3.30 in the morning in the middle of the night and they don't want to be, they're not kind about that. And so Jesus clearly is annoyed with the disciples. He goes up on the deck and he looks at the wind and the waves and he says, peace, be still. And they do. And I've often thought, man, that would be a really cool moment in history to be in. If you could go back to one spot that's got to be in the running. Can you imagine, those of you who know me, how smug I would be on the deck of that ship with my popcorn? If you could time travel also popcorn with you, smart food, white cheddar, please. I would sit there and look at the disciples and be the least scared person laughing at them, be like, you're gonna be fine, just watch. Can you imagine how smug I would be knowing what was going to happen, just waiting for Jesus to come up on the hull of the ship, on the deck of the ship and say, peace, be still. And then it happens and you're like, see, I told you guys. It would be so easy to be peaceful in that moment because we know how the story ends, but they didn't. And so they were scared. And he comes out and he says, peace, be still. And peace, be still. When I hear people cover this story, talk about the story, preach on this story, peace, be still usually gets the focus. That's usually the phrase we stop on is the power of Jesus. And that's a good place to focus. But that's never really caught my attention as something else in the story. The next thing that catches my attention a little bit more is the disciples marveling at who this Jesus was. He goes back down into the stern of the ship, presumably to go back to sleep, this time peacefully, without his white noise. And the disciples look at each other and they were fearful and they said, who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him. See, when they went down into the ship to get him, they called him teacher, rabbi, pastor. They didn't know yet what Jesus was or who he was. They didn't call him Lord. They didn't call him Savior. They called him teacher. They were ignorant as to the nature of Christ just yet. And so they knew that guy could do some stuff. They knew that he could perform some miracles and cast out demons. They had seen a little bit of things. They knew that he possessed a wisdom that was unique in their generation. But they didn't know he could do this. So they marveled at who he was. And sometimes we focus on that. But for me, as far back as my memory goes from hearing this story, the thing that's always captured my attention is Jesus's incredulity with the disciples. He's incredulous with them. He's frustrated. And to me, because look at the text. He says, why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith? Oh, you of little faith. Like, what's the matter, guys? Why are you being so scared? Like, just chill out. It's going to be all right. And it's never made sense to me that this would be Jesus' response because we're taught about Jesus that he's meek and mild. We see him being abundant in patience and grace and love. And from a very young age, it's always seemed out of step with the character of Christ that this would be his chosen response to his disciples at their very reasonable fear. Again, Peter and James and John, the fishermen in the group, they're scared too. When the flight attendant on the plane starts to freak out, it's time for you to get scared as well. So I don't really care what Matthew's doing, but I'm looking at Peter. This is the guy that walks on water a little bit later in his life. And he's scared. So there's not anybody listening to my voice who wouldn't have been scared on that boat too. And to that very legitimate fear, Jesus goes, what's the matter with you? What's the matter with you? Why are you scared? What, you have no faith? Come on. He's frustrated with them. And it's always puzzled me. Why was Jesus frustrated with the disciples? And I want to propose to you two reasons. The first reason that I'm about to share is not the reason. It's a reason, and I think it's worth talking about. But really, the first reason provides a bridge to the second reason that I'm going to get to at the end of the sermon that I think really is why Jesus was internally frustrated with the disciples. But we can't get there without going through the first reason first. So the first reason I would like to submit to you that Jesus was frustrated with the disciples is the disciples underestimated Jesus' power, plan, and love for them. I think very simply the disciples underestimated Jesus. They underestimated Jesus' power. They ran to him because they knew he could do something, but they didn't know that he could do that. And apparently Jesus felt like he had revealed enough to them and instructed them enough that they ought to have known. They ought to have known that he had this special connection with God the Father and that everything was going to be okay. But they underestimated his power and his efficacy and his ability to be able to bring about the change or the provision that they needed. So they underestimated the power of Jesus. They underestimated the plan of Jesus. See, the disciples got called by a rabbi, and in those days, if you understand how that worked, that was kind of going to seminary back in the day. That was preparatory school for being released as a pastor or a rabbi into the wild. And so their expectation is most likely we're going to follow this man for a little while, however many years it takes, four, five, eight, 10 years. And then eventually we're going to be released out into the wild to do, to lead our own ministry. A lot like a young pastor going to seminary, expecting to graduate with a degree that says, I know all the things about theology I'll ever need to know. There's no questions that will ever stump me. And I have good categories for everything that's ever going to happen in my life. And then going to church and starting real ministry and finding out those categories are going to be pretty challenging, pal. You're going to have to learn to adjust those. But that's what a seminarian does. They go to school, they get a degree, and then they're released to church. And so that's what the disciples presumably thought they were going to be doing. Training with this man, learning how to be a rabbi, eventually they'd be released to be rabbis on their own. What they had no idea about was the scope of Jesus's plan for their lives. Jesus wasn't going to release them into the various cities and towns within Israel to do their own personal ministries. No, these were the foundational rocks upon which the church of God was being built. They were the kingdom of God on earth. They were being entrusted with the keys to the kingdom. Two and a half years after this moment, Jesus was going to die on a cross. He was going to raise himself from the dead, conquering death and sin. Then he was going to spend 40 days with them and then go into heaven and say, wait for the Holy Spirit to come. He's going to tell you what you need. And then they were going to launch the movement of God on earth, the intersection of the physical and the spiritual in the temporal God's church, his kingdom here. He had big plans for the disciples. And listen, it's 2,000 years later. We're on a different continent talking about their Jesus. They did a pretty good job. It was a pretty good plan. They did not realize, the disciples, that they were plans A, B, C, D, E, all the way to Z of God starting his kingdom here on earth, of transferring it from the nation of Israel to the kingdom, God's church, the bride of Christ, of which we are a part. See, they underestimated Jesus's plan for them. Pay attention to this. Because they reduced it to what they could envision for themselves. They underestimated Jesus' plan for them because they reduced it to what they could envision for themselves. They didn't make space for what Jesus could possibly be envisioning for them. And then they underestimated the love of Christ. That Jesus actually loved them enough to execute that plan. Because the plan involves Jesus dying the most painful death that that era of humanity could cook up. Suffering through the torment of hell and being resurrected on the third day, conquering death and sin. The plan involved Jesus being separated from his God. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me is one of the things he mutters on the cross. It was the first time in all of time that Jesus and God had been separated even for a little bit. And Jesus endured that. He endured the sufferings on the cross for us, for you and for me, because he loves us. Because the Bible says that love is in that while we were yet sinners, Christ dies for us. That's what love is. And what the disciples did not know and did not understand is that two and a half years from now, he's going to be hanging on a cross and we're going to feel like we've failed and he's failed, but that's the necessary thing that has to happen because he is winning for us a seat at the banquet table for all of eternity. That through living his perfect life, through leaving the keys of the kingdom with us, through dying on the cross, through raising from the dead and leaving that tomb empty, that Jesus was conquering death and hell for all of eternity and there was going to come a day, spoiler alert, when he would calm all storms for all time. But that was going to require an excruciating death. That was going to require limitless forgiveness over and over and over again as he watches us, you and me, trample on that death with our willful actions and our willful rebellion and our decision to not honor the death of Jesus on the cross and our decision on a weekly and daily basis to put ourself as Lord of our life and not Jesus as Lord of our life. And he knew that he was going to die on the cross, that he was going to offer you his love, that we were going to trample on that, and yet still he was going to offer us grace and invite us to a seat at the banquet table in heaven one day where we will be in harmony with our God for all of eternity. The disciples did not know that Jesus loved them that much. They did not know his plan was that big and that his power was that great, and so they underestimated him. And it makes me wonder, do we underestimate Jesus too? Do we forget how powerful he is? Do we sit in a circumstance and render it hopeless as though prayer can't possibly help because Jesus can move mountains, but not that one. Jesus can fix other relationships, but not this one. Jesus can empower other people facing temptation, but not me and not mine. Do we underestimate his power? Do we underestimate Jesus' plan for us by reducing it to what we can envision for ourselves? Can I just tell you, you have no idea what Jesus wants to do with you. You have no clue what Jesus wants to do with a single faithful heart who will be consistent. I see over and over again people who are convinced that they have no gifting, there's nothing special about them or outstanding about them. And so when they hear pastors like me talk about plans that Jesus has for them, they think, certainly that's not me. That's for other people. And it just reminds me of my mama. I've told you guys this story plenty of times. She died of ovarian cancer at 74 or 75 years old, and she was a woman who would sit in sermons like this, and she would think, I have nothing to offer the kingdom of God. I have no talents. I have no skills. Everyone around me is more important and better liked than I am. And yet, because she loved God, she just faithfully loved others her entire life. And when she passed away at 75, there was over 400 people at that funeral. All a testament to how Linda had loved them so well throughout the course of her life. And I gotta tell you, I've done plenty of funerals for people around that age and older. It's not often there's 400 people there. And she's one that throughout her life would have sat in a sermon like this and thought, God doesn't really have a plan for me. Yes, he does. Yes, he does. You have no idea who you're raising. You think Billy Graham's parents and Mother Teresa's parents knew who they were raising? You have no idea who you're friends with and who you're loving on. You have no idea how much an email or a prayer or a phone call or a late night conversation can mean to somebody. You have no idea. Just walk faithfully in Jesus' plan and you let him do what he's going to do. So often we underestimate Jesus' plan for us by writing off ourselves and limiting that plan to what we can envision. And he has such a bigger picture for us. Do we underestimate his love for us? Do we think that we've trampled on his grace one too many times and he's probably fed up with me now? No, he's not. Do we forget that he's promised us in Hebrews that he's at the right hand of the Father interceding for us? Do we, like the disciples, underestimate our Jesus? I think one of the reasons that we do that is because we fail to remember, as the disciples are a good example for in this story, that Jesus has depth just like anyone else. And knowing him takes time. I don't know if you've ever thought about it this way, but very clearly in the story, the disciples simply didn't know Jesus enough yet. Jesus felt like he had revealed enough of himself that they should have faith in him by now, that they should know by now, but they simply didn't know who he was. They simply didn't know by then. And so they doubted him and they were scared and they were anxious and they worried and they were fearful. And so they underestimated him, I believe, because they didn't fully know him yet. And we've got to acknowledge that getting to know Jesus is just like getting to know anyone else. There's depth there. There's layers. I think of one of my favorite people that I've ever met in my entire life, Harris Winston. No, I'm just kidding around. It's not Harris. It's this guy that I used to teach with. It's really not Harris. It's this guy that I used to teach with named Coach McCready, Robert W. McCready. When I started teaching school, thanks Harris for being the punchline for that joke. Anybody could have done it. When I started teaching school, I was in a previous life, my late 20s. I taught high school Bible and was a school chaplain at a small private school outside of Atlanta. In my first year there, I got hired at the same time as this new science teacher and the football coach, Coach McCready. And when I met him, I learned about him that he was a tailback at Auburn in the 60s. And so tough, Southern, good old boy from Alabama. He didn't, actually he did chew tobacco all the time. Now I think about it, he always had to dip in, that guy, teaching at a private Christian high school. Everybody just looks the other way, right? That was Coach McCready, just tough as nails. And he calls me out. The first week, he starts calling me Coach Rector. I'm not the coach of anything, but he just brings me to practice, and he makes me the special teams coach because I know how to kick a ball because I have a soccer background, and he did not because he has a football background. And so I was the special teams coordinator. And he called everybody baby, and he called buses cheese wagons, and he was just a character, man. I could tell you some very colorful stories with colorful language about Coach McCready and some of the things I heard that man say. But then I find out that he was also a Vietnam veteran and that he led 100 Marines during his first tour in Vietnam to the jungles of Vietnam. That'll do something to you. He did such a good job with it that the Marine Corps honored him with a nice, easy assignment doing recruiting in Alabama so he wouldn't have to risk his neck anymore and could wait out the war that way. And Coach McCready hated that idea. So he bugged his CO over and over and over again until he could find a path to get back to Vietnam. And the only way to do it was to go to training to become a recon Marine. So he went back to Vietnam as a recon Marine crawling through the tunnels of the Viet Cong shirtless with a Bowie knife and a pistol. I'm not making that up. That's Rambo stuff, man. That's a tough son of a gun. And he was all of that. He dripped that toughness. He could look at you in a way and no one's ever made me that scared in my whole life. But you get to know him. And I had the opportunity to do that. Seventh period, I was free. He taught seniors a class that he didn't care about who were on the football team, and he just let them sit in the back and do whatever they wanted. It was a really great school. And me and Coach would sit in the front, and we would just have a conversation for an hour. And we'd talk about everything, and we'd talk about life, and he didn't know it at the time, but he was discipling me, and mentoring me, and counseling me, and helping me in my marriage, and helping me learn to be a man, and helping me learn to follow God well, and showing me different ways that faith could look, and I learned about his heart, and I saw him tear up with something special that happened for the boys. The last year I was at that school, he and his wife, by his request, got a little toy poodle, black one, named Pepper. And Coach McCready's policy was if Pepper's not invited, then neither am I. And it never went anywhere that Pepper was not invited. Took him to stores before emotional support dogs were a thing and just dared people to tell him to get out of there because you wouldn't. And I bet over those three years, I got to know Coach McCready better than anybody else at that school. And if I saw him this afternoon, we could stop and we could have a four-hour conversation and it would not be enough. We were thick as thieves, man. But that knowledge of him and who he was and his heart, that came over time. It came over investment. It came over going to see him every day when I didn't have to and us wanting to spend that time together. You have those friendships too. Why would your relationship with Jesus be any different? How can we come to church once a week, sing about Jesus, hear about Jesus, go home and don't think about Jesus for a week, and then show up the next week and think, why am I not closer to Jesus? It's a pursuit. It's a getting to know him. It's exploring him. It's mining the depths of who he is in his word. Learning more about our God. Reading the gospels over and over and over again and printinging on ourselves the character and the heart of Jesus, pursuing him in prayer, spending time with him that we don't have to passionately following after Jesus so that we get to know him, so that we get to trust him, so that we get to love him. And then what happens when we do this, when we pursue Jesus and we know his heart, we get to watch him come through over and over and over again. And we get to watch him calm the storms over and over and over again. We get to see how he's going to do that. I've had that experience to do that as the pastor of grace. When I got here, we were in a heck of a storm. And I'm not going to recount all of that for everyone present, but it was not good times. But I saw Jesus come through. I could tell you a story about a Memorial Day offering that was supernatural that first month that I was here, where God said, hey, I care about this place. How God has had the right people show up at the right times to just affirm for us, I care about this place. This place matters to me. And frankly, I've weathered enough storms with grace, and some of you have too, that we're now just the people on the boat eating the smart pop popcorn with the white cheddar going, this is going to be fun. Look at what God's going to do. The more you know Jesus, the more you trust him, and the less you doubt he will come through. And I asked the question earlier, have you underestimated Jesus? And I would tell you that a pretty good indicator for that is how much we worry, how much we give into anxiety and fear and stress. Now listen, I'm not talking about clinical anxiety that's treated by medications. I'm not talking about an actual chemical imbalance that causes that. I'm talking about your regular, everyday, run-of-the-mill worry. Is my kid gonna get the right teacher? Maybe if I stay up a couple more hours tonight worrying about it, then that will help the situation. And they will definitely get the teacher they're supposed to. Will the deal close? Is my kid going to make good decisions at college? No, but they'll learn from them. Will my son or my daughter meet the right person that they're supposed to marry? Am I going to like them? I don't know. But listen, God is over all of those things. And the longer we walk with Jesus, the less worrisome those things are because we know he's got it. And so a good indicator of whether or not we're underestimating Jesus in our own lives is how much fear and anxiety and worry and stress we carry about the things that only he can control. And this, I think, is the real reason that Jesus was frustrated with the disciples that night. Because the disciples were focused on the outer storm while Jesus was focused on the inner storm. The disciples were focused on the storm out there, things beyond their control. And Jesus is sitting there sleeping in the stern going, guys, if you'll just trust me, you could be asleep now too. If you'll just trust me, you don't have to be scared right now. You don't have to be fearful right now. You don't have to be anxious right now. See, Jesus comes to us and we often miss this and he offers to calm the storms in here. And so often we're like the disciples and we're like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm fine in here. Can you calm the storms out there? Can you make that go away and that go away and that go away and that go away? Can you heal here, here, and here? Can you handle all of those things so that I don't feel any stress? And Jesus is like, I'm offering you my perfect peace so that you don't have to stress at all. I'm offering you my perfect peace so that you can be calm in here and not have to worry about all the things going on out there. Because let me tell you something. To live this life is to experience storms. When Jesus calmed that storm in the Sea of Galilee, how long was it until the next one? Did they just stop altogether? When Jesus fixes that bad news, you've lived life long enough, there's more coming. We've weathered storms at grace. We're in a fun season right now. You think there's not more coming? Maybe you're in the midst of a storm right now, and we want desperately for Jesus to calm it. Maybe we're in a peaceful time right now. Either way, we know that there's more coming, but here's what Jesus offers to us, that he will give us such an internal peace and calm this internal storm in such a way that none of those will ever have an impact on us again. He gives us the option to trust him and walk in perfect peace. Maybe this is what Paul was talking about in Philippians. When he says, be anxious for nothing but in everything through prayer, petition, and with thanksgiving, present your request to God and the God of peace who transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. He's offering to calm the inner storm. Because on this side of eternity, in this broken world where sin pervades, there will always be storms. And there's coming a day in Revelation 19 and in Revelation 21 where Jesus calms all the storms forever and there's no more storms. And until then, and between now and then, there's gonna be storms out there, but he's offering you peace in here if you'll get to know him and trust him and love him and walk with him. And so that's the invitation to us. That's the invitation that we see as a result of this story. This story is an invitation to know Jesus more. This story is an invitation to go deeper with him, into his word, to pursue him in prayer, to swallows me up, even if that storm is the storm that swallows up someone I love so much, that Jesus has gone to where that storm is and he's conquered that too. And one day I'll exist on the other side of eternity and I'll be with that person again. That's the storm that Jesus has calmed for us. He's won that for us. So let's not look at the story of Jesus calming the storm as a simple story that displays the power of Jesus and the ignorance of the disciples, but let's look at it as a story that beckons our hearts to go deeper with him, to know him more, to trust him more, to walk with more peace and more humility and more grace as we see him come through again and again and again. Let's allow Jesus to calm the storm in here and we won't be so concerned with the storms out there. Let's pray. Father, God, we thank you for calming our storms. Lord, for the folks in here who are walking through them. There are waves crashing over their boat, man. They don't know how they're going to make it out of this one. God, I do pray that you would calm those. But more than that, I pray that you would calm them. Calm their anxious hearts. God, for those of us here who don't know you, who don't know your son, with the depth that we would like to, would you beckon us towards you? Would you call us into your presence? God, give us a daily desire to meet with you, to hear from you, to talk to you, to listen, to praise. God, would you be a part of our conversation? Would you be a part of our friendships? Would you be a part of the way we work and the way we operate and the way we think, be a part of our car rides and our walks and our workouts. Jesus, we invite you into our lives that we might know you more, that we might trust you more, that we might trust your heart more, that you might calm the storms that rage in us from time to time. And we thank you for being the one who calms the storms once and for all. It's in your name that we pray these things. Amen.

All right, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here and making Grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you're new this morning, I have great news for you. You've picked an excellent Sunday to begin attending Grace. I realized in this last week, we're constantly looking for ways to make ourselves better. And I realized in this last week that we have been using one-ply toilet paper in the bathrooms. I did not know this, but that is completely unacceptable. So I found out who was in charge of these purchases, and I said, we've got to do better, and they said, what should we do? And I said, go to the store and find the most expensive kind and get it. That's what we deserve at Grace. So if you're here for the first time, I got good news for you. This is a luxurious experience in the children's hallway. We did make that improvement. I'm not just making that up. This is the last part of our series in Isaiah called the Treasury of Isaiah, where we're kind of acknowledging it's 66 books. It's a ton of stuff that really would bog us down if we tried to go through the whole thing exhaustively. And so I've done my best. Jacob, don't go to the bathroom right now. It's too tempting, he says. I can't wait for him to come back in. I've already got a joke loaded. All right. That was quick. All right. Let's get it. Let's pray. Let's get it together. Okay. So we can't go through the whole book exhaustively, but we can pull out some of the more impactful scriptures and reflect on them as a body. And this was actually supposed to be a six-week series, but I wanted to extend it by a week so that I could talk about this verse in Isaiah with you. It's a short and simple verse that we'll get to in a minute, but I think it's such a hugely impactful concept, and I know of several folks in our body, in the church, who very much need the truth of this scripture today. But as we approach it, I want us to think of a memory that most of us probably have. Some of you may not have this memory for different reasons. This was something that Jen brought to my attention as I was kind of talking through this concept with her. Jen is my wife, for those that don't know. And so she was talking about when she was a little girl and they were taking a road trip and she's in the back of the car. And they did, you know, they were, she grew up in Birmingham, or Birmingham, that's how you're supposed to say it. And they would go down to Dothan for Thanksgiving. They would travel over to Memphis for Christmas. They did road trips a fair amount as children. They drove down to the Florida Panhandle every year. And so road trips were a thing. And sometimes on those road trips, you'll remember from when you were little and still now, it starts to rain, storms roll in. And sometimes it's what Bubba from Forrest Gump would call big old fat rain. It's coming down in sheets. You can't see anything. And when you're a child and you're in the back and you're peering over and you're looking, you can't see anything. You can barely see the car in front of you. And you don't know how your mom or your dad is still driving. In this case, it was her dad. And you start to get scared because it's coming down heavy and it's hard to see. People even have their hazards on, which just isn't a sign. I want to be as nice about this as I can. If you're driving in heavy rain and you put your hazards on, we're in the same rain you are. We know, okay? We know it's a treacherous condition. Just throwing that out there for you to consider, hazard people. All right. You're in the back. It's scary. And you're worried. It feels tense. It's the rain that's so loud that you can't hear and you can't talk anymore. You're just trying to weather the storm. And Jen remembers looking at her dad and seeing the placid, nonplussed expression on his face, and she was fine. He is at peace, so I am at peace. I'm looking at my dad. He's not worried about the storm. I'm not worried about the storm. And as a dad, those of you who have driven through those storms, you've done it plenty of times, you know. I've driven through storms before. I'm going to drive through storms in the future. This one's going to be fine. Even if it's the worst one, this one's going to be fine. And so his peace gave her peace, right? And what it got me to thinking about is what if we could go through life and the storms of life with the type of peace that your dad had when you were a little kid and the storms came and we're driving down the road. Well, God offers us this peace a few different places in scripture, but he talks about it first specifically in Isaiah. In this short, I think very powerful verse where Isaiah writes this about God. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. I really like that descriptor there, perfect. Not just any peace, but a perfect peace, a kind of unthreatened peace, a kind of restful peace. And when I think about that kind of peace, the way to understand it, I think about, because you guys know, I've told you before, I enjoy history. Last summer, I had the opportunity to listen to a biography on Julius Caesar. I try to always be reading a physical book and then listening to a book. I read the fun ones and I listen to the boring ones. It's the way that I get through them. So I'm listening to a biography on Julius Caesar. And they talk about within that biography this idea of Pax Romana, Roman peace. It was a thing that the Roman Empire offered to the conquered peoples. And it kind of worked like this. One of the places that Julius Caesar, he became famous in the Gallic Wars. So he went up into what we understand as modern day France and Belgium and Switzerland and that area. And there was different Gallic tribes. And the way that we think about nations and states is pretty new in the span of human history. Most everybody, particularly in Europe at that time, existed within tribes and clans. And those tribes and clans would bind together, sometimes under a successful warlord, sometimes just out of mutual desire for protection, and they would create these pacts. If you get attacked by another neighboring tribe or clan, then we will come in and we will protect you, and you offer us your protection as well. It was these agreed upon truces. We're not going to attack you, but if anyone attacks us, we'll attack them on our behalf. But these allegiances and alliances would change on a whim. Every five years, every decade, every year, there's different alliances and allegiances to keep up with. This one's attacking us, that one's attacking us. So even while you're in a peace, it's a fragile peace. It's a threatened peace. If you existed in those tribes in that day, even if it wasn't a spring when you were watching your husband or your brother or your son go off to war to defend the tribes, you were still on the lookout. You still knew that any day someone could bring word that the peace that you had has now been broken. It was a fragile peace. And so what the Roman Empire offered is to come in, and now they've conquered all the tribes. And you are now under their protection. So if someone attacks you, the weight and the force and the might of the Roman army is going to defend you. It's not just these inter-familial clashes anymore. Now they're messing with the Roman Empire. So the Roman Empire, once they conquered you, which sounds bad, one of the nice offshoots of that is you now have a protected peace. You now have a peace that there is no force strong enough to compromise. As long as you like pay your taxes and stuff. But Pax Romana was this kind of empire-wide protected, unthreatened peace. And I think that that's a profound idea for us. Because we understand what it is to exist in a fragile peace. If you have young children, you understand what fragile peace is because you send them to the playroom to give you two moments respite. And they're up there and they're fine. And then they start yelling. Someone's upset. And you go and you broker a peace. You stop playing with that. You give that back to them. You start using your head. You quit being a jerk. Everyone's fine. Okay? And then you leave. And you have five more minutes of a fragile peace until it's broken again by someone's scream. If you exist in a marriage, you know what a fragile peace is. I don't mind telling you because I can't say honestly they're infrequent, but I don't mind telling you that a couple Saturdays ago, Jen and I were enjoying a very fragile peace. Just for whatever reason, on that particular day, with other things going on in our lives, there was just something simmering under the surface all day long. Neither of us could do anything right. We were just kind of, we're at each other's throats, then we apologize and start forgetting, man, I don't even know why I'm mad. It doesn't even make any sense. And then five seconds later, someone pauses in a conversation too long after a question, and now let's get them. So it was a fragile peace. We know what fragile pieces are. And what God offers us is this protected peace, this perfect peace, this peace that is unthreatened and unmoved by forces both within and without our control. It's really this profound peace that allows us, as we go through the storms of life, to think, been through storms before we will go through storms again and this one will be fine even if it's the worst one and what's really profound about that piece is that God is the one driving we are in the back seat looking at the face of our Father who is unmoved by this storm too. This is the kind of peace that God offers his children. However, he doesn't offer it to everyone. We're going to look at who has access to this peace. But before we do, I have just a couple of reflections on what it means to have perfect peace. What is perfect peace and what are the implications for us? And if we think about it together, how can we better understand this idea of peacefulness? Well, the first thing that I would bring to your attention, the first thing that sprang to mind for me is that God's peace surpasses knowledge or understanding. God's peace surpasses knowledge or understanding. It's not going to make any sense. Paul writes about this peace in Philippians, famous passage, Philippians 4, you have the peace. When you watch someone walk with this amount of peace and clarity and tranquility, it defies understanding and logic. I think of this great story in the Old Testament in the early chapters of 1 Samuel with the high priest Eli. He's the high priest of Israel, and he's just taken in Samuel to live in the temple who's going to dedicate his life to service to the Lord. And Eli has two sons. I believe their names are Hophni and Phinehas. And they're jerks. They're absolute jerks. They're using their political power for all of the wrong reasons. They're taking advantage of taxpayers, taking advantage of the poor. They're taking advantage of women. They're doing all the despicable things that we hate when people in those positions do them. And one night, God gives Samuel a dream. And the next morning, Eli insists that Samuel tell him what that dream is. And so Samuel finally tells Eli the worst possible news any father can receive. And he says, in my dream last night, God told me that your two sons are going to die soon and they will not be in the priesthood anymore. One of them is not the next high priest. And so in one comment, in one answer, Eli learns the worst thing that any father can possibly learn. You are going to lose your children and you are going to lose your legacy. There's nothing worse than that. And Eli's response, very next verse, doesn't miss a beat, doesn't go pray about it and come back with a prepared statement. Very next verse, Eli says, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. That's a pretty remarkable piece. To receive the worst news any father can possibly receive and the response out of the gate, it is the Lord. do what seems good to him that is a peace that passes understanding that is a peace that can't be explained that is a peace that we would marvel at and it is a peace that we should be jealous of the other thing i would say about god's perfect peace, and I think that this is really important. God's peace provides rest for the soul. God's peace provides rest for our souls. There are those of you in here who came in tired this morning. You woke up exhausted. You slept eight hours and it wasn't enough. There are those of you who go to bed being kept up by the things you're worrying about. And when you wake up, your mind is racing just as fast. And when that issue gets settled, the worry monster that exists in your head finds another thing to attack and push into the forefronts of your thoughts so that you never get any rest from the anxiety that you feel and from the things about which you are worried. Some of us have carried burdens of relationships. Our marriage is cruddy. Our children are estranged or drifting. We've received a tough diagnosis. We're watching a loved one walk through a hard time and there's nothing that we can do about it. And we are exhausted. We are exhausted with worry. We're exhausted with worry about things that are outside our control. Which is why it's so important to understand that God's perfect peace gives our soul a place to rest, to stop and to shut it down and to be okay and to not worry about the next thing and to be realistic about what is within and without our control. God's perfect peace offers us rest. And for some of you, that's what I want for you this morning, is to move towards a place where you can finally slow down and rest and tell that worry monster to shut up. But God does not offer this peace indiscriminately. It is offered to everyone, but we have a part to play in the reception of this peace. If you look back at the verse, it says, you will keep in perfect peace who? Those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. God's peace is only for the steadfast and can only come through trust. God's peace is only for the steadfast, for those who persevere. Persevere in what? Persevere in their trust of the work of Jesus Christ. And we're going to talk more about that trust and exactly what we're placing it in and how that's helpful to us. But we have to understand that though this peace that God offers is offered to everyone equally, it is not offered without discrimination. There's a part that we have to play. And the part that we have to play is to trust God, is to place our faith in him. And when we do, when we truly trust, when we truly see ourselves as the little kids sitting in the back seat watching our heavenly father drive us through life, when that is our posture and we trust him and we can sit in the back and we don't have to worry about it, when that's our posture, he will give us perfect peace. And when that is your posture, the peace that you can have goes beyond understanding and is unfathomable, I believe, to the non-Christian mind. And I was trying to think of the best example of this kind of peace. I was trying to think of the best example of this kind of peace. Someone that we've seen in our lives or in history go through a remarkably difficult time and yet maintain this consistent, faithful peace despite all the circumstances. And I was reminded of the story of a man named Horatio Safford. Horatio Safford lived in the late 1800s in Chicago, and he ended up writing It Is Well, the famous hymn that a lot of us know. And a lot of you may know the story or bits and pieces of the story surrounding the penning of It Is well. It's the most famous story about how a hymn was written. But I bet that you don't know all the parts. And for some of you, you still have no clue what I'm talking about. Horatio Safford was a Christian man who lived in Chicago in the late 1800s. He was a successful lawyer. He had five children, a boy and four girls, and a wife named Ann. And in the Chicago fire of 1871, Horatio lost a vast majority of his net worth. He lost his practice, the building where his practice was. He lost his home, and he had several properties and holdings throughout the city of Chicago. He lost those too. The fire ruined him. In the wake of the fire, his four-year-old son fell to scarlet fever. So now he's lost a child. Believing that his wife and he and his daughters needed a bit of a respite, they said, let's go to England and take a deep breath over there. As they were planning their trip to England, his plans changed. Something in the States was requiring him. And so he sent his wife Anne ahead with his four daughters and said, you guys go. I'll be there in about three weeks. On the way to England, the ship carrying his family sunk. All four daughters were lost. He received a cable upon Anne's arrival in England. I alone survived. Horatio gets that news. He boards a ship, and he goes to be with Anne. On the journey over, the captain of the ship was aware of the tragedy that had befallen Horatio, and he called, he sent for him, and he said, hey, we're at about the same spot that your family was when they sank. Just wanted you to know. And Horatio sat down in the midst of that tragedy, of being a modern-day Job, where in seemingly one fell swoop, he lost his possessions and he lost his family. And he sits down and he writes the hymn. At the time it was a poem. Years later someone put it to music and it became a hymn. He writes the poem. It is well. It's the famous hymn that we know. And with that context, when you know that he's writing this on a boat over where his drowned daughters rest, having lost a son and everything he owns, going to see a wife that is as crestfallen as him, he sits down and he, listen, he writes these words. This is the first verse of it as well. He writes this, when peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot thou has taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. Cindy, leave that up there, please. Look at that. Look at that and put yourself in his shoes and think about your ability to sit down and write, when peace like a river attendeth my way and when sorrows like sea billows roll. Oh, you mean the same sea billows that just claimed your daughters? The same sea that just cost you your family? That your God created? When you feel like you have every right to be so angry, and yet you choose to sit down and say, when peace like a river attends my way, and when sorrows like sea billows like the ones that claim my family's role, whatever my lot, you have taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. How does someone write that? How is that the response to trials and to tragedy and to the storms that threaten your peace? I can only tell you how by pointing you to the second verse because he explains it to us. Though Satan should buffet. Those trials should come. Let this blessed assurance control. I love this. That Christ has regarded my helpless estate. And has shed his own blood for my soul. How does he maintain perfect peace? Because his mind is steadfast in his trust in God. How does he maintain his perfect peace? Because he knows that Jesus died for him. And what he writes about that death of Christ is so important. And I think so profound. He says, when Satan should buffet, again, a reference to the sea, buffet like the waves on the ship when it sank. When Satan should buffet, when trials should come, the ones that he's been walking through for two years, let this blessed assurance control that Christ has regarded my helpless estate and shed his own blood for my soul. And I love that word that he chooses there. I love that word helpless. Because when we think about our helplessness before God, particularly as it relates to Jesus Christ, I think we tend to put it in the context of this myopic view of the gospel in which Jesus only died to take my soul up to heaven. And so when we think about our helplessness, we think about the helplessness, what it means to be helpless to get our soul to heaven. We think about what it means to be helpless to go from dead in sin to alive in Christ, from in this temporal body to in my eternal soul. We think about our helplessness to make that jump to a perfect eternity with God, and so we need God's help. We need Jesus' help to get us there. But what I want us to think about is that is far from the only way in which we are helpless. We are, every single one of us, every single person in this room can get a call today that changes your life forever. We are one vibration in our pocket away from a profoundly different existence. And let me tell you something. You are helpless against that phone call. There is nothing you can do to prevent it. We may act like a big, tough, civilized society with an important pharmaceutical complex and the most advanced medical equipment in the world. And we can act like we can fight cancer. But we are helpless with who gets it and when they do. Even the most fastidious of us are sometimes helpless against the onslaught of that awful disease and its acquiring. As parents, we are helpless when our kid is driving down the road. Do you understand? Our fortunes could be taken. Our families could be taken. There's so many different ways that life can buffet us. There's so many different trials that could come. And we exist in part because we're Americans and we're the most independent, individualized civilization that's ever existed. We exist as if we're driving down the road, facing the storms of life on our own with the wherewithal to get through them. But listen, you're helpless if a tornado comes along and sweeps you off the road. There is so much in life to which we are rendered helpless. And I don't think we go through life understanding that. We are not grown adults capable of handling the buffets of life. We are newborn babies that are vulnerable to this world and this universe in ways that we don't understand. And so when Christ regards our helpless estate, it's not just our soul's inability to get itself into heaven. It's our inability to protect ourselves from the seasons of life. And it's for that that he shed his blood. It's for that that he died. And that's something that Horatio knew. That it wasn't just the helplessness of his soul, but it was our complete lack of agency to prevent ourself from suffering in the first place. And it's this simple truth, I believe, that won the day for him and wins the day for us. When Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered this too. It's the knowledge in the midst of our trials that when Jesus conquered sin and shame by dying on the cross and raising from the dead, when Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered this too. Whatever this is for you, he conquered this too. There's this great passage that I refer to a lot, Revelation chapter 21, verses 1 through 4. I won't belabor the passage here, but there's a phrase there, there's a promise that the former things will have passed away. There will be no more weeping, no more crying, no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. And I love to ruminate on what those former things are. Cancer, divorce, abuse, despair, orphans, loss, tragedy, awful phone calls, relational strife, being born to broken parents who hurt you because they're hurt. All that stuff is the former things that's passed away. And what we know is those former things, those things that will pass away, the things that exist in your life that are wearing you out and making you tired and making life so difficult right now, the things you go to sleep worrying about, the things you wake up worrying about. Whatever's waiting for you on the other end of that call one day. We can have perfect peace in those trials. Because we know that because Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered that too. We know that because he offers salvation to those who believe in his shedding of blood for them, that even when we lose them, and even when the trial claims them, that we will see them again in eternity. We know that this life is but a mist and a vapor compared to what awaits us on the other side of passing. We understand that. And so in a few minutes, in a few minutes, we're going to sing it as well together. We're going to stand and we're going to proclaim these words back to God. And so my prayer for you in preparation for this and even this morning as I've been praying about the service is that you'll be able to sing that with authenticity. That you'll be able to sing it as well. And if there is something in your life that is so hard that it's hard for you to muster the singing, that it's hard for you to muster the words, then listen to the people singing around you and let them sing on your behalf. And know, know that we can say that though peace like a river attends, when peace like a river attends our way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever our lot, God has enabled us to say, it is well, it is well with our soul. I want to finish by reading you this fourth verse. This fourth verse is not one that is often sung. But as I was reviewing the lyrics in reference to our my soul. I pray that God will whisper his peace to you this morning. Let's pray. Father, we need your perfect peace. We need your protected peace. Everyone in this room is walking through a storm of one sort or another. Everyone in this room will walk through more. And so God, when we do, I pray that we remember that you are driving and that we are resting. Help us find our rest in your perfect peace. Help us remember that whatever it is we're facing, that Jesus has conquered that too. And God, give us the courage to sing and to proclaim and to believe that even if it isn't well with us now, that it can be, and you will make it so. God, whisper your peace to us this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here and making Grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you're new this morning, I have great news for you. You've picked an excellent Sunday to begin attending Grace. I realized in this last week, we're constantly looking for ways to make ourselves better. And I realized in this last week that we have been using one-ply toilet paper in the bathrooms. I did not know this, but that is completely unacceptable. So I found out who was in charge of these purchases, and I said, we've got to do better, and they said, what should we do? And I said, go to the store and find the most expensive kind and get it. That's what we deserve at Grace. So if you're here for the first time, I got good news for you. This is a luxurious experience in the children's hallway. We did make that improvement. I'm not just making that up. This is the last part of our series in Isaiah called the Treasury of Isaiah, where we're kind of acknowledging it's 66 books. It's a ton of stuff that really would bog us down if we tried to go through the whole thing exhaustively. And so I've done my best. Jacob, don't go to the bathroom right now. It's too tempting, he says. I can't wait for him to come back in. I've already got a joke loaded. All right. That was quick. All right. Let's get it. Let's pray. Let's get it together. Okay. So we can't go through the whole book exhaustively, but we can pull out some of the more impactful scriptures and reflect on them as a body. And this was actually supposed to be a six-week series, but I wanted to extend it by a week so that I could talk about this verse in Isaiah with you. It's a short and simple verse that we'll get to in a minute, but I think it's such a hugely impactful concept, and I know of several folks in our body, in the church, who very much need the truth of this scripture today. But as we approach it, I want us to think of a memory that most of us probably have. Some of you may not have this memory for different reasons. This was something that Jen brought to my attention as I was kind of talking through this concept with her. Jen is my wife, for those that don't know. And so she was talking about when she was a little girl and they were taking a road trip and she's in the back of the car. And they did, you know, they were, she grew up in Birmingham, or Birmingham, that's how you're supposed to say it. And they would go down to Dothan for Thanksgiving. They would travel over to Memphis for Christmas. They did road trips a fair amount as children. They drove down to the Florida Panhandle every year. And so road trips were a thing. And sometimes on those road trips, you'll remember from when you were little and still now, it starts to rain, storms roll in. And sometimes it's what Bubba from Forrest Gump would call big old fat rain. It's coming down in sheets. You can't see anything. And when you're a child and you're in the back and you're peering over and you're looking, you can't see anything. You can barely see the car in front of you. And you don't know how your mom or your dad is still driving. In this case, it was her dad. And you start to get scared because it's coming down heavy and it's hard to see. People even have their hazards on, which just isn't a sign. I want to be as nice about this as I can. If you're driving in heavy rain and you put your hazards on, we're in the same rain you are. We know, okay? We know it's a treacherous condition. Just throwing that out there for you to consider, hazard people. All right. You're in the back. It's scary. And you're worried. It feels tense. It's the rain that's so loud that you can't hear and you can't talk anymore. You're just trying to weather the storm. And Jen remembers looking at her dad and seeing the placid, nonplussed expression on his face, and she was fine. He is at peace, so I am at peace. I'm looking at my dad. He's not worried about the storm. I'm not worried about the storm. And as a dad, those of you who have driven through those storms, you've done it plenty of times, you know. I've driven through storms before. I'm going to drive through storms in the future. This one's going to be fine. Even if it's the worst one, this one's going to be fine. And so his peace gave her peace, right? And what it got me to thinking about is what if we could go through life and the storms of life with the type of peace that your dad had when you were a little kid and the storms came and we're driving down the road. Well, God offers us this peace a few different places in scripture, but he talks about it first specifically in Isaiah. In this short, I think very powerful verse where Isaiah writes this about God. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. I really like that descriptor there, perfect. Not just any peace, but a perfect peace, a kind of unthreatened peace, a kind of restful peace. And when I think about that kind of peace, the way to understand it, I think about, because you guys know, I've told you before, I enjoy history. Last summer, I had the opportunity to listen to a biography on Julius Caesar. I try to always be reading a physical book and then listening to a book. I read the fun ones and I listen to the boring ones. It's the way that I get through them. So I'm listening to a biography on Julius Caesar. And they talk about within that biography this idea of Pax Romana, Roman peace. It was a thing that the Roman Empire offered to the conquered peoples. And it kind of worked like this. One of the places that Julius Caesar, he became famous in the Gallic Wars. So he went up into what we understand as modern day France and Belgium and Switzerland and that area. And there was different Gallic tribes. And the way that we think about nations and states is pretty new in the span of human history. Most everybody, particularly in Europe at that time, existed within tribes and clans. And those tribes and clans would bind together, sometimes under a successful warlord, sometimes just out of mutual desire for protection, and they would create these pacts. If you get attacked by another neighboring tribe or clan, then we will come in and we will protect you, and you offer us your protection as well. It was these agreed upon truces. We're not going to attack you, but if anyone attacks us, we'll attack them on our behalf. But these allegiances and alliances would change on a whim. Every five years, every decade, every year, there's different alliances and allegiances to keep up with. This one's attacking us, that one's attacking us. So even while you're in a peace, it's a fragile peace. It's a threatened peace. If you existed in those tribes in that day, even if it wasn't a spring when you were watching your husband or your brother or your son go off to war to defend the tribes, you were still on the lookout. You still knew that any day someone could bring word that the peace that you had has now been broken. It was a fragile peace. And so what the Roman Empire offered is to come in, and now they've conquered all the tribes. And you are now under their protection. So if someone attacks you, the weight and the force and the might of the Roman army is going to defend you. It's not just these inter-familial clashes anymore. Now they're messing with the Roman Empire. So the Roman Empire, once they conquered you, which sounds bad, one of the nice offshoots of that is you now have a protected peace. You now have a peace that there is no force strong enough to compromise. As long as you like pay your taxes and stuff. But Pax Romana was this kind of empire-wide protected, unthreatened peace. And I think that that's a profound idea for us. Because we understand what it is to exist in a fragile peace. If you have young children, you understand what fragile peace is because you send them to the playroom to give you two moments respite. And they're up there and they're fine. And then they start yelling. Someone's upset. And you go and you broker a peace. You stop playing with that. You give that back to them. You start using your head. You quit being a jerk. Everyone's fine. Okay? And then you leave. And you have five more minutes of a fragile peace until it's broken again by someone's scream. If you exist in a marriage, you know what a fragile peace is. I don't mind telling you because I can't say honestly they're infrequent, but I don't mind telling you that a couple Saturdays ago, Jen and I were enjoying a very fragile peace. Just for whatever reason, on that particular day, with other things going on in our lives, there was just something simmering under the surface all day long. Neither of us could do anything right. We were just kind of, we're at each other's throats, then we apologize and start forgetting, man, I don't even know why I'm mad. It doesn't even make any sense. And then five seconds later, someone pauses in a conversation too long after a question, and now let's get them. So it was a fragile peace. We know what fragile pieces are. And what God offers us is this protected peace, this perfect peace, this peace that is unthreatened and unmoved by forces both within and without our control. It's really this profound peace that allows us, as we go through the storms of life, to think, been through storms before we will go through storms again and this one will be fine even if it's the worst one and what's really profound about that piece is that God is the one driving we are in the back seat looking at the face of our Father who is unmoved by this storm too. This is the kind of peace that God offers his children. However, he doesn't offer it to everyone. We're going to look at who has access to this peace. But before we do, I have just a couple of reflections on what it means to have perfect peace. What is perfect peace and what are the implications for us? And if we think about it together, how can we better understand this idea of peacefulness? Well, the first thing that I would bring to your attention, the first thing that sprang to mind for me is that God's peace surpasses knowledge or understanding. God's peace surpasses knowledge or understanding. It's not going to make any sense. Paul writes about this peace in Philippians, famous passage, Philippians 4, you have the peace. When you watch someone walk with this amount of peace and clarity and tranquility, it defies understanding and logic. I think of this great story in the Old Testament in the early chapters of 1 Samuel with the high priest Eli. He's the high priest of Israel, and he's just taken in Samuel to live in the temple who's going to dedicate his life to service to the Lord. And Eli has two sons. I believe their names are Hophni and Phinehas. And they're jerks. They're absolute jerks. They're using their political power for all of the wrong reasons. They're taking advantage of taxpayers, taking advantage of the poor. They're taking advantage of women. They're doing all the despicable things that we hate when people in those positions do them. And one night, God gives Samuel a dream. And the next morning, Eli insists that Samuel tell him what that dream is. And so Samuel finally tells Eli the worst possible news any father can receive. And he says, in my dream last night, God told me that your two sons are going to die soon and they will not be in the priesthood anymore. One of them is not the next high priest. And so in one comment, in one answer, Eli learns the worst thing that any father can possibly learn. You are going to lose your children and you are going to lose your legacy. There's nothing worse than that. And Eli's response, very next verse, doesn't miss a beat, doesn't go pray about it and come back with a prepared statement. Very next verse, Eli says, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. That's a pretty remarkable piece. To receive the worst news any father can possibly receive and the response out of the gate, it is the Lord. do what seems good to him that is a peace that passes understanding that is a peace that can't be explained that is a peace that we would marvel at and it is a peace that we should be jealous of the other thing i would say about god's perfect peace, and I think that this is really important. God's peace provides rest for the soul. God's peace provides rest for our souls. There are those of you in here who came in tired this morning. You woke up exhausted. You slept eight hours and it wasn't enough. There are those of you who go to bed being kept up by the things you're worrying about. And when you wake up, your mind is racing just as fast. And when that issue gets settled, the worry monster that exists in your head finds another thing to attack and push into the forefronts of your thoughts so that you never get any rest from the anxiety that you feel and from the things about which you are worried. Some of us have carried burdens of relationships. Our marriage is cruddy. Our children are estranged or drifting. We've received a tough diagnosis. We're watching a loved one walk through a hard time and there's nothing that we can do about it. And we are exhausted. We are exhausted with worry. We're exhausted with worry about things that are outside our control. Which is why it's so important to understand that God's perfect peace gives our soul a place to rest, to stop and to shut it down and to be okay and to not worry about the next thing and to be realistic about what is within and without our control. God's perfect peace offers us rest. And for some of you, that's what I want for you this morning, is to move towards a place where you can finally slow down and rest and tell that worry monster to shut up. But God does not offer this peace indiscriminately. It is offered to everyone, but we have a part to play in the reception of this peace. If you look back at the verse, it says, you will keep in perfect peace who? Those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. God's peace is only for the steadfast and can only come through trust. God's peace is only for the steadfast, for those who persevere. Persevere in what? Persevere in their trust of the work of Jesus Christ. And we're going to talk more about that trust and exactly what we're placing it in and how that's helpful to us. But we have to understand that though this peace that God offers is offered to everyone equally, it is not offered without discrimination. There's a part that we have to play. And the part that we have to play is to trust God, is to place our faith in him. And when we do, when we truly trust, when we truly see ourselves as the little kids sitting in the back seat watching our heavenly father drive us through life, when that is our posture and we trust him and we can sit in the back and we don't have to worry about it, when that's our posture, he will give us perfect peace. And when that is your posture, the peace that you can have goes beyond understanding and is unfathomable, I believe, to the non-Christian mind. And I was trying to think of the best example of this kind of peace. I was trying to think of the best example of this kind of peace. Someone that we've seen in our lives or in history go through a remarkably difficult time and yet maintain this consistent, faithful peace despite all the circumstances. And I was reminded of the story of a man named Horatio Safford. Horatio Safford lived in the late 1800s in Chicago, and he ended up writing It Is Well, the famous hymn that a lot of us know. And a lot of you may know the story or bits and pieces of the story surrounding the penning of It Is well. It's the most famous story about how a hymn was written. But I bet that you don't know all the parts. And for some of you, you still have no clue what I'm talking about. Horatio Safford was a Christian man who lived in Chicago in the late 1800s. He was a successful lawyer. He had five children, a boy and four girls, and a wife named Ann. And in the Chicago fire of 1871, Horatio lost a vast majority of his net worth. He lost his practice, the building where his practice was. He lost his home, and he had several properties and holdings throughout the city of Chicago. He lost those too. The fire ruined him. In the wake of the fire, his four-year-old son fell to scarlet fever. So now he's lost a child. Believing that his wife and he and his daughters needed a bit of a respite, they said, let's go to England and take a deep breath over there. As they were planning their trip to England, his plans changed. Something in the States was requiring him. And so he sent his wife Anne ahead with his four daughters and said, you guys go. I'll be there in about three weeks. On the way to England, the ship carrying his family sunk. All four daughters were lost. He received a cable upon Anne's arrival in England. I alone survived. Horatio gets that news. He boards a ship, and he goes to be with Anne. On the journey over, the captain of the ship was aware of the tragedy that had befallen Horatio, and he called, he sent for him, and he said, hey, we're at about the same spot that your family was when they sank. Just wanted you to know. And Horatio sat down in the midst of that tragedy, of being a modern-day Job, where in seemingly one fell swoop, he lost his possessions and he lost his family. And he sits down and he writes the hymn. At the time it was a poem. Years later someone put it to music and it became a hymn. He writes the poem. It is well. It's the famous hymn that we know. And with that context, when you know that he's writing this on a boat over where his drowned daughters rest, having lost a son and everything he owns, going to see a wife that is as crestfallen as him, he sits down and he, listen, he writes these words. This is the first verse of it as well. He writes this, when peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot thou has taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. Cindy, leave that up there, please. Look at that. Look at that and put yourself in his shoes and think about your ability to sit down and write, when peace like a river attendeth my way and when sorrows like sea billows roll. Oh, you mean the same sea billows that just claimed your daughters? The same sea that just cost you your family? That your God created? When you feel like you have every right to be so angry, and yet you choose to sit down and say, when peace like a river attends my way, and when sorrows like sea billows like the ones that claim my family's role, whatever my lot, you have taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. How does someone write that? How is that the response to trials and to tragedy and to the storms that threaten your peace? I can only tell you how by pointing you to the second verse because he explains it to us. Though Satan should buffet. Those trials should come. Let this blessed assurance control. I love this. That Christ has regarded my helpless estate. And has shed his own blood for my soul. How does he maintain perfect peace? Because his mind is steadfast in his trust in God. How does he maintain his perfect peace? Because he knows that Jesus died for him. And what he writes about that death of Christ is so important. And I think so profound. He says, when Satan should buffet, again, a reference to the sea, buffet like the waves on the ship when it sank. When Satan should buffet, when trials should come, the ones that he's been walking through for two years, let this blessed assurance control that Christ has regarded my helpless estate and shed his own blood for my soul. And I love that word that he chooses there. I love that word helpless. Because when we think about our helplessness before God, particularly as it relates to Jesus Christ, I think we tend to put it in the context of this myopic view of the gospel in which Jesus only died to take my soul up to heaven. And so when we think about our helplessness, we think about the helplessness, what it means to be helpless to get our soul to heaven. We think about what it means to be helpless to go from dead in sin to alive in Christ, from in this temporal body to in my eternal soul. We think about our helplessness to make that jump to a perfect eternity with God, and so we need God's help. We need Jesus' help to get us there. But what I want us to think about is that is far from the only way in which we are helpless. We are, every single one of us, every single person in this room can get a call today that changes your life forever. We are one vibration in our pocket away from a profoundly different existence. And let me tell you something. You are helpless against that phone call. There is nothing you can do to prevent it. We may act like a big, tough, civilized society with an important pharmaceutical complex and the most advanced medical equipment in the world. And we can act like we can fight cancer. But we are helpless with who gets it and when they do. Even the most fastidious of us are sometimes helpless against the onslaught of that awful disease and its acquiring. As parents, we are helpless when our kid is driving down the road. Do you understand? Our fortunes could be taken. Our families could be taken. There's so many different ways that life can buffet us. There's so many different trials that could come. And we exist in part because we're Americans and we're the most independent, individualized civilization that's ever existed. We exist as if we're driving down the road, facing the storms of life on our own with the wherewithal to get through them. But listen, you're helpless if a tornado comes along and sweeps you off the road. There is so much in life to which we are rendered helpless. And I don't think we go through life understanding that. We are not grown adults capable of handling the buffets of life. We are newborn babies that are vulnerable to this world and this universe in ways that we don't understand. And so when Christ regards our helpless estate, it's not just our soul's inability to get itself into heaven. It's our inability to protect ourselves from the seasons of life. And it's for that that he shed his blood. It's for that that he died. And that's something that Horatio knew. That it wasn't just the helplessness of his soul, but it was our complete lack of agency to prevent ourself from suffering in the first place. And it's this simple truth, I believe, that won the day for him and wins the day for us. When Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered this too. It's the knowledge in the midst of our trials that when Jesus conquered sin and shame by dying on the cross and raising from the dead, when Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered this too. Whatever this is for you, he conquered this too. There's this great passage that I refer to a lot, Revelation chapter 21, verses 1 through 4. I won't belabor the passage here, but there's a phrase there, there's a promise that the former things will have passed away. There will be no more weeping, no more crying, no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. And I love to ruminate on what those former things are. Cancer, divorce, abuse, despair, orphans, loss, tragedy, awful phone calls, relational strife, being born to broken parents who hurt you because they're hurt. All that stuff is the former things that's passed away. And what we know is those former things, those things that will pass away, the things that exist in your life that are wearing you out and making you tired and making life so difficult right now, the things you go to sleep worrying about, the things you wake up worrying about. Whatever's waiting for you on the other end of that call one day. We can have perfect peace in those trials. Because we know that because Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered that too. We know that because he offers salvation to those who believe in his shedding of blood for them, that even when we lose them, and even when the trial claims them, that we will see them again in eternity. We know that this life is but a mist and a vapor compared to what awaits us on the other side of passing. We understand that. And so in a few minutes, in a few minutes, we're going to sing it as well together. We're going to stand and we're going to proclaim these words back to God. And so my prayer for you in preparation for this and even this morning as I've been praying about the service is that you'll be able to sing that with authenticity. That you'll be able to sing it as well. And if there is something in your life that is so hard that it's hard for you to muster the singing, that it's hard for you to muster the words, then listen to the people singing around you and let them sing on your behalf. And know, know that we can say that though peace like a river attends, when peace like a river attends our way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever our lot, God has enabled us to say, it is well, it is well with our soul. I want to finish by reading you this fourth verse. This fourth verse is not one that is often sung. But as I was reviewing the lyrics in reference to our my soul. I pray that God will whisper his peace to you this morning. Let's pray. Father, we need your perfect peace. We need your protected peace. Everyone in this room is walking through a storm of one sort or another. Everyone in this room will walk through more. And so God, when we do, I pray that we remember that you are driving and that we are resting. Help us find our rest in your perfect peace. Help us remember that whatever it is we're facing, that Jesus has conquered that too. And God, give us the courage to sing and to proclaim and to believe that even if it isn't well with us now, that it can be, and you will make it so. God, whisper your peace to us this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here and making Grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you're new this morning, I have great news for you. You've picked an excellent Sunday to begin attending Grace. I realized in this last week, we're constantly looking for ways to make ourselves better. And I realized in this last week that we have been using one-ply toilet paper in the bathrooms. I did not know this, but that is completely unacceptable. So I found out who was in charge of these purchases, and I said, we've got to do better, and they said, what should we do? And I said, go to the store and find the most expensive kind and get it. That's what we deserve at Grace. So if you're here for the first time, I got good news for you. This is a luxurious experience in the children's hallway. We did make that improvement. I'm not just making that up. This is the last part of our series in Isaiah called the Treasury of Isaiah, where we're kind of acknowledging it's 66 books. It's a ton of stuff that really would bog us down if we tried to go through the whole thing exhaustively. And so I've done my best. Jacob, don't go to the bathroom right now. It's too tempting, he says. I can't wait for him to come back in. I've already got a joke loaded. All right. That was quick. All right. Let's get it. Let's pray. Let's get it together. Okay. So we can't go through the whole book exhaustively, but we can pull out some of the more impactful scriptures and reflect on them as a body. And this was actually supposed to be a six-week series, but I wanted to extend it by a week so that I could talk about this verse in Isaiah with you. It's a short and simple verse that we'll get to in a minute, but I think it's such a hugely impactful concept, and I know of several folks in our body, in the church, who very much need the truth of this scripture today. But as we approach it, I want us to think of a memory that most of us probably have. Some of you may not have this memory for different reasons. This was something that Jen brought to my attention as I was kind of talking through this concept with her. Jen is my wife, for those that don't know. And so she was talking about when she was a little girl and they were taking a road trip and she's in the back of the car. And they did, you know, they were, she grew up in Birmingham, or Birmingham, that's how you're supposed to say it. And they would go down to Dothan for Thanksgiving. They would travel over to Memphis for Christmas. They did road trips a fair amount as children. They drove down to the Florida Panhandle every year. And so road trips were a thing. And sometimes on those road trips, you'll remember from when you were little and still now, it starts to rain, storms roll in. And sometimes it's what Bubba from Forrest Gump would call big old fat rain. It's coming down in sheets. You can't see anything. And when you're a child and you're in the back and you're peering over and you're looking, you can't see anything. You can barely see the car in front of you. And you don't know how your mom or your dad is still driving. In this case, it was her dad. And you start to get scared because it's coming down heavy and it's hard to see. People even have their hazards on, which just isn't a sign. I want to be as nice about this as I can. If you're driving in heavy rain and you put your hazards on, we're in the same rain you are. We know, okay? We know it's a treacherous condition. Just throwing that out there for you to consider, hazard people. All right. You're in the back. It's scary. And you're worried. It feels tense. It's the rain that's so loud that you can't hear and you can't talk anymore. You're just trying to weather the storm. And Jen remembers looking at her dad and seeing the placid, nonplussed expression on his face, and she was fine. He is at peace, so I am at peace. I'm looking at my dad. He's not worried about the storm. I'm not worried about the storm. And as a dad, those of you who have driven through those storms, you've done it plenty of times, you know. I've driven through storms before. I'm going to drive through storms in the future. This one's going to be fine. Even if it's the worst one, this one's going to be fine. And so his peace gave her peace, right? And what it got me to thinking about is what if we could go through life and the storms of life with the type of peace that your dad had when you were a little kid and the storms came and we're driving down the road. Well, God offers us this peace a few different places in scripture, but he talks about it first specifically in Isaiah. In this short, I think very powerful verse where Isaiah writes this about God. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. I really like that descriptor there, perfect. Not just any peace, but a perfect peace, a kind of unthreatened peace, a kind of restful peace. And when I think about that kind of peace, the way to understand it, I think about, because you guys know, I've told you before, I enjoy history. Last summer, I had the opportunity to listen to a biography on Julius Caesar. I try to always be reading a physical book and then listening to a book. I read the fun ones and I listen to the boring ones. It's the way that I get through them. So I'm listening to a biography on Julius Caesar. And they talk about within that biography this idea of Pax Romana, Roman peace. It was a thing that the Roman Empire offered to the conquered peoples. And it kind of worked like this. One of the places that Julius Caesar, he became famous in the Gallic Wars. So he went up into what we understand as modern day France and Belgium and Switzerland and that area. And there was different Gallic tribes. And the way that we think about nations and states is pretty new in the span of human history. Most everybody, particularly in Europe at that time, existed within tribes and clans. And those tribes and clans would bind together, sometimes under a successful warlord, sometimes just out of mutual desire for protection, and they would create these pacts. If you get attacked by another neighboring tribe or clan, then we will come in and we will protect you, and you offer us your protection as well. It was these agreed upon truces. We're not going to attack you, but if anyone attacks us, we'll attack them on our behalf. But these allegiances and alliances would change on a whim. Every five years, every decade, every year, there's different alliances and allegiances to keep up with. This one's attacking us, that one's attacking us. So even while you're in a peace, it's a fragile peace. It's a threatened peace. If you existed in those tribes in that day, even if it wasn't a spring when you were watching your husband or your brother or your son go off to war to defend the tribes, you were still on the lookout. You still knew that any day someone could bring word that the peace that you had has now been broken. It was a fragile peace. And so what the Roman Empire offered is to come in, and now they've conquered all the tribes. And you are now under their protection. So if someone attacks you, the weight and the force and the might of the Roman army is going to defend you. It's not just these inter-familial clashes anymore. Now they're messing with the Roman Empire. So the Roman Empire, once they conquered you, which sounds bad, one of the nice offshoots of that is you now have a protected peace. You now have a peace that there is no force strong enough to compromise. As long as you like pay your taxes and stuff. But Pax Romana was this kind of empire-wide protected, unthreatened peace. And I think that that's a profound idea for us. Because we understand what it is to exist in a fragile peace. If you have young children, you understand what fragile peace is because you send them to the playroom to give you two moments respite. And they're up there and they're fine. And then they start yelling. Someone's upset. And you go and you broker a peace. You stop playing with that. You give that back to them. You start using your head. You quit being a jerk. Everyone's fine. Okay? And then you leave. And you have five more minutes of a fragile peace until it's broken again by someone's scream. If you exist in a marriage, you know what a fragile peace is. I don't mind telling you because I can't say honestly they're infrequent, but I don't mind telling you that a couple Saturdays ago, Jen and I were enjoying a very fragile peace. Just for whatever reason, on that particular day, with other things going on in our lives, there was just something simmering under the surface all day long. Neither of us could do anything right. We were just kind of, we're at each other's throats, then we apologize and start forgetting, man, I don't even know why I'm mad. It doesn't even make any sense. And then five seconds later, someone pauses in a conversation too long after a question, and now let's get them. So it was a fragile peace. We know what fragile pieces are. And what God offers us is this protected peace, this perfect peace, this peace that is unthreatened and unmoved by forces both within and without our control. It's really this profound peace that allows us, as we go through the storms of life, to think, been through storms before we will go through storms again and this one will be fine even if it's the worst one and what's really profound about that piece is that God is the one driving we are in the back seat looking at the face of our Father who is unmoved by this storm too. This is the kind of peace that God offers his children. However, he doesn't offer it to everyone. We're going to look at who has access to this peace. But before we do, I have just a couple of reflections on what it means to have perfect peace. What is perfect peace and what are the implications for us? And if we think about it together, how can we better understand this idea of peacefulness? Well, the first thing that I would bring to your attention, the first thing that sprang to mind for me is that God's peace surpasses knowledge or understanding. God's peace surpasses knowledge or understanding. It's not going to make any sense. Paul writes about this peace in Philippians, famous passage, Philippians 4, you have the peace. When you watch someone walk with this amount of peace and clarity and tranquility, it defies understanding and logic. I think of this great story in the Old Testament in the early chapters of 1 Samuel with the high priest Eli. He's the high priest of Israel, and he's just taken in Samuel to live in the temple who's going to dedicate his life to service to the Lord. And Eli has two sons. I believe their names are Hophni and Phinehas. And they're jerks. They're absolute jerks. They're using their political power for all of the wrong reasons. They're taking advantage of taxpayers, taking advantage of the poor. They're taking advantage of women. They're doing all the despicable things that we hate when people in those positions do them. And one night, God gives Samuel a dream. And the next morning, Eli insists that Samuel tell him what that dream is. And so Samuel finally tells Eli the worst possible news any father can receive. And he says, in my dream last night, God told me that your two sons are going to die soon and they will not be in the priesthood anymore. One of them is not the next high priest. And so in one comment, in one answer, Eli learns the worst thing that any father can possibly learn. You are going to lose your children and you are going to lose your legacy. There's nothing worse than that. And Eli's response, very next verse, doesn't miss a beat, doesn't go pray about it and come back with a prepared statement. Very next verse, Eli says, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. That's a pretty remarkable piece. To receive the worst news any father can possibly receive and the response out of the gate, it is the Lord. do what seems good to him that is a peace that passes understanding that is a peace that can't be explained that is a peace that we would marvel at and it is a peace that we should be jealous of the other thing i would say about god's perfect peace, and I think that this is really important. God's peace provides rest for the soul. God's peace provides rest for our souls. There are those of you in here who came in tired this morning. You woke up exhausted. You slept eight hours and it wasn't enough. There are those of you who go to bed being kept up by the things you're worrying about. And when you wake up, your mind is racing just as fast. And when that issue gets settled, the worry monster that exists in your head finds another thing to attack and push into the forefronts of your thoughts so that you never get any rest from the anxiety that you feel and from the things about which you are worried. Some of us have carried burdens of relationships. Our marriage is cruddy. Our children are estranged or drifting. We've received a tough diagnosis. We're watching a loved one walk through a hard time and there's nothing that we can do about it. And we are exhausted. We are exhausted with worry. We're exhausted with worry about things that are outside our control. Which is why it's so important to understand that God's perfect peace gives our soul a place to rest, to stop and to shut it down and to be okay and to not worry about the next thing and to be realistic about what is within and without our control. God's perfect peace offers us rest. And for some of you, that's what I want for you this morning, is to move towards a place where you can finally slow down and rest and tell that worry monster to shut up. But God does not offer this peace indiscriminately. It is offered to everyone, but we have a part to play in the reception of this peace. If you look back at the verse, it says, you will keep in perfect peace who? Those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. God's peace is only for the steadfast and can only come through trust. God's peace is only for the steadfast, for those who persevere. Persevere in what? Persevere in their trust of the work of Jesus Christ. And we're going to talk more about that trust and exactly what we're placing it in and how that's helpful to us. But we have to understand that though this peace that God offers is offered to everyone equally, it is not offered without discrimination. There's a part that we have to play. And the part that we have to play is to trust God, is to place our faith in him. And when we do, when we truly trust, when we truly see ourselves as the little kids sitting in the back seat watching our heavenly father drive us through life, when that is our posture and we trust him and we can sit in the back and we don't have to worry about it, when that's our posture, he will give us perfect peace. And when that is your posture, the peace that you can have goes beyond understanding and is unfathomable, I believe, to the non-Christian mind. And I was trying to think of the best example of this kind of peace. I was trying to think of the best example of this kind of peace. Someone that we've seen in our lives or in history go through a remarkably difficult time and yet maintain this consistent, faithful peace despite all the circumstances. And I was reminded of the story of a man named Horatio Safford. Horatio Safford lived in the late 1800s in Chicago, and he ended up writing It Is Well, the famous hymn that a lot of us know. And a lot of you may know the story or bits and pieces of the story surrounding the penning of It Is well. It's the most famous story about how a hymn was written. But I bet that you don't know all the parts. And for some of you, you still have no clue what I'm talking about. Horatio Safford was a Christian man who lived in Chicago in the late 1800s. He was a successful lawyer. He had five children, a boy and four girls, and a wife named Ann. And in the Chicago fire of 1871, Horatio lost a vast majority of his net worth. He lost his practice, the building where his practice was. He lost his home, and he had several properties and holdings throughout the city of Chicago. He lost those too. The fire ruined him. In the wake of the fire, his four-year-old son fell to scarlet fever. So now he's lost a child. Believing that his wife and he and his daughters needed a bit of a respite, they said, let's go to England and take a deep breath over there. As they were planning their trip to England, his plans changed. Something in the States was requiring him. And so he sent his wife Anne ahead with his four daughters and said, you guys go. I'll be there in about three weeks. On the way to England, the ship carrying his family sunk. All four daughters were lost. He received a cable upon Anne's arrival in England. I alone survived. Horatio gets that news. He boards a ship, and he goes to be with Anne. On the journey over, the captain of the ship was aware of the tragedy that had befallen Horatio, and he called, he sent for him, and he said, hey, we're at about the same spot that your family was when they sank. Just wanted you to know. And Horatio sat down in the midst of that tragedy, of being a modern-day Job, where in seemingly one fell swoop, he lost his possessions and he lost his family. And he sits down and he writes the hymn. At the time it was a poem. Years later someone put it to music and it became a hymn. He writes the poem. It is well. It's the famous hymn that we know. And with that context, when you know that he's writing this on a boat over where his drowned daughters rest, having lost a son and everything he owns, going to see a wife that is as crestfallen as him, he sits down and he, listen, he writes these words. This is the first verse of it as well. He writes this, when peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot thou has taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. Cindy, leave that up there, please. Look at that. Look at that and put yourself in his shoes and think about your ability to sit down and write, when peace like a river attendeth my way and when sorrows like sea billows roll. Oh, you mean the same sea billows that just claimed your daughters? The same sea that just cost you your family? That your God created? When you feel like you have every right to be so angry, and yet you choose to sit down and say, when peace like a river attends my way, and when sorrows like sea billows like the ones that claim my family's role, whatever my lot, you have taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. How does someone write that? How is that the response to trials and to tragedy and to the storms that threaten your peace? I can only tell you how by pointing you to the second verse because he explains it to us. Though Satan should buffet. Those trials should come. Let this blessed assurance control. I love this. That Christ has regarded my helpless estate. And has shed his own blood for my soul. How does he maintain perfect peace? Because his mind is steadfast in his trust in God. How does he maintain his perfect peace? Because he knows that Jesus died for him. And what he writes about that death of Christ is so important. And I think so profound. He says, when Satan should buffet, again, a reference to the sea, buffet like the waves on the ship when it sank. When Satan should buffet, when trials should come, the ones that he's been walking through for two years, let this blessed assurance control that Christ has regarded my helpless estate and shed his own blood for my soul. And I love that word that he chooses there. I love that word helpless. Because when we think about our helplessness before God, particularly as it relates to Jesus Christ, I think we tend to put it in the context of this myopic view of the gospel in which Jesus only died to take my soul up to heaven. And so when we think about our helplessness, we think about the helplessness, what it means to be helpless to get our soul to heaven. We think about what it means to be helpless to go from dead in sin to alive in Christ, from in this temporal body to in my eternal soul. We think about our helplessness to make that jump to a perfect eternity with God, and so we need God's help. We need Jesus' help to get us there. But what I want us to think about is that is far from the only way in which we are helpless. We are, every single one of us, every single person in this room can get a call today that changes your life forever. We are one vibration in our pocket away from a profoundly different existence. And let me tell you something. You are helpless against that phone call. There is nothing you can do to prevent it. We may act like a big, tough, civilized society with an important pharmaceutical complex and the most advanced medical equipment in the world. And we can act like we can fight cancer. But we are helpless with who gets it and when they do. Even the most fastidious of us are sometimes helpless against the onslaught of that awful disease and its acquiring. As parents, we are helpless when our kid is driving down the road. Do you understand? Our fortunes could be taken. Our families could be taken. There's so many different ways that life can buffet us. There's so many different trials that could come. And we exist in part because we're Americans and we're the most independent, individualized civilization that's ever existed. We exist as if we're driving down the road, facing the storms of life on our own with the wherewithal to get through them. But listen, you're helpless if a tornado comes along and sweeps you off the road. There is so much in life to which we are rendered helpless. And I don't think we go through life understanding that. We are not grown adults capable of handling the buffets of life. We are newborn babies that are vulnerable to this world and this universe in ways that we don't understand. And so when Christ regards our helpless estate, it's not just our soul's inability to get itself into heaven. It's our inability to protect ourselves from the seasons of life. And it's for that that he shed his blood. It's for that that he died. And that's something that Horatio knew. That it wasn't just the helplessness of his soul, but it was our complete lack of agency to prevent ourself from suffering in the first place. And it's this simple truth, I believe, that won the day for him and wins the day for us. When Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered this too. It's the knowledge in the midst of our trials that when Jesus conquered sin and shame by dying on the cross and raising from the dead, when Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered this too. Whatever this is for you, he conquered this too. There's this great passage that I refer to a lot, Revelation chapter 21, verses 1 through 4. I won't belabor the passage here, but there's a phrase there, there's a promise that the former things will have passed away. There will be no more weeping, no more crying, no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. And I love to ruminate on what those former things are. Cancer, divorce, abuse, despair, orphans, loss, tragedy, awful phone calls, relational strife, being born to broken parents who hurt you because they're hurt. All that stuff is the former things that's passed away. And what we know is those former things, those things that will pass away, the things that exist in your life that are wearing you out and making you tired and making life so difficult right now, the things you go to sleep worrying about, the things you wake up worrying about. Whatever's waiting for you on the other end of that call one day. We can have perfect peace in those trials. Because we know that because Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered that too. We know that because he offers salvation to those who believe in his shedding of blood for them, that even when we lose them, and even when the trial claims them, that we will see them again in eternity. We know that this life is but a mist and a vapor compared to what awaits us on the other side of passing. We understand that. And so in a few minutes, in a few minutes, we're going to sing it as well together. We're going to stand and we're going to proclaim these words back to God. And so my prayer for you in preparation for this and even this morning as I've been praying about the service is that you'll be able to sing that with authenticity. That you'll be able to sing it as well. And if there is something in your life that is so hard that it's hard for you to muster the singing, that it's hard for you to muster the words, then listen to the people singing around you and let them sing on your behalf. And know, know that we can say that though peace like a river attends, when peace like a river attends our way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever our lot, God has enabled us to say, it is well, it is well with our soul. I want to finish by reading you this fourth verse. This fourth verse is not one that is often sung. But as I was reviewing the lyrics in reference to our my soul. I pray that God will whisper his peace to you this morning. Let's pray. Father, we need your perfect peace. We need your protected peace. Everyone in this room is walking through a storm of one sort or another. Everyone in this room will walk through more. And so God, when we do, I pray that we remember that you are driving and that we are resting. Help us find our rest in your perfect peace. Help us remember that whatever it is we're facing, that Jesus has conquered that too. And God, give us the courage to sing and to proclaim and to believe that even if it isn't well with us now, that it can be, and you will make it so. God, whisper your peace to us this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here and making Grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you're new this morning, I have great news for you. You've picked an excellent Sunday to begin attending Grace. I realized in this last week, we're constantly looking for ways to make ourselves better. And I realized in this last week that we have been using one-ply toilet paper in the bathrooms. I did not know this, but that is completely unacceptable. So I found out who was in charge of these purchases, and I said, we've got to do better, and they said, what should we do? And I said, go to the store and find the most expensive kind and get it. That's what we deserve at Grace. So if you're here for the first time, I got good news for you. This is a luxurious experience in the children's hallway. We did make that improvement. I'm not just making that up. This is the last part of our series in Isaiah called the Treasury of Isaiah, where we're kind of acknowledging it's 66 books. It's a ton of stuff that really would bog us down if we tried to go through the whole thing exhaustively. And so I've done my best. Jacob, don't go to the bathroom right now. It's too tempting, he says. I can't wait for him to come back in. I've already got a joke loaded. All right. That was quick. All right. Let's get it. Let's pray. Let's get it together. Okay. So we can't go through the whole book exhaustively, but we can pull out some of the more impactful scriptures and reflect on them as a body. And this was actually supposed to be a six-week series, but I wanted to extend it by a week so that I could talk about this verse in Isaiah with you. It's a short and simple verse that we'll get to in a minute, but I think it's such a hugely impactful concept, and I know of several folks in our body, in the church, who very much need the truth of this scripture today. But as we approach it, I want us to think of a memory that most of us probably have. Some of you may not have this memory for different reasons. This was something that Jen brought to my attention as I was kind of talking through this concept with her. Jen is my wife, for those that don't know. And so she was talking about when she was a little girl and they were taking a road trip and she's in the back of the car. And they did, you know, they were, she grew up in Birmingham, or Birmingham, that's how you're supposed to say it. And they would go down to Dothan for Thanksgiving. They would travel over to Memphis for Christmas. They did road trips a fair amount as children. They drove down to the Florida Panhandle every year. And so road trips were a thing. And sometimes on those road trips, you'll remember from when you were little and still now, it starts to rain, storms roll in. And sometimes it's what Bubba from Forrest Gump would call big old fat rain. It's coming down in sheets. You can't see anything. And when you're a child and you're in the back and you're peering over and you're looking, you can't see anything. You can barely see the car in front of you. And you don't know how your mom or your dad is still driving. In this case, it was her dad. And you start to get scared because it's coming down heavy and it's hard to see. People even have their hazards on, which just isn't a sign. I want to be as nice about this as I can. If you're driving in heavy rain and you put your hazards on, we're in the same rain you are. We know, okay? We know it's a treacherous condition. Just throwing that out there for you to consider, hazard people. All right. You're in the back. It's scary. And you're worried. It feels tense. It's the rain that's so loud that you can't hear and you can't talk anymore. You're just trying to weather the storm. And Jen remembers looking at her dad and seeing the placid, nonplussed expression on his face, and she was fine. He is at peace, so I am at peace. I'm looking at my dad. He's not worried about the storm. I'm not worried about the storm. And as a dad, those of you who have driven through those storms, you've done it plenty of times, you know. I've driven through storms before. I'm going to drive through storms in the future. This one's going to be fine. Even if it's the worst one, this one's going to be fine. And so his peace gave her peace, right? And what it got me to thinking about is what if we could go through life and the storms of life with the type of peace that your dad had when you were a little kid and the storms came and we're driving down the road. Well, God offers us this peace a few different places in scripture, but he talks about it first specifically in Isaiah. In this short, I think very powerful verse where Isaiah writes this about God. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. I really like that descriptor there, perfect. Not just any peace, but a perfect peace, a kind of unthreatened peace, a kind of restful peace. And when I think about that kind of peace, the way to understand it, I think about, because you guys know, I've told you before, I enjoy history. Last summer, I had the opportunity to listen to a biography on Julius Caesar. I try to always be reading a physical book and then listening to a book. I read the fun ones and I listen to the boring ones. It's the way that I get through them. So I'm listening to a biography on Julius Caesar. And they talk about within that biography this idea of Pax Romana, Roman peace. It was a thing that the Roman Empire offered to the conquered peoples. And it kind of worked like this. One of the places that Julius Caesar, he became famous in the Gallic Wars. So he went up into what we understand as modern day France and Belgium and Switzerland and that area. And there was different Gallic tribes. And the way that we think about nations and states is pretty new in the span of human history. Most everybody, particularly in Europe at that time, existed within tribes and clans. And those tribes and clans would bind together, sometimes under a successful warlord, sometimes just out of mutual desire for protection, and they would create these pacts. If you get attacked by another neighboring tribe or clan, then we will come in and we will protect you, and you offer us your protection as well. It was these agreed upon truces. We're not going to attack you, but if anyone attacks us, we'll attack them on our behalf. But these allegiances and alliances would change on a whim. Every five years, every decade, every year, there's different alliances and allegiances to keep up with. This one's attacking us, that one's attacking us. So even while you're in a peace, it's a fragile peace. It's a threatened peace. If you existed in those tribes in that day, even if it wasn't a spring when you were watching your husband or your brother or your son go off to war to defend the tribes, you were still on the lookout. You still knew that any day someone could bring word that the peace that you had has now been broken. It was a fragile peace. And so what the Roman Empire offered is to come in, and now they've conquered all the tribes. And you are now under their protection. So if someone attacks you, the weight and the force and the might of the Roman army is going to defend you. It's not just these inter-familial clashes anymore. Now they're messing with the Roman Empire. So the Roman Empire, once they conquered you, which sounds bad, one of the nice offshoots of that is you now have a protected peace. You now have a peace that there is no force strong enough to compromise. As long as you like pay your taxes and stuff. But Pax Romana was this kind of empire-wide protected, unthreatened peace. And I think that that's a profound idea for us. Because we understand what it is to exist in a fragile peace. If you have young children, you understand what fragile peace is because you send them to the playroom to give you two moments respite. And they're up there and they're fine. And then they start yelling. Someone's upset. And you go and you broker a peace. You stop playing with that. You give that back to them. You start using your head. You quit being a jerk. Everyone's fine. Okay? And then you leave. And you have five more minutes of a fragile peace until it's broken again by someone's scream. If you exist in a marriage, you know what a fragile peace is. I don't mind telling you because I can't say honestly they're infrequent, but I don't mind telling you that a couple Saturdays ago, Jen and I were enjoying a very fragile peace. Just for whatever reason, on that particular day, with other things going on in our lives, there was just something simmering under the surface all day long. Neither of us could do anything right. We were just kind of, we're at each other's throats, then we apologize and start forgetting, man, I don't even know why I'm mad. It doesn't even make any sense. And then five seconds later, someone pauses in a conversation too long after a question, and now let's get them. So it was a fragile peace. We know what fragile pieces are. And what God offers us is this protected peace, this perfect peace, this peace that is unthreatened and unmoved by forces both within and without our control. It's really this profound peace that allows us, as we go through the storms of life, to think, been through storms before we will go through storms again and this one will be fine even if it's the worst one and what's really profound about that piece is that God is the one driving we are in the back seat looking at the face of our Father who is unmoved by this storm too. This is the kind of peace that God offers his children. However, he doesn't offer it to everyone. We're going to look at who has access to this peace. But before we do, I have just a couple of reflections on what it means to have perfect peace. What is perfect peace and what are the implications for us? And if we think about it together, how can we better understand this idea of peacefulness? Well, the first thing that I would bring to your attention, the first thing that sprang to mind for me is that God's peace surpasses knowledge or understanding. God's peace surpasses knowledge or understanding. It's not going to make any sense. Paul writes about this peace in Philippians, famous passage, Philippians 4, you have the peace. When you watch someone walk with this amount of peace and clarity and tranquility, it defies understanding and logic. I think of this great story in the Old Testament in the early chapters of 1 Samuel with the high priest Eli. He's the high priest of Israel, and he's just taken in Samuel to live in the temple who's going to dedicate his life to service to the Lord. And Eli has two sons. I believe their names are Hophni and Phinehas. And they're jerks. They're absolute jerks. They're using their political power for all of the wrong reasons. They're taking advantage of taxpayers, taking advantage of the poor. They're taking advantage of women. They're doing all the despicable things that we hate when people in those positions do them. And one night, God gives Samuel a dream. And the next morning, Eli insists that Samuel tell him what that dream is. And so Samuel finally tells Eli the worst possible news any father can receive. And he says, in my dream last night, God told me that your two sons are going to die soon and they will not be in the priesthood anymore. One of them is not the next high priest. And so in one comment, in one answer, Eli learns the worst thing that any father can possibly learn. You are going to lose your children and you are going to lose your legacy. There's nothing worse than that. And Eli's response, very next verse, doesn't miss a beat, doesn't go pray about it and come back with a prepared statement. Very next verse, Eli says, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. That's a pretty remarkable piece. To receive the worst news any father can possibly receive and the response out of the gate, it is the Lord. do what seems good to him that is a peace that passes understanding that is a peace that can't be explained that is a peace that we would marvel at and it is a peace that we should be jealous of the other thing i would say about god's perfect peace, and I think that this is really important. God's peace provides rest for the soul. God's peace provides rest for our souls. There are those of you in here who came in tired this morning. You woke up exhausted. You slept eight hours and it wasn't enough. There are those of you who go to bed being kept up by the things you're worrying about. And when you wake up, your mind is racing just as fast. And when that issue gets settled, the worry monster that exists in your head finds another thing to attack and push into the forefronts of your thoughts so that you never get any rest from the anxiety that you feel and from the things about which you are worried. Some of us have carried burdens of relationships. Our marriage is cruddy. Our children are estranged or drifting. We've received a tough diagnosis. We're watching a loved one walk through a hard time and there's nothing that we can do about it. And we are exhausted. We are exhausted with worry. We're exhausted with worry about things that are outside our control. Which is why it's so important to understand that God's perfect peace gives our soul a place to rest, to stop and to shut it down and to be okay and to not worry about the next thing and to be realistic about what is within and without our control. God's perfect peace offers us rest. And for some of you, that's what I want for you this morning, is to move towards a place where you can finally slow down and rest and tell that worry monster to shut up. But God does not offer this peace indiscriminately. It is offered to everyone, but we have a part to play in the reception of this peace. If you look back at the verse, it says, you will keep in perfect peace who? Those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. God's peace is only for the steadfast and can only come through trust. God's peace is only for the steadfast, for those who persevere. Persevere in what? Persevere in their trust of the work of Jesus Christ. And we're going to talk more about that trust and exactly what we're placing it in and how that's helpful to us. But we have to understand that though this peace that God offers is offered to everyone equally, it is not offered without discrimination. There's a part that we have to play. And the part that we have to play is to trust God, is to place our faith in him. And when we do, when we truly trust, when we truly see ourselves as the little kids sitting in the back seat watching our heavenly father drive us through life, when that is our posture and we trust him and we can sit in the back and we don't have to worry about it, when that's our posture, he will give us perfect peace. And when that is your posture, the peace that you can have goes beyond understanding and is unfathomable, I believe, to the non-Christian mind. And I was trying to think of the best example of this kind of peace. I was trying to think of the best example of this kind of peace. Someone that we've seen in our lives or in history go through a remarkably difficult time and yet maintain this consistent, faithful peace despite all the circumstances. And I was reminded of the story of a man named Horatio Safford. Horatio Safford lived in the late 1800s in Chicago, and he ended up writing It Is Well, the famous hymn that a lot of us know. And a lot of you may know the story or bits and pieces of the story surrounding the penning of It Is well. It's the most famous story about how a hymn was written. But I bet that you don't know all the parts. And for some of you, you still have no clue what I'm talking about. Horatio Safford was a Christian man who lived in Chicago in the late 1800s. He was a successful lawyer. He had five children, a boy and four girls, and a wife named Ann. And in the Chicago fire of 1871, Horatio lost a vast majority of his net worth. He lost his practice, the building where his practice was. He lost his home, and he had several properties and holdings throughout the city of Chicago. He lost those too. The fire ruined him. In the wake of the fire, his four-year-old son fell to scarlet fever. So now he's lost a child. Believing that his wife and he and his daughters needed a bit of a respite, they said, let's go to England and take a deep breath over there. As they were planning their trip to England, his plans changed. Something in the States was requiring him. And so he sent his wife Anne ahead with his four daughters and said, you guys go. I'll be there in about three weeks. On the way to England, the ship carrying his family sunk. All four daughters were lost. He received a cable upon Anne's arrival in England. I alone survived. Horatio gets that news. He boards a ship, and he goes to be with Anne. On the journey over, the captain of the ship was aware of the tragedy that had befallen Horatio, and he called, he sent for him, and he said, hey, we're at about the same spot that your family was when they sank. Just wanted you to know. And Horatio sat down in the midst of that tragedy, of being a modern-day Job, where in seemingly one fell swoop, he lost his possessions and he lost his family. And he sits down and he writes the hymn. At the time it was a poem. Years later someone put it to music and it became a hymn. He writes the poem. It is well. It's the famous hymn that we know. And with that context, when you know that he's writing this on a boat over where his drowned daughters rest, having lost a son and everything he owns, going to see a wife that is as crestfallen as him, he sits down and he, listen, he writes these words. This is the first verse of it as well. He writes this, when peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot thou has taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. Cindy, leave that up there, please. Look at that. Look at that and put yourself in his shoes and think about your ability to sit down and write, when peace like a river attendeth my way and when sorrows like sea billows roll. Oh, you mean the same sea billows that just claimed your daughters? The same sea that just cost you your family? That your God created? When you feel like you have every right to be so angry, and yet you choose to sit down and say, when peace like a river attends my way, and when sorrows like sea billows like the ones that claim my family's role, whatever my lot, you have taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. How does someone write that? How is that the response to trials and to tragedy and to the storms that threaten your peace? I can only tell you how by pointing you to the second verse because he explains it to us. Though Satan should buffet. Those trials should come. Let this blessed assurance control. I love this. That Christ has regarded my helpless estate. And has shed his own blood for my soul. How does he maintain perfect peace? Because his mind is steadfast in his trust in God. How does he maintain his perfect peace? Because he knows that Jesus died for him. And what he writes about that death of Christ is so important. And I think so profound. He says, when Satan should buffet, again, a reference to the sea, buffet like the waves on the ship when it sank. When Satan should buffet, when trials should come, the ones that he's been walking through for two years, let this blessed assurance control that Christ has regarded my helpless estate and shed his own blood for my soul. And I love that word that he chooses there. I love that word helpless. Because when we think about our helplessness before God, particularly as it relates to Jesus Christ, I think we tend to put it in the context of this myopic view of the gospel in which Jesus only died to take my soul up to heaven. And so when we think about our helplessness, we think about the helplessness, what it means to be helpless to get our soul to heaven. We think about what it means to be helpless to go from dead in sin to alive in Christ, from in this temporal body to in my eternal soul. We think about our helplessness to make that jump to a perfect eternity with God, and so we need God's help. We need Jesus' help to get us there. But what I want us to think about is that is far from the only way in which we are helpless. We are, every single one of us, every single person in this room can get a call today that changes your life forever. We are one vibration in our pocket away from a profoundly different existence. And let me tell you something. You are helpless against that phone call. There is nothing you can do to prevent it. We may act like a big, tough, civilized society with an important pharmaceutical complex and the most advanced medical equipment in the world. And we can act like we can fight cancer. But we are helpless with who gets it and when they do. Even the most fastidious of us are sometimes helpless against the onslaught of that awful disease and its acquiring. As parents, we are helpless when our kid is driving down the road. Do you understand? Our fortunes could be taken. Our families could be taken. There's so many different ways that life can buffet us. There's so many different trials that could come. And we exist in part because we're Americans and we're the most independent, individualized civilization that's ever existed. We exist as if we're driving down the road, facing the storms of life on our own with the wherewithal to get through them. But listen, you're helpless if a tornado comes along and sweeps you off the road. There is so much in life to which we are rendered helpless. And I don't think we go through life understanding that. We are not grown adults capable of handling the buffets of life. We are newborn babies that are vulnerable to this world and this universe in ways that we don't understand. And so when Christ regards our helpless estate, it's not just our soul's inability to get itself into heaven. It's our inability to protect ourselves from the seasons of life. And it's for that that he shed his blood. It's for that that he died. And that's something that Horatio knew. That it wasn't just the helplessness of his soul, but it was our complete lack of agency to prevent ourself from suffering in the first place. And it's this simple truth, I believe, that won the day for him and wins the day for us. When Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered this too. It's the knowledge in the midst of our trials that when Jesus conquered sin and shame by dying on the cross and raising from the dead, when Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered this too. Whatever this is for you, he conquered this too. There's this great passage that I refer to a lot, Revelation chapter 21, verses 1 through 4. I won't belabor the passage here, but there's a phrase there, there's a promise that the former things will have passed away. There will be no more weeping, no more crying, no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. And I love to ruminate on what those former things are. Cancer, divorce, abuse, despair, orphans, loss, tragedy, awful phone calls, relational strife, being born to broken parents who hurt you because they're hurt. All that stuff is the former things that's passed away. And what we know is those former things, those things that will pass away, the things that exist in your life that are wearing you out and making you tired and making life so difficult right now, the things you go to sleep worrying about, the things you wake up worrying about. Whatever's waiting for you on the other end of that call one day. We can have perfect peace in those trials. Because we know that because Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered that too. We know that because he offers salvation to those who believe in his shedding of blood for them, that even when we lose them, and even when the trial claims them, that we will see them again in eternity. We know that this life is but a mist and a vapor compared to what awaits us on the other side of passing. We understand that. And so in a few minutes, in a few minutes, we're going to sing it as well together. We're going to stand and we're going to proclaim these words back to God. And so my prayer for you in preparation for this and even this morning as I've been praying about the service is that you'll be able to sing that with authenticity. That you'll be able to sing it as well. And if there is something in your life that is so hard that it's hard for you to muster the singing, that it's hard for you to muster the words, then listen to the people singing around you and let them sing on your behalf. And know, know that we can say that though peace like a river attends, when peace like a river attends our way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever our lot, God has enabled us to say, it is well, it is well with our soul. I want to finish by reading you this fourth verse. This fourth verse is not one that is often sung. But as I was reviewing the lyrics in reference to our my soul. I pray that God will whisper his peace to you this morning. Let's pray. Father, we need your perfect peace. We need your protected peace. Everyone in this room is walking through a storm of one sort or another. Everyone in this room will walk through more. And so God, when we do, I pray that we remember that you are driving and that we are resting. Help us find our rest in your perfect peace. Help us remember that whatever it is we're facing, that Jesus has conquered that too. And God, give us the courage to sing and to proclaim and to believe that even if it isn't well with us now, that it can be, and you will make it so. God, whisper your peace to us this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.