The Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. If you're joining us online, thank you for doing that. If you're catching up later in the week, we appreciate you following along. This is our third part in our series going through the book of Revelation. There's a lot of questions there, a lot of curiosity, a lot of mystery. And so I want to do the best that I can as we move through the series to help make Revelation more approachable and understandable for all of us, whether that means pulling back from the details and the weeds so that we can actually see the forest and get the point of this amazing book, or whether it means making it approachable so that we can actually understand what's happening throughout the book. Last week, my dad carried the weight for us. He did a phenomenal job. Many of you have said kind things to me about him, and I appreciate that. I was as surprised as the rest of us that he did such a good job. I was watching from the cabin that I was at going, huh, look at this. The dude's good at it. So that was really, really cool and a neat moment for us. So I appreciate you guys indulging that. And he did a good job talking about Revelation 4 and 5. And the point that he made was that God in chapter 4 is seated on the throne and that Jesus, the Lamb of God, is the one worthy to open the seals. That's what happens in 4 and 5. But there's a question that leads into the rest of the book of why is Jesus, as the Lamb of God, stepping forward to open a seal? What's the deal there? What's going on? And it's actually an important part in the narrative of Revelation, what's happening in 4 and 5. And basically, what's happening in 4 and 5 is that Jesus is stepping up to begin the tribulation period. This is when the tribulation begins. It's the official start of it. Now, some of you know that word tribulation. Others of you may not. Maybe we can define it. Maybe we kind of have a loose knowledge of what it is. But what Jesus is doing in Revelation 4 and 5 is he is beginning the tribulation period. And in Revelation chapters 6 through 17 describes this tribulation period. So the way that we're going to approach it as a church is for the next three weeks, we're going to talk about this together. This morning, we're going to define the tribulation. Next week, we're going to look at the events of the tribulation. And then the week after that, we're going to look at the signs in the tribulation. Because this is where it gets sticky. This is the tough part. Revelation 1 through 5, that's easy. We just did that. The last two sermons, Jesus comes back. Hooray. God establishes new heaven and new earth. Those are easy. These middle three, boy, they're tricky. They are tricky. This is where if you have questions, what does this mean? What happens? In what order? I'm genuinely interested in them. So this week or next week, as you're reading through Revelation, hopefully you're following along in the reading plan, or maybe there's been something rattling around for a long time. If there's something that you in particular want me to address and say, hey, this is how we understand this event, then let me know, email me. And I will absolutely, if I can't address it in the sermon, I'll figure out how to answer you personally. But I would love your questions because the thing is, if you're asking it, so are five other people, at least. So ask away and we'll kind of cobble this thing together over the next three weeks as we focus on this tribulation period. So this morning, I want to define the tribulation and what it is, and then ask, why is it necessary? So that's the first thing to think about. What is the tribulation and why is it necessary? Why does it have to happen? And the tribulation is quite simply, the most abrupt way to put it is, the tribulation is the seven-year process of God pouring out his earned wrath and reclaiming what is rightfully his. The tribulation process is a seven-year process of God pouring out his earned wrath on creation and reclaiming what is rightfully his. I will be up front with you and tell you, this sermon this week is the least excited to preach a sermon I have been in my life. Okay. I did not wake up going, yes, wrath of God. This is super fun in 2021. I'm actually getting on a plane this afternoon to go to Atlanta and just be around the stadium during the game in case they win tonight. And it is really hard for me to not focus on how excited I am for that and appropriately address the wrath of God in the service this morning. As we began the series, I knew that this was coming. And to me, it's the hardest part of Revelation. Not interpreting what's going to happen and trying to figure everything out, but for a 21st century audience, to actually, for us to wrap our head around the fact that our God is a wrathful God, that he is a just God. And so this morning, as I was preparing this week, I realized we can't really go on and discuss the events of the tribulation until we adequately understand the wrath of God that's seen in the tribulation. So when we ask, why is the tribulation necessary? Why is it necessary for God to pour out his wrath on his creation at the end of time? Well, the first answer that I would offer you is that God's wrath is necessary because his justice requires it. God's wrath is necessary because his justice requires it. My dad did a great job last week of defining holiness in a way that I had never thought of before when he was talking about the angels around the throne and they're singing to God. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And what does that word holy mean? Well, he defined it as being the intersection of God's love and God's justice. That they are perfectly balanced in God. And we love God's love. We love God's love. But we don't talk a lot about God's justice. And the reality is that his person, his very essence, requires a balance of love and justice. And the further reality is we don't want a God creator sovereign over all of the universe who isn't just, who isn't capable of wrath. Our own sensibilities insist that our God would be just. Here's what I mean. The Braves are playing the Astros in the World Series. The whole country is a Braves fan right now because everybody hates the Astros, right? They are the patriots of baseball. Everyone hates them. Now, here's why everyone hates the Astros. For those of you who don't know baseball and may not be informed about this, back in 2017, the Astros had a great season and a great team, and they won the World Series. And they kind of came out of nowhere when they did it, and I think they may have won the next year or the year previous, I'm not sure, but two years around 2017, they won the World Series. And it was kind of fun, because they were kind of a cool team, and they were kind of fun to cheer for. But then it came out that they were cheating. Like, not cheating a little bit. They were cheating a lot of it. And that's how they won those two World Series. And then what happened was, what did baseball do? What did the commissioner do? Did the commissioner bring wrath and justice upon the Astros? No, he'd like find the owner and I think the coach got in trouble. But none of the players who actually cheated got punished. And so everyone hates the Astros because it wasn't fair. It's not right. They cheated, they got caught, and nothing happened to them. And our senses of justice cry out and say, that's not fair. To the extent that, and I was so proud of my hometown, when their best player came up to bat in game three of the World Series, first time he had to play in Atlanta, the whole stadium broke out with chants of cheater, cheater, cheater. I'm like, yes, this is great. Our sense of justice is offended when things are not fairly litigated. To think about it in a more applicable personal way. Parents, if somebody did something to genuinely harm your child in a way that requires you to be in court and to prosecute them. And they are absolutely guilty. How offended would you be if the judge did not display justice and said, you know what? That wasn't you. You didn't mean it. You're off the hook. No, we want a just judge in the same way we want a just God. His nature requires it. And our senses of fairness and justice demand it. The uncomfortable side of that justice is his wrath. And make no mistake, when you read the middle sections of the book of Revelation, it reads very much like the Old Testament prophets. Two times in the book of Revelation, the phrase, the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God is used. In Revelation 19, when Jesus comes back, it says that he is going to tread the press of the fury of the wrath of God, which tells us that God's wrath does not only exist, but it is furious. We are told at a different point that God will send an angel with a sickle to take a third of humanity like grapes and put them in a wine press and press them with his fury and his wrath. The wrath of God in Revelation is unavoidable. And to pretend like it's not there is dishonest and unfair. So we have to come to grips with this existence and learn how to accept that this is a part of the God that we worship. To do that, I think that we can listen to the voices of the martyrs in Revelation chapter 6 to begin not only to understand that God's justice requires wrath and that we want a just God, but also to begin to understand the source of this wrath. It's helpful to listen to the voice of the martyrs in Revelation 6. This to me is one of the more poignant moments in all of scripture, and I'll tell you why in a second. Revelation chapter 6 verses 9 through 11. So there's this poignant scene in heaven. As Jesus begins to open the seals, and if you don't understand what the seals are, that's all right. We're going to talk about those next week. The rest of Revelation is scheduled out through seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls. And we're going to talk about that progression next week. But for this one, as this seal was opened, then there's martyrs under the throne at the altar of God. And these martyrs are men and women who have died for their faith. They were killed because they professed a faith in God. And they cry out, how much longer are you going to wait before you avenge us, God? We were killed for you. You saw the people from heaven. You know who murdered us. When are you going to punish the people who are harming your children? And this voice, the voice of the martyrs, echoes. And it echoes particularly with the original audience. Because I told you in week one that the people who received this letter endured great persecution. The generations of the church that immediately followed this time around 90, 95 AD endured tremendous persecution. To be a Christian, to proclaim and claim the gospel of faith in Jesus was to put your life at risk, was to put your family at risk. So the people reading this letter and receiving it, they cried out with the martyrs too. Yeah, God, win. How much longer? And here's how much longer before you avenge. You saw them take our dad. You saw them kill our mom. You saw them take my wife. When are you going to make that okay? And if we pay attention, what we see is that we cry out with the martyrs as well. We also cry out with the martyrs. Paul talks about this in Romans when he says in Romans chapter 8 that all of creation groans for the return of our king. When we have that sense that this isn't right, most of you know that part of mine and Jen's story is that at the end of last year, her dad lost a two-year battle to pancreatic cancer. Her dad was the best man I ever knew. And I will always be sad that Lily doesn't get to experience the glow of his love in her life. I will always be sad that his grandson will only get to meet him in eternity. And so we cry out, God, he loved you. He served you. He loves his grandkids. He cried when we told him that we were pregnant because he knew we wouldn't meet that one. How is this okay with you? And that's just ours. You guys have it too. Where you cry out with the martyrs. God, you could have done something and you didn't. When are you going to fix it? When are you going to make this okay? How are you going to make this right? And it's not an insistent thing. It's not a precocious thing. We don't walk into the throne room of God and demand. We sit at the altar and we humbly wonder and plea like, God, how much longer are you going to watch this? And we need to realize that that voice has been echoing throughout the centuries, not just for the things that we endure that seem unfair or seem like God could have prevented it and he didn't, but for all the things going on over the course of history. God sat in heaven and he watched the Holocaust. And the voice of the martyr says, God, how much longer? He sat in heaven and he watches the slave trade. That still exists. And we think, how much longer, God? He's seen the atrocities of people claiming his name in the Crusades. Evil meted out over an entire continent, falsely claiming him. How much longer, God? So at the beginning, when I define the tribulation as God pouring out his earned wrath, that's what I mean. He's been waiting. He is angered by the evil things that happen. He is angered and hurt by school shootings. He is angered that our sin has broken down the world in such a way that we lose people too early from disease. He's angered by that. He's hurt by that, that Satan has been loosed into his perfect creation and the people who listen to his voice, including us, have perverted it and made it something that it is not. He's angered by that. He's angered by us when we trample on his gospel and we presume upon his grace and we act like our actions have no consequences because we're so used to hearing about the love of God that we forget about the wrath of God. And it angers him. God says that vengeance is his, and he will take it. He's simply waiting. And when the martyrs ask him, how much longer are you going to wait to do, as I always say, to make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue? When will that happen, God? His response is, rest a little while longer because there's still more to be added to your numbers. It's not time yet, but it's coming. And so we see in listening to the voice of the martyrs and in seeing the response of God that part of the necessity of God's wrath and his tribulation is that God's wrath is actually working to draw people to him. His wrath is working to wake people up and to draw them into his eternity. If there are still martyrs who have yet to be added to the number in Revelation chapter six, then what it means is there are people in the tribulation period actively sharing their faith so that more people might know Jesus, so that more people might spend eternity in heaven. If you flip the page to the next chapter, what you see is a mass of humanity being ushered into heaven. And John leans over to the angel next to him and he goes, who are they? And he says, those are all the people who have accepted Christ who are coming out of the tribulation. God is using his wrath as a tool to wake people up and draw them near to him. And if that sounds like a contradiction, then let's think of it this way. In our house, we try to be calm. I try, best I can, not to raise my voice. Except at Jen. Boy, howdy. I really get after Jen. I'm just messing around. I try not to raise my voice. Now, sometimes, Lily, she's five. She's very much like me. And so, I can't help it. But most of the time, I'm pretty calm with her. And the reason I try not to raise my voice is, first of all, I want to set that model for her. But second, I want it to matter when I do. We raise our voice all the time. Eventually, I mean, you can see these kids. They're in the store. Their mom's yelling at them. They couldn't care less. Because mom yells at them all the time. So I want it to matter when I raise my voice. Because when I raise my voice to Lily, sometimes I do it because it's the only thing left that's going to get her attention. Right, parents? I tell her to stop. Don't do that. Put that down. We're not going to talk about that. I try to be as calm as I can. But sometimes I have to get stern with her. And when I get stern with her, I'm doing it to get her attention. Because what I'm saying matters. The same is true of God. Sometimes God has to get stern with his children because he's been trying to get our attention in other ways and we're not listening. So sometimes God gets forceful with us because you parents know if you pick your moments there, you can really get your kids' attention simply by being more stern with them. So God also knows, and we see it in the Old Testament, that sometimes to get the attention of His people, He raises His voice. He does not do it to intimidate or scare us, although that should be our reaction. He does it to draw us near to him, to get our attention. He does it because his biggest priority in all of creation is that you and I would spend eternity with him. That's why Paul writes that even though we endure pain for a little while, he considers it nothing compared to the glory that he's going to experience in eternity. It's nothing. It doesn't matter. So is God, and Jesus tells us, listen, if your eye's causing you to sin, gouge it out. It's better to enter into heaven with one eye than it is to have both eyes and not be in eternity with God. So sometimes God uses his wrath and his stern voice to get our attention because his priority is that we would spend eternity with him. This may be why Solomon writes in Proverbs chapter 9 that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Many of you have probably heard this verse before. And when I was growing up and we would come across this verse, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, we were kind of told that fear there is an awe, it's a respect. It's not being afraid of our Heavenly Father because our Heavenly Father is good. It's being in awe of Him, and that's the beginning of wisdom. No, no, no. It's being fall on your face, terrified of the Father. It's actual fear. On the holiday that we celebrate fear, this is actual fear. Being fearful of our almighty God creator in heaven. Being scared of what he can do to us if he were to so choose. Being actually fearful of him. Reading through the wrath of God that will be poured out on creation and going, that sounds terrible. And God goes, yeah, because here's the thing. As we go through Revelation and we see God's wrath meted out on creation, please understand, the only people who experience God's wrath are the ones who don't believe in it. The only people who experience the wrath of God are the ones who have said, please God, or the ones who have not said, please God, spare me. At any point, if we look to God and we say, God, you're God and I'm not, and I trust you, please spare me your wrath. He does. The only ones left to experience the wrath at the end of the tribulation, I am convinced, are those who have chosen obstinately to refuse to submit to God in faith. And so he pours out his wrath. And he pours out his wrath because God in his goodness sent his son to rescue us up to heaven to spend eternity with him. And we obstinately, some of us choose to not believe in the son that he sent. Instead, we spit on it. Instead, we don't believe it. Instead, we pass it off like a fairy tale. And one day, every knee will bow before our God in heaven. And the only ones who will experience God's wrath are the ones that have to be forced to bow. And it is not, to me, until we understand that, that we can begin to appreciate God's love for us. This is why wisdom begins in, oh no, God created the universe and I'm terrified of him. And God says, good, but guess what? I created it so that you could spend eternity with me and I love you. And all you have to do to be spared from that wrath is ask me. As I sank into this topic for this week, I began to reflect on the wrath of God. It actually occurred to me, something that I've long understood, but something that fits very well into this sermon and this idea right now, which is it is impossible to adequately appreciate God's love without being in awe of his wrath. It is impossible to adequately appreciate God's love without being in awe of his wrath. And I think it's actually good for us to take a Sunday and confront the fact that our God is just and his justice necessitates wrath. And for us to exist and tremble and for us to hear it said, yeah, we want to be as nice as possible to everyone, but one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. And you do not want to be made to bow against your will. We submit to God now and we spend eternity with him later. And I think it's good for us to sink into that reality because we talk a lot about the love of God and we should. We talk about our good, good father and we should and we talk about his grace and we talk about his forgiveness and we talk about his mercy and we should. Those things are good and trust me, I like preaching about those things way more. But I think that sometimes we talk so much about God's love for us that we forget he has every right to smite us. All the times that we've trampled on the gospel. All the times that I've presumed upon God's grace, knowing he would forgive me. All the times I've cheapened the blood of Christ on the cross with my action and my attitude and my obstinance. We were in here on Tuesday morning for Bible study and I was sitting right here and over there was a roach. And I noticed it and Shane noticed it, but it was a roach. And we're like, whatever, I didn't care. It was like 620. Live it up, roach. But when Britt Vinson, who was dressed up like a cowboy that day, noticed it. You like that, Kyle? Okay. All right, pal. There you go. I love Kyle. When Britt Vinson in his cowboy boots saw the roach, he got up. That was the end of that roach. We live our lives as if God can't do that to us. We live our lives as if that's not a daily reality. And we live our lives as if it would somehow be unfair if he did. When it's not. The most fair and just thing for him to do is to take us. Is to die for our sin. That is the most just thing. But because his incredible love balances his incredible justice, he sent his son so he doesn't have to smite us, and we walk around acting like that's not a reality when it is. And so it's good for a Sunday for us to sink into the wrath of God and to appreciate it. Because I wonder about me and maybe about you if we feel stagnant in our walk with the Lord. If we heard Steve talk about being on fire for Jesus and it's been a while since we have experienced that. If we give mental assent to the fact that God loves us, but we are not warmed by it daily and overwhelmed by the magnitude of the grace of his love for us, maybe it's in part because we haven't sat and thought for a minute in a long time about the wrath that his love is balancing out. About what he's sparing us from. About what it means for him to have every right to claim us and choose in his goodness not to. So my hope and my prayer this week has been that by focusing on God's wrath, it would actually inexplicably draw us closer to him and help us more deeply appreciate the love that he lavishes upon us and the things that John writes, like from his fullness he has bestowed upon us grace upon grace. I hope we can appreciate those sentiments a little more deeply today and feel God's love a little more closely today by reflecting on his tremendous wrath as well. Let's pray. God, thank you for your justice. Thank you for your terrible and furious wrath. We know that we would not want a God that was not capable of those things, whose character didn't require them. Father, I pray that if anyone can hear my voice, whether it's today or in the future, who doesn't know you, who has not bowed their knee, I pray that they would cry out to you today. That they would claim Jesus as their Savior and you as their Father. That they would simply ask to be spared of your wrath, which you are so anxious to do. God, would we be brought more close to you? And God, would we walk more fearfully of you? To give us a greater depth of appreciation of your love for us. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.
The Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. If you're joining us online, thank you for doing that. If you're catching up later in the week, we appreciate you following along. This is our third part in our series going through the book of Revelation. There's a lot of questions there, a lot of curiosity, a lot of mystery. And so I want to do the best that I can as we move through the series to help make Revelation more approachable and understandable for all of us, whether that means pulling back from the details and the weeds so that we can actually see the forest and get the point of this amazing book, or whether it means making it approachable so that we can actually understand what's happening throughout the book. Last week, my dad carried the weight for us. He did a phenomenal job. Many of you have said kind things to me about him, and I appreciate that. I was as surprised as the rest of us that he did such a good job. I was watching from the cabin that I was at going, huh, look at this. The dude's good at it. So that was really, really cool and a neat moment for us. So I appreciate you guys indulging that. And he did a good job talking about Revelation 4 and 5. And the point that he made was that God in chapter 4 is seated on the throne and that Jesus, the Lamb of God, is the one worthy to open the seals. That's what happens in 4 and 5. But there's a question that leads into the rest of the book of why is Jesus, as the Lamb of God, stepping forward to open a seal? What's the deal there? What's going on? And it's actually an important part in the narrative of Revelation, what's happening in 4 and 5. And basically, what's happening in 4 and 5 is that Jesus is stepping up to begin the tribulation period. This is when the tribulation begins. It's the official start of it. Now, some of you know that word tribulation. Others of you may not. Maybe we can define it. Maybe we kind of have a loose knowledge of what it is. But what Jesus is doing in Revelation 4 and 5 is he is beginning the tribulation period. And in Revelation chapters 6 through 17 describes this tribulation period. So the way that we're going to approach it as a church is for the next three weeks, we're going to talk about this together. This morning, we're going to define the tribulation. Next week, we're going to look at the events of the tribulation. And then the week after that, we're going to look at the signs in the tribulation. Because this is where it gets sticky. This is the tough part. Revelation 1 through 5, that's easy. We just did that. The last two sermons, Jesus comes back. Hooray. God establishes new heaven and new earth. Those are easy. These middle three, boy, they're tricky. They are tricky. This is where if you have questions, what does this mean? What happens? In what order? I'm genuinely interested in them. So this week or next week, as you're reading through Revelation, hopefully you're following along in the reading plan, or maybe there's been something rattling around for a long time. If there's something that you in particular want me to address and say, hey, this is how we understand this event, then let me know, email me. And I will absolutely, if I can't address it in the sermon, I'll figure out how to answer you personally. But I would love your questions because the thing is, if you're asking it, so are five other people, at least. So ask away and we'll kind of cobble this thing together over the next three weeks as we focus on this tribulation period. So this morning, I want to define the tribulation and what it is, and then ask, why is it necessary? So that's the first thing to think about. What is the tribulation and why is it necessary? Why does it have to happen? And the tribulation is quite simply, the most abrupt way to put it is, the tribulation is the seven-year process of God pouring out his earned wrath and reclaiming what is rightfully his. The tribulation process is a seven-year process of God pouring out his earned wrath on creation and reclaiming what is rightfully his. I will be up front with you and tell you, this sermon this week is the least excited to preach a sermon I have been in my life. Okay. I did not wake up going, yes, wrath of God. This is super fun in 2021. I'm actually getting on a plane this afternoon to go to Atlanta and just be around the stadium during the game in case they win tonight. And it is really hard for me to not focus on how excited I am for that and appropriately address the wrath of God in the service this morning. As we began the series, I knew that this was coming. And to me, it's the hardest part of Revelation. Not interpreting what's going to happen and trying to figure everything out, but for a 21st century audience, to actually, for us to wrap our head around the fact that our God is a wrathful God, that he is a just God. And so this morning, as I was preparing this week, I realized we can't really go on and discuss the events of the tribulation until we adequately understand the wrath of God that's seen in the tribulation. So when we ask, why is the tribulation necessary? Why is it necessary for God to pour out his wrath on his creation at the end of time? Well, the first answer that I would offer you is that God's wrath is necessary because his justice requires it. God's wrath is necessary because his justice requires it. My dad did a great job last week of defining holiness in a way that I had never thought of before when he was talking about the angels around the throne and they're singing to God. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And what does that word holy mean? Well, he defined it as being the intersection of God's love and God's justice. That they are perfectly balanced in God. And we love God's love. We love God's love. But we don't talk a lot about God's justice. And the reality is that his person, his very essence, requires a balance of love and justice. And the further reality is we don't want a God creator sovereign over all of the universe who isn't just, who isn't capable of wrath. Our own sensibilities insist that our God would be just. Here's what I mean. The Braves are playing the Astros in the World Series. The whole country is a Braves fan right now because everybody hates the Astros, right? They are the patriots of baseball. Everyone hates them. Now, here's why everyone hates the Astros. For those of you who don't know baseball and may not be informed about this, back in 2017, the Astros had a great season and a great team, and they won the World Series. And they kind of came out of nowhere when they did it, and I think they may have won the next year or the year previous, I'm not sure, but two years around 2017, they won the World Series. And it was kind of fun, because they were kind of a cool team, and they were kind of fun to cheer for. But then it came out that they were cheating. Like, not cheating a little bit. They were cheating a lot of it. And that's how they won those two World Series. And then what happened was, what did baseball do? What did the commissioner do? Did the commissioner bring wrath and justice upon the Astros? No, he'd like find the owner and I think the coach got in trouble. But none of the players who actually cheated got punished. And so everyone hates the Astros because it wasn't fair. It's not right. They cheated, they got caught, and nothing happened to them. And our senses of justice cry out and say, that's not fair. To the extent that, and I was so proud of my hometown, when their best player came up to bat in game three of the World Series, first time he had to play in Atlanta, the whole stadium broke out with chants of cheater, cheater, cheater. I'm like, yes, this is great. Our sense of justice is offended when things are not fairly litigated. To think about it in a more applicable personal way. Parents, if somebody did something to genuinely harm your child in a way that requires you to be in court and to prosecute them. And they are absolutely guilty. How offended would you be if the judge did not display justice and said, you know what? That wasn't you. You didn't mean it. You're off the hook. No, we want a just judge in the same way we want a just God. His nature requires it. And our senses of fairness and justice demand it. The uncomfortable side of that justice is his wrath. And make no mistake, when you read the middle sections of the book of Revelation, it reads very much like the Old Testament prophets. Two times in the book of Revelation, the phrase, the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God is used. In Revelation 19, when Jesus comes back, it says that he is going to tread the press of the fury of the wrath of God, which tells us that God's wrath does not only exist, but it is furious. We are told at a different point that God will send an angel with a sickle to take a third of humanity like grapes and put them in a wine press and press them with his fury and his wrath. The wrath of God in Revelation is unavoidable. And to pretend like it's not there is dishonest and unfair. So we have to come to grips with this existence and learn how to accept that this is a part of the God that we worship. To do that, I think that we can listen to the voices of the martyrs in Revelation chapter 6 to begin not only to understand that God's justice requires wrath and that we want a just God, but also to begin to understand the source of this wrath. It's helpful to listen to the voice of the martyrs in Revelation 6. This to me is one of the more poignant moments in all of scripture, and I'll tell you why in a second. Revelation chapter 6 verses 9 through 11. So there's this poignant scene in heaven. As Jesus begins to open the seals, and if you don't understand what the seals are, that's all right. We're going to talk about those next week. The rest of Revelation is scheduled out through seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls. And we're going to talk about that progression next week. But for this one, as this seal was opened, then there's martyrs under the throne at the altar of God. And these martyrs are men and women who have died for their faith. They were killed because they professed a faith in God. And they cry out, how much longer are you going to wait before you avenge us, God? We were killed for you. You saw the people from heaven. You know who murdered us. When are you going to punish the people who are harming your children? And this voice, the voice of the martyrs, echoes. And it echoes particularly with the original audience. Because I told you in week one that the people who received this letter endured great persecution. The generations of the church that immediately followed this time around 90, 95 AD endured tremendous persecution. To be a Christian, to proclaim and claim the gospel of faith in Jesus was to put your life at risk, was to put your family at risk. So the people reading this letter and receiving it, they cried out with the martyrs too. Yeah, God, win. How much longer? And here's how much longer before you avenge. You saw them take our dad. You saw them kill our mom. You saw them take my wife. When are you going to make that okay? And if we pay attention, what we see is that we cry out with the martyrs as well. We also cry out with the martyrs. Paul talks about this in Romans when he says in Romans chapter 8 that all of creation groans for the return of our king. When we have that sense that this isn't right, most of you know that part of mine and Jen's story is that at the end of last year, her dad lost a two-year battle to pancreatic cancer. Her dad was the best man I ever knew. And I will always be sad that Lily doesn't get to experience the glow of his love in her life. I will always be sad that his grandson will only get to meet him in eternity. And so we cry out, God, he loved you. He served you. He loves his grandkids. He cried when we told him that we were pregnant because he knew we wouldn't meet that one. How is this okay with you? And that's just ours. You guys have it too. Where you cry out with the martyrs. God, you could have done something and you didn't. When are you going to fix it? When are you going to make this okay? How are you going to make this right? And it's not an insistent thing. It's not a precocious thing. We don't walk into the throne room of God and demand. We sit at the altar and we humbly wonder and plea like, God, how much longer are you going to watch this? And we need to realize that that voice has been echoing throughout the centuries, not just for the things that we endure that seem unfair or seem like God could have prevented it and he didn't, but for all the things going on over the course of history. God sat in heaven and he watched the Holocaust. And the voice of the martyr says, God, how much longer? He sat in heaven and he watches the slave trade. That still exists. And we think, how much longer, God? He's seen the atrocities of people claiming his name in the Crusades. Evil meted out over an entire continent, falsely claiming him. How much longer, God? So at the beginning, when I define the tribulation as God pouring out his earned wrath, that's what I mean. He's been waiting. He is angered by the evil things that happen. He is angered and hurt by school shootings. He is angered that our sin has broken down the world in such a way that we lose people too early from disease. He's angered by that. He's hurt by that, that Satan has been loosed into his perfect creation and the people who listen to his voice, including us, have perverted it and made it something that it is not. He's angered by that. He's angered by us when we trample on his gospel and we presume upon his grace and we act like our actions have no consequences because we're so used to hearing about the love of God that we forget about the wrath of God. And it angers him. God says that vengeance is his, and he will take it. He's simply waiting. And when the martyrs ask him, how much longer are you going to wait to do, as I always say, to make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue? When will that happen, God? His response is, rest a little while longer because there's still more to be added to your numbers. It's not time yet, but it's coming. And so we see in listening to the voice of the martyrs and in seeing the response of God that part of the necessity of God's wrath and his tribulation is that God's wrath is actually working to draw people to him. His wrath is working to wake people up and to draw them into his eternity. If there are still martyrs who have yet to be added to the number in Revelation chapter six, then what it means is there are people in the tribulation period actively sharing their faith so that more people might know Jesus, so that more people might spend eternity in heaven. If you flip the page to the next chapter, what you see is a mass of humanity being ushered into heaven. And John leans over to the angel next to him and he goes, who are they? And he says, those are all the people who have accepted Christ who are coming out of the tribulation. God is using his wrath as a tool to wake people up and draw them near to him. And if that sounds like a contradiction, then let's think of it this way. In our house, we try to be calm. I try, best I can, not to raise my voice. Except at Jen. Boy, howdy. I really get after Jen. I'm just messing around. I try not to raise my voice. Now, sometimes, Lily, she's five. She's very much like me. And so, I can't help it. But most of the time, I'm pretty calm with her. And the reason I try not to raise my voice is, first of all, I want to set that model for her. But second, I want it to matter when I do. We raise our voice all the time. Eventually, I mean, you can see these kids. They're in the store. Their mom's yelling at them. They couldn't care less. Because mom yells at them all the time. So I want it to matter when I raise my voice. Because when I raise my voice to Lily, sometimes I do it because it's the only thing left that's going to get her attention. Right, parents? I tell her to stop. Don't do that. Put that down. We're not going to talk about that. I try to be as calm as I can. But sometimes I have to get stern with her. And when I get stern with her, I'm doing it to get her attention. Because what I'm saying matters. The same is true of God. Sometimes God has to get stern with his children because he's been trying to get our attention in other ways and we're not listening. So sometimes God gets forceful with us because you parents know if you pick your moments there, you can really get your kids' attention simply by being more stern with them. So God also knows, and we see it in the Old Testament, that sometimes to get the attention of His people, He raises His voice. He does not do it to intimidate or scare us, although that should be our reaction. He does it to draw us near to him, to get our attention. He does it because his biggest priority in all of creation is that you and I would spend eternity with him. That's why Paul writes that even though we endure pain for a little while, he considers it nothing compared to the glory that he's going to experience in eternity. It's nothing. It doesn't matter. So is God, and Jesus tells us, listen, if your eye's causing you to sin, gouge it out. It's better to enter into heaven with one eye than it is to have both eyes and not be in eternity with God. So sometimes God uses his wrath and his stern voice to get our attention because his priority is that we would spend eternity with him. This may be why Solomon writes in Proverbs chapter 9 that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Many of you have probably heard this verse before. And when I was growing up and we would come across this verse, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, we were kind of told that fear there is an awe, it's a respect. It's not being afraid of our Heavenly Father because our Heavenly Father is good. It's being in awe of Him, and that's the beginning of wisdom. No, no, no. It's being fall on your face, terrified of the Father. It's actual fear. On the holiday that we celebrate fear, this is actual fear. Being fearful of our almighty God creator in heaven. Being scared of what he can do to us if he were to so choose. Being actually fearful of him. Reading through the wrath of God that will be poured out on creation and going, that sounds terrible. And God goes, yeah, because here's the thing. As we go through Revelation and we see God's wrath meted out on creation, please understand, the only people who experience God's wrath are the ones who don't believe in it. The only people who experience the wrath of God are the ones who have said, please God, or the ones who have not said, please God, spare me. At any point, if we look to God and we say, God, you're God and I'm not, and I trust you, please spare me your wrath. He does. The only ones left to experience the wrath at the end of the tribulation, I am convinced, are those who have chosen obstinately to refuse to submit to God in faith. And so he pours out his wrath. And he pours out his wrath because God in his goodness sent his son to rescue us up to heaven to spend eternity with him. And we obstinately, some of us choose to not believe in the son that he sent. Instead, we spit on it. Instead, we don't believe it. Instead, we pass it off like a fairy tale. And one day, every knee will bow before our God in heaven. And the only ones who will experience God's wrath are the ones that have to be forced to bow. And it is not, to me, until we understand that, that we can begin to appreciate God's love for us. This is why wisdom begins in, oh no, God created the universe and I'm terrified of him. And God says, good, but guess what? I created it so that you could spend eternity with me and I love you. And all you have to do to be spared from that wrath is ask me. As I sank into this topic for this week, I began to reflect on the wrath of God. It actually occurred to me, something that I've long understood, but something that fits very well into this sermon and this idea right now, which is it is impossible to adequately appreciate God's love without being in awe of his wrath. It is impossible to adequately appreciate God's love without being in awe of his wrath. And I think it's actually good for us to take a Sunday and confront the fact that our God is just and his justice necessitates wrath. And for us to exist and tremble and for us to hear it said, yeah, we want to be as nice as possible to everyone, but one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. And you do not want to be made to bow against your will. We submit to God now and we spend eternity with him later. And I think it's good for us to sink into that reality because we talk a lot about the love of God and we should. We talk about our good, good father and we should and we talk about his grace and we talk about his forgiveness and we talk about his mercy and we should. Those things are good and trust me, I like preaching about those things way more. But I think that sometimes we talk so much about God's love for us that we forget he has every right to smite us. All the times that we've trampled on the gospel. All the times that I've presumed upon God's grace, knowing he would forgive me. All the times I've cheapened the blood of Christ on the cross with my action and my attitude and my obstinance. We were in here on Tuesday morning for Bible study and I was sitting right here and over there was a roach. And I noticed it and Shane noticed it, but it was a roach. And we're like, whatever, I didn't care. It was like 620. Live it up, roach. But when Britt Vinson, who was dressed up like a cowboy that day, noticed it. You like that, Kyle? Okay. All right, pal. There you go. I love Kyle. When Britt Vinson in his cowboy boots saw the roach, he got up. That was the end of that roach. We live our lives as if God can't do that to us. We live our lives as if that's not a daily reality. And we live our lives as if it would somehow be unfair if he did. When it's not. The most fair and just thing for him to do is to take us. Is to die for our sin. That is the most just thing. But because his incredible love balances his incredible justice, he sent his son so he doesn't have to smite us, and we walk around acting like that's not a reality when it is. And so it's good for a Sunday for us to sink into the wrath of God and to appreciate it. Because I wonder about me and maybe about you if we feel stagnant in our walk with the Lord. If we heard Steve talk about being on fire for Jesus and it's been a while since we have experienced that. If we give mental assent to the fact that God loves us, but we are not warmed by it daily and overwhelmed by the magnitude of the grace of his love for us, maybe it's in part because we haven't sat and thought for a minute in a long time about the wrath that his love is balancing out. About what he's sparing us from. About what it means for him to have every right to claim us and choose in his goodness not to. So my hope and my prayer this week has been that by focusing on God's wrath, it would actually inexplicably draw us closer to him and help us more deeply appreciate the love that he lavishes upon us and the things that John writes, like from his fullness he has bestowed upon us grace upon grace. I hope we can appreciate those sentiments a little more deeply today and feel God's love a little more closely today by reflecting on his tremendous wrath as well. Let's pray. God, thank you for your justice. Thank you for your terrible and furious wrath. We know that we would not want a God that was not capable of those things, whose character didn't require them. Father, I pray that if anyone can hear my voice, whether it's today or in the future, who doesn't know you, who has not bowed their knee, I pray that they would cry out to you today. That they would claim Jesus as their Savior and you as their Father. That they would simply ask to be spared of your wrath, which you are so anxious to do. God, would we be brought more close to you? And God, would we walk more fearfully of you? To give us a greater depth of appreciation of your love for us. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.
The Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. If you're joining us online, thank you for doing that. If you're catching up later in the week, we appreciate you following along. This is our third part in our series going through the book of Revelation. There's a lot of questions there, a lot of curiosity, a lot of mystery. And so I want to do the best that I can as we move through the series to help make Revelation more approachable and understandable for all of us, whether that means pulling back from the details and the weeds so that we can actually see the forest and get the point of this amazing book, or whether it means making it approachable so that we can actually understand what's happening throughout the book. Last week, my dad carried the weight for us. He did a phenomenal job. Many of you have said kind things to me about him, and I appreciate that. I was as surprised as the rest of us that he did such a good job. I was watching from the cabin that I was at going, huh, look at this. The dude's good at it. So that was really, really cool and a neat moment for us. So I appreciate you guys indulging that. And he did a good job talking about Revelation 4 and 5. And the point that he made was that God in chapter 4 is seated on the throne and that Jesus, the Lamb of God, is the one worthy to open the seals. That's what happens in 4 and 5. But there's a question that leads into the rest of the book of why is Jesus, as the Lamb of God, stepping forward to open a seal? What's the deal there? What's going on? And it's actually an important part in the narrative of Revelation, what's happening in 4 and 5. And basically, what's happening in 4 and 5 is that Jesus is stepping up to begin the tribulation period. This is when the tribulation begins. It's the official start of it. Now, some of you know that word tribulation. Others of you may not. Maybe we can define it. Maybe we kind of have a loose knowledge of what it is. But what Jesus is doing in Revelation 4 and 5 is he is beginning the tribulation period. And in Revelation chapters 6 through 17 describes this tribulation period. So the way that we're going to approach it as a church is for the next three weeks, we're going to talk about this together. This morning, we're going to define the tribulation. Next week, we're going to look at the events of the tribulation. And then the week after that, we're going to look at the signs in the tribulation. Because this is where it gets sticky. This is the tough part. Revelation 1 through 5, that's easy. We just did that. The last two sermons, Jesus comes back. Hooray. God establishes new heaven and new earth. Those are easy. These middle three, boy, they're tricky. They are tricky. This is where if you have questions, what does this mean? What happens? In what order? I'm genuinely interested in them. So this week or next week, as you're reading through Revelation, hopefully you're following along in the reading plan, or maybe there's been something rattling around for a long time. If there's something that you in particular want me to address and say, hey, this is how we understand this event, then let me know, email me. And I will absolutely, if I can't address it in the sermon, I'll figure out how to answer you personally. But I would love your questions because the thing is, if you're asking it, so are five other people, at least. So ask away and we'll kind of cobble this thing together over the next three weeks as we focus on this tribulation period. So this morning, I want to define the tribulation and what it is, and then ask, why is it necessary? So that's the first thing to think about. What is the tribulation and why is it necessary? Why does it have to happen? And the tribulation is quite simply, the most abrupt way to put it is, the tribulation is the seven-year process of God pouring out his earned wrath and reclaiming what is rightfully his. The tribulation process is a seven-year process of God pouring out his earned wrath on creation and reclaiming what is rightfully his. I will be up front with you and tell you, this sermon this week is the least excited to preach a sermon I have been in my life. Okay. I did not wake up going, yes, wrath of God. This is super fun in 2021. I'm actually getting on a plane this afternoon to go to Atlanta and just be around the stadium during the game in case they win tonight. And it is really hard for me to not focus on how excited I am for that and appropriately address the wrath of God in the service this morning. As we began the series, I knew that this was coming. And to me, it's the hardest part of Revelation. Not interpreting what's going to happen and trying to figure everything out, but for a 21st century audience, to actually, for us to wrap our head around the fact that our God is a wrathful God, that he is a just God. And so this morning, as I was preparing this week, I realized we can't really go on and discuss the events of the tribulation until we adequately understand the wrath of God that's seen in the tribulation. So when we ask, why is the tribulation necessary? Why is it necessary for God to pour out his wrath on his creation at the end of time? Well, the first answer that I would offer you is that God's wrath is necessary because his justice requires it. God's wrath is necessary because his justice requires it. My dad did a great job last week of defining holiness in a way that I had never thought of before when he was talking about the angels around the throne and they're singing to God. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And what does that word holy mean? Well, he defined it as being the intersection of God's love and God's justice. That they are perfectly balanced in God. And we love God's love. We love God's love. But we don't talk a lot about God's justice. And the reality is that his person, his very essence, requires a balance of love and justice. And the further reality is we don't want a God creator sovereign over all of the universe who isn't just, who isn't capable of wrath. Our own sensibilities insist that our God would be just. Here's what I mean. The Braves are playing the Astros in the World Series. The whole country is a Braves fan right now because everybody hates the Astros, right? They are the patriots of baseball. Everyone hates them. Now, here's why everyone hates the Astros. For those of you who don't know baseball and may not be informed about this, back in 2017, the Astros had a great season and a great team, and they won the World Series. And they kind of came out of nowhere when they did it, and I think they may have won the next year or the year previous, I'm not sure, but two years around 2017, they won the World Series. And it was kind of fun, because they were kind of a cool team, and they were kind of fun to cheer for. But then it came out that they were cheating. Like, not cheating a little bit. They were cheating a lot of it. And that's how they won those two World Series. And then what happened was, what did baseball do? What did the commissioner do? Did the commissioner bring wrath and justice upon the Astros? No, he'd like find the owner and I think the coach got in trouble. But none of the players who actually cheated got punished. And so everyone hates the Astros because it wasn't fair. It's not right. They cheated, they got caught, and nothing happened to them. And our senses of justice cry out and say, that's not fair. To the extent that, and I was so proud of my hometown, when their best player came up to bat in game three of the World Series, first time he had to play in Atlanta, the whole stadium broke out with chants of cheater, cheater, cheater. I'm like, yes, this is great. Our sense of justice is offended when things are not fairly litigated. To think about it in a more applicable personal way. Parents, if somebody did something to genuinely harm your child in a way that requires you to be in court and to prosecute them. And they are absolutely guilty. How offended would you be if the judge did not display justice and said, you know what? That wasn't you. You didn't mean it. You're off the hook. No, we want a just judge in the same way we want a just God. His nature requires it. And our senses of fairness and justice demand it. The uncomfortable side of that justice is his wrath. And make no mistake, when you read the middle sections of the book of Revelation, it reads very much like the Old Testament prophets. Two times in the book of Revelation, the phrase, the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God is used. In Revelation 19, when Jesus comes back, it says that he is going to tread the press of the fury of the wrath of God, which tells us that God's wrath does not only exist, but it is furious. We are told at a different point that God will send an angel with a sickle to take a third of humanity like grapes and put them in a wine press and press them with his fury and his wrath. The wrath of God in Revelation is unavoidable. And to pretend like it's not there is dishonest and unfair. So we have to come to grips with this existence and learn how to accept that this is a part of the God that we worship. To do that, I think that we can listen to the voices of the martyrs in Revelation chapter 6 to begin not only to understand that God's justice requires wrath and that we want a just God, but also to begin to understand the source of this wrath. It's helpful to listen to the voice of the martyrs in Revelation 6. This to me is one of the more poignant moments in all of scripture, and I'll tell you why in a second. Revelation chapter 6 verses 9 through 11. So there's this poignant scene in heaven. As Jesus begins to open the seals, and if you don't understand what the seals are, that's all right. We're going to talk about those next week. The rest of Revelation is scheduled out through seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls. And we're going to talk about that progression next week. But for this one, as this seal was opened, then there's martyrs under the throne at the altar of God. And these martyrs are men and women who have died for their faith. They were killed because they professed a faith in God. And they cry out, how much longer are you going to wait before you avenge us, God? We were killed for you. You saw the people from heaven. You know who murdered us. When are you going to punish the people who are harming your children? And this voice, the voice of the martyrs, echoes. And it echoes particularly with the original audience. Because I told you in week one that the people who received this letter endured great persecution. The generations of the church that immediately followed this time around 90, 95 AD endured tremendous persecution. To be a Christian, to proclaim and claim the gospel of faith in Jesus was to put your life at risk, was to put your family at risk. So the people reading this letter and receiving it, they cried out with the martyrs too. Yeah, God, win. How much longer? And here's how much longer before you avenge. You saw them take our dad. You saw them kill our mom. You saw them take my wife. When are you going to make that okay? And if we pay attention, what we see is that we cry out with the martyrs as well. We also cry out with the martyrs. Paul talks about this in Romans when he says in Romans chapter 8 that all of creation groans for the return of our king. When we have that sense that this isn't right, most of you know that part of mine and Jen's story is that at the end of last year, her dad lost a two-year battle to pancreatic cancer. Her dad was the best man I ever knew. And I will always be sad that Lily doesn't get to experience the glow of his love in her life. I will always be sad that his grandson will only get to meet him in eternity. And so we cry out, God, he loved you. He served you. He loves his grandkids. He cried when we told him that we were pregnant because he knew we wouldn't meet that one. How is this okay with you? And that's just ours. You guys have it too. Where you cry out with the martyrs. God, you could have done something and you didn't. When are you going to fix it? When are you going to make this okay? How are you going to make this right? And it's not an insistent thing. It's not a precocious thing. We don't walk into the throne room of God and demand. We sit at the altar and we humbly wonder and plea like, God, how much longer are you going to watch this? And we need to realize that that voice has been echoing throughout the centuries, not just for the things that we endure that seem unfair or seem like God could have prevented it and he didn't, but for all the things going on over the course of history. God sat in heaven and he watched the Holocaust. And the voice of the martyr says, God, how much longer? He sat in heaven and he watches the slave trade. That still exists. And we think, how much longer, God? He's seen the atrocities of people claiming his name in the Crusades. Evil meted out over an entire continent, falsely claiming him. How much longer, God? So at the beginning, when I define the tribulation as God pouring out his earned wrath, that's what I mean. He's been waiting. He is angered by the evil things that happen. He is angered and hurt by school shootings. He is angered that our sin has broken down the world in such a way that we lose people too early from disease. He's angered by that. He's hurt by that, that Satan has been loosed into his perfect creation and the people who listen to his voice, including us, have perverted it and made it something that it is not. He's angered by that. He's angered by us when we trample on his gospel and we presume upon his grace and we act like our actions have no consequences because we're so used to hearing about the love of God that we forget about the wrath of God. And it angers him. God says that vengeance is his, and he will take it. He's simply waiting. And when the martyrs ask him, how much longer are you going to wait to do, as I always say, to make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue? When will that happen, God? His response is, rest a little while longer because there's still more to be added to your numbers. It's not time yet, but it's coming. And so we see in listening to the voice of the martyrs and in seeing the response of God that part of the necessity of God's wrath and his tribulation is that God's wrath is actually working to draw people to him. His wrath is working to wake people up and to draw them into his eternity. If there are still martyrs who have yet to be added to the number in Revelation chapter six, then what it means is there are people in the tribulation period actively sharing their faith so that more people might know Jesus, so that more people might spend eternity in heaven. If you flip the page to the next chapter, what you see is a mass of humanity being ushered into heaven. And John leans over to the angel next to him and he goes, who are they? And he says, those are all the people who have accepted Christ who are coming out of the tribulation. God is using his wrath as a tool to wake people up and draw them near to him. And if that sounds like a contradiction, then let's think of it this way. In our house, we try to be calm. I try, best I can, not to raise my voice. Except at Jen. Boy, howdy. I really get after Jen. I'm just messing around. I try not to raise my voice. Now, sometimes, Lily, she's five. She's very much like me. And so, I can't help it. But most of the time, I'm pretty calm with her. And the reason I try not to raise my voice is, first of all, I want to set that model for her. But second, I want it to matter when I do. We raise our voice all the time. Eventually, I mean, you can see these kids. They're in the store. Their mom's yelling at them. They couldn't care less. Because mom yells at them all the time. So I want it to matter when I raise my voice. Because when I raise my voice to Lily, sometimes I do it because it's the only thing left that's going to get her attention. Right, parents? I tell her to stop. Don't do that. Put that down. We're not going to talk about that. I try to be as calm as I can. But sometimes I have to get stern with her. And when I get stern with her, I'm doing it to get her attention. Because what I'm saying matters. The same is true of God. Sometimes God has to get stern with his children because he's been trying to get our attention in other ways and we're not listening. So sometimes God gets forceful with us because you parents know if you pick your moments there, you can really get your kids' attention simply by being more stern with them. So God also knows, and we see it in the Old Testament, that sometimes to get the attention of His people, He raises His voice. He does not do it to intimidate or scare us, although that should be our reaction. He does it to draw us near to him, to get our attention. He does it because his biggest priority in all of creation is that you and I would spend eternity with him. That's why Paul writes that even though we endure pain for a little while, he considers it nothing compared to the glory that he's going to experience in eternity. It's nothing. It doesn't matter. So is God, and Jesus tells us, listen, if your eye's causing you to sin, gouge it out. It's better to enter into heaven with one eye than it is to have both eyes and not be in eternity with God. So sometimes God uses his wrath and his stern voice to get our attention because his priority is that we would spend eternity with him. This may be why Solomon writes in Proverbs chapter 9 that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Many of you have probably heard this verse before. And when I was growing up and we would come across this verse, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, we were kind of told that fear there is an awe, it's a respect. It's not being afraid of our Heavenly Father because our Heavenly Father is good. It's being in awe of Him, and that's the beginning of wisdom. No, no, no. It's being fall on your face, terrified of the Father. It's actual fear. On the holiday that we celebrate fear, this is actual fear. Being fearful of our almighty God creator in heaven. Being scared of what he can do to us if he were to so choose. Being actually fearful of him. Reading through the wrath of God that will be poured out on creation and going, that sounds terrible. And God goes, yeah, because here's the thing. As we go through Revelation and we see God's wrath meted out on creation, please understand, the only people who experience God's wrath are the ones who don't believe in it. The only people who experience the wrath of God are the ones who have said, please God, or the ones who have not said, please God, spare me. At any point, if we look to God and we say, God, you're God and I'm not, and I trust you, please spare me your wrath. He does. The only ones left to experience the wrath at the end of the tribulation, I am convinced, are those who have chosen obstinately to refuse to submit to God in faith. And so he pours out his wrath. And he pours out his wrath because God in his goodness sent his son to rescue us up to heaven to spend eternity with him. And we obstinately, some of us choose to not believe in the son that he sent. Instead, we spit on it. Instead, we don't believe it. Instead, we pass it off like a fairy tale. And one day, every knee will bow before our God in heaven. And the only ones who will experience God's wrath are the ones that have to be forced to bow. And it is not, to me, until we understand that, that we can begin to appreciate God's love for us. This is why wisdom begins in, oh no, God created the universe and I'm terrified of him. And God says, good, but guess what? I created it so that you could spend eternity with me and I love you. And all you have to do to be spared from that wrath is ask me. As I sank into this topic for this week, I began to reflect on the wrath of God. It actually occurred to me, something that I've long understood, but something that fits very well into this sermon and this idea right now, which is it is impossible to adequately appreciate God's love without being in awe of his wrath. It is impossible to adequately appreciate God's love without being in awe of his wrath. And I think it's actually good for us to take a Sunday and confront the fact that our God is just and his justice necessitates wrath. And for us to exist and tremble and for us to hear it said, yeah, we want to be as nice as possible to everyone, but one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. And you do not want to be made to bow against your will. We submit to God now and we spend eternity with him later. And I think it's good for us to sink into that reality because we talk a lot about the love of God and we should. We talk about our good, good father and we should and we talk about his grace and we talk about his forgiveness and we talk about his mercy and we should. Those things are good and trust me, I like preaching about those things way more. But I think that sometimes we talk so much about God's love for us that we forget he has every right to smite us. All the times that we've trampled on the gospel. All the times that I've presumed upon God's grace, knowing he would forgive me. All the times I've cheapened the blood of Christ on the cross with my action and my attitude and my obstinance. We were in here on Tuesday morning for Bible study and I was sitting right here and over there was a roach. And I noticed it and Shane noticed it, but it was a roach. And we're like, whatever, I didn't care. It was like 620. Live it up, roach. But when Britt Vinson, who was dressed up like a cowboy that day, noticed it. You like that, Kyle? Okay. All right, pal. There you go. I love Kyle. When Britt Vinson in his cowboy boots saw the roach, he got up. That was the end of that roach. We live our lives as if God can't do that to us. We live our lives as if that's not a daily reality. And we live our lives as if it would somehow be unfair if he did. When it's not. The most fair and just thing for him to do is to take us. Is to die for our sin. That is the most just thing. But because his incredible love balances his incredible justice, he sent his son so he doesn't have to smite us, and we walk around acting like that's not a reality when it is. And so it's good for a Sunday for us to sink into the wrath of God and to appreciate it. Because I wonder about me and maybe about you if we feel stagnant in our walk with the Lord. If we heard Steve talk about being on fire for Jesus and it's been a while since we have experienced that. If we give mental assent to the fact that God loves us, but we are not warmed by it daily and overwhelmed by the magnitude of the grace of his love for us, maybe it's in part because we haven't sat and thought for a minute in a long time about the wrath that his love is balancing out. About what he's sparing us from. About what it means for him to have every right to claim us and choose in his goodness not to. So my hope and my prayer this week has been that by focusing on God's wrath, it would actually inexplicably draw us closer to him and help us more deeply appreciate the love that he lavishes upon us and the things that John writes, like from his fullness he has bestowed upon us grace upon grace. I hope we can appreciate those sentiments a little more deeply today and feel God's love a little more closely today by reflecting on his tremendous wrath as well. Let's pray. God, thank you for your justice. Thank you for your terrible and furious wrath. We know that we would not want a God that was not capable of those things, whose character didn't require them. Father, I pray that if anyone can hear my voice, whether it's today or in the future, who doesn't know you, who has not bowed their knee, I pray that they would cry out to you today. That they would claim Jesus as their Savior and you as their Father. That they would simply ask to be spared of your wrath, which you are so anxious to do. God, would we be brought more close to you? And God, would we walk more fearfully of you? To give us a greater depth of appreciation of your love for us. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.
Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks so much for making grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you're watching online, wherever you are, whatever you may be doing, thank you for your presence there and here. It is with some excitement that I get back into the pulpit this weekend. The elders several years ago made a decision that I would get a stay from preaching in the month of July, and our staff carries the torch. And I don't know about you guys, but I thought Aaron and Aaron and Kyle each preached the best sermon I've ever heard them preach, and I thought that they carried the torch well in July. So I'm very grateful to have such a deep bench here at the church that can serve us in those weeks. And then Doug Bergeson preached last week, and he did fine. But I'm very grateful that we have those voices in our church, and I'm very grateful for when we get to hear from other voices. I'm also grateful that I get to continue on this morning in our series in the life of Moses. We took a brief break last week for Ministry Partner Sunday, but this week we're jumping back into Moses and we're going to carry Moses through the end of the month into Labor Day weekend. And then the second weekend in September, we're going to begin a new series called Gentle and Lowly. I will tell you more about that. There's going to be a book. We're all going to read it together. If you'd like to, I think it's really going to bring us together as a church. I'm very excited for that series. But before that, we have this, where we are continuing to look at the life of Moses and how God used him to lead his people out of Egypt and eventually into the promised land and establish this new nation. As we look at the portion of the story on which I want to focus this morning, I want us to attempt to shed a mindset and adopt a new one that may be best illustrated by my daughter this past week. This last week, I had an opportunity to go on a cruise. My parents are cruise people. They like cruises. Some people are cruise people. You're weird. Some people are not cruise people, okay? But we went on a cruise, and as part of this cruise, it was a really wonderful experience. My sister and her three girls and her husband came along as well. It was one big family, and it was a really, really great experience. The last full day we were there, we docked at Royal Caribbean's private island called Coco Cay. Perfect day at Coco Cay. Except it rained the whole time. So our joke was, it's a pretty okay day at Coco Cay. Coco Cay is home to, there's this Daredevil's Tower. And off this tower in the middle of the island spit five different water slides. The apex is Daredevil's Peak, which is the tallest water slide in North America. And Lily did it. My nine-year-old daughter chose it, and she did it, and I was so proud of her. There is nothing that that has to do anything at all with my sermon. I'm just proud of Lily for choosing to do Daredevil's Peak because I did it and I was, you know, you cross your feet and your arms like this and I'm like wiping off my eyes because I'm trying to save my contacts so I don't have to walk around in a fog for the rest of the day. And I'm giggling to myself thinking, and I said out loud, holy crap, this is fast. Holy crap, this is fast. But she did it. Great. Here's why I bring that up. Because on your way up the stairs, there's different slides that you can do. And the very lowest is like some sort of racers. The idea is that you start each one at the same time and you see who gets to the bottom first, which spoiler alert, it's whoever's fattest. That's who gets to the bottom first. That's how that works. I won a lot of races this week. And there's like this burgundy-ish slide that's enclosed, and then there's a yellow slide that's open, and you kind of like slosh on the sides of it. And as we were going up the stairs, Lily said, Daddy, we're going to do this later, but don't do the yellow slide. And I said, why, baby? And she goes, because I think I saw on YouTube that people fly out of it. They just fly like right off the sides and they just, just careen into Daredevil's Peak, right? And this was a legitimate concern of hers, that Daddy, please don't do this slide because you might fly out of it and die. There's, there's legitimate danger at the top of the slide. And I just remember thinking, sweetie, you don't know how liability works. There is no one on the planet that is more incented to make sure that no one flies off this slide than Royal Caribbean. They're insured for this. That's not going to happen. You could find someone who weighs 450 pounds, put them in a speed suit, grease them up, and they're still not flying out of that slide. Okay? No one's flying out of that slide, but I thought what a quaint, wonderful thing it is to be nine and to believe that you are in such peril at the top of this slide that you may not make it to the bottom. When's the last time you had that kind of wonder and naivety in your life? When it was a possibility to do a water slide and it end fatally. Of course we're not scared of that. Of course I know that I'm not going to fly out of it. Of course I know it's perfectly safe. Of course I was never scared at any point to do any of these slides because they're insured by American companies, which means you're not going to die on them. But Lily didn't know that. She still has this nine-year-old sense of wonder where danger is possible on water slides. And there is something about life that chips away at our wonder, isn't there? There's about life we're becoming an adult means that we don't awe at things anymore it means that we don't wonder at things anymore it means that we instantly explain things away and if we can't instantly explain it away we know that there is a way to explain it away. We just need to acquaint ourselves with it. And it makes me sad that I can't stand at the top of a water slide with a sense of trepidation in my heart. I was trepidatious about keeping my breakfast down before I did Daredevil's Peak. It turns a lot, and I thought I might get sick. But at no point was I scared for my life. At no point did I think something catastrophic was going to happen, but what must it be like to be nine again and to be fully convinced that Dad shouldn't do the yellow slide because it may not be safe. Grownups, we've lost that sense of wonder. We've lost our ability to marvel. And we very readily explain things away. But I bring that up and I acquaint us with that mindset of the wondrous child because I believe that the passage that we are going to read today stirs up within us that wonder if we will let it. As I read through Exodus, getting ready for this series, and I arrived at this passage, I'm going to be in Exodus chapter 19, verses 16 through the end of the chapter, through 25. And I read this passage. It kind of had this profound impact on me. On the trip, like you do, I read a book. When you go on vacation, you read a book. And so I was reading a book, and this book, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, is particularly profound. And there was one chapter where it ended with this old man knowing that his children were tricking him into retirement and that he was going to go into retirement and die, and he was content with this choice. And he asked his eldest child to keep his knowledge of that away from his other kids. Let them go on thinking they're tricking me. And the way that it was written was so profound that it felt like I would cheapen the book and the thought if I simply turned the page and continued to read. So after I read that portion of the book, I read it again, and then I shut the book, and I put it on the nightstand, and I turned off the light, and I just ruminated in it. Because there are some portions of some stories that get cheapened when you continue on without reflecting on them. And I think this morning, in Exodus chapter 19, we arrive at one of those moments. That if we just continue to charge ahead, reading the life of Moses, we miss the profundity that is bound within these words. If we do not reflect on it. Further, not only do I want us to reflect on it this morning, but I want us to do our very best to reflect on it with the wonder of a naive nine-year-old. I want us to do our best to marvel at these words, to put ourselves in this situation, and to allow the words to sweep us up and to respect what is happening in this portion of the story. God is about to give the Ten Commandments to the Hebrew people. And next week we will look at the law and the commandments and we will talk about why they're so important and so meaningful and how they are the fulcrum on which a huge portion of the Bible rests in teeters. We'll look at that next week. And it would be tempting to get to this part of the story, get to Mount Sinai in the presence of God and just move right into the law because that's the headliner from this part of the book. That's the headliner from this part of the story. But I don't just want to rush headlong into the law and miss how profound the precursor is to that deliverance of the law. The Hebrew people have been wandering through the desert by this point for some time. Months, years, decades. And they come to this mountain called Mount Sinai. And clouds and smoke come to rest over the mountain. And God tells Moses to tell the people this is now a holy place. Do not let anyone touch the mountain. If anyone touches the mountain, they are to be stoned or run through with arrows. This is holy ground. Can you imagine being an ancient Hebrew person, having escaped from Egypt, watched God part the waters and then collapse them in on the Egyptian army and the top 600 chariot drivers in their country. Demolish the army and make you safe. And every day you wake up and you pick up manna on the ground and you feed your family and God provides for you every day. Can you imagine what it would be like? And then, and you're led by a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. And then one day you're in front of this mountain and cloud and smoke comes to rest on the mountain and you are told this is holy ground. You cannot touch it. And you're not American. You don't understand science. You don't have all the learning that you have. You cannot explain this away. The only thing to explain it away is this is miraculous and that is from God. And you marvel at it and you awe at it because you have not, your wonder has not been chipped away at by your education and by your experience. And then on the third day, this is what transpires. And this is where I think it's worth taking a holy pause to reflect on what's happening in the narrative. I'm going to read you more verses than I normally do. I simply think that they're all important. And so read said to the Lord, The people cannot come up from Mount Sinai because you warned us yourself. Put limits around the mountain and set it apart as holy. The Lord replied, Go down and bring Aaron up with you, but the priests and the people must not force their way through to come up to the Lord, or he will break out against them. So Moses went down to the people and told them. I know that this may seem obscure to point out on a Sunday morning, but to me it's not obscure at all. To me, it's halting. It's poignant. It's important. God brings his very presence down to the top of the mountain. He has not brought his presence anywhere since the Garden of Eden. But he brings it down here now. And for three days before he brought his presence, there was smoke and fire and clouds covering this holy ground. And then he descends onto it himself and he calls to Moses, come and speak to me. And before he gives Moses the law, which is the reason that he came, he just simply says to Moses, go and tell them, don't come here. This is holy. This is sacred. And I know that it's so hard for us to do, and our American 21st century minds that are so smart, and so educated, and so smug. But can we not envision what it must have been like to marvel at this mountain where it says smoke is lifting from it like a furnace because the presence of God is on it? And there is this man that we revere and he is leading us named Moses. And he's called to the top of it. And he comes down with a message for us. Our imaginations are too atrophied to appreciate this. This point would be better made in the second and third grade room than it is here. Because we're too smart for this. We're too developed for this. We've lost our sense of wonder. We know water slides are safe. And so we read passages like this, and I'm afraid that we miss it. And we go, what's the point? This is the point. Do you see how awful and terrifying God is? Do you see how big He is? Do you see how marvelous He is? Do you see how awesome, in the very sense of the word, that He is. Do you see how awesome in the very sense of the word that he is? And so I think if we just read this and we go, yeah, yeah, get to the commandments, we cheapen the narrative and we miss what's happening here. Because what's happening here reminds me of one of my favorite Proverbs, Proverbs chapter nine, verse 10, where it simply says at the beginning, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. This passage personifies, exemplifies, illustrates that point better than any other passage I know outside of the book of Revelation, where it just grabs you and it shakes you and it makes you pay attention to who our God is and how big he is. How fearful must we have been if we were there? If we can imagine what it must have been like to be in the desert and to watch this mountain shake violently and to see smoke rising off of it and to know that our God that we worship, that we just sang to, is present there. How much would that stir us? And how much fear would we have of who that awesome God is and what he must be capable of? It is something that we have lost in 21st century church. But to me, it illustrates and personifies that passage in Proverbs that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And many of us have probably heard that passage before, have heard that idiom before. Even if we didn't know it was from Proverbs, we've heard that phrase, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And what we tend to do is we try to defang it by making fear mean reverence and awe. It doesn't really mean afraid. It means that we just revere God. And I want to be very clear about this this morning. No, no, no. Fear means being afraid. When we were doing the water slides, back to this well, when we were doing the water slides, about halfway up the tower, there was these slides called dueling demons. And at the top of them, there was a capsule. It was clear plastic and it would open hydraulically. And you would step into the capsule and it it would close, and there's water running down your back, and your feet are crossed, and your hands are here. And at some point or another, the sadistic slide worker is going to press the button, and the bottom's going to drop out. Okay? That was the ride. And it was super fun. I was laughing the whole time. It was great. Lily said she wanted to do it. She had said she wasn't going to do it. But she said she wanted to try dueling demons with her cousin Charlotte. And I was like, great, babe. And so we get up there. We wait in line. And it's her turn. And she goes, and I want to watch her in the capsule. And the thing opens like a coffin, you know. And then, and she took one step into it and paused and like looked around. And I was getting ready. I knew she was going to turn and look at me. And I was getting ready to like, babe, you got it. You can do this. You're all right. You know, like I was going to talk her into it. But when she turned and looked at me, the color had left her face. And she just went. And I just, all toughness left. Baby, come here. Come here. You don't have to do it. Walk down by yourself in shame, but you don't have to do it. You don't have to do this. I'm still going to do it. I'll see you at the bottom. I'm not going to miss my opportunity to duel the demon. But when I saw her, I knew she was afraid. She was scared. There's no talking her into this. Fear of the Lord means being afraid. We don't soft pedal it with reverence first. We are actually afraid of him and what he can do. We actually tremble at his might. I don't know if you read it, if you caught it in the narrative, but it's said that the whole camp trembled. The tough, grizzled old men. The women who have seen everything and endured more. The whole camp tremb idea that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, let us not soft pedal it first into reverence. Let us understand first that it is an actual sense of fear where the color leaves our face and we understand what it is that our God is capable of. And we don't talk about this a lot, particularly not in American churches, but he can smite us. He can put his thumb on us and end it. You know your mom used to say, I brought you into this world, I can take you out of it? God actually means it. We should be fearful of God. That's where our relationship with him should start. And when we skip that step, I think we shortchange ourselves. I actually have thought about it this way for years. And I don't know if this will resonate with you or not, but for me, the way that our progressive understanding of who God is isn't very dissimilar from my progressive understanding of who my father is. I was born in the 80s, and when you're born in the 80s, your parents hit you. They spanked you, okay? That's what you got. I got spanked when I was growing up. We don't do it now. If we do it now, we don't talk about it. But I will say that there are times when my children act in such a way, and I think this is why we invented spanking. You have no fear, and you need a knot jerked in your tail. My dad didn't just spank me. And one of the biggest mistakes I made was when I was eight years old, my mom broke the wooden spoon on me and I laughed at her. It was belt after that, from then on out. And if I had anything in my life to do over again, I would strongly consider going back to eight years old and crying and pretending like that hurt. Because the belt was the worst. Not only did we get spanked with the belt, but my dad had a couple of moves perfected that I can't even do to this day. I called it the no-look slap and grab, but when we were in the car, I'd be in the back seat, and if me and my sister got sideways, dad could, without looking, without breaking eye contact with the road, reach back and slap. He had some sort of radar to know where my left thigh was. He could reach back and slap it and grab it and squeeze it. So now I'm dealing with the sting of hitting my leg. And then he squeezes it and he has these fulcrum grips on my leg. I'm in incredible pain. I have no idea what words he's saying or what words I'm using. I'm just trying to get this done with, right? And then he had this other move where he would grab my arm and twist it and just kind of jam my shoulder into itself and walk me across a room. And I'm going like this. It was easier to be a parent in the 80s, I think. But when I was little, I was scared of my dad. For better or worse, maybe I need to work this out in therapy. For better or worse, I was scared of him. I didn't get sideways because I didn't want to get hurt. I watched my mouth because I didn't want the no-look slapping grab. I didn't want to get spanked. I was scared, and so that kept me in line. But eventually, somewhere in middle school, I realized, defects is a thing. He's not going to hurt me that bad. He really is not going to do anything. Or I can report him. I got a leg up. But by that time in my life, I just wanted to make him proud of me. I didn't obey him because I was scared of getting the belt. I obeyed him because I wanted to make him proud. And then at some point in my life, I realized that he was proud of me, that he was proud to call me his son. And my mom was proud to call me her son. And then the knowledge of their pride in me made me love them all the more. And so fear begat reverence, begat a desire to make them proud. The fact that I knew that they were proud of me begat this deep love for them, that they loved and accepted me for who I was no matter what and it was unconditional and I don't think it works very differently with our Heavenly Father but we can't just jump straight to love we have to experience fear and from that fear a desire to make our Heavenly Father proud and from that desire realize that he is proud of us that that He does love us as much as He ever will. And then from that comes this unconditional, reciprocal, grateful love from us towards our Heavenly Father. But it has to start with fear. That's why it says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And I think that that gets a bad rap, this idea of fearing our God. Why would our God want us to be afraid of him? Why would he ask that of us? Because in the 21st century church, in American church, we skip fear and we go straight to the cross. We skip fear and we go right to Christmas and right to Easter. I am forgiven because he was forsaken. I'm accepted. He was condemned. And we get to move right to God. We get to move right into God's presence. We never experience the fear of him. It's like growing up with your grandfather when all he ever wants to do is spoil you. But you forget that your dad has to discipline you. We forget that. And we skip straight to love. And we forget to fear our God. We forget scenes like this in Exodus 19 where we should be awestruck by him and wonder and marvel at his largesse and at his might and at his wrath and at his vengeance and at his anger. Those don't make us comfortable, so we move on from them. But I believe that we cheapen our relationship with our Father God when we are not aware of them. So why does God insist that fear is the beginning of wisdom? And how can that be a good thing? A few points to this end. First of all, fear appreciates grace and mercy. Fear helps us appreciate grace and mercy. Here's what I mean. Back to the well of the cruise this week by way of illustration. This was a, my parents were saying, a once-in-a-lifetime trip for our family. My parents are big cruisers. They like to do it, and so they wanted to bring Amy and I, Amy's my sister, and our families along. And so we did the whole thing. And it was really nice, and Dad did it right. And we got to stay in a suite. And that's pretty, I'm not trying to brag, I'm just telling you that we stayed in a suite. It is pretty awesome. There was a curtain dividing our king-size bed from the height of bed, so that was fancy. And we had our own balcony and a chair that you could read on and watch the ocean, which was really, really cool. We had, there was a private suite lounge that your key card got you access to, and from 4.30 to 8, there's free Cokes, so it was awesome. We would go there every day and get Cokes before dinner because at dinner, if you wanted a Coke, they would upcharge you like $5.50 or something. So we'd go get a free Coke and then take that to dinner. But it was like a really nice experience. And at one point, we had told each of Jen and I each did a cruise when we were teenagers with our families. And at one point Lily said, uh, mommy and daddy, when you did cruises before, did you stay in rooms like this? And it was like, no, no, we stayed in an interior room that was tiny. It was like a cave and it was damp. And you had to shuffle sideways to get into bed because there's no space. And you slept sweaty against your sibling. That's what you did. All right. That was traveling when we were growing up. Because when we were growing up, we didn't have grandparents that had been moderately successful. So mom and dad had to foot the bill for vacations. Jen, growing up, went to vacation in Seaside Beach every year before Seaside Beach was bougie and awesome, back when it was just run down like all the beaches in North Carolina. I hate North Carolina beaches. And your barbecue sauce. I'm just throwing that out there. Yeah, I know. They got a house that was a few blocks off of the beach that somehow or another through the Southern Baptist Church relationship network, Jen's dad found this older lady, and he would come down. He was pretty handy. And in exchange for doing a certain amount of projects, his family could stay in the basement a few blocks off of the beach. So she grew up vacationing by trading handiwork for a location that was a bike ride away from the beach. And Lily's staying in a suite with free Cokes in the afternoon and a private dining room going, isn't this how everyone travels? And it's like, no, no, this is not how, this is not how rectors travel. Somebody gave us a courtside seats one time to an NC state game. And we were sitting, Lily and I were on the floor sitting behind the television announcer booth and they were turning around and interacting with her during the commercial breaks. And at one point in the game, I grabbed her and I said, Lily, do you see up there in the shadows the seats against the wall that are really high up and you can barely see? And she goes, yes. And I said, those are rector seats. Okay? These are not. Do not get used to this. But it was just funny to me, Daddy, did you stay in rooms like this when you were a kid? No. No, I didn't have rich grandparents. I stayed with the poor. I stayed in poor people rooms. And we went on one. And it was a treat. But she doesn't understand that. And that's something to work out. Something that Jen and I have to navigate. But to her, what we just did is normal. That's what we're used to. But because I stayed in the dank cabin cave when I was a kid, I can have a deeper appreciation for the sweet. Because it was like Lord of the Flies and I had to fight for one glass of water amongst a bunch of overweight people trying to get to the same trough when I was 16. I can appreciate access to water all I want on a ship. She can't appreciate that. She doesn't have that perspective. And my point is, New Testament Christians are a lot more like her than they are like the Old Testament Christians. New Testament Christians don't know what it is to fear God because we meet Jesus right away. We meet someone who describes himself as gentle and lowly. We don't know what it is to suffer. We don't know what it is to be fearful of God. We've never sat at the base of the mountain and watched it violently shake while we tremble with our friends at the might of our God because we go straight to the cross. We go straight to Christmas and we go straight to Easter and we see Jesus meek and mild. We are the rich billionaire trust fund babies of history born into this soft world where we never have to fear God. And so we read passages like this and they're foreign to us because that's not our God because our God comes meek and mild and, and he loves me, and he died for me, and he accepts me, and I call him Abba Father, and he calls me up into his lap. We forget the awful God that comes before that. We forget the fear-inspiring God that comes before that, and we end up acting like spoiled brats towards our God because we forget to fear him. So fear appreciates grace and mercy. When I have grappled with the reality that not only do I deserve a punishment for my sin and for my disloyalty to God, but that he is also highly capable of meeting that out and has chosen not to, and instead has chosen to show me grace and mercy in the form of his son and watched him die for my betrayal to him. It is only then when we swim in those waters and acquaint ourselves with that reality that we can properly appreciate grace and mercy. But we're so quick to jump to grace and mercy. And we figuratively ask our parents, has it always been like this? Did you travel like this when you were a kid? Because we're spoiled. And so I think that fear is good because it refocuses us on our gratitude for grace and mercy. And it shows us how important those things are. Fear is good because fear reminds us of our place. It reminds us of our place. When we say the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and we say this is actually a good thing. Why? Because it reminds us of our place. Jen pointed this out to me this week. Do you understand that the original sin in the Garden of Eden was essentially choosing to not be afraid of God anymore? It was losing this fear of God. The story goes that the serpent whispered into the ear of Eve. There was one tree. There was only one rule. God said, do whatever you want. Just don't eat fruit off of this one tree. And the serpent appears to Eve and speaks into her ear and says, do you know that God actually doesn't want you to eat of that tree? Because if you do, you'll know the difference between good and evil and you'll be like him. He's just trying to hold you down. He doesn't want you to be like he is and So what happened in the language of what we're talking about this morning is he whispered in Eve's ear You don't have to be afraid of him You can do what you want You don't have to fear God you are like him and so the original sin Was have to fear God. You are like him. And so the original sin was refusing to fear God at the beginning of wisdom. Do you see that? And I love the way that the Bible starts out, and this is why I say that fear helps us keep our place. The very first sentence of the Bible, do you know what it is? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And I'm firmly convinced that it does not begin that way just because that's where the story starts. I'm firmly convinced that the Bible begins that way because it sets up from the very first sentence, the essential relationship in all creation. I am the creator, you are the created. All sin in our life is when we do this and we put ourselves on level with our creator. Anytime we sin, anytime we do anything that displeases God, all we've done is we've said, yeah, you're the creator, but I think I'm equal to you. So I'm not going to follow your rules. I'm going to follow mine. Everything in life that is messed up begins with a fundamental disjointment of this relationship where he says he is the creator and we are the creation and we go, nope, I'm not scared of you. This was the original sin of Eve. When the serpent whispered in her ear, you don't have to be afraid of him anymore. You are like him. And so she lost the fear of the Lord. So the fear of God keeps us in our place. It reminds us that he is all-powerful creator, and we are subservient creation. When Job got upset with God in that book, and he confronts him in Job 38, God's response is, hey Job, you forgot your place. So when we have fear of God, when we read Exodus 19 and we allow that to take us back to our nine-year-old selves and tremble at the might of our God, it also reminds us to keep our place. Last good thing I'll say about fear and why God insists on it is that fear makes knowledge a privilege. It makes knowledge of God a privilege. We presume that we should know who God is. We presume that we have a right to him. We presume that he should share himself with us. But that is not the case. Do you understand the miracle of the condescension of God? Do you understand what that is? Here is a figure that for the first time in history, since the garden of Eden descends onto a mountain, it burns with smoke. It shakes violently. It makes everyone around him tremble. And thousands of years later, he condescends by sending his son and our frail form to be with us, to sit in the muck and the mire. The miracle of God's condescension to us, to be one of us, to live as us, to be tempted as us, to love as us, and then to die as us for us. We start with Christmas and we start with Easter, so we take it for granted. But put yourself in the shoes of the people surrounding that mountain and imagine that thousands of years later, this being that's shaking the foundations of the earth and is causing fear and everyone that I know is going to send his son in human form to live the life of a pauper, to love me perfectly, to die perfectly, and to pave a way for me to get to know that cloud, Testament Christian mindset that grew up thinking that they always vacation in suites. That grows up thinking that God could never possibly be upset with me. He loves me. I'm forgiven. I'm concerned for the spoiled Christians that don't take time to understand what it means to fear their God and how mighty and awesome he is. I'm concerned for the church as life chips away at our wonder and we're no longer scared of water slides because we can explain it all away. And I just thought it was worth it this morning to try my best. And I don't mean this in any disrespectful way. But to try my best to grab your face and make you look at the might and the wonder and the awe of your God. For once, before we skip to Easter and we skip to Christmas. Look how wonderful and terrifying and miraculous he is. And let's be grateful that he uses that for us, not against us. That he chooses to love us. That he chooses to save us, that he chooses to condescend to be a part of us. We cannot read Exodus and see God descend on Mount Sinai and not pause and acknowledge that we are spoiled spiritual brats that do not often enough reflect on the awe-inspiring wonder, might, and wrath of God. And so this morning, let us do that. And may we always see ourselves at the foot of the mountain. And in so doing, come to appreciate all the things we love about our Heavenly Father all the more. Because I think so often we skip to the things we love about our God and we forget this foundation of fear that is the very beginning of wisdom that deepens our appreciation for him. So may we this morning together sit at the base of the mountain and tremble. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for what you chose to do with the Israelites in descending upon Mount Sinai. God, I'm not sure why you chose to reveal yourself in that way. I'm not even sure we've handled it the way it needs to be handled this morning, but I know, God, it gives me pause. I know, Father, it makes me wonder at you. And I hope that just a little bit of that wonder was communicated. And I hope that we are moved by it. I hope that we will not be so inoculated by your love that we forget your wrath. God, give us a deep appreciation for that so that we may approach you with more gratitude. So that we might marvel at the fact that you love us, that you know us, that you care about us, and that you're proud of us. God, help us more and more to see ourselves at the foot of that mountain, marveling at who and what you are. In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks so much for making grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you're watching online, wherever you are, whatever you may be doing, thank you for your presence there and here. It is with some excitement that I get back into the pulpit this weekend. The elders several years ago made a decision that I would get a stay from preaching in the month of July, and our staff carries the torch. And I don't know about you guys, but I thought Aaron and Aaron and Kyle each preached the best sermon I've ever heard them preach, and I thought that they carried the torch well in July. So I'm very grateful to have such a deep bench here at the church that can serve us in those weeks. And then Doug Bergeson preached last week, and he did fine. But I'm very grateful that we have those voices in our church, and I'm very grateful for when we get to hear from other voices. I'm also grateful that I get to continue on this morning in our series in the life of Moses. We took a brief break last week for Ministry Partner Sunday, but this week we're jumping back into Moses and we're going to carry Moses through the end of the month into Labor Day weekend. And then the second weekend in September, we're going to begin a new series called Gentle and Lowly. I will tell you more about that. There's going to be a book. We're all going to read it together. If you'd like to, I think it's really going to bring us together as a church. I'm very excited for that series. But before that, we have this, where we are continuing to look at the life of Moses and how God used him to lead his people out of Egypt and eventually into the promised land and establish this new nation. As we look at the portion of the story on which I want to focus this morning, I want us to attempt to shed a mindset and adopt a new one that may be best illustrated by my daughter this past week. This last week, I had an opportunity to go on a cruise. My parents are cruise people. They like cruises. Some people are cruise people. You're weird. Some people are not cruise people, okay? But we went on a cruise, and as part of this cruise, it was a really wonderful experience. My sister and her three girls and her husband came along as well. It was one big family, and it was a really, really great experience. The last full day we were there, we docked at Royal Caribbean's private island called Coco Cay. Perfect day at Coco Cay. Except it rained the whole time. So our joke was, it's a pretty okay day at Coco Cay. Coco Cay is home to, there's this Daredevil's Tower. And off this tower in the middle of the island spit five different water slides. The apex is Daredevil's Peak, which is the tallest water slide in North America. And Lily did it. My nine-year-old daughter chose it, and she did it, and I was so proud of her. There is nothing that that has to do anything at all with my sermon. I'm just proud of Lily for choosing to do Daredevil's Peak because I did it and I was, you know, you cross your feet and your arms like this and I'm like wiping off my eyes because I'm trying to save my contacts so I don't have to walk around in a fog for the rest of the day. And I'm giggling to myself thinking, and I said out loud, holy crap, this is fast. Holy crap, this is fast. But she did it. Great. Here's why I bring that up. Because on your way up the stairs, there's different slides that you can do. And the very lowest is like some sort of racers. The idea is that you start each one at the same time and you see who gets to the bottom first, which spoiler alert, it's whoever's fattest. That's who gets to the bottom first. That's how that works. I won a lot of races this week. And there's like this burgundy-ish slide that's enclosed, and then there's a yellow slide that's open, and you kind of like slosh on the sides of it. And as we were going up the stairs, Lily said, Daddy, we're going to do this later, but don't do the yellow slide. And I said, why, baby? And she goes, because I think I saw on YouTube that people fly out of it. They just fly like right off the sides and they just, just careen into Daredevil's Peak, right? And this was a legitimate concern of hers, that Daddy, please don't do this slide because you might fly out of it and die. There's, there's legitimate danger at the top of the slide. And I just remember thinking, sweetie, you don't know how liability works. There is no one on the planet that is more incented to make sure that no one flies off this slide than Royal Caribbean. They're insured for this. That's not going to happen. You could find someone who weighs 450 pounds, put them in a speed suit, grease them up, and they're still not flying out of that slide. Okay? No one's flying out of that slide, but I thought what a quaint, wonderful thing it is to be nine and to believe that you are in such peril at the top of this slide that you may not make it to the bottom. When's the last time you had that kind of wonder and naivety in your life? When it was a possibility to do a water slide and it end fatally. Of course we're not scared of that. Of course I know that I'm not going to fly out of it. Of course I know it's perfectly safe. Of course I was never scared at any point to do any of these slides because they're insured by American companies, which means you're not going to die on them. But Lily didn't know that. She still has this nine-year-old sense of wonder where danger is possible on water slides. And there is something about life that chips away at our wonder, isn't there? There's about life we're becoming an adult means that we don't awe at things anymore it means that we don't wonder at things anymore it means that we instantly explain things away and if we can't instantly explain it away we know that there is a way to explain it away. We just need to acquaint ourselves with it. And it makes me sad that I can't stand at the top of a water slide with a sense of trepidation in my heart. I was trepidatious about keeping my breakfast down before I did Daredevil's Peak. It turns a lot, and I thought I might get sick. But at no point was I scared for my life. At no point did I think something catastrophic was going to happen, but what must it be like to be nine again and to be fully convinced that Dad shouldn't do the yellow slide because it may not be safe. Grownups, we've lost that sense of wonder. We've lost our ability to marvel. And we very readily explain things away. But I bring that up and I acquaint us with that mindset of the wondrous child because I believe that the passage that we are going to read today stirs up within us that wonder if we will let it. As I read through Exodus, getting ready for this series, and I arrived at this passage, I'm going to be in Exodus chapter 19, verses 16 through the end of the chapter, through 25. And I read this passage. It kind of had this profound impact on me. On the trip, like you do, I read a book. When you go on vacation, you read a book. And so I was reading a book, and this book, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, is particularly profound. And there was one chapter where it ended with this old man knowing that his children were tricking him into retirement and that he was going to go into retirement and die, and he was content with this choice. And he asked his eldest child to keep his knowledge of that away from his other kids. Let them go on thinking they're tricking me. And the way that it was written was so profound that it felt like I would cheapen the book and the thought if I simply turned the page and continued to read. So after I read that portion of the book, I read it again, and then I shut the book, and I put it on the nightstand, and I turned off the light, and I just ruminated in it. Because there are some portions of some stories that get cheapened when you continue on without reflecting on them. And I think this morning, in Exodus chapter 19, we arrive at one of those moments. That if we just continue to charge ahead, reading the life of Moses, we miss the profundity that is bound within these words. If we do not reflect on it. Further, not only do I want us to reflect on it this morning, but I want us to do our very best to reflect on it with the wonder of a naive nine-year-old. I want us to do our best to marvel at these words, to put ourselves in this situation, and to allow the words to sweep us up and to respect what is happening in this portion of the story. God is about to give the Ten Commandments to the Hebrew people. And next week we will look at the law and the commandments and we will talk about why they're so important and so meaningful and how they are the fulcrum on which a huge portion of the Bible rests in teeters. We'll look at that next week. And it would be tempting to get to this part of the story, get to Mount Sinai in the presence of God and just move right into the law because that's the headliner from this part of the book. That's the headliner from this part of the story. But I don't just want to rush headlong into the law and miss how profound the precursor is to that deliverance of the law. The Hebrew people have been wandering through the desert by this point for some time. Months, years, decades. And they come to this mountain called Mount Sinai. And clouds and smoke come to rest over the mountain. And God tells Moses to tell the people this is now a holy place. Do not let anyone touch the mountain. If anyone touches the mountain, they are to be stoned or run through with arrows. This is holy ground. Can you imagine being an ancient Hebrew person, having escaped from Egypt, watched God part the waters and then collapse them in on the Egyptian army and the top 600 chariot drivers in their country. Demolish the army and make you safe. And every day you wake up and you pick up manna on the ground and you feed your family and God provides for you every day. Can you imagine what it would be like? And then, and you're led by a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. And then one day you're in front of this mountain and cloud and smoke comes to rest on the mountain and you are told this is holy ground. You cannot touch it. And you're not American. You don't understand science. You don't have all the learning that you have. You cannot explain this away. The only thing to explain it away is this is miraculous and that is from God. And you marvel at it and you awe at it because you have not, your wonder has not been chipped away at by your education and by your experience. And then on the third day, this is what transpires. And this is where I think it's worth taking a holy pause to reflect on what's happening in the narrative. I'm going to read you more verses than I normally do. I simply think that they're all important. And so read said to the Lord, The people cannot come up from Mount Sinai because you warned us yourself. Put limits around the mountain and set it apart as holy. The Lord replied, Go down and bring Aaron up with you, but the priests and the people must not force their way through to come up to the Lord, or he will break out against them. So Moses went down to the people and told them. I know that this may seem obscure to point out on a Sunday morning, but to me it's not obscure at all. To me, it's halting. It's poignant. It's important. God brings his very presence down to the top of the mountain. He has not brought his presence anywhere since the Garden of Eden. But he brings it down here now. And for three days before he brought his presence, there was smoke and fire and clouds covering this holy ground. And then he descends onto it himself and he calls to Moses, come and speak to me. And before he gives Moses the law, which is the reason that he came, he just simply says to Moses, go and tell them, don't come here. This is holy. This is sacred. And I know that it's so hard for us to do, and our American 21st century minds that are so smart, and so educated, and so smug. But can we not envision what it must have been like to marvel at this mountain where it says smoke is lifting from it like a furnace because the presence of God is on it? And there is this man that we revere and he is leading us named Moses. And he's called to the top of it. And he comes down with a message for us. Our imaginations are too atrophied to appreciate this. This point would be better made in the second and third grade room than it is here. Because we're too smart for this. We're too developed for this. We've lost our sense of wonder. We know water slides are safe. And so we read passages like this, and I'm afraid that we miss it. And we go, what's the point? This is the point. Do you see how awful and terrifying God is? Do you see how big He is? Do you see how marvelous He is? Do you see how awesome, in the very sense of the word, that He is. Do you see how awesome in the very sense of the word that he is? And so I think if we just read this and we go, yeah, yeah, get to the commandments, we cheapen the narrative and we miss what's happening here. Because what's happening here reminds me of one of my favorite Proverbs, Proverbs chapter nine, verse 10, where it simply says at the beginning, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. This passage personifies, exemplifies, illustrates that point better than any other passage I know outside of the book of Revelation, where it just grabs you and it shakes you and it makes you pay attention to who our God is and how big he is. How fearful must we have been if we were there? If we can imagine what it must have been like to be in the desert and to watch this mountain shake violently and to see smoke rising off of it and to know that our God that we worship, that we just sang to, is present there. How much would that stir us? And how much fear would we have of who that awesome God is and what he must be capable of? It is something that we have lost in 21st century church. But to me, it illustrates and personifies that passage in Proverbs that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And many of us have probably heard that passage before, have heard that idiom before. Even if we didn't know it was from Proverbs, we've heard that phrase, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And what we tend to do is we try to defang it by making fear mean reverence and awe. It doesn't really mean afraid. It means that we just revere God. And I want to be very clear about this this morning. No, no, no. Fear means being afraid. When we were doing the water slides, back to this well, when we were doing the water slides, about halfway up the tower, there was these slides called dueling demons. And at the top of them, there was a capsule. It was clear plastic and it would open hydraulically. And you would step into the capsule and it it would close, and there's water running down your back, and your feet are crossed, and your hands are here. And at some point or another, the sadistic slide worker is going to press the button, and the bottom's going to drop out. Okay? That was the ride. And it was super fun. I was laughing the whole time. It was great. Lily said she wanted to do it. She had said she wasn't going to do it. But she said she wanted to try dueling demons with her cousin Charlotte. And I was like, great, babe. And so we get up there. We wait in line. And it's her turn. And she goes, and I want to watch her in the capsule. And the thing opens like a coffin, you know. And then, and she took one step into it and paused and like looked around. And I was getting ready. I knew she was going to turn and look at me. And I was getting ready to like, babe, you got it. You can do this. You're all right. You know, like I was going to talk her into it. But when she turned and looked at me, the color had left her face. And she just went. And I just, all toughness left. Baby, come here. Come here. You don't have to do it. Walk down by yourself in shame, but you don't have to do it. You don't have to do this. I'm still going to do it. I'll see you at the bottom. I'm not going to miss my opportunity to duel the demon. But when I saw her, I knew she was afraid. She was scared. There's no talking her into this. Fear of the Lord means being afraid. We don't soft pedal it with reverence first. We are actually afraid of him and what he can do. We actually tremble at his might. I don't know if you read it, if you caught it in the narrative, but it's said that the whole camp trembled. The tough, grizzled old men. The women who have seen everything and endured more. The whole camp tremb idea that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, let us not soft pedal it first into reverence. Let us understand first that it is an actual sense of fear where the color leaves our face and we understand what it is that our God is capable of. And we don't talk about this a lot, particularly not in American churches, but he can smite us. He can put his thumb on us and end it. You know your mom used to say, I brought you into this world, I can take you out of it? God actually means it. We should be fearful of God. That's where our relationship with him should start. And when we skip that step, I think we shortchange ourselves. I actually have thought about it this way for years. And I don't know if this will resonate with you or not, but for me, the way that our progressive understanding of who God is isn't very dissimilar from my progressive understanding of who my father is. I was born in the 80s, and when you're born in the 80s, your parents hit you. They spanked you, okay? That's what you got. I got spanked when I was growing up. We don't do it now. If we do it now, we don't talk about it. But I will say that there are times when my children act in such a way, and I think this is why we invented spanking. You have no fear, and you need a knot jerked in your tail. My dad didn't just spank me. And one of the biggest mistakes I made was when I was eight years old, my mom broke the wooden spoon on me and I laughed at her. It was belt after that, from then on out. And if I had anything in my life to do over again, I would strongly consider going back to eight years old and crying and pretending like that hurt. Because the belt was the worst. Not only did we get spanked with the belt, but my dad had a couple of moves perfected that I can't even do to this day. I called it the no-look slap and grab, but when we were in the car, I'd be in the back seat, and if me and my sister got sideways, dad could, without looking, without breaking eye contact with the road, reach back and slap. He had some sort of radar to know where my left thigh was. He could reach back and slap it and grab it and squeeze it. So now I'm dealing with the sting of hitting my leg. And then he squeezes it and he has these fulcrum grips on my leg. I'm in incredible pain. I have no idea what words he's saying or what words I'm using. I'm just trying to get this done with, right? And then he had this other move where he would grab my arm and twist it and just kind of jam my shoulder into itself and walk me across a room. And I'm going like this. It was easier to be a parent in the 80s, I think. But when I was little, I was scared of my dad. For better or worse, maybe I need to work this out in therapy. For better or worse, I was scared of him. I didn't get sideways because I didn't want to get hurt. I watched my mouth because I didn't want the no-look slapping grab. I didn't want to get spanked. I was scared, and so that kept me in line. But eventually, somewhere in middle school, I realized, defects is a thing. He's not going to hurt me that bad. He really is not going to do anything. Or I can report him. I got a leg up. But by that time in my life, I just wanted to make him proud of me. I didn't obey him because I was scared of getting the belt. I obeyed him because I wanted to make him proud. And then at some point in my life, I realized that he was proud of me, that he was proud to call me his son. And my mom was proud to call me her son. And then the knowledge of their pride in me made me love them all the more. And so fear begat reverence, begat a desire to make them proud. The fact that I knew that they were proud of me begat this deep love for them, that they loved and accepted me for who I was no matter what and it was unconditional and I don't think it works very differently with our Heavenly Father but we can't just jump straight to love we have to experience fear and from that fear a desire to make our Heavenly Father proud and from that desire realize that he is proud of us that that He does love us as much as He ever will. And then from that comes this unconditional, reciprocal, grateful love from us towards our Heavenly Father. But it has to start with fear. That's why it says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And I think that that gets a bad rap, this idea of fearing our God. Why would our God want us to be afraid of him? Why would he ask that of us? Because in the 21st century church, in American church, we skip fear and we go straight to the cross. We skip fear and we go right to Christmas and right to Easter. I am forgiven because he was forsaken. I'm accepted. He was condemned. And we get to move right to God. We get to move right into God's presence. We never experience the fear of him. It's like growing up with your grandfather when all he ever wants to do is spoil you. But you forget that your dad has to discipline you. We forget that. And we skip straight to love. And we forget to fear our God. We forget scenes like this in Exodus 19 where we should be awestruck by him and wonder and marvel at his largesse and at his might and at his wrath and at his vengeance and at his anger. Those don't make us comfortable, so we move on from them. But I believe that we cheapen our relationship with our Father God when we are not aware of them. So why does God insist that fear is the beginning of wisdom? And how can that be a good thing? A few points to this end. First of all, fear appreciates grace and mercy. Fear helps us appreciate grace and mercy. Here's what I mean. Back to the well of the cruise this week by way of illustration. This was a, my parents were saying, a once-in-a-lifetime trip for our family. My parents are big cruisers. They like to do it, and so they wanted to bring Amy and I, Amy's my sister, and our families along. And so we did the whole thing. And it was really nice, and Dad did it right. And we got to stay in a suite. And that's pretty, I'm not trying to brag, I'm just telling you that we stayed in a suite. It is pretty awesome. There was a curtain dividing our king-size bed from the height of bed, so that was fancy. And we had our own balcony and a chair that you could read on and watch the ocean, which was really, really cool. We had, there was a private suite lounge that your key card got you access to, and from 4.30 to 8, there's free Cokes, so it was awesome. We would go there every day and get Cokes before dinner because at dinner, if you wanted a Coke, they would upcharge you like $5.50 or something. So we'd go get a free Coke and then take that to dinner. But it was like a really nice experience. And at one point, we had told each of Jen and I each did a cruise when we were teenagers with our families. And at one point Lily said, uh, mommy and daddy, when you did cruises before, did you stay in rooms like this? And it was like, no, no, we stayed in an interior room that was tiny. It was like a cave and it was damp. And you had to shuffle sideways to get into bed because there's no space. And you slept sweaty against your sibling. That's what you did. All right. That was traveling when we were growing up. Because when we were growing up, we didn't have grandparents that had been moderately successful. So mom and dad had to foot the bill for vacations. Jen, growing up, went to vacation in Seaside Beach every year before Seaside Beach was bougie and awesome, back when it was just run down like all the beaches in North Carolina. I hate North Carolina beaches. And your barbecue sauce. I'm just throwing that out there. Yeah, I know. They got a house that was a few blocks off of the beach that somehow or another through the Southern Baptist Church relationship network, Jen's dad found this older lady, and he would come down. He was pretty handy. And in exchange for doing a certain amount of projects, his family could stay in the basement a few blocks off of the beach. So she grew up vacationing by trading handiwork for a location that was a bike ride away from the beach. And Lily's staying in a suite with free Cokes in the afternoon and a private dining room going, isn't this how everyone travels? And it's like, no, no, this is not how, this is not how rectors travel. Somebody gave us a courtside seats one time to an NC state game. And we were sitting, Lily and I were on the floor sitting behind the television announcer booth and they were turning around and interacting with her during the commercial breaks. And at one point in the game, I grabbed her and I said, Lily, do you see up there in the shadows the seats against the wall that are really high up and you can barely see? And she goes, yes. And I said, those are rector seats. Okay? These are not. Do not get used to this. But it was just funny to me, Daddy, did you stay in rooms like this when you were a kid? No. No, I didn't have rich grandparents. I stayed with the poor. I stayed in poor people rooms. And we went on one. And it was a treat. But she doesn't understand that. And that's something to work out. Something that Jen and I have to navigate. But to her, what we just did is normal. That's what we're used to. But because I stayed in the dank cabin cave when I was a kid, I can have a deeper appreciation for the sweet. Because it was like Lord of the Flies and I had to fight for one glass of water amongst a bunch of overweight people trying to get to the same trough when I was 16. I can appreciate access to water all I want on a ship. She can't appreciate that. She doesn't have that perspective. And my point is, New Testament Christians are a lot more like her than they are like the Old Testament Christians. New Testament Christians don't know what it is to fear God because we meet Jesus right away. We meet someone who describes himself as gentle and lowly. We don't know what it is to suffer. We don't know what it is to be fearful of God. We've never sat at the base of the mountain and watched it violently shake while we tremble with our friends at the might of our God because we go straight to the cross. We go straight to Christmas and we go straight to Easter and we see Jesus meek and mild. We are the rich billionaire trust fund babies of history born into this soft world where we never have to fear God. And so we read passages like this and they're foreign to us because that's not our God because our God comes meek and mild and, and he loves me, and he died for me, and he accepts me, and I call him Abba Father, and he calls me up into his lap. We forget the awful God that comes before that. We forget the fear-inspiring God that comes before that, and we end up acting like spoiled brats towards our God because we forget to fear him. So fear appreciates grace and mercy. When I have grappled with the reality that not only do I deserve a punishment for my sin and for my disloyalty to God, but that he is also highly capable of meeting that out and has chosen not to, and instead has chosen to show me grace and mercy in the form of his son and watched him die for my betrayal to him. It is only then when we swim in those waters and acquaint ourselves with that reality that we can properly appreciate grace and mercy. But we're so quick to jump to grace and mercy. And we figuratively ask our parents, has it always been like this? Did you travel like this when you were a kid? Because we're spoiled. And so I think that fear is good because it refocuses us on our gratitude for grace and mercy. And it shows us how important those things are. Fear is good because fear reminds us of our place. It reminds us of our place. When we say the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and we say this is actually a good thing. Why? Because it reminds us of our place. Jen pointed this out to me this week. Do you understand that the original sin in the Garden of Eden was essentially choosing to not be afraid of God anymore? It was losing this fear of God. The story goes that the serpent whispered into the ear of Eve. There was one tree. There was only one rule. God said, do whatever you want. Just don't eat fruit off of this one tree. And the serpent appears to Eve and speaks into her ear and says, do you know that God actually doesn't want you to eat of that tree? Because if you do, you'll know the difference between good and evil and you'll be like him. He's just trying to hold you down. He doesn't want you to be like he is and So what happened in the language of what we're talking about this morning is he whispered in Eve's ear You don't have to be afraid of him You can do what you want You don't have to fear God you are like him and so the original sin Was have to fear God. You are like him. And so the original sin was refusing to fear God at the beginning of wisdom. Do you see that? And I love the way that the Bible starts out, and this is why I say that fear helps us keep our place. The very first sentence of the Bible, do you know what it is? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And I'm firmly convinced that it does not begin that way just because that's where the story starts. I'm firmly convinced that the Bible begins that way because it sets up from the very first sentence, the essential relationship in all creation. I am the creator, you are the created. All sin in our life is when we do this and we put ourselves on level with our creator. Anytime we sin, anytime we do anything that displeases God, all we've done is we've said, yeah, you're the creator, but I think I'm equal to you. So I'm not going to follow your rules. I'm going to follow mine. Everything in life that is messed up begins with a fundamental disjointment of this relationship where he says he is the creator and we are the creation and we go, nope, I'm not scared of you. This was the original sin of Eve. When the serpent whispered in her ear, you don't have to be afraid of him anymore. You are like him. And so she lost the fear of the Lord. So the fear of God keeps us in our place. It reminds us that he is all-powerful creator, and we are subservient creation. When Job got upset with God in that book, and he confronts him in Job 38, God's response is, hey Job, you forgot your place. So when we have fear of God, when we read Exodus 19 and we allow that to take us back to our nine-year-old selves and tremble at the might of our God, it also reminds us to keep our place. Last good thing I'll say about fear and why God insists on it is that fear makes knowledge a privilege. It makes knowledge of God a privilege. We presume that we should know who God is. We presume that we have a right to him. We presume that he should share himself with us. But that is not the case. Do you understand the miracle of the condescension of God? Do you understand what that is? Here is a figure that for the first time in history, since the garden of Eden descends onto a mountain, it burns with smoke. It shakes violently. It makes everyone around him tremble. And thousands of years later, he condescends by sending his son and our frail form to be with us, to sit in the muck and the mire. The miracle of God's condescension to us, to be one of us, to live as us, to be tempted as us, to love as us, and then to die as us for us. We start with Christmas and we start with Easter, so we take it for granted. But put yourself in the shoes of the people surrounding that mountain and imagine that thousands of years later, this being that's shaking the foundations of the earth and is causing fear and everyone that I know is going to send his son in human form to live the life of a pauper, to love me perfectly, to die perfectly, and to pave a way for me to get to know that cloud, Testament Christian mindset that grew up thinking that they always vacation in suites. That grows up thinking that God could never possibly be upset with me. He loves me. I'm forgiven. I'm concerned for the spoiled Christians that don't take time to understand what it means to fear their God and how mighty and awesome he is. I'm concerned for the church as life chips away at our wonder and we're no longer scared of water slides because we can explain it all away. And I just thought it was worth it this morning to try my best. And I don't mean this in any disrespectful way. But to try my best to grab your face and make you look at the might and the wonder and the awe of your God. For once, before we skip to Easter and we skip to Christmas. Look how wonderful and terrifying and miraculous he is. And let's be grateful that he uses that for us, not against us. That he chooses to love us. That he chooses to save us, that he chooses to condescend to be a part of us. We cannot read Exodus and see God descend on Mount Sinai and not pause and acknowledge that we are spoiled spiritual brats that do not often enough reflect on the awe-inspiring wonder, might, and wrath of God. And so this morning, let us do that. And may we always see ourselves at the foot of the mountain. And in so doing, come to appreciate all the things we love about our Heavenly Father all the more. Because I think so often we skip to the things we love about our God and we forget this foundation of fear that is the very beginning of wisdom that deepens our appreciation for him. So may we this morning together sit at the base of the mountain and tremble. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for what you chose to do with the Israelites in descending upon Mount Sinai. God, I'm not sure why you chose to reveal yourself in that way. I'm not even sure we've handled it the way it needs to be handled this morning, but I know, God, it gives me pause. I know, Father, it makes me wonder at you. And I hope that just a little bit of that wonder was communicated. And I hope that we are moved by it. I hope that we will not be so inoculated by your love that we forget your wrath. God, give us a deep appreciation for that so that we may approach you with more gratitude. So that we might marvel at the fact that you love us, that you know us, that you care about us, and that you're proud of us. God, help us more and more to see ourselves at the foot of that mountain, marveling at who and what you are. In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks so much for making grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you're watching online, wherever you are, whatever you may be doing, thank you for your presence there and here. It is with some excitement that I get back into the pulpit this weekend. The elders several years ago made a decision that I would get a stay from preaching in the month of July, and our staff carries the torch. And I don't know about you guys, but I thought Aaron and Aaron and Kyle each preached the best sermon I've ever heard them preach, and I thought that they carried the torch well in July. So I'm very grateful to have such a deep bench here at the church that can serve us in those weeks. And then Doug Bergeson preached last week, and he did fine. But I'm very grateful that we have those voices in our church, and I'm very grateful for when we get to hear from other voices. I'm also grateful that I get to continue on this morning in our series in the life of Moses. We took a brief break last week for Ministry Partner Sunday, but this week we're jumping back into Moses and we're going to carry Moses through the end of the month into Labor Day weekend. And then the second weekend in September, we're going to begin a new series called Gentle and Lowly. I will tell you more about that. There's going to be a book. We're all going to read it together. If you'd like to, I think it's really going to bring us together as a church. I'm very excited for that series. But before that, we have this, where we are continuing to look at the life of Moses and how God used him to lead his people out of Egypt and eventually into the promised land and establish this new nation. As we look at the portion of the story on which I want to focus this morning, I want us to attempt to shed a mindset and adopt a new one that may be best illustrated by my daughter this past week. This last week, I had an opportunity to go on a cruise. My parents are cruise people. They like cruises. Some people are cruise people. You're weird. Some people are not cruise people, okay? But we went on a cruise, and as part of this cruise, it was a really wonderful experience. My sister and her three girls and her husband came along as well. It was one big family, and it was a really, really great experience. The last full day we were there, we docked at Royal Caribbean's private island called Coco Cay. Perfect day at Coco Cay. Except it rained the whole time. So our joke was, it's a pretty okay day at Coco Cay. Coco Cay is home to, there's this Daredevil's Tower. And off this tower in the middle of the island spit five different water slides. The apex is Daredevil's Peak, which is the tallest water slide in North America. And Lily did it. My nine-year-old daughter chose it, and she did it, and I was so proud of her. There is nothing that that has to do anything at all with my sermon. I'm just proud of Lily for choosing to do Daredevil's Peak because I did it and I was, you know, you cross your feet and your arms like this and I'm like wiping off my eyes because I'm trying to save my contacts so I don't have to walk around in a fog for the rest of the day. And I'm giggling to myself thinking, and I said out loud, holy crap, this is fast. Holy crap, this is fast. But she did it. Great. Here's why I bring that up. Because on your way up the stairs, there's different slides that you can do. And the very lowest is like some sort of racers. The idea is that you start each one at the same time and you see who gets to the bottom first, which spoiler alert, it's whoever's fattest. That's who gets to the bottom first. That's how that works. I won a lot of races this week. And there's like this burgundy-ish slide that's enclosed, and then there's a yellow slide that's open, and you kind of like slosh on the sides of it. And as we were going up the stairs, Lily said, Daddy, we're going to do this later, but don't do the yellow slide. And I said, why, baby? And she goes, because I think I saw on YouTube that people fly out of it. They just fly like right off the sides and they just, just careen into Daredevil's Peak, right? And this was a legitimate concern of hers, that Daddy, please don't do this slide because you might fly out of it and die. There's, there's legitimate danger at the top of the slide. And I just remember thinking, sweetie, you don't know how liability works. There is no one on the planet that is more incented to make sure that no one flies off this slide than Royal Caribbean. They're insured for this. That's not going to happen. You could find someone who weighs 450 pounds, put them in a speed suit, grease them up, and they're still not flying out of that slide. Okay? No one's flying out of that slide, but I thought what a quaint, wonderful thing it is to be nine and to believe that you are in such peril at the top of this slide that you may not make it to the bottom. When's the last time you had that kind of wonder and naivety in your life? When it was a possibility to do a water slide and it end fatally. Of course we're not scared of that. Of course I know that I'm not going to fly out of it. Of course I know it's perfectly safe. Of course I was never scared at any point to do any of these slides because they're insured by American companies, which means you're not going to die on them. But Lily didn't know that. She still has this nine-year-old sense of wonder where danger is possible on water slides. And there is something about life that chips away at our wonder, isn't there? There's about life we're becoming an adult means that we don't awe at things anymore it means that we don't wonder at things anymore it means that we instantly explain things away and if we can't instantly explain it away we know that there is a way to explain it away. We just need to acquaint ourselves with it. And it makes me sad that I can't stand at the top of a water slide with a sense of trepidation in my heart. I was trepidatious about keeping my breakfast down before I did Daredevil's Peak. It turns a lot, and I thought I might get sick. But at no point was I scared for my life. At no point did I think something catastrophic was going to happen, but what must it be like to be nine again and to be fully convinced that Dad shouldn't do the yellow slide because it may not be safe. Grownups, we've lost that sense of wonder. We've lost our ability to marvel. And we very readily explain things away. But I bring that up and I acquaint us with that mindset of the wondrous child because I believe that the passage that we are going to read today stirs up within us that wonder if we will let it. As I read through Exodus, getting ready for this series, and I arrived at this passage, I'm going to be in Exodus chapter 19, verses 16 through the end of the chapter, through 25. And I read this passage. It kind of had this profound impact on me. On the trip, like you do, I read a book. When you go on vacation, you read a book. And so I was reading a book, and this book, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, is particularly profound. And there was one chapter where it ended with this old man knowing that his children were tricking him into retirement and that he was going to go into retirement and die, and he was content with this choice. And he asked his eldest child to keep his knowledge of that away from his other kids. Let them go on thinking they're tricking me. And the way that it was written was so profound that it felt like I would cheapen the book and the thought if I simply turned the page and continued to read. So after I read that portion of the book, I read it again, and then I shut the book, and I put it on the nightstand, and I turned off the light, and I just ruminated in it. Because there are some portions of some stories that get cheapened when you continue on without reflecting on them. And I think this morning, in Exodus chapter 19, we arrive at one of those moments. That if we just continue to charge ahead, reading the life of Moses, we miss the profundity that is bound within these words. If we do not reflect on it. Further, not only do I want us to reflect on it this morning, but I want us to do our very best to reflect on it with the wonder of a naive nine-year-old. I want us to do our best to marvel at these words, to put ourselves in this situation, and to allow the words to sweep us up and to respect what is happening in this portion of the story. God is about to give the Ten Commandments to the Hebrew people. And next week we will look at the law and the commandments and we will talk about why they're so important and so meaningful and how they are the fulcrum on which a huge portion of the Bible rests in teeters. We'll look at that next week. And it would be tempting to get to this part of the story, get to Mount Sinai in the presence of God and just move right into the law because that's the headliner from this part of the book. That's the headliner from this part of the story. But I don't just want to rush headlong into the law and miss how profound the precursor is to that deliverance of the law. The Hebrew people have been wandering through the desert by this point for some time. Months, years, decades. And they come to this mountain called Mount Sinai. And clouds and smoke come to rest over the mountain. And God tells Moses to tell the people this is now a holy place. Do not let anyone touch the mountain. If anyone touches the mountain, they are to be stoned or run through with arrows. This is holy ground. Can you imagine being an ancient Hebrew person, having escaped from Egypt, watched God part the waters and then collapse them in on the Egyptian army and the top 600 chariot drivers in their country. Demolish the army and make you safe. And every day you wake up and you pick up manna on the ground and you feed your family and God provides for you every day. Can you imagine what it would be like? And then, and you're led by a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. And then one day you're in front of this mountain and cloud and smoke comes to rest on the mountain and you are told this is holy ground. You cannot touch it. And you're not American. You don't understand science. You don't have all the learning that you have. You cannot explain this away. The only thing to explain it away is this is miraculous and that is from God. And you marvel at it and you awe at it because you have not, your wonder has not been chipped away at by your education and by your experience. And then on the third day, this is what transpires. And this is where I think it's worth taking a holy pause to reflect on what's happening in the narrative. I'm going to read you more verses than I normally do. I simply think that they're all important. And so read said to the Lord, The people cannot come up from Mount Sinai because you warned us yourself. Put limits around the mountain and set it apart as holy. The Lord replied, Go down and bring Aaron up with you, but the priests and the people must not force their way through to come up to the Lord, or he will break out against them. So Moses went down to the people and told them. I know that this may seem obscure to point out on a Sunday morning, but to me it's not obscure at all. To me, it's halting. It's poignant. It's important. God brings his very presence down to the top of the mountain. He has not brought his presence anywhere since the Garden of Eden. But he brings it down here now. And for three days before he brought his presence, there was smoke and fire and clouds covering this holy ground. And then he descends onto it himself and he calls to Moses, come and speak to me. And before he gives Moses the law, which is the reason that he came, he just simply says to Moses, go and tell them, don't come here. This is holy. This is sacred. And I know that it's so hard for us to do, and our American 21st century minds that are so smart, and so educated, and so smug. But can we not envision what it must have been like to marvel at this mountain where it says smoke is lifting from it like a furnace because the presence of God is on it? And there is this man that we revere and he is leading us named Moses. And he's called to the top of it. And he comes down with a message for us. Our imaginations are too atrophied to appreciate this. This point would be better made in the second and third grade room than it is here. Because we're too smart for this. We're too developed for this. We've lost our sense of wonder. We know water slides are safe. And so we read passages like this, and I'm afraid that we miss it. And we go, what's the point? This is the point. Do you see how awful and terrifying God is? Do you see how big He is? Do you see how marvelous He is? Do you see how awesome, in the very sense of the word, that He is. Do you see how awesome in the very sense of the word that he is? And so I think if we just read this and we go, yeah, yeah, get to the commandments, we cheapen the narrative and we miss what's happening here. Because what's happening here reminds me of one of my favorite Proverbs, Proverbs chapter nine, verse 10, where it simply says at the beginning, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. This passage personifies, exemplifies, illustrates that point better than any other passage I know outside of the book of Revelation, where it just grabs you and it shakes you and it makes you pay attention to who our God is and how big he is. How fearful must we have been if we were there? If we can imagine what it must have been like to be in the desert and to watch this mountain shake violently and to see smoke rising off of it and to know that our God that we worship, that we just sang to, is present there. How much would that stir us? And how much fear would we have of who that awesome God is and what he must be capable of? It is something that we have lost in 21st century church. But to me, it illustrates and personifies that passage in Proverbs that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And many of us have probably heard that passage before, have heard that idiom before. Even if we didn't know it was from Proverbs, we've heard that phrase, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And what we tend to do is we try to defang it by making fear mean reverence and awe. It doesn't really mean afraid. It means that we just revere God. And I want to be very clear about this this morning. No, no, no. Fear means being afraid. When we were doing the water slides, back to this well, when we were doing the water slides, about halfway up the tower, there was these slides called dueling demons. And at the top of them, there was a capsule. It was clear plastic and it would open hydraulically. And you would step into the capsule and it it would close, and there's water running down your back, and your feet are crossed, and your hands are here. And at some point or another, the sadistic slide worker is going to press the button, and the bottom's going to drop out. Okay? That was the ride. And it was super fun. I was laughing the whole time. It was great. Lily said she wanted to do it. She had said she wasn't going to do it. But she said she wanted to try dueling demons with her cousin Charlotte. And I was like, great, babe. And so we get up there. We wait in line. And it's her turn. And she goes, and I want to watch her in the capsule. And the thing opens like a coffin, you know. And then, and she took one step into it and paused and like looked around. And I was getting ready. I knew she was going to turn and look at me. And I was getting ready to like, babe, you got it. You can do this. You're all right. You know, like I was going to talk her into it. But when she turned and looked at me, the color had left her face. And she just went. And I just, all toughness left. Baby, come here. Come here. You don't have to do it. Walk down by yourself in shame, but you don't have to do it. You don't have to do this. I'm still going to do it. I'll see you at the bottom. I'm not going to miss my opportunity to duel the demon. But when I saw her, I knew she was afraid. She was scared. There's no talking her into this. Fear of the Lord means being afraid. We don't soft pedal it with reverence first. We are actually afraid of him and what he can do. We actually tremble at his might. I don't know if you read it, if you caught it in the narrative, but it's said that the whole camp trembled. The tough, grizzled old men. The women who have seen everything and endured more. The whole camp tremb idea that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, let us not soft pedal it first into reverence. Let us understand first that it is an actual sense of fear where the color leaves our face and we understand what it is that our God is capable of. And we don't talk about this a lot, particularly not in American churches, but he can smite us. He can put his thumb on us and end it. You know your mom used to say, I brought you into this world, I can take you out of it? God actually means it. We should be fearful of God. That's where our relationship with him should start. And when we skip that step, I think we shortchange ourselves. I actually have thought about it this way for years. And I don't know if this will resonate with you or not, but for me, the way that our progressive understanding of who God is isn't very dissimilar from my progressive understanding of who my father is. I was born in the 80s, and when you're born in the 80s, your parents hit you. They spanked you, okay? That's what you got. I got spanked when I was growing up. We don't do it now. If we do it now, we don't talk about it. But I will say that there are times when my children act in such a way, and I think this is why we invented spanking. You have no fear, and you need a knot jerked in your tail. My dad didn't just spank me. And one of the biggest mistakes I made was when I was eight years old, my mom broke the wooden spoon on me and I laughed at her. It was belt after that, from then on out. And if I had anything in my life to do over again, I would strongly consider going back to eight years old and crying and pretending like that hurt. Because the belt was the worst. Not only did we get spanked with the belt, but my dad had a couple of moves perfected that I can't even do to this day. I called it the no-look slap and grab, but when we were in the car, I'd be in the back seat, and if me and my sister got sideways, dad could, without looking, without breaking eye contact with the road, reach back and slap. He had some sort of radar to know where my left thigh was. He could reach back and slap it and grab it and squeeze it. So now I'm dealing with the sting of hitting my leg. And then he squeezes it and he has these fulcrum grips on my leg. I'm in incredible pain. I have no idea what words he's saying or what words I'm using. I'm just trying to get this done with, right? And then he had this other move where he would grab my arm and twist it and just kind of jam my shoulder into itself and walk me across a room. And I'm going like this. It was easier to be a parent in the 80s, I think. But when I was little, I was scared of my dad. For better or worse, maybe I need to work this out in therapy. For better or worse, I was scared of him. I didn't get sideways because I didn't want to get hurt. I watched my mouth because I didn't want the no-look slapping grab. I didn't want to get spanked. I was scared, and so that kept me in line. But eventually, somewhere in middle school, I realized, defects is a thing. He's not going to hurt me that bad. He really is not going to do anything. Or I can report him. I got a leg up. But by that time in my life, I just wanted to make him proud of me. I didn't obey him because I was scared of getting the belt. I obeyed him because I wanted to make him proud. And then at some point in my life, I realized that he was proud of me, that he was proud to call me his son. And my mom was proud to call me her son. And then the knowledge of their pride in me made me love them all the more. And so fear begat reverence, begat a desire to make them proud. The fact that I knew that they were proud of me begat this deep love for them, that they loved and accepted me for who I was no matter what and it was unconditional and I don't think it works very differently with our Heavenly Father but we can't just jump straight to love we have to experience fear and from that fear a desire to make our Heavenly Father proud and from that desire realize that he is proud of us that that He does love us as much as He ever will. And then from that comes this unconditional, reciprocal, grateful love from us towards our Heavenly Father. But it has to start with fear. That's why it says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And I think that that gets a bad rap, this idea of fearing our God. Why would our God want us to be afraid of him? Why would he ask that of us? Because in the 21st century church, in American church, we skip fear and we go straight to the cross. We skip fear and we go right to Christmas and right to Easter. I am forgiven because he was forsaken. I'm accepted. He was condemned. And we get to move right to God. We get to move right into God's presence. We never experience the fear of him. It's like growing up with your grandfather when all he ever wants to do is spoil you. But you forget that your dad has to discipline you. We forget that. And we skip straight to love. And we forget to fear our God. We forget scenes like this in Exodus 19 where we should be awestruck by him and wonder and marvel at his largesse and at his might and at his wrath and at his vengeance and at his anger. Those don't make us comfortable, so we move on from them. But I believe that we cheapen our relationship with our Father God when we are not aware of them. So why does God insist that fear is the beginning of wisdom? And how can that be a good thing? A few points to this end. First of all, fear appreciates grace and mercy. Fear helps us appreciate grace and mercy. Here's what I mean. Back to the well of the cruise this week by way of illustration. This was a, my parents were saying, a once-in-a-lifetime trip for our family. My parents are big cruisers. They like to do it, and so they wanted to bring Amy and I, Amy's my sister, and our families along. And so we did the whole thing. And it was really nice, and Dad did it right. And we got to stay in a suite. And that's pretty, I'm not trying to brag, I'm just telling you that we stayed in a suite. It is pretty awesome. There was a curtain dividing our king-size bed from the height of bed, so that was fancy. And we had our own balcony and a chair that you could read on and watch the ocean, which was really, really cool. We had, there was a private suite lounge that your key card got you access to, and from 4.30 to 8, there's free Cokes, so it was awesome. We would go there every day and get Cokes before dinner because at dinner, if you wanted a Coke, they would upcharge you like $5.50 or something. So we'd go get a free Coke and then take that to dinner. But it was like a really nice experience. And at one point, we had told each of Jen and I each did a cruise when we were teenagers with our families. And at one point Lily said, uh, mommy and daddy, when you did cruises before, did you stay in rooms like this? And it was like, no, no, we stayed in an interior room that was tiny. It was like a cave and it was damp. And you had to shuffle sideways to get into bed because there's no space. And you slept sweaty against your sibling. That's what you did. All right. That was traveling when we were growing up. Because when we were growing up, we didn't have grandparents that had been moderately successful. So mom and dad had to foot the bill for vacations. Jen, growing up, went to vacation in Seaside Beach every year before Seaside Beach was bougie and awesome, back when it was just run down like all the beaches in North Carolina. I hate North Carolina beaches. And your barbecue sauce. I'm just throwing that out there. Yeah, I know. They got a house that was a few blocks off of the beach that somehow or another through the Southern Baptist Church relationship network, Jen's dad found this older lady, and he would come down. He was pretty handy. And in exchange for doing a certain amount of projects, his family could stay in the basement a few blocks off of the beach. So she grew up vacationing by trading handiwork for a location that was a bike ride away from the beach. And Lily's staying in a suite with free Cokes in the afternoon and a private dining room going, isn't this how everyone travels? And it's like, no, no, this is not how, this is not how rectors travel. Somebody gave us a courtside seats one time to an NC state game. And we were sitting, Lily and I were on the floor sitting behind the television announcer booth and they were turning around and interacting with her during the commercial breaks. And at one point in the game, I grabbed her and I said, Lily, do you see up there in the shadows the seats against the wall that are really high up and you can barely see? And she goes, yes. And I said, those are rector seats. Okay? These are not. Do not get used to this. But it was just funny to me, Daddy, did you stay in rooms like this when you were a kid? No. No, I didn't have rich grandparents. I stayed with the poor. I stayed in poor people rooms. And we went on one. And it was a treat. But she doesn't understand that. And that's something to work out. Something that Jen and I have to navigate. But to her, what we just did is normal. That's what we're used to. But because I stayed in the dank cabin cave when I was a kid, I can have a deeper appreciation for the sweet. Because it was like Lord of the Flies and I had to fight for one glass of water amongst a bunch of overweight people trying to get to the same trough when I was 16. I can appreciate access to water all I want on a ship. She can't appreciate that. She doesn't have that perspective. And my point is, New Testament Christians are a lot more like her than they are like the Old Testament Christians. New Testament Christians don't know what it is to fear God because we meet Jesus right away. We meet someone who describes himself as gentle and lowly. We don't know what it is to suffer. We don't know what it is to be fearful of God. We've never sat at the base of the mountain and watched it violently shake while we tremble with our friends at the might of our God because we go straight to the cross. We go straight to Christmas and we go straight to Easter and we see Jesus meek and mild. We are the rich billionaire trust fund babies of history born into this soft world where we never have to fear God. And so we read passages like this and they're foreign to us because that's not our God because our God comes meek and mild and, and he loves me, and he died for me, and he accepts me, and I call him Abba Father, and he calls me up into his lap. We forget the awful God that comes before that. We forget the fear-inspiring God that comes before that, and we end up acting like spoiled brats towards our God because we forget to fear him. So fear appreciates grace and mercy. When I have grappled with the reality that not only do I deserve a punishment for my sin and for my disloyalty to God, but that he is also highly capable of meeting that out and has chosen not to, and instead has chosen to show me grace and mercy in the form of his son and watched him die for my betrayal to him. It is only then when we swim in those waters and acquaint ourselves with that reality that we can properly appreciate grace and mercy. But we're so quick to jump to grace and mercy. And we figuratively ask our parents, has it always been like this? Did you travel like this when you were a kid? Because we're spoiled. And so I think that fear is good because it refocuses us on our gratitude for grace and mercy. And it shows us how important those things are. Fear is good because fear reminds us of our place. It reminds us of our place. When we say the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and we say this is actually a good thing. Why? Because it reminds us of our place. Jen pointed this out to me this week. Do you understand that the original sin in the Garden of Eden was essentially choosing to not be afraid of God anymore? It was losing this fear of God. The story goes that the serpent whispered into the ear of Eve. There was one tree. There was only one rule. God said, do whatever you want. Just don't eat fruit off of this one tree. And the serpent appears to Eve and speaks into her ear and says, do you know that God actually doesn't want you to eat of that tree? Because if you do, you'll know the difference between good and evil and you'll be like him. He's just trying to hold you down. He doesn't want you to be like he is and So what happened in the language of what we're talking about this morning is he whispered in Eve's ear You don't have to be afraid of him You can do what you want You don't have to fear God you are like him and so the original sin Was have to fear God. You are like him. And so the original sin was refusing to fear God at the beginning of wisdom. Do you see that? And I love the way that the Bible starts out, and this is why I say that fear helps us keep our place. The very first sentence of the Bible, do you know what it is? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And I'm firmly convinced that it does not begin that way just because that's where the story starts. I'm firmly convinced that the Bible begins that way because it sets up from the very first sentence, the essential relationship in all creation. I am the creator, you are the created. All sin in our life is when we do this and we put ourselves on level with our creator. Anytime we sin, anytime we do anything that displeases God, all we've done is we've said, yeah, you're the creator, but I think I'm equal to you. So I'm not going to follow your rules. I'm going to follow mine. Everything in life that is messed up begins with a fundamental disjointment of this relationship where he says he is the creator and we are the creation and we go, nope, I'm not scared of you. This was the original sin of Eve. When the serpent whispered in her ear, you don't have to be afraid of him anymore. You are like him. And so she lost the fear of the Lord. So the fear of God keeps us in our place. It reminds us that he is all-powerful creator, and we are subservient creation. When Job got upset with God in that book, and he confronts him in Job 38, God's response is, hey Job, you forgot your place. So when we have fear of God, when we read Exodus 19 and we allow that to take us back to our nine-year-old selves and tremble at the might of our God, it also reminds us to keep our place. Last good thing I'll say about fear and why God insists on it is that fear makes knowledge a privilege. It makes knowledge of God a privilege. We presume that we should know who God is. We presume that we have a right to him. We presume that he should share himself with us. But that is not the case. Do you understand the miracle of the condescension of God? Do you understand what that is? Here is a figure that for the first time in history, since the garden of Eden descends onto a mountain, it burns with smoke. It shakes violently. It makes everyone around him tremble. And thousands of years later, he condescends by sending his son and our frail form to be with us, to sit in the muck and the mire. The miracle of God's condescension to us, to be one of us, to live as us, to be tempted as us, to love as us, and then to die as us for us. We start with Christmas and we start with Easter, so we take it for granted. But put yourself in the shoes of the people surrounding that mountain and imagine that thousands of years later, this being that's shaking the foundations of the earth and is causing fear and everyone that I know is going to send his son in human form to live the life of a pauper, to love me perfectly, to die perfectly, and to pave a way for me to get to know that cloud, Testament Christian mindset that grew up thinking that they always vacation in suites. That grows up thinking that God could never possibly be upset with me. He loves me. I'm forgiven. I'm concerned for the spoiled Christians that don't take time to understand what it means to fear their God and how mighty and awesome he is. I'm concerned for the church as life chips away at our wonder and we're no longer scared of water slides because we can explain it all away. And I just thought it was worth it this morning to try my best. And I don't mean this in any disrespectful way. But to try my best to grab your face and make you look at the might and the wonder and the awe of your God. For once, before we skip to Easter and we skip to Christmas. Look how wonderful and terrifying and miraculous he is. And let's be grateful that he uses that for us, not against us. That he chooses to love us. That he chooses to save us, that he chooses to condescend to be a part of us. We cannot read Exodus and see God descend on Mount Sinai and not pause and acknowledge that we are spoiled spiritual brats that do not often enough reflect on the awe-inspiring wonder, might, and wrath of God. And so this morning, let us do that. And may we always see ourselves at the foot of the mountain. And in so doing, come to appreciate all the things we love about our Heavenly Father all the more. Because I think so often we skip to the things we love about our God and we forget this foundation of fear that is the very beginning of wisdom that deepens our appreciation for him. So may we this morning together sit at the base of the mountain and tremble. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for what you chose to do with the Israelites in descending upon Mount Sinai. God, I'm not sure why you chose to reveal yourself in that way. I'm not even sure we've handled it the way it needs to be handled this morning, but I know, God, it gives me pause. I know, Father, it makes me wonder at you. And I hope that just a little bit of that wonder was communicated. And I hope that we are moved by it. I hope that we will not be so inoculated by your love that we forget your wrath. God, give us a deep appreciation for that so that we may approach you with more gratitude. So that we might marvel at the fact that you love us, that you know us, that you care about us, and that you're proud of us. God, help us more and more to see ourselves at the foot of that mountain, marveling at who and what you are. In Jesus' name, amen.
