Proverbs

Good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Happy New Year. If I had known that worship was going to be that good, I would have prepared a better sermon. So we just had the best part of the service already. And let me just say to you, if coming to church more regularly is one of your New Year's resolutions, I am rooting so hard for you. I am happy for that. And we are doing everything we can to make it worth your while and enriching and good to get up and get ready and come and hopefully be pushed a little bit closer to Jesus when you left than when you were when you came through the doors. And I would also say this, if that is a New Year's resolution for you, and so grace is the place that you're choosing to do that, if you get a couple weeks in and this just ain't cutting it, man, this is not doing it, can you just please go visit another church before you just quit church? Because there's a lot of great churches in the area, and some of them are probably hitting notes that we're not. And I would really love to see everybody involved in a church family. It's such an important part of life. So I would just throw that out there to you. This series that we are focused on now for this month is called Known For. And we're going to be talking about this idea of reputation and what we're known for. So in week one, to be known for, and then we're going to say, what do we want our faith, big C church, Christianity, and our culture today, what do we want it to be known for? And so if you're a praying person, you can be praying for me for that fourth week, because there's things I want to say that I shouldn't. There's things that I need to say that I'm going to be scared to, and I'm going to have to find a good balance there because there's a lot to say about how Christians posture themselves in our current culture, and I want to talk to Grace about how we can be on the right end of that, helping Christianity in our culture. But that begins with focusing first on ourselves and on our reputations. Now, everybody, I would think, is known for something. Everybody has a bit of a reputation, right? I think when we think of people who are known for things, that maybe we think of people who have lived bigger lives than most of us. Politicians or athletes or celebrities or authors or people who influence in some way, but I would argue that everybody's known for something. I mean, if you think about it this way, what would you say your dad's known for? When you think about your dad, what do you think of? What's your mom known for? When you think about your best friend, your husband or your wife, what are they known for in your circles? Right? Something comes to mind. When you think about your favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? When you think about your least favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? In this office space, it's youth ministry is what they're known for. That was the joke of me making fun of Kyle, our student pastor, just in case you guys didn't catch on to that. He's the worst. He's getting married in six days. Yay, Kyle! Everybody is known for something. You're known for something. You're known for something by your acquaintances, kind of concentric circles of concern. By your acquaintances, you're known in certain ways. By your close friends, you're known in certain ways. And by your family, you're known in certain ways. And so the question that I would put in front of you this morning, and it's a good question to consider at the beginning of a year, the time when we do New Year's resolutions, What are you known for? What is your reputation? And I think those concentric circles of concern are important to consider because it's really easy to be known for certain things, to put on a good face with your acquaintances, with the people that you interact with at work sometimes, with your neighbors that you see sometimes, with your friends that you hang out with when you want to. We can put on a good show for those kind of outer edge people, right? And then our friends who may text with us more, call us more, interact with us more, they kind of know us a little bit better. I was 17 years old, and I had this really incredible experience at camp. And I was really moved towards Jesus. I grew up in the church, but God kind of got a hold of me, just reinvigorated me, and I was really just, it was one of those spiritual highs, right? And my dad was, he was the chairman of the board growing up. He was a big church guy. All my memories are church memories, and I was so proud to tell him, Dad, I'm really going to choose Jesus. I'm really going to push after him. He totally changed me while I was there, and he looked at me, and he said, that's great, son. Be nice to your mom. I was like, dang you. He just crutted on my spiritual high, but he was right. Our families know us best. We can't fake it with our spouses. We can't fake it with our kids. They grow up in our homes. They see us at our best and our worst. What are we known for in our families? And so then I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? What would you hope to be known for? When people hear your name, what do you want them to think? Your kids growing up in your house, what kind of stories do you want them to tell about you? When your coworkers talk about you behind your back when you leave the room or when you're in the meeting, what do you want them to say? When your friends that you play tennis with or you do trivia night with or you do whatever neighborhood stuff with find out that you're really involved in your church, what do you want them to think? Do you want them to go, yeah, that checks out? Or do you want them to go, really? Him? Huh. What do you want your reputation to be? Now, some of you could be like my wife, Jen, who's not here this morning. John's got a little bit of a fever, so we're kind of tending to that. So I can say this and not embarrass her. She's got a pretty good reputation. If you know Jen, you know that everybody calls her Sweet Jen. She doesn't have a lot of work to do on how she's perceived by the general public, nor does she have work to do with how she's perceived by me. She's got a pretty good name in our house. And so maybe that's you. And as you think about your reputation and you think about what you want to be known for, God and his goodness and you and your humility have done a good job in actually making a good name for yourself. And so we just need to continue there. That's great. But maybe you're like me. Jeff, what are you laughing at, man? Yeah, maybe you're like me and Jeff. And you've got some rough edges. You have probably a good reputation. You're known for positive things. People think of you well, but there's also some parts about you, and you know them, and they know them, that, man, you'd love to shave off. I know for me, I think I'm known at all three levels of my life. I think I'm known for being loyal, being honest, hopefully for being a good and loving friend, being present. But I can also be known to be gruff and grumpy. And if I'm being honest, one of my least favorite things about myself right now is I can get into moods that begin to affect the tone and tenor of everything around me, whether it's at staff or an elder meeting or at my house or with my friends. And I don't like those moods, man. I don't like being that grumpy sometimes. I don't want to be known for that. And maybe you have some things in your life that you don't want to be known for either. So as you move into this year, I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? And there are others of you who may just feel like no matter what you do, you're known for your mistake. You're known for screwing up. You're an addict, and you'll never not be. You're a cheater, and you've just got to live with it. You've made a big, huge mistake. And you feel like that when everybody sees you, all they see is that mistake, and all they'll ever see is that mistake. And I just want to tell you that it's never too late to rebuild your reputation. I told you guys at Christmas Eve, and I've mentioned stories about him before, about my pawpaw. And I hesitated to share this because it's, first of all, I don't want to talk about him all the time, and second of all, this is his business, it's not ours, but he's in heaven now, and I don't think he'd mind too much. I think when you get to heaven, you get a lot of grace for people's humanity. But I told you guys, he's my favorite person that's ever lived, and that's true. I've told you I have glowing memories of him and how present he was and how much he loved me. But his name was Don. Don also grew up real poor in South Georgia, I guess in the 30s. Had a daddy that was abusive, had a dirt floor. And then he had kids in the 60s and 70s, and he raised them. And he raised them like a man without a good daddy, without Jesus, would. And he had a temper, and sometimes it got the best of him. So the kids who grew up in that home did not know him like I knew him. But at one point, he came to know Jesus. And I don't know that he did it intentionally, but he began to rebuild his reputation. So that now, I don't know that part of him. I don't know that side of him. I never experienced it. And his children all have fond memories of him, all love him, all continue to mourn him. It's never too late to choose a new reputation. So the answer to that question, what reputation do you want to have, if it feels impossible to you, it is not. By God's goodness and through your humility, you can begin to work towards it. And there are others of you who fall into this camp. I'm not going to linger here long, but it is worth saying. There are some of you in here who have a good reputation. You have a good name. And that's good. And people think highly of you. And that's good. But you got a secret. You got some stuff going on in the shadows. And if people found out about it, you wouldn't have that good reputation anymore. So you look good, but you're not. And you know it. Maybe this can be the year that you finally leave those shadows behind. You finally leave those in the past. And you finally walk as the person that everybody believes you are and that God created you to be. And maybe it's possible that God in his goodness and his love for you has kept those things in the dark for you to give you opportunity to move away from them and be who he wants you to be this year and moving forward. I pray that none of us have stuff going on in the shadows that could ruin what everybody sees in the light. But if we do, let's be done with that too. But as we consider this question, what do you want to be known for? Not what are you known for, what do you want to be known for? I think it's actually way more important to ask the question, what does God want you to be known for? What does God want you to be known for? If you're a believer, if you're a Christian, if you're a child of God, which means to be someone who is a Christian, you believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He's the son of God and he came to earth. That he did what he said he did. He died on the cross and he rose again on the third day. And that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. He's going to come back one day and he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. If you believe those things about Jesus, then you are a Christian. You are a child of God. And what does God want your reputation to be? What does he want you to be known for? And that might sound like a little bit of a silly question, but I actually believe, based on the counsel of scripture, that this is an important question, that it matters to God deeply what your reputation is. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your co-workers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your coworkers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to him a lot how you're known. And I don't just think that intuitively because as I was thinking about it this week, of course God cares what his children's reputations are because don't you care what your kids' reputations are? Doesn't your heart fill with pride when the teacher says, you've got a great kid here, they're doing wonderful? Isn't it filled with shame when your teacher says, your kid is terrible, I wish they weren't in my class? We want our children to have good reputations, not just because they're a reflection on us, but because we want them to have a good name. So does God care about the reputations of his children. But again, it's not just intuitively that I believe this. It says so in Scripture. In Proverbs 22, verse 1, it says, God says if you have the choice between great wealth or a good name, choose a good name. I do not have that choice. I get to choose a good name or nothing. It's not an either or situation for me. But if you do have the opportunity to choose wealth or to choose name, choose name, choose reputation, choose standing, choose favor. That's how important it is that you have a good reputation to God. It's so important, in fact, that in the New Testament, when they start to name church officers, things for people to do within the church, they make reputation one of the requirements. In the book of Acts, there's this scene, I believe in chapter 6, where they had to choose deacons, people to do the ministry of the church, kind of think church staff, because the disciples were getting, they were trying to focus on prayer and teaching, and they were getting so caught up in the daily needs of the church, they could no longer meet them. And so God instructed them, go and choose seven men to be deacons and to meet the needs within the church. And there was two requirements to be a deacon. One was to be faithful and filled with the Spirit. The other one was to have a good reputation in the community. God didn't want anyone in leadership in his church that wasn't well-known and well-thought-of in the community in which they were serving. And then to further that, to choose elders, Paul writes to Titus, when you're choosing elders, when you're choosing the leaders of your church, among the things that I want to be true of them, that God wants to be true of them, they need to have a good reputation amongst outsiders. There's another place where God says in 1 Peter, God says through Peter, that Christians are to be a good example, to set a good example, to have a good reputation amongst the Gentiles, amongst non-believers, so that they can find no fault in you. Your reputation and what you're known for matters a lot to your God. So what does he want you to be known for? Well, this is an interesting question, because there's so many instructions about this all over scripture. There's so many different times in scripture where we are told what he wants us to do and who he wants us to be. I think of Philippians 4, 5 when it says, let your reasonableness be known to all people. So God, and I think this is interesting and worth pointing out, God wants his children to be thoughtful, reasonable people. I don't think that we often associate that with a Christian trait, but it is. We need to be thoughtful, reasonable people. And let me just kind of put a finer point on that. If you learned everything you needed to learn in your life by the age of 33, and you don't have any new opinions since then, and no new information has entered your brain since then, you're not being a thoughtful, reasonable person. Or you're a freaking smart 33-year-old. You really nailed it. God calls us to be thoughtful, reasonable people. In the Beatitudes that we're going to focus on next month in February in a series called Blessed, he calls us to be meek, to be peacemakers, to hunger and thirst for righteousness. In different areas of the Bible, he gives us different lists of characteristics that we are to pursue. In Galatians, he tells us that we will be known by our fruit, either the fruit of an evil life or the fruit of a life filled with the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I think you can make a very strong argument that God wants his children to be known for those fruit. And then in Ephesians, we get kind of a seminal passage of what is the picture of what a Christian should be? What is the picture of what God wants us to be? Read with me in Ephesians chapter 4, verses 1 through 6. Paul writes this, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. So Paul kind of lays it out there in Ephesians. Be humble, be gentle, bear with one another, be loving, be patient. And we see these kinds of verses over and over again through scripture. And the reality of it is, it's really hard to wrap your mind around all the things that God wants us to be known for. I grew up, I don't have any memories of my life without church. We were there every time the doors were open. My parents were highly involved. I went to a Christian elementary school and high school. I went to a Bible college. I went to seminary. I've been in ministry for 20 years. And I don't think I could get 50% of all the characteristics that are listed out in the whole of Scripture as to what God wants His children to be. It's a lot there. So when you ask, what does God want us to be known for, that's a tricky answer because it gets long. And it can be confusing and intimidating, which is why God boiled it down for us. And the more I thought about this, the more I thought there really is a simple answer here for all of us. What does God want us to be known for? God wants his children to be known for loving well. That's what he wants you to be known for. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be known for loving well. And I didn't put a person there, loving him well, loving your neighbor well neighbor well. Loving your spouse well. Loving your church well. Just loving well. To be an excellent lover. That's why we're told in scripture that God tells us that we should love him with all our heart, soul, mind. Amen. And that we should love our neighbor as ourself. And then he says, on this rests the whole law and the prophets. The entire Bible. All the commandments in the Bible are summed up in those two, love God well, love others well. And then Jesus makes it even easier. He tells the disciples this new commandment I give you towards the end of his life, love others as I have loved you. And then John, 30 years later, writing his letters to the general church, 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, basically says, if you say you know Jesus and you do not love, then you are full of it. Now that's a loose paraphrase, but the spirit of it is there. He says you're a liar and the truth is not in you. What does God want his children to be known for? He wants us to be known for loving well. And if you think about it, it makes sense. How can I love someone well if I'm not humble? How can I love someone well if I don't bear up their burdens? Well, if I don't bear up their burdens, if I'm not patient with them, if I don't listen to them? How can we love people well if we are not reasonable and we will not listen to what they say or what they think? If we're not open to new understandings and new ideas. How can we love people well if we're not meek but we're just brash all the time? And so the reality of it is there's a lot of different characteristics that a lot of us need to work on, but what God wants us to be known for and what I want you to be known for in 2023 is to love well. And that looks different in different seasons of life, but I can tell you this. If you have a spouse, God wants you to love them well, to respect them deeply, to serve them, to live for them and not yourself. God wants you to choose them. God wants the people who see your marriage to go, man, they love each other so much. He serves her so well. She honors him so much in the way she talks about him. That's what God in your marriage, if you have children in your home, God wants for your children to look at your marriage and say, that's what I want when I grow up and I'm not going to settle for anything less. So what do you want to be known for? What does God want from you this year? He wants you to be a good husband and good wife. He wants you to be present for them. If you have kids, if they're at home, what does God want for you there? He wants you to love them well. He wants you to be present with them. He wants you to get off your phone and turn off the TV and get on the floor and play with them. He wants you to listen to them. He wants you to be interested in them or feign interest the best way you know how. When the Bible says in Isaiah that you will run and not grow weary and walk and not be faint and will soar on wings like eagles, I think he's talking to parents who have seven-year-olds and have to watch the seventh thing of the day. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be the person in the office that people come to and share with. He wants you to be the consistent one. He wants you to be the one that will listen to other people be human but will not run down your boss or their coworker just for the fun of it. He wants you to be the one that exists above that fray. He wants you to be the one who honors him in all that you do, who loves your co-workers well. He wants you to be the one in your friend group who loves well, who points people towards Jesus. He wants you to be the one in the neighborhood that's the most patient with the other kids, that's the most giving and hospitable with your time. He wants you to be known for how well you love. And I wondered why this was so important to God. And why is reputation so important that we're going to spend four weeks on it? And this occurred to me, and I'm going to throw this out here. You guys try it on. You see if you agree with this, because it's going to come up every week. I'm going to remind us of this. We're going to tie back into these two ideas. Into one, that God wants us to be known for loving well. And then this idea too, that there is nothing more persuasive than a name. I don't think there's anything in life more persuasive than somebody's name. And here's what I mean. Think about recommendations that you get from people. Some people you get bad recommendations from, some good. There's somebody who was in one of my small groups a couple years ago, and in that small group we were sharing about this experience we had with sushi in New York City. And if you want to hear about it, I'll tell you about it, because it was amazing. It was the best food I ever had in my life. It was a great meal. And we were kind of telling them about that. And he pipes up and he says, oh, yeah, I know where to get great sushi. I said, really, where? He goes, yeah, there's this place in Boone. It's the best sushi in the world. And I'm like, Boone? Five hours from the ocean, Boone? Like that Boone? Hill country of App State? Where they're still nailing chicken fried steaks? Like that boon? That place? And I said, did you mean like best in, like boon? Or like Western North Carolina? He's like, nope, the world. Better than like New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Tokyo? Like the place where they invented it? Better than those places? Yes, way better. You'll never have better sushi. And in that moment, I realized I will never listen to you again in my life. That dude could tell me, dude, I tried this great barbecue restaurant down the street. I will never, ever go there. I do not trust. Now, he can tell me about other things. This book is good. These things are nice. But if he tells me about food, you can shove it, buddy. I've got this other friend who I've been really close friends with him for 30 years now. And I trust his recommendations on TV shows and movies and podcasts and books so much that he doesn't even have to talk me into them anymore. He can just text me the name of a show and I will just go binge all 12 seasons of it right there. Like I know it's going to be good. He doesn't even have to do anything. If Tyler tells me I should do this, I will because I trust him. Over time, he's built a good reputation of taste and I know that it's not to let me down. There is nothing more convincing than a name. And where this becomes particularly important is when we are trying to reach a lost world. I've mentioned this to you before, but if you are a believer, the only reason God doesn't snatch you right into heaven the very second you come to faith is so that on your way to that eternity for which he created you, you can bring as many people with you along the way as possible. The only reason you still draw breath is so you can bring as many people to eternity in heaven with you as you go as is humanly possible. If there was anything else to do, if that wasn't true, he would just snatch you right to heaven just as soon as you accepted him. Why wouldn't this place with so much pain and hurt and whisk you right up away to heaven immediately so you can begin to experience paradise with him? Why wouldn't he do that unless he's leaving you here so that on your way to that place that he's preparing for you, you can bring as many people with you as possible. That's why you're here. And if you want to bring other people with you, what could be more persuasive than a good name? What could be more persuasive than someone who claims to love Jesus and then loves them like they actually do love Jesus? Because in our culture, in 2023, your neighbors and your coworkers and your friends who do not embrace Christ, maybe they've outright rejected him. Maybe they're one of those people who say that they've accepted Jesus, they believe in him, but they're good and they don't really prioritize their faith at all and it makes us wonder if there is genuine faith there. If you have people in your life like that. You know, in the past, we talked about evangelism, this act of sharing our faith and pushing people towards Christ and hopefully seeing them come to faith. In the past, we were told about how to tell people about Jesus. 2023, guess what? They've all heard of him. It's very likely they have a reason. Can I tell you it's pretty likely it's a good reason? That deserves a thoughtful response? Are those people that you know who do not embrace faith, are they more likely to be won over by a theological argument? By digging into the science so that you can try to disprove atheism? By sending them to a blog post or a website or a case for faith by Lee Strobel? Or are they most likely to be won over by a name that's loved them for years? By someone who says they love Jesus, who says they love others, and in your marriage, and in your relationship with your children, and in your relationship with them, they see it. I'm not saying you're faultless, but I'm saying what's more convincing to the outside world than someone who actually practices what they preach and walks what they talk and has a good name that can be trusted. So that when that name says, hey, my church is pretty special to me, I'd love for you to come too, That actually carries some weight, and they go, because they think there's something different about this family. And I don't know what it is, but if it's their faith, then I want to understand that. A good name gets your foot in the door when you say, yeah, I do actually have a faith. I do believe in Jesus, and let me tell you why. If you have a good name and a reputation that supports that statement, they're going to listen to you with a lot more attention than if you don't have a good reputation with them, if the video does not match the audio. So I believe that God cares deeply about your reputation and what you are known for because a good reputation is more persuasive than anything else on the planet. So I hope that 2023 will be a year that you choose to ask yourself regularly, what am I known for and what do I want to be known for? How am I loving? Am I loving well? Am I being lazy? Am I being sloppy? Am I being selfish? Or am I being someone who loves like Jesus loves? Understanding that as we love in that way, there is nothing more persuasive to those around us than a consistent love of Christ and love of them. And please understand that the only way, you're not white knuckling your way to good love. You're not doing that. You have to wake up every day, spend time in God's word, time in prayer. You gotta pursue him. You gotta seek him. You gotta have friendships in your life that feed you spiritually. You gotta talk about Jesus to your children and to your friends've got to focus your eyes on Christ, the found love, and that love will be noticed. And people will come to faith because God is using you in their life. I went this year at Grace. We're back open. This is hopefully the first normal year we've had in three years. We're ready to run. We're ready to do ministry. We're ready to go. I want to see a lot of new faces at Grace. I want to meet a lot of your neighbors. I want to meet a lot of your coworkers. And listen to me. I don't want to do that because of church growth. And the people who know me best know I don't give a flip about church growth for the sake of church growth. I don't care about that. Can I just tell you this? Here's what I realized last year. If we just stay this size with this size staff and you guys all just keep coming, my life is so easy. But I want to see new faces here. Because new faces mean you're out in your community and you're sharing about your faith. New faces mean that you're trusted. New faces mean that you have a good name and you're using it to bring people to eternity with you. I want to see a lot of baptisms this year. Because baptisms mean people have been awakened to or have come to faith. I want to see the way God moves in our church this year when we are people who focus on loving well. I want this to be a year where we reach our community well, and I think that's done through building a good reputation. So we're going to take the next three weeks. I'm actually excited about this series because often in a series we'll have kind of a list of topics, reputation, faith, grace, love, whatever it is. And I'll kind of hit those and then move on. But this time we're going to spend four weeks in what we're known for and really deep dive into it. And I'm excited at the opportunity to do that. And I hope that you'll come along with me. And I hope that people will come to love your Savior because of how well you have loved them. Let's pray. Father, we always say that we love you, but we acknowledge that we love you because you first loved us, because you first cared for us, because you created us, because you created us to share yourself with us, and that you have designed for us and purposed us for in eternity. God, I pray that we would bring as many people as we can with us on our way there. Father, for those who feel like their reputation is tarnished, I pray that you would give them a vision for a new one and a belief that if they simply love you and love others well, that that will change. God, for those with secrets or rough edges, would you move us away from those and towards you? Would we embrace your goodness in our life? Would we embrace the firm foundation of love that you have given us and walk in that love and trust you alone and not other things to bring us happiness and joy. But would we lean into you more this year and in doing so be a magnet for those around you and God for those that you're using with good names already. Would you just keep on giving them energy as they go. Father we pray at the beginning of this year for a lot of new faces in this church so that we can have the opportunity to love on them and see them come to know you and that because we love them well, they open their eyes to how much you already love them and they come to love you too. It's in your son's name we are able to pray all these things. Amen.

Good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Happy New Year. If I had known that worship was going to be that good, I would have prepared a better sermon. So we just had the best part of the service already. And let me just say to you, if coming to church more regularly is one of your New Year's resolutions, I am rooting so hard for you. I am happy for that. And we are doing everything we can to make it worth your while and enriching and good to get up and get ready and come and hopefully be pushed a little bit closer to Jesus when you left than when you were when you came through the doors. And I would also say this, if that is a New Year's resolution for you, and so grace is the place that you're choosing to do that, if you get a couple weeks in and this just ain't cutting it, man, this is not doing it, can you just please go visit another church before you just quit church? Because there's a lot of great churches in the area, and some of them are probably hitting notes that we're not. And I would really love to see everybody involved in a church family. It's such an important part of life. So I would just throw that out there to you. This series that we are focused on now for this month is called Known For. And we're going to be talking about this idea of reputation and what we're known for. So in week one, to be known for, and then we're going to say, what do we want our faith, big C church, Christianity, and our culture today, what do we want it to be known for? And so if you're a praying person, you can be praying for me for that fourth week, because there's things I want to say that I shouldn't. There's things that I need to say that I'm going to be scared to, and I'm going to have to find a good balance there because there's a lot to say about how Christians posture themselves in our current culture, and I want to talk to Grace about how we can be on the right end of that, helping Christianity in our culture. But that begins with focusing first on ourselves and on our reputations. Now, everybody, I would think, is known for something. Everybody has a bit of a reputation, right? I think when we think of people who are known for things, that maybe we think of people who have lived bigger lives than most of us. Politicians or athletes or celebrities or authors or people who influence in some way, but I would argue that everybody's known for something. I mean, if you think about it this way, what would you say your dad's known for? When you think about your dad, what do you think of? What's your mom known for? When you think about your best friend, your husband or your wife, what are they known for in your circles? Right? Something comes to mind. When you think about your favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? When you think about your least favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? In this office space, it's youth ministry is what they're known for. That was the joke of me making fun of Kyle, our student pastor, just in case you guys didn't catch on to that. He's the worst. He's getting married in six days. Yay, Kyle! Everybody is known for something. You're known for something. You're known for something by your acquaintances, kind of concentric circles of concern. By your acquaintances, you're known in certain ways. By your close friends, you're known in certain ways. And by your family, you're known in certain ways. And so the question that I would put in front of you this morning, and it's a good question to consider at the beginning of a year, the time when we do New Year's resolutions, What are you known for? What is your reputation? And I think those concentric circles of concern are important to consider because it's really easy to be known for certain things, to put on a good face with your acquaintances, with the people that you interact with at work sometimes, with your neighbors that you see sometimes, with your friends that you hang out with when you want to. We can put on a good show for those kind of outer edge people, right? And then our friends who may text with us more, call us more, interact with us more, they kind of know us a little bit better. I was 17 years old, and I had this really incredible experience at camp. And I was really moved towards Jesus. I grew up in the church, but God kind of got a hold of me, just reinvigorated me, and I was really just, it was one of those spiritual highs, right? And my dad was, he was the chairman of the board growing up. He was a big church guy. All my memories are church memories, and I was so proud to tell him, Dad, I'm really going to choose Jesus. I'm really going to push after him. He totally changed me while I was there, and he looked at me, and he said, that's great, son. Be nice to your mom. I was like, dang you. He just crutted on my spiritual high, but he was right. Our families know us best. We can't fake it with our spouses. We can't fake it with our kids. They grow up in our homes. They see us at our best and our worst. What are we known for in our families? And so then I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? What would you hope to be known for? When people hear your name, what do you want them to think? Your kids growing up in your house, what kind of stories do you want them to tell about you? When your coworkers talk about you behind your back when you leave the room or when you're in the meeting, what do you want them to say? When your friends that you play tennis with or you do trivia night with or you do whatever neighborhood stuff with find out that you're really involved in your church, what do you want them to think? Do you want them to go, yeah, that checks out? Or do you want them to go, really? Him? Huh. What do you want your reputation to be? Now, some of you could be like my wife, Jen, who's not here this morning. John's got a little bit of a fever, so we're kind of tending to that. So I can say this and not embarrass her. She's got a pretty good reputation. If you know Jen, you know that everybody calls her Sweet Jen. She doesn't have a lot of work to do on how she's perceived by the general public, nor does she have work to do with how she's perceived by me. She's got a pretty good name in our house. And so maybe that's you. And as you think about your reputation and you think about what you want to be known for, God and his goodness and you and your humility have done a good job in actually making a good name for yourself. And so we just need to continue there. That's great. But maybe you're like me. Jeff, what are you laughing at, man? Yeah, maybe you're like me and Jeff. And you've got some rough edges. You have probably a good reputation. You're known for positive things. People think of you well, but there's also some parts about you, and you know them, and they know them, that, man, you'd love to shave off. I know for me, I think I'm known at all three levels of my life. I think I'm known for being loyal, being honest, hopefully for being a good and loving friend, being present. But I can also be known to be gruff and grumpy. And if I'm being honest, one of my least favorite things about myself right now is I can get into moods that begin to affect the tone and tenor of everything around me, whether it's at staff or an elder meeting or at my house or with my friends. And I don't like those moods, man. I don't like being that grumpy sometimes. I don't want to be known for that. And maybe you have some things in your life that you don't want to be known for either. So as you move into this year, I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? And there are others of you who may just feel like no matter what you do, you're known for your mistake. You're known for screwing up. You're an addict, and you'll never not be. You're a cheater, and you've just got to live with it. You've made a big, huge mistake. And you feel like that when everybody sees you, all they see is that mistake, and all they'll ever see is that mistake. And I just want to tell you that it's never too late to rebuild your reputation. I told you guys at Christmas Eve, and I've mentioned stories about him before, about my pawpaw. And I hesitated to share this because it's, first of all, I don't want to talk about him all the time, and second of all, this is his business, it's not ours, but he's in heaven now, and I don't think he'd mind too much. I think when you get to heaven, you get a lot of grace for people's humanity. But I told you guys, he's my favorite person that's ever lived, and that's true. I've told you I have glowing memories of him and how present he was and how much he loved me. But his name was Don. Don also grew up real poor in South Georgia, I guess in the 30s. Had a daddy that was abusive, had a dirt floor. And then he had kids in the 60s and 70s, and he raised them. And he raised them like a man without a good daddy, without Jesus, would. And he had a temper, and sometimes it got the best of him. So the kids who grew up in that home did not know him like I knew him. But at one point, he came to know Jesus. And I don't know that he did it intentionally, but he began to rebuild his reputation. So that now, I don't know that part of him. I don't know that side of him. I never experienced it. And his children all have fond memories of him, all love him, all continue to mourn him. It's never too late to choose a new reputation. So the answer to that question, what reputation do you want to have, if it feels impossible to you, it is not. By God's goodness and through your humility, you can begin to work towards it. And there are others of you who fall into this camp. I'm not going to linger here long, but it is worth saying. There are some of you in here who have a good reputation. You have a good name. And that's good. And people think highly of you. And that's good. But you got a secret. You got some stuff going on in the shadows. And if people found out about it, you wouldn't have that good reputation anymore. So you look good, but you're not. And you know it. Maybe this can be the year that you finally leave those shadows behind. You finally leave those in the past. And you finally walk as the person that everybody believes you are and that God created you to be. And maybe it's possible that God in his goodness and his love for you has kept those things in the dark for you to give you opportunity to move away from them and be who he wants you to be this year and moving forward. I pray that none of us have stuff going on in the shadows that could ruin what everybody sees in the light. But if we do, let's be done with that too. But as we consider this question, what do you want to be known for? Not what are you known for, what do you want to be known for? I think it's actually way more important to ask the question, what does God want you to be known for? What does God want you to be known for? If you're a believer, if you're a Christian, if you're a child of God, which means to be someone who is a Christian, you believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He's the son of God and he came to earth. That he did what he said he did. He died on the cross and he rose again on the third day. And that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. He's going to come back one day and he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. If you believe those things about Jesus, then you are a Christian. You are a child of God. And what does God want your reputation to be? What does he want you to be known for? And that might sound like a little bit of a silly question, but I actually believe, based on the counsel of scripture, that this is an important question, that it matters to God deeply what your reputation is. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your co-workers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your coworkers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to him a lot how you're known. And I don't just think that intuitively because as I was thinking about it this week, of course God cares what his children's reputations are because don't you care what your kids' reputations are? Doesn't your heart fill with pride when the teacher says, you've got a great kid here, they're doing wonderful? Isn't it filled with shame when your teacher says, your kid is terrible, I wish they weren't in my class? We want our children to have good reputations, not just because they're a reflection on us, but because we want them to have a good name. So does God care about the reputations of his children. But again, it's not just intuitively that I believe this. It says so in Scripture. In Proverbs 22, verse 1, it says, God says if you have the choice between great wealth or a good name, choose a good name. I do not have that choice. I get to choose a good name or nothing. It's not an either or situation for me. But if you do have the opportunity to choose wealth or to choose name, choose name, choose reputation, choose standing, choose favor. That's how important it is that you have a good reputation to God. It's so important, in fact, that in the New Testament, when they start to name church officers, things for people to do within the church, they make reputation one of the requirements. In the book of Acts, there's this scene, I believe in chapter 6, where they had to choose deacons, people to do the ministry of the church, kind of think church staff, because the disciples were getting, they were trying to focus on prayer and teaching, and they were getting so caught up in the daily needs of the church, they could no longer meet them. And so God instructed them, go and choose seven men to be deacons and to meet the needs within the church. And there was two requirements to be a deacon. One was to be faithful and filled with the Spirit. The other one was to have a good reputation in the community. God didn't want anyone in leadership in his church that wasn't well-known and well-thought-of in the community in which they were serving. And then to further that, to choose elders, Paul writes to Titus, when you're choosing elders, when you're choosing the leaders of your church, among the things that I want to be true of them, that God wants to be true of them, they need to have a good reputation amongst outsiders. There's another place where God says in 1 Peter, God says through Peter, that Christians are to be a good example, to set a good example, to have a good reputation amongst the Gentiles, amongst non-believers, so that they can find no fault in you. Your reputation and what you're known for matters a lot to your God. So what does he want you to be known for? Well, this is an interesting question, because there's so many instructions about this all over scripture. There's so many different times in scripture where we are told what he wants us to do and who he wants us to be. I think of Philippians 4, 5 when it says, let your reasonableness be known to all people. So God, and I think this is interesting and worth pointing out, God wants his children to be thoughtful, reasonable people. I don't think that we often associate that with a Christian trait, but it is. We need to be thoughtful, reasonable people. And let me just kind of put a finer point on that. If you learned everything you needed to learn in your life by the age of 33, and you don't have any new opinions since then, and no new information has entered your brain since then, you're not being a thoughtful, reasonable person. Or you're a freaking smart 33-year-old. You really nailed it. God calls us to be thoughtful, reasonable people. In the Beatitudes that we're going to focus on next month in February in a series called Blessed, he calls us to be meek, to be peacemakers, to hunger and thirst for righteousness. In different areas of the Bible, he gives us different lists of characteristics that we are to pursue. In Galatians, he tells us that we will be known by our fruit, either the fruit of an evil life or the fruit of a life filled with the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I think you can make a very strong argument that God wants his children to be known for those fruit. And then in Ephesians, we get kind of a seminal passage of what is the picture of what a Christian should be? What is the picture of what God wants us to be? Read with me in Ephesians chapter 4, verses 1 through 6. Paul writes this, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. So Paul kind of lays it out there in Ephesians. Be humble, be gentle, bear with one another, be loving, be patient. And we see these kinds of verses over and over again through scripture. And the reality of it is, it's really hard to wrap your mind around all the things that God wants us to be known for. I grew up, I don't have any memories of my life without church. We were there every time the doors were open. My parents were highly involved. I went to a Christian elementary school and high school. I went to a Bible college. I went to seminary. I've been in ministry for 20 years. And I don't think I could get 50% of all the characteristics that are listed out in the whole of Scripture as to what God wants His children to be. It's a lot there. So when you ask, what does God want us to be known for, that's a tricky answer because it gets long. And it can be confusing and intimidating, which is why God boiled it down for us. And the more I thought about this, the more I thought there really is a simple answer here for all of us. What does God want us to be known for? God wants his children to be known for loving well. That's what he wants you to be known for. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be known for loving well. And I didn't put a person there, loving him well, loving your neighbor well neighbor well. Loving your spouse well. Loving your church well. Just loving well. To be an excellent lover. That's why we're told in scripture that God tells us that we should love him with all our heart, soul, mind. Amen. And that we should love our neighbor as ourself. And then he says, on this rests the whole law and the prophets. The entire Bible. All the commandments in the Bible are summed up in those two, love God well, love others well. And then Jesus makes it even easier. He tells the disciples this new commandment I give you towards the end of his life, love others as I have loved you. And then John, 30 years later, writing his letters to the general church, 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, basically says, if you say you know Jesus and you do not love, then you are full of it. Now that's a loose paraphrase, but the spirit of it is there. He says you're a liar and the truth is not in you. What does God want his children to be known for? He wants us to be known for loving well. And if you think about it, it makes sense. How can I love someone well if I'm not humble? How can I love someone well if I don't bear up their burdens? Well, if I don't bear up their burdens, if I'm not patient with them, if I don't listen to them? How can we love people well if we are not reasonable and we will not listen to what they say or what they think? If we're not open to new understandings and new ideas. How can we love people well if we're not meek but we're just brash all the time? And so the reality of it is there's a lot of different characteristics that a lot of us need to work on, but what God wants us to be known for and what I want you to be known for in 2023 is to love well. And that looks different in different seasons of life, but I can tell you this. If you have a spouse, God wants you to love them well, to respect them deeply, to serve them, to live for them and not yourself. God wants you to choose them. God wants the people who see your marriage to go, man, they love each other so much. He serves her so well. She honors him so much in the way she talks about him. That's what God in your marriage, if you have children in your home, God wants for your children to look at your marriage and say, that's what I want when I grow up and I'm not going to settle for anything less. So what do you want to be known for? What does God want from you this year? He wants you to be a good husband and good wife. He wants you to be present for them. If you have kids, if they're at home, what does God want for you there? He wants you to love them well. He wants you to be present with them. He wants you to get off your phone and turn off the TV and get on the floor and play with them. He wants you to listen to them. He wants you to be interested in them or feign interest the best way you know how. When the Bible says in Isaiah that you will run and not grow weary and walk and not be faint and will soar on wings like eagles, I think he's talking to parents who have seven-year-olds and have to watch the seventh thing of the day. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be the person in the office that people come to and share with. He wants you to be the consistent one. He wants you to be the one that will listen to other people be human but will not run down your boss or their coworker just for the fun of it. He wants you to be the one that exists above that fray. He wants you to be the one who honors him in all that you do, who loves your co-workers well. He wants you to be the one in your friend group who loves well, who points people towards Jesus. He wants you to be the one in the neighborhood that's the most patient with the other kids, that's the most giving and hospitable with your time. He wants you to be known for how well you love. And I wondered why this was so important to God. And why is reputation so important that we're going to spend four weeks on it? And this occurred to me, and I'm going to throw this out here. You guys try it on. You see if you agree with this, because it's going to come up every week. I'm going to remind us of this. We're going to tie back into these two ideas. Into one, that God wants us to be known for loving well. And then this idea too, that there is nothing more persuasive than a name. I don't think there's anything in life more persuasive than somebody's name. And here's what I mean. Think about recommendations that you get from people. Some people you get bad recommendations from, some good. There's somebody who was in one of my small groups a couple years ago, and in that small group we were sharing about this experience we had with sushi in New York City. And if you want to hear about it, I'll tell you about it, because it was amazing. It was the best food I ever had in my life. It was a great meal. And we were kind of telling them about that. And he pipes up and he says, oh, yeah, I know where to get great sushi. I said, really, where? He goes, yeah, there's this place in Boone. It's the best sushi in the world. And I'm like, Boone? Five hours from the ocean, Boone? Like that Boone? Hill country of App State? Where they're still nailing chicken fried steaks? Like that boon? That place? And I said, did you mean like best in, like boon? Or like Western North Carolina? He's like, nope, the world. Better than like New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Tokyo? Like the place where they invented it? Better than those places? Yes, way better. You'll never have better sushi. And in that moment, I realized I will never listen to you again in my life. That dude could tell me, dude, I tried this great barbecue restaurant down the street. I will never, ever go there. I do not trust. Now, he can tell me about other things. This book is good. These things are nice. But if he tells me about food, you can shove it, buddy. I've got this other friend who I've been really close friends with him for 30 years now. And I trust his recommendations on TV shows and movies and podcasts and books so much that he doesn't even have to talk me into them anymore. He can just text me the name of a show and I will just go binge all 12 seasons of it right there. Like I know it's going to be good. He doesn't even have to do anything. If Tyler tells me I should do this, I will because I trust him. Over time, he's built a good reputation of taste and I know that it's not to let me down. There is nothing more convincing than a name. And where this becomes particularly important is when we are trying to reach a lost world. I've mentioned this to you before, but if you are a believer, the only reason God doesn't snatch you right into heaven the very second you come to faith is so that on your way to that eternity for which he created you, you can bring as many people with you along the way as possible. The only reason you still draw breath is so you can bring as many people to eternity in heaven with you as you go as is humanly possible. If there was anything else to do, if that wasn't true, he would just snatch you right to heaven just as soon as you accepted him. Why wouldn't this place with so much pain and hurt and whisk you right up away to heaven immediately so you can begin to experience paradise with him? Why wouldn't he do that unless he's leaving you here so that on your way to that place that he's preparing for you, you can bring as many people with you as possible. That's why you're here. And if you want to bring other people with you, what could be more persuasive than a good name? What could be more persuasive than someone who claims to love Jesus and then loves them like they actually do love Jesus? Because in our culture, in 2023, your neighbors and your coworkers and your friends who do not embrace Christ, maybe they've outright rejected him. Maybe they're one of those people who say that they've accepted Jesus, they believe in him, but they're good and they don't really prioritize their faith at all and it makes us wonder if there is genuine faith there. If you have people in your life like that. You know, in the past, we talked about evangelism, this act of sharing our faith and pushing people towards Christ and hopefully seeing them come to faith. In the past, we were told about how to tell people about Jesus. 2023, guess what? They've all heard of him. It's very likely they have a reason. Can I tell you it's pretty likely it's a good reason? That deserves a thoughtful response? Are those people that you know who do not embrace faith, are they more likely to be won over by a theological argument? By digging into the science so that you can try to disprove atheism? By sending them to a blog post or a website or a case for faith by Lee Strobel? Or are they most likely to be won over by a name that's loved them for years? By someone who says they love Jesus, who says they love others, and in your marriage, and in your relationship with your children, and in your relationship with them, they see it. I'm not saying you're faultless, but I'm saying what's more convincing to the outside world than someone who actually practices what they preach and walks what they talk and has a good name that can be trusted. So that when that name says, hey, my church is pretty special to me, I'd love for you to come too, That actually carries some weight, and they go, because they think there's something different about this family. And I don't know what it is, but if it's their faith, then I want to understand that. A good name gets your foot in the door when you say, yeah, I do actually have a faith. I do believe in Jesus, and let me tell you why. If you have a good name and a reputation that supports that statement, they're going to listen to you with a lot more attention than if you don't have a good reputation with them, if the video does not match the audio. So I believe that God cares deeply about your reputation and what you are known for because a good reputation is more persuasive than anything else on the planet. So I hope that 2023 will be a year that you choose to ask yourself regularly, what am I known for and what do I want to be known for? How am I loving? Am I loving well? Am I being lazy? Am I being sloppy? Am I being selfish? Or am I being someone who loves like Jesus loves? Understanding that as we love in that way, there is nothing more persuasive to those around us than a consistent love of Christ and love of them. And please understand that the only way, you're not white knuckling your way to good love. You're not doing that. You have to wake up every day, spend time in God's word, time in prayer. You gotta pursue him. You gotta seek him. You gotta have friendships in your life that feed you spiritually. You gotta talk about Jesus to your children and to your friends've got to focus your eyes on Christ, the found love, and that love will be noticed. And people will come to faith because God is using you in their life. I went this year at Grace. We're back open. This is hopefully the first normal year we've had in three years. We're ready to run. We're ready to do ministry. We're ready to go. I want to see a lot of new faces at Grace. I want to meet a lot of your neighbors. I want to meet a lot of your coworkers. And listen to me. I don't want to do that because of church growth. And the people who know me best know I don't give a flip about church growth for the sake of church growth. I don't care about that. Can I just tell you this? Here's what I realized last year. If we just stay this size with this size staff and you guys all just keep coming, my life is so easy. But I want to see new faces here. Because new faces mean you're out in your community and you're sharing about your faith. New faces mean that you're trusted. New faces mean that you have a good name and you're using it to bring people to eternity with you. I want to see a lot of baptisms this year. Because baptisms mean people have been awakened to or have come to faith. I want to see the way God moves in our church this year when we are people who focus on loving well. I want this to be a year where we reach our community well, and I think that's done through building a good reputation. So we're going to take the next three weeks. I'm actually excited about this series because often in a series we'll have kind of a list of topics, reputation, faith, grace, love, whatever it is. And I'll kind of hit those and then move on. But this time we're going to spend four weeks in what we're known for and really deep dive into it. And I'm excited at the opportunity to do that. And I hope that you'll come along with me. And I hope that people will come to love your Savior because of how well you have loved them. Let's pray. Father, we always say that we love you, but we acknowledge that we love you because you first loved us, because you first cared for us, because you created us, because you created us to share yourself with us, and that you have designed for us and purposed us for in eternity. God, I pray that we would bring as many people as we can with us on our way there. Father, for those who feel like their reputation is tarnished, I pray that you would give them a vision for a new one and a belief that if they simply love you and love others well, that that will change. God, for those with secrets or rough edges, would you move us away from those and towards you? Would we embrace your goodness in our life? Would we embrace the firm foundation of love that you have given us and walk in that love and trust you alone and not other things to bring us happiness and joy. But would we lean into you more this year and in doing so be a magnet for those around you and God for those that you're using with good names already. Would you just keep on giving them energy as they go. Father we pray at the beginning of this year for a lot of new faces in this church so that we can have the opportunity to love on them and see them come to know you and that because we love them well, they open their eyes to how much you already love them and they come to love you too. It's in your son's name we are able to pray all these things. Amen.

We serve a God who's working through time to bring about His will and ultimately our good. We see the evidence of His sovereignty in the book of Genesis with the life of Joseph. To know and understand the story of Joseph is to get a glimpse into the very heart of God and to be assured that we can trust His plan. Last week we heard about Jacob and collectively wondered why God would choose to bless someone who at times acted so very ungodly. We were comforted to learn that God blessed Jacob because he had promised him that he would, and our God always keeps his promises, no matter our behavior. This week, we will see God make a promise to Joseph in the form of a dream, but immediately be forced to wonder if and how God will actually keep his promise. In the end, Joseph will be compelled to decide if he trusts God and trusts that despite uncertain circumstances, he has a plan. Well, good morning, church. It's good to see everybody. Thank you for being here today. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you yet, my name is Nate, and I would love to get to do that after the service. If you're checking us out online, thank you so much for doing that, and we'd love to see you here whenever you get the chance. Emil, those were the best announcements you've ever done. Thank you for that. Those were fantastic. This is the second part in our series called He Has a Plan, where we're going through the life of Joseph together. And so just as a reminder, it's a seven-week series, and the way that I'm looking at it and thinking about it as I write the sermons and think about how to weave them together is with the license that this is one big, long, seven-week sermon. Again, these sermons are not designed to stand alone by themselves and make the traditional point that you go home with thinking about, but rather each as a setup for the next as we follow the narrative of Joseph's life through scripture. And we're going to be spending a lot of time each week in the narrative, in learning the story, and thinking through what it would be like to walk through the story. Because I believe that honors the text. I believe that honors God's word that people have given their life to, have died for, have preserved through the years. And there's a reason that the author of Genesis recorded these stories. There's a reason that they choose the details that they do. And so we honor those stories and we honor the text and we honor our God by taking our time and going through the stories, not necessarily mining for things that can matter to us right now, primarily, but really as a vehicle to learn about God and his story as it's revealed in the stories of the Bible. So we're going to sink into them as we move through these next now six weeks. Last week, as you were reminded on our video there, that we started in the life of Jacob, Joseph's dad, whose name was later changed to Israel. And we picked up some important dynamics there, too, that are very relevant to the story this morning. The first is those promises that were made to Abraham that Jacob wanted to attach himself to. Abraham is Jacob's grandfather, Joseph's great-grandfather, and Jacob wanted to attach himself to those promises. And we're going to see those come up again today. And then we also learned, and this becomes very important, that Jacob had two wives. He married first Leah. He got tricked into marrying Leah by his uncle Laban, which is a really dirty trick. I mean, that's up there in terrible things to do to somebody, marry off a daughter that they're not interested in and then be like, well, you're stuck with her now. How must that have made Leah felt? And then he married the one that he really loved seven years later, Rachel. And what we didn't talk about last time that's worth mentioning now is that Leah was able to begin to produce male offspring with no problem at all, which was a huge deal in the ancient world. That's what you wanted was male offspring. And so Leah was able to do that with great efficacy. She had a bunch of kids, seven or eight boys. But Rachel really struggled to produce a male offspring. And it was years and years that went by of the struggle for her, which is a struggle that we see often in the Bible. Which is why I do very much think that God is near and cares deeply about those people, particularly those women who struggle to have the children that they want so desperately. That theme comes up again and again in the Bible, and Rachel is a part of that theme. But we see her eventually have a son, and his name is Joseph. Joseph is the firstborn son of the wife that Jacob really deeply loved. So we finished the narrative last week. Jacob had just encountered his brother Esau, and then he was moving into the land of Canaan, the land that was promised to his grandfather Abraham, and kind of setting up life and finally able to live the life that he had always wanted to lay hold of. And that's kind of where we pick up the story. So we turn over a couple of chapters, and we're in Genesis chapter 37, which is where we're going to be all morning this morning, if you have a Bible and you want to turn there. And we pick up the story when Joseph is 17 years old and they're living in the land of Canaan, what we now know as Israel. I'm going to begin reading in verse 2 and then verse 3 and 4 will appear on your screen. But this is where we pick up the story. Joseph, being 17 years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives, and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. Now Israel loved Joseph more. Israel is Jacob. Remember when Jacob had the encounter with, we think, potentially Christ, his name would change to Israel. So now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him. So there's a lot going on in the family dynamics there in those verses. But what we see is that Joseph, like I said, is the favored son. He's the firstborn son of Rachel, but he's got a lot of brothers. Joseph has 11 brothers, 12 sons in all, and they would become the 12 tribes of Israel when they move into that land later on in the time of Moses and Joshua. But right now they're just 12 individual dudes, and Joseph is younger than most of his brothers. The oldest, Reuben, was likely in his early to mid-30s by the time Joseph is 17 years old. So the dynamic is the patriarch of the family, Jacob, has two wives, and each wife has a servant that he uses as a concubine that each bear him some sons, but he's got a bunch of sons. But his first son from Rachel is the one that he loves the most. He's got another son from Rachel named Benjamin, and it's important that we remember that name because in week six and seven, we're going to encounter Benjamin again, and this is going to matter. But Joseph is his favorite son because that's from his favorite wife. Now, how do you think that made Joseph's brothers feel? These guys who are grown men, who are grown adults, and they're doing the hard work of the flocks. Jacob's not, he's not working with the herds anymore. He's not doing any of the stuff to generate the wealth. It's his sons that are doing it. And he's made it very clear to his sons that work the hardest that you are not my favorite, that Joseph is my favorite. This was, it's easy to say, a very unhealthy family and family dynamic. In the midst of this, Joseph is a 17-year-old, is out with the herds and his brothers. And this was a nomadic people. So Jacob was kind of the central hub. His camp was kind of the central hub. And then his herds were out in the countryside all around them. You could travel for a day before you would get to his sons and the flocks that they were tending. So they're pretty dispersed. And so Joseph comes back to his dad, Jacob, and he gives him a bad report of his brothers. Reuben doesn't know what he's doing. If Tally can't shear sheep worth a darn, they're terrible at this. They're selling them for peanuts. It's a bad operation out there. And he goes back and he tells on his brothers. And while he's back there telling on his brothers, his dad gives him the famous coat of many colors that we've probably all heard of before. And we might wonder, what's it matter that it was a multicolored coat? And I could get into all the stuff about how expensive it was to dye materials and what colors things normally were. And they were monochromatic and very easy to make and all that stuff. But suffice it to say, this is Joseph or this is Jacob in no uncertain terms, letting his sons know, this is my favorite son. I know that it's kind of been implied before. I know that you guys could probably figure this out, but now you need to know this. He's the guy. He's my favorite. It's not too dissimilar from the idea of somebody having a bunch of sons and whenever the son gets to be driving age, he buys them a truck, but it's a beater of a truck, like an old Ford Ranger with 180,000 miles on it that barely gets down the road. And then when Joseph comes of age, dad buys him a brand new F-150 with all the bells and whistles. And he takes that F-150 and he drives back to the brothers and he says, look at this truck. Joseph was incredibly unwise in this season of life. So he goes and he wears the coat around his brothers, which if it were me, I would thank you, dad, and I would fold that up and put it in my tent and I would come back to that later, but I wouldn't go wear it in front of my brothers. But this is what Joseph does because Joseph is dumb. And if you don't believe me that he's dumb, that he's just a dumb, bratty, snot-nosed 17-year-old kid, look at what he does. Joseph has some dreams. And this is important because Joseph has a gift from God that we'll see laced throughout the story as a dream interpreter, an interpreter of dreams. And I'll say up front before we read these, that there's nothing in the text that says that these dreams were from God, but all of the context around the text and all of the context around the life of Joseph suggests very much that these dreams are from God. And so I feel like I'm on solid footing if I were to espouse to you the idea that these are dreams that represent promises from God. But just know in your own thinking and the way you process the story yourself, it doesn't say that in scripture. That's just a license I'm taking with the context within which we find the dreams. We're going to look in 37 beginning in verse 7. These are the dreams that Joseph has. He says, So he has two dreams. In one dream, it's all equals, sheaves of wheat, stalks of wheat. And all of the wheat bows down to one wheat. And Joseph says, I'm the one. They were bowing down to me. Well, he has 11 brothers, so it's pretty obvious the symbolism here. And they respond in kind. Are you saying that you're going to rule over us? And then he has another dream. And in this dream, it wasn't just the planets, but the sun and the moon that bowed down to him as well, indicating his father and mother. And so the brothers resented him even more. But if you keep reading down into verse 10, what you'll find is it said that Jacob took this to heart. Jacob didn't get ticked yet because he kind of knew something was going on with this Joseph kid. He had already experienced in his life how God brings about his promises in unexpected ways. And this was really just a way of putting the writing, of taking the writing on the wall and putting it in front of their faces. Because the technicolor coat and all the other things indicated that Joseph was going to be the one to rule over his brothers. You'll remember from last week with the idea of birthright and blessing, that in the ancient world, the firstborn son received a double portion of inheritance from his father when his father passed away, and the firstborn son assumed the authority of the father if the father was incapacitated or passed away. So for Joseph to be the one that's favored above and beyond his other brothers, the writing is on the wall that one day all the older guys, Dan and Reuben and Naphtali and all the others, are going to be working for Joseph. And so it's at this point that I think it's worth just pausing and thinking about what Joseph is doing right here. Put yourself in his shoes. Pretend you're Joseph. And in your family dynamic, you know that you are your dad's favorite child. You also know that you have 10 brothers who are older than you. The oldest of whom is probably in his mid-30s. The rest are somewhere in their 20s. It's a whole swath between 17 and 35. And you know that they hate you. They can't stand you. They loathe you. They resent you. They do not want to work for you one day. And yet, your dad loves you and is going to elevate you above all of them. And so one day, you're going to have to find a way to get these guys to continue to work for you and produce for you and run the clan with them. These relationships are important. If Joseph is forward-thinking at all, which he was a 17-year-old kid, I don't know a single 17-year-old boy that is forward-thinking beyond prom. But if Joseph was forward-thinking at all, he would have understood, I'm going to have to lead these guys in the future. Me having a harmonious relationship with them is going to be pretty essential to our combined success. And so he ought to have slow played it. He ought to have been humble and played those things down. But instead he shows up wearing the coat instead of tucking it away and saving it for later. And if you had those dreams and you're Joseph, would you then go to your brothers who, by the way, in a land with no military and no police, no recourse for you, this is a place where might makes right. Are you going to walk up to them and be like, guys, I had a dream. Guess what it was? We were all weak, right? You with me? And then you guys bowed down to me. And then I had another dream. And you guys and mom and dad did too. How you like that, suckers? It was incredibly dumb and incredibly arrogant, incredibly bratty. At this point in his life, and we're going to talk about this more in a minute, because it's a stark transition from who Joseph becomes. But at this season of his life, Joseph is a snot-nosed 17-year-old brat. He's the worst kind of rich kid. He's kind of a terrible human, and he's rubbing his brother's noses in it. And so, one day, his dad says, go out to your brothers and check on the herds. And so off he goes. He goes to where his brothers are supposed to be, and they're not there. But someone points him in the right direction. He goes and he finds his brothers. As he's approaching, his brothers see him approaching and they begin to talk. And they say, hey, here's Joseph. He's coming. Let's just kill him. Let's just kill him and we'll tell dad that he's dead. And the thinking had to be, and then one of us can inherit the promises and we don't have to worry about that. One of us can be in charge of the family. We won't have to submit to Joseph. He's a jerk. That's going to be a terrible life to have to submit to this guy for the rest of our life. He's totally unbearable. Let's just kill him. And we'll tell dad that an animal got him. And they said, yeah, okay. Well, then the oldest son, Reuben, heard of this plan. And he was like, guys, let's not kill him. Let's just throw him in a pit. And in that way, he effectively saved Joseph's life, which is why to this day, the Reuben is the king of all sandwiches. I don't know if you guys ever knew that by that connection in scripture. They teach you that in seminary. So they decided to throw him in a pit. And then Reuben's off doing something else. I don't know what Reuben's doing. And Judah, one of the younger brothers, says, guys, what are we doing with Joseph in a pit? We can't make any money off of him. It doesn't do us any good. What are we going to do? We can't take him out now. He's going to tell dad on us. We're going to have to kill him. What do we get if we kill him? Nothing. Let's sell him. Here come the Midianites. They're known slave traders. Let's sell them to the Midianites. And at least we can make some money off of this, and then we'll tell dad that he's dead. So that's what they do. The Midianites come by. They sell Joseph to them. He's now a slave. They take the coat of many colors and they tatter it and they beat it up and they dip it in animal blood and they carry it home to Jacob and they say, we're so sorry we found this coat as we were coming back. It looks very much like some wild beast got to Joseph and killed your beloved son. We're so sorry, Dad. And then they grieve with him. And so Joseph goes from next in line to be the head of a tribe, the head of this clan, to on some ox cart in shackles, heading to a foreign country to be a slave. And it seems worth it to pause here and make note of this point, because this is not the Joseph that we know. When I think of Joseph, when I think of the Joseph of the Old Testament, I think of a man that personifies consistent obedience. I think of a man who at every turn does the right thing. I think of a man who we would all do well to be like Joseph. He is a moral exemplar in the Old Testament. Next week, we're going to look at his outright commitment to his own purity of heart and of spirit. I think of Joseph as a character to be attained to, of someone that I want to be like, who does the right thing all the time, no matter what. But in chapter 37, that's not the Joseph that we see. So there's a change that happens between chapter 37 and the rest of Genesis through 50. And I think that change is what's happening to him right here in this passage. And it makes me believe that humility always precedes obedience. Humility always precedes obedience. A humbling will happen before we can walk in the obedience that God asks of us. I'm not talking about little pockets of obedience. It's possible to be prideful and still obey in places. But what I'm talking about is it is impossible to live the obedient life that God calls us to. It is impossible to submit ourselves to God's word and to submit ourselves to God's will and his plan if we have not been humbled, if we are living arrogantly. Isn't this the fundamental agreement with salvation? Isn't that how it starts? Someone who is not a believer coming to the end of themselves, coming to a place where they say, you know what? I think I've been wrong about faith. I think I've been wrong about religion. I've been wrong about trying to be the Lord of my own life. God, I'm tired of doing it my way. I want to do it your way. Isn't there a fundamental submission in the obedience of salvation? And what is obedience besides agreeing that, you know what, I think that your way is better than my way? With your kids, we have a five-year-old. She has to choose to obey us. She has to choose to believe and humble herself and say, I'm not right here. You guys must be right, I'm going to trust you. Humility always precedes obedience. And if you think about it, how is it possible to become more Christ-like? How is it possible to be more like Jesus and carry a prideful and haughty spirit through life. Someone who is described as gentle and lowly in heart. How can we become more like that if we're prideful in ourselves? How can we produce the fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. How can we produce those things? How can those things be produced in our life if we are walking in a prideful, haughty arrogance? If we walk out and we look at our house and we say, look at what I bought, look at how successful I am. If we look at our cars and say, look at what I drive. If we look at our friendships and say, look at who they are. If we look at ourselves in the mirror and say, look how good I look, which is a particular struggle of mine. And how can we look at the things in our life and attribute those things to ourself? Look at what I've built. Look at what we've done. Look at who I am. How can we walk through life thinking that we're right about everything and that the people who disagree, who deign to disagree with us are stupid and misinformed and watch the wrong cable network that they shouldn't watch? Like how can we walk through life thinking that we're right about everything and that people who disagree with us must be inherently wrong about everything and yet walk in the humility that obedience requires? How can we think highly of ourselves as Joseph did and yet walk in the humility that obedience requires. We can't. And those of you who have been around long enough, which is approximately seven years, after seven years of life, you ought to have figured this out. Life has a way of bringing us all low, doesn't it? Life will humble you. One minute, you'll think you're the best. The next day, you feel like the worst. Life has a way of humbling us. And so I think the option for us, if we'll accept that the obedient life that God calls us to follows humility. And we'll accept that humility is going to happen. The question becomes, do you want to be humbled the easy way or the hard way? Do you want in your prayers to ask God of it, God, please keep me humble. God, please remind me of how much you love me. Please remind me of my own sin that you've forgiven in me so that I don't think overly hypocritically about other people and condemn others. Do we want to be people who pray and ask for God to keep us humble in what I believe is a gentle and loving way that our God does it? Or do we want to, like Joseph, be broken into humility? Not because God seeks to break us, but because life humbles us. How do we want to be humbled? The easy way or the hard way? This may be why Proverbs says in chapter 16 that pride comes before the fall, that a haughty spirit comes before destruction. This may be why James says in chapter 4 that God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. There is a profound change in the life of Joseph, and I think it has everything to do with the humbling that he went through here. And the other thing worth pointing out, particularly for those of us in the room who are starting out our adult life, God had plans for Joseph. God made a promise to Joseph. Your brothers are going to bow down to you. Even your dad and your mom are going to bow down to you. God made that promise to him. There was a plan for Joseph. The problem was Joseph wasn't ready for that plan. The problem was the current version of Joseph was going to muck that one up. So Joseph has to go through a humbling and a changing so that when that plan arrives, he as a person is ready for it. And for many of us, sure, God has a plan for you. God wants things for you. God has designed you to do and accomplish certain things and to experience certain blessings and to be used in certain ways. The problem is you're not ready for God's plan yet. So His Holy Spirit grows us and humbles us and brings us to a place where our character can handle the plans that He has for us. So if it feels like you're treading water, if it feels like you're not accomplishing the things that you want to accomplish, or that you're not yet where you feel like you want to be, or even where it feels like maybe God has told you that you would be, I'm not saying it's the reason, but there's a chance that the current version of you simply isn't ready for the plans that God has for you. And so we're going to need to go through a humbling and a changing. At the end of this chapter, we stop at this perilous place for Joseph. Verse 36 in chapter 37 sums it up this way. It says, Meanwhile, the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard. This is where we will leave the story. We see this picture of a snot-nosed kid who can't get out of his own way, who angers his brother so deeply that they sell him into slavery and they go back and they tell his dad Joseph is dead. And Joseph goes from second in command, from claimant to the promises, from heir to the throne of a tribe, where he was going to be the guy. He goes from that to a slave, the slave of the captain of Pharaoh's guard, a slave in the most powerful nation on the planet, working for a guy that was tasked with protecting Pharaoh. It is a precipitous drop. And in this moment in his life, as he's being carted off by the Midianites, as he's eventually bought by Potiphar or representatives of Potiphar, I believe that Joseph faces this question that all of us at different points and seasons in our life face? Is he to resent God because he betrayed me or trust God because he loves me? That's the question that Joseph is faced with now as he travels down to Egypt. Do I resent God because I feel like he betrayed me or do I choose to trust God because I know that I know that I know that he loves me? Because make no mistake, in this moment, Joseph had to have felt betrayed by his God. God gave him a promise. God rose him to prominence. God told him, your brothers are going to bow down to you. And in this moment, it seems like that's the exact opposite of what's happening. His brothers heard that. They didn't want it to happen. So they do the exact opposite of God's will and sell him into slavery so they don't have to worry about that anymore. Problem solved. We're never going to bow down to Joseph. And so it seems very much like what's happening in Joseph's life is the exact opposite of what his God had promised him. So Joseph feels betrayed. So he's got a choice. Do I resent this betrayal? Or do I choose to trust God because I know that I know that I know that he loves me? And if he loves me, he must have a plan for me. And here's the thing. Here's the thing that I love about this crossroads in the life of Joseph. The very thing that has caused him to feel betrayed by his God, the very thing that makes him doubt his faith, the very thing that makes it seem like God has let him down, the fact that he has been sold into slavery and has been brought low and humbled and is no longer where he was and cannot see a clear path to the promises that God gave him, the very thing that happens to cause Joseph to doubt God and feel betrayed by God is the thing that has to happen to bring about the future that God promises to Joseph. Do you understand? If you know the whole story, you know, spoiler alert, eventually his brothers do bow down to him. But his being sold into slavery by his brothers was a necessary trial and instance to go through so that God could put Joseph exactly where he wanted to put him 25 years later and bring about the promises that he made to Joseph when he was a 17-year-old snot-nosed kid. And from his spot, from the ox cart on the way to Egypt, Joseph cannot see that future. There is no path in his head that brings about the promise that God gave to him. He cannot see that future. And in the midst of that blindness where he cannot see how in the world is God going to be faithful to what he promised me, he has to choose. Do I resent God because he's allowing me to sit here? Or do I choose to trust him because I know that he loves me? And I know that he has his hand on me still. And you have to make that choice too. There are times in life when we feel betrayed by our God. When a diagnosis comes in that feels unfair. When we're faced with a loss that doesn't seem right. When we don't get the job, when we don't get the child, when the child that we do have is so difficult to deal with that we're not really sure what went wrong or how we could fix it. To be someone who follows God is to experience a season where we feel like in some way or another he's let us down. And when we're in that season, we have good company and that Joseph sat there too. And he had to choose. Am I going to resent God because I feel like he betrayed me? Or am I going to choose to trust him because I know that I know that I know that He loves me. And if He loves me, He must have a plan for me. That's where we're going to pick it up next week. Let's pray. Father, thank You for loving us. Thank You for having a plan for us. Thank You for creating us in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. I pray that we would cling to those promises. Cling to what is promised to us in Scripture. Because Romans tells us that we can hope in you because that's the one place we can put our hope where it won't be put to shame. God, thank you for your servant Joseph. And thank you for directing the author of Genesis to show us his humanity, to show us that he wasn't always this guy who made incredibly good choices at every turn despite the difficulties. Thank you for showing us that he was human just like we are. Lord, I pray for our humility, that we would be gentle and humble in spirit, that we would be increasingly like your son, Jesus, that we would think more highly of those around us and that we would see your blessings in our life and allow those to bring us appropriately low so that we can walk in obedience to you. Let none of us in here require the force that Joseph did to bring us to a place of humility. And God, if there are those of us who are tempted to resent you right now, I pray this morning that we would choose to trust you, that we would be assured in myriad ways that you love us deeply, profoundly, and unconditionally. It's in your son's name that we pray. Amen.

We serve a God who's working through time to bring about His will and ultimately our good. We see the evidence of His sovereignty in the book of Genesis with the life of Joseph. To know and understand the story of Joseph is to get a glimpse into the very heart of God and to be assured that we can trust His plan. Last week we heard about Jacob and collectively wondered why God would choose to bless someone who at times acted so very ungodly. We were comforted to learn that God blessed Jacob because he had promised him that he would, and our God always keeps his promises, no matter our behavior. This week, we will see God make a promise to Joseph in the form of a dream, but immediately be forced to wonder if and how God will actually keep his promise. In the end, Joseph will be compelled to decide if he trusts God and trusts that despite uncertain circumstances, he has a plan. Well, good morning, church. It's good to see everybody. Thank you for being here today. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you yet, my name is Nate, and I would love to get to do that after the service. If you're checking us out online, thank you so much for doing that, and we'd love to see you here whenever you get the chance. Emil, those were the best announcements you've ever done. Thank you for that. Those were fantastic. This is the second part in our series called He Has a Plan, where we're going through the life of Joseph together. And so just as a reminder, it's a seven-week series, and the way that I'm looking at it and thinking about it as I write the sermons and think about how to weave them together is with the license that this is one big, long, seven-week sermon. Again, these sermons are not designed to stand alone by themselves and make the traditional point that you go home with thinking about, but rather each as a setup for the next as we follow the narrative of Joseph's life through scripture. And we're going to be spending a lot of time each week in the narrative, in learning the story, and thinking through what it would be like to walk through the story. Because I believe that honors the text. I believe that honors God's word that people have given their life to, have died for, have preserved through the years. And there's a reason that the author of Genesis recorded these stories. There's a reason that they choose the details that they do. And so we honor those stories and we honor the text and we honor our God by taking our time and going through the stories, not necessarily mining for things that can matter to us right now, primarily, but really as a vehicle to learn about God and his story as it's revealed in the stories of the Bible. So we're going to sink into them as we move through these next now six weeks. Last week, as you were reminded on our video there, that we started in the life of Jacob, Joseph's dad, whose name was later changed to Israel. And we picked up some important dynamics there, too, that are very relevant to the story this morning. The first is those promises that were made to Abraham that Jacob wanted to attach himself to. Abraham is Jacob's grandfather, Joseph's great-grandfather, and Jacob wanted to attach himself to those promises. And we're going to see those come up again today. And then we also learned, and this becomes very important, that Jacob had two wives. He married first Leah. He got tricked into marrying Leah by his uncle Laban, which is a really dirty trick. I mean, that's up there in terrible things to do to somebody, marry off a daughter that they're not interested in and then be like, well, you're stuck with her now. How must that have made Leah felt? And then he married the one that he really loved seven years later, Rachel. And what we didn't talk about last time that's worth mentioning now is that Leah was able to begin to produce male offspring with no problem at all, which was a huge deal in the ancient world. That's what you wanted was male offspring. And so Leah was able to do that with great efficacy. She had a bunch of kids, seven or eight boys. But Rachel really struggled to produce a male offspring. And it was years and years that went by of the struggle for her, which is a struggle that we see often in the Bible. Which is why I do very much think that God is near and cares deeply about those people, particularly those women who struggle to have the children that they want so desperately. That theme comes up again and again in the Bible, and Rachel is a part of that theme. But we see her eventually have a son, and his name is Joseph. Joseph is the firstborn son of the wife that Jacob really deeply loved. So we finished the narrative last week. Jacob had just encountered his brother Esau, and then he was moving into the land of Canaan, the land that was promised to his grandfather Abraham, and kind of setting up life and finally able to live the life that he had always wanted to lay hold of. And that's kind of where we pick up the story. So we turn over a couple of chapters, and we're in Genesis chapter 37, which is where we're going to be all morning this morning, if you have a Bible and you want to turn there. And we pick up the story when Joseph is 17 years old and they're living in the land of Canaan, what we now know as Israel. I'm going to begin reading in verse 2 and then verse 3 and 4 will appear on your screen. But this is where we pick up the story. Joseph, being 17 years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives, and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. Now Israel loved Joseph more. Israel is Jacob. Remember when Jacob had the encounter with, we think, potentially Christ, his name would change to Israel. So now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him. So there's a lot going on in the family dynamics there in those verses. But what we see is that Joseph, like I said, is the favored son. He's the firstborn son of Rachel, but he's got a lot of brothers. Joseph has 11 brothers, 12 sons in all, and they would become the 12 tribes of Israel when they move into that land later on in the time of Moses and Joshua. But right now they're just 12 individual dudes, and Joseph is younger than most of his brothers. The oldest, Reuben, was likely in his early to mid-30s by the time Joseph is 17 years old. So the dynamic is the patriarch of the family, Jacob, has two wives, and each wife has a servant that he uses as a concubine that each bear him some sons, but he's got a bunch of sons. But his first son from Rachel is the one that he loves the most. He's got another son from Rachel named Benjamin, and it's important that we remember that name because in week six and seven, we're going to encounter Benjamin again, and this is going to matter. But Joseph is his favorite son because that's from his favorite wife. Now, how do you think that made Joseph's brothers feel? These guys who are grown men, who are grown adults, and they're doing the hard work of the flocks. Jacob's not, he's not working with the herds anymore. He's not doing any of the stuff to generate the wealth. It's his sons that are doing it. And he's made it very clear to his sons that work the hardest that you are not my favorite, that Joseph is my favorite. This was, it's easy to say, a very unhealthy family and family dynamic. In the midst of this, Joseph is a 17-year-old, is out with the herds and his brothers. And this was a nomadic people. So Jacob was kind of the central hub. His camp was kind of the central hub. And then his herds were out in the countryside all around them. You could travel for a day before you would get to his sons and the flocks that they were tending. So they're pretty dispersed. And so Joseph comes back to his dad, Jacob, and he gives him a bad report of his brothers. Reuben doesn't know what he's doing. If Tally can't shear sheep worth a darn, they're terrible at this. They're selling them for peanuts. It's a bad operation out there. And he goes back and he tells on his brothers. And while he's back there telling on his brothers, his dad gives him the famous coat of many colors that we've probably all heard of before. And we might wonder, what's it matter that it was a multicolored coat? And I could get into all the stuff about how expensive it was to dye materials and what colors things normally were. And they were monochromatic and very easy to make and all that stuff. But suffice it to say, this is Joseph or this is Jacob in no uncertain terms, letting his sons know, this is my favorite son. I know that it's kind of been implied before. I know that you guys could probably figure this out, but now you need to know this. He's the guy. He's my favorite. It's not too dissimilar from the idea of somebody having a bunch of sons and whenever the son gets to be driving age, he buys them a truck, but it's a beater of a truck, like an old Ford Ranger with 180,000 miles on it that barely gets down the road. And then when Joseph comes of age, dad buys him a brand new F-150 with all the bells and whistles. And he takes that F-150 and he drives back to the brothers and he says, look at this truck. Joseph was incredibly unwise in this season of life. So he goes and he wears the coat around his brothers, which if it were me, I would thank you, dad, and I would fold that up and put it in my tent and I would come back to that later, but I wouldn't go wear it in front of my brothers. But this is what Joseph does because Joseph is dumb. And if you don't believe me that he's dumb, that he's just a dumb, bratty, snot-nosed 17-year-old kid, look at what he does. Joseph has some dreams. And this is important because Joseph has a gift from God that we'll see laced throughout the story as a dream interpreter, an interpreter of dreams. And I'll say up front before we read these, that there's nothing in the text that says that these dreams were from God, but all of the context around the text and all of the context around the life of Joseph suggests very much that these dreams are from God. And so I feel like I'm on solid footing if I were to espouse to you the idea that these are dreams that represent promises from God. But just know in your own thinking and the way you process the story yourself, it doesn't say that in scripture. That's just a license I'm taking with the context within which we find the dreams. We're going to look in 37 beginning in verse 7. These are the dreams that Joseph has. He says, So he has two dreams. In one dream, it's all equals, sheaves of wheat, stalks of wheat. And all of the wheat bows down to one wheat. And Joseph says, I'm the one. They were bowing down to me. Well, he has 11 brothers, so it's pretty obvious the symbolism here. And they respond in kind. Are you saying that you're going to rule over us? And then he has another dream. And in this dream, it wasn't just the planets, but the sun and the moon that bowed down to him as well, indicating his father and mother. And so the brothers resented him even more. But if you keep reading down into verse 10, what you'll find is it said that Jacob took this to heart. Jacob didn't get ticked yet because he kind of knew something was going on with this Joseph kid. He had already experienced in his life how God brings about his promises in unexpected ways. And this was really just a way of putting the writing, of taking the writing on the wall and putting it in front of their faces. Because the technicolor coat and all the other things indicated that Joseph was going to be the one to rule over his brothers. You'll remember from last week with the idea of birthright and blessing, that in the ancient world, the firstborn son received a double portion of inheritance from his father when his father passed away, and the firstborn son assumed the authority of the father if the father was incapacitated or passed away. So for Joseph to be the one that's favored above and beyond his other brothers, the writing is on the wall that one day all the older guys, Dan and Reuben and Naphtali and all the others, are going to be working for Joseph. And so it's at this point that I think it's worth just pausing and thinking about what Joseph is doing right here. Put yourself in his shoes. Pretend you're Joseph. And in your family dynamic, you know that you are your dad's favorite child. You also know that you have 10 brothers who are older than you. The oldest of whom is probably in his mid-30s. The rest are somewhere in their 20s. It's a whole swath between 17 and 35. And you know that they hate you. They can't stand you. They loathe you. They resent you. They do not want to work for you one day. And yet, your dad loves you and is going to elevate you above all of them. And so one day, you're going to have to find a way to get these guys to continue to work for you and produce for you and run the clan with them. These relationships are important. If Joseph is forward-thinking at all, which he was a 17-year-old kid, I don't know a single 17-year-old boy that is forward-thinking beyond prom. But if Joseph was forward-thinking at all, he would have understood, I'm going to have to lead these guys in the future. Me having a harmonious relationship with them is going to be pretty essential to our combined success. And so he ought to have slow played it. He ought to have been humble and played those things down. But instead he shows up wearing the coat instead of tucking it away and saving it for later. And if you had those dreams and you're Joseph, would you then go to your brothers who, by the way, in a land with no military and no police, no recourse for you, this is a place where might makes right. Are you going to walk up to them and be like, guys, I had a dream. Guess what it was? We were all weak, right? You with me? And then you guys bowed down to me. And then I had another dream. And you guys and mom and dad did too. How you like that, suckers? It was incredibly dumb and incredibly arrogant, incredibly bratty. At this point in his life, and we're going to talk about this more in a minute, because it's a stark transition from who Joseph becomes. But at this season of his life, Joseph is a snot-nosed 17-year-old brat. He's the worst kind of rich kid. He's kind of a terrible human, and he's rubbing his brother's noses in it. And so, one day, his dad says, go out to your brothers and check on the herds. And so off he goes. He goes to where his brothers are supposed to be, and they're not there. But someone points him in the right direction. He goes and he finds his brothers. As he's approaching, his brothers see him approaching and they begin to talk. And they say, hey, here's Joseph. He's coming. Let's just kill him. Let's just kill him and we'll tell dad that he's dead. And the thinking had to be, and then one of us can inherit the promises and we don't have to worry about that. One of us can be in charge of the family. We won't have to submit to Joseph. He's a jerk. That's going to be a terrible life to have to submit to this guy for the rest of our life. He's totally unbearable. Let's just kill him. And we'll tell dad that an animal got him. And they said, yeah, okay. Well, then the oldest son, Reuben, heard of this plan. And he was like, guys, let's not kill him. Let's just throw him in a pit. And in that way, he effectively saved Joseph's life, which is why to this day, the Reuben is the king of all sandwiches. I don't know if you guys ever knew that by that connection in scripture. They teach you that in seminary. So they decided to throw him in a pit. And then Reuben's off doing something else. I don't know what Reuben's doing. And Judah, one of the younger brothers, says, guys, what are we doing with Joseph in a pit? We can't make any money off of him. It doesn't do us any good. What are we going to do? We can't take him out now. He's going to tell dad on us. We're going to have to kill him. What do we get if we kill him? Nothing. Let's sell him. Here come the Midianites. They're known slave traders. Let's sell them to the Midianites. And at least we can make some money off of this, and then we'll tell dad that he's dead. So that's what they do. The Midianites come by. They sell Joseph to them. He's now a slave. They take the coat of many colors and they tatter it and they beat it up and they dip it in animal blood and they carry it home to Jacob and they say, we're so sorry we found this coat as we were coming back. It looks very much like some wild beast got to Joseph and killed your beloved son. We're so sorry, Dad. And then they grieve with him. And so Joseph goes from next in line to be the head of a tribe, the head of this clan, to on some ox cart in shackles, heading to a foreign country to be a slave. And it seems worth it to pause here and make note of this point, because this is not the Joseph that we know. When I think of Joseph, when I think of the Joseph of the Old Testament, I think of a man that personifies consistent obedience. I think of a man who at every turn does the right thing. I think of a man who we would all do well to be like Joseph. He is a moral exemplar in the Old Testament. Next week, we're going to look at his outright commitment to his own purity of heart and of spirit. I think of Joseph as a character to be attained to, of someone that I want to be like, who does the right thing all the time, no matter what. But in chapter 37, that's not the Joseph that we see. So there's a change that happens between chapter 37 and the rest of Genesis through 50. And I think that change is what's happening to him right here in this passage. And it makes me believe that humility always precedes obedience. Humility always precedes obedience. A humbling will happen before we can walk in the obedience that God asks of us. I'm not talking about little pockets of obedience. It's possible to be prideful and still obey in places. But what I'm talking about is it is impossible to live the obedient life that God calls us to. It is impossible to submit ourselves to God's word and to submit ourselves to God's will and his plan if we have not been humbled, if we are living arrogantly. Isn't this the fundamental agreement with salvation? Isn't that how it starts? Someone who is not a believer coming to the end of themselves, coming to a place where they say, you know what? I think I've been wrong about faith. I think I've been wrong about religion. I've been wrong about trying to be the Lord of my own life. God, I'm tired of doing it my way. I want to do it your way. Isn't there a fundamental submission in the obedience of salvation? And what is obedience besides agreeing that, you know what, I think that your way is better than my way? With your kids, we have a five-year-old. She has to choose to obey us. She has to choose to believe and humble herself and say, I'm not right here. You guys must be right, I'm going to trust you. Humility always precedes obedience. And if you think about it, how is it possible to become more Christ-like? How is it possible to be more like Jesus and carry a prideful and haughty spirit through life. Someone who is described as gentle and lowly in heart. How can we become more like that if we're prideful in ourselves? How can we produce the fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. How can we produce those things? How can those things be produced in our life if we are walking in a prideful, haughty arrogance? If we walk out and we look at our house and we say, look at what I bought, look at how successful I am. If we look at our cars and say, look at what I drive. If we look at our friendships and say, look at who they are. If we look at ourselves in the mirror and say, look how good I look, which is a particular struggle of mine. And how can we look at the things in our life and attribute those things to ourself? Look at what I've built. Look at what we've done. Look at who I am. How can we walk through life thinking that we're right about everything and that the people who disagree, who deign to disagree with us are stupid and misinformed and watch the wrong cable network that they shouldn't watch? Like how can we walk through life thinking that we're right about everything and that people who disagree with us must be inherently wrong about everything and yet walk in the humility that obedience requires? How can we think highly of ourselves as Joseph did and yet walk in the humility that obedience requires. We can't. And those of you who have been around long enough, which is approximately seven years, after seven years of life, you ought to have figured this out. Life has a way of bringing us all low, doesn't it? Life will humble you. One minute, you'll think you're the best. The next day, you feel like the worst. Life has a way of humbling us. And so I think the option for us, if we'll accept that the obedient life that God calls us to follows humility. And we'll accept that humility is going to happen. The question becomes, do you want to be humbled the easy way or the hard way? Do you want in your prayers to ask God of it, God, please keep me humble. God, please remind me of how much you love me. Please remind me of my own sin that you've forgiven in me so that I don't think overly hypocritically about other people and condemn others. Do we want to be people who pray and ask for God to keep us humble in what I believe is a gentle and loving way that our God does it? Or do we want to, like Joseph, be broken into humility? Not because God seeks to break us, but because life humbles us. How do we want to be humbled? The easy way or the hard way? This may be why Proverbs says in chapter 16 that pride comes before the fall, that a haughty spirit comes before destruction. This may be why James says in chapter 4 that God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. There is a profound change in the life of Joseph, and I think it has everything to do with the humbling that he went through here. And the other thing worth pointing out, particularly for those of us in the room who are starting out our adult life, God had plans for Joseph. God made a promise to Joseph. Your brothers are going to bow down to you. Even your dad and your mom are going to bow down to you. God made that promise to him. There was a plan for Joseph. The problem was Joseph wasn't ready for that plan. The problem was the current version of Joseph was going to muck that one up. So Joseph has to go through a humbling and a changing so that when that plan arrives, he as a person is ready for it. And for many of us, sure, God has a plan for you. God wants things for you. God has designed you to do and accomplish certain things and to experience certain blessings and to be used in certain ways. The problem is you're not ready for God's plan yet. So His Holy Spirit grows us and humbles us and brings us to a place where our character can handle the plans that He has for us. So if it feels like you're treading water, if it feels like you're not accomplishing the things that you want to accomplish, or that you're not yet where you feel like you want to be, or even where it feels like maybe God has told you that you would be, I'm not saying it's the reason, but there's a chance that the current version of you simply isn't ready for the plans that God has for you. And so we're going to need to go through a humbling and a changing. At the end of this chapter, we stop at this perilous place for Joseph. Verse 36 in chapter 37 sums it up this way. It says, Meanwhile, the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard. This is where we will leave the story. We see this picture of a snot-nosed kid who can't get out of his own way, who angers his brother so deeply that they sell him into slavery and they go back and they tell his dad Joseph is dead. And Joseph goes from second in command, from claimant to the promises, from heir to the throne of a tribe, where he was going to be the guy. He goes from that to a slave, the slave of the captain of Pharaoh's guard, a slave in the most powerful nation on the planet, working for a guy that was tasked with protecting Pharaoh. It is a precipitous drop. And in this moment in his life, as he's being carted off by the Midianites, as he's eventually bought by Potiphar or representatives of Potiphar, I believe that Joseph faces this question that all of us at different points and seasons in our life face? Is he to resent God because he betrayed me or trust God because he loves me? That's the question that Joseph is faced with now as he travels down to Egypt. Do I resent God because I feel like he betrayed me or do I choose to trust God because I know that I know that I know that he loves me? Because make no mistake, in this moment, Joseph had to have felt betrayed by his God. God gave him a promise. God rose him to prominence. God told him, your brothers are going to bow down to you. And in this moment, it seems like that's the exact opposite of what's happening. His brothers heard that. They didn't want it to happen. So they do the exact opposite of God's will and sell him into slavery so they don't have to worry about that anymore. Problem solved. We're never going to bow down to Joseph. And so it seems very much like what's happening in Joseph's life is the exact opposite of what his God had promised him. So Joseph feels betrayed. So he's got a choice. Do I resent this betrayal? Or do I choose to trust God because I know that I know that I know that he loves me? And if he loves me, he must have a plan for me. And here's the thing. Here's the thing that I love about this crossroads in the life of Joseph. The very thing that has caused him to feel betrayed by his God, the very thing that makes him doubt his faith, the very thing that makes it seem like God has let him down, the fact that he has been sold into slavery and has been brought low and humbled and is no longer where he was and cannot see a clear path to the promises that God gave him, the very thing that happens to cause Joseph to doubt God and feel betrayed by God is the thing that has to happen to bring about the future that God promises to Joseph. Do you understand? If you know the whole story, you know, spoiler alert, eventually his brothers do bow down to him. But his being sold into slavery by his brothers was a necessary trial and instance to go through so that God could put Joseph exactly where he wanted to put him 25 years later and bring about the promises that he made to Joseph when he was a 17-year-old snot-nosed kid. And from his spot, from the ox cart on the way to Egypt, Joseph cannot see that future. There is no path in his head that brings about the promise that God gave to him. He cannot see that future. And in the midst of that blindness where he cannot see how in the world is God going to be faithful to what he promised me, he has to choose. Do I resent God because he's allowing me to sit here? Or do I choose to trust him because I know that he loves me? And I know that he has his hand on me still. And you have to make that choice too. There are times in life when we feel betrayed by our God. When a diagnosis comes in that feels unfair. When we're faced with a loss that doesn't seem right. When we don't get the job, when we don't get the child, when the child that we do have is so difficult to deal with that we're not really sure what went wrong or how we could fix it. To be someone who follows God is to experience a season where we feel like in some way or another he's let us down. And when we're in that season, we have good company and that Joseph sat there too. And he had to choose. Am I going to resent God because I feel like he betrayed me? Or am I going to choose to trust him because I know that I know that I know that He loves me. And if He loves me, He must have a plan for me. That's where we're going to pick it up next week. Let's pray. Father, thank You for loving us. Thank You for having a plan for us. Thank You for creating us in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. I pray that we would cling to those promises. Cling to what is promised to us in Scripture. Because Romans tells us that we can hope in you because that's the one place we can put our hope where it won't be put to shame. God, thank you for your servant Joseph. And thank you for directing the author of Genesis to show us his humanity, to show us that he wasn't always this guy who made incredibly good choices at every turn despite the difficulties. Thank you for showing us that he was human just like we are. Lord, I pray for our humility, that we would be gentle and humble in spirit, that we would be increasingly like your son, Jesus, that we would think more highly of those around us and that we would see your blessings in our life and allow those to bring us appropriately low so that we can walk in obedience to you. Let none of us in here require the force that Joseph did to bring us to a place of humility. And God, if there are those of us who are tempted to resent you right now, I pray this morning that we would choose to trust you, that we would be assured in myriad ways that you love us deeply, profoundly, and unconditionally. It's in your son's name that we pray. Amen.

We serve a God who's working through time to bring about His will and ultimately our good. We see the evidence of His sovereignty in the book of Genesis with the life of Joseph. To know and understand the story of Joseph is to get a glimpse into the very heart of God and to be assured that we can trust His plan. Last week we heard about Jacob and collectively wondered why God would choose to bless someone who at times acted so very ungodly. We were comforted to learn that God blessed Jacob because he had promised him that he would, and our God always keeps his promises, no matter our behavior. This week, we will see God make a promise to Joseph in the form of a dream, but immediately be forced to wonder if and how God will actually keep his promise. In the end, Joseph will be compelled to decide if he trusts God and trusts that despite uncertain circumstances, he has a plan. Well, good morning, church. It's good to see everybody. Thank you for being here today. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you yet, my name is Nate, and I would love to get to do that after the service. If you're checking us out online, thank you so much for doing that, and we'd love to see you here whenever you get the chance. Emil, those were the best announcements you've ever done. Thank you for that. Those were fantastic. This is the second part in our series called He Has a Plan, where we're going through the life of Joseph together. And so just as a reminder, it's a seven-week series, and the way that I'm looking at it and thinking about it as I write the sermons and think about how to weave them together is with the license that this is one big, long, seven-week sermon. Again, these sermons are not designed to stand alone by themselves and make the traditional point that you go home with thinking about, but rather each as a setup for the next as we follow the narrative of Joseph's life through scripture. And we're going to be spending a lot of time each week in the narrative, in learning the story, and thinking through what it would be like to walk through the story. Because I believe that honors the text. I believe that honors God's word that people have given their life to, have died for, have preserved through the years. And there's a reason that the author of Genesis recorded these stories. There's a reason that they choose the details that they do. And so we honor those stories and we honor the text and we honor our God by taking our time and going through the stories, not necessarily mining for things that can matter to us right now, primarily, but really as a vehicle to learn about God and his story as it's revealed in the stories of the Bible. So we're going to sink into them as we move through these next now six weeks. Last week, as you were reminded on our video there, that we started in the life of Jacob, Joseph's dad, whose name was later changed to Israel. And we picked up some important dynamics there, too, that are very relevant to the story this morning. The first is those promises that were made to Abraham that Jacob wanted to attach himself to. Abraham is Jacob's grandfather, Joseph's great-grandfather, and Jacob wanted to attach himself to those promises. And we're going to see those come up again today. And then we also learned, and this becomes very important, that Jacob had two wives. He married first Leah. He got tricked into marrying Leah by his uncle Laban, which is a really dirty trick. I mean, that's up there in terrible things to do to somebody, marry off a daughter that they're not interested in and then be like, well, you're stuck with her now. How must that have made Leah felt? And then he married the one that he really loved seven years later, Rachel. And what we didn't talk about last time that's worth mentioning now is that Leah was able to begin to produce male offspring with no problem at all, which was a huge deal in the ancient world. That's what you wanted was male offspring. And so Leah was able to do that with great efficacy. She had a bunch of kids, seven or eight boys. But Rachel really struggled to produce a male offspring. And it was years and years that went by of the struggle for her, which is a struggle that we see often in the Bible. Which is why I do very much think that God is near and cares deeply about those people, particularly those women who struggle to have the children that they want so desperately. That theme comes up again and again in the Bible, and Rachel is a part of that theme. But we see her eventually have a son, and his name is Joseph. Joseph is the firstborn son of the wife that Jacob really deeply loved. So we finished the narrative last week. Jacob had just encountered his brother Esau, and then he was moving into the land of Canaan, the land that was promised to his grandfather Abraham, and kind of setting up life and finally able to live the life that he had always wanted to lay hold of. And that's kind of where we pick up the story. So we turn over a couple of chapters, and we're in Genesis chapter 37, which is where we're going to be all morning this morning, if you have a Bible and you want to turn there. And we pick up the story when Joseph is 17 years old and they're living in the land of Canaan, what we now know as Israel. I'm going to begin reading in verse 2 and then verse 3 and 4 will appear on your screen. But this is where we pick up the story. Joseph, being 17 years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives, and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. Now Israel loved Joseph more. Israel is Jacob. Remember when Jacob had the encounter with, we think, potentially Christ, his name would change to Israel. So now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him. So there's a lot going on in the family dynamics there in those verses. But what we see is that Joseph, like I said, is the favored son. He's the firstborn son of Rachel, but he's got a lot of brothers. Joseph has 11 brothers, 12 sons in all, and they would become the 12 tribes of Israel when they move into that land later on in the time of Moses and Joshua. But right now they're just 12 individual dudes, and Joseph is younger than most of his brothers. The oldest, Reuben, was likely in his early to mid-30s by the time Joseph is 17 years old. So the dynamic is the patriarch of the family, Jacob, has two wives, and each wife has a servant that he uses as a concubine that each bear him some sons, but he's got a bunch of sons. But his first son from Rachel is the one that he loves the most. He's got another son from Rachel named Benjamin, and it's important that we remember that name because in week six and seven, we're going to encounter Benjamin again, and this is going to matter. But Joseph is his favorite son because that's from his favorite wife. Now, how do you think that made Joseph's brothers feel? These guys who are grown men, who are grown adults, and they're doing the hard work of the flocks. Jacob's not, he's not working with the herds anymore. He's not doing any of the stuff to generate the wealth. It's his sons that are doing it. And he's made it very clear to his sons that work the hardest that you are not my favorite, that Joseph is my favorite. This was, it's easy to say, a very unhealthy family and family dynamic. In the midst of this, Joseph is a 17-year-old, is out with the herds and his brothers. And this was a nomadic people. So Jacob was kind of the central hub. His camp was kind of the central hub. And then his herds were out in the countryside all around them. You could travel for a day before you would get to his sons and the flocks that they were tending. So they're pretty dispersed. And so Joseph comes back to his dad, Jacob, and he gives him a bad report of his brothers. Reuben doesn't know what he's doing. If Tally can't shear sheep worth a darn, they're terrible at this. They're selling them for peanuts. It's a bad operation out there. And he goes back and he tells on his brothers. And while he's back there telling on his brothers, his dad gives him the famous coat of many colors that we've probably all heard of before. And we might wonder, what's it matter that it was a multicolored coat? And I could get into all the stuff about how expensive it was to dye materials and what colors things normally were. And they were monochromatic and very easy to make and all that stuff. But suffice it to say, this is Joseph or this is Jacob in no uncertain terms, letting his sons know, this is my favorite son. I know that it's kind of been implied before. I know that you guys could probably figure this out, but now you need to know this. He's the guy. He's my favorite. It's not too dissimilar from the idea of somebody having a bunch of sons and whenever the son gets to be driving age, he buys them a truck, but it's a beater of a truck, like an old Ford Ranger with 180,000 miles on it that barely gets down the road. And then when Joseph comes of age, dad buys him a brand new F-150 with all the bells and whistles. And he takes that F-150 and he drives back to the brothers and he says, look at this truck. Joseph was incredibly unwise in this season of life. So he goes and he wears the coat around his brothers, which if it were me, I would thank you, dad, and I would fold that up and put it in my tent and I would come back to that later, but I wouldn't go wear it in front of my brothers. But this is what Joseph does because Joseph is dumb. And if you don't believe me that he's dumb, that he's just a dumb, bratty, snot-nosed 17-year-old kid, look at what he does. Joseph has some dreams. And this is important because Joseph has a gift from God that we'll see laced throughout the story as a dream interpreter, an interpreter of dreams. And I'll say up front before we read these, that there's nothing in the text that says that these dreams were from God, but all of the context around the text and all of the context around the life of Joseph suggests very much that these dreams are from God. And so I feel like I'm on solid footing if I were to espouse to you the idea that these are dreams that represent promises from God. But just know in your own thinking and the way you process the story yourself, it doesn't say that in scripture. That's just a license I'm taking with the context within which we find the dreams. We're going to look in 37 beginning in verse 7. These are the dreams that Joseph has. He says, So he has two dreams. In one dream, it's all equals, sheaves of wheat, stalks of wheat. And all of the wheat bows down to one wheat. And Joseph says, I'm the one. They were bowing down to me. Well, he has 11 brothers, so it's pretty obvious the symbolism here. And they respond in kind. Are you saying that you're going to rule over us? And then he has another dream. And in this dream, it wasn't just the planets, but the sun and the moon that bowed down to him as well, indicating his father and mother. And so the brothers resented him even more. But if you keep reading down into verse 10, what you'll find is it said that Jacob took this to heart. Jacob didn't get ticked yet because he kind of knew something was going on with this Joseph kid. He had already experienced in his life how God brings about his promises in unexpected ways. And this was really just a way of putting the writing, of taking the writing on the wall and putting it in front of their faces. Because the technicolor coat and all the other things indicated that Joseph was going to be the one to rule over his brothers. You'll remember from last week with the idea of birthright and blessing, that in the ancient world, the firstborn son received a double portion of inheritance from his father when his father passed away, and the firstborn son assumed the authority of the father if the father was incapacitated or passed away. So for Joseph to be the one that's favored above and beyond his other brothers, the writing is on the wall that one day all the older guys, Dan and Reuben and Naphtali and all the others, are going to be working for Joseph. And so it's at this point that I think it's worth just pausing and thinking about what Joseph is doing right here. Put yourself in his shoes. Pretend you're Joseph. And in your family dynamic, you know that you are your dad's favorite child. You also know that you have 10 brothers who are older than you. The oldest of whom is probably in his mid-30s. The rest are somewhere in their 20s. It's a whole swath between 17 and 35. And you know that they hate you. They can't stand you. They loathe you. They resent you. They do not want to work for you one day. And yet, your dad loves you and is going to elevate you above all of them. And so one day, you're going to have to find a way to get these guys to continue to work for you and produce for you and run the clan with them. These relationships are important. If Joseph is forward-thinking at all, which he was a 17-year-old kid, I don't know a single 17-year-old boy that is forward-thinking beyond prom. But if Joseph was forward-thinking at all, he would have understood, I'm going to have to lead these guys in the future. Me having a harmonious relationship with them is going to be pretty essential to our combined success. And so he ought to have slow played it. He ought to have been humble and played those things down. But instead he shows up wearing the coat instead of tucking it away and saving it for later. And if you had those dreams and you're Joseph, would you then go to your brothers who, by the way, in a land with no military and no police, no recourse for you, this is a place where might makes right. Are you going to walk up to them and be like, guys, I had a dream. Guess what it was? We were all weak, right? You with me? And then you guys bowed down to me. And then I had another dream. And you guys and mom and dad did too. How you like that, suckers? It was incredibly dumb and incredibly arrogant, incredibly bratty. At this point in his life, and we're going to talk about this more in a minute, because it's a stark transition from who Joseph becomes. But at this season of his life, Joseph is a snot-nosed 17-year-old brat. He's the worst kind of rich kid. He's kind of a terrible human, and he's rubbing his brother's noses in it. And so, one day, his dad says, go out to your brothers and check on the herds. And so off he goes. He goes to where his brothers are supposed to be, and they're not there. But someone points him in the right direction. He goes and he finds his brothers. As he's approaching, his brothers see him approaching and they begin to talk. And they say, hey, here's Joseph. He's coming. Let's just kill him. Let's just kill him and we'll tell dad that he's dead. And the thinking had to be, and then one of us can inherit the promises and we don't have to worry about that. One of us can be in charge of the family. We won't have to submit to Joseph. He's a jerk. That's going to be a terrible life to have to submit to this guy for the rest of our life. He's totally unbearable. Let's just kill him. And we'll tell dad that an animal got him. And they said, yeah, okay. Well, then the oldest son, Reuben, heard of this plan. And he was like, guys, let's not kill him. Let's just throw him in a pit. And in that way, he effectively saved Joseph's life, which is why to this day, the Reuben is the king of all sandwiches. I don't know if you guys ever knew that by that connection in scripture. They teach you that in seminary. So they decided to throw him in a pit. And then Reuben's off doing something else. I don't know what Reuben's doing. And Judah, one of the younger brothers, says, guys, what are we doing with Joseph in a pit? We can't make any money off of him. It doesn't do us any good. What are we going to do? We can't take him out now. He's going to tell dad on us. We're going to have to kill him. What do we get if we kill him? Nothing. Let's sell him. Here come the Midianites. They're known slave traders. Let's sell them to the Midianites. And at least we can make some money off of this, and then we'll tell dad that he's dead. So that's what they do. The Midianites come by. They sell Joseph to them. He's now a slave. They take the coat of many colors and they tatter it and they beat it up and they dip it in animal blood and they carry it home to Jacob and they say, we're so sorry we found this coat as we were coming back. It looks very much like some wild beast got to Joseph and killed your beloved son. We're so sorry, Dad. And then they grieve with him. And so Joseph goes from next in line to be the head of a tribe, the head of this clan, to on some ox cart in shackles, heading to a foreign country to be a slave. And it seems worth it to pause here and make note of this point, because this is not the Joseph that we know. When I think of Joseph, when I think of the Joseph of the Old Testament, I think of a man that personifies consistent obedience. I think of a man who at every turn does the right thing. I think of a man who we would all do well to be like Joseph. He is a moral exemplar in the Old Testament. Next week, we're going to look at his outright commitment to his own purity of heart and of spirit. I think of Joseph as a character to be attained to, of someone that I want to be like, who does the right thing all the time, no matter what. But in chapter 37, that's not the Joseph that we see. So there's a change that happens between chapter 37 and the rest of Genesis through 50. And I think that change is what's happening to him right here in this passage. And it makes me believe that humility always precedes obedience. Humility always precedes obedience. A humbling will happen before we can walk in the obedience that God asks of us. I'm not talking about little pockets of obedience. It's possible to be prideful and still obey in places. But what I'm talking about is it is impossible to live the obedient life that God calls us to. It is impossible to submit ourselves to God's word and to submit ourselves to God's will and his plan if we have not been humbled, if we are living arrogantly. Isn't this the fundamental agreement with salvation? Isn't that how it starts? Someone who is not a believer coming to the end of themselves, coming to a place where they say, you know what? I think I've been wrong about faith. I think I've been wrong about religion. I've been wrong about trying to be the Lord of my own life. God, I'm tired of doing it my way. I want to do it your way. Isn't there a fundamental submission in the obedience of salvation? And what is obedience besides agreeing that, you know what, I think that your way is better than my way? With your kids, we have a five-year-old. She has to choose to obey us. She has to choose to believe and humble herself and say, I'm not right here. You guys must be right, I'm going to trust you. Humility always precedes obedience. And if you think about it, how is it possible to become more Christ-like? How is it possible to be more like Jesus and carry a prideful and haughty spirit through life. Someone who is described as gentle and lowly in heart. How can we become more like that if we're prideful in ourselves? How can we produce the fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. How can we produce those things? How can those things be produced in our life if we are walking in a prideful, haughty arrogance? If we walk out and we look at our house and we say, look at what I bought, look at how successful I am. If we look at our cars and say, look at what I drive. If we look at our friendships and say, look at who they are. If we look at ourselves in the mirror and say, look how good I look, which is a particular struggle of mine. And how can we look at the things in our life and attribute those things to ourself? Look at what I've built. Look at what we've done. Look at who I am. How can we walk through life thinking that we're right about everything and that the people who disagree, who deign to disagree with us are stupid and misinformed and watch the wrong cable network that they shouldn't watch? Like how can we walk through life thinking that we're right about everything and that people who disagree with us must be inherently wrong about everything and yet walk in the humility that obedience requires? How can we think highly of ourselves as Joseph did and yet walk in the humility that obedience requires. We can't. And those of you who have been around long enough, which is approximately seven years, after seven years of life, you ought to have figured this out. Life has a way of bringing us all low, doesn't it? Life will humble you. One minute, you'll think you're the best. The next day, you feel like the worst. Life has a way of humbling us. And so I think the option for us, if we'll accept that the obedient life that God calls us to follows humility. And we'll accept that humility is going to happen. The question becomes, do you want to be humbled the easy way or the hard way? Do you want in your prayers to ask God of it, God, please keep me humble. God, please remind me of how much you love me. Please remind me of my own sin that you've forgiven in me so that I don't think overly hypocritically about other people and condemn others. Do we want to be people who pray and ask for God to keep us humble in what I believe is a gentle and loving way that our God does it? Or do we want to, like Joseph, be broken into humility? Not because God seeks to break us, but because life humbles us. How do we want to be humbled? The easy way or the hard way? This may be why Proverbs says in chapter 16 that pride comes before the fall, that a haughty spirit comes before destruction. This may be why James says in chapter 4 that God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. There is a profound change in the life of Joseph, and I think it has everything to do with the humbling that he went through here. And the other thing worth pointing out, particularly for those of us in the room who are starting out our adult life, God had plans for Joseph. God made a promise to Joseph. Your brothers are going to bow down to you. Even your dad and your mom are going to bow down to you. God made that promise to him. There was a plan for Joseph. The problem was Joseph wasn't ready for that plan. The problem was the current version of Joseph was going to muck that one up. So Joseph has to go through a humbling and a changing so that when that plan arrives, he as a person is ready for it. And for many of us, sure, God has a plan for you. God wants things for you. God has designed you to do and accomplish certain things and to experience certain blessings and to be used in certain ways. The problem is you're not ready for God's plan yet. So His Holy Spirit grows us and humbles us and brings us to a place where our character can handle the plans that He has for us. So if it feels like you're treading water, if it feels like you're not accomplishing the things that you want to accomplish, or that you're not yet where you feel like you want to be, or even where it feels like maybe God has told you that you would be, I'm not saying it's the reason, but there's a chance that the current version of you simply isn't ready for the plans that God has for you. And so we're going to need to go through a humbling and a changing. At the end of this chapter, we stop at this perilous place for Joseph. Verse 36 in chapter 37 sums it up this way. It says, Meanwhile, the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard. This is where we will leave the story. We see this picture of a snot-nosed kid who can't get out of his own way, who angers his brother so deeply that they sell him into slavery and they go back and they tell his dad Joseph is dead. And Joseph goes from second in command, from claimant to the promises, from heir to the throne of a tribe, where he was going to be the guy. He goes from that to a slave, the slave of the captain of Pharaoh's guard, a slave in the most powerful nation on the planet, working for a guy that was tasked with protecting Pharaoh. It is a precipitous drop. And in this moment in his life, as he's being carted off by the Midianites, as he's eventually bought by Potiphar or representatives of Potiphar, I believe that Joseph faces this question that all of us at different points and seasons in our life face? Is he to resent God because he betrayed me or trust God because he loves me? That's the question that Joseph is faced with now as he travels down to Egypt. Do I resent God because I feel like he betrayed me or do I choose to trust God because I know that I know that I know that he loves me? Because make no mistake, in this moment, Joseph had to have felt betrayed by his God. God gave him a promise. God rose him to prominence. God told him, your brothers are going to bow down to you. And in this moment, it seems like that's the exact opposite of what's happening. His brothers heard that. They didn't want it to happen. So they do the exact opposite of God's will and sell him into slavery so they don't have to worry about that anymore. Problem solved. We're never going to bow down to Joseph. And so it seems very much like what's happening in Joseph's life is the exact opposite of what his God had promised him. So Joseph feels betrayed. So he's got a choice. Do I resent this betrayal? Or do I choose to trust God because I know that I know that I know that he loves me? And if he loves me, he must have a plan for me. And here's the thing. Here's the thing that I love about this crossroads in the life of Joseph. The very thing that has caused him to feel betrayed by his God, the very thing that makes him doubt his faith, the very thing that makes it seem like God has let him down, the fact that he has been sold into slavery and has been brought low and humbled and is no longer where he was and cannot see a clear path to the promises that God gave him, the very thing that happens to cause Joseph to doubt God and feel betrayed by God is the thing that has to happen to bring about the future that God promises to Joseph. Do you understand? If you know the whole story, you know, spoiler alert, eventually his brothers do bow down to him. But his being sold into slavery by his brothers was a necessary trial and instance to go through so that God could put Joseph exactly where he wanted to put him 25 years later and bring about the promises that he made to Joseph when he was a 17-year-old snot-nosed kid. And from his spot, from the ox cart on the way to Egypt, Joseph cannot see that future. There is no path in his head that brings about the promise that God gave to him. He cannot see that future. And in the midst of that blindness where he cannot see how in the world is God going to be faithful to what he promised me, he has to choose. Do I resent God because he's allowing me to sit here? Or do I choose to trust him because I know that he loves me? And I know that he has his hand on me still. And you have to make that choice too. There are times in life when we feel betrayed by our God. When a diagnosis comes in that feels unfair. When we're faced with a loss that doesn't seem right. When we don't get the job, when we don't get the child, when the child that we do have is so difficult to deal with that we're not really sure what went wrong or how we could fix it. To be someone who follows God is to experience a season where we feel like in some way or another he's let us down. And when we're in that season, we have good company and that Joseph sat there too. And he had to choose. Am I going to resent God because I feel like he betrayed me? Or am I going to choose to trust him because I know that I know that I know that He loves me. And if He loves me, He must have a plan for me. That's where we're going to pick it up next week. Let's pray. Father, thank You for loving us. Thank You for having a plan for us. Thank You for creating us in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. I pray that we would cling to those promises. Cling to what is promised to us in Scripture. Because Romans tells us that we can hope in you because that's the one place we can put our hope where it won't be put to shame. God, thank you for your servant Joseph. And thank you for directing the author of Genesis to show us his humanity, to show us that he wasn't always this guy who made incredibly good choices at every turn despite the difficulties. Thank you for showing us that he was human just like we are. Lord, I pray for our humility, that we would be gentle and humble in spirit, that we would be increasingly like your son, Jesus, that we would think more highly of those around us and that we would see your blessings in our life and allow those to bring us appropriately low so that we can walk in obedience to you. Let none of us in here require the force that Joseph did to bring us to a place of humility. And God, if there are those of us who are tempted to resent you right now, I pray this morning that we would choose to trust you, that we would be assured in myriad ways that you love us deeply, profoundly, and unconditionally. It's in your son's name that we pray. Amen.

All right, well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making us a part of your Sunday morning. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that after the service. Just a real quick tip of the cap to Carly, our female vocalist. She was hacking up a lung in the pre-service meeting. She just got a little nagging cough, and she said, I'm just praying that I make it through my song. She said, great job with Honey in the Rock. You made it. Now, I got things to get to. All right, settle down. But now, if you start to cough during the sermon, get out. Go. All right. Carly's the best. She's also our graphics person, and we love her. This is part two of our series called Transformed. Jordan, in the open, kind of told you guys a little bit of what it is about and what it's for. It's based on that verse in Romans chapter 12 that says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And so there's some things that we wanted to talk about over this series that will run into mid-October where maybe we can just shift our thinking a little bit. Maybe we can allow God to transform our mind in the way that we think about some things. And maybe that can actually transform our lives. And so this morning, we're going to talk about this transformation from comparison to contentment. One of the most, probably the most ubiquitous desires on the planet. Every person, every culture, everywhere wants happiness. Now we might put different words around that. We might describe it differently. I want to be safe. I want to be provided for. I want to have enough of this. I want to feel enough security here. I want to be loved. I want whatever it is, whatever the ingredients of happiness are for us. But everybody wants for themselves and for their children and for the people they love to be happy. It's a ubiquitous human desire. It is virtually universal. Now, because we're believers, most of us in this room would claim a faith in Christ. We know that the most important thing to desire is a relationship with him. We know that the thing that we want for our children is a relationship with Jesus. And so I'm not arguing that happiness should replace that. As a matter of fact, as believers, we know that happiness is only really achievable if we trust in Christ to bring that about. And that's one of the things we're going to see this morning. But if we think about happiness, what it means to be happy, it can't mean being a smiling idiot all the time, just grinning all the time. Every day is the best day ever. So it has to be something deeper than that. And the deeper foundation of happiness is contentment. It's being content, being content in the moment. This moment doesn't need any more. I love it the way it is. This situation, this season, this relationship doesn't need any more. I'm happy with the way that it is. It's to be content, to figure out how to be content. When we can do that, we can be happy. The problem is that we exist in a culture tailor-made to rob us of contentment. Would you agree with that? We exist in a culture and in a time where we are constantly and consistently berated with messages and images and comparisons that erode our contentment to a place where we are no longer happy and we spend our days wishing we had what we don't instead of being grateful for having what we do because we live in this culture that just perniciously eats away and erodes away at our own contentment. I was talking with a friend of mine and I asked her, what's the biggest threat to your contentment? And she very quickly said, social media, social media. I scroll Facebook, Instagram. Is it X now? I'm not on Twitter anymore. They went from Twitter to X. I scroll and I see other people who are doing better than me. Their SUV is bigger and wider than mine. And so now I feel like it fits nicely into parking spaces. Mine fits nicely into parking spaces. Theirs takes up two. So they are obviously having a better life than me. You know, their vacations are nicer than mine. They've got life figured out. They're in better shape than me. The scrolling relentlessly of social media and comparing ourselves to what we see chips away at a lot of our contentment. And to that, I would just offer this as an aside. Back at the beginning of the year, I think it's sometime in February, I realized that I was wasting so much time on my phone, just mindlessly scrolling apps for no good reason. And I would scroll at the time Twitter, and I would just be angry. I would be angry at the politics. I would be angry at Christians arguing with Christians. It would just make me mad. So then I would switch over to Facebook. Maybe this will be better. And then on Facebook, all it is, I don't know about your feed and your algorithm. All it is is a bunch of people from my life like 11 years ago that I no longer care about. Like, that's great that you were in the strawberry fields on Saturday. That's not what I want to see. That's not like engaging content for me. So I don't even know what's going on with Facebook. And it was a couple of days of scrolling and realizing, I don't know any of these people anymore. Why are they here? And then Instagram for me just became, the algorithm became falling videos and golf tutorials. That was it. That was all I got and the whole thing. And I'm like, this is a total waste of time. So I took everything off my phone, except for TikTok. I watch TikTok sometimes. That's kind of fun. But I took everything off my phone. And I'll tell you this, my happiness meter has gone up since doing that. So for some of y'all, I know I'm joking around a little bit, but for some of y'all, you may not need anything else in this sermon than just kind of a nudge. Why don't you think about taking that off your phone for a while? Is it making you happy? Is it bringing you joy? Is it making you more or less content? Why don't you take it off your phone and see if you engage more with the people around you? See if you look more at God's goodness in your life that's already there. See if you're more present for people. For at least somebody here, I know that that's all you need. I know that's what you need to hear today. Just try that out. See if it doesn't help a little bit. But if it's not online, it's in person, right? It's still, we can still play the comparison game and make ourselves unhappy with the things that we have. I remember in the summer of 2020, for the previous three years since I moved here, I had been driving a Nissan Leaf. And if you were here during that time, if you knew me during that time, you'd love to make fun of me for that because you hate the environment and fiscal savings. No, because I mean that you, if you listen, I drove one for three years. I'm just going to say this. If you drive a Leaf, you do deserve to get made fun of. That's, that's part of the deal. When I bought the car, I wasn't like, people are going to think this is awesome. Like I knew I was going to get made fun of. So when it came time to sell it and get something new, I thought, I want something nice. I want something that I like. For the first time in my life, I want to buy myself a nice car. And so I looked around, and I looked at a Tesla, the less expensive Tesla, but it was more expensive than the Accord that I was comparing it to. It was more money down, less miles a year, more money per month. And I thought, gosh, it's just not wise. I'm not going to do that. And so I leased an Accord. And it was the nicest car I ever had. When I got in it, I was like, I can't believe this is so nice. Like I was really, I was excited. Here's how excited I was about it. As a grown man, here's what I did. I drove I drove it to my neighborhood I parked it on a street I got out and I took pictures of it so I did I took pictures of my new car and then you know I texted them to my parents how lame is that what am I like 17 that's so embarrassing I remembered that I did that as I was prepping for the sermon I remember that's the thing that I did. And I'm like, what is the matter with you? But I did it. That's how proud I was of this car. I was so excited to drive in the lap of luxury of the Honda Accord XLE or whatever it was. EXL or I don't know. And then like a month later, my jerk friend Tyler got a Tesla. And he's like texting us pictures of it and videos. And it was so awesome. And it was way faster. And the whole roof of a Tesla is glass. And I had, I had a sunroof in my Accord, but it was one of the normal size ones from like 1987. Good job, you dope. That's the car you have now. Everything's controlled from a touch screen. I have to still touch buttons like it's 1998. This was terrible. And within a month, listen, I'm so proud of this car, I'm taking pictures of it. Within a month, I hate it. I want to take it back to the dealership and get a Tesla. I hated what I had. I wanted something new. Life just works that way, doesn't it? In the comparison game. I have a 28-inch black stone on my back porch. I like to cook on it. I go to somebody else's house. They got a 36. I'm like, dang, I got to get a 36. There's more quesadillas on there. The guy with the 36 goes over to his buddy's house. He's got a 36 inch blast stone, but it's in a permanent, it's got stone built up around. It's a permanent cook station outside. This is fancy. This is a big deal now. Then permanent blackstone station guy goes to somebody else's house and he's got a permanent kitchen set up with a smoker and a pool. And he's like, honey, we got to get a pool. And then the guy with the pool in the setup goes to his buddy's house and he's got an infinity pool. And he's like, oh, I got to get an infinity pool. And then that person goes to the bigger infinity pool and on and on and on it goes. And we can never just be satisfied with what we have because our culture that we exist in just chips away at our happiness through that comparison game. And here's another thing as an aside that the comparison game does. It is convinced. This is just for the young moms in the room. So basically, you, okay? It has convinced. I watch it happen. And you, okay? I didn't see you over there. It was Jordan Shaw. It's convinced the moms that they're not momming hard enough. That's what social media does. That's what the comparison thing does. It convinces moms and dads that they're not momming and dadding hard enough. They need to do more. Your cupcakes need to look better when you take them to the school. When your treats, when it's your week for snacks, for the soccer game, your cooler needs to be nice. It needs to be better than the other coolers. You need to engage in imaginative play. You need to do supportive discipline and never be angry at your kids. And only talk to them in soft tones because they're all little princes and princesses and they can't handle adversity in their life. So let's be very gentle. And let's not grade their papers in red. Let's use green and encouraging things and tones. Let's do that. And we're convinced, I see this in moms right now, that you're just not momming right. And you go to bed every night with this gross combination of mom guilt and mom exhaustion. I need to do more. I don't have one single ounce left to give, and I might hate my children. It's just this combo platter that's terrible. And here's what I want to tell you. Here's what I want to tell you, young moms. You are very likely a better mom to your children than your mom was to you. Very likely. It's just a generational thing. Jen and I are so much more present with our kids than our parents were with us. We just are. It's generational. It's just what this generation is doing. So let yourself off the hook a little bit. Now we won't know if we're doing it right until they're adults and they're not in prison, but for now it seems like we're doing a good job. You're doing a good job. Let yourself off the hook a little bit. Quit playing the comparison game. You're doing a good job with your kids. I actually watched a TED Talk a couple years ago, and it stuck with me. It's this guy doing studies on happiness. And he made the point that many of us, because of goal setting and attainment, have fundamentally eliminated the possibility of happiness from our life, which is kind of a crazy thought. But he says that when we set goals for ourselves and we say, when I get to those goals, I'm going to be happy. When I graduate college, I'll be happy. When I get a job, I'll be happy. Get the promotion, I'll be happy. When I meet the person, I'll be happy. When I get married, I'll be happy. When we have children, I'll be happy. When the children leave the house, I'll be happy, I meet the person I'll be happy when I get married I'll be happy when we have children I'll be happy when the children leave the house I'll be happy which is probably true and then when and then when when we get to be grandparents I'll be happy and what we do in life is we set the goalposts we set the marker for happy off in the distance and then we think I'm not happy now but when I get there I will be and then we get there what do we do the very second we arrive we move to the next thing. So I never spend any time in the joy that God brought me to. I only spend time anticipating the next thing I'm going to need to be happy. Whenever sit and revel in God's goodness now. So I think it's fair to say that we have a contentment issue. We always want the next thing. We always want a little bit more. Something a little bit bigger. Something a little bit shinier. Something a little bit more peaceful. We're always bugging God or ourselves for whatever could be next. Which is why I think this verse in Philippians is such a helpful verse for us this morning. It's actually, and then don't put that one up on the screen yet. I'm just gonna say 13 and then I'll read them all. It's actually one of the most misused verses in all of scripture. It's neck and neck Philippians 4.13 and Jeremiah 29.11. Philippians 4.13 says, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength, or I can do all things through him who strengthens me. And we see people misuse this all the time. I can do anything I set my mind to with Christ powering me. In the name of Christ, I can do whatever I want to do. I've seen athletes with this tattooed on themselves somewhere. I'm going to complete the pass through Christ who gives me strength or score the goal or hit the home run or pitch the strikeout. Like I'm going to do this through Christ who gives me strength. There's even a Christian apparel line, like Under Armour, but for believers. So it means it's almost as good as the not believing material, but it's a little bit cheaper and a little bit poorly done. And it's got 413 all over it. These, these athletes are on high school fields all over the nation being powered by Christ and their teams are winning all of the state championships, of course, because they're powered by Jesus and he wants them to win. We misappropriate the verse all the time. It does not mean that through Christ who gives me strength, I can close the sale. I can accomplish this thing. I can do this deed. I can accomplish this act. It does not mean that. We have to be very careful when we pluck verses out of context and make them mean what only the sentence sounds like without anything else informing what that sentence actually means. And we use it to mean the opposite of what it really means. Here's what it really means. Here's the context of it. If we read verses 11 and 12, Paul writes this in Philippians. Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In's about learning in all seasons to trust God to provide what we need. And I love that the word learn shows up in here two times. I've learned to be in abundance and in need. I have learned to be in plenty and in want. I've learned these things through Christ who gives me strength. And it may seem like, well, man, it would be pretty easy. I don't know how tough that is, Paul. It'd be pretty, pretty easy to be content in abundance when you have plenty, when you don't want for anything, when you're, when you're living a life of luxury and you've got more than what you could ask for. It's got to be pretty easy to be content in that scenario. And to that thought, which isn't all the way incorrect, I would remind you of this proverb. I think about this proverb a lot. Proverbs 23, 1 through 5. When you sit down to eat with a ruler, observe carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite. Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food. Do not toil to acquire wealth. Be discerning enough to desist. When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven. That is a fancy, poetic way of saying this. Acc breeds more desire not less exposure to nice things a taste of the good life usually breeds a desire for more of that not less we have it pretty good then we go to someone else's house and they have it a little bit better and all of a a sudden we go home and we want what they want. Did you see that serving dish? I want that serving dish. My serving dish is from Kohl's. It is stupid. I would like a nice serving dish from like Nordstrom or something. I don't know. Crate and barrel. That's where you waste money on serving dishes. William Sonoma. That's right. That's a gold standard. That's all Jeffy has at his house. William Sonoma, everything. And Viking appliances, I'm sure. Yeah, because you can tell that the Viking stove heats up the ground beef better than just a regular GE stove, right? Yes, of course. But we all want those things. We all want those things. There's actually the effect of this that accumulation tends to make you want more. I heard this a while back. Steve Harvey, the host of Family Feud, was giving some people some financial advice. And he said, if you're just starting out in your career and you don't have a lot of money, he said, save up enough for a first class ticket somewhere and fly first class. Because once you fly first class, you will never want to fly coach again. And you will reorganize your life and be driven to make the money you need so that you can fly first class. And here's the thing. He's right. Have you ever flown first class? When you fly first class, you don't want to sit back there with the gen pop anymore. That's depressing. Now, here's what I've not done. And if I do this, I'm in big trouble. I've never flown in one of those pods internationally. If I fly in one of those pods where you get to stretch out and you get your own screen, like, I'm done for. But what you do when you get exposed, when you're at the king's table and you're around things that you don't have, is you begin to organize your life in such a way so that you can have those. When you see your friends taking nice vacations, you start to organize your life in such a way so you can too. When you see what you don't have, you start to organize your life in such a way that you can have what you want. And in organizing your life around the things that you want, around materials or experiences, we lose the contentment that's sitting right in front of us. So let's not think it's just a simple thing to learn to be content when you're surrounded with abundance, because it's not. It's really tricky, and it's really sneaky. Now the one that we would all agree is difficult is to be content when we have little. I kind of wondered as I read that, how can anyone be content in the midst of tragedy, loss, or loneliness? When you're sitting in the wake of a divorce, how can you claim in that moment to be content? When you are a freshly minted widow or widower, how can you claim in that moment to be content? When your children are walking through a tragically difficult time, how can you possibly claim to be content, to be happy? I need for nothing, when you clearly need for much. This is where that word learned comes into play, because somehow or another, Paul figured that one out. But that feels impossible. And it feels like really bad pastoral counsel. Someone's walking through a really difficult time in their life. They come to my office to see me, and they're crying about this hardship that they're enduring or that they're watching a loved one endure. And I point them to this verse and go, hey, you can be content through Christ who strengthens you. You should just be happy right now. How do we do that? How is that attainable? In the grace vine that I wrote for this week, I stated that this was a deeply personal sermon for me. Because this topic of contentment and happiness is actually something I think a great deal about. Because back in 2020, in the fall, I started to go to therapy. And I've mentioned before that I've done therapy, and I've mentioned before that I think everyone should do it. Everybody, you should go to preventative maintenance therapy. Most of us, all of us need more maintenance than we're willing to acknowledge anyways. Everyone should go. If you can afford therapy, you should go to therapy. I actually have a really good buddy here at the church. He's a big, tough guy, you know. He feels the only acceptable emotion to him is anger, and all other emotions are for sissies, all of them. And he decided he was going to start going to therapy, and I sent him to a guy, and he literally texts me every time he talks to this guy. Man, I love that guy so much. This is the best. I've never experienced anything like this in my life. Like, every time. Big tough guy loves therapy. You'd like it too. But I remember sitting in this guy's office, and I had kind of come to realize that in life, like, we all chase things. We all chase happiness. Some chase respect. Some chase security, stability, love, approval, just a sense of being enough and worthwhile. We're all chasing something. All adults are little more than just a pile, a comprising of insecurities and desires and ways that we try to cover those things up to make ourselves acceptable to the broader milieu. That's all we are. We're all chasing something. And I sat in his office, and he looked at me and he said, dude, when are you going to realize it? I said, realize what? He said, that thing that you're chasing, you have it. You have it. You have a wife who loves you. You guys laugh together every day. At the time we just had Lily, she said, you have a daughter who loves you, wants to spend time with you. You have rich friendships. People who support you, believe in you. You have a job that you love, a church that you love, and who seems to love you and support you too. When are you going to quit chasing it? You have it. It's right there if you'll just stop to look at it. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. And I realized, my goodness, I don't know why I'm striving so hard to get the thing that's going to make me happy. I have all the ingredients for happiness in my life right now if I'll just notice them. And I think that that's true of most of us. I think most of us already have all the ingredients for happiness available to us. We already have all the ingredients of happiness available to us right now. Even if it seems like there's this hole in our life, this thing that we want, and I won't be happy until I get it, I would push back and say, no, you have everything you need right now to be content in this moment. It doesn't mean that we should stop striving. It doesn't mean that we should stop trying. It doesn't mean that we should stop seeking, but we can be content in this moment because God has given us everything we need to be content. He's given us all the ingredients to make happy if we will just stop and slow down and see them. And since then, since realizing that, I've just done a lot of reflection on the transformative power of being content. On the transformative power of looking at your life and saying, thanks God, I have everything I need to be happy in you and content in you. And I would be willing to bet that whatever it is you're chasing, you've probably caught it. Whatever it is you think you need, you probably don't. And that all the things that you need in your life to make you content in the Lord, He has provided for you. And as this has washed over me, it's impacted me in profound ways. And so I sat down and I thought, how has just this arrival at contentment shaped me? How has it changed me? How has it impacted me? And I came up with this list. Contentment has transformed my gratitude, perspective, faith, sentimentality, and my prayer life. Most importantly, contentment has transformed my gratitude. It has transformed the way that I walk through life grateful for God's goodness in my life. Every time Jen, my wife, laughs at one of my jokes, I say a little prayer of gratitude to God. Because as long as she'll laugh at my jokes, I know we're good. When she stops laughing at my jokes, we're in in trouble because I don't really have any other tools in the tool belt besides trying to make her laugh. Like I'm not romantic. That's it. It's changed the way I think about my children and the moments that I'm grateful for with them because here's the reality. Parents with young kids. When that kid is crying and you have to walk in there at 3.30 in the morning when all you want in the whole world is to sleep and you pick them up and you calm them down and that little head is resting on your shoulder and that little arm is on the other shoulder and you calm them down and you get them back to sleep and you lay them back down in that bed. Let me tell you something that's super depressing. You won't know when it is the last time that you just did that. One of those times is going to be the last time and you won't know that it was. And there's a bunch of parents whose kids are grown up who would give anything in the world to have that moment with their kid one more time. So be grateful for those moments. Be grateful for the sleepless nights because you only get so many of them. I was sitting in my house the other day and John and Lily, Lily's seven, John's two, they're running around the downstairs. We asked Lily to vacuum the kitchen and we got this little thing that she can do it with. And she did for a second. And then she just started running laps around the kitchen and the dining room. And she's screaming and John's screaming and no work is getting done. And I'm sitting there. And Jen was a little bit exasperated with him. And I'm just grinning like an idiot. Because I think one day we're going to miss these days. One day I'm going to miss a noisy house. And when you're content, when you're determined to see the good and what God has provided for you right now, annoying things become moments of gratitude. Frustrating things become moments of peace and reflection. It transforms the way you walk through life. It was in this season that I stumbled upon this verse in John 1 16 that I say all the time. You guys have heard me say it. From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. I love that verse. From God's fullness, from his goodness, from his generosity and his mercy and his grace, he has given you so many blessings. And it's up to us in the moments to acknowledge those. Next time you're with friends and you have a great conversation and it's life-giving and dinner is good, be grateful for it. Tell them so. Thank God for them. Next time you get one of those good laughs where your eyes tear up and you can't stop and you go for so long that you can't remember why you started, even if it was about something inappropriate, anyways, still praise God for laughter in your life. It was good and those moments are sweet and we don't know how many of them we get. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. I know. Some of us are in hard seasons. Some of us are in seasons of abundance. But I know that we all have God's goodness in our life. We just sang that song. I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. And Aaron and the band laid out and I heard you guys saying that. If it's true, then be content in that goodness. And I love that line, why should I fear? The evidence is here. That's how it changed my faith. I said it affects my gratitude. It changes my faith. My faith in God. My faith in his goodness. I know that things are going to work out the way that he wants them to work out because he wants them to work out that way. He's inviting me into it. But I have nothing to fear from the future because God is orchestrating it and I am in his hands. And I've said last week we launched the part two of the campaign to build a building. And I said last week, and you'll hear me say a bunch, if God wants us to build it, we will. If he doesn't, we won't. But that doesn't change one little bit what I get to do and what he's called me to do. That doesn't change one little bit what he's called you guys to do, what he's called us to do as a church, which is make disciples and grow closer to him, connect people to Jesus and connect people to people. That's what he's called us to do. That mission doesn't change if we get into a building. It doesn't change if we stay. Now, if we go, I'll be excited. If we don't, I'll be sad. But not for very long on either way because if God wants us to do it, we will. If he doesn't, we won't. I'm content. I'm happy getting to do what God has asked us to do in whatever capacity, in whatever location he's asked us to do it. This God opening my eyes to contentment has changed my perspective on life. In the middle of this realization, we were walking through a season of need. It was a hard one. We were walking through pancreatic cancer with Jen's dad. We ended up losing him at the end of that year. It was not an easy time for everyone around us to be content. It wasn't an easy thing to watch my wife just be sad and try to be content with that. But one of the things I learned is that life has seasons. And sometimes they're abundant, and sometimes they're lacking. And in the abundant seasons, we should revel in them and praise God for them and find joy in them. And in the seasons of need and hurt and want, we can take solace that it's a season that every day won't feel like today. Every month won't feel like this month. And a lot of times I'm not even sure. Sometimes we operate as Christians that God takes us into hard seasons because he has a lesson that he wants us to learn. So we allow these things to happen to us. And I just kind of think that's a pretty myopic view of God's will. He's orchestrating all these other things and all these, all this ripple effect and all these other people's lives so that you can learn this lesson about being grateful. Maybe, maybe you're that important in God's kingdom. Or maybe life ebbs and flows and good seasons and bad seasons come and go. And when we're in a bad season, we just say, I'm in a bad season. This is tough. But I know that God is with me and I know that everything won't feel like this. It's changed my perspective. It's changed my sentimentality a lot, like a lot. Because of those sweet moments, from his fullness, we've all received grace upon grace. And you reflect upon those sweet things with friends or children or family or whatever it is, I cry all the time. Like, if I'm watching TV with John and he's on my lap and Lily sees it and gets jealous and she comes over and she puts her head right here and she says she wants snugs and now I'm cuddling with both of my children at the same time, I have the 100% chance I'm going to cry. I just will. I'll just sit there and I'll think, this is the good stuff. Like I'm such a sap. I don't know if I told you guys this already, but we got a piano in the house and Jen's playing just a little bit. And she was playing a hymn. I said, go play a hymn for me. She said, what hymn? I said, I don't care. I just want to hear you play a hymn. And she goes and she plays it. And I went and I stood next to the piano and she's playing the hymn. And I started crying and she was like, what are you, like, what's the matter with you? And I'm like trying to explain to her, like, I just imagined like 20 years down the road, John and Lily coming back with their kids and we're standing in this very dining room and we're singing Christmas carols and hymns. And she was like, you got to get it together, man. And she, I mean, she's right. But I've seen it revolutionize that in me too, savoring every moment as sweet and as God's blessing. And then lastly, I think that contentment radically changes our prayer life. I've talked about this a couple of times, but Jesus starts the Lord's Prayer with your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Over the years, my personal prayer life has gotten a lot shorter. The most words I use when I pray is when I pray in front of other people. It's not that I'm praying for shorter amounts of time. I just use a lot less words. Because I just pray, God, here's the thing. Would you do with this thing what you want? And would you help me to accept what that is? God, here's a concern. Would you be in this concern? And would you help me to be content in your answer? God, this person is sick. I'm just lifting them up to you. I don't know what to pray for them. But will your will be done in their life and in the life of their family? God, Lily's struggling. Will you help her? According to whatever your will is, because I know that this struggle might be important for who she's gonna become. But in all things, God, your will be done. And when you pray like that, then you can just kind of rest in the assurance that he will do his will. So I by no means have figured out contentment. And it certainly wasn't by my own desire that I arrived there. I didn't decide one day, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to be content. I'm just going to decide to be happy with my life. I didn't do that. It washed over me like a ton of bricks because someone was ministering to me and they said, hey, you have all the ingredients for happy in your life right now. Maybe you should stop reaching for other things. And so I would like to say that same thing to you. You very likely have all the ingredients you need right now to make happy. If we just stop reaching and grabbing. And then here's what happens. I said earlier, it's impossible. It feels impossible to be content in a season of want during loss or loneliness or tragedy. But what happens is when we learn to be people who are content, that word learn, Paul says it's a process. When we learn to be people who are content with what God has provided for us in this moment and in this season, then when we are in a season of need, when we are in a season of hurt, if you're sitting there and I'm like, hey, you've got all the ingredients you need to make happy, you're like, I don't. I don't. I've got a big hole in my life. If that's you, here's how being a content person even transforms that mindset. Trusting God and being content allows you to say, you know what? I might not have all the ingredients in my life. I think I need to be happy, but I have Jesus and he's enough. He has provided himself for me and he is enough. And I trust him that not all seasons will feel like this season. And then we come full circle back to the verse and make this point. True contentment is only possible through the sanctifying work of Jesus. Sanctify, I always say, is to become more like Christ in character. It's a process after we claim a faith in Christ and then we're taken up to heaven in glory. Everything that happens in between, the Holy Spirit is working in us to make us more like Christ in our character. That's a sanctification process. And that's only, true contentment is only accessible through the sanctifying work of Christ. That's why Paul says, I've learned to be content. How? Through Christ who gives me strength because he allows me to do all things. And when we find our contentment in Christ and in his strength, we come full circle and we get to say, along with Paul, I have learned in seasons of plenty and I have learned in seasons of little to be content and happy because I can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. Let's pray. Father, we do, we do. We see the evidence of your goodness all over our lives. Lord, I pray that we would look at your considerable gifts, at the fullness that has leaked out onto us, and we would see the good things that you've given us, the good friends who love us, the good family that supports us, the good job or the good role or the good thing in our identity that we get to do to express ourselves and exercise our gifts, God, would we look at the many, many rich blessings that we have in our lives and be grateful to you. Father, for those with us who don't feel content, who do feel sad, who do feel like they are lacking some essential ingredients. God, would they feel this morning that you really are enough? Would they feel this morning that Jesus really is enough? Would they trust that these seasons of need and want, they come and go, and that you're in these seasons with us just like you're in the seasons of abundance with us? Help us be a grateful people. Help us pray with faith and with trust. And God, help us learn like Paul did to be content in all seasons and to find that joy and that contentment in you. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making us a part of your Sunday morning. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that after the service. Just a real quick tip of the cap to Carly, our female vocalist. She was hacking up a lung in the pre-service meeting. She just got a little nagging cough, and she said, I'm just praying that I make it through my song. She said, great job with Honey in the Rock. You made it. Now, I got things to get to. All right, settle down. But now, if you start to cough during the sermon, get out. Go. All right. Carly's the best. She's also our graphics person, and we love her. This is part two of our series called Transformed. Jordan, in the open, kind of told you guys a little bit of what it is about and what it's for. It's based on that verse in Romans chapter 12 that says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And so there's some things that we wanted to talk about over this series that will run into mid-October where maybe we can just shift our thinking a little bit. Maybe we can allow God to transform our mind in the way that we think about some things. And maybe that can actually transform our lives. And so this morning, we're going to talk about this transformation from comparison to contentment. One of the most, probably the most ubiquitous desires on the planet. Every person, every culture, everywhere wants happiness. Now we might put different words around that. We might describe it differently. I want to be safe. I want to be provided for. I want to have enough of this. I want to feel enough security here. I want to be loved. I want whatever it is, whatever the ingredients of happiness are for us. But everybody wants for themselves and for their children and for the people they love to be happy. It's a ubiquitous human desire. It is virtually universal. Now, because we're believers, most of us in this room would claim a faith in Christ. We know that the most important thing to desire is a relationship with him. We know that the thing that we want for our children is a relationship with Jesus. And so I'm not arguing that happiness should replace that. As a matter of fact, as believers, we know that happiness is only really achievable if we trust in Christ to bring that about. And that's one of the things we're going to see this morning. But if we think about happiness, what it means to be happy, it can't mean being a smiling idiot all the time, just grinning all the time. Every day is the best day ever. So it has to be something deeper than that. And the deeper foundation of happiness is contentment. It's being content, being content in the moment. This moment doesn't need any more. I love it the way it is. This situation, this season, this relationship doesn't need any more. I'm happy with the way that it is. It's to be content, to figure out how to be content. When we can do that, we can be happy. The problem is that we exist in a culture tailor-made to rob us of contentment. Would you agree with that? We exist in a culture and in a time where we are constantly and consistently berated with messages and images and comparisons that erode our contentment to a place where we are no longer happy and we spend our days wishing we had what we don't instead of being grateful for having what we do because we live in this culture that just perniciously eats away and erodes away at our own contentment. I was talking with a friend of mine and I asked her, what's the biggest threat to your contentment? And she very quickly said, social media, social media. I scroll Facebook, Instagram. Is it X now? I'm not on Twitter anymore. They went from Twitter to X. I scroll and I see other people who are doing better than me. Their SUV is bigger and wider than mine. And so now I feel like it fits nicely into parking spaces. Mine fits nicely into parking spaces. Theirs takes up two. So they are obviously having a better life than me. You know, their vacations are nicer than mine. They've got life figured out. They're in better shape than me. The scrolling relentlessly of social media and comparing ourselves to what we see chips away at a lot of our contentment. And to that, I would just offer this as an aside. Back at the beginning of the year, I think it's sometime in February, I realized that I was wasting so much time on my phone, just mindlessly scrolling apps for no good reason. And I would scroll at the time Twitter, and I would just be angry. I would be angry at the politics. I would be angry at Christians arguing with Christians. It would just make me mad. So then I would switch over to Facebook. Maybe this will be better. And then on Facebook, all it is, I don't know about your feed and your algorithm. All it is is a bunch of people from my life like 11 years ago that I no longer care about. Like, that's great that you were in the strawberry fields on Saturday. That's not what I want to see. That's not like engaging content for me. So I don't even know what's going on with Facebook. And it was a couple of days of scrolling and realizing, I don't know any of these people anymore. Why are they here? And then Instagram for me just became, the algorithm became falling videos and golf tutorials. That was it. That was all I got and the whole thing. And I'm like, this is a total waste of time. So I took everything off my phone, except for TikTok. I watch TikTok sometimes. That's kind of fun. But I took everything off my phone. And I'll tell you this, my happiness meter has gone up since doing that. So for some of y'all, I know I'm joking around a little bit, but for some of y'all, you may not need anything else in this sermon than just kind of a nudge. Why don't you think about taking that off your phone for a while? Is it making you happy? Is it bringing you joy? Is it making you more or less content? Why don't you take it off your phone and see if you engage more with the people around you? See if you look more at God's goodness in your life that's already there. See if you're more present for people. For at least somebody here, I know that that's all you need. I know that's what you need to hear today. Just try that out. See if it doesn't help a little bit. But if it's not online, it's in person, right? It's still, we can still play the comparison game and make ourselves unhappy with the things that we have. I remember in the summer of 2020, for the previous three years since I moved here, I had been driving a Nissan Leaf. And if you were here during that time, if you knew me during that time, you'd love to make fun of me for that because you hate the environment and fiscal savings. No, because I mean that you, if you listen, I drove one for three years. I'm just going to say this. If you drive a Leaf, you do deserve to get made fun of. That's, that's part of the deal. When I bought the car, I wasn't like, people are going to think this is awesome. Like I knew I was going to get made fun of. So when it came time to sell it and get something new, I thought, I want something nice. I want something that I like. For the first time in my life, I want to buy myself a nice car. And so I looked around, and I looked at a Tesla, the less expensive Tesla, but it was more expensive than the Accord that I was comparing it to. It was more money down, less miles a year, more money per month. And I thought, gosh, it's just not wise. I'm not going to do that. And so I leased an Accord. And it was the nicest car I ever had. When I got in it, I was like, I can't believe this is so nice. Like I was really, I was excited. Here's how excited I was about it. As a grown man, here's what I did. I drove I drove it to my neighborhood I parked it on a street I got out and I took pictures of it so I did I took pictures of my new car and then you know I texted them to my parents how lame is that what am I like 17 that's so embarrassing I remembered that I did that as I was prepping for the sermon I remember that's the thing that I did. And I'm like, what is the matter with you? But I did it. That's how proud I was of this car. I was so excited to drive in the lap of luxury of the Honda Accord XLE or whatever it was. EXL or I don't know. And then like a month later, my jerk friend Tyler got a Tesla. And he's like texting us pictures of it and videos. And it was so awesome. And it was way faster. And the whole roof of a Tesla is glass. And I had, I had a sunroof in my Accord, but it was one of the normal size ones from like 1987. Good job, you dope. That's the car you have now. Everything's controlled from a touch screen. I have to still touch buttons like it's 1998. This was terrible. And within a month, listen, I'm so proud of this car, I'm taking pictures of it. Within a month, I hate it. I want to take it back to the dealership and get a Tesla. I hated what I had. I wanted something new. Life just works that way, doesn't it? In the comparison game. I have a 28-inch black stone on my back porch. I like to cook on it. I go to somebody else's house. They got a 36. I'm like, dang, I got to get a 36. There's more quesadillas on there. The guy with the 36 goes over to his buddy's house. He's got a 36 inch blast stone, but it's in a permanent, it's got stone built up around. It's a permanent cook station outside. This is fancy. This is a big deal now. Then permanent blackstone station guy goes to somebody else's house and he's got a permanent kitchen set up with a smoker and a pool. And he's like, honey, we got to get a pool. And then the guy with the pool in the setup goes to his buddy's house and he's got an infinity pool. And he's like, oh, I got to get an infinity pool. And then that person goes to the bigger infinity pool and on and on and on it goes. And we can never just be satisfied with what we have because our culture that we exist in just chips away at our happiness through that comparison game. And here's another thing as an aside that the comparison game does. It is convinced. This is just for the young moms in the room. So basically, you, okay? It has convinced. I watch it happen. And you, okay? I didn't see you over there. It was Jordan Shaw. It's convinced the moms that they're not momming hard enough. That's what social media does. That's what the comparison thing does. It convinces moms and dads that they're not momming and dadding hard enough. They need to do more. Your cupcakes need to look better when you take them to the school. When your treats, when it's your week for snacks, for the soccer game, your cooler needs to be nice. It needs to be better than the other coolers. You need to engage in imaginative play. You need to do supportive discipline and never be angry at your kids. And only talk to them in soft tones because they're all little princes and princesses and they can't handle adversity in their life. So let's be very gentle. And let's not grade their papers in red. Let's use green and encouraging things and tones. Let's do that. And we're convinced, I see this in moms right now, that you're just not momming right. And you go to bed every night with this gross combination of mom guilt and mom exhaustion. I need to do more. I don't have one single ounce left to give, and I might hate my children. It's just this combo platter that's terrible. And here's what I want to tell you. Here's what I want to tell you, young moms. You are very likely a better mom to your children than your mom was to you. Very likely. It's just a generational thing. Jen and I are so much more present with our kids than our parents were with us. We just are. It's generational. It's just what this generation is doing. So let yourself off the hook a little bit. Now we won't know if we're doing it right until they're adults and they're not in prison, but for now it seems like we're doing a good job. You're doing a good job. Let yourself off the hook a little bit. Quit playing the comparison game. You're doing a good job with your kids. I actually watched a TED Talk a couple years ago, and it stuck with me. It's this guy doing studies on happiness. And he made the point that many of us, because of goal setting and attainment, have fundamentally eliminated the possibility of happiness from our life, which is kind of a crazy thought. But he says that when we set goals for ourselves and we say, when I get to those goals, I'm going to be happy. When I graduate college, I'll be happy. When I get a job, I'll be happy. Get the promotion, I'll be happy. When I meet the person, I'll be happy. When I get married, I'll be happy. When we have children, I'll be happy. When the children leave the house, I'll be happy, I meet the person I'll be happy when I get married I'll be happy when we have children I'll be happy when the children leave the house I'll be happy which is probably true and then when and then when when we get to be grandparents I'll be happy and what we do in life is we set the goalposts we set the marker for happy off in the distance and then we think I'm not happy now but when I get there I will be and then we get there what do we do the very second we arrive we move to the next thing. So I never spend any time in the joy that God brought me to. I only spend time anticipating the next thing I'm going to need to be happy. Whenever sit and revel in God's goodness now. So I think it's fair to say that we have a contentment issue. We always want the next thing. We always want a little bit more. Something a little bit bigger. Something a little bit shinier. Something a little bit more peaceful. We're always bugging God or ourselves for whatever could be next. Which is why I think this verse in Philippians is such a helpful verse for us this morning. It's actually, and then don't put that one up on the screen yet. I'm just gonna say 13 and then I'll read them all. It's actually one of the most misused verses in all of scripture. It's neck and neck Philippians 4.13 and Jeremiah 29.11. Philippians 4.13 says, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength, or I can do all things through him who strengthens me. And we see people misuse this all the time. I can do anything I set my mind to with Christ powering me. In the name of Christ, I can do whatever I want to do. I've seen athletes with this tattooed on themselves somewhere. I'm going to complete the pass through Christ who gives me strength or score the goal or hit the home run or pitch the strikeout. Like I'm going to do this through Christ who gives me strength. There's even a Christian apparel line, like Under Armour, but for believers. So it means it's almost as good as the not believing material, but it's a little bit cheaper and a little bit poorly done. And it's got 413 all over it. These, these athletes are on high school fields all over the nation being powered by Christ and their teams are winning all of the state championships, of course, because they're powered by Jesus and he wants them to win. We misappropriate the verse all the time. It does not mean that through Christ who gives me strength, I can close the sale. I can accomplish this thing. I can do this deed. I can accomplish this act. It does not mean that. We have to be very careful when we pluck verses out of context and make them mean what only the sentence sounds like without anything else informing what that sentence actually means. And we use it to mean the opposite of what it really means. Here's what it really means. Here's the context of it. If we read verses 11 and 12, Paul writes this in Philippians. Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In's about learning in all seasons to trust God to provide what we need. And I love that the word learn shows up in here two times. I've learned to be in abundance and in need. I have learned to be in plenty and in want. I've learned these things through Christ who gives me strength. And it may seem like, well, man, it would be pretty easy. I don't know how tough that is, Paul. It'd be pretty, pretty easy to be content in abundance when you have plenty, when you don't want for anything, when you're, when you're living a life of luxury and you've got more than what you could ask for. It's got to be pretty easy to be content in that scenario. And to that thought, which isn't all the way incorrect, I would remind you of this proverb. I think about this proverb a lot. Proverbs 23, 1 through 5. When you sit down to eat with a ruler, observe carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite. Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food. Do not toil to acquire wealth. Be discerning enough to desist. When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven. That is a fancy, poetic way of saying this. Acc breeds more desire not less exposure to nice things a taste of the good life usually breeds a desire for more of that not less we have it pretty good then we go to someone else's house and they have it a little bit better and all of a a sudden we go home and we want what they want. Did you see that serving dish? I want that serving dish. My serving dish is from Kohl's. It is stupid. I would like a nice serving dish from like Nordstrom or something. I don't know. Crate and barrel. That's where you waste money on serving dishes. William Sonoma. That's right. That's a gold standard. That's all Jeffy has at his house. William Sonoma, everything. And Viking appliances, I'm sure. Yeah, because you can tell that the Viking stove heats up the ground beef better than just a regular GE stove, right? Yes, of course. But we all want those things. We all want those things. There's actually the effect of this that accumulation tends to make you want more. I heard this a while back. Steve Harvey, the host of Family Feud, was giving some people some financial advice. And he said, if you're just starting out in your career and you don't have a lot of money, he said, save up enough for a first class ticket somewhere and fly first class. Because once you fly first class, you will never want to fly coach again. And you will reorganize your life and be driven to make the money you need so that you can fly first class. And here's the thing. He's right. Have you ever flown first class? When you fly first class, you don't want to sit back there with the gen pop anymore. That's depressing. Now, here's what I've not done. And if I do this, I'm in big trouble. I've never flown in one of those pods internationally. If I fly in one of those pods where you get to stretch out and you get your own screen, like, I'm done for. But what you do when you get exposed, when you're at the king's table and you're around things that you don't have, is you begin to organize your life in such a way so that you can have those. When you see your friends taking nice vacations, you start to organize your life in such a way so you can too. When you see what you don't have, you start to organize your life in such a way that you can have what you want. And in organizing your life around the things that you want, around materials or experiences, we lose the contentment that's sitting right in front of us. So let's not think it's just a simple thing to learn to be content when you're surrounded with abundance, because it's not. It's really tricky, and it's really sneaky. Now the one that we would all agree is difficult is to be content when we have little. I kind of wondered as I read that, how can anyone be content in the midst of tragedy, loss, or loneliness? When you're sitting in the wake of a divorce, how can you claim in that moment to be content? When you are a freshly minted widow or widower, how can you claim in that moment to be content? When your children are walking through a tragically difficult time, how can you possibly claim to be content, to be happy? I need for nothing, when you clearly need for much. This is where that word learned comes into play, because somehow or another, Paul figured that one out. But that feels impossible. And it feels like really bad pastoral counsel. Someone's walking through a really difficult time in their life. They come to my office to see me, and they're crying about this hardship that they're enduring or that they're watching a loved one endure. And I point them to this verse and go, hey, you can be content through Christ who strengthens you. You should just be happy right now. How do we do that? How is that attainable? In the grace vine that I wrote for this week, I stated that this was a deeply personal sermon for me. Because this topic of contentment and happiness is actually something I think a great deal about. Because back in 2020, in the fall, I started to go to therapy. And I've mentioned before that I've done therapy, and I've mentioned before that I think everyone should do it. Everybody, you should go to preventative maintenance therapy. Most of us, all of us need more maintenance than we're willing to acknowledge anyways. Everyone should go. If you can afford therapy, you should go to therapy. I actually have a really good buddy here at the church. He's a big, tough guy, you know. He feels the only acceptable emotion to him is anger, and all other emotions are for sissies, all of them. And he decided he was going to start going to therapy, and I sent him to a guy, and he literally texts me every time he talks to this guy. Man, I love that guy so much. This is the best. I've never experienced anything like this in my life. Like, every time. Big tough guy loves therapy. You'd like it too. But I remember sitting in this guy's office, and I had kind of come to realize that in life, like, we all chase things. We all chase happiness. Some chase respect. Some chase security, stability, love, approval, just a sense of being enough and worthwhile. We're all chasing something. All adults are little more than just a pile, a comprising of insecurities and desires and ways that we try to cover those things up to make ourselves acceptable to the broader milieu. That's all we are. We're all chasing something. And I sat in his office, and he looked at me and he said, dude, when are you going to realize it? I said, realize what? He said, that thing that you're chasing, you have it. You have it. You have a wife who loves you. You guys laugh together every day. At the time we just had Lily, she said, you have a daughter who loves you, wants to spend time with you. You have rich friendships. People who support you, believe in you. You have a job that you love, a church that you love, and who seems to love you and support you too. When are you going to quit chasing it? You have it. It's right there if you'll just stop to look at it. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. And I realized, my goodness, I don't know why I'm striving so hard to get the thing that's going to make me happy. I have all the ingredients for happiness in my life right now if I'll just notice them. And I think that that's true of most of us. I think most of us already have all the ingredients for happiness available to us. We already have all the ingredients of happiness available to us right now. Even if it seems like there's this hole in our life, this thing that we want, and I won't be happy until I get it, I would push back and say, no, you have everything you need right now to be content in this moment. It doesn't mean that we should stop striving. It doesn't mean that we should stop trying. It doesn't mean that we should stop seeking, but we can be content in this moment because God has given us everything we need to be content. He's given us all the ingredients to make happy if we will just stop and slow down and see them. And since then, since realizing that, I've just done a lot of reflection on the transformative power of being content. On the transformative power of looking at your life and saying, thanks God, I have everything I need to be happy in you and content in you. And I would be willing to bet that whatever it is you're chasing, you've probably caught it. Whatever it is you think you need, you probably don't. And that all the things that you need in your life to make you content in the Lord, He has provided for you. And as this has washed over me, it's impacted me in profound ways. And so I sat down and I thought, how has just this arrival at contentment shaped me? How has it changed me? How has it impacted me? And I came up with this list. Contentment has transformed my gratitude, perspective, faith, sentimentality, and my prayer life. Most importantly, contentment has transformed my gratitude. It has transformed the way that I walk through life grateful for God's goodness in my life. Every time Jen, my wife, laughs at one of my jokes, I say a little prayer of gratitude to God. Because as long as she'll laugh at my jokes, I know we're good. When she stops laughing at my jokes, we're in in trouble because I don't really have any other tools in the tool belt besides trying to make her laugh. Like I'm not romantic. That's it. It's changed the way I think about my children and the moments that I'm grateful for with them because here's the reality. Parents with young kids. When that kid is crying and you have to walk in there at 3.30 in the morning when all you want in the whole world is to sleep and you pick them up and you calm them down and that little head is resting on your shoulder and that little arm is on the other shoulder and you calm them down and you get them back to sleep and you lay them back down in that bed. Let me tell you something that's super depressing. You won't know when it is the last time that you just did that. One of those times is going to be the last time and you won't know that it was. And there's a bunch of parents whose kids are grown up who would give anything in the world to have that moment with their kid one more time. So be grateful for those moments. Be grateful for the sleepless nights because you only get so many of them. I was sitting in my house the other day and John and Lily, Lily's seven, John's two, they're running around the downstairs. We asked Lily to vacuum the kitchen and we got this little thing that she can do it with. And she did for a second. And then she just started running laps around the kitchen and the dining room. And she's screaming and John's screaming and no work is getting done. And I'm sitting there. And Jen was a little bit exasperated with him. And I'm just grinning like an idiot. Because I think one day we're going to miss these days. One day I'm going to miss a noisy house. And when you're content, when you're determined to see the good and what God has provided for you right now, annoying things become moments of gratitude. Frustrating things become moments of peace and reflection. It transforms the way you walk through life. It was in this season that I stumbled upon this verse in John 1 16 that I say all the time. You guys have heard me say it. From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. I love that verse. From God's fullness, from his goodness, from his generosity and his mercy and his grace, he has given you so many blessings. And it's up to us in the moments to acknowledge those. Next time you're with friends and you have a great conversation and it's life-giving and dinner is good, be grateful for it. Tell them so. Thank God for them. Next time you get one of those good laughs where your eyes tear up and you can't stop and you go for so long that you can't remember why you started, even if it was about something inappropriate, anyways, still praise God for laughter in your life. It was good and those moments are sweet and we don't know how many of them we get. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. I know. Some of us are in hard seasons. Some of us are in seasons of abundance. But I know that we all have God's goodness in our life. We just sang that song. I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. And Aaron and the band laid out and I heard you guys saying that. If it's true, then be content in that goodness. And I love that line, why should I fear? The evidence is here. That's how it changed my faith. I said it affects my gratitude. It changes my faith. My faith in God. My faith in his goodness. I know that things are going to work out the way that he wants them to work out because he wants them to work out that way. He's inviting me into it. But I have nothing to fear from the future because God is orchestrating it and I am in his hands. And I've said last week we launched the part two of the campaign to build a building. And I said last week, and you'll hear me say a bunch, if God wants us to build it, we will. If he doesn't, we won't. But that doesn't change one little bit what I get to do and what he's called me to do. That doesn't change one little bit what he's called you guys to do, what he's called us to do as a church, which is make disciples and grow closer to him, connect people to Jesus and connect people to people. That's what he's called us to do. That mission doesn't change if we get into a building. It doesn't change if we stay. Now, if we go, I'll be excited. If we don't, I'll be sad. But not for very long on either way because if God wants us to do it, we will. If he doesn't, we won't. I'm content. I'm happy getting to do what God has asked us to do in whatever capacity, in whatever location he's asked us to do it. This God opening my eyes to contentment has changed my perspective on life. In the middle of this realization, we were walking through a season of need. It was a hard one. We were walking through pancreatic cancer with Jen's dad. We ended up losing him at the end of that year. It was not an easy time for everyone around us to be content. It wasn't an easy thing to watch my wife just be sad and try to be content with that. But one of the things I learned is that life has seasons. And sometimes they're abundant, and sometimes they're lacking. And in the abundant seasons, we should revel in them and praise God for them and find joy in them. And in the seasons of need and hurt and want, we can take solace that it's a season that every day won't feel like today. Every month won't feel like this month. And a lot of times I'm not even sure. Sometimes we operate as Christians that God takes us into hard seasons because he has a lesson that he wants us to learn. So we allow these things to happen to us. And I just kind of think that's a pretty myopic view of God's will. He's orchestrating all these other things and all these, all this ripple effect and all these other people's lives so that you can learn this lesson about being grateful. Maybe, maybe you're that important in God's kingdom. Or maybe life ebbs and flows and good seasons and bad seasons come and go. And when we're in a bad season, we just say, I'm in a bad season. This is tough. But I know that God is with me and I know that everything won't feel like this. It's changed my perspective. It's changed my sentimentality a lot, like a lot. Because of those sweet moments, from his fullness, we've all received grace upon grace. And you reflect upon those sweet things with friends or children or family or whatever it is, I cry all the time. Like, if I'm watching TV with John and he's on my lap and Lily sees it and gets jealous and she comes over and she puts her head right here and she says she wants snugs and now I'm cuddling with both of my children at the same time, I have the 100% chance I'm going to cry. I just will. I'll just sit there and I'll think, this is the good stuff. Like I'm such a sap. I don't know if I told you guys this already, but we got a piano in the house and Jen's playing just a little bit. And she was playing a hymn. I said, go play a hymn for me. She said, what hymn? I said, I don't care. I just want to hear you play a hymn. And she goes and she plays it. And I went and I stood next to the piano and she's playing the hymn. And I started crying and she was like, what are you, like, what's the matter with you? And I'm like trying to explain to her, like, I just imagined like 20 years down the road, John and Lily coming back with their kids and we're standing in this very dining room and we're singing Christmas carols and hymns. And she was like, you got to get it together, man. And she, I mean, she's right. But I've seen it revolutionize that in me too, savoring every moment as sweet and as God's blessing. And then lastly, I think that contentment radically changes our prayer life. I've talked about this a couple of times, but Jesus starts the Lord's Prayer with your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Over the years, my personal prayer life has gotten a lot shorter. The most words I use when I pray is when I pray in front of other people. It's not that I'm praying for shorter amounts of time. I just use a lot less words. Because I just pray, God, here's the thing. Would you do with this thing what you want? And would you help me to accept what that is? God, here's a concern. Would you be in this concern? And would you help me to be content in your answer? God, this person is sick. I'm just lifting them up to you. I don't know what to pray for them. But will your will be done in their life and in the life of their family? God, Lily's struggling. Will you help her? According to whatever your will is, because I know that this struggle might be important for who she's gonna become. But in all things, God, your will be done. And when you pray like that, then you can just kind of rest in the assurance that he will do his will. So I by no means have figured out contentment. And it certainly wasn't by my own desire that I arrived there. I didn't decide one day, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to be content. I'm just going to decide to be happy with my life. I didn't do that. It washed over me like a ton of bricks because someone was ministering to me and they said, hey, you have all the ingredients for happy in your life right now. Maybe you should stop reaching for other things. And so I would like to say that same thing to you. You very likely have all the ingredients you need right now to make happy. If we just stop reaching and grabbing. And then here's what happens. I said earlier, it's impossible. It feels impossible to be content in a season of want during loss or loneliness or tragedy. But what happens is when we learn to be people who are content, that word learn, Paul says it's a process. When we learn to be people who are content with what God has provided for us in this moment and in this season, then when we are in a season of need, when we are in a season of hurt, if you're sitting there and I'm like, hey, you've got all the ingredients you need to make happy, you're like, I don't. I don't. I've got a big hole in my life. If that's you, here's how being a content person even transforms that mindset. Trusting God and being content allows you to say, you know what? I might not have all the ingredients in my life. I think I need to be happy, but I have Jesus and he's enough. He has provided himself for me and he is enough. And I trust him that not all seasons will feel like this season. And then we come full circle back to the verse and make this point. True contentment is only possible through the sanctifying work of Jesus. Sanctify, I always say, is to become more like Christ in character. It's a process after we claim a faith in Christ and then we're taken up to heaven in glory. Everything that happens in between, the Holy Spirit is working in us to make us more like Christ in our character. That's a sanctification process. And that's only, true contentment is only accessible through the sanctifying work of Christ. That's why Paul says, I've learned to be content. How? Through Christ who gives me strength because he allows me to do all things. And when we find our contentment in Christ and in his strength, we come full circle and we get to say, along with Paul, I have learned in seasons of plenty and I have learned in seasons of little to be content and happy because I can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. Let's pray. Father, we do, we do. We see the evidence of your goodness all over our lives. Lord, I pray that we would look at your considerable gifts, at the fullness that has leaked out onto us, and we would see the good things that you've given us, the good friends who love us, the good family that supports us, the good job or the good role or the good thing in our identity that we get to do to express ourselves and exercise our gifts, God, would we look at the many, many rich blessings that we have in our lives and be grateful to you. Father, for those with us who don't feel content, who do feel sad, who do feel like they are lacking some essential ingredients. God, would they feel this morning that you really are enough? Would they feel this morning that Jesus really is enough? Would they trust that these seasons of need and want, they come and go, and that you're in these seasons with us just like you're in the seasons of abundance with us? Help us be a grateful people. Help us pray with faith and with trust. And God, help us learn like Paul did to be content in all seasons and to find that joy and that contentment in you. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making us a part of your Sunday morning. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that after the service. Just a real quick tip of the cap to Carly, our female vocalist. She was hacking up a lung in the pre-service meeting. She just got a little nagging cough, and she said, I'm just praying that I make it through my song. She said, great job with Honey in the Rock. You made it. Now, I got things to get to. All right, settle down. But now, if you start to cough during the sermon, get out. Go. All right. Carly's the best. She's also our graphics person, and we love her. This is part two of our series called Transformed. Jordan, in the open, kind of told you guys a little bit of what it is about and what it's for. It's based on that verse in Romans chapter 12 that says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And so there's some things that we wanted to talk about over this series that will run into mid-October where maybe we can just shift our thinking a little bit. Maybe we can allow God to transform our mind in the way that we think about some things. And maybe that can actually transform our lives. And so this morning, we're going to talk about this transformation from comparison to contentment. One of the most, probably the most ubiquitous desires on the planet. Every person, every culture, everywhere wants happiness. Now we might put different words around that. We might describe it differently. I want to be safe. I want to be provided for. I want to have enough of this. I want to feel enough security here. I want to be loved. I want whatever it is, whatever the ingredients of happiness are for us. But everybody wants for themselves and for their children and for the people they love to be happy. It's a ubiquitous human desire. It is virtually universal. Now, because we're believers, most of us in this room would claim a faith in Christ. We know that the most important thing to desire is a relationship with him. We know that the thing that we want for our children is a relationship with Jesus. And so I'm not arguing that happiness should replace that. As a matter of fact, as believers, we know that happiness is only really achievable if we trust in Christ to bring that about. And that's one of the things we're going to see this morning. But if we think about happiness, what it means to be happy, it can't mean being a smiling idiot all the time, just grinning all the time. Every day is the best day ever. So it has to be something deeper than that. And the deeper foundation of happiness is contentment. It's being content, being content in the moment. This moment doesn't need any more. I love it the way it is. This situation, this season, this relationship doesn't need any more. I'm happy with the way that it is. It's to be content, to figure out how to be content. When we can do that, we can be happy. The problem is that we exist in a culture tailor-made to rob us of contentment. Would you agree with that? We exist in a culture and in a time where we are constantly and consistently berated with messages and images and comparisons that erode our contentment to a place where we are no longer happy and we spend our days wishing we had what we don't instead of being grateful for having what we do because we live in this culture that just perniciously eats away and erodes away at our own contentment. I was talking with a friend of mine and I asked her, what's the biggest threat to your contentment? And she very quickly said, social media, social media. I scroll Facebook, Instagram. Is it X now? I'm not on Twitter anymore. They went from Twitter to X. I scroll and I see other people who are doing better than me. Their SUV is bigger and wider than mine. And so now I feel like it fits nicely into parking spaces. Mine fits nicely into parking spaces. Theirs takes up two. So they are obviously having a better life than me. You know, their vacations are nicer than mine. They've got life figured out. They're in better shape than me. The scrolling relentlessly of social media and comparing ourselves to what we see chips away at a lot of our contentment. And to that, I would just offer this as an aside. Back at the beginning of the year, I think it's sometime in February, I realized that I was wasting so much time on my phone, just mindlessly scrolling apps for no good reason. And I would scroll at the time Twitter, and I would just be angry. I would be angry at the politics. I would be angry at Christians arguing with Christians. It would just make me mad. So then I would switch over to Facebook. Maybe this will be better. And then on Facebook, all it is, I don't know about your feed and your algorithm. All it is is a bunch of people from my life like 11 years ago that I no longer care about. Like, that's great that you were in the strawberry fields on Saturday. That's not what I want to see. That's not like engaging content for me. So I don't even know what's going on with Facebook. And it was a couple of days of scrolling and realizing, I don't know any of these people anymore. Why are they here? And then Instagram for me just became, the algorithm became falling videos and golf tutorials. That was it. That was all I got and the whole thing. And I'm like, this is a total waste of time. So I took everything off my phone, except for TikTok. I watch TikTok sometimes. That's kind of fun. But I took everything off my phone. And I'll tell you this, my happiness meter has gone up since doing that. So for some of y'all, I know I'm joking around a little bit, but for some of y'all, you may not need anything else in this sermon than just kind of a nudge. Why don't you think about taking that off your phone for a while? Is it making you happy? Is it bringing you joy? Is it making you more or less content? Why don't you take it off your phone and see if you engage more with the people around you? See if you look more at God's goodness in your life that's already there. See if you're more present for people. For at least somebody here, I know that that's all you need. I know that's what you need to hear today. Just try that out. See if it doesn't help a little bit. But if it's not online, it's in person, right? It's still, we can still play the comparison game and make ourselves unhappy with the things that we have. I remember in the summer of 2020, for the previous three years since I moved here, I had been driving a Nissan Leaf. And if you were here during that time, if you knew me during that time, you'd love to make fun of me for that because you hate the environment and fiscal savings. No, because I mean that you, if you listen, I drove one for three years. I'm just going to say this. If you drive a Leaf, you do deserve to get made fun of. That's, that's part of the deal. When I bought the car, I wasn't like, people are going to think this is awesome. Like I knew I was going to get made fun of. So when it came time to sell it and get something new, I thought, I want something nice. I want something that I like. For the first time in my life, I want to buy myself a nice car. And so I looked around, and I looked at a Tesla, the less expensive Tesla, but it was more expensive than the Accord that I was comparing it to. It was more money down, less miles a year, more money per month. And I thought, gosh, it's just not wise. I'm not going to do that. And so I leased an Accord. And it was the nicest car I ever had. When I got in it, I was like, I can't believe this is so nice. Like I was really, I was excited. Here's how excited I was about it. As a grown man, here's what I did. I drove I drove it to my neighborhood I parked it on a street I got out and I took pictures of it so I did I took pictures of my new car and then you know I texted them to my parents how lame is that what am I like 17 that's so embarrassing I remembered that I did that as I was prepping for the sermon I remember that's the thing that I did. And I'm like, what is the matter with you? But I did it. That's how proud I was of this car. I was so excited to drive in the lap of luxury of the Honda Accord XLE or whatever it was. EXL or I don't know. And then like a month later, my jerk friend Tyler got a Tesla. And he's like texting us pictures of it and videos. And it was so awesome. And it was way faster. And the whole roof of a Tesla is glass. And I had, I had a sunroof in my Accord, but it was one of the normal size ones from like 1987. Good job, you dope. That's the car you have now. Everything's controlled from a touch screen. I have to still touch buttons like it's 1998. This was terrible. And within a month, listen, I'm so proud of this car, I'm taking pictures of it. Within a month, I hate it. I want to take it back to the dealership and get a Tesla. I hated what I had. I wanted something new. Life just works that way, doesn't it? In the comparison game. I have a 28-inch black stone on my back porch. I like to cook on it. I go to somebody else's house. They got a 36. I'm like, dang, I got to get a 36. There's more quesadillas on there. The guy with the 36 goes over to his buddy's house. He's got a 36 inch blast stone, but it's in a permanent, it's got stone built up around. It's a permanent cook station outside. This is fancy. This is a big deal now. Then permanent blackstone station guy goes to somebody else's house and he's got a permanent kitchen set up with a smoker and a pool. And he's like, honey, we got to get a pool. And then the guy with the pool in the setup goes to his buddy's house and he's got an infinity pool. And he's like, oh, I got to get an infinity pool. And then that person goes to the bigger infinity pool and on and on and on it goes. And we can never just be satisfied with what we have because our culture that we exist in just chips away at our happiness through that comparison game. And here's another thing as an aside that the comparison game does. It is convinced. This is just for the young moms in the room. So basically, you, okay? It has convinced. I watch it happen. And you, okay? I didn't see you over there. It was Jordan Shaw. It's convinced the moms that they're not momming hard enough. That's what social media does. That's what the comparison thing does. It convinces moms and dads that they're not momming and dadding hard enough. They need to do more. Your cupcakes need to look better when you take them to the school. When your treats, when it's your week for snacks, for the soccer game, your cooler needs to be nice. It needs to be better than the other coolers. You need to engage in imaginative play. You need to do supportive discipline and never be angry at your kids. And only talk to them in soft tones because they're all little princes and princesses and they can't handle adversity in their life. So let's be very gentle. And let's not grade their papers in red. Let's use green and encouraging things and tones. Let's do that. And we're convinced, I see this in moms right now, that you're just not momming right. And you go to bed every night with this gross combination of mom guilt and mom exhaustion. I need to do more. I don't have one single ounce left to give, and I might hate my children. It's just this combo platter that's terrible. And here's what I want to tell you. Here's what I want to tell you, young moms. You are very likely a better mom to your children than your mom was to you. Very likely. It's just a generational thing. Jen and I are so much more present with our kids than our parents were with us. We just are. It's generational. It's just what this generation is doing. So let yourself off the hook a little bit. Now we won't know if we're doing it right until they're adults and they're not in prison, but for now it seems like we're doing a good job. You're doing a good job. Let yourself off the hook a little bit. Quit playing the comparison game. You're doing a good job with your kids. I actually watched a TED Talk a couple years ago, and it stuck with me. It's this guy doing studies on happiness. And he made the point that many of us, because of goal setting and attainment, have fundamentally eliminated the possibility of happiness from our life, which is kind of a crazy thought. But he says that when we set goals for ourselves and we say, when I get to those goals, I'm going to be happy. When I graduate college, I'll be happy. When I get a job, I'll be happy. Get the promotion, I'll be happy. When I meet the person, I'll be happy. When I get married, I'll be happy. When we have children, I'll be happy. When the children leave the house, I'll be happy, I meet the person I'll be happy when I get married I'll be happy when we have children I'll be happy when the children leave the house I'll be happy which is probably true and then when and then when when we get to be grandparents I'll be happy and what we do in life is we set the goalposts we set the marker for happy off in the distance and then we think I'm not happy now but when I get there I will be and then we get there what do we do the very second we arrive we move to the next thing. So I never spend any time in the joy that God brought me to. I only spend time anticipating the next thing I'm going to need to be happy. Whenever sit and revel in God's goodness now. So I think it's fair to say that we have a contentment issue. We always want the next thing. We always want a little bit more. Something a little bit bigger. Something a little bit shinier. Something a little bit more peaceful. We're always bugging God or ourselves for whatever could be next. Which is why I think this verse in Philippians is such a helpful verse for us this morning. It's actually, and then don't put that one up on the screen yet. I'm just gonna say 13 and then I'll read them all. It's actually one of the most misused verses in all of scripture. It's neck and neck Philippians 4.13 and Jeremiah 29.11. Philippians 4.13 says, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength, or I can do all things through him who strengthens me. And we see people misuse this all the time. I can do anything I set my mind to with Christ powering me. In the name of Christ, I can do whatever I want to do. I've seen athletes with this tattooed on themselves somewhere. I'm going to complete the pass through Christ who gives me strength or score the goal or hit the home run or pitch the strikeout. Like I'm going to do this through Christ who gives me strength. There's even a Christian apparel line, like Under Armour, but for believers. So it means it's almost as good as the not believing material, but it's a little bit cheaper and a little bit poorly done. And it's got 413 all over it. These, these athletes are on high school fields all over the nation being powered by Christ and their teams are winning all of the state championships, of course, because they're powered by Jesus and he wants them to win. We misappropriate the verse all the time. It does not mean that through Christ who gives me strength, I can close the sale. I can accomplish this thing. I can do this deed. I can accomplish this act. It does not mean that. We have to be very careful when we pluck verses out of context and make them mean what only the sentence sounds like without anything else informing what that sentence actually means. And we use it to mean the opposite of what it really means. Here's what it really means. Here's the context of it. If we read verses 11 and 12, Paul writes this in Philippians. Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In's about learning in all seasons to trust God to provide what we need. And I love that the word learn shows up in here two times. I've learned to be in abundance and in need. I have learned to be in plenty and in want. I've learned these things through Christ who gives me strength. And it may seem like, well, man, it would be pretty easy. I don't know how tough that is, Paul. It'd be pretty, pretty easy to be content in abundance when you have plenty, when you don't want for anything, when you're, when you're living a life of luxury and you've got more than what you could ask for. It's got to be pretty easy to be content in that scenario. And to that thought, which isn't all the way incorrect, I would remind you of this proverb. I think about this proverb a lot. Proverbs 23, 1 through 5. When you sit down to eat with a ruler, observe carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite. Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food. Do not toil to acquire wealth. Be discerning enough to desist. When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven. That is a fancy, poetic way of saying this. Acc breeds more desire not less exposure to nice things a taste of the good life usually breeds a desire for more of that not less we have it pretty good then we go to someone else's house and they have it a little bit better and all of a a sudden we go home and we want what they want. Did you see that serving dish? I want that serving dish. My serving dish is from Kohl's. It is stupid. I would like a nice serving dish from like Nordstrom or something. I don't know. Crate and barrel. That's where you waste money on serving dishes. William Sonoma. That's right. That's a gold standard. That's all Jeffy has at his house. William Sonoma, everything. And Viking appliances, I'm sure. Yeah, because you can tell that the Viking stove heats up the ground beef better than just a regular GE stove, right? Yes, of course. But we all want those things. We all want those things. There's actually the effect of this that accumulation tends to make you want more. I heard this a while back. Steve Harvey, the host of Family Feud, was giving some people some financial advice. And he said, if you're just starting out in your career and you don't have a lot of money, he said, save up enough for a first class ticket somewhere and fly first class. Because once you fly first class, you will never want to fly coach again. And you will reorganize your life and be driven to make the money you need so that you can fly first class. And here's the thing. He's right. Have you ever flown first class? When you fly first class, you don't want to sit back there with the gen pop anymore. That's depressing. Now, here's what I've not done. And if I do this, I'm in big trouble. I've never flown in one of those pods internationally. If I fly in one of those pods where you get to stretch out and you get your own screen, like, I'm done for. But what you do when you get exposed, when you're at the king's table and you're around things that you don't have, is you begin to organize your life in such a way so that you can have those. When you see your friends taking nice vacations, you start to organize your life in such a way so you can too. When you see what you don't have, you start to organize your life in such a way that you can have what you want. And in organizing your life around the things that you want, around materials or experiences, we lose the contentment that's sitting right in front of us. So let's not think it's just a simple thing to learn to be content when you're surrounded with abundance, because it's not. It's really tricky, and it's really sneaky. Now the one that we would all agree is difficult is to be content when we have little. I kind of wondered as I read that, how can anyone be content in the midst of tragedy, loss, or loneliness? When you're sitting in the wake of a divorce, how can you claim in that moment to be content? When you are a freshly minted widow or widower, how can you claim in that moment to be content? When your children are walking through a tragically difficult time, how can you possibly claim to be content, to be happy? I need for nothing, when you clearly need for much. This is where that word learned comes into play, because somehow or another, Paul figured that one out. But that feels impossible. And it feels like really bad pastoral counsel. Someone's walking through a really difficult time in their life. They come to my office to see me, and they're crying about this hardship that they're enduring or that they're watching a loved one endure. And I point them to this verse and go, hey, you can be content through Christ who strengthens you. You should just be happy right now. How do we do that? How is that attainable? In the grace vine that I wrote for this week, I stated that this was a deeply personal sermon for me. Because this topic of contentment and happiness is actually something I think a great deal about. Because back in 2020, in the fall, I started to go to therapy. And I've mentioned before that I've done therapy, and I've mentioned before that I think everyone should do it. Everybody, you should go to preventative maintenance therapy. Most of us, all of us need more maintenance than we're willing to acknowledge anyways. Everyone should go. If you can afford therapy, you should go to therapy. I actually have a really good buddy here at the church. He's a big, tough guy, you know. He feels the only acceptable emotion to him is anger, and all other emotions are for sissies, all of them. And he decided he was going to start going to therapy, and I sent him to a guy, and he literally texts me every time he talks to this guy. Man, I love that guy so much. This is the best. I've never experienced anything like this in my life. Like, every time. Big tough guy loves therapy. You'd like it too. But I remember sitting in this guy's office, and I had kind of come to realize that in life, like, we all chase things. We all chase happiness. Some chase respect. Some chase security, stability, love, approval, just a sense of being enough and worthwhile. We're all chasing something. All adults are little more than just a pile, a comprising of insecurities and desires and ways that we try to cover those things up to make ourselves acceptable to the broader milieu. That's all we are. We're all chasing something. And I sat in his office, and he looked at me and he said, dude, when are you going to realize it? I said, realize what? He said, that thing that you're chasing, you have it. You have it. You have a wife who loves you. You guys laugh together every day. At the time we just had Lily, she said, you have a daughter who loves you, wants to spend time with you. You have rich friendships. People who support you, believe in you. You have a job that you love, a church that you love, and who seems to love you and support you too. When are you going to quit chasing it? You have it. It's right there if you'll just stop to look at it. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. And I realized, my goodness, I don't know why I'm striving so hard to get the thing that's going to make me happy. I have all the ingredients for happiness in my life right now if I'll just notice them. And I think that that's true of most of us. I think most of us already have all the ingredients for happiness available to us. We already have all the ingredients of happiness available to us right now. Even if it seems like there's this hole in our life, this thing that we want, and I won't be happy until I get it, I would push back and say, no, you have everything you need right now to be content in this moment. It doesn't mean that we should stop striving. It doesn't mean that we should stop trying. It doesn't mean that we should stop seeking, but we can be content in this moment because God has given us everything we need to be content. He's given us all the ingredients to make happy if we will just stop and slow down and see them. And since then, since realizing that, I've just done a lot of reflection on the transformative power of being content. On the transformative power of looking at your life and saying, thanks God, I have everything I need to be happy in you and content in you. And I would be willing to bet that whatever it is you're chasing, you've probably caught it. Whatever it is you think you need, you probably don't. And that all the things that you need in your life to make you content in the Lord, He has provided for you. And as this has washed over me, it's impacted me in profound ways. And so I sat down and I thought, how has just this arrival at contentment shaped me? How has it changed me? How has it impacted me? And I came up with this list. Contentment has transformed my gratitude, perspective, faith, sentimentality, and my prayer life. Most importantly, contentment has transformed my gratitude. It has transformed the way that I walk through life grateful for God's goodness in my life. Every time Jen, my wife, laughs at one of my jokes, I say a little prayer of gratitude to God. Because as long as she'll laugh at my jokes, I know we're good. When she stops laughing at my jokes, we're in in trouble because I don't really have any other tools in the tool belt besides trying to make her laugh. Like I'm not romantic. That's it. It's changed the way I think about my children and the moments that I'm grateful for with them because here's the reality. Parents with young kids. When that kid is crying and you have to walk in there at 3.30 in the morning when all you want in the whole world is to sleep and you pick them up and you calm them down and that little head is resting on your shoulder and that little arm is on the other shoulder and you calm them down and you get them back to sleep and you lay them back down in that bed. Let me tell you something that's super depressing. You won't know when it is the last time that you just did that. One of those times is going to be the last time and you won't know that it was. And there's a bunch of parents whose kids are grown up who would give anything in the world to have that moment with their kid one more time. So be grateful for those moments. Be grateful for the sleepless nights because you only get so many of them. I was sitting in my house the other day and John and Lily, Lily's seven, John's two, they're running around the downstairs. We asked Lily to vacuum the kitchen and we got this little thing that she can do it with. And she did for a second. And then she just started running laps around the kitchen and the dining room. And she's screaming and John's screaming and no work is getting done. And I'm sitting there. And Jen was a little bit exasperated with him. And I'm just grinning like an idiot. Because I think one day we're going to miss these days. One day I'm going to miss a noisy house. And when you're content, when you're determined to see the good and what God has provided for you right now, annoying things become moments of gratitude. Frustrating things become moments of peace and reflection. It transforms the way you walk through life. It was in this season that I stumbled upon this verse in John 1 16 that I say all the time. You guys have heard me say it. From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. I love that verse. From God's fullness, from his goodness, from his generosity and his mercy and his grace, he has given you so many blessings. And it's up to us in the moments to acknowledge those. Next time you're with friends and you have a great conversation and it's life-giving and dinner is good, be grateful for it. Tell them so. Thank God for them. Next time you get one of those good laughs where your eyes tear up and you can't stop and you go for so long that you can't remember why you started, even if it was about something inappropriate, anyways, still praise God for laughter in your life. It was good and those moments are sweet and we don't know how many of them we get. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. I know. Some of us are in hard seasons. Some of us are in seasons of abundance. But I know that we all have God's goodness in our life. We just sang that song. I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. And Aaron and the band laid out and I heard you guys saying that. If it's true, then be content in that goodness. And I love that line, why should I fear? The evidence is here. That's how it changed my faith. I said it affects my gratitude. It changes my faith. My faith in God. My faith in his goodness. I know that things are going to work out the way that he wants them to work out because he wants them to work out that way. He's inviting me into it. But I have nothing to fear from the future because God is orchestrating it and I am in his hands. And I've said last week we launched the part two of the campaign to build a building. And I said last week, and you'll hear me say a bunch, if God wants us to build it, we will. If he doesn't, we won't. But that doesn't change one little bit what I get to do and what he's called me to do. That doesn't change one little bit what he's called you guys to do, what he's called us to do as a church, which is make disciples and grow closer to him, connect people to Jesus and connect people to people. That's what he's called us to do. That mission doesn't change if we get into a building. It doesn't change if we stay. Now, if we go, I'll be excited. If we don't, I'll be sad. But not for very long on either way because if God wants us to do it, we will. If he doesn't, we won't. I'm content. I'm happy getting to do what God has asked us to do in whatever capacity, in whatever location he's asked us to do it. This God opening my eyes to contentment has changed my perspective on life. In the middle of this realization, we were walking through a season of need. It was a hard one. We were walking through pancreatic cancer with Jen's dad. We ended up losing him at the end of that year. It was not an easy time for everyone around us to be content. It wasn't an easy thing to watch my wife just be sad and try to be content with that. But one of the things I learned is that life has seasons. And sometimes they're abundant, and sometimes they're lacking. And in the abundant seasons, we should revel in them and praise God for them and find joy in them. And in the seasons of need and hurt and want, we can take solace that it's a season that every day won't feel like today. Every month won't feel like this month. And a lot of times I'm not even sure. Sometimes we operate as Christians that God takes us into hard seasons because he has a lesson that he wants us to learn. So we allow these things to happen to us. And I just kind of think that's a pretty myopic view of God's will. He's orchestrating all these other things and all these, all this ripple effect and all these other people's lives so that you can learn this lesson about being grateful. Maybe, maybe you're that important in God's kingdom. Or maybe life ebbs and flows and good seasons and bad seasons come and go. And when we're in a bad season, we just say, I'm in a bad season. This is tough. But I know that God is with me and I know that everything won't feel like this. It's changed my perspective. It's changed my sentimentality a lot, like a lot. Because of those sweet moments, from his fullness, we've all received grace upon grace. And you reflect upon those sweet things with friends or children or family or whatever it is, I cry all the time. Like, if I'm watching TV with John and he's on my lap and Lily sees it and gets jealous and she comes over and she puts her head right here and she says she wants snugs and now I'm cuddling with both of my children at the same time, I have the 100% chance I'm going to cry. I just will. I'll just sit there and I'll think, this is the good stuff. Like I'm such a sap. I don't know if I told you guys this already, but we got a piano in the house and Jen's playing just a little bit. And she was playing a hymn. I said, go play a hymn for me. She said, what hymn? I said, I don't care. I just want to hear you play a hymn. And she goes and she plays it. And I went and I stood next to the piano and she's playing the hymn. And I started crying and she was like, what are you, like, what's the matter with you? And I'm like trying to explain to her, like, I just imagined like 20 years down the road, John and Lily coming back with their kids and we're standing in this very dining room and we're singing Christmas carols and hymns. And she was like, you got to get it together, man. And she, I mean, she's right. But I've seen it revolutionize that in me too, savoring every moment as sweet and as God's blessing. And then lastly, I think that contentment radically changes our prayer life. I've talked about this a couple of times, but Jesus starts the Lord's Prayer with your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Over the years, my personal prayer life has gotten a lot shorter. The most words I use when I pray is when I pray in front of other people. It's not that I'm praying for shorter amounts of time. I just use a lot less words. Because I just pray, God, here's the thing. Would you do with this thing what you want? And would you help me to accept what that is? God, here's a concern. Would you be in this concern? And would you help me to be content in your answer? God, this person is sick. I'm just lifting them up to you. I don't know what to pray for them. But will your will be done in their life and in the life of their family? God, Lily's struggling. Will you help her? According to whatever your will is, because I know that this struggle might be important for who she's gonna become. But in all things, God, your will be done. And when you pray like that, then you can just kind of rest in the assurance that he will do his will. So I by no means have figured out contentment. And it certainly wasn't by my own desire that I arrived there. I didn't decide one day, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to be content. I'm just going to decide to be happy with my life. I didn't do that. It washed over me like a ton of bricks because someone was ministering to me and they said, hey, you have all the ingredients for happy in your life right now. Maybe you should stop reaching for other things. And so I would like to say that same thing to you. You very likely have all the ingredients you need right now to make happy. If we just stop reaching and grabbing. And then here's what happens. I said earlier, it's impossible. It feels impossible to be content in a season of want during loss or loneliness or tragedy. But what happens is when we learn to be people who are content, that word learn, Paul says it's a process. When we learn to be people who are content with what God has provided for us in this moment and in this season, then when we are in a season of need, when we are in a season of hurt, if you're sitting there and I'm like, hey, you've got all the ingredients you need to make happy, you're like, I don't. I don't. I've got a big hole in my life. If that's you, here's how being a content person even transforms that mindset. Trusting God and being content allows you to say, you know what? I might not have all the ingredients in my life. I think I need to be happy, but I have Jesus and he's enough. He has provided himself for me and he is enough. And I trust him that not all seasons will feel like this season. And then we come full circle back to the verse and make this point. True contentment is only possible through the sanctifying work of Jesus. Sanctify, I always say, is to become more like Christ in character. It's a process after we claim a faith in Christ and then we're taken up to heaven in glory. Everything that happens in between, the Holy Spirit is working in us to make us more like Christ in our character. That's a sanctification process. And that's only, true contentment is only accessible through the sanctifying work of Christ. That's why Paul says, I've learned to be content. How? Through Christ who gives me strength because he allows me to do all things. And when we find our contentment in Christ and in his strength, we come full circle and we get to say, along with Paul, I have learned in seasons of plenty and I have learned in seasons of little to be content and happy because I can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. Let's pray. Father, we do, we do. We see the evidence of your goodness all over our lives. Lord, I pray that we would look at your considerable gifts, at the fullness that has leaked out onto us, and we would see the good things that you've given us, the good friends who love us, the good family that supports us, the good job or the good role or the good thing in our identity that we get to do to express ourselves and exercise our gifts, God, would we look at the many, many rich blessings that we have in our lives and be grateful to you. Father, for those with us who don't feel content, who do feel sad, who do feel like they are lacking some essential ingredients. God, would they feel this morning that you really are enough? Would they feel this morning that Jesus really is enough? Would they trust that these seasons of need and want, they come and go, and that you're in these seasons with us just like you're in the seasons of abundance with us? Help us be a grateful people. Help us pray with faith and with trust. And God, help us learn like Paul did to be content in all seasons and to find that joy and that contentment in you. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making us a part of your Sunday morning. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that after the service. Just a real quick tip of the cap to Carly, our female vocalist. She was hacking up a lung in the pre-service meeting. She just got a little nagging cough, and she said, I'm just praying that I make it through my song. She said, great job with Honey in the Rock. You made it. Now, I got things to get to. All right, settle down. But now, if you start to cough during the sermon, get out. Go. All right. Carly's the best. She's also our graphics person, and we love her. This is part two of our series called Transformed. Jordan, in the open, kind of told you guys a little bit of what it is about and what it's for. It's based on that verse in Romans chapter 12 that says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And so there's some things that we wanted to talk about over this series that will run into mid-October where maybe we can just shift our thinking a little bit. Maybe we can allow God to transform our mind in the way that we think about some things. And maybe that can actually transform our lives. And so this morning, we're going to talk about this transformation from comparison to contentment. One of the most, probably the most ubiquitous desires on the planet. Every person, every culture, everywhere wants happiness. Now we might put different words around that. We might describe it differently. I want to be safe. I want to be provided for. I want to have enough of this. I want to feel enough security here. I want to be loved. I want whatever it is, whatever the ingredients of happiness are for us. But everybody wants for themselves and for their children and for the people they love to be happy. It's a ubiquitous human desire. It is virtually universal. Now, because we're believers, most of us in this room would claim a faith in Christ. We know that the most important thing to desire is a relationship with him. We know that the thing that we want for our children is a relationship with Jesus. And so I'm not arguing that happiness should replace that. As a matter of fact, as believers, we know that happiness is only really achievable if we trust in Christ to bring that about. And that's one of the things we're going to see this morning. But if we think about happiness, what it means to be happy, it can't mean being a smiling idiot all the time, just grinning all the time. Every day is the best day ever. So it has to be something deeper than that. And the deeper foundation of happiness is contentment. It's being content, being content in the moment. This moment doesn't need any more. I love it the way it is. This situation, this season, this relationship doesn't need any more. I'm happy with the way that it is. It's to be content, to figure out how to be content. When we can do that, we can be happy. The problem is that we exist in a culture tailor-made to rob us of contentment. Would you agree with that? We exist in a culture and in a time where we are constantly and consistently berated with messages and images and comparisons that erode our contentment to a place where we are no longer happy and we spend our days wishing we had what we don't instead of being grateful for having what we do because we live in this culture that just perniciously eats away and erodes away at our own contentment. I was talking with a friend of mine and I asked her, what's the biggest threat to your contentment? And she very quickly said, social media, social media. I scroll Facebook, Instagram. Is it X now? I'm not on Twitter anymore. They went from Twitter to X. I scroll and I see other people who are doing better than me. Their SUV is bigger and wider than mine. And so now I feel like it fits nicely into parking spaces. Mine fits nicely into parking spaces. Theirs takes up two. So they are obviously having a better life than me. You know, their vacations are nicer than mine. They've got life figured out. They're in better shape than me. The scrolling relentlessly of social media and comparing ourselves to what we see chips away at a lot of our contentment. And to that, I would just offer this as an aside. Back at the beginning of the year, I think it's sometime in February, I realized that I was wasting so much time on my phone, just mindlessly scrolling apps for no good reason. And I would scroll at the time Twitter, and I would just be angry. I would be angry at the politics. I would be angry at Christians arguing with Christians. It would just make me mad. So then I would switch over to Facebook. Maybe this will be better. And then on Facebook, all it is, I don't know about your feed and your algorithm. All it is is a bunch of people from my life like 11 years ago that I no longer care about. Like, that's great that you were in the strawberry fields on Saturday. That's not what I want to see. That's not like engaging content for me. So I don't even know what's going on with Facebook. And it was a couple of days of scrolling and realizing, I don't know any of these people anymore. Why are they here? And then Instagram for me just became, the algorithm became falling videos and golf tutorials. That was it. That was all I got and the whole thing. And I'm like, this is a total waste of time. So I took everything off my phone, except for TikTok. I watch TikTok sometimes. That's kind of fun. But I took everything off my phone. And I'll tell you this, my happiness meter has gone up since doing that. So for some of y'all, I know I'm joking around a little bit, but for some of y'all, you may not need anything else in this sermon than just kind of a nudge. Why don't you think about taking that off your phone for a while? Is it making you happy? Is it bringing you joy? Is it making you more or less content? Why don't you take it off your phone and see if you engage more with the people around you? See if you look more at God's goodness in your life that's already there. See if you're more present for people. For at least somebody here, I know that that's all you need. I know that's what you need to hear today. Just try that out. See if it doesn't help a little bit. But if it's not online, it's in person, right? It's still, we can still play the comparison game and make ourselves unhappy with the things that we have. I remember in the summer of 2020, for the previous three years since I moved here, I had been driving a Nissan Leaf. And if you were here during that time, if you knew me during that time, you'd love to make fun of me for that because you hate the environment and fiscal savings. No, because I mean that you, if you listen, I drove one for three years. I'm just going to say this. If you drive a Leaf, you do deserve to get made fun of. That's, that's part of the deal. When I bought the car, I wasn't like, people are going to think this is awesome. Like I knew I was going to get made fun of. So when it came time to sell it and get something new, I thought, I want something nice. I want something that I like. For the first time in my life, I want to buy myself a nice car. And so I looked around, and I looked at a Tesla, the less expensive Tesla, but it was more expensive than the Accord that I was comparing it to. It was more money down, less miles a year, more money per month. And I thought, gosh, it's just not wise. I'm not going to do that. And so I leased an Accord. And it was the nicest car I ever had. When I got in it, I was like, I can't believe this is so nice. Like I was really, I was excited. Here's how excited I was about it. As a grown man, here's what I did. I drove I drove it to my neighborhood I parked it on a street I got out and I took pictures of it so I did I took pictures of my new car and then you know I texted them to my parents how lame is that what am I like 17 that's so embarrassing I remembered that I did that as I was prepping for the sermon I remember that's the thing that I did. And I'm like, what is the matter with you? But I did it. That's how proud I was of this car. I was so excited to drive in the lap of luxury of the Honda Accord XLE or whatever it was. EXL or I don't know. And then like a month later, my jerk friend Tyler got a Tesla. And he's like texting us pictures of it and videos. And it was so awesome. And it was way faster. And the whole roof of a Tesla is glass. And I had, I had a sunroof in my Accord, but it was one of the normal size ones from like 1987. Good job, you dope. That's the car you have now. Everything's controlled from a touch screen. I have to still touch buttons like it's 1998. This was terrible. And within a month, listen, I'm so proud of this car, I'm taking pictures of it. Within a month, I hate it. I want to take it back to the dealership and get a Tesla. I hated what I had. I wanted something new. Life just works that way, doesn't it? In the comparison game. I have a 28-inch black stone on my back porch. I like to cook on it. I go to somebody else's house. They got a 36. I'm like, dang, I got to get a 36. There's more quesadillas on there. The guy with the 36 goes over to his buddy's house. He's got a 36 inch blast stone, but it's in a permanent, it's got stone built up around. It's a permanent cook station outside. This is fancy. This is a big deal now. Then permanent blackstone station guy goes to somebody else's house and he's got a permanent kitchen set up with a smoker and a pool. And he's like, honey, we got to get a pool. And then the guy with the pool in the setup goes to his buddy's house and he's got an infinity pool. And he's like, oh, I got to get an infinity pool. And then that person goes to the bigger infinity pool and on and on and on it goes. And we can never just be satisfied with what we have because our culture that we exist in just chips away at our happiness through that comparison game. And here's another thing as an aside that the comparison game does. It is convinced. This is just for the young moms in the room. So basically, you, okay? It has convinced. I watch it happen. And you, okay? I didn't see you over there. It was Jordan Shaw. It's convinced the moms that they're not momming hard enough. That's what social media does. That's what the comparison thing does. It convinces moms and dads that they're not momming and dadding hard enough. They need to do more. Your cupcakes need to look better when you take them to the school. When your treats, when it's your week for snacks, for the soccer game, your cooler needs to be nice. It needs to be better than the other coolers. You need to engage in imaginative play. You need to do supportive discipline and never be angry at your kids. And only talk to them in soft tones because they're all little princes and princesses and they can't handle adversity in their life. So let's be very gentle. And let's not grade their papers in red. Let's use green and encouraging things and tones. Let's do that. And we're convinced, I see this in moms right now, that you're just not momming right. And you go to bed every night with this gross combination of mom guilt and mom exhaustion. I need to do more. I don't have one single ounce left to give, and I might hate my children. It's just this combo platter that's terrible. And here's what I want to tell you. Here's what I want to tell you, young moms. You are very likely a better mom to your children than your mom was to you. Very likely. It's just a generational thing. Jen and I are so much more present with our kids than our parents were with us. We just are. It's generational. It's just what this generation is doing. So let yourself off the hook a little bit. Now we won't know if we're doing it right until they're adults and they're not in prison, but for now it seems like we're doing a good job. You're doing a good job. Let yourself off the hook a little bit. Quit playing the comparison game. You're doing a good job with your kids. I actually watched a TED Talk a couple years ago, and it stuck with me. It's this guy doing studies on happiness. And he made the point that many of us, because of goal setting and attainment, have fundamentally eliminated the possibility of happiness from our life, which is kind of a crazy thought. But he says that when we set goals for ourselves and we say, when I get to those goals, I'm going to be happy. When I graduate college, I'll be happy. When I get a job, I'll be happy. Get the promotion, I'll be happy. When I meet the person, I'll be happy. When I get married, I'll be happy. When we have children, I'll be happy. When the children leave the house, I'll be happy, I meet the person I'll be happy when I get married I'll be happy when we have children I'll be happy when the children leave the house I'll be happy which is probably true and then when and then when when we get to be grandparents I'll be happy and what we do in life is we set the goalposts we set the marker for happy off in the distance and then we think I'm not happy now but when I get there I will be and then we get there what do we do the very second we arrive we move to the next thing. So I never spend any time in the joy that God brought me to. I only spend time anticipating the next thing I'm going to need to be happy. Whenever sit and revel in God's goodness now. So I think it's fair to say that we have a contentment issue. We always want the next thing. We always want a little bit more. Something a little bit bigger. Something a little bit shinier. Something a little bit more peaceful. We're always bugging God or ourselves for whatever could be next. Which is why I think this verse in Philippians is such a helpful verse for us this morning. It's actually, and then don't put that one up on the screen yet. I'm just gonna say 13 and then I'll read them all. It's actually one of the most misused verses in all of scripture. It's neck and neck Philippians 4.13 and Jeremiah 29.11. Philippians 4.13 says, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength, or I can do all things through him who strengthens me. And we see people misuse this all the time. I can do anything I set my mind to with Christ powering me. In the name of Christ, I can do whatever I want to do. I've seen athletes with this tattooed on themselves somewhere. I'm going to complete the pass through Christ who gives me strength or score the goal or hit the home run or pitch the strikeout. Like I'm going to do this through Christ who gives me strength. There's even a Christian apparel line, like Under Armour, but for believers. So it means it's almost as good as the not believing material, but it's a little bit cheaper and a little bit poorly done. And it's got 413 all over it. These, these athletes are on high school fields all over the nation being powered by Christ and their teams are winning all of the state championships, of course, because they're powered by Jesus and he wants them to win. We misappropriate the verse all the time. It does not mean that through Christ who gives me strength, I can close the sale. I can accomplish this thing. I can do this deed. I can accomplish this act. It does not mean that. We have to be very careful when we pluck verses out of context and make them mean what only the sentence sounds like without anything else informing what that sentence actually means. And we use it to mean the opposite of what it really means. Here's what it really means. Here's the context of it. If we read verses 11 and 12, Paul writes this in Philippians. Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In's about learning in all seasons to trust God to provide what we need. And I love that the word learn shows up in here two times. I've learned to be in abundance and in need. I have learned to be in plenty and in want. I've learned these things through Christ who gives me strength. And it may seem like, well, man, it would be pretty easy. I don't know how tough that is, Paul. It'd be pretty, pretty easy to be content in abundance when you have plenty, when you don't want for anything, when you're, when you're living a life of luxury and you've got more than what you could ask for. It's got to be pretty easy to be content in that scenario. And to that thought, which isn't all the way incorrect, I would remind you of this proverb. I think about this proverb a lot. Proverbs 23, 1 through 5. When you sit down to eat with a ruler, observe carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite. Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food. Do not toil to acquire wealth. Be discerning enough to desist. When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven. That is a fancy, poetic way of saying this. Acc breeds more desire not less exposure to nice things a taste of the good life usually breeds a desire for more of that not less we have it pretty good then we go to someone else's house and they have it a little bit better and all of a a sudden we go home and we want what they want. Did you see that serving dish? I want that serving dish. My serving dish is from Kohl's. It is stupid. I would like a nice serving dish from like Nordstrom or something. I don't know. Crate and barrel. That's where you waste money on serving dishes. William Sonoma. That's right. That's a gold standard. That's all Jeffy has at his house. William Sonoma, everything. And Viking appliances, I'm sure. Yeah, because you can tell that the Viking stove heats up the ground beef better than just a regular GE stove, right? Yes, of course. But we all want those things. We all want those things. There's actually the effect of this that accumulation tends to make you want more. I heard this a while back. Steve Harvey, the host of Family Feud, was giving some people some financial advice. And he said, if you're just starting out in your career and you don't have a lot of money, he said, save up enough for a first class ticket somewhere and fly first class. Because once you fly first class, you will never want to fly coach again. And you will reorganize your life and be driven to make the money you need so that you can fly first class. And here's the thing. He's right. Have you ever flown first class? When you fly first class, you don't want to sit back there with the gen pop anymore. That's depressing. Now, here's what I've not done. And if I do this, I'm in big trouble. I've never flown in one of those pods internationally. If I fly in one of those pods where you get to stretch out and you get your own screen, like, I'm done for. But what you do when you get exposed, when you're at the king's table and you're around things that you don't have, is you begin to organize your life in such a way so that you can have those. When you see your friends taking nice vacations, you start to organize your life in such a way so you can too. When you see what you don't have, you start to organize your life in such a way that you can have what you want. And in organizing your life around the things that you want, around materials or experiences, we lose the contentment that's sitting right in front of us. So let's not think it's just a simple thing to learn to be content when you're surrounded with abundance, because it's not. It's really tricky, and it's really sneaky. Now the one that we would all agree is difficult is to be content when we have little. I kind of wondered as I read that, how can anyone be content in the midst of tragedy, loss, or loneliness? When you're sitting in the wake of a divorce, how can you claim in that moment to be content? When you are a freshly minted widow or widower, how can you claim in that moment to be content? When your children are walking through a tragically difficult time, how can you possibly claim to be content, to be happy? I need for nothing, when you clearly need for much. This is where that word learned comes into play, because somehow or another, Paul figured that one out. But that feels impossible. And it feels like really bad pastoral counsel. Someone's walking through a really difficult time in their life. They come to my office to see me, and they're crying about this hardship that they're enduring or that they're watching a loved one endure. And I point them to this verse and go, hey, you can be content through Christ who strengthens you. You should just be happy right now. How do we do that? How is that attainable? In the grace vine that I wrote for this week, I stated that this was a deeply personal sermon for me. Because this topic of contentment and happiness is actually something I think a great deal about. Because back in 2020, in the fall, I started to go to therapy. And I've mentioned before that I've done therapy, and I've mentioned before that I think everyone should do it. Everybody, you should go to preventative maintenance therapy. Most of us, all of us need more maintenance than we're willing to acknowledge anyways. Everyone should go. If you can afford therapy, you should go to therapy. I actually have a really good buddy here at the church. He's a big, tough guy, you know. He feels the only acceptable emotion to him is anger, and all other emotions are for sissies, all of them. And he decided he was going to start going to therapy, and I sent him to a guy, and he literally texts me every time he talks to this guy. Man, I love that guy so much. This is the best. I've never experienced anything like this in my life. Like, every time. Big tough guy loves therapy. You'd like it too. But I remember sitting in this guy's office, and I had kind of come to realize that in life, like, we all chase things. We all chase happiness. Some chase respect. Some chase security, stability, love, approval, just a sense of being enough and worthwhile. We're all chasing something. All adults are little more than just a pile, a comprising of insecurities and desires and ways that we try to cover those things up to make ourselves acceptable to the broader milieu. That's all we are. We're all chasing something. And I sat in his office, and he looked at me and he said, dude, when are you going to realize it? I said, realize what? He said, that thing that you're chasing, you have it. You have it. You have a wife who loves you. You guys laugh together every day. At the time we just had Lily, she said, you have a daughter who loves you, wants to spend time with you. You have rich friendships. People who support you, believe in you. You have a job that you love, a church that you love, and who seems to love you and support you too. When are you going to quit chasing it? You have it. It's right there if you'll just stop to look at it. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. And I realized, my goodness, I don't know why I'm striving so hard to get the thing that's going to make me happy. I have all the ingredients for happiness in my life right now if I'll just notice them. And I think that that's true of most of us. I think most of us already have all the ingredients for happiness available to us. We already have all the ingredients of happiness available to us right now. Even if it seems like there's this hole in our life, this thing that we want, and I won't be happy until I get it, I would push back and say, no, you have everything you need right now to be content in this moment. It doesn't mean that we should stop striving. It doesn't mean that we should stop trying. It doesn't mean that we should stop seeking, but we can be content in this moment because God has given us everything we need to be content. He's given us all the ingredients to make happy if we will just stop and slow down and see them. And since then, since realizing that, I've just done a lot of reflection on the transformative power of being content. On the transformative power of looking at your life and saying, thanks God, I have everything I need to be happy in you and content in you. And I would be willing to bet that whatever it is you're chasing, you've probably caught it. Whatever it is you think you need, you probably don't. And that all the things that you need in your life to make you content in the Lord, He has provided for you. And as this has washed over me, it's impacted me in profound ways. And so I sat down and I thought, how has just this arrival at contentment shaped me? How has it changed me? How has it impacted me? And I came up with this list. Contentment has transformed my gratitude, perspective, faith, sentimentality, and my prayer life. Most importantly, contentment has transformed my gratitude. It has transformed the way that I walk through life grateful for God's goodness in my life. Every time Jen, my wife, laughs at one of my jokes, I say a little prayer of gratitude to God. Because as long as she'll laugh at my jokes, I know we're good. When she stops laughing at my jokes, we're in in trouble because I don't really have any other tools in the tool belt besides trying to make her laugh. Like I'm not romantic. That's it. It's changed the way I think about my children and the moments that I'm grateful for with them because here's the reality. Parents with young kids. When that kid is crying and you have to walk in there at 3.30 in the morning when all you want in the whole world is to sleep and you pick them up and you calm them down and that little head is resting on your shoulder and that little arm is on the other shoulder and you calm them down and you get them back to sleep and you lay them back down in that bed. Let me tell you something that's super depressing. You won't know when it is the last time that you just did that. One of those times is going to be the last time and you won't know that it was. And there's a bunch of parents whose kids are grown up who would give anything in the world to have that moment with their kid one more time. So be grateful for those moments. Be grateful for the sleepless nights because you only get so many of them. I was sitting in my house the other day and John and Lily, Lily's seven, John's two, they're running around the downstairs. We asked Lily to vacuum the kitchen and we got this little thing that she can do it with. And she did for a second. And then she just started running laps around the kitchen and the dining room. And she's screaming and John's screaming and no work is getting done. And I'm sitting there. And Jen was a little bit exasperated with him. And I'm just grinning like an idiot. Because I think one day we're going to miss these days. One day I'm going to miss a noisy house. And when you're content, when you're determined to see the good and what God has provided for you right now, annoying things become moments of gratitude. Frustrating things become moments of peace and reflection. It transforms the way you walk through life. It was in this season that I stumbled upon this verse in John 1 16 that I say all the time. You guys have heard me say it. From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. I love that verse. From God's fullness, from his goodness, from his generosity and his mercy and his grace, he has given you so many blessings. And it's up to us in the moments to acknowledge those. Next time you're with friends and you have a great conversation and it's life-giving and dinner is good, be grateful for it. Tell them so. Thank God for them. Next time you get one of those good laughs where your eyes tear up and you can't stop and you go for so long that you can't remember why you started, even if it was about something inappropriate, anyways, still praise God for laughter in your life. It was good and those moments are sweet and we don't know how many of them we get. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. I know. Some of us are in hard seasons. Some of us are in seasons of abundance. But I know that we all have God's goodness in our life. We just sang that song. I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. And Aaron and the band laid out and I heard you guys saying that. If it's true, then be content in that goodness. And I love that line, why should I fear? The evidence is here. That's how it changed my faith. I said it affects my gratitude. It changes my faith. My faith in God. My faith in his goodness. I know that things are going to work out the way that he wants them to work out because he wants them to work out that way. He's inviting me into it. But I have nothing to fear from the future because God is orchestrating it and I am in his hands. And I've said last week we launched the part two of the campaign to build a building. And I said last week, and you'll hear me say a bunch, if God wants us to build it, we will. If he doesn't, we won't. But that doesn't change one little bit what I get to do and what he's called me to do. That doesn't change one little bit what he's called you guys to do, what he's called us to do as a church, which is make disciples and grow closer to him, connect people to Jesus and connect people to people. That's what he's called us to do. That mission doesn't change if we get into a building. It doesn't change if we stay. Now, if we go, I'll be excited. If we don't, I'll be sad. But not for very long on either way because if God wants us to do it, we will. If he doesn't, we won't. I'm content. I'm happy getting to do what God has asked us to do in whatever capacity, in whatever location he's asked us to do it. This God opening my eyes to contentment has changed my perspective on life. In the middle of this realization, we were walking through a season of need. It was a hard one. We were walking through pancreatic cancer with Jen's dad. We ended up losing him at the end of that year. It was not an easy time for everyone around us to be content. It wasn't an easy thing to watch my wife just be sad and try to be content with that. But one of the things I learned is that life has seasons. And sometimes they're abundant, and sometimes they're lacking. And in the abundant seasons, we should revel in them and praise God for them and find joy in them. And in the seasons of need and hurt and want, we can take solace that it's a season that every day won't feel like today. Every month won't feel like this month. And a lot of times I'm not even sure. Sometimes we operate as Christians that God takes us into hard seasons because he has a lesson that he wants us to learn. So we allow these things to happen to us. And I just kind of think that's a pretty myopic view of God's will. He's orchestrating all these other things and all these, all this ripple effect and all these other people's lives so that you can learn this lesson about being grateful. Maybe, maybe you're that important in God's kingdom. Or maybe life ebbs and flows and good seasons and bad seasons come and go. And when we're in a bad season, we just say, I'm in a bad season. This is tough. But I know that God is with me and I know that everything won't feel like this. It's changed my perspective. It's changed my sentimentality a lot, like a lot. Because of those sweet moments, from his fullness, we've all received grace upon grace. And you reflect upon those sweet things with friends or children or family or whatever it is, I cry all the time. Like, if I'm watching TV with John and he's on my lap and Lily sees it and gets jealous and she comes over and she puts her head right here and she says she wants snugs and now I'm cuddling with both of my children at the same time, I have the 100% chance I'm going to cry. I just will. I'll just sit there and I'll think, this is the good stuff. Like I'm such a sap. I don't know if I told you guys this already, but we got a piano in the house and Jen's playing just a little bit. And she was playing a hymn. I said, go play a hymn for me. She said, what hymn? I said, I don't care. I just want to hear you play a hymn. And she goes and she plays it. And I went and I stood next to the piano and she's playing the hymn. And I started crying and she was like, what are you, like, what's the matter with you? And I'm like trying to explain to her, like, I just imagined like 20 years down the road, John and Lily coming back with their kids and we're standing in this very dining room and we're singing Christmas carols and hymns. And she was like, you got to get it together, man. And she, I mean, she's right. But I've seen it revolutionize that in me too, savoring every moment as sweet and as God's blessing. And then lastly, I think that contentment radically changes our prayer life. I've talked about this a couple of times, but Jesus starts the Lord's Prayer with your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Over the years, my personal prayer life has gotten a lot shorter. The most words I use when I pray is when I pray in front of other people. It's not that I'm praying for shorter amounts of time. I just use a lot less words. Because I just pray, God, here's the thing. Would you do with this thing what you want? And would you help me to accept what that is? God, here's a concern. Would you be in this concern? And would you help me to be content in your answer? God, this person is sick. I'm just lifting them up to you. I don't know what to pray for them. But will your will be done in their life and in the life of their family? God, Lily's struggling. Will you help her? According to whatever your will is, because I know that this struggle might be important for who she's gonna become. But in all things, God, your will be done. And when you pray like that, then you can just kind of rest in the assurance that he will do his will. So I by no means have figured out contentment. And it certainly wasn't by my own desire that I arrived there. I didn't decide one day, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to be content. I'm just going to decide to be happy with my life. I didn't do that. It washed over me like a ton of bricks because someone was ministering to me and they said, hey, you have all the ingredients for happy in your life right now. Maybe you should stop reaching for other things. And so I would like to say that same thing to you. You very likely have all the ingredients you need right now to make happy. If we just stop reaching and grabbing. And then here's what happens. I said earlier, it's impossible. It feels impossible to be content in a season of want during loss or loneliness or tragedy. But what happens is when we learn to be people who are content, that word learn, Paul says it's a process. When we learn to be people who are content with what God has provided for us in this moment and in this season, then when we are in a season of need, when we are in a season of hurt, if you're sitting there and I'm like, hey, you've got all the ingredients you need to make happy, you're like, I don't. I don't. I've got a big hole in my life. If that's you, here's how being a content person even transforms that mindset. Trusting God and being content allows you to say, you know what? I might not have all the ingredients in my life. I think I need to be happy, but I have Jesus and he's enough. He has provided himself for me and he is enough. And I trust him that not all seasons will feel like this season. And then we come full circle back to the verse and make this point. True contentment is only possible through the sanctifying work of Jesus. Sanctify, I always say, is to become more like Christ in character. It's a process after we claim a faith in Christ and then we're taken up to heaven in glory. Everything that happens in between, the Holy Spirit is working in us to make us more like Christ in our character. That's a sanctification process. And that's only, true contentment is only accessible through the sanctifying work of Christ. That's why Paul says, I've learned to be content. How? Through Christ who gives me strength because he allows me to do all things. And when we find our contentment in Christ and in his strength, we come full circle and we get to say, along with Paul, I have learned in seasons of plenty and I have learned in seasons of little to be content and happy because I can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. Let's pray. Father, we do, we do. We see the evidence of your goodness all over our lives. Lord, I pray that we would look at your considerable gifts, at the fullness that has leaked out onto us, and we would see the good things that you've given us, the good friends who love us, the good family that supports us, the good job or the good role or the good thing in our identity that we get to do to express ourselves and exercise our gifts, God, would we look at the many, many rich blessings that we have in our lives and be grateful to you. Father, for those with us who don't feel content, who do feel sad, who do feel like they are lacking some essential ingredients. God, would they feel this morning that you really are enough? Would they feel this morning that Jesus really is enough? Would they trust that these seasons of need and want, they come and go, and that you're in these seasons with us just like you're in the seasons of abundance with us? Help us be a grateful people. Help us pray with faith and with trust. And God, help us learn like Paul did to be content in all seasons and to find that joy and that contentment in you. In Jesus' name, amen.

We always talk about the stories of Moses and Abraham and David and Paul. We know all about the boys, but what about the girls? Why don't we talk more about the people in the Bible who are like me? It turns out the girls of the Bible are pretty awesome. And when we take the time to learn their stories, we will be amazed at what God can do with someone who is consistently, humbly, and lovingly faithful. Well, good morning again. Thank you again for being here. This is my first Sunday back after having a kid, so I'm really grateful to be back in the saddle. I mean, I didn't do anything. Jen was primarily responsible for birthing the child. But yeah, so it's been a heck of a two weeks. For those who haven't seen, this is a picture of John. This is our boy. Yes, yes, I know. But before we go overboard with how cute he is, I am of the conviction that no child is actually cute until they've been alive for about three months. At the three-month mark, they become cute. At the newborn stage, they look like angry aliens, so we don't have to pretend like he's exceptionally cute, all right? But he's got blonde hair. He's a good-looking kid. We are excited about him. And I also wanted to thank Kyle for jumping in and preaching for us for two weeks. We had a plan leading into this series where we kind of acknowledged, you know, Nate, you're probably going to have to miss a couple of weeks somewhere in this faithful series because your baby is due. And I said, yeah. I said, so listen, when she goes into labor, I'm going to text you and you're teaching for the next two weeks. And he was like, all right, got it. So we had this plan in place, but neither of us expected to implement that plan almost three weeks prior to the due date. So he got the text on Friday morning and had to preach Sunday and I think did a remarkably good job. So thank you, Kyle, for doing that. And I'm glad to be back with you preaching about faithful women of the Bible. The woman that we're going to look at this morning is someone that I would be willing to bet that even though most of us probably know who she is, we might not know her name. It's a woman named Jochebed. And I had to actually look up what her name was, shamefully, because I know her story, but I didn't know her name. Her name is Jochebed, and Jochebed is probably the greatest mom of all time. If she's not the greatest, she's in the goat conversation. She's on the Mount Rushmore of moms, I think. And this isn't all the time the case, because sometimes excellent parents have children that just in their adulthood, they struggle. So it's not a one-to-one thing, but a lot of times you can tell the quality of a parent by the kids that they produce, right? And Jochebed produced some really good ones. From what we know, she had at least three children. She may have had more, but we know of three of them. One of them, her son, was a guy named Aaron. He was the first high priest of the nation of Israel. His staff was in the Ark of the Covenant. He is the one who performed a lot of the miracles that got the Israelites free of Egyptian enslavement. He instituted a lot of the religion that we still follow today. He had a profound impact on Israel in the Old Testament and continues to impact how we understand God to this day. I mentioned him in a sermon a couple of weeks ago when we were in Hebrews talking about Jesus as the great high priest. Aaron's a big deal. She had a daughter named Miriam. And most of us probably don't know about Miriam, but she was the first priestess in Israel. In a time when we didn't really know a lot about priestesses or that they even existed, but she was the first priestess in Israel. She actually wrote a praise song that's included in scripture, making her the first included female author in the Bible. And the praise song was just for the women of Israel. Men were not supposed to sing it, and it was about the conquest at God's faithfulness at the Red Sea, how God parted the sea and then defeated the armies of Egypt for them. She wrote that song, and it's included in the Bible. Those two kids are Jochebed's kids, and they did some really good stuff. Even if the third kid was a screw-up, she's still doing pretty good, right? The third kid was Moses. You may have heard of him. Even if you're here this morning and you wouldn't call yourself a believer, you're not really a church person, or you're listening or watching online, you wouldn't call yourself a church person. When I say Moses, you at least know who that is. You at least know, oh, that's a big deal Bible guy. Yeah. He freed the Hebrews from slavery. He led them through the desert. He established the religion. He came down with the Ten Commandments. It was the law of Moses. He wrote the first five books of the Bible. All three of these people, Aaron, Miriam, and Moses came from Jochebed's house. And so I want to know, what was she doing? What kind of Kool-Aid was she serving that produced these three incredible people that we still remember 6,000 years later? What was happening in her house that produced these types of adults. And I think if we can get some insight into that question, if we can get an answer there, then we can certainly apply that in our homes to our children, but I think that we'll pull out of it something that we can apply to all of life. So if we want to learn what it was like to grow up in Jacob's house, we don't have a ton of text. We don't get a lot of insight into her as a mother or as a person, really. We just get really one snippet at the beginning of Exodus in Exodus chapter 2. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, there's one in the seat back in front of you. Or if you're at home, there's one on your phone. If you're in person, don't look at your phone. That will distract me. I'll think that you're totally bored and now you're on Twitter or something. So look at Exodus chapter 2. We're going to pick it up right at the beginning. Now what's happening here before I read the verses? The Hebrew people are slaves to the Egyptians. And someone, one of Pharaoh's advisors, got in his ear and was like, hey man, these Hebrews, there's a lot of them. We think that when they were wandering through the desert, archaeologists and theologians believed that it was somewhere around 500,000 people that made up the Hebrew nation. So this Egyptian advisor said, hey, there's a lot of them. We're a little bit worried if they continue to grow at the current rate that they could be so strong that if they decided to rebel against us, there could be an insurrection that we wouldn't be able to stop. So we need to do something about this burgeoning Hebrew civilization within our borders. We need to do something about this population. And so what they decided to do is to kill all the boys two years and younger, and the midwives, the ones delivering the babies, were instructed, if you deliver a baby boy, you have to kill it right away. This is just evil stuff, but this is what they did. And so there's a woman named Jochebed, and she's about to have a son. And this is a snippet that we get of her story in that context. In Exodus chapter 2, I'm going to pick it up in verse 1. It says, Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman. That's just a tribe within the nation of Israel. This is the action that she took. And then if you continue to read the story, what you learn is she goes down to the river with this new boy, this three-month-old baby boy in a basket, and she sets it in the reeds. She sets it in the river, presumably the Nile River. And she sends her daughter, maybe Miriam, up as a lookout to see what happens to this basket. And somehow or another, she knew, I would presume that she knew the general schedule of the princess, of Pharaoh's daughter, and knew that she came out to bathe in the Nile River. And so she timed it up just right so that when she released Moses, that this basket would be encountered by the daughter of Pharaoh. And she had her daughter looking out to make sure that this is what happened. And sure enough, Pharaoh's daughter saw the basket. She had her servants grab it. They opened it up. There's a baby inside. She's moved by this and is compelled to adopt the baby. When she adopts Moses, they didn't have formula back then, all right? So she couldn't just mix something up and feed it to him. So she needed a woman who was capable of feeding a child at the time. So she tells her servants, go to the Hebrew people, find a woman who's able to feed a child right now and ask her to wean this child for me until they're off of it and then return. So they go into the Hebrew encampment and who do they find? Jochebed. Oh, what do you know? I can feed a kid. So she gets her son Moses back and gets those moments with him, those special months and probably years with him until it's time for him to be adopted officially into the palace by the princess of Egypt. The rest of the story from there, he grows up in this royal society. He learns how to lead. He gets the best education possible. He's exiled into the wilderness for 40 years. God speaks to him out of a burning bush. He comes back. He leads the people into freedom. That's the story of Moses. But as we look at the story of Jochebed here, can you imagine? Can you just imagine? Those of you who are parents, can you imagine having a baby? The moment John was born and they placed him on Jen's chest, I knew good and well, and it's not hyperbole, and you dads know what I'm talking about. I knew good and well I would die for that kid. Can you imagine taking the thing that is most precious to you in the world, putting it in a basket, and floating it down the river? Just releasing it and hoping that it works out. Having no control over what happened, having done all that you could do, and then setting this child in a basket and letting it go down the river. Can you imagine watching that basket like Jochebed did? But as I think about this story and the lessons that we can learn from this story, what I realized was the wisdom of Jacobad was that she did all that she could, and then she acknowledged it wasn't enough. She did all that she could, everything possible, and then she acknowledged, and that's still not enough. I think it's noteworthy that she got a basket, she wove it, she got the best bulrushes, and she put it together. She made it just for her kid. She made sure it was perfect. Then she coated it with bitumen and pitch. She made it waterproof. She took extra special care. She observed the schedule of the princess. She sent her daughter as a lookout. She did everything that she could. She controlled every detail that she could. She didn't just find any old basket. She didn't just set it in the river at any old time. She did everything that she could, but then at some point or another, she acknowledged something that I think we struggle so mightily to acknowledge. I've done everything that I can, and now I have to acknowledge that that's not enough. There's some mystical intersection between our effort and God's actions, between our effort and God's responsibility. And I think the lesson from Jochebed as I think about it more and more this week is yes, she did all that she could. Yes, she had faith, but she was able to accept this reality that there is a gap between our efforts and God's actions. And that in that gap, you have to admit, my efforts, my abilities are going to fall short. If she would have just sat there holding on to the basket and never released it, she would have waited too long and would have missed the opportunity. If she would have waited in the river with that basket up to the princess, she would have ruined it by being present when she found him. And if she would have given him to her daughter and said, walk the baby to the princess and ask, she would have ruined the opportunity. I can also imagine her waiting too deep into the river, holding on to the basket, refusing to let go of control, and I'm also going to acknowledge that at some point that's not going to be enough. It reminds me of this proverb that I've always loved. Proverbs chapter 21, verse 31. It says, the horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord. We can do everything we can to get the horse ready for battle. We can sharpen the sword. We can make sure the saddle's just right. We can know where the enemy is. We can approach the way we're supposed to approach. We can do everything we're going to do. But the battle belongs to the Lord. I can do the prep work. I can do everything I can do. But at some point or another, I have to hand the results over to God. And one of the reasons I love this story of Jochebed and the picture of her releasing that basket down the river is because as I was thinking about it one day, it occurred to me, isn't this just what parenthood is? Isn't parenthood just that moment over and over and over again where we've done everything we can and then at some point or another we have to release? A lot of you guys know this part of mine and Jen's story. We wanted a long time to be pregnant. We waited eight years to be pregnant and it was a hard eight years. And then when we finally did get pregnant, we found out about eight or 10 weeks in that we had miscarried. And that was hard. Maybe the hardest thing we've ever walked through as a couple. So when we got pregnant with Lily, I prayed so hard, God, please protect this child. Please don't let us walk through that again. Please, God, you've got to take care of us. And I would have done anything. I would have gotten three jobs. I would have never slept. Jen would have done anything. We would have put her on any diet, literally any injection. Whatever we can do to try to protect this baby that's growing inside of her, we will do it. But the reality is there was nothing we could do. We could do a couple things. We would be careful about a couple diets. But the reality was we had to pray. God, this child is yours. We believe you care about them and that you care about us. So we trust you with this pregnancy. And it occurred to me that this is what parenthood is. God, there's nothing left that I can do. I'm impotent here. But you care about us and you care about them, so we trust you. There was another reminder as we were having John during the process of labor and of waiting until it was really time to have the child. You know, there's contractions and things start to pick up in that process. And somewhere in that process, in the middle of the night, Jen's blood pressure began to drop and John's heart rate plummeted. And the nurses tried to pretend like it wasn't a big deal, but four of them rushed in there and started going really fast and dropping things and cussing. And one was trying to make light and like, like uneasy jokes. And me and Jen are scared. We're looking at each other. Our eyes are big. We don't know what to do. I can't even get near her to hold her hand because she's surrounded by nurses that are moving her around and they're giving her shots to try to do this and that and the other thing. And there's about 20 or 30 minutes where we were just scared. And all I could do is pray. And I was reminded of the story of Jochebed. We've done all that we can do. Now we pray. Now it's in the Lord's hands. And this is a picture of parenthood. One day, you do everything you can. You get them ready. You try to protect them. You try to choose the right school. But one day, you're going to let go of their hand, and they're going to walk into kindergarten, and you're not going to be with them for eight hours, and you don't know what's going to happen. One day, you entrust them to other dumb middle schoolers and the things that they're going to say and the stuff that's on their phones. There's coming a day, parents, many of us have experienced it already, where you watch them drive off. They drive away from home for the first time. They're 16 years old. They got their license. You can't control what happens in that car. You drop them off at college and hope they make wise choices. You walk them down the aisle and see them walk into a life that you won't live. You watch them have kids and wish them the best of luck. But parenthood is nothing if not a continual releasing of a basket down a river. Saying, God, I've done all that I can do. Now I trust you. And it's important to me to point something out here. And if I don't point this out, this could come across as like clumsy, ham-handed advice. Just trust God with your kids. Just trust God with the things in your life. Don't worry about it. Trust God. No, listen, she did everything that she could. She chose the perfect basket. She covered it with bitumen and pitch. She timed it out. She sent the lookout. She controlled everything that she could control. And so for your kids, because some of us are walking through some really serious things, and it would feel really clumsy to go, well, just trust God. We had a child this summer. It broke my heart to think about it. I think that they were four while they were walking through this. He choked on something really bad at dinner one night, really, really badly. Scared everybody in the family. Moms and nurse scared them to death. It traumatized him so badly that after that moment, he could no longer eat. He couldn't be convinced to put anything in his mouth and eat and swallow because he was scared of it. And they got treatment for it, and they did all the best things that they could. And eventually, eventually, he's able to start drinking smoothies, and then eventually, he was able to start eating things. And then, I was talking to his dad a couple of weeks ago. Then finally, they would give him something for dinner. And he was like, I can't eat that. I'm going to choke. And he's like, I saw you eat six chicken nuggets like an hour ago. So you're squared away, pal. Like then it became a thing where he was trying to get out of certain meals. But for a while, it was incredibly scary. And it would be super clumsy of me as a pastor to pick up the phone and call this couple and be like, I know that your child's having a hard time swallowing anything and is losing weight at a dangerous rate and is close to starving themselves, but just trust God with it. That's clumsy advice. Do everything that you can do. Get the best baskets. Get the best treatment. Call in the best experts. Go to the best practices. Get the best people associated with your children. Put in all the effort. Put in all the prayer. Rally all of your resources to do the best thing that you can do by your child. But be like Jacob and acknowledge that there's coming a moment where my efforts stop and God's actions begin. Do not hang on to that basket for too long. And do not trick yourself into believing that you can control the things that you can't control. So it's not just clumsy, trust God and everything will be okay. We don't just grab any old basket and throw the kid in the water anytime we want. Do everything that you can do, but acknowledge that there's coming a moment when you can't do anymore. And in that moment, choose to be like Jacob and trust God. And you know, I'm preaching about this, and sometimes I don't love to do parenting sermons because it doesn't hit everybody in the room. It hits a portion of the room. But I think that this one actually works for everyone because releasing things to God isn't just a practice for parenting. It's a necessary practice for all of life. This idea of preparing the horses for battle, but the victory is the Lord's. That's not just for raising children. That's for everything in life. Maybe you're in a marriage right now that has seen better years. Maybe it's getting really hard. And you want more than anything for this marriage to be fixed. You're not sure if your spouse is in it with you, but you want more than anything for this marriage to be fixed. This principle applies to that situation. Do everything that you can do. Get the best counseling that you can have. Have the hardest conversations that you need to have. Do the most introspection that you can do. Own the most in the relationship that you can own, but at the end of the day, you're going to have to admit that there comes an intersection with my efforts and God's actions, and you're going to have to trust that relationship to him. You're going to have to float that down the river and quit trying to control everything and trust that whatever needs to change in their heart, that God is going to change it if he's going to change it at all. With our careers, with what we want in life, with our goals, that interview that we really want to nail, the job that we really want to get, the account that we really want to close, the company that we really want to work for, the career that we really want to have, whatever it is that we're yearning and striving for, do all the work. Make the best possible basket, but at some point or another, trust that God cares about your career too and float it down the river and let him do with it what he's going to do. Those of us with aging parents, this is a hard reality. How do we take care of them? How do we do the right things? How do we know what to do? How do we know what to say? How do we know when to be forceful and when to back off and be respectful? How do we know when to take over? Do everything that you can do. Do everything that you know to do. But at some point or another, let go of the basket and let God take control of it. This applies, I think, to every area of life, to our finances, to our relationships, to everything that we do. Do everything that you can do. But just acknowledge, just know that at some point there's coming a time when your efforts will fall short and we will need God's actions to come in and trust those things to God. And if you're somebody who struggles with this, if you're anxious, just know that holding onto the basket too long could be the worst possible thing for it. If we go back to parenthood, think of the people that you know that have tried to control their child for too long and then release them into college and what happens? Because you couldn't release them sooner. Think about the people who probably should have put a little bit more bitumen on the basket. Maybe you should have picked a better basket. Maybe you should have been a little bit more thoughtful before you just slung that thing down the river. There's a downside to not doing everything that we can do. There's a downside to hanging on too long and to tricking ourselves into believing that we can continue to control things as we drown in the river ourselves and pull our basket of whatever's dear to us down with us. But I remember a couple years ago, I guess it was about 2018, we bought a house in April or in February of 2020. Praise God, because we couldn't buy a house right now. We started looking in 2018 for a house, and Jen was looking every day. I am convinced that between 2018 and 2020, there is no one who knew the North Raleigh real estate market better than Jen Rector. Not a soul on earth. I'm telling you, we'd be sitting there after dinner, and I'd be on my phone looking at Zillowow and I'd be like, oh, this house looks good. And she'd go, where is it? I'm like, it's over on like Diamond Hitch Trail. And she goes, oh, is that the green one or the brick one? I'm like, geez, the green one? She goes, yeah, it's got a great outdoor space, but I don't know about that kitchen. Okay, well, I guess we'll check that one off the list. Like she had this thing memorized, man. And we began to get concerned that we weren't going to be able to buy a house in North Raleigh because we really love this area. We really love North Raleigh. I didn't want to move to the outskirts. We really love it here. It was important to us to stay here. But it was really hard to find a house that we could afford and that we actually wanted. And we had a lot of conversations about, gosh, I'm not sure that this is gonna work out. Jen would be anxious that we're never gonna be able to buy a house or whatever. And one day it occurred to me and I just told her, I said, listen, I believe that God brought us to Raleigh. I believe that he actually cares about where we live. I believe that where we live matters to him and the community that he places us in matters to him. And because of that, we can trust him with this. Because we know that God cares about where we live, we can trust him with finding us a house. So we still did everything that we could do, but then one day he brought us a house that for us was perfect, is perfect. And I'm glad he did because no kidding around, if we would have waited another year to try to keep looking for this perfect house, I don't think that we could get into a house right now. And that's the encouragement that I would give you this morning. The thing that you're anxious about, the thing that you're trying to control, whether it's your kids or your career or your relationship or your finances or the things that you won't let go, that you're just latched onto this basket and you can't seem to release it to God or acknowledge that there's a place where your efforts need to stop and God's actions need to begin. If you're in that place, I would ask myself this question. Does God care about this? Does God care about this thing? If he does, then I can trust him with it. Does God care about this thing? If he does, I can trust him with it. Does God care about my kids? Absolutely he does, so I can trust him with them. Does God care about my marriage? Yes, deeply. It matters tremendously to him, so you can trust him with it. Does he care where you live? Yes. Does he care about your career? Yes. Does he care about your relationships? Yes. Does he care about your finances and your aging parents? Yes. He cares about all those things. So if God actually cares about this thing that matters so much to you, then I want you to know that you can trust him with that. His wisdom is greater than yours. His providence is better than yours. His strength is mightier than yours. His vision is further than yours. I think we have a lot to learn from the example of Jochebed. I don't know that this is the reason that she raised three incredible children, but I would be willing to bet that it's a big part of it. We all of us, especially those of us who are anxious, those of us who worry, those of us who stay up, worrying about all the different things that could possibly happen as we try to keep adding the perfect amount of bitumen and pitch and finding the perfect basket before we are willing to release it down the river to God. Let's acknowledge that this releasing, this principle of Jacobad, it really brings with it great peace. There is an incredible peace to watching something float away from you, knowing good and well, I've done all that I can. Have you done everything that you could? Yeah, I've done everything that I could. Now I'm giving it over to God. And what he does with it, I'm good with. There's an incredible peace to that. If we struggle with anxiety this morning, maybe what we need to do is finally release it and let the peace of God wash over us, knowing that if he cares about it, then he will take care of it. And in that way, I think we can all learn from the example of Jacob. Let me pray for us. Father, we love you this morning. We thank you for who you are and for what you do for us. Lord, I pray for the parents in the room. We struggle so mightily with relinquishing control of the children that you've given us. Would we acknowledge that we just simply can't control every detail? We're going to have to trust you in the conversations and in the spend the night parties and out on the road and at college and at school. We're going to have to trust that you care about those children too and that you will direct their paths. For those of us with other concerns, be it our finances or our careers or our relationships or our marriage, God, would we just be comforted by the fact that you care about those things too? Would we have the faith and the humility of Jochebed to do everything that we know to do, but at some point or another understand that our efforts are going to fall short and we need to entrust these things to your actions. Give us the strength and the peace to do that even today, Father. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.