Revelation

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am the pastor here. I know a lot of you guys are wondering, did Nate do that voiceover? Yeah, I did. I did, actually. I worked really hard on that and my accent. But I am so excited about this series, about the book of John, about spending. We're going to spend 13 weeks in the gospel of John, and I really couldn't be more elated to do it. And I will tell you a couple things. First off, the whole point of this morning, like Kyle alluded to in the announcements, is to get you excited about John, to help you understand why this is such a big deal, why this is such a big book, why it's important enough to stop and spend 13 weeks in. I really haven't been excited for a series, this excited for a series, in a really long time. Part of the reason I'm excited is because I feel like we've been waiting to do this as a church. I've been waiting to do this as your pastor. I told you guys last week, if you were here, that when I came in April of 2017, that I looked back through all of the series that had happened at the church to see where you guys had been and what you guys had been learning about to make sure that I wouldn't be repetitive moving forward and to see if there was any gaps that I felt like I needed to teach. And what I saw was that we spent a lot of time in the Gospels. The Gospels are the books of the Bible that tell the story of Jesus' life. It's the first four books in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And so you had spent a lot of time there, and you'd spend a lot of time in a book called Acts that kind of tells the story of the early church. It's a fun book. It's a storytelling book. It's the only one in the New Testament. And so it's a good book to be in. But I felt like there was so much more that we needed to study and know about the scripture. So we spent time in the Old Testament focusing on characters like David, and then the names of God, and then how the Old Testament points to Jesus. And so we've done that for a long time, and now it's time as a church to dive into Jesus, to dive into the story of his life, to acquaint ourselves corporately with our Savior, with someone who loves us and who died for us. And I'm really elated to do this. But I will also say this, and I'll remind you of this here at the end of the service. As I sat down to prep for the series and outline it, one of the things I realized is there is no way I can teach everything that I want to teach from the book of John. There is no way that I can do justice to the book of John. When I was growing up, my pastor, a guy named Buddy Hoffman, who I adore and respect immensely, he passed away a couple of years ago, but I consider myself lucky to grow up under his teaching. And my passion for scripture, I think, was ignited a lot by him. He spent four years going through the book of John, every Sunday morning and every Sunday night, until his elders finally sat him down and were like, dude, we need some Proverbs or something. You've got to switch it up. So if he could do that, I couldn't do four years, but I could do more than 13 weeks. I sat down to outline the series, and I just started by opening the Bible and just writing down everything that I saw. I was like, oh, I got to teach about that. Oh, yeah, that can be a sermon. Oh, yeah, they need to know about this. And I got through the first two chapters, and it was already like an 18-week series. So this really, if I'm being honest, isn't us going through the book of John. It's really Nate's 13 favorite things in the book of John. So to really get all of it, you're going to have to work along with us, okay? And we're going to get to that at the end. But I just want to say that as a preface to the series. As we preface the series this week and we launch into what does God say to us through this book, I want to answer some fundamental questions about why we're even doing this. I think one of the fundamental questions that we should answer is, why should we study a gospel? What is interesting to us about the gospels? Why were they written? Why did these books matter in some ways, in a different way than all the rest of Scripture? And so that's the first question we're going to answer. And I think John gives us that answer, at least the beginnings of an answer, in the 20th chapter of his book. The Gospel of John is 21 chapters long. And at the end of the second to last chapter, he throws in this statement, verse 31. And he says, I have written these things that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. So he says, I've written all of this down, my experiences with Jesus down for this reason, so that you, you being whoever reads this ever, may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. So he wrote this so that you believe that Jesus was who he says he was. He wants you, he wrote this down so that you would know that Jesus is real and Jesus was who he says he was. And I don't know if you ever thought about it this way, and this is why we need to study a gospel and why Jesus matters so much to us. Do you understand that Jesus is the hinge on which all of history swings? He's the fulcrum on which all of history rests, that he matters more. He stands alone in history as the single most influential figure to ever be on the planet. Do you understand that? Do you understand that all of history and all of faith really boils down to two questions? These are the only questions that matter. Was Jesus real, and was he telling us the truth? That's all that matters. Was Jesus real? Did a guy named Jesus of Nazareth actually walk the planet 2,000 years ago? And if he existed, was that guy telling us the truth about himself? Because what he claims is that he is the incarnate son of the creator God who came to reconcile our relationship back to that God and that all reconciliation that we know as salvation flows through him because of what he did while he was on this earth, because he died and resurrected and defeated death and sin, and we'll see that later. Because of all of that, we can have a faith that we place in God if he's real, because that's what he claimed. So we have to answer those two questions. Was Jesus real, and was he telling us the truth? And I would say to you this morning, if you were here and you're not a believer, if you were here and you wouldn't call yourself a Christian, maybe there's someone close to you who kind of encourages you to come to church and so you come to do the nice thing. First of all, good for you for doing the nice thing. But if you're considering faith, dipping your toe into the waters of faith, unsure about faith, I would tell you that the very first thing you need to figure out is the answer to those questions. When I do my research, when I look at history, based on all the evidence, did Jesus, did he really exist? And then, do I believe that he was telling us the truth? Because if the answers to those questions are no, I don't think he existed. I don't think he was telling us the truth. Then nothing else matters, right? Nothing else matters. The Old Testament doesn't matter. What we understand about God doesn't matter. Nothing else in all of Christendom and the way that we understand the world and our worldview and the way that we understand faith, none of that matters if Jesus wasn't real and he wasn't telling us the truth. But if he was real and he is telling us the truth, that changes everything. Because that man during his life is recorded as affirming the first 39 books of the Bible that we call the Old Testament, that he called the Talmud. He affirms those, the law and the prophets, as scripture, as God breathed. He had the same 39 books that we have today by the time he was on earth. They were assembled around 250 BC and the people in Jerusalem said, yep, this is the holy text. And so Jesus affirms the holy text. So if Jesus is real and he is who he says he was, then he said he himself believed that the Old Testament was God breathed and was the word of God. So we can believe it too. If he's real and he is who he says he was, then he actually died and he was actually resurrected and he actually went to heaven. And the church that he leaves us in Acts is actually true and that was really the kingdom that he came to start that goes through the rest of history. It's the kingdom that we sit in now. If Jesus is real, then all of history before him looked forward to anticipating a Messiah, and all of history after him looks back to him as the Messiah and looks forward to his return, if he's real. So Jesus really is the hinge of all of history. We have to figure out what we think of him. We have to understand whether or not we can believe him. I think those questions are the most fundamental and the most important questions for anyone to answer in their life. If you've never answered them for yourself, it is worth the effort to do it. I promise. Get those answers for yourself. Because in Jesus, what we see is these essential qualities that we absolutely have to have. They're revealed in the Gospels, and it's why we study the Gospels. What I want you guys to understand is Jesus is the divine exemplar. He is the divine exemplar of our faith. An exemplar is just a fancy word for the best possible perfect model. And we see both of these things in the gospel. If you really want a fancy theological term, it's called the hypostatic union, that he is 100% God and 100% man. And we will never really understand how that all works out. But both elements are necessary and both elements are displayed in Scripture. And we need him to be divine, because without his divinity, we do not have the faith that he gave us. Okay? Without his divinity, there is no faith. Right? We understand that? And then, if we don't get his example, if he doesn't live for 33 years, three of which are really highly recorded, if we don't see the gospel stories of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, then we never get his example, and we need his example because without it, we have no perfect model for the faith that he founded. He is the exemplar, and that's essential for us as well. Without Jesus, we get other pictures of the faith. We get Paul, who may have struggled with arrogance. We get Moses, who may have struggled with anger. We get Esther, who had her own struggles. We get Ruth, who had her own struggles. We get them throughout Scripture, but they're all imperfect models. Jesus is the perfect model of your faith. So because he is the hinge of history, because he's the most influential person to ever live, we should really, really, really want to know everything we can about him on a more personal level than that. Jesus is your Savior. If you're a believer, he's your Savior. He is the one person to whom everyone else looks. He is the one person on whom all of Scripture is focused, whether it's looking forward to him or looking back to him or anticipating him again. Understanding Jesus is fundamental to your faith. That's why the prayer of Paul for all of his churches is that you would know Jesus along with the saints in the breadth and the depth and the fullness of the knowledge of Christ. It's why he prays it over and over again, and he praises the churches throughout the ancient world for their knowledge of Jesus, because it all boils down to how well we know Jesus. Jesus says in John 15, and we're going to spend a whole week on this, that if we abide in him, that he will abide in us, and that we will bear much fruit. And all of life boils down to focusing on Jesus. The author of Hebrews tells us to run our race, to throw off the sin and the weight that entangles us. And how do we do that? By focusing our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. If you are a believer, there is no element of your faith that is more important or fundamental to you than understanding the person of Jesus and getting to know him in a very real way. And there is no better way to do that than the Gospels. If you are considering the faith, and you wouldn't say yet that you're a believer, the best thing to consider in the faith is who was the person of Jesus. It's essential to us that we study him and that we know him. I heard somebody say one time, a scholar once said, you couldn't possibly claim to be a Christian who knows Jesus if you don't read all four Gospels a minimum of once a year. I'm not espousing that as true. I would never say someone is not a Christian who doesn't know Jesus. That seems pretty inflammatory. But the attitude behind it is, if we believe, we have got to dig into these things and get to know the person of Christ. So, because we see that studying the gospel is so essential, something that we have to do, we should want to do, the question becomes, well, why John? There's four options there. They all do a great job of it. So why do we choose John? Why have I chosen John for us to go through? Well, I believe that John has a unique relationship with Jesus. He has a unique relationship with our Savior. And I think that because there's clues dropped all throughout his gospel that show us that this is true. First of all, one of the things I would point to is Jesus in his life had about 100 to 120 people kind of following him around wherever he went. Sometimes we don't know that or we forget about that. We think about the 12 disciples that were with him all the time, but really there was others around him, 100 to 120, that followed him all over the place. Actually, in Acts, when Judas has to get replaced, one of the requirements to be the replacement disciple, which ends up being a guy named Matthias, is he had to have been here from the very beginning. So there's people for all three years of his ministry that followed him around that were just never mentioned. Those are people of great faith. Then there was the 12 disciples, the 12 that he called, and we know the 12 disciples. But then there was an inner circle of three disciples, the only disciples that he gave nicknames to, Peter, James, and John. When Jesus met Peter, his name was Simon, but he renamed him Cephas or Cephas, which means rocky, which is translated Peter. So Jesus named some dude Rocky because he just kind of had an attitude that was like ready, fire, aim, right? And so Jesus was like, you're Rocky. Then he gives James and John the coolest nickname in all the Bible. They were brothers, and their dad was named Zebedee. And so they were called the sons of Zebedee, but his nickname for them was the sons of thunder. Come on, man. That's awesome. I want to be a son of thunder. I'm just Nate. That's lame. But they get the best nickname in the Bible. They're in the inner circle. They have access to Jesus that even the other disciples who see him every day do not have. Little things like, and it's not a little thing, it's actually a huge thing. And some of you know the story and some of you don't, and that's okay. But at the end of Jesus's life, he's about to be arrested and he goes to pray this incredible prayer in what's called the Garden of Gethsemane. And he leaves the disciples and he grabs three of them and he says, will you guys come pray with me? And John's one of those disciples. Throughout the entire crucifixion process, John is present there. He had access to Jesus that nobody else had. We'll see an intimate moment between he and Jesus at a meal here in a minute. John was so comfortable with Jesus that his mom felt total comfort in asking Jesus for special favors for her boy. They were walking into Jerusalem the last week of Jesus's life to begin Holy Week. In Christendom, we understand Holy Week kind of sets in motion the gears that bring about crucifixion and resurrection, and then we celebrate Easter. And so they're walking into the city. Jesus has been being welcomed as a king. One of the things you'll see in the gospel as we go through it is nobody, my contention is, nobody understood who Jesus was or what he came to do. Nobody really understood Jesus except for two people, Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist. I don't think anybody else got it until after he came back to life. They expect Jesus to walk into Jerusalem. All the prophecies are that he's going to be a king. So they expect him to walk into Jerusalem, sit on the throne of David, overthrow Roman rule, and make Israel awesome again and this world's superpower, and Jesus is going to be the king of the world. And so walking into Jerusalem, John's mom is behind Jesus tugging on his tunic going, hey, when you take over the planet, can John be like your vice president? Moms, man, forever. They're all the same. Moms are the best. That's why we have a day for you guys. Fathers have a day for you guys because we felt bad about dads, but moms, they deserve their day, right? Because they've always done that. That's how comfortable she was. She felt like she could ask for that from Jesus. John actually records that he was the first disciple to the tomb. After Jesus dies and is resurrected, John records that Mary Magdalene was the first one to the tomb, but then she goes back to the disciples and she goes, hey, there's nobody there. And so two of the disciples take off running, John and Peter, right? Two of the very close ones. And John makes sure to record in his gospel 60 years after it happened because he's a dude. We started running together, but after a while, the one that Jesus loved left behind Peter and got ahead of him. So he's like, hey, just so we know, for all of history, I won, all right? Like I got there first and had enough time to review the tomb and fold some stuff up before Peter ever gets there. He was the first one to the empty tomb. He was so close to Jesus that when Jesus was hanging on the cross and said very little because of the excruciating pain that it required to speak, he looked at John. And John was the lone disciple around. He looked at John, who was standing next to Mary, his mother. And he says, Mary, behold your son. John, behold your mother. And what he's saying is, John, take care of my mom for me. Especially in that society where old women had no way to make a wage and they were entirely reliant on their families to care for them, this was a huge responsibility. And he looks at John, of all the people that he's met in his life, of all the people that he knows, he looks at John and he says, take care of my mom. Makes him the executor of his will. Remarkably close. And then we have this moment in John chapter 13 that I think impacted John for the rest of his life. It gives us a picture of the relationship that Jesus had with him. In John chapter 13, what's happening is the disciples are reclining at the table. And when the Bible says reclining at the table, for us, it really just means like drooping in your seat, probably with your legs crossed and just kind of slouched down like you own the joint. Okay, that's what it looks like when I recline at the table. But when they reclined at the table, it literally meant that they were kind of laying down on their side with their elbow out and eating off the table like this, kind of in a pinwheel situation, like chest to back. Not totally spooning, but closer than you'd want to be, okay? And that's how they're reclining at the table. And in this meal, it's before Holy Week, before things are set in motion, he looks at the disciples and he says, one of you is going to betray me. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be a disciple in that moment. To go, what? Who? Who would betray you? But he says, one of you is going to betray me. And Peter, of course, because he's Peter, wants to know immediately. I love Peter so much. I relate to him so much. He wants to know immediately, but he knows he can't just brutishly ask in front of everyone. So he hits up John, like in elementary school. Hey, John, figure it out. He says, hey, John, ask Jesus who it is. Who's it going to be? Because he knows that John has Jesus' ear. It's a tip of the cap to the relationship that Peter knows they share. And John leans presumably back to Jesus. And he says, who's going to betray you? And Jesus says, it's the one that I give this morsel to. And he takes the bread and he dips it and he hands it to Judas. And John knows. And he's the only one that knows. Because Jesus trusted him with that secret. And then I'll say it now because we're not going to get to it later because there's just so much. But this incredible moment happens. He gives it to Judas. And when he gives it to Judas, it says that Satan swept into him. So now Jesus is eye to eye with Satan. And he looks at him and he says, what you're about to do, do it quickly. Incredibly intense sentence. And if we're reading too fast, we don't get it. What you're about to do, go and do it quickly. And then it says, and then it was night. And the whole tone of the book in Jesus' life changes. Because before then it had been light. It's an incredible moment there. And right after that moment, Jesus offers a profound teaching to only the disciples who remain, to only the faithful ones who will now carry his kingdom forward because Judas has been exposed and he's now gone. It says the disciples didn't know what he was talking about. They thought when he said, go and do it quickly, and they thought maybe he's going to get some money for a meal or something like that. They didn't know, but John knew. And so John was really paying attention to what happened. And then Jesus gives them, the faithful disciples, this teaching. And he says to them in John 13, and you can just listen. He says, little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me. And just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, where I'm going, you cannot come because he's going to death. They don't understand this yet, but that's what he's telling them. He says this, It's the whole commandment. It's the new commandment. It even supersedes the commandment to love God and to love others. It's the new one. Love one another. Love, love, love. It's the final commandment that Jesus gives. It's the only new commandment that he gives. And it touched John so much that at the end of his life when he was writing the other epistles, John, first, second, and third John that we have at the end of the New Testament, you know that 1st John, if you open it up and you read it, it is a commentary on these two verses, on that one teaching, love one another. That is how the world will know that you are my disciples, love one another. If you go in your Bible and you open up 1st John, it is a commentary, it is an exposition of what Jesus teaches right here that stuck with him so profoundly that he writes about it as an old man wanting everybody to understand what Jesus was teaching in that moment that mattered so much to him. If you open up 1 John and you read it, what does it say over and over again? If you say that you love Jesus but you hate your brother, then you are a liar and the truth is not in you. If you do love Jesus, then you will love your brother. And if you love your brother, then you must love Jesus. It's an entire exposition on this moment. And then there's this other moment that I really love in Revelation. John goes on from here. He goes on. He takes care of Jesus' mom. And all the disciples we see in Acts, a lot stay central to Jerusalem. Some disperse and begin to preach the gospel in other places. But John, we learn, is the only disciple that did not die a martyr's death. All the other disciples were put to death for their faith. But John was allowed by God to live for many, many years into maybe his 70s or 80s. A lot of people believe that John was maybe the youngest disciple. Some put him as young as potentially 10 years old when Jesus called him. A lot of scholars believe that the disciples were high school boys and college freshmen when Jesus called them. Can you imagine that? Leaving the keys of the kingdom to them? Yikes. I don't know that that's true, but a lot of scholars believe that that's true. And that means that John has a lot of time between when Jesus passes to remember back. And he's got a lot of years of ministry and a lot of preaching and a lot of writing and a lot of influencing. And he discipled early church leaders like Polycarp and set in motion the vehicle of the church. He was like the first real church father. And at the end of his life, he's on exile. He's in exile on the island of Patmos, somewhere around 93 AD, 60 years now after Jesus has passed. And all of these years, he's preached about his Jesus. He's taught other people about his Jesus. He's taught them about his best friend and his hero and this man that he loved so much that he has devoted his entire life for. And now he's in exile, remembering and writing and looking forward to when he finally gets to meet his Savior again. And the Holy Spirit comes to him in this season and sweeps him up and takes him to heaven. And he says, here, I want you to write down the things that you see. And that book becomes Revelation. And at the beginning of Revelation, we have this incredible glimpse of the relationship between John and Jesus, where they are reunited. And I'm going to read. You don't have to turn there. You can just listen. John is in heaven, and he's seeing all of these visions. And then he sees this man that scares the fire out of him. And this like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like flames of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze refined in a furnace. And his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars. From his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword. And his face was like the sun, shining in full strength. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. He didn't know yet that it was Jesus. And he falls on his feet, terrified, because he's never seen the heavenly reunited with his Jesus. He knows that it's Jesus' hand on his shoulder and that it's Jesus' voice speaking to him. And the one that he had lived his life in memory of and devoted to and longed to be reunited with was there, and he finally meets him in his heavenly form. And it's this man, with those unique perspectives, that writes us the gospel of John. We study John because it gives us a unique perspective of Jesus. How could it not? You know, in John's gospel, he never refers to himself as John. He refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. And some scholars argue that this is evidence that he didn't actually write the book himself, that somebody wrote it for him, because what an arrogant thing to call yourself the disciple whom Jesus loved. But man, as I read that and I think about the relationship that John had with Jesus, I don't think it's an arrogant thing at all. I think that John, in his old age, he's 50 or 60 years removed from Jesus. He's in his 70s. He's in the twilight of his life, particularly with life expectancy back then. He was an old man reflecting back on his early years. And as he wrote this, he refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. And I think that he uses that not because he was proud of himself or somehow arrogant. I think he was astounded that he was the one that Jesus chose to love and reveal himself to in that way. I think as he thought back that he was touched and humbled, I can't believe that Jesus trusted me with the secret of Judas. I think he was touched and humbled. I can't believe that my Savior, that my hero asked me to care for his mom. I can't believe that he swept me up and spoke to me in Revelation. I can't believe that all the other disciples have passed, and for some reason he's allowed me to shepherd the early church, his kingdom, his building into the next age of leaders. I can't believe that my life has included these amazing privileges. I cannot believe I'm the disciple that Jesus has chosen to love. And so he calls himself that. And that's the man that offers us a perspective of his Jesus. By the time he wrote this, all the other gospels had been written, and they had begun to circulate in the churches. So we have every reason to believe that John had actually read the accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And those are called synoptic gospels, and they're different than John's gospel. They're synoptic because they tell the same story with the same chronology from beginning to end. And so what John is able to do is read those and go, okay, here's what you need to know about my Jesus. Here's what you need to know about my best friend. He is a man in his old age who loves Jesus, who knows him maybe better than anyone has ever known him, writing down a book that you may believe that Jesus was who he says he was, telling you, you know what? If you want to know Jesus, then here's what you really need to know. Look at these things. That's why his book is unique. That's why the other books include parables, pithy sayings that are memorable teachings of Jesus, and John doesn't include any of those. In John, we get these big sweeping monologues. We get these real long teachings from Jesus. In the other books, we have the long teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, but John doesn't share the Sermon on the Mount because it's already been taken care of. Instead, he shares with you these big, long conversations like the one that he has with Nicodemus in chapter 3, the Pharisee that comes to see him at night because he's ashamed and embarrassed that he might actually believe in this Jesus guy. So Jesus has a conversation with him that John records. We get stories that we don't get in the other Gospels, like when Jesus' closest friend in the world, Lazarus, dies and Jesus goes to raise him from the dead and comfort his sisters in the city of Bethany. And we get this verse, John 11, 35, the shortest one in the Bible that says, Jesus wept, that answers for us for all time. How does Jesus respond in our tragedy? Well, he comes and he weeps with us. We know that because John tells us so. We get in John these I am statements. There's no parables there, and there's not as much figurative language, but he says, I am again and again. I am the bread of life. I am the living water. I am the good shepherd. Over and over again, we see these things. We get the miracle at Cana, where Jesus' first public miracle is to keep the party going. You guys do with that whatever you want to, but it's in there. We get one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, John 17. It's called the High Priestly Prayer. Right before Jesus dies, he prays for them, and he prays for the church. And get this, 2,000 years ago, he prayed for you. And it's recorded in John 17. We have all these things in his gospel that we don't get in the others. And the others are not unimportant. They're incredibly important. And we can't get a holistic picture of Jesus outside of those gospels. But John is an old man in his old age reflecting back on the person that he's loved the most in his entire life saying, here's what you need to know about my Jesus. Here's what you need to know about my friend and my hero. Unique and it stands alone. And it's an amazing book. And it's worthy of our consideration. And like I said, the whole point of this morning is to get you to a place where you go, I want to know what John says about Jesus. Wherever you are, if you're dipping your toes in the water of faith, start with John and see what he says about the person you're considering. If you call yourself a Christian, then read John and look at what he says about his Savior that you love so much and learn about him. And like I said at the beginning, this is not a series working through John. I'm going to skip around and share stories and it's going to be good. I really, really hope. But if you want to get the most you can out of this series and you have got to do the work on your own on a daily basis. So I made a reading plan for us for John. There's one, they're in the lobby, they're on the information table. The one thing I want you to do from this sermon is leave and grab one of those. There's gonna be one online, they're gonna be in a couple of different places. I've even, I want you so badly to read the book of John with us that uniquely I've included a catch-up day, okay? Every Saturday it just says, catch up, man. I know you missed one, I did too. Let's catch up. Do it. Use the YouVersion app. If you don't know what that is, Google it. Use that app, and you can listen to it in your car, okay? If reading is hard for you or you're lazy like me, just listen to it in your car, man. Listen to it on your jog. But it's two chapters a week. It's easy. The whole goal for you leaving today is to be excited enough about the book of John and what God's servant John has to say about his Jesus that you're willing to dig into it on your own. And then together as a church, we're going to learn more about who our Jesus is. And my prayer for you is that you will know him, Jesus, more deeply and more intimately than you ever have by the time we get on the other side of Easter this year. I hope that you'll do that with us. Let me pray, and then we're going to take communion together. Father, we love you. We are so grateful. We're so grateful for the book of John. I thank you for inspiring him to write down what he did. Thank you for giving him the perspective that would allow him to remember the things that he remembered. God, thank you even for preserving it through all of history, through the years and through the wars and through all of the torrent of the times, God, that you brought this book down to us. Thank you for the diligent scribes that recorded it, that protected it, that gave their lives for it, that we might learn from it. God, I pray that you would reveal yourself to us in this book in incredible ways, that we would see the tenderness of your son, that we would see your heart revealed as it's poured out in the form of him, that we would come to value the spirit that he's left us behind, and more than anything, that we would come to know you in an intimate way through this series and through this study. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. In just a minute, we're going to take communion together, but as we do, this is probably the appropriate place to acknowledge that earlier this week, a young boy, 17-year-old, named Leighton Holidayiday passed away overnight in the early mornings of Wednesday. A lot of us know the family and know his dad, Craig Holliday, was the founding pastor of Grace. And so the community grieves, and Grace in particular grieves with the holidays with Craig and Rhett and his brother Cody. And so this afternoon there's going to be a funeral at NRCA at 3 o'clock. Everyone's invited, and the family would appreciate your attendance and your prayers and your support. And I mention it now because we're about to do communion, and today is a tragic day. It's been a tragic week. One of the most sad things in life is to bury a child. And so today, there's nothing that makes today not sad. But here's the thing. Because of communion, because of what it represents, today isn't just sad. It is tragic. But because of Jesus, it's not just tragic. Because Jesus defeated death and holds the keys to hell and Hades, this day is not just tragic. It can also be hopeful. And that's an amazing thing. So when we take communion today, we remember the death of Christ that united us with our creator. But what we also remember is that this was the moment that Jesus defeated death and took the sting out of days like today and made them not just tragic, but also made them hopeful, which is a remarkable thing. As the disciples were reclined around the table the night that Jesus was arrested, he took the bread and he broke it and he says, this is my body that was broken for you. Every time you eat of this, do it in remembrance of me. And then he took the wine and he poured it out and he says, this is my blood that was poured out for you. Every time you drink it, do it in remembrance of me. So I'm going to pray and we're going to take communion. And as we do, as we always do, we reflect on how grateful we are that Jesus, through this breaking of his body and through the spilling of his blood, reunites us with him. But today we also are grateful for the fact that through this act he defeated death and Hades and that days like today aren't just tragic. They can be hopeful too. Let's pray. Father, we love you so much. We thank you for your son. We thank you for sacrificing him for us. We thank you that he rose again and defeated death and hell. We thank you that he has taken the sting out of sin and says to death, where are your shackles? That it has been defeated. God, we are so grateful that you've saved us from ourselves, from our own foolishness at times, that from our own choices, God, you reunite us with you and we are so grateful for that. God, we are also grateful that you take the sting out of tragedy and that you promise a future that is delivered by Jesus. Thank you for communion and everything that it means. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am the pastor here. I know a lot of you guys are wondering, did Nate do that voiceover? Yeah, I did. I did, actually. I worked really hard on that and my accent. But I am so excited about this series, about the book of John, about spending. We're going to spend 13 weeks in the gospel of John, and I really couldn't be more elated to do it. And I will tell you a couple things. First off, the whole point of this morning, like Kyle alluded to in the announcements, is to get you excited about John, to help you understand why this is such a big deal, why this is such a big book, why it's important enough to stop and spend 13 weeks in. I really haven't been excited for a series, this excited for a series, in a really long time. Part of the reason I'm excited is because I feel like we've been waiting to do this as a church. I've been waiting to do this as your pastor. I told you guys last week, if you were here, that when I came in April of 2017, that I looked back through all of the series that had happened at the church to see where you guys had been and what you guys had been learning about to make sure that I wouldn't be repetitive moving forward and to see if there was any gaps that I felt like I needed to teach. And what I saw was that we spent a lot of time in the Gospels. The Gospels are the books of the Bible that tell the story of Jesus' life. It's the first four books in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And so you had spent a lot of time there, and you'd spend a lot of time in a book called Acts that kind of tells the story of the early church. It's a fun book. It's a storytelling book. It's the only one in the New Testament. And so it's a good book to be in. But I felt like there was so much more that we needed to study and know about the scripture. So we spent time in the Old Testament focusing on characters like David, and then the names of God, and then how the Old Testament points to Jesus. And so we've done that for a long time, and now it's time as a church to dive into Jesus, to dive into the story of his life, to acquaint ourselves corporately with our Savior, with someone who loves us and who died for us. And I'm really elated to do this. But I will also say this, and I'll remind you of this here at the end of the service. As I sat down to prep for the series and outline it, one of the things I realized is there is no way I can teach everything that I want to teach from the book of John. There is no way that I can do justice to the book of John. When I was growing up, my pastor, a guy named Buddy Hoffman, who I adore and respect immensely, he passed away a couple of years ago, but I consider myself lucky to grow up under his teaching. And my passion for scripture, I think, was ignited a lot by him. He spent four years going through the book of John, every Sunday morning and every Sunday night, until his elders finally sat him down and were like, dude, we need some Proverbs or something. You've got to switch it up. So if he could do that, I couldn't do four years, but I could do more than 13 weeks. I sat down to outline the series, and I just started by opening the Bible and just writing down everything that I saw. I was like, oh, I got to teach about that. Oh, yeah, that can be a sermon. Oh, yeah, they need to know about this. And I got through the first two chapters, and it was already like an 18-week series. So this really, if I'm being honest, isn't us going through the book of John. It's really Nate's 13 favorite things in the book of John. So to really get all of it, you're going to have to work along with us, okay? And we're going to get to that at the end. But I just want to say that as a preface to the series. As we preface the series this week and we launch into what does God say to us through this book, I want to answer some fundamental questions about why we're even doing this. I think one of the fundamental questions that we should answer is, why should we study a gospel? What is interesting to us about the gospels? Why were they written? Why did these books matter in some ways, in a different way than all the rest of Scripture? And so that's the first question we're going to answer. And I think John gives us that answer, at least the beginnings of an answer, in the 20th chapter of his book. The Gospel of John is 21 chapters long. And at the end of the second to last chapter, he throws in this statement, verse 31. And he says, I have written these things that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. So he says, I've written all of this down, my experiences with Jesus down for this reason, so that you, you being whoever reads this ever, may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. So he wrote this so that you believe that Jesus was who he says he was. He wants you, he wrote this down so that you would know that Jesus is real and Jesus was who he says he was. And I don't know if you ever thought about it this way, and this is why we need to study a gospel and why Jesus matters so much to us. Do you understand that Jesus is the hinge on which all of history swings? He's the fulcrum on which all of history rests, that he matters more. He stands alone in history as the single most influential figure to ever be on the planet. Do you understand that? Do you understand that all of history and all of faith really boils down to two questions? These are the only questions that matter. Was Jesus real, and was he telling us the truth? That's all that matters. Was Jesus real? Did a guy named Jesus of Nazareth actually walk the planet 2,000 years ago? And if he existed, was that guy telling us the truth about himself? Because what he claims is that he is the incarnate son of the creator God who came to reconcile our relationship back to that God and that all reconciliation that we know as salvation flows through him because of what he did while he was on this earth, because he died and resurrected and defeated death and sin, and we'll see that later. Because of all of that, we can have a faith that we place in God if he's real, because that's what he claimed. So we have to answer those two questions. Was Jesus real, and was he telling us the truth? And I would say to you this morning, if you were here and you're not a believer, if you were here and you wouldn't call yourself a Christian, maybe there's someone close to you who kind of encourages you to come to church and so you come to do the nice thing. First of all, good for you for doing the nice thing. But if you're considering faith, dipping your toe into the waters of faith, unsure about faith, I would tell you that the very first thing you need to figure out is the answer to those questions. When I do my research, when I look at history, based on all the evidence, did Jesus, did he really exist? And then, do I believe that he was telling us the truth? Because if the answers to those questions are no, I don't think he existed. I don't think he was telling us the truth. Then nothing else matters, right? Nothing else matters. The Old Testament doesn't matter. What we understand about God doesn't matter. Nothing else in all of Christendom and the way that we understand the world and our worldview and the way that we understand faith, none of that matters if Jesus wasn't real and he wasn't telling us the truth. But if he was real and he is telling us the truth, that changes everything. Because that man during his life is recorded as affirming the first 39 books of the Bible that we call the Old Testament, that he called the Talmud. He affirms those, the law and the prophets, as scripture, as God breathed. He had the same 39 books that we have today by the time he was on earth. They were assembled around 250 BC and the people in Jerusalem said, yep, this is the holy text. And so Jesus affirms the holy text. So if Jesus is real and he is who he says he was, then he said he himself believed that the Old Testament was God breathed and was the word of God. So we can believe it too. If he's real and he is who he says he was, then he actually died and he was actually resurrected and he actually went to heaven. And the church that he leaves us in Acts is actually true and that was really the kingdom that he came to start that goes through the rest of history. It's the kingdom that we sit in now. If Jesus is real, then all of history before him looked forward to anticipating a Messiah, and all of history after him looks back to him as the Messiah and looks forward to his return, if he's real. So Jesus really is the hinge of all of history. We have to figure out what we think of him. We have to understand whether or not we can believe him. I think those questions are the most fundamental and the most important questions for anyone to answer in their life. If you've never answered them for yourself, it is worth the effort to do it. I promise. Get those answers for yourself. Because in Jesus, what we see is these essential qualities that we absolutely have to have. They're revealed in the Gospels, and it's why we study the Gospels. What I want you guys to understand is Jesus is the divine exemplar. He is the divine exemplar of our faith. An exemplar is just a fancy word for the best possible perfect model. And we see both of these things in the gospel. If you really want a fancy theological term, it's called the hypostatic union, that he is 100% God and 100% man. And we will never really understand how that all works out. But both elements are necessary and both elements are displayed in Scripture. And we need him to be divine, because without his divinity, we do not have the faith that he gave us. Okay? Without his divinity, there is no faith. Right? We understand that? And then, if we don't get his example, if he doesn't live for 33 years, three of which are really highly recorded, if we don't see the gospel stories of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, then we never get his example, and we need his example because without it, we have no perfect model for the faith that he founded. He is the exemplar, and that's essential for us as well. Without Jesus, we get other pictures of the faith. We get Paul, who may have struggled with arrogance. We get Moses, who may have struggled with anger. We get Esther, who had her own struggles. We get Ruth, who had her own struggles. We get them throughout Scripture, but they're all imperfect models. Jesus is the perfect model of your faith. So because he is the hinge of history, because he's the most influential person to ever live, we should really, really, really want to know everything we can about him on a more personal level than that. Jesus is your Savior. If you're a believer, he's your Savior. He is the one person to whom everyone else looks. He is the one person on whom all of Scripture is focused, whether it's looking forward to him or looking back to him or anticipating him again. Understanding Jesus is fundamental to your faith. That's why the prayer of Paul for all of his churches is that you would know Jesus along with the saints in the breadth and the depth and the fullness of the knowledge of Christ. It's why he prays it over and over again, and he praises the churches throughout the ancient world for their knowledge of Jesus, because it all boils down to how well we know Jesus. Jesus says in John 15, and we're going to spend a whole week on this, that if we abide in him, that he will abide in us, and that we will bear much fruit. And all of life boils down to focusing on Jesus. The author of Hebrews tells us to run our race, to throw off the sin and the weight that entangles us. And how do we do that? By focusing our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. If you are a believer, there is no element of your faith that is more important or fundamental to you than understanding the person of Jesus and getting to know him in a very real way. And there is no better way to do that than the Gospels. If you are considering the faith, and you wouldn't say yet that you're a believer, the best thing to consider in the faith is who was the person of Jesus. It's essential to us that we study him and that we know him. I heard somebody say one time, a scholar once said, you couldn't possibly claim to be a Christian who knows Jesus if you don't read all four Gospels a minimum of once a year. I'm not espousing that as true. I would never say someone is not a Christian who doesn't know Jesus. That seems pretty inflammatory. But the attitude behind it is, if we believe, we have got to dig into these things and get to know the person of Christ. So, because we see that studying the gospel is so essential, something that we have to do, we should want to do, the question becomes, well, why John? There's four options there. They all do a great job of it. So why do we choose John? Why have I chosen John for us to go through? Well, I believe that John has a unique relationship with Jesus. He has a unique relationship with our Savior. And I think that because there's clues dropped all throughout his gospel that show us that this is true. First of all, one of the things I would point to is Jesus in his life had about 100 to 120 people kind of following him around wherever he went. Sometimes we don't know that or we forget about that. We think about the 12 disciples that were with him all the time, but really there was others around him, 100 to 120, that followed him all over the place. Actually, in Acts, when Judas has to get replaced, one of the requirements to be the replacement disciple, which ends up being a guy named Matthias, is he had to have been here from the very beginning. So there's people for all three years of his ministry that followed him around that were just never mentioned. Those are people of great faith. Then there was the 12 disciples, the 12 that he called, and we know the 12 disciples. But then there was an inner circle of three disciples, the only disciples that he gave nicknames to, Peter, James, and John. When Jesus met Peter, his name was Simon, but he renamed him Cephas or Cephas, which means rocky, which is translated Peter. So Jesus named some dude Rocky because he just kind of had an attitude that was like ready, fire, aim, right? And so Jesus was like, you're Rocky. Then he gives James and John the coolest nickname in all the Bible. They were brothers, and their dad was named Zebedee. And so they were called the sons of Zebedee, but his nickname for them was the sons of thunder. Come on, man. That's awesome. I want to be a son of thunder. I'm just Nate. That's lame. But they get the best nickname in the Bible. They're in the inner circle. They have access to Jesus that even the other disciples who see him every day do not have. Little things like, and it's not a little thing, it's actually a huge thing. And some of you know the story and some of you don't, and that's okay. But at the end of Jesus's life, he's about to be arrested and he goes to pray this incredible prayer in what's called the Garden of Gethsemane. And he leaves the disciples and he grabs three of them and he says, will you guys come pray with me? And John's one of those disciples. Throughout the entire crucifixion process, John is present there. He had access to Jesus that nobody else had. We'll see an intimate moment between he and Jesus at a meal here in a minute. John was so comfortable with Jesus that his mom felt total comfort in asking Jesus for special favors for her boy. They were walking into Jerusalem the last week of Jesus's life to begin Holy Week. In Christendom, we understand Holy Week kind of sets in motion the gears that bring about crucifixion and resurrection, and then we celebrate Easter. And so they're walking into the city. Jesus has been being welcomed as a king. One of the things you'll see in the gospel as we go through it is nobody, my contention is, nobody understood who Jesus was or what he came to do. Nobody really understood Jesus except for two people, Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist. I don't think anybody else got it until after he came back to life. They expect Jesus to walk into Jerusalem. All the prophecies are that he's going to be a king. So they expect him to walk into Jerusalem, sit on the throne of David, overthrow Roman rule, and make Israel awesome again and this world's superpower, and Jesus is going to be the king of the world. And so walking into Jerusalem, John's mom is behind Jesus tugging on his tunic going, hey, when you take over the planet, can John be like your vice president? Moms, man, forever. They're all the same. Moms are the best. That's why we have a day for you guys. Fathers have a day for you guys because we felt bad about dads, but moms, they deserve their day, right? Because they've always done that. That's how comfortable she was. She felt like she could ask for that from Jesus. John actually records that he was the first disciple to the tomb. After Jesus dies and is resurrected, John records that Mary Magdalene was the first one to the tomb, but then she goes back to the disciples and she goes, hey, there's nobody there. And so two of the disciples take off running, John and Peter, right? Two of the very close ones. And John makes sure to record in his gospel 60 years after it happened because he's a dude. We started running together, but after a while, the one that Jesus loved left behind Peter and got ahead of him. So he's like, hey, just so we know, for all of history, I won, all right? Like I got there first and had enough time to review the tomb and fold some stuff up before Peter ever gets there. He was the first one to the empty tomb. He was so close to Jesus that when Jesus was hanging on the cross and said very little because of the excruciating pain that it required to speak, he looked at John. And John was the lone disciple around. He looked at John, who was standing next to Mary, his mother. And he says, Mary, behold your son. John, behold your mother. And what he's saying is, John, take care of my mom for me. Especially in that society where old women had no way to make a wage and they were entirely reliant on their families to care for them, this was a huge responsibility. And he looks at John, of all the people that he's met in his life, of all the people that he knows, he looks at John and he says, take care of my mom. Makes him the executor of his will. Remarkably close. And then we have this moment in John chapter 13 that I think impacted John for the rest of his life. It gives us a picture of the relationship that Jesus had with him. In John chapter 13, what's happening is the disciples are reclining at the table. And when the Bible says reclining at the table, for us, it really just means like drooping in your seat, probably with your legs crossed and just kind of slouched down like you own the joint. Okay, that's what it looks like when I recline at the table. But when they reclined at the table, it literally meant that they were kind of laying down on their side with their elbow out and eating off the table like this, kind of in a pinwheel situation, like chest to back. Not totally spooning, but closer than you'd want to be, okay? And that's how they're reclining at the table. And in this meal, it's before Holy Week, before things are set in motion, he looks at the disciples and he says, one of you is going to betray me. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be a disciple in that moment. To go, what? Who? Who would betray you? But he says, one of you is going to betray me. And Peter, of course, because he's Peter, wants to know immediately. I love Peter so much. I relate to him so much. He wants to know immediately, but he knows he can't just brutishly ask in front of everyone. So he hits up John, like in elementary school. Hey, John, figure it out. He says, hey, John, ask Jesus who it is. Who's it going to be? Because he knows that John has Jesus' ear. It's a tip of the cap to the relationship that Peter knows they share. And John leans presumably back to Jesus. And he says, who's going to betray you? And Jesus says, it's the one that I give this morsel to. And he takes the bread and he dips it and he hands it to Judas. And John knows. And he's the only one that knows. Because Jesus trusted him with that secret. And then I'll say it now because we're not going to get to it later because there's just so much. But this incredible moment happens. He gives it to Judas. And when he gives it to Judas, it says that Satan swept into him. So now Jesus is eye to eye with Satan. And he looks at him and he says, what you're about to do, do it quickly. Incredibly intense sentence. And if we're reading too fast, we don't get it. What you're about to do, go and do it quickly. And then it says, and then it was night. And the whole tone of the book in Jesus' life changes. Because before then it had been light. It's an incredible moment there. And right after that moment, Jesus offers a profound teaching to only the disciples who remain, to only the faithful ones who will now carry his kingdom forward because Judas has been exposed and he's now gone. It says the disciples didn't know what he was talking about. They thought when he said, go and do it quickly, and they thought maybe he's going to get some money for a meal or something like that. They didn't know, but John knew. And so John was really paying attention to what happened. And then Jesus gives them, the faithful disciples, this teaching. And he says to them in John 13, and you can just listen. He says, little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me. And just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, where I'm going, you cannot come because he's going to death. They don't understand this yet, but that's what he's telling them. He says this, It's the whole commandment. It's the new commandment. It even supersedes the commandment to love God and to love others. It's the new one. Love one another. Love, love, love. It's the final commandment that Jesus gives. It's the only new commandment that he gives. And it touched John so much that at the end of his life when he was writing the other epistles, John, first, second, and third John that we have at the end of the New Testament, you know that 1st John, if you open it up and you read it, it is a commentary on these two verses, on that one teaching, love one another. That is how the world will know that you are my disciples, love one another. If you go in your Bible and you open up 1st John, it is a commentary, it is an exposition of what Jesus teaches right here that stuck with him so profoundly that he writes about it as an old man wanting everybody to understand what Jesus was teaching in that moment that mattered so much to him. If you open up 1 John and you read it, what does it say over and over again? If you say that you love Jesus but you hate your brother, then you are a liar and the truth is not in you. If you do love Jesus, then you will love your brother. And if you love your brother, then you must love Jesus. It's an entire exposition on this moment. And then there's this other moment that I really love in Revelation. John goes on from here. He goes on. He takes care of Jesus' mom. And all the disciples we see in Acts, a lot stay central to Jerusalem. Some disperse and begin to preach the gospel in other places. But John, we learn, is the only disciple that did not die a martyr's death. All the other disciples were put to death for their faith. But John was allowed by God to live for many, many years into maybe his 70s or 80s. A lot of people believe that John was maybe the youngest disciple. Some put him as young as potentially 10 years old when Jesus called him. A lot of scholars believe that the disciples were high school boys and college freshmen when Jesus called them. Can you imagine that? Leaving the keys of the kingdom to them? Yikes. I don't know that that's true, but a lot of scholars believe that that's true. And that means that John has a lot of time between when Jesus passes to remember back. And he's got a lot of years of ministry and a lot of preaching and a lot of writing and a lot of influencing. And he discipled early church leaders like Polycarp and set in motion the vehicle of the church. He was like the first real church father. And at the end of his life, he's on exile. He's in exile on the island of Patmos, somewhere around 93 AD, 60 years now after Jesus has passed. And all of these years, he's preached about his Jesus. He's taught other people about his Jesus. He's taught them about his best friend and his hero and this man that he loved so much that he has devoted his entire life for. And now he's in exile, remembering and writing and looking forward to when he finally gets to meet his Savior again. And the Holy Spirit comes to him in this season and sweeps him up and takes him to heaven. And he says, here, I want you to write down the things that you see. And that book becomes Revelation. And at the beginning of Revelation, we have this incredible glimpse of the relationship between John and Jesus, where they are reunited. And I'm going to read. You don't have to turn there. You can just listen. John is in heaven, and he's seeing all of these visions. And then he sees this man that scares the fire out of him. And this like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like flames of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze refined in a furnace. And his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars. From his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword. And his face was like the sun, shining in full strength. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. He didn't know yet that it was Jesus. And he falls on his feet, terrified, because he's never seen the heavenly reunited with his Jesus. He knows that it's Jesus' hand on his shoulder and that it's Jesus' voice speaking to him. And the one that he had lived his life in memory of and devoted to and longed to be reunited with was there, and he finally meets him in his heavenly form. And it's this man, with those unique perspectives, that writes us the gospel of John. We study John because it gives us a unique perspective of Jesus. How could it not? You know, in John's gospel, he never refers to himself as John. He refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. And some scholars argue that this is evidence that he didn't actually write the book himself, that somebody wrote it for him, because what an arrogant thing to call yourself the disciple whom Jesus loved. But man, as I read that and I think about the relationship that John had with Jesus, I don't think it's an arrogant thing at all. I think that John, in his old age, he's 50 or 60 years removed from Jesus. He's in his 70s. He's in the twilight of his life, particularly with life expectancy back then. He was an old man reflecting back on his early years. And as he wrote this, he refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. And I think that he uses that not because he was proud of himself or somehow arrogant. I think he was astounded that he was the one that Jesus chose to love and reveal himself to in that way. I think as he thought back that he was touched and humbled, I can't believe that Jesus trusted me with the secret of Judas. I think he was touched and humbled. I can't believe that my Savior, that my hero asked me to care for his mom. I can't believe that he swept me up and spoke to me in Revelation. I can't believe that all the other disciples have passed, and for some reason he's allowed me to shepherd the early church, his kingdom, his building into the next age of leaders. I can't believe that my life has included these amazing privileges. I cannot believe I'm the disciple that Jesus has chosen to love. And so he calls himself that. And that's the man that offers us a perspective of his Jesus. By the time he wrote this, all the other gospels had been written, and they had begun to circulate in the churches. So we have every reason to believe that John had actually read the accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And those are called synoptic gospels, and they're different than John's gospel. They're synoptic because they tell the same story with the same chronology from beginning to end. And so what John is able to do is read those and go, okay, here's what you need to know about my Jesus. Here's what you need to know about my best friend. He is a man in his old age who loves Jesus, who knows him maybe better than anyone has ever known him, writing down a book that you may believe that Jesus was who he says he was, telling you, you know what? If you want to know Jesus, then here's what you really need to know. Look at these things. That's why his book is unique. That's why the other books include parables, pithy sayings that are memorable teachings of Jesus, and John doesn't include any of those. In John, we get these big sweeping monologues. We get these real long teachings from Jesus. In the other books, we have the long teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, but John doesn't share the Sermon on the Mount because it's already been taken care of. Instead, he shares with you these big, long conversations like the one that he has with Nicodemus in chapter 3, the Pharisee that comes to see him at night because he's ashamed and embarrassed that he might actually believe in this Jesus guy. So Jesus has a conversation with him that John records. We get stories that we don't get in the other Gospels, like when Jesus' closest friend in the world, Lazarus, dies and Jesus goes to raise him from the dead and comfort his sisters in the city of Bethany. And we get this verse, John 11, 35, the shortest one in the Bible that says, Jesus wept, that answers for us for all time. How does Jesus respond in our tragedy? Well, he comes and he weeps with us. We know that because John tells us so. We get in John these I am statements. There's no parables there, and there's not as much figurative language, but he says, I am again and again. I am the bread of life. I am the living water. I am the good shepherd. Over and over again, we see these things. We get the miracle at Cana, where Jesus' first public miracle is to keep the party going. You guys do with that whatever you want to, but it's in there. We get one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, John 17. It's called the High Priestly Prayer. Right before Jesus dies, he prays for them, and he prays for the church. And get this, 2,000 years ago, he prayed for you. And it's recorded in John 17. We have all these things in his gospel that we don't get in the others. And the others are not unimportant. They're incredibly important. And we can't get a holistic picture of Jesus outside of those gospels. But John is an old man in his old age reflecting back on the person that he's loved the most in his entire life saying, here's what you need to know about my Jesus. Here's what you need to know about my friend and my hero. Unique and it stands alone. And it's an amazing book. And it's worthy of our consideration. And like I said, the whole point of this morning is to get you to a place where you go, I want to know what John says about Jesus. Wherever you are, if you're dipping your toes in the water of faith, start with John and see what he says about the person you're considering. If you call yourself a Christian, then read John and look at what he says about his Savior that you love so much and learn about him. And like I said at the beginning, this is not a series working through John. I'm going to skip around and share stories and it's going to be good. I really, really hope. But if you want to get the most you can out of this series and you have got to do the work on your own on a daily basis. So I made a reading plan for us for John. There's one, they're in the lobby, they're on the information table. The one thing I want you to do from this sermon is leave and grab one of those. There's gonna be one online, they're gonna be in a couple of different places. I've even, I want you so badly to read the book of John with us that uniquely I've included a catch-up day, okay? Every Saturday it just says, catch up, man. I know you missed one, I did too. Let's catch up. Do it. Use the YouVersion app. If you don't know what that is, Google it. Use that app, and you can listen to it in your car, okay? If reading is hard for you or you're lazy like me, just listen to it in your car, man. Listen to it on your jog. But it's two chapters a week. It's easy. The whole goal for you leaving today is to be excited enough about the book of John and what God's servant John has to say about his Jesus that you're willing to dig into it on your own. And then together as a church, we're going to learn more about who our Jesus is. And my prayer for you is that you will know him, Jesus, more deeply and more intimately than you ever have by the time we get on the other side of Easter this year. I hope that you'll do that with us. Let me pray, and then we're going to take communion together. Father, we love you. We are so grateful. We're so grateful for the book of John. I thank you for inspiring him to write down what he did. Thank you for giving him the perspective that would allow him to remember the things that he remembered. God, thank you even for preserving it through all of history, through the years and through the wars and through all of the torrent of the times, God, that you brought this book down to us. Thank you for the diligent scribes that recorded it, that protected it, that gave their lives for it, that we might learn from it. God, I pray that you would reveal yourself to us in this book in incredible ways, that we would see the tenderness of your son, that we would see your heart revealed as it's poured out in the form of him, that we would come to value the spirit that he's left us behind, and more than anything, that we would come to know you in an intimate way through this series and through this study. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. In just a minute, we're going to take communion together, but as we do, this is probably the appropriate place to acknowledge that earlier this week, a young boy, 17-year-old, named Leighton Holidayiday passed away overnight in the early mornings of Wednesday. A lot of us know the family and know his dad, Craig Holliday, was the founding pastor of Grace. And so the community grieves, and Grace in particular grieves with the holidays with Craig and Rhett and his brother Cody. And so this afternoon there's going to be a funeral at NRCA at 3 o'clock. Everyone's invited, and the family would appreciate your attendance and your prayers and your support. And I mention it now because we're about to do communion, and today is a tragic day. It's been a tragic week. One of the most sad things in life is to bury a child. And so today, there's nothing that makes today not sad. But here's the thing. Because of communion, because of what it represents, today isn't just sad. It is tragic. But because of Jesus, it's not just tragic. Because Jesus defeated death and holds the keys to hell and Hades, this day is not just tragic. It can also be hopeful. And that's an amazing thing. So when we take communion today, we remember the death of Christ that united us with our creator. But what we also remember is that this was the moment that Jesus defeated death and took the sting out of days like today and made them not just tragic, but also made them hopeful, which is a remarkable thing. As the disciples were reclined around the table the night that Jesus was arrested, he took the bread and he broke it and he says, this is my body that was broken for you. Every time you eat of this, do it in remembrance of me. And then he took the wine and he poured it out and he says, this is my blood that was poured out for you. Every time you drink it, do it in remembrance of me. So I'm going to pray and we're going to take communion. And as we do, as we always do, we reflect on how grateful we are that Jesus, through this breaking of his body and through the spilling of his blood, reunites us with him. But today we also are grateful for the fact that through this act he defeated death and Hades and that days like today aren't just tragic. They can be hopeful too. Let's pray. Father, we love you so much. We thank you for your son. We thank you for sacrificing him for us. We thank you that he rose again and defeated death and hell. We thank you that he has taken the sting out of sin and says to death, where are your shackles? That it has been defeated. God, we are so grateful that you've saved us from ourselves, from our own foolishness at times, that from our own choices, God, you reunite us with you and we are so grateful for that. God, we are also grateful that you take the sting out of tragedy and that you promise a future that is delivered by Jesus. Thank you for communion and everything that it means. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am the pastor here. I know a lot of you guys are wondering, did Nate do that voiceover? Yeah, I did. I did, actually. I worked really hard on that and my accent. But I am so excited about this series, about the book of John, about spending. We're going to spend 13 weeks in the gospel of John, and I really couldn't be more elated to do it. And I will tell you a couple things. First off, the whole point of this morning, like Kyle alluded to in the announcements, is to get you excited about John, to help you understand why this is such a big deal, why this is such a big book, why it's important enough to stop and spend 13 weeks in. I really haven't been excited for a series, this excited for a series, in a really long time. Part of the reason I'm excited is because I feel like we've been waiting to do this as a church. I've been waiting to do this as your pastor. I told you guys last week, if you were here, that when I came in April of 2017, that I looked back through all of the series that had happened at the church to see where you guys had been and what you guys had been learning about to make sure that I wouldn't be repetitive moving forward and to see if there was any gaps that I felt like I needed to teach. And what I saw was that we spent a lot of time in the Gospels. The Gospels are the books of the Bible that tell the story of Jesus' life. It's the first four books in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And so you had spent a lot of time there, and you'd spend a lot of time in a book called Acts that kind of tells the story of the early church. It's a fun book. It's a storytelling book. It's the only one in the New Testament. And so it's a good book to be in. But I felt like there was so much more that we needed to study and know about the scripture. So we spent time in the Old Testament focusing on characters like David, and then the names of God, and then how the Old Testament points to Jesus. And so we've done that for a long time, and now it's time as a church to dive into Jesus, to dive into the story of his life, to acquaint ourselves corporately with our Savior, with someone who loves us and who died for us. And I'm really elated to do this. But I will also say this, and I'll remind you of this here at the end of the service. As I sat down to prep for the series and outline it, one of the things I realized is there is no way I can teach everything that I want to teach from the book of John. There is no way that I can do justice to the book of John. When I was growing up, my pastor, a guy named Buddy Hoffman, who I adore and respect immensely, he passed away a couple of years ago, but I consider myself lucky to grow up under his teaching. And my passion for scripture, I think, was ignited a lot by him. He spent four years going through the book of John, every Sunday morning and every Sunday night, until his elders finally sat him down and were like, dude, we need some Proverbs or something. You've got to switch it up. So if he could do that, I couldn't do four years, but I could do more than 13 weeks. I sat down to outline the series, and I just started by opening the Bible and just writing down everything that I saw. I was like, oh, I got to teach about that. Oh, yeah, that can be a sermon. Oh, yeah, they need to know about this. And I got through the first two chapters, and it was already like an 18-week series. So this really, if I'm being honest, isn't us going through the book of John. It's really Nate's 13 favorite things in the book of John. So to really get all of it, you're going to have to work along with us, okay? And we're going to get to that at the end. But I just want to say that as a preface to the series. As we preface the series this week and we launch into what does God say to us through this book, I want to answer some fundamental questions about why we're even doing this. I think one of the fundamental questions that we should answer is, why should we study a gospel? What is interesting to us about the gospels? Why were they written? Why did these books matter in some ways, in a different way than all the rest of Scripture? And so that's the first question we're going to answer. And I think John gives us that answer, at least the beginnings of an answer, in the 20th chapter of his book. The Gospel of John is 21 chapters long. And at the end of the second to last chapter, he throws in this statement, verse 31. And he says, I have written these things that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. So he says, I've written all of this down, my experiences with Jesus down for this reason, so that you, you being whoever reads this ever, may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. So he wrote this so that you believe that Jesus was who he says he was. He wants you, he wrote this down so that you would know that Jesus is real and Jesus was who he says he was. And I don't know if you ever thought about it this way, and this is why we need to study a gospel and why Jesus matters so much to us. Do you understand that Jesus is the hinge on which all of history swings? He's the fulcrum on which all of history rests, that he matters more. He stands alone in history as the single most influential figure to ever be on the planet. Do you understand that? Do you understand that all of history and all of faith really boils down to two questions? These are the only questions that matter. Was Jesus real, and was he telling us the truth? That's all that matters. Was Jesus real? Did a guy named Jesus of Nazareth actually walk the planet 2,000 years ago? And if he existed, was that guy telling us the truth about himself? Because what he claims is that he is the incarnate son of the creator God who came to reconcile our relationship back to that God and that all reconciliation that we know as salvation flows through him because of what he did while he was on this earth, because he died and resurrected and defeated death and sin, and we'll see that later. Because of all of that, we can have a faith that we place in God if he's real, because that's what he claimed. So we have to answer those two questions. Was Jesus real, and was he telling us the truth? And I would say to you this morning, if you were here and you're not a believer, if you were here and you wouldn't call yourself a Christian, maybe there's someone close to you who kind of encourages you to come to church and so you come to do the nice thing. First of all, good for you for doing the nice thing. But if you're considering faith, dipping your toe into the waters of faith, unsure about faith, I would tell you that the very first thing you need to figure out is the answer to those questions. When I do my research, when I look at history, based on all the evidence, did Jesus, did he really exist? And then, do I believe that he was telling us the truth? Because if the answers to those questions are no, I don't think he existed. I don't think he was telling us the truth. Then nothing else matters, right? Nothing else matters. The Old Testament doesn't matter. What we understand about God doesn't matter. Nothing else in all of Christendom and the way that we understand the world and our worldview and the way that we understand faith, none of that matters if Jesus wasn't real and he wasn't telling us the truth. But if he was real and he is telling us the truth, that changes everything. Because that man during his life is recorded as affirming the first 39 books of the Bible that we call the Old Testament, that he called the Talmud. He affirms those, the law and the prophets, as scripture, as God breathed. He had the same 39 books that we have today by the time he was on earth. They were assembled around 250 BC and the people in Jerusalem said, yep, this is the holy text. And so Jesus affirms the holy text. So if Jesus is real and he is who he says he was, then he said he himself believed that the Old Testament was God breathed and was the word of God. So we can believe it too. If he's real and he is who he says he was, then he actually died and he was actually resurrected and he actually went to heaven. And the church that he leaves us in Acts is actually true and that was really the kingdom that he came to start that goes through the rest of history. It's the kingdom that we sit in now. If Jesus is real, then all of history before him looked forward to anticipating a Messiah, and all of history after him looks back to him as the Messiah and looks forward to his return, if he's real. So Jesus really is the hinge of all of history. We have to figure out what we think of him. We have to understand whether or not we can believe him. I think those questions are the most fundamental and the most important questions for anyone to answer in their life. If you've never answered them for yourself, it is worth the effort to do it. I promise. Get those answers for yourself. Because in Jesus, what we see is these essential qualities that we absolutely have to have. They're revealed in the Gospels, and it's why we study the Gospels. What I want you guys to understand is Jesus is the divine exemplar. He is the divine exemplar of our faith. An exemplar is just a fancy word for the best possible perfect model. And we see both of these things in the gospel. If you really want a fancy theological term, it's called the hypostatic union, that he is 100% God and 100% man. And we will never really understand how that all works out. But both elements are necessary and both elements are displayed in Scripture. And we need him to be divine, because without his divinity, we do not have the faith that he gave us. Okay? Without his divinity, there is no faith. Right? We understand that? And then, if we don't get his example, if he doesn't live for 33 years, three of which are really highly recorded, if we don't see the gospel stories of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, then we never get his example, and we need his example because without it, we have no perfect model for the faith that he founded. He is the exemplar, and that's essential for us as well. Without Jesus, we get other pictures of the faith. We get Paul, who may have struggled with arrogance. We get Moses, who may have struggled with anger. We get Esther, who had her own struggles. We get Ruth, who had her own struggles. We get them throughout Scripture, but they're all imperfect models. Jesus is the perfect model of your faith. So because he is the hinge of history, because he's the most influential person to ever live, we should really, really, really want to know everything we can about him on a more personal level than that. Jesus is your Savior. If you're a believer, he's your Savior. He is the one person to whom everyone else looks. He is the one person on whom all of Scripture is focused, whether it's looking forward to him or looking back to him or anticipating him again. Understanding Jesus is fundamental to your faith. That's why the prayer of Paul for all of his churches is that you would know Jesus along with the saints in the breadth and the depth and the fullness of the knowledge of Christ. It's why he prays it over and over again, and he praises the churches throughout the ancient world for their knowledge of Jesus, because it all boils down to how well we know Jesus. Jesus says in John 15, and we're going to spend a whole week on this, that if we abide in him, that he will abide in us, and that we will bear much fruit. And all of life boils down to focusing on Jesus. The author of Hebrews tells us to run our race, to throw off the sin and the weight that entangles us. And how do we do that? By focusing our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. If you are a believer, there is no element of your faith that is more important or fundamental to you than understanding the person of Jesus and getting to know him in a very real way. And there is no better way to do that than the Gospels. If you are considering the faith, and you wouldn't say yet that you're a believer, the best thing to consider in the faith is who was the person of Jesus. It's essential to us that we study him and that we know him. I heard somebody say one time, a scholar once said, you couldn't possibly claim to be a Christian who knows Jesus if you don't read all four Gospels a minimum of once a year. I'm not espousing that as true. I would never say someone is not a Christian who doesn't know Jesus. That seems pretty inflammatory. But the attitude behind it is, if we believe, we have got to dig into these things and get to know the person of Christ. So, because we see that studying the gospel is so essential, something that we have to do, we should want to do, the question becomes, well, why John? There's four options there. They all do a great job of it. So why do we choose John? Why have I chosen John for us to go through? Well, I believe that John has a unique relationship with Jesus. He has a unique relationship with our Savior. And I think that because there's clues dropped all throughout his gospel that show us that this is true. First of all, one of the things I would point to is Jesus in his life had about 100 to 120 people kind of following him around wherever he went. Sometimes we don't know that or we forget about that. We think about the 12 disciples that were with him all the time, but really there was others around him, 100 to 120, that followed him all over the place. Actually, in Acts, when Judas has to get replaced, one of the requirements to be the replacement disciple, which ends up being a guy named Matthias, is he had to have been here from the very beginning. So there's people for all three years of his ministry that followed him around that were just never mentioned. Those are people of great faith. Then there was the 12 disciples, the 12 that he called, and we know the 12 disciples. But then there was an inner circle of three disciples, the only disciples that he gave nicknames to, Peter, James, and John. When Jesus met Peter, his name was Simon, but he renamed him Cephas or Cephas, which means rocky, which is translated Peter. So Jesus named some dude Rocky because he just kind of had an attitude that was like ready, fire, aim, right? And so Jesus was like, you're Rocky. Then he gives James and John the coolest nickname in all the Bible. They were brothers, and their dad was named Zebedee. And so they were called the sons of Zebedee, but his nickname for them was the sons of thunder. Come on, man. That's awesome. I want to be a son of thunder. I'm just Nate. That's lame. But they get the best nickname in the Bible. They're in the inner circle. They have access to Jesus that even the other disciples who see him every day do not have. Little things like, and it's not a little thing, it's actually a huge thing. And some of you know the story and some of you don't, and that's okay. But at the end of Jesus's life, he's about to be arrested and he goes to pray this incredible prayer in what's called the Garden of Gethsemane. And he leaves the disciples and he grabs three of them and he says, will you guys come pray with me? And John's one of those disciples. Throughout the entire crucifixion process, John is present there. He had access to Jesus that nobody else had. We'll see an intimate moment between he and Jesus at a meal here in a minute. John was so comfortable with Jesus that his mom felt total comfort in asking Jesus for special favors for her boy. They were walking into Jerusalem the last week of Jesus's life to begin Holy Week. In Christendom, we understand Holy Week kind of sets in motion the gears that bring about crucifixion and resurrection, and then we celebrate Easter. And so they're walking into the city. Jesus has been being welcomed as a king. One of the things you'll see in the gospel as we go through it is nobody, my contention is, nobody understood who Jesus was or what he came to do. Nobody really understood Jesus except for two people, Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist. I don't think anybody else got it until after he came back to life. They expect Jesus to walk into Jerusalem. All the prophecies are that he's going to be a king. So they expect him to walk into Jerusalem, sit on the throne of David, overthrow Roman rule, and make Israel awesome again and this world's superpower, and Jesus is going to be the king of the world. And so walking into Jerusalem, John's mom is behind Jesus tugging on his tunic going, hey, when you take over the planet, can John be like your vice president? Moms, man, forever. They're all the same. Moms are the best. That's why we have a day for you guys. Fathers have a day for you guys because we felt bad about dads, but moms, they deserve their day, right? Because they've always done that. That's how comfortable she was. She felt like she could ask for that from Jesus. John actually records that he was the first disciple to the tomb. After Jesus dies and is resurrected, John records that Mary Magdalene was the first one to the tomb, but then she goes back to the disciples and she goes, hey, there's nobody there. And so two of the disciples take off running, John and Peter, right? Two of the very close ones. And John makes sure to record in his gospel 60 years after it happened because he's a dude. We started running together, but after a while, the one that Jesus loved left behind Peter and got ahead of him. So he's like, hey, just so we know, for all of history, I won, all right? Like I got there first and had enough time to review the tomb and fold some stuff up before Peter ever gets there. He was the first one to the empty tomb. He was so close to Jesus that when Jesus was hanging on the cross and said very little because of the excruciating pain that it required to speak, he looked at John. And John was the lone disciple around. He looked at John, who was standing next to Mary, his mother. And he says, Mary, behold your son. John, behold your mother. And what he's saying is, John, take care of my mom for me. Especially in that society where old women had no way to make a wage and they were entirely reliant on their families to care for them, this was a huge responsibility. And he looks at John, of all the people that he's met in his life, of all the people that he knows, he looks at John and he says, take care of my mom. Makes him the executor of his will. Remarkably close. And then we have this moment in John chapter 13 that I think impacted John for the rest of his life. It gives us a picture of the relationship that Jesus had with him. In John chapter 13, what's happening is the disciples are reclining at the table. And when the Bible says reclining at the table, for us, it really just means like drooping in your seat, probably with your legs crossed and just kind of slouched down like you own the joint. Okay, that's what it looks like when I recline at the table. But when they reclined at the table, it literally meant that they were kind of laying down on their side with their elbow out and eating off the table like this, kind of in a pinwheel situation, like chest to back. Not totally spooning, but closer than you'd want to be, okay? And that's how they're reclining at the table. And in this meal, it's before Holy Week, before things are set in motion, he looks at the disciples and he says, one of you is going to betray me. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be a disciple in that moment. To go, what? Who? Who would betray you? But he says, one of you is going to betray me. And Peter, of course, because he's Peter, wants to know immediately. I love Peter so much. I relate to him so much. He wants to know immediately, but he knows he can't just brutishly ask in front of everyone. So he hits up John, like in elementary school. Hey, John, figure it out. He says, hey, John, ask Jesus who it is. Who's it going to be? Because he knows that John has Jesus' ear. It's a tip of the cap to the relationship that Peter knows they share. And John leans presumably back to Jesus. And he says, who's going to betray you? And Jesus says, it's the one that I give this morsel to. And he takes the bread and he dips it and he hands it to Judas. And John knows. And he's the only one that knows. Because Jesus trusted him with that secret. And then I'll say it now because we're not going to get to it later because there's just so much. But this incredible moment happens. He gives it to Judas. And when he gives it to Judas, it says that Satan swept into him. So now Jesus is eye to eye with Satan. And he looks at him and he says, what you're about to do, do it quickly. Incredibly intense sentence. And if we're reading too fast, we don't get it. What you're about to do, go and do it quickly. And then it says, and then it was night. And the whole tone of the book in Jesus' life changes. Because before then it had been light. It's an incredible moment there. And right after that moment, Jesus offers a profound teaching to only the disciples who remain, to only the faithful ones who will now carry his kingdom forward because Judas has been exposed and he's now gone. It says the disciples didn't know what he was talking about. They thought when he said, go and do it quickly, and they thought maybe he's going to get some money for a meal or something like that. They didn't know, but John knew. And so John was really paying attention to what happened. And then Jesus gives them, the faithful disciples, this teaching. And he says to them in John 13, and you can just listen. He says, little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me. And just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, where I'm going, you cannot come because he's going to death. They don't understand this yet, but that's what he's telling them. He says this, It's the whole commandment. It's the new commandment. It even supersedes the commandment to love God and to love others. It's the new one. Love one another. Love, love, love. It's the final commandment that Jesus gives. It's the only new commandment that he gives. And it touched John so much that at the end of his life when he was writing the other epistles, John, first, second, and third John that we have at the end of the New Testament, you know that 1st John, if you open it up and you read it, it is a commentary on these two verses, on that one teaching, love one another. That is how the world will know that you are my disciples, love one another. If you go in your Bible and you open up 1st John, it is a commentary, it is an exposition of what Jesus teaches right here that stuck with him so profoundly that he writes about it as an old man wanting everybody to understand what Jesus was teaching in that moment that mattered so much to him. If you open up 1 John and you read it, what does it say over and over again? If you say that you love Jesus but you hate your brother, then you are a liar and the truth is not in you. If you do love Jesus, then you will love your brother. And if you love your brother, then you must love Jesus. It's an entire exposition on this moment. And then there's this other moment that I really love in Revelation. John goes on from here. He goes on. He takes care of Jesus' mom. And all the disciples we see in Acts, a lot stay central to Jerusalem. Some disperse and begin to preach the gospel in other places. But John, we learn, is the only disciple that did not die a martyr's death. All the other disciples were put to death for their faith. But John was allowed by God to live for many, many years into maybe his 70s or 80s. A lot of people believe that John was maybe the youngest disciple. Some put him as young as potentially 10 years old when Jesus called him. A lot of scholars believe that the disciples were high school boys and college freshmen when Jesus called them. Can you imagine that? Leaving the keys of the kingdom to them? Yikes. I don't know that that's true, but a lot of scholars believe that that's true. And that means that John has a lot of time between when Jesus passes to remember back. And he's got a lot of years of ministry and a lot of preaching and a lot of writing and a lot of influencing. And he discipled early church leaders like Polycarp and set in motion the vehicle of the church. He was like the first real church father. And at the end of his life, he's on exile. He's in exile on the island of Patmos, somewhere around 93 AD, 60 years now after Jesus has passed. And all of these years, he's preached about his Jesus. He's taught other people about his Jesus. He's taught them about his best friend and his hero and this man that he loved so much that he has devoted his entire life for. And now he's in exile, remembering and writing and looking forward to when he finally gets to meet his Savior again. And the Holy Spirit comes to him in this season and sweeps him up and takes him to heaven. And he says, here, I want you to write down the things that you see. And that book becomes Revelation. And at the beginning of Revelation, we have this incredible glimpse of the relationship between John and Jesus, where they are reunited. And I'm going to read. You don't have to turn there. You can just listen. John is in heaven, and he's seeing all of these visions. And then he sees this man that scares the fire out of him. And this like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like flames of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze refined in a furnace. And his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars. From his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword. And his face was like the sun, shining in full strength. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. He didn't know yet that it was Jesus. And he falls on his feet, terrified, because he's never seen the heavenly reunited with his Jesus. He knows that it's Jesus' hand on his shoulder and that it's Jesus' voice speaking to him. And the one that he had lived his life in memory of and devoted to and longed to be reunited with was there, and he finally meets him in his heavenly form. And it's this man, with those unique perspectives, that writes us the gospel of John. We study John because it gives us a unique perspective of Jesus. How could it not? You know, in John's gospel, he never refers to himself as John. He refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. And some scholars argue that this is evidence that he didn't actually write the book himself, that somebody wrote it for him, because what an arrogant thing to call yourself the disciple whom Jesus loved. But man, as I read that and I think about the relationship that John had with Jesus, I don't think it's an arrogant thing at all. I think that John, in his old age, he's 50 or 60 years removed from Jesus. He's in his 70s. He's in the twilight of his life, particularly with life expectancy back then. He was an old man reflecting back on his early years. And as he wrote this, he refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. And I think that he uses that not because he was proud of himself or somehow arrogant. I think he was astounded that he was the one that Jesus chose to love and reveal himself to in that way. I think as he thought back that he was touched and humbled, I can't believe that Jesus trusted me with the secret of Judas. I think he was touched and humbled. I can't believe that my Savior, that my hero asked me to care for his mom. I can't believe that he swept me up and spoke to me in Revelation. I can't believe that all the other disciples have passed, and for some reason he's allowed me to shepherd the early church, his kingdom, his building into the next age of leaders. I can't believe that my life has included these amazing privileges. I cannot believe I'm the disciple that Jesus has chosen to love. And so he calls himself that. And that's the man that offers us a perspective of his Jesus. By the time he wrote this, all the other gospels had been written, and they had begun to circulate in the churches. So we have every reason to believe that John had actually read the accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And those are called synoptic gospels, and they're different than John's gospel. They're synoptic because they tell the same story with the same chronology from beginning to end. And so what John is able to do is read those and go, okay, here's what you need to know about my Jesus. Here's what you need to know about my best friend. He is a man in his old age who loves Jesus, who knows him maybe better than anyone has ever known him, writing down a book that you may believe that Jesus was who he says he was, telling you, you know what? If you want to know Jesus, then here's what you really need to know. Look at these things. That's why his book is unique. That's why the other books include parables, pithy sayings that are memorable teachings of Jesus, and John doesn't include any of those. In John, we get these big sweeping monologues. We get these real long teachings from Jesus. In the other books, we have the long teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, but John doesn't share the Sermon on the Mount because it's already been taken care of. Instead, he shares with you these big, long conversations like the one that he has with Nicodemus in chapter 3, the Pharisee that comes to see him at night because he's ashamed and embarrassed that he might actually believe in this Jesus guy. So Jesus has a conversation with him that John records. We get stories that we don't get in the other Gospels, like when Jesus' closest friend in the world, Lazarus, dies and Jesus goes to raise him from the dead and comfort his sisters in the city of Bethany. And we get this verse, John 11, 35, the shortest one in the Bible that says, Jesus wept, that answers for us for all time. How does Jesus respond in our tragedy? Well, he comes and he weeps with us. We know that because John tells us so. We get in John these I am statements. There's no parables there, and there's not as much figurative language, but he says, I am again and again. I am the bread of life. I am the living water. I am the good shepherd. Over and over again, we see these things. We get the miracle at Cana, where Jesus' first public miracle is to keep the party going. You guys do with that whatever you want to, but it's in there. We get one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, John 17. It's called the High Priestly Prayer. Right before Jesus dies, he prays for them, and he prays for the church. And get this, 2,000 years ago, he prayed for you. And it's recorded in John 17. We have all these things in his gospel that we don't get in the others. And the others are not unimportant. They're incredibly important. And we can't get a holistic picture of Jesus outside of those gospels. But John is an old man in his old age reflecting back on the person that he's loved the most in his entire life saying, here's what you need to know about my Jesus. Here's what you need to know about my friend and my hero. Unique and it stands alone. And it's an amazing book. And it's worthy of our consideration. And like I said, the whole point of this morning is to get you to a place where you go, I want to know what John says about Jesus. Wherever you are, if you're dipping your toes in the water of faith, start with John and see what he says about the person you're considering. If you call yourself a Christian, then read John and look at what he says about his Savior that you love so much and learn about him. And like I said at the beginning, this is not a series working through John. I'm going to skip around and share stories and it's going to be good. I really, really hope. But if you want to get the most you can out of this series and you have got to do the work on your own on a daily basis. So I made a reading plan for us for John. There's one, they're in the lobby, they're on the information table. The one thing I want you to do from this sermon is leave and grab one of those. There's gonna be one online, they're gonna be in a couple of different places. I've even, I want you so badly to read the book of John with us that uniquely I've included a catch-up day, okay? Every Saturday it just says, catch up, man. I know you missed one, I did too. Let's catch up. Do it. Use the YouVersion app. If you don't know what that is, Google it. Use that app, and you can listen to it in your car, okay? If reading is hard for you or you're lazy like me, just listen to it in your car, man. Listen to it on your jog. But it's two chapters a week. It's easy. The whole goal for you leaving today is to be excited enough about the book of John and what God's servant John has to say about his Jesus that you're willing to dig into it on your own. And then together as a church, we're going to learn more about who our Jesus is. And my prayer for you is that you will know him, Jesus, more deeply and more intimately than you ever have by the time we get on the other side of Easter this year. I hope that you'll do that with us. Let me pray, and then we're going to take communion together. Father, we love you. We are so grateful. We're so grateful for the book of John. I thank you for inspiring him to write down what he did. Thank you for giving him the perspective that would allow him to remember the things that he remembered. God, thank you even for preserving it through all of history, through the years and through the wars and through all of the torrent of the times, God, that you brought this book down to us. Thank you for the diligent scribes that recorded it, that protected it, that gave their lives for it, that we might learn from it. God, I pray that you would reveal yourself to us in this book in incredible ways, that we would see the tenderness of your son, that we would see your heart revealed as it's poured out in the form of him, that we would come to value the spirit that he's left us behind, and more than anything, that we would come to know you in an intimate way through this series and through this study. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. In just a minute, we're going to take communion together, but as we do, this is probably the appropriate place to acknowledge that earlier this week, a young boy, 17-year-old, named Leighton Holidayiday passed away overnight in the early mornings of Wednesday. A lot of us know the family and know his dad, Craig Holliday, was the founding pastor of Grace. And so the community grieves, and Grace in particular grieves with the holidays with Craig and Rhett and his brother Cody. And so this afternoon there's going to be a funeral at NRCA at 3 o'clock. Everyone's invited, and the family would appreciate your attendance and your prayers and your support. And I mention it now because we're about to do communion, and today is a tragic day. It's been a tragic week. One of the most sad things in life is to bury a child. And so today, there's nothing that makes today not sad. But here's the thing. Because of communion, because of what it represents, today isn't just sad. It is tragic. But because of Jesus, it's not just tragic. Because Jesus defeated death and holds the keys to hell and Hades, this day is not just tragic. It can also be hopeful. And that's an amazing thing. So when we take communion today, we remember the death of Christ that united us with our creator. But what we also remember is that this was the moment that Jesus defeated death and took the sting out of days like today and made them not just tragic, but also made them hopeful, which is a remarkable thing. As the disciples were reclined around the table the night that Jesus was arrested, he took the bread and he broke it and he says, this is my body that was broken for you. Every time you eat of this, do it in remembrance of me. And then he took the wine and he poured it out and he says, this is my blood that was poured out for you. Every time you drink it, do it in remembrance of me. So I'm going to pray and we're going to take communion. And as we do, as we always do, we reflect on how grateful we are that Jesus, through this breaking of his body and through the spilling of his blood, reunites us with him. But today we also are grateful for the fact that through this act he defeated death and Hades and that days like today aren't just tragic. They can be hopeful too. Let's pray. Father, we love you so much. We thank you for your son. We thank you for sacrificing him for us. We thank you that he rose again and defeated death and hell. We thank you that he has taken the sting out of sin and says to death, where are your shackles? That it has been defeated. God, we are so grateful that you've saved us from ourselves, from our own foolishness at times, that from our own choices, God, you reunite us with you and we are so grateful for that. God, we are also grateful that you take the sting out of tragedy and that you promise a future that is delivered by Jesus. Thank you for communion and everything that it means. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am the pastor here. I know a lot of you guys are wondering, did Nate do that voiceover? Yeah, I did. I did, actually. I worked really hard on that and my accent. But I am so excited about this series, about the book of John, about spending. We're going to spend 13 weeks in the gospel of John, and I really couldn't be more elated to do it. And I will tell you a couple things. First off, the whole point of this morning, like Kyle alluded to in the announcements, is to get you excited about John, to help you understand why this is such a big deal, why this is such a big book, why it's important enough to stop and spend 13 weeks in. I really haven't been excited for a series, this excited for a series, in a really long time. Part of the reason I'm excited is because I feel like we've been waiting to do this as a church. I've been waiting to do this as your pastor. I told you guys last week, if you were here, that when I came in April of 2017, that I looked back through all of the series that had happened at the church to see where you guys had been and what you guys had been learning about to make sure that I wouldn't be repetitive moving forward and to see if there was any gaps that I felt like I needed to teach. And what I saw was that we spent a lot of time in the Gospels. The Gospels are the books of the Bible that tell the story of Jesus' life. It's the first four books in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And so you had spent a lot of time there, and you'd spend a lot of time in a book called Acts that kind of tells the story of the early church. It's a fun book. It's a storytelling book. It's the only one in the New Testament. And so it's a good book to be in. But I felt like there was so much more that we needed to study and know about the scripture. So we spent time in the Old Testament focusing on characters like David, and then the names of God, and then how the Old Testament points to Jesus. And so we've done that for a long time, and now it's time as a church to dive into Jesus, to dive into the story of his life, to acquaint ourselves corporately with our Savior, with someone who loves us and who died for us. And I'm really elated to do this. But I will also say this, and I'll remind you of this here at the end of the service. As I sat down to prep for the series and outline it, one of the things I realized is there is no way I can teach everything that I want to teach from the book of John. There is no way that I can do justice to the book of John. When I was growing up, my pastor, a guy named Buddy Hoffman, who I adore and respect immensely, he passed away a couple of years ago, but I consider myself lucky to grow up under his teaching. And my passion for scripture, I think, was ignited a lot by him. He spent four years going through the book of John, every Sunday morning and every Sunday night, until his elders finally sat him down and were like, dude, we need some Proverbs or something. You've got to switch it up. So if he could do that, I couldn't do four years, but I could do more than 13 weeks. I sat down to outline the series, and I just started by opening the Bible and just writing down everything that I saw. I was like, oh, I got to teach about that. Oh, yeah, that can be a sermon. Oh, yeah, they need to know about this. And I got through the first two chapters, and it was already like an 18-week series. So this really, if I'm being honest, isn't us going through the book of John. It's really Nate's 13 favorite things in the book of John. So to really get all of it, you're going to have to work along with us, okay? And we're going to get to that at the end. But I just want to say that as a preface to the series. As we preface the series this week and we launch into what does God say to us through this book, I want to answer some fundamental questions about why we're even doing this. I think one of the fundamental questions that we should answer is, why should we study a gospel? What is interesting to us about the gospels? Why were they written? Why did these books matter in some ways, in a different way than all the rest of Scripture? And so that's the first question we're going to answer. And I think John gives us that answer, at least the beginnings of an answer, in the 20th chapter of his book. The Gospel of John is 21 chapters long. And at the end of the second to last chapter, he throws in this statement, verse 31. And he says, I have written these things that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. So he says, I've written all of this down, my experiences with Jesus down for this reason, so that you, you being whoever reads this ever, may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. So he wrote this so that you believe that Jesus was who he says he was. He wants you, he wrote this down so that you would know that Jesus is real and Jesus was who he says he was. And I don't know if you ever thought about it this way, and this is why we need to study a gospel and why Jesus matters so much to us. Do you understand that Jesus is the hinge on which all of history swings? He's the fulcrum on which all of history rests, that he matters more. He stands alone in history as the single most influential figure to ever be on the planet. Do you understand that? Do you understand that all of history and all of faith really boils down to two questions? These are the only questions that matter. Was Jesus real, and was he telling us the truth? That's all that matters. Was Jesus real? Did a guy named Jesus of Nazareth actually walk the planet 2,000 years ago? And if he existed, was that guy telling us the truth about himself? Because what he claims is that he is the incarnate son of the creator God who came to reconcile our relationship back to that God and that all reconciliation that we know as salvation flows through him because of what he did while he was on this earth, because he died and resurrected and defeated death and sin, and we'll see that later. Because of all of that, we can have a faith that we place in God if he's real, because that's what he claimed. So we have to answer those two questions. Was Jesus real, and was he telling us the truth? And I would say to you this morning, if you were here and you're not a believer, if you were here and you wouldn't call yourself a Christian, maybe there's someone close to you who kind of encourages you to come to church and so you come to do the nice thing. First of all, good for you for doing the nice thing. But if you're considering faith, dipping your toe into the waters of faith, unsure about faith, I would tell you that the very first thing you need to figure out is the answer to those questions. When I do my research, when I look at history, based on all the evidence, did Jesus, did he really exist? And then, do I believe that he was telling us the truth? Because if the answers to those questions are no, I don't think he existed. I don't think he was telling us the truth. Then nothing else matters, right? Nothing else matters. The Old Testament doesn't matter. What we understand about God doesn't matter. Nothing else in all of Christendom and the way that we understand the world and our worldview and the way that we understand faith, none of that matters if Jesus wasn't real and he wasn't telling us the truth. But if he was real and he is telling us the truth, that changes everything. Because that man during his life is recorded as affirming the first 39 books of the Bible that we call the Old Testament, that he called the Talmud. He affirms those, the law and the prophets, as scripture, as God breathed. He had the same 39 books that we have today by the time he was on earth. They were assembled around 250 BC and the people in Jerusalem said, yep, this is the holy text. And so Jesus affirms the holy text. So if Jesus is real and he is who he says he was, then he said he himself believed that the Old Testament was God breathed and was the word of God. So we can believe it too. If he's real and he is who he says he was, then he actually died and he was actually resurrected and he actually went to heaven. And the church that he leaves us in Acts is actually true and that was really the kingdom that he came to start that goes through the rest of history. It's the kingdom that we sit in now. If Jesus is real, then all of history before him looked forward to anticipating a Messiah, and all of history after him looks back to him as the Messiah and looks forward to his return, if he's real. So Jesus really is the hinge of all of history. We have to figure out what we think of him. We have to understand whether or not we can believe him. I think those questions are the most fundamental and the most important questions for anyone to answer in their life. If you've never answered them for yourself, it is worth the effort to do it. I promise. Get those answers for yourself. Because in Jesus, what we see is these essential qualities that we absolutely have to have. They're revealed in the Gospels, and it's why we study the Gospels. What I want you guys to understand is Jesus is the divine exemplar. He is the divine exemplar of our faith. An exemplar is just a fancy word for the best possible perfect model. And we see both of these things in the gospel. If you really want a fancy theological term, it's called the hypostatic union, that he is 100% God and 100% man. And we will never really understand how that all works out. But both elements are necessary and both elements are displayed in Scripture. And we need him to be divine, because without his divinity, we do not have the faith that he gave us. Okay? Without his divinity, there is no faith. Right? We understand that? And then, if we don't get his example, if he doesn't live for 33 years, three of which are really highly recorded, if we don't see the gospel stories of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, then we never get his example, and we need his example because without it, we have no perfect model for the faith that he founded. He is the exemplar, and that's essential for us as well. Without Jesus, we get other pictures of the faith. We get Paul, who may have struggled with arrogance. We get Moses, who may have struggled with anger. We get Esther, who had her own struggles. We get Ruth, who had her own struggles. We get them throughout Scripture, but they're all imperfect models. Jesus is the perfect model of your faith. So because he is the hinge of history, because he's the most influential person to ever live, we should really, really, really want to know everything we can about him on a more personal level than that. Jesus is your Savior. If you're a believer, he's your Savior. He is the one person to whom everyone else looks. He is the one person on whom all of Scripture is focused, whether it's looking forward to him or looking back to him or anticipating him again. Understanding Jesus is fundamental to your faith. That's why the prayer of Paul for all of his churches is that you would know Jesus along with the saints in the breadth and the depth and the fullness of the knowledge of Christ. It's why he prays it over and over again, and he praises the churches throughout the ancient world for their knowledge of Jesus, because it all boils down to how well we know Jesus. Jesus says in John 15, and we're going to spend a whole week on this, that if we abide in him, that he will abide in us, and that we will bear much fruit. And all of life boils down to focusing on Jesus. The author of Hebrews tells us to run our race, to throw off the sin and the weight that entangles us. And how do we do that? By focusing our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. If you are a believer, there is no element of your faith that is more important or fundamental to you than understanding the person of Jesus and getting to know him in a very real way. And there is no better way to do that than the Gospels. If you are considering the faith, and you wouldn't say yet that you're a believer, the best thing to consider in the faith is who was the person of Jesus. It's essential to us that we study him and that we know him. I heard somebody say one time, a scholar once said, you couldn't possibly claim to be a Christian who knows Jesus if you don't read all four Gospels a minimum of once a year. I'm not espousing that as true. I would never say someone is not a Christian who doesn't know Jesus. That seems pretty inflammatory. But the attitude behind it is, if we believe, we have got to dig into these things and get to know the person of Christ. So, because we see that studying the gospel is so essential, something that we have to do, we should want to do, the question becomes, well, why John? There's four options there. They all do a great job of it. So why do we choose John? Why have I chosen John for us to go through? Well, I believe that John has a unique relationship with Jesus. He has a unique relationship with our Savior. And I think that because there's clues dropped all throughout his gospel that show us that this is true. First of all, one of the things I would point to is Jesus in his life had about 100 to 120 people kind of following him around wherever he went. Sometimes we don't know that or we forget about that. We think about the 12 disciples that were with him all the time, but really there was others around him, 100 to 120, that followed him all over the place. Actually, in Acts, when Judas has to get replaced, one of the requirements to be the replacement disciple, which ends up being a guy named Matthias, is he had to have been here from the very beginning. So there's people for all three years of his ministry that followed him around that were just never mentioned. Those are people of great faith. Then there was the 12 disciples, the 12 that he called, and we know the 12 disciples. But then there was an inner circle of three disciples, the only disciples that he gave nicknames to, Peter, James, and John. When Jesus met Peter, his name was Simon, but he renamed him Cephas or Cephas, which means rocky, which is translated Peter. So Jesus named some dude Rocky because he just kind of had an attitude that was like ready, fire, aim, right? And so Jesus was like, you're Rocky. Then he gives James and John the coolest nickname in all the Bible. They were brothers, and their dad was named Zebedee. And so they were called the sons of Zebedee, but his nickname for them was the sons of thunder. Come on, man. That's awesome. I want to be a son of thunder. I'm just Nate. That's lame. But they get the best nickname in the Bible. They're in the inner circle. They have access to Jesus that even the other disciples who see him every day do not have. Little things like, and it's not a little thing, it's actually a huge thing. And some of you know the story and some of you don't, and that's okay. But at the end of Jesus's life, he's about to be arrested and he goes to pray this incredible prayer in what's called the Garden of Gethsemane. And he leaves the disciples and he grabs three of them and he says, will you guys come pray with me? And John's one of those disciples. Throughout the entire crucifixion process, John is present there. He had access to Jesus that nobody else had. We'll see an intimate moment between he and Jesus at a meal here in a minute. John was so comfortable with Jesus that his mom felt total comfort in asking Jesus for special favors for her boy. They were walking into Jerusalem the last week of Jesus's life to begin Holy Week. In Christendom, we understand Holy Week kind of sets in motion the gears that bring about crucifixion and resurrection, and then we celebrate Easter. And so they're walking into the city. Jesus has been being welcomed as a king. One of the things you'll see in the gospel as we go through it is nobody, my contention is, nobody understood who Jesus was or what he came to do. Nobody really understood Jesus except for two people, Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist. I don't think anybody else got it until after he came back to life. They expect Jesus to walk into Jerusalem. All the prophecies are that he's going to be a king. So they expect him to walk into Jerusalem, sit on the throne of David, overthrow Roman rule, and make Israel awesome again and this world's superpower, and Jesus is going to be the king of the world. And so walking into Jerusalem, John's mom is behind Jesus tugging on his tunic going, hey, when you take over the planet, can John be like your vice president? Moms, man, forever. They're all the same. Moms are the best. That's why we have a day for you guys. Fathers have a day for you guys because we felt bad about dads, but moms, they deserve their day, right? Because they've always done that. That's how comfortable she was. She felt like she could ask for that from Jesus. John actually records that he was the first disciple to the tomb. After Jesus dies and is resurrected, John records that Mary Magdalene was the first one to the tomb, but then she goes back to the disciples and she goes, hey, there's nobody there. And so two of the disciples take off running, John and Peter, right? Two of the very close ones. And John makes sure to record in his gospel 60 years after it happened because he's a dude. We started running together, but after a while, the one that Jesus loved left behind Peter and got ahead of him. So he's like, hey, just so we know, for all of history, I won, all right? Like I got there first and had enough time to review the tomb and fold some stuff up before Peter ever gets there. He was the first one to the empty tomb. He was so close to Jesus that when Jesus was hanging on the cross and said very little because of the excruciating pain that it required to speak, he looked at John. And John was the lone disciple around. He looked at John, who was standing next to Mary, his mother. And he says, Mary, behold your son. John, behold your mother. And what he's saying is, John, take care of my mom for me. Especially in that society where old women had no way to make a wage and they were entirely reliant on their families to care for them, this was a huge responsibility. And he looks at John, of all the people that he's met in his life, of all the people that he knows, he looks at John and he says, take care of my mom. Makes him the executor of his will. Remarkably close. And then we have this moment in John chapter 13 that I think impacted John for the rest of his life. It gives us a picture of the relationship that Jesus had with him. In John chapter 13, what's happening is the disciples are reclining at the table. And when the Bible says reclining at the table, for us, it really just means like drooping in your seat, probably with your legs crossed and just kind of slouched down like you own the joint. Okay, that's what it looks like when I recline at the table. But when they reclined at the table, it literally meant that they were kind of laying down on their side with their elbow out and eating off the table like this, kind of in a pinwheel situation, like chest to back. Not totally spooning, but closer than you'd want to be, okay? And that's how they're reclining at the table. And in this meal, it's before Holy Week, before things are set in motion, he looks at the disciples and he says, one of you is going to betray me. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be a disciple in that moment. To go, what? Who? Who would betray you? But he says, one of you is going to betray me. And Peter, of course, because he's Peter, wants to know immediately. I love Peter so much. I relate to him so much. He wants to know immediately, but he knows he can't just brutishly ask in front of everyone. So he hits up John, like in elementary school. Hey, John, figure it out. He says, hey, John, ask Jesus who it is. Who's it going to be? Because he knows that John has Jesus' ear. It's a tip of the cap to the relationship that Peter knows they share. And John leans presumably back to Jesus. And he says, who's going to betray you? And Jesus says, it's the one that I give this morsel to. And he takes the bread and he dips it and he hands it to Judas. And John knows. And he's the only one that knows. Because Jesus trusted him with that secret. And then I'll say it now because we're not going to get to it later because there's just so much. But this incredible moment happens. He gives it to Judas. And when he gives it to Judas, it says that Satan swept into him. So now Jesus is eye to eye with Satan. And he looks at him and he says, what you're about to do, do it quickly. Incredibly intense sentence. And if we're reading too fast, we don't get it. What you're about to do, go and do it quickly. And then it says, and then it was night. And the whole tone of the book in Jesus' life changes. Because before then it had been light. It's an incredible moment there. And right after that moment, Jesus offers a profound teaching to only the disciples who remain, to only the faithful ones who will now carry his kingdom forward because Judas has been exposed and he's now gone. It says the disciples didn't know what he was talking about. They thought when he said, go and do it quickly, and they thought maybe he's going to get some money for a meal or something like that. They didn't know, but John knew. And so John was really paying attention to what happened. And then Jesus gives them, the faithful disciples, this teaching. And he says to them in John 13, and you can just listen. He says, little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me. And just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, where I'm going, you cannot come because he's going to death. They don't understand this yet, but that's what he's telling them. He says this, It's the whole commandment. It's the new commandment. It even supersedes the commandment to love God and to love others. It's the new one. Love one another. Love, love, love. It's the final commandment that Jesus gives. It's the only new commandment that he gives. And it touched John so much that at the end of his life when he was writing the other epistles, John, first, second, and third John that we have at the end of the New Testament, you know that 1st John, if you open it up and you read it, it is a commentary on these two verses, on that one teaching, love one another. That is how the world will know that you are my disciples, love one another. If you go in your Bible and you open up 1st John, it is a commentary, it is an exposition of what Jesus teaches right here that stuck with him so profoundly that he writes about it as an old man wanting everybody to understand what Jesus was teaching in that moment that mattered so much to him. If you open up 1 John and you read it, what does it say over and over again? If you say that you love Jesus but you hate your brother, then you are a liar and the truth is not in you. If you do love Jesus, then you will love your brother. And if you love your brother, then you must love Jesus. It's an entire exposition on this moment. And then there's this other moment that I really love in Revelation. John goes on from here. He goes on. He takes care of Jesus' mom. And all the disciples we see in Acts, a lot stay central to Jerusalem. Some disperse and begin to preach the gospel in other places. But John, we learn, is the only disciple that did not die a martyr's death. All the other disciples were put to death for their faith. But John was allowed by God to live for many, many years into maybe his 70s or 80s. A lot of people believe that John was maybe the youngest disciple. Some put him as young as potentially 10 years old when Jesus called him. A lot of scholars believe that the disciples were high school boys and college freshmen when Jesus called them. Can you imagine that? Leaving the keys of the kingdom to them? Yikes. I don't know that that's true, but a lot of scholars believe that that's true. And that means that John has a lot of time between when Jesus passes to remember back. And he's got a lot of years of ministry and a lot of preaching and a lot of writing and a lot of influencing. And he discipled early church leaders like Polycarp and set in motion the vehicle of the church. He was like the first real church father. And at the end of his life, he's on exile. He's in exile on the island of Patmos, somewhere around 93 AD, 60 years now after Jesus has passed. And all of these years, he's preached about his Jesus. He's taught other people about his Jesus. He's taught them about his best friend and his hero and this man that he loved so much that he has devoted his entire life for. And now he's in exile, remembering and writing and looking forward to when he finally gets to meet his Savior again. And the Holy Spirit comes to him in this season and sweeps him up and takes him to heaven. And he says, here, I want you to write down the things that you see. And that book becomes Revelation. And at the beginning of Revelation, we have this incredible glimpse of the relationship between John and Jesus, where they are reunited. And I'm going to read. You don't have to turn there. You can just listen. John is in heaven, and he's seeing all of these visions. And then he sees this man that scares the fire out of him. And this like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like flames of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze refined in a furnace. And his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars. From his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword. And his face was like the sun, shining in full strength. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. He didn't know yet that it was Jesus. And he falls on his feet, terrified, because he's never seen the heavenly reunited with his Jesus. He knows that it's Jesus' hand on his shoulder and that it's Jesus' voice speaking to him. And the one that he had lived his life in memory of and devoted to and longed to be reunited with was there, and he finally meets him in his heavenly form. And it's this man, with those unique perspectives, that writes us the gospel of John. We study John because it gives us a unique perspective of Jesus. How could it not? You know, in John's gospel, he never refers to himself as John. He refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. And some scholars argue that this is evidence that he didn't actually write the book himself, that somebody wrote it for him, because what an arrogant thing to call yourself the disciple whom Jesus loved. But man, as I read that and I think about the relationship that John had with Jesus, I don't think it's an arrogant thing at all. I think that John, in his old age, he's 50 or 60 years removed from Jesus. He's in his 70s. He's in the twilight of his life, particularly with life expectancy back then. He was an old man reflecting back on his early years. And as he wrote this, he refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. And I think that he uses that not because he was proud of himself or somehow arrogant. I think he was astounded that he was the one that Jesus chose to love and reveal himself to in that way. I think as he thought back that he was touched and humbled, I can't believe that Jesus trusted me with the secret of Judas. I think he was touched and humbled. I can't believe that my Savior, that my hero asked me to care for his mom. I can't believe that he swept me up and spoke to me in Revelation. I can't believe that all the other disciples have passed, and for some reason he's allowed me to shepherd the early church, his kingdom, his building into the next age of leaders. I can't believe that my life has included these amazing privileges. I cannot believe I'm the disciple that Jesus has chosen to love. And so he calls himself that. And that's the man that offers us a perspective of his Jesus. By the time he wrote this, all the other gospels had been written, and they had begun to circulate in the churches. So we have every reason to believe that John had actually read the accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And those are called synoptic gospels, and they're different than John's gospel. They're synoptic because they tell the same story with the same chronology from beginning to end. And so what John is able to do is read those and go, okay, here's what you need to know about my Jesus. Here's what you need to know about my best friend. He is a man in his old age who loves Jesus, who knows him maybe better than anyone has ever known him, writing down a book that you may believe that Jesus was who he says he was, telling you, you know what? If you want to know Jesus, then here's what you really need to know. Look at these things. That's why his book is unique. That's why the other books include parables, pithy sayings that are memorable teachings of Jesus, and John doesn't include any of those. In John, we get these big sweeping monologues. We get these real long teachings from Jesus. In the other books, we have the long teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, but John doesn't share the Sermon on the Mount because it's already been taken care of. Instead, he shares with you these big, long conversations like the one that he has with Nicodemus in chapter 3, the Pharisee that comes to see him at night because he's ashamed and embarrassed that he might actually believe in this Jesus guy. So Jesus has a conversation with him that John records. We get stories that we don't get in the other Gospels, like when Jesus' closest friend in the world, Lazarus, dies and Jesus goes to raise him from the dead and comfort his sisters in the city of Bethany. And we get this verse, John 11, 35, the shortest one in the Bible that says, Jesus wept, that answers for us for all time. How does Jesus respond in our tragedy? Well, he comes and he weeps with us. We know that because John tells us so. We get in John these I am statements. There's no parables there, and there's not as much figurative language, but he says, I am again and again. I am the bread of life. I am the living water. I am the good shepherd. Over and over again, we see these things. We get the miracle at Cana, where Jesus' first public miracle is to keep the party going. You guys do with that whatever you want to, but it's in there. We get one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, John 17. It's called the High Priestly Prayer. Right before Jesus dies, he prays for them, and he prays for the church. And get this, 2,000 years ago, he prayed for you. And it's recorded in John 17. We have all these things in his gospel that we don't get in the others. And the others are not unimportant. They're incredibly important. And we can't get a holistic picture of Jesus outside of those gospels. But John is an old man in his old age reflecting back on the person that he's loved the most in his entire life saying, here's what you need to know about my Jesus. Here's what you need to know about my friend and my hero. Unique and it stands alone. And it's an amazing book. And it's worthy of our consideration. And like I said, the whole point of this morning is to get you to a place where you go, I want to know what John says about Jesus. Wherever you are, if you're dipping your toes in the water of faith, start with John and see what he says about the person you're considering. If you call yourself a Christian, then read John and look at what he says about his Savior that you love so much and learn about him. And like I said at the beginning, this is not a series working through John. I'm going to skip around and share stories and it's going to be good. I really, really hope. But if you want to get the most you can out of this series and you have got to do the work on your own on a daily basis. So I made a reading plan for us for John. There's one, they're in the lobby, they're on the information table. The one thing I want you to do from this sermon is leave and grab one of those. There's gonna be one online, they're gonna be in a couple of different places. I've even, I want you so badly to read the book of John with us that uniquely I've included a catch-up day, okay? Every Saturday it just says, catch up, man. I know you missed one, I did too. Let's catch up. Do it. Use the YouVersion app. If you don't know what that is, Google it. Use that app, and you can listen to it in your car, okay? If reading is hard for you or you're lazy like me, just listen to it in your car, man. Listen to it on your jog. But it's two chapters a week. It's easy. The whole goal for you leaving today is to be excited enough about the book of John and what God's servant John has to say about his Jesus that you're willing to dig into it on your own. And then together as a church, we're going to learn more about who our Jesus is. And my prayer for you is that you will know him, Jesus, more deeply and more intimately than you ever have by the time we get on the other side of Easter this year. I hope that you'll do that with us. Let me pray, and then we're going to take communion together. Father, we love you. We are so grateful. We're so grateful for the book of John. I thank you for inspiring him to write down what he did. Thank you for giving him the perspective that would allow him to remember the things that he remembered. God, thank you even for preserving it through all of history, through the years and through the wars and through all of the torrent of the times, God, that you brought this book down to us. Thank you for the diligent scribes that recorded it, that protected it, that gave their lives for it, that we might learn from it. God, I pray that you would reveal yourself to us in this book in incredible ways, that we would see the tenderness of your son, that we would see your heart revealed as it's poured out in the form of him, that we would come to value the spirit that he's left us behind, and more than anything, that we would come to know you in an intimate way through this series and through this study. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. In just a minute, we're going to take communion together, but as we do, this is probably the appropriate place to acknowledge that earlier this week, a young boy, 17-year-old, named Leighton Holidayiday passed away overnight in the early mornings of Wednesday. A lot of us know the family and know his dad, Craig Holliday, was the founding pastor of Grace. And so the community grieves, and Grace in particular grieves with the holidays with Craig and Rhett and his brother Cody. And so this afternoon there's going to be a funeral at NRCA at 3 o'clock. Everyone's invited, and the family would appreciate your attendance and your prayers and your support. And I mention it now because we're about to do communion, and today is a tragic day. It's been a tragic week. One of the most sad things in life is to bury a child. And so today, there's nothing that makes today not sad. But here's the thing. Because of communion, because of what it represents, today isn't just sad. It is tragic. But because of Jesus, it's not just tragic. Because Jesus defeated death and holds the keys to hell and Hades, this day is not just tragic. It can also be hopeful. And that's an amazing thing. So when we take communion today, we remember the death of Christ that united us with our creator. But what we also remember is that this was the moment that Jesus defeated death and took the sting out of days like today and made them not just tragic, but also made them hopeful, which is a remarkable thing. As the disciples were reclined around the table the night that Jesus was arrested, he took the bread and he broke it and he says, this is my body that was broken for you. Every time you eat of this, do it in remembrance of me. And then he took the wine and he poured it out and he says, this is my blood that was poured out for you. Every time you drink it, do it in remembrance of me. So I'm going to pray and we're going to take communion. And as we do, as we always do, we reflect on how grateful we are that Jesus, through this breaking of his body and through the spilling of his blood, reunites us with him. But today we also are grateful for the fact that through this act he defeated death and Hades and that days like today aren't just tragic. They can be hopeful too. Let's pray. Father, we love you so much. We thank you for your son. We thank you for sacrificing him for us. We thank you that he rose again and defeated death and hell. We thank you that he has taken the sting out of sin and says to death, where are your shackles? That it has been defeated. God, we are so grateful that you've saved us from ourselves, from our own foolishness at times, that from our own choices, God, you reunite us with you and we are so grateful for that. God, we are also grateful that you take the sting out of tragedy and that you promise a future that is delivered by Jesus. Thank you for communion and everything that it means. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. Thanks for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors of grace. Somebody over there is stinky because this side is full. You guys, I don't know what you're avoiding over here, but this is ridiculous. It's good to see you. Thanks for coming in May in the rain. I keep expecting for us to get over. There's always a bump in attendance in the spring, January, February, March. And that usually lasts until Easter. And then you guys go to the beach like for the whole until August. I don't see you again. So I keep expecting that every week and you keep showing up. So I'm just I'm going to threaten you with this. You keep showing up. We're going to two services in the fall. OK, you just have to deal with it. I also just want to praise God sincerely for this. Gibby, our worship pastor, Aaron Gibson, Gibby. We have too many Aarons around here, so I have to give them all nicknames, except for Aaron Buchanan. He's just Aaron, which makes sense. If you know him, that fits. Gibby's sick as a dog this morning. Like legit could barely talk to me when he got in this morning. He was late. He was later than he normally is because he's sick. So he can sneeze in the lobby now. But you wouldn't believe how often we look at each other on a Sunday morning and go, I feel terrible. I don't know if I can preach. I don't know if I can sing. And we just pray for God to give us 30 good minutes. And He always does. He always does. That was fantastic. I was moved to tears. It's so fun and good to be a singing church, especially since I inherited a bunch of frozen Presbyterians eight years ago. We've had to work on that a little bit. If you know, you know. This morning we continue in our series that Haley mentioned called FAQs, where we sourced some questions out to the small groups, solicited some responses, and just said, hey, what is it that you're curious about? What do you want to know? What questions do you have? And so we took kind of the most common ones and we said, let's talk about these on a Sunday. And I'm particularly excited to talk about this topic this morning because I feel it's so important. And it came up a lot in a bunch of different ways. But it's basically questions about understanding the doctrine of salvation. What does it mean to be saved? How do I know I'm going to heaven? Am I going to be saved forever? Can I lose it? Why does the question we're going to focus on at the beginning of our time this morning is why does God accept deathbed confessions, which is an interesting question, but there was a lot of questions around this doctrine of salvation and seeking to understand what it does mean to be saved and having a better understanding around that. And I think it's such an important question because once we get into church world, we kind of stop asking about salvation because I think we feel like we're supposed to know. And so we're embarrassed to ask. But here's what I know is that my understanding of salvation has worked progressively through my life that with each year or decade that passes, I come to understand salvation and what it is a little bit better. And I think that your understanding of salvation should progress as well. Even if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, there's a reason you're in church on a random May in the rain. And it has to be because you're at least curious. You're at least thoughtful about it. And so I would love to have the opportunity to tell you more about what it means to be a Christian. And I want the Christians in the room to understand their salvation more deeply. Because it's my suspicion that everybody here who is a Christian has at some point in their life, and many of you, and I have to, I hope that you'll trust me this morning that I'm not trying to be hard on anybody. I'm not trying to make you feel small for the way that you think. I'm not trying to make you feel uneducated or dumb. I just think this is a necessary phase of our understanding of our salvation that every Christian goes through. And I also know from experience that many Christians spend their entire life kind of misunderstanding the doctrine of salvation and being overly reductive about the incredible miracle that it is and what it actually means. And so this morning, what I'm hoping to do is to give us all a more rich understanding of our salvation. So either we're kind of locked into how we initially understand it, and this will kind of open up our minds and help us understand it better, God and more grateful to him for the miraculous event and process of our salvation. So that's where we're going this morning. That's what I want to do. To get there, I want to start with this question that came up in our emails, which is why does God accept a deathbed confession? This is an interesting question because it belies the motives behind it. And the motives behind that question generate a lot of the other questions that we have around salvation. This question comes most of the time from a sense of jealousy or resentment or entitlement or frustration. This question is most likely, and if you're the one that asked this, please hear me. It makes sense to ask it. I understand why you would. Every Christian has asked it. It's asked so often that Jesus talks about it in the Bible, and we're about to go to exactly where Jesus answers this question. But I want us to understand why we're asking it first. Let's just put it out there and be honest about it, because all of us do it. And again, I don't want anyone to feel bad for asking this question. I just want to understand why it comes up. The main motive in my estimation behind this question, why would God accept a deathbed confession, is essentially this, if we're going to use real language. I've been saved for decades. And I've been denying myself and keeping it between the ditches and trying to follow God's rules for years. And I've lived without the freedom of a pagan. And I'm going to use the word pagan this morning because a pagan is someone who doesn't believe in God. I'm not trying to be dismissive of those people, of non-believers. It's just pagans easier to say than non-believer? So we as Christians, and we know this, especially those of us that were Christians in high school and college, we are jealous of the freedom of the pagan, right? We're jealous of what they get to do and what we can't do. We've spent our life trying to follow the rules, trying to do the right things, trying to live the right way. And now here's this person who spent their life as a free pagan doing whatever they wanted to do, following any rules that they felt like they needed to follow, never committed to God, no fidelity, didn't put in the work that I did. And now at the very end, they're just going to slip in the door and we're going to the same heaven. That's not fair. I know it's hard to hear that out loud, but I can see about half of you grinning at me right now. You'll all have these smirks on your face like, yeah, that's pretty true. You got me. We've all thought that, and it's okay to think that. It makes sense why we would. It makes sense that we would think that. But here's Jesus' answer to that question. Why does he accept deathbed confessions? This is actually a parable. In the Gospel of Matthew, you can turn to chapter 20 if you want to. I'm going to read you verses 13 through 16, but first I need to tell you what's going on. Somebody comes up to Jesus and they ask this question. And so Jesus tells this story. He says there's an owner of a vineyard and he goes out one day where he can get some day laborers. And I've told you before, Israel was a poor country. They were impoverished. And so there was hubs where you would go and you could get men to come and put in a day's labor at whatever business you owned. And this was their livelihood. This was all that. They just hope they got picked that day. That was their livelihood. And so there's these people and the owner goes and he says, hey, I need y'all to come work for me in my vineyard. I'm going to pay you one denarius. I don't know how much that is. I could have done the research on what it was, but that feels like a waste of time. Google it if you care. I'm going to give you one denarius. And they're like, okay, great deal. So they go with him, they get in the Ford Ranger and they go to the vineyard and they start to work, right? And I don't know why Ford Ranger is funny, but it is. And they start to work and they're working all day. About the middle of the day, some other workers come by the field and they go, hey, we're looking for work. Can we help you today? And the owner says, yeah, sure. Come on. You can work for me. And so they start working by the middle of the day. And then about the last hour of the day, some other workers show up and they go, hey, we're looking for work. Can we work for you? The owner says, that's great. Yeah, come on. And they're working for him. So then when the work's done, the owner lines them up and begins to pay them. And he starts with the first group of workers that he hired that morning. Here's your one denarius for your day's labor. Thank you very much. And then he goes to the group that he hired in the middle. And he says, here's your one denarius. Thank you very much. And then he goes to the group that he hired with just an hour to go. And he said, here's your one denarius. Thank you very much. And the guys that have been working all day are ticked. Like, that's not fair. I worked eight hours for my denarius. That dude worked two hours, worked one hour. He had missed the smoke breaks and the lunch break and everything and just came in during the last hour. That's not fair. And the owner responds to them like this in verse 13. But he answered one of them, I am not being unfair to unfair to you friend didn't you agree to work for a denarius take your pay and go I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money or are you envious because I am generous so So the last will be first. And the first will be last. I love that response. They go, hey, that's not fair. We've been working for eight hours. They've been working for one hour. And you're giving us the same pay. And he goes, what do you care? That's basically the answer. It's my money. Do you care what I do with my own possession? Do you care what I do with my own resources? What right is it of yours to tell me what I should do? I chose to be generous to him. Are you envious of my generosity? You agreed to a denarius. I gave you a denarius. They agreed to this. I gave them this. It's my resources to do with what I want. And so to our question of why does God accept a deathbed confession where the implication is, hey, I've been laboring in the vineyard all day, my whole life. I've been working at this for decades. I put in a full eight hours. And I get my salvation. I get my eternity in heaven. I get my utopia. But they just slid in at the last minute. They don't deserve what I deserve. Maybe we can believe in purgatory so they have to suffer a little bit before they get the glory that I get. This is the jealousy that we express. And in that is implied exactly what the workers were frustrated about. Hey, that's not fair. I've put in my time and my effort. I've done my work. And the pay shouldn't be the same. And here's what this does. When we ask that question and we think that way. And here's what I wanted to talk about. When we think like that, we make salvation something that we think of in terms of being in or out. And very often, there's a lot of questions that Christians ask about salvation, and the motivation behind that question is, am I in or am I out? Did I say the prayer the right way? Am I in or am I out? Am I in heaven or am I burning in hell forever? That's what we're asking. How much sinning can I do and still be saved? Can I lose my salvation or does God hold on to me and I can't lose my salvation? That's an in or out question. How do I, if I feel like I lost my salvation, can I get it back? If someone wanders away, were they ever truly saved? All these questions that we ask about salvation are indicative of this thought process of in or out. And that's how we think about our salvation. And this is the place where many of us get stuck for our whole lives. But what I want us to see is that in or out salvation is a small salvation. Thinking of it that way reduces it to something that it should have never been. And if you're there, if you think about it this way, if you've thought about it that way, I don't want you to feel bad because that in or out mentality was probably handed to you by a well-meaning teacher in your church who also adopted that, who never got a more expansive view of salvation. I got saved when I was four. I was four and a half years old. We went to a special service on Sunday night, and the teacher taught us about the doctrine of hell. And I don't know if Aaron Winston's in here, but if I find out that we're teaching our four-year-olds about hell and scaring them into salvation, that's not going to be okay. They taught us about hell. They told us what it was. And they said, do you want to go there? No. No way. That sounds terrible. What's in heaven? Well, you sing a lot. I mean, that's better than hell. Okay. What do I have to do to go to heaven? Well, you have to believe in Jesus. Deal. What do I do to believe in Jesus? Will you repeat this prayer after me? Okay. You say the words and I'll do them too. And I was saved into an in or out understanding of salvation. What four-year-old isn't going to take out a fire insurance policy by threat of hell. Of course I got saved. God in his goodness has progressed my understanding of what salvation is over the decades. But many of us get saved into this kind of faith where for us it's a matter of are we in or are we out? And when we think of it that way, we become the jealous workers in the vineyard that get upset that we've been, and some of you will understand this reference, we've been the good brother in Luke 15, the one that stayed home and worked. And then the prodigal son comes home and God lets him into heaven and throws a party for him too. And we're like, what in the world? I've been doing my part the whole time. Because for us, salvation is, am I in? Am I going to heaven? Or am I not? And many of us get saved. And with this reductive view of what salvation is, we spend the rest of our lives just trying to stay in and trying to understand what's going to keep us there. But I think that there is a much bigger, better view of salvation. And I think it's presented to us in plain language in the greatest chapter in the Bible, Romans chapter 8. I'm going to read to you what Paul writes about what salvation is. But before I do, I want you to understand where we're picking this up. The first eight chapters of Romans, the first seven chapters of Romans, are a lengthy explanation of the doctrine of salvation. It's a lengthy explanation of the doctrine of salvation. Now, also, I want to pause here before I read. I forgot to say this, and I want to make sure that we're clear on this. When I talk about salvation, when I say saved or not, I want to just pause and be very clear that we understand what this means together, okay? The way that we explain salvation at grace, and when I say we, I mean me, because I'm the one that does it. The way that we explain salvation at grace is to say, to be saved, to be a Christian means that we believe Jesus is who he says he is. He says he's the son of God who's come to take away the sins of the world. We believe that. We believe that it means that Jesus did what he said he did. He lived a perfect life. He died a perfect death and he resurrected and rescued us from death and sin and shame. And it means that we believe that he's going to do what he says he's going to do, which in Revelation 19 is to come crashing through the clouds to reclaim us and his creation and restore it back to himself and its original glory. To be a Christian is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, did what he said he did, and he's going to do what he says he's going to do. And that to become a Christian, all we need to engage in is the fundamental repentance of Christianity, which Peter describes to us in Acts. He's preaching a sermon. Jesus has been crucified. They're hanging out in the upper room for 40 days trying to figure out what to do. The Holy Spirit descends on them. Peter goes out to the crowd and he preaches. And the sermon is, hey, that guy that you killed was the Messiah and he came to save you. And the crowd believes him. And they say, what do we do? We messed up. And Peter says, repent and be baptized. Repent of what? I believe it's the fundamental repentance of salvation, which is to repent of who you thought Jesus was before you came to agree with him about who he says he is. So to be saved, we repent of who we thought Jesus was before we moved into this moment and this process of salvation. And we accept who he says he is from his word. That's what being a Christian is. Now, Romans is the most detailed theological lesson we get in the Bible. And the first seven chapters are written to help us understand what salvation is and what God did in it and what his responsibility is, what our responsibility is. Then in Romans 8, he culminates that seven chapter argument with what I think is the greatest chapter of the Bible and the culmination of the glory of salvation. And he proclaims to us what salvation is. So I want you to hear how Paul talks about it in Romans chapter 8 and see if this can't begin to expand our view of salvation. I've got my old Bible out. This is the ESV. I was reading this passage this morning in the NIV as I was going through the sermon. Sorry, sorry, DeVos. I know I bought you a Bible and now I'm ruining it. And I just didn't, I don't like the way the NIV reads. This is way better. So if you'll indulge me, I'm going to read you from the ESV. This is the soaring doctrine of salvation that Paul gives us. Verse 19. And I'm going to read all the way down through verse 30, so buckle up. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons in God. The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it. In hopes that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning who have the firstfruits of the Spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he sees, but if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Okay, lock in. You may have faded away, and you're not paying attention to the words anymore, but these three verses are super important. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And this is the important part. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. This is Paul's soaring description of what it means to be saved and what salvation is seeking to do and what God is seeking to work in that salvation. So the first thing that we see is in the very first verse where Paul says, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. What Paul is saying here is, whatever we had to suffer to be Christians, whatever we had to suffer to be in and to build God's kingdom, whatever that work was for the day in the vineyard, and we've put in our time, whatever suffering we've endured for the sake of the kingdom and for the sake of God is not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed to us. In other words, there is no possible way you will spend any time at all being saved, being a Christian, being a child of God, and come to regret it. It is impossible that you would be a Christian your whole life and serve God your whole life and get to heaven and be jealous of the people who partied in college. That will not happen. As a matter of fact, what I want us to see, and Paul's talking to a persecuted church, to people who actually suffer. Very few of us, if any, have suffered for our faith. The bar to entry in the American evangelical church is so low that it costs us nothing to come. We have not suffered. Furthermore, the Bible makes it very clear that life with God is the best life possible. Scripture is replete of verses and passages that remind us that being a Christian is the best life possible. And I can go through the Rolodex, John 10.10, that I talk about all the time. The thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy. But Jesus says, I have come that you might have life and have it to the full, have the most rich, full life possible. We're told in Psalms that at God's right hand are pleasures forevermore, that in his presence, there is a fullness of joy. We're told again in Psalms that one day in his courts is better than thousands elsewhere. We're told that we serve a God in Ephesians that is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine. We're told in John that from his fullness, we receive grace upon grace. We're told these things over and over again in scripture, that life with God is the best life possible. It's the fullest life possible. And so the reality is that if you're a Christian who's been saved your whole life and someone slips in at the last minute and they get to go to heaven too, you shouldn't feel jealousy. You should feel empathy because you just got to live your whole life with God and they missed out on all that joy. It is to our advantage to be picked up early and work in the vineyard all day. It's the life that we should desire and what we want. We should not feel jealousy to the deathbed conversion. We should feel empathy because they had to go through their whole life without God. And that's what salvation is. It's not in or out. It's with or without. You understand? It's not am I in, am I in, am I going or am I not? It's do I, am I living life with God? Am I abiding in him or am I not? And when someone is not saved, when someone doesn't know the Lord, the great tragedy is that they go through their life without experiencing the joy of the Lord and the joy of heaven. Without experiencing that relationship with him and the richness and fullness of life. We should not be jealous of that. We should be empathetic and continue to invite them in because through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. We needn't be jealous of the people who don't put in the work that we do. Because there is joy in that work. So right off the bat, Paul's not talking about in or out. Paul says with or without. And that there is no suffering that will not make it worth the glory that is to be revealed to us. Then, in the rest of this passage, we see this. And this is an important phrase. I want us to rest on it for a little bit. Salvation is a process of restoration and renewal. Salvation is a process of restoration and renewal. This is why this is important. Those words, process is important, restoration, renewal is important, and I want to show you why. But first, we're going to go to that word process. Because I think that many of us think about salvation as this moment in time. I wasn't saved. I prayed the prayer, said the confession, did whatever moment you look to where your belief changed. I wasn't saved. Then I prayed the prayer. I am saved. Done. And that's not true. Salvation is a process. And we know that salvation is a process because of what Paul writes in verse 30 that I said was really important. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. That's a process. So let's walk through it so we understand it. Those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom God knew before time were going to accept his invitation to salvation, he also called them to himself. With the urging of the Holy Spirit, he called you to himself. It wasn't your work that found God. It was God calling you to himself through his love and through his kindness and through his goodness. Now, I know that some of you in the room are Calvinist and you care deeply about these words. I am not and I don't. So I'm not going to last a long time there. OK, but those whom he predestined, he also called those whom he called. He also justified that justification is what many of us think of as the moment of our salvation. That's when you were set righteous. You were clothed in the righteousness of Christ. You were set right in the court of God. You were justified before him. You are no longer guilty. You were absolved from your sin because Jesus died, lived a perfect life and died a perfect death. You are now justified before God. And the good news is that in the culmination of this chapter, there's this incredibly powerful verse of the assurance of salvation where Paul writes, So once you are justified, Paul says, I am convinced that nothing can unjustify you. Nothing can unsave you. But the process doesn't stop there. Those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom he called, he also justified. Those whom he justified, he also glorified. Now Paul speaks as if it's already been done because the work has been done. But we are not yet glorified. We are glorified when we occupy our bodies in heaven. We are glorified when we sit in the presence of God. I love that verse that he sneaks in there in the middle. We do not hope for what we see. We hope for what we do not see. So we wait for it with patience. Meaning, when we get to heaven, we don't need faith and hope anymore because we have God there. So he says that glorification is coming later. So what I want you to understand about your salvation is that it is in process. It's not done. When you are justified, you're secure. You will not be unjustified. But there is another step. And that doesn't happen until eternity. And that's what's in this text. So it's a process, I said, and that's the process. It starts at predestination, at call, at justification, and it's finished at glorification when we're in eternity with God forever. But it's also a process of renewal and restoration. We think about salvation as just our issue. It's just me and God. It's just for me. Jesus died for me, but that's not what we see in the text. In the text, we see that we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and the redemption of our bodies, the completion of the salvation process. But so does the world groans in the pains of childbirth waiting for its redemption and restoration as well. So what I want us to understand about salvation is it's bigger than you. It's about restoring all of creation. When God made heaven and earth in Genesis, he made it perfect. He was pleased with it. And I am convinced that it looks completely different than our earth now. And we have mucked up this earth with sin and brokenness. And that one day he will restore all things. He will return and he will make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. And he will be with us and we will be with our God and the former things will have passed away. And he'll create a new heaven and a new earth. And he will have restored creation back to himself and its original purpose. So when Jesus dies on the cross, he's not just dying for souls. He's dying for everything that he created to restore it back to himself. Because we're told in Romans that all of creation groans for the return of the king. The earth groans for God. And when we think about salvation as being in or being out, we miss virtually everything that's said in Romans 8. We make it so overly reductive as if to think that what we're teaching the kids over there is the greatest understanding that we ever need of this incredible doctrine. And we miss out on what it truly means to be saved. Here's the last thing that I want us to understand about salvation. Being saved allows us to experience glimpses of heaven here and now. If being in heaven is being with God and not being in heaven is being without God, then as people, we are literally experiencing either hell on earth or heaven on earth. Sometimes we get glimpses of what it is when we're in God's presence, at moments with our children, a hike, a sunset, a hug, singing. When we raise our voices, every time we sing and you guys sing loud and Aaron backs off and it's just us, every time that happens, I have to stop singing because I start crying. Because that's what heaven will be like. We will sing together. And so in being believers, we get these glimpses of heaven and what it will be like. And we usher God into our life and and we invite him in, and we allow him in. This is, again, why we should not be envious of the person who gets saved on their deathbed and got, oh, you got this whole life of freedom. No, we're actually taught in Romans that we are slaves to sin. We're slaves to this bondage of corruption, but that by being saved, we are finally free from sin. We live with more freedom than anyone. We should have more joy than anyone. I said this on Easter. Easter is the most joyful day and we are the most joyful people because of the hope that we have in Christ. So I want you to see this morning. I don't know if you can tell I'm fired up about it because I really want you to understand what it means to be saved it's not it's it's too small to understand it as am I going to heaven or am I not am I in or am I out with all gentleness that's a childlike understanding of our faith. And as we grow, and as we move towards glorification through our sanctification, we should allow God to deepen our understanding of what it means to be his child. And we should understand that he's going to restore all of creation to himself, not just us. And we should understand that every day we get to live as Christians is a day that we spend in the presence of God. And at his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. In his presence, there is fullness of joy. We should be happy and proud and grateful if we're already laboring in the vineyard because of our understanding of what salvation is and how much God loves us through it. So let's progress in that and develop a far more deep, rich, helpful, gratitude-inducing understanding of what it means to be saved. Let's pray. Father, thank you for saving us. Thank you for sending your son. Thank you for sharing him with us. Thank you for watching him suffer for us. Thank you for the promise that you will renew and restore us. Thank you for the promise that you will renew and restore creation. Thank you for who you are. God, if there's anybody here who doesn't know you, I pray that your Holy Spirit would beckon them even now to desire to be with you and begin to experience glimpses of eternity here in this life. For those of us who are saved, God, thank you. Thank you for calling us to work early. Thank you for letting us labor in your vineyard. Thank you for the joy that it brings in what it is. God, we pray all these things in the name of your son, Jesus. Amen.

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. Thanks for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors of grace. Somebody over there is stinky because this side is full. You guys, I don't know what you're avoiding over here, but this is ridiculous. It's good to see you. Thanks for coming in May in the rain. I keep expecting for us to get over. There's always a bump in attendance in the spring, January, February, March. And that usually lasts until Easter. And then you guys go to the beach like for the whole until August. I don't see you again. So I keep expecting that every week and you keep showing up. So I'm just I'm going to threaten you with this. You keep showing up. We're going to two services in the fall. OK, you just have to deal with it. I also just want to praise God sincerely for this. Gibby, our worship pastor, Aaron Gibson, Gibby. We have too many Aarons around here, so I have to give them all nicknames, except for Aaron Buchanan. He's just Aaron, which makes sense. If you know him, that fits. Gibby's sick as a dog this morning. Like legit could barely talk to me when he got in this morning. He was late. He was later than he normally is because he's sick. So he can sneeze in the lobby now. But you wouldn't believe how often we look at each other on a Sunday morning and go, I feel terrible. I don't know if I can preach. I don't know if I can sing. And we just pray for God to give us 30 good minutes. And He always does. He always does. That was fantastic. I was moved to tears. It's so fun and good to be a singing church, especially since I inherited a bunch of frozen Presbyterians eight years ago. We've had to work on that a little bit. If you know, you know. This morning we continue in our series that Haley mentioned called FAQs, where we sourced some questions out to the small groups, solicited some responses, and just said, hey, what is it that you're curious about? What do you want to know? What questions do you have? And so we took kind of the most common ones and we said, let's talk about these on a Sunday. And I'm particularly excited to talk about this topic this morning because I feel it's so important. And it came up a lot in a bunch of different ways. But it's basically questions about understanding the doctrine of salvation. What does it mean to be saved? How do I know I'm going to heaven? Am I going to be saved forever? Can I lose it? Why does the question we're going to focus on at the beginning of our time this morning is why does God accept deathbed confessions, which is an interesting question, but there was a lot of questions around this doctrine of salvation and seeking to understand what it does mean to be saved and having a better understanding around that. And I think it's such an important question because once we get into church world, we kind of stop asking about salvation because I think we feel like we're supposed to know. And so we're embarrassed to ask. But here's what I know is that my understanding of salvation has worked progressively through my life that with each year or decade that passes, I come to understand salvation and what it is a little bit better. And I think that your understanding of salvation should progress as well. Even if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, there's a reason you're in church on a random May in the rain. And it has to be because you're at least curious. You're at least thoughtful about it. And so I would love to have the opportunity to tell you more about what it means to be a Christian. And I want the Christians in the room to understand their salvation more deeply. Because it's my suspicion that everybody here who is a Christian has at some point in their life, and many of you, and I have to, I hope that you'll trust me this morning that I'm not trying to be hard on anybody. I'm not trying to make you feel small for the way that you think. I'm not trying to make you feel uneducated or dumb. I just think this is a necessary phase of our understanding of our salvation that every Christian goes through. And I also know from experience that many Christians spend their entire life kind of misunderstanding the doctrine of salvation and being overly reductive about the incredible miracle that it is and what it actually means. And so this morning, what I'm hoping to do is to give us all a more rich understanding of our salvation. So either we're kind of locked into how we initially understand it, and this will kind of open up our minds and help us understand it better, God and more grateful to him for the miraculous event and process of our salvation. So that's where we're going this morning. That's what I want to do. To get there, I want to start with this question that came up in our emails, which is why does God accept a deathbed confession? This is an interesting question because it belies the motives behind it. And the motives behind that question generate a lot of the other questions that we have around salvation. This question comes most of the time from a sense of jealousy or resentment or entitlement or frustration. This question is most likely, and if you're the one that asked this, please hear me. It makes sense to ask it. I understand why you would. Every Christian has asked it. It's asked so often that Jesus talks about it in the Bible, and we're about to go to exactly where Jesus answers this question. But I want us to understand why we're asking it first. Let's just put it out there and be honest about it, because all of us do it. And again, I don't want anyone to feel bad for asking this question. I just want to understand why it comes up. The main motive in my estimation behind this question, why would God accept a deathbed confession, is essentially this, if we're going to use real language. I've been saved for decades. And I've been denying myself and keeping it between the ditches and trying to follow God's rules for years. And I've lived without the freedom of a pagan. And I'm going to use the word pagan this morning because a pagan is someone who doesn't believe in God. I'm not trying to be dismissive of those people, of non-believers. It's just pagans easier to say than non-believer? So we as Christians, and we know this, especially those of us that were Christians in high school and college, we are jealous of the freedom of the pagan, right? We're jealous of what they get to do and what we can't do. We've spent our life trying to follow the rules, trying to do the right things, trying to live the right way. And now here's this person who spent their life as a free pagan doing whatever they wanted to do, following any rules that they felt like they needed to follow, never committed to God, no fidelity, didn't put in the work that I did. And now at the very end, they're just going to slip in the door and we're going to the same heaven. That's not fair. I know it's hard to hear that out loud, but I can see about half of you grinning at me right now. You'll all have these smirks on your face like, yeah, that's pretty true. You got me. We've all thought that, and it's okay to think that. It makes sense why we would. It makes sense that we would think that. But here's Jesus' answer to that question. Why does he accept deathbed confessions? This is actually a parable. In the Gospel of Matthew, you can turn to chapter 20 if you want to. I'm going to read you verses 13 through 16, but first I need to tell you what's going on. Somebody comes up to Jesus and they ask this question. And so Jesus tells this story. He says there's an owner of a vineyard and he goes out one day where he can get some day laborers. And I've told you before, Israel was a poor country. They were impoverished. And so there was hubs where you would go and you could get men to come and put in a day's labor at whatever business you owned. And this was their livelihood. This was all that. They just hope they got picked that day. That was their livelihood. And so there's these people and the owner goes and he says, hey, I need y'all to come work for me in my vineyard. I'm going to pay you one denarius. I don't know how much that is. I could have done the research on what it was, but that feels like a waste of time. Google it if you care. I'm going to give you one denarius. And they're like, okay, great deal. So they go with him, they get in the Ford Ranger and they go to the vineyard and they start to work, right? And I don't know why Ford Ranger is funny, but it is. And they start to work and they're working all day. About the middle of the day, some other workers come by the field and they go, hey, we're looking for work. Can we help you today? And the owner says, yeah, sure. Come on. You can work for me. And so they start working by the middle of the day. And then about the last hour of the day, some other workers show up and they go, hey, we're looking for work. Can we work for you? The owner says, that's great. Yeah, come on. And they're working for him. So then when the work's done, the owner lines them up and begins to pay them. And he starts with the first group of workers that he hired that morning. Here's your one denarius for your day's labor. Thank you very much. And then he goes to the group that he hired in the middle. And he says, here's your one denarius. Thank you very much. And then he goes to the group that he hired with just an hour to go. And he said, here's your one denarius. Thank you very much. And the guys that have been working all day are ticked. Like, that's not fair. I worked eight hours for my denarius. That dude worked two hours, worked one hour. He had missed the smoke breaks and the lunch break and everything and just came in during the last hour. That's not fair. And the owner responds to them like this in verse 13. But he answered one of them, I am not being unfair to unfair to you friend didn't you agree to work for a denarius take your pay and go I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money or are you envious because I am generous so So the last will be first. And the first will be last. I love that response. They go, hey, that's not fair. We've been working for eight hours. They've been working for one hour. And you're giving us the same pay. And he goes, what do you care? That's basically the answer. It's my money. Do you care what I do with my own possession? Do you care what I do with my own resources? What right is it of yours to tell me what I should do? I chose to be generous to him. Are you envious of my generosity? You agreed to a denarius. I gave you a denarius. They agreed to this. I gave them this. It's my resources to do with what I want. And so to our question of why does God accept a deathbed confession where the implication is, hey, I've been laboring in the vineyard all day, my whole life. I've been working at this for decades. I put in a full eight hours. And I get my salvation. I get my eternity in heaven. I get my utopia. But they just slid in at the last minute. They don't deserve what I deserve. Maybe we can believe in purgatory so they have to suffer a little bit before they get the glory that I get. This is the jealousy that we express. And in that is implied exactly what the workers were frustrated about. Hey, that's not fair. I've put in my time and my effort. I've done my work. And the pay shouldn't be the same. And here's what this does. When we ask that question and we think that way. And here's what I wanted to talk about. When we think like that, we make salvation something that we think of in terms of being in or out. And very often, there's a lot of questions that Christians ask about salvation, and the motivation behind that question is, am I in or am I out? Did I say the prayer the right way? Am I in or am I out? Am I in heaven or am I burning in hell forever? That's what we're asking. How much sinning can I do and still be saved? Can I lose my salvation or does God hold on to me and I can't lose my salvation? That's an in or out question. How do I, if I feel like I lost my salvation, can I get it back? If someone wanders away, were they ever truly saved? All these questions that we ask about salvation are indicative of this thought process of in or out. And that's how we think about our salvation. And this is the place where many of us get stuck for our whole lives. But what I want us to see is that in or out salvation is a small salvation. Thinking of it that way reduces it to something that it should have never been. And if you're there, if you think about it this way, if you've thought about it that way, I don't want you to feel bad because that in or out mentality was probably handed to you by a well-meaning teacher in your church who also adopted that, who never got a more expansive view of salvation. I got saved when I was four. I was four and a half years old. We went to a special service on Sunday night, and the teacher taught us about the doctrine of hell. And I don't know if Aaron Winston's in here, but if I find out that we're teaching our four-year-olds about hell and scaring them into salvation, that's not going to be okay. They taught us about hell. They told us what it was. And they said, do you want to go there? No. No way. That sounds terrible. What's in heaven? Well, you sing a lot. I mean, that's better than hell. Okay. What do I have to do to go to heaven? Well, you have to believe in Jesus. Deal. What do I do to believe in Jesus? Will you repeat this prayer after me? Okay. You say the words and I'll do them too. And I was saved into an in or out understanding of salvation. What four-year-old isn't going to take out a fire insurance policy by threat of hell. Of course I got saved. God in his goodness has progressed my understanding of what salvation is over the decades. But many of us get saved into this kind of faith where for us it's a matter of are we in or are we out? And when we think of it that way, we become the jealous workers in the vineyard that get upset that we've been, and some of you will understand this reference, we've been the good brother in Luke 15, the one that stayed home and worked. And then the prodigal son comes home and God lets him into heaven and throws a party for him too. And we're like, what in the world? I've been doing my part the whole time. Because for us, salvation is, am I in? Am I going to heaven? Or am I not? And many of us get saved. And with this reductive view of what salvation is, we spend the rest of our lives just trying to stay in and trying to understand what's going to keep us there. But I think that there is a much bigger, better view of salvation. And I think it's presented to us in plain language in the greatest chapter in the Bible, Romans chapter 8. I'm going to read to you what Paul writes about what salvation is. But before I do, I want you to understand where we're picking this up. The first eight chapters of Romans, the first seven chapters of Romans, are a lengthy explanation of the doctrine of salvation. It's a lengthy explanation of the doctrine of salvation. Now, also, I want to pause here before I read. I forgot to say this, and I want to make sure that we're clear on this. When I talk about salvation, when I say saved or not, I want to just pause and be very clear that we understand what this means together, okay? The way that we explain salvation at grace, and when I say we, I mean me, because I'm the one that does it. The way that we explain salvation at grace is to say, to be saved, to be a Christian means that we believe Jesus is who he says he is. He says he's the son of God who's come to take away the sins of the world. We believe that. We believe that it means that Jesus did what he said he did. He lived a perfect life. He died a perfect death and he resurrected and rescued us from death and sin and shame. And it means that we believe that he's going to do what he says he's going to do, which in Revelation 19 is to come crashing through the clouds to reclaim us and his creation and restore it back to himself and its original glory. To be a Christian is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, did what he said he did, and he's going to do what he says he's going to do. And that to become a Christian, all we need to engage in is the fundamental repentance of Christianity, which Peter describes to us in Acts. He's preaching a sermon. Jesus has been crucified. They're hanging out in the upper room for 40 days trying to figure out what to do. The Holy Spirit descends on them. Peter goes out to the crowd and he preaches. And the sermon is, hey, that guy that you killed was the Messiah and he came to save you. And the crowd believes him. And they say, what do we do? We messed up. And Peter says, repent and be baptized. Repent of what? I believe it's the fundamental repentance of salvation, which is to repent of who you thought Jesus was before you came to agree with him about who he says he is. So to be saved, we repent of who we thought Jesus was before we moved into this moment and this process of salvation. And we accept who he says he is from his word. That's what being a Christian is. Now, Romans is the most detailed theological lesson we get in the Bible. And the first seven chapters are written to help us understand what salvation is and what God did in it and what his responsibility is, what our responsibility is. Then in Romans 8, he culminates that seven chapter argument with what I think is the greatest chapter of the Bible and the culmination of the glory of salvation. And he proclaims to us what salvation is. So I want you to hear how Paul talks about it in Romans chapter 8 and see if this can't begin to expand our view of salvation. I've got my old Bible out. This is the ESV. I was reading this passage this morning in the NIV as I was going through the sermon. Sorry, sorry, DeVos. I know I bought you a Bible and now I'm ruining it. And I just didn't, I don't like the way the NIV reads. This is way better. So if you'll indulge me, I'm going to read you from the ESV. This is the soaring doctrine of salvation that Paul gives us. Verse 19. And I'm going to read all the way down through verse 30, so buckle up. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons in God. The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it. In hopes that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning who have the firstfruits of the Spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he sees, but if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Okay, lock in. You may have faded away, and you're not paying attention to the words anymore, but these three verses are super important. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And this is the important part. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. This is Paul's soaring description of what it means to be saved and what salvation is seeking to do and what God is seeking to work in that salvation. So the first thing that we see is in the very first verse where Paul says, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. What Paul is saying here is, whatever we had to suffer to be Christians, whatever we had to suffer to be in and to build God's kingdom, whatever that work was for the day in the vineyard, and we've put in our time, whatever suffering we've endured for the sake of the kingdom and for the sake of God is not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed to us. In other words, there is no possible way you will spend any time at all being saved, being a Christian, being a child of God, and come to regret it. It is impossible that you would be a Christian your whole life and serve God your whole life and get to heaven and be jealous of the people who partied in college. That will not happen. As a matter of fact, what I want us to see, and Paul's talking to a persecuted church, to people who actually suffer. Very few of us, if any, have suffered for our faith. The bar to entry in the American evangelical church is so low that it costs us nothing to come. We have not suffered. Furthermore, the Bible makes it very clear that life with God is the best life possible. Scripture is replete of verses and passages that remind us that being a Christian is the best life possible. And I can go through the Rolodex, John 10.10, that I talk about all the time. The thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy. But Jesus says, I have come that you might have life and have it to the full, have the most rich, full life possible. We're told in Psalms that at God's right hand are pleasures forevermore, that in his presence, there is a fullness of joy. We're told again in Psalms that one day in his courts is better than thousands elsewhere. We're told that we serve a God in Ephesians that is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine. We're told in John that from his fullness, we receive grace upon grace. We're told these things over and over again in scripture, that life with God is the best life possible. It's the fullest life possible. And so the reality is that if you're a Christian who's been saved your whole life and someone slips in at the last minute and they get to go to heaven too, you shouldn't feel jealousy. You should feel empathy because you just got to live your whole life with God and they missed out on all that joy. It is to our advantage to be picked up early and work in the vineyard all day. It's the life that we should desire and what we want. We should not feel jealousy to the deathbed conversion. We should feel empathy because they had to go through their whole life without God. And that's what salvation is. It's not in or out. It's with or without. You understand? It's not am I in, am I in, am I going or am I not? It's do I, am I living life with God? Am I abiding in him or am I not? And when someone is not saved, when someone doesn't know the Lord, the great tragedy is that they go through their life without experiencing the joy of the Lord and the joy of heaven. Without experiencing that relationship with him and the richness and fullness of life. We should not be jealous of that. We should be empathetic and continue to invite them in because through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. We needn't be jealous of the people who don't put in the work that we do. Because there is joy in that work. So right off the bat, Paul's not talking about in or out. Paul says with or without. And that there is no suffering that will not make it worth the glory that is to be revealed to us. Then, in the rest of this passage, we see this. And this is an important phrase. I want us to rest on it for a little bit. Salvation is a process of restoration and renewal. Salvation is a process of restoration and renewal. This is why this is important. Those words, process is important, restoration, renewal is important, and I want to show you why. But first, we're going to go to that word process. Because I think that many of us think about salvation as this moment in time. I wasn't saved. I prayed the prayer, said the confession, did whatever moment you look to where your belief changed. I wasn't saved. Then I prayed the prayer. I am saved. Done. And that's not true. Salvation is a process. And we know that salvation is a process because of what Paul writes in verse 30 that I said was really important. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. That's a process. So let's walk through it so we understand it. Those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom God knew before time were going to accept his invitation to salvation, he also called them to himself. With the urging of the Holy Spirit, he called you to himself. It wasn't your work that found God. It was God calling you to himself through his love and through his kindness and through his goodness. Now, I know that some of you in the room are Calvinist and you care deeply about these words. I am not and I don't. So I'm not going to last a long time there. OK, but those whom he predestined, he also called those whom he called. He also justified that justification is what many of us think of as the moment of our salvation. That's when you were set righteous. You were clothed in the righteousness of Christ. You were set right in the court of God. You were justified before him. You are no longer guilty. You were absolved from your sin because Jesus died, lived a perfect life and died a perfect death. You are now justified before God. And the good news is that in the culmination of this chapter, there's this incredibly powerful verse of the assurance of salvation where Paul writes, So once you are justified, Paul says, I am convinced that nothing can unjustify you. Nothing can unsave you. But the process doesn't stop there. Those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom he called, he also justified. Those whom he justified, he also glorified. Now Paul speaks as if it's already been done because the work has been done. But we are not yet glorified. We are glorified when we occupy our bodies in heaven. We are glorified when we sit in the presence of God. I love that verse that he sneaks in there in the middle. We do not hope for what we see. We hope for what we do not see. So we wait for it with patience. Meaning, when we get to heaven, we don't need faith and hope anymore because we have God there. So he says that glorification is coming later. So what I want you to understand about your salvation is that it is in process. It's not done. When you are justified, you're secure. You will not be unjustified. But there is another step. And that doesn't happen until eternity. And that's what's in this text. So it's a process, I said, and that's the process. It starts at predestination, at call, at justification, and it's finished at glorification when we're in eternity with God forever. But it's also a process of renewal and restoration. We think about salvation as just our issue. It's just me and God. It's just for me. Jesus died for me, but that's not what we see in the text. In the text, we see that we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and the redemption of our bodies, the completion of the salvation process. But so does the world groans in the pains of childbirth waiting for its redemption and restoration as well. So what I want us to understand about salvation is it's bigger than you. It's about restoring all of creation. When God made heaven and earth in Genesis, he made it perfect. He was pleased with it. And I am convinced that it looks completely different than our earth now. And we have mucked up this earth with sin and brokenness. And that one day he will restore all things. He will return and he will make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. And he will be with us and we will be with our God and the former things will have passed away. And he'll create a new heaven and a new earth. And he will have restored creation back to himself and its original purpose. So when Jesus dies on the cross, he's not just dying for souls. He's dying for everything that he created to restore it back to himself. Because we're told in Romans that all of creation groans for the return of the king. The earth groans for God. And when we think about salvation as being in or being out, we miss virtually everything that's said in Romans 8. We make it so overly reductive as if to think that what we're teaching the kids over there is the greatest understanding that we ever need of this incredible doctrine. And we miss out on what it truly means to be saved. Here's the last thing that I want us to understand about salvation. Being saved allows us to experience glimpses of heaven here and now. If being in heaven is being with God and not being in heaven is being without God, then as people, we are literally experiencing either hell on earth or heaven on earth. Sometimes we get glimpses of what it is when we're in God's presence, at moments with our children, a hike, a sunset, a hug, singing. When we raise our voices, every time we sing and you guys sing loud and Aaron backs off and it's just us, every time that happens, I have to stop singing because I start crying. Because that's what heaven will be like. We will sing together. And so in being believers, we get these glimpses of heaven and what it will be like. And we usher God into our life and and we invite him in, and we allow him in. This is, again, why we should not be envious of the person who gets saved on their deathbed and got, oh, you got this whole life of freedom. No, we're actually taught in Romans that we are slaves to sin. We're slaves to this bondage of corruption, but that by being saved, we are finally free from sin. We live with more freedom than anyone. We should have more joy than anyone. I said this on Easter. Easter is the most joyful day and we are the most joyful people because of the hope that we have in Christ. So I want you to see this morning. I don't know if you can tell I'm fired up about it because I really want you to understand what it means to be saved it's not it's it's too small to understand it as am I going to heaven or am I not am I in or am I out with all gentleness that's a childlike understanding of our faith. And as we grow, and as we move towards glorification through our sanctification, we should allow God to deepen our understanding of what it means to be his child. And we should understand that he's going to restore all of creation to himself, not just us. And we should understand that every day we get to live as Christians is a day that we spend in the presence of God. And at his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. In his presence, there is fullness of joy. We should be happy and proud and grateful if we're already laboring in the vineyard because of our understanding of what salvation is and how much God loves us through it. So let's progress in that and develop a far more deep, rich, helpful, gratitude-inducing understanding of what it means to be saved. Let's pray. Father, thank you for saving us. Thank you for sending your son. Thank you for sharing him with us. Thank you for watching him suffer for us. Thank you for the promise that you will renew and restore us. Thank you for the promise that you will renew and restore creation. Thank you for who you are. God, if there's anybody here who doesn't know you, I pray that your Holy Spirit would beckon them even now to desire to be with you and begin to experience glimpses of eternity here in this life. For those of us who are saved, God, thank you. Thank you for calling us to work early. Thank you for letting us labor in your vineyard. Thank you for the joy that it brings in what it is. God, we pray all these things in the name of your son, Jesus. Amen.

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. Thanks for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors of grace. Somebody over there is stinky because this side is full. You guys, I don't know what you're avoiding over here, but this is ridiculous. It's good to see you. Thanks for coming in May in the rain. I keep expecting for us to get over. There's always a bump in attendance in the spring, January, February, March. And that usually lasts until Easter. And then you guys go to the beach like for the whole until August. I don't see you again. So I keep expecting that every week and you keep showing up. So I'm just I'm going to threaten you with this. You keep showing up. We're going to two services in the fall. OK, you just have to deal with it. I also just want to praise God sincerely for this. Gibby, our worship pastor, Aaron Gibson, Gibby. We have too many Aarons around here, so I have to give them all nicknames, except for Aaron Buchanan. He's just Aaron, which makes sense. If you know him, that fits. Gibby's sick as a dog this morning. Like legit could barely talk to me when he got in this morning. He was late. He was later than he normally is because he's sick. So he can sneeze in the lobby now. But you wouldn't believe how often we look at each other on a Sunday morning and go, I feel terrible. I don't know if I can preach. I don't know if I can sing. And we just pray for God to give us 30 good minutes. And He always does. He always does. That was fantastic. I was moved to tears. It's so fun and good to be a singing church, especially since I inherited a bunch of frozen Presbyterians eight years ago. We've had to work on that a little bit. If you know, you know. This morning we continue in our series that Haley mentioned called FAQs, where we sourced some questions out to the small groups, solicited some responses, and just said, hey, what is it that you're curious about? What do you want to know? What questions do you have? And so we took kind of the most common ones and we said, let's talk about these on a Sunday. And I'm particularly excited to talk about this topic this morning because I feel it's so important. And it came up a lot in a bunch of different ways. But it's basically questions about understanding the doctrine of salvation. What does it mean to be saved? How do I know I'm going to heaven? Am I going to be saved forever? Can I lose it? Why does the question we're going to focus on at the beginning of our time this morning is why does God accept deathbed confessions, which is an interesting question, but there was a lot of questions around this doctrine of salvation and seeking to understand what it does mean to be saved and having a better understanding around that. And I think it's such an important question because once we get into church world, we kind of stop asking about salvation because I think we feel like we're supposed to know. And so we're embarrassed to ask. But here's what I know is that my understanding of salvation has worked progressively through my life that with each year or decade that passes, I come to understand salvation and what it is a little bit better. And I think that your understanding of salvation should progress as well. Even if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, there's a reason you're in church on a random May in the rain. And it has to be because you're at least curious. You're at least thoughtful about it. And so I would love to have the opportunity to tell you more about what it means to be a Christian. And I want the Christians in the room to understand their salvation more deeply. Because it's my suspicion that everybody here who is a Christian has at some point in their life, and many of you, and I have to, I hope that you'll trust me this morning that I'm not trying to be hard on anybody. I'm not trying to make you feel small for the way that you think. I'm not trying to make you feel uneducated or dumb. I just think this is a necessary phase of our understanding of our salvation that every Christian goes through. And I also know from experience that many Christians spend their entire life kind of misunderstanding the doctrine of salvation and being overly reductive about the incredible miracle that it is and what it actually means. And so this morning, what I'm hoping to do is to give us all a more rich understanding of our salvation. So either we're kind of locked into how we initially understand it, and this will kind of open up our minds and help us understand it better, God and more grateful to him for the miraculous event and process of our salvation. So that's where we're going this morning. That's what I want to do. To get there, I want to start with this question that came up in our emails, which is why does God accept a deathbed confession? This is an interesting question because it belies the motives behind it. And the motives behind that question generate a lot of the other questions that we have around salvation. This question comes most of the time from a sense of jealousy or resentment or entitlement or frustration. This question is most likely, and if you're the one that asked this, please hear me. It makes sense to ask it. I understand why you would. Every Christian has asked it. It's asked so often that Jesus talks about it in the Bible, and we're about to go to exactly where Jesus answers this question. But I want us to understand why we're asking it first. Let's just put it out there and be honest about it, because all of us do it. And again, I don't want anyone to feel bad for asking this question. I just want to understand why it comes up. The main motive in my estimation behind this question, why would God accept a deathbed confession, is essentially this, if we're going to use real language. I've been saved for decades. And I've been denying myself and keeping it between the ditches and trying to follow God's rules for years. And I've lived without the freedom of a pagan. And I'm going to use the word pagan this morning because a pagan is someone who doesn't believe in God. I'm not trying to be dismissive of those people, of non-believers. It's just pagans easier to say than non-believer? So we as Christians, and we know this, especially those of us that were Christians in high school and college, we are jealous of the freedom of the pagan, right? We're jealous of what they get to do and what we can't do. We've spent our life trying to follow the rules, trying to do the right things, trying to live the right way. And now here's this person who spent their life as a free pagan doing whatever they wanted to do, following any rules that they felt like they needed to follow, never committed to God, no fidelity, didn't put in the work that I did. And now at the very end, they're just going to slip in the door and we're going to the same heaven. That's not fair. I know it's hard to hear that out loud, but I can see about half of you grinning at me right now. You'll all have these smirks on your face like, yeah, that's pretty true. You got me. We've all thought that, and it's okay to think that. It makes sense why we would. It makes sense that we would think that. But here's Jesus' answer to that question. Why does he accept deathbed confessions? This is actually a parable. In the Gospel of Matthew, you can turn to chapter 20 if you want to. I'm going to read you verses 13 through 16, but first I need to tell you what's going on. Somebody comes up to Jesus and they ask this question. And so Jesus tells this story. He says there's an owner of a vineyard and he goes out one day where he can get some day laborers. And I've told you before, Israel was a poor country. They were impoverished. And so there was hubs where you would go and you could get men to come and put in a day's labor at whatever business you owned. And this was their livelihood. This was all that. They just hope they got picked that day. That was their livelihood. And so there's these people and the owner goes and he says, hey, I need y'all to come work for me in my vineyard. I'm going to pay you one denarius. I don't know how much that is. I could have done the research on what it was, but that feels like a waste of time. Google it if you care. I'm going to give you one denarius. And they're like, okay, great deal. So they go with him, they get in the Ford Ranger and they go to the vineyard and they start to work, right? And I don't know why Ford Ranger is funny, but it is. And they start to work and they're working all day. About the middle of the day, some other workers come by the field and they go, hey, we're looking for work. Can we help you today? And the owner says, yeah, sure. Come on. You can work for me. And so they start working by the middle of the day. And then about the last hour of the day, some other workers show up and they go, hey, we're looking for work. Can we work for you? The owner says, that's great. Yeah, come on. And they're working for him. So then when the work's done, the owner lines them up and begins to pay them. And he starts with the first group of workers that he hired that morning. Here's your one denarius for your day's labor. Thank you very much. And then he goes to the group that he hired in the middle. And he says, here's your one denarius. Thank you very much. And then he goes to the group that he hired with just an hour to go. And he said, here's your one denarius. Thank you very much. And the guys that have been working all day are ticked. Like, that's not fair. I worked eight hours for my denarius. That dude worked two hours, worked one hour. He had missed the smoke breaks and the lunch break and everything and just came in during the last hour. That's not fair. And the owner responds to them like this in verse 13. But he answered one of them, I am not being unfair to unfair to you friend didn't you agree to work for a denarius take your pay and go I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money or are you envious because I am generous so So the last will be first. And the first will be last. I love that response. They go, hey, that's not fair. We've been working for eight hours. They've been working for one hour. And you're giving us the same pay. And he goes, what do you care? That's basically the answer. It's my money. Do you care what I do with my own possession? Do you care what I do with my own resources? What right is it of yours to tell me what I should do? I chose to be generous to him. Are you envious of my generosity? You agreed to a denarius. I gave you a denarius. They agreed to this. I gave them this. It's my resources to do with what I want. And so to our question of why does God accept a deathbed confession where the implication is, hey, I've been laboring in the vineyard all day, my whole life. I've been working at this for decades. I put in a full eight hours. And I get my salvation. I get my eternity in heaven. I get my utopia. But they just slid in at the last minute. They don't deserve what I deserve. Maybe we can believe in purgatory so they have to suffer a little bit before they get the glory that I get. This is the jealousy that we express. And in that is implied exactly what the workers were frustrated about. Hey, that's not fair. I've put in my time and my effort. I've done my work. And the pay shouldn't be the same. And here's what this does. When we ask that question and we think that way. And here's what I wanted to talk about. When we think like that, we make salvation something that we think of in terms of being in or out. And very often, there's a lot of questions that Christians ask about salvation, and the motivation behind that question is, am I in or am I out? Did I say the prayer the right way? Am I in or am I out? Am I in heaven or am I burning in hell forever? That's what we're asking. How much sinning can I do and still be saved? Can I lose my salvation or does God hold on to me and I can't lose my salvation? That's an in or out question. How do I, if I feel like I lost my salvation, can I get it back? If someone wanders away, were they ever truly saved? All these questions that we ask about salvation are indicative of this thought process of in or out. And that's how we think about our salvation. And this is the place where many of us get stuck for our whole lives. But what I want us to see is that in or out salvation is a small salvation. Thinking of it that way reduces it to something that it should have never been. And if you're there, if you think about it this way, if you've thought about it that way, I don't want you to feel bad because that in or out mentality was probably handed to you by a well-meaning teacher in your church who also adopted that, who never got a more expansive view of salvation. I got saved when I was four. I was four and a half years old. We went to a special service on Sunday night, and the teacher taught us about the doctrine of hell. And I don't know if Aaron Winston's in here, but if I find out that we're teaching our four-year-olds about hell and scaring them into salvation, that's not going to be okay. They taught us about hell. They told us what it was. And they said, do you want to go there? No. No way. That sounds terrible. What's in heaven? Well, you sing a lot. I mean, that's better than hell. Okay. What do I have to do to go to heaven? Well, you have to believe in Jesus. Deal. What do I do to believe in Jesus? Will you repeat this prayer after me? Okay. You say the words and I'll do them too. And I was saved into an in or out understanding of salvation. What four-year-old isn't going to take out a fire insurance policy by threat of hell. Of course I got saved. God in his goodness has progressed my understanding of what salvation is over the decades. But many of us get saved into this kind of faith where for us it's a matter of are we in or are we out? And when we think of it that way, we become the jealous workers in the vineyard that get upset that we've been, and some of you will understand this reference, we've been the good brother in Luke 15, the one that stayed home and worked. And then the prodigal son comes home and God lets him into heaven and throws a party for him too. And we're like, what in the world? I've been doing my part the whole time. Because for us, salvation is, am I in? Am I going to heaven? Or am I not? And many of us get saved. And with this reductive view of what salvation is, we spend the rest of our lives just trying to stay in and trying to understand what's going to keep us there. But I think that there is a much bigger, better view of salvation. And I think it's presented to us in plain language in the greatest chapter in the Bible, Romans chapter 8. I'm going to read to you what Paul writes about what salvation is. But before I do, I want you to understand where we're picking this up. The first eight chapters of Romans, the first seven chapters of Romans, are a lengthy explanation of the doctrine of salvation. It's a lengthy explanation of the doctrine of salvation. Now, also, I want to pause here before I read. I forgot to say this, and I want to make sure that we're clear on this. When I talk about salvation, when I say saved or not, I want to just pause and be very clear that we understand what this means together, okay? The way that we explain salvation at grace, and when I say we, I mean me, because I'm the one that does it. The way that we explain salvation at grace is to say, to be saved, to be a Christian means that we believe Jesus is who he says he is. He says he's the son of God who's come to take away the sins of the world. We believe that. We believe that it means that Jesus did what he said he did. He lived a perfect life. He died a perfect death and he resurrected and rescued us from death and sin and shame. And it means that we believe that he's going to do what he says he's going to do, which in Revelation 19 is to come crashing through the clouds to reclaim us and his creation and restore it back to himself and its original glory. To be a Christian is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, did what he said he did, and he's going to do what he says he's going to do. And that to become a Christian, all we need to engage in is the fundamental repentance of Christianity, which Peter describes to us in Acts. He's preaching a sermon. Jesus has been crucified. They're hanging out in the upper room for 40 days trying to figure out what to do. The Holy Spirit descends on them. Peter goes out to the crowd and he preaches. And the sermon is, hey, that guy that you killed was the Messiah and he came to save you. And the crowd believes him. And they say, what do we do? We messed up. And Peter says, repent and be baptized. Repent of what? I believe it's the fundamental repentance of salvation, which is to repent of who you thought Jesus was before you came to agree with him about who he says he is. So to be saved, we repent of who we thought Jesus was before we moved into this moment and this process of salvation. And we accept who he says he is from his word. That's what being a Christian is. Now, Romans is the most detailed theological lesson we get in the Bible. And the first seven chapters are written to help us understand what salvation is and what God did in it and what his responsibility is, what our responsibility is. Then in Romans 8, he culminates that seven chapter argument with what I think is the greatest chapter of the Bible and the culmination of the glory of salvation. And he proclaims to us what salvation is. So I want you to hear how Paul talks about it in Romans chapter 8 and see if this can't begin to expand our view of salvation. I've got my old Bible out. This is the ESV. I was reading this passage this morning in the NIV as I was going through the sermon. Sorry, sorry, DeVos. I know I bought you a Bible and now I'm ruining it. And I just didn't, I don't like the way the NIV reads. This is way better. So if you'll indulge me, I'm going to read you from the ESV. This is the soaring doctrine of salvation that Paul gives us. Verse 19. And I'm going to read all the way down through verse 30, so buckle up. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons in God. The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it. In hopes that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning who have the firstfruits of the Spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he sees, but if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Okay, lock in. You may have faded away, and you're not paying attention to the words anymore, but these three verses are super important. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And this is the important part. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. This is Paul's soaring description of what it means to be saved and what salvation is seeking to do and what God is seeking to work in that salvation. So the first thing that we see is in the very first verse where Paul says, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. What Paul is saying here is, whatever we had to suffer to be Christians, whatever we had to suffer to be in and to build God's kingdom, whatever that work was for the day in the vineyard, and we've put in our time, whatever suffering we've endured for the sake of the kingdom and for the sake of God is not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed to us. In other words, there is no possible way you will spend any time at all being saved, being a Christian, being a child of God, and come to regret it. It is impossible that you would be a Christian your whole life and serve God your whole life and get to heaven and be jealous of the people who partied in college. That will not happen. As a matter of fact, what I want us to see, and Paul's talking to a persecuted church, to people who actually suffer. Very few of us, if any, have suffered for our faith. The bar to entry in the American evangelical church is so low that it costs us nothing to come. We have not suffered. Furthermore, the Bible makes it very clear that life with God is the best life possible. Scripture is replete of verses and passages that remind us that being a Christian is the best life possible. And I can go through the Rolodex, John 10.10, that I talk about all the time. The thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy. But Jesus says, I have come that you might have life and have it to the full, have the most rich, full life possible. We're told in Psalms that at God's right hand are pleasures forevermore, that in his presence, there is a fullness of joy. We're told again in Psalms that one day in his courts is better than thousands elsewhere. We're told that we serve a God in Ephesians that is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine. We're told in John that from his fullness, we receive grace upon grace. We're told these things over and over again in scripture, that life with God is the best life possible. It's the fullest life possible. And so the reality is that if you're a Christian who's been saved your whole life and someone slips in at the last minute and they get to go to heaven too, you shouldn't feel jealousy. You should feel empathy because you just got to live your whole life with God and they missed out on all that joy. It is to our advantage to be picked up early and work in the vineyard all day. It's the life that we should desire and what we want. We should not feel jealousy to the deathbed conversion. We should feel empathy because they had to go through their whole life without God. And that's what salvation is. It's not in or out. It's with or without. You understand? It's not am I in, am I in, am I going or am I not? It's do I, am I living life with God? Am I abiding in him or am I not? And when someone is not saved, when someone doesn't know the Lord, the great tragedy is that they go through their life without experiencing the joy of the Lord and the joy of heaven. Without experiencing that relationship with him and the richness and fullness of life. We should not be jealous of that. We should be empathetic and continue to invite them in because through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. We needn't be jealous of the people who don't put in the work that we do. Because there is joy in that work. So right off the bat, Paul's not talking about in or out. Paul says with or without. And that there is no suffering that will not make it worth the glory that is to be revealed to us. Then, in the rest of this passage, we see this. And this is an important phrase. I want us to rest on it for a little bit. Salvation is a process of restoration and renewal. Salvation is a process of restoration and renewal. This is why this is important. Those words, process is important, restoration, renewal is important, and I want to show you why. But first, we're going to go to that word process. Because I think that many of us think about salvation as this moment in time. I wasn't saved. I prayed the prayer, said the confession, did whatever moment you look to where your belief changed. I wasn't saved. Then I prayed the prayer. I am saved. Done. And that's not true. Salvation is a process. And we know that salvation is a process because of what Paul writes in verse 30 that I said was really important. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. That's a process. So let's walk through it so we understand it. Those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom God knew before time were going to accept his invitation to salvation, he also called them to himself. With the urging of the Holy Spirit, he called you to himself. It wasn't your work that found God. It was God calling you to himself through his love and through his kindness and through his goodness. Now, I know that some of you in the room are Calvinist and you care deeply about these words. I am not and I don't. So I'm not going to last a long time there. OK, but those whom he predestined, he also called those whom he called. He also justified that justification is what many of us think of as the moment of our salvation. That's when you were set righteous. You were clothed in the righteousness of Christ. You were set right in the court of God. You were justified before him. You are no longer guilty. You were absolved from your sin because Jesus died, lived a perfect life and died a perfect death. You are now justified before God. And the good news is that in the culmination of this chapter, there's this incredibly powerful verse of the assurance of salvation where Paul writes, So once you are justified, Paul says, I am convinced that nothing can unjustify you. Nothing can unsave you. But the process doesn't stop there. Those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom he called, he also justified. Those whom he justified, he also glorified. Now Paul speaks as if it's already been done because the work has been done. But we are not yet glorified. We are glorified when we occupy our bodies in heaven. We are glorified when we sit in the presence of God. I love that verse that he sneaks in there in the middle. We do not hope for what we see. We hope for what we do not see. So we wait for it with patience. Meaning, when we get to heaven, we don't need faith and hope anymore because we have God there. So he says that glorification is coming later. So what I want you to understand about your salvation is that it is in process. It's not done. When you are justified, you're secure. You will not be unjustified. But there is another step. And that doesn't happen until eternity. And that's what's in this text. So it's a process, I said, and that's the process. It starts at predestination, at call, at justification, and it's finished at glorification when we're in eternity with God forever. But it's also a process of renewal and restoration. We think about salvation as just our issue. It's just me and God. It's just for me. Jesus died for me, but that's not what we see in the text. In the text, we see that we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and the redemption of our bodies, the completion of the salvation process. But so does the world groans in the pains of childbirth waiting for its redemption and restoration as well. So what I want us to understand about salvation is it's bigger than you. It's about restoring all of creation. When God made heaven and earth in Genesis, he made it perfect. He was pleased with it. And I am convinced that it looks completely different than our earth now. And we have mucked up this earth with sin and brokenness. And that one day he will restore all things. He will return and he will make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. And he will be with us and we will be with our God and the former things will have passed away. And he'll create a new heaven and a new earth. And he will have restored creation back to himself and its original purpose. So when Jesus dies on the cross, he's not just dying for souls. He's dying for everything that he created to restore it back to himself. Because we're told in Romans that all of creation groans for the return of the king. The earth groans for God. And when we think about salvation as being in or being out, we miss virtually everything that's said in Romans 8. We make it so overly reductive as if to think that what we're teaching the kids over there is the greatest understanding that we ever need of this incredible doctrine. And we miss out on what it truly means to be saved. Here's the last thing that I want us to understand about salvation. Being saved allows us to experience glimpses of heaven here and now. If being in heaven is being with God and not being in heaven is being without God, then as people, we are literally experiencing either hell on earth or heaven on earth. Sometimes we get glimpses of what it is when we're in God's presence, at moments with our children, a hike, a sunset, a hug, singing. When we raise our voices, every time we sing and you guys sing loud and Aaron backs off and it's just us, every time that happens, I have to stop singing because I start crying. Because that's what heaven will be like. We will sing together. And so in being believers, we get these glimpses of heaven and what it will be like. And we usher God into our life and and we invite him in, and we allow him in. This is, again, why we should not be envious of the person who gets saved on their deathbed and got, oh, you got this whole life of freedom. No, we're actually taught in Romans that we are slaves to sin. We're slaves to this bondage of corruption, but that by being saved, we are finally free from sin. We live with more freedom than anyone. We should have more joy than anyone. I said this on Easter. Easter is the most joyful day and we are the most joyful people because of the hope that we have in Christ. So I want you to see this morning. I don't know if you can tell I'm fired up about it because I really want you to understand what it means to be saved it's not it's it's too small to understand it as am I going to heaven or am I not am I in or am I out with all gentleness that's a childlike understanding of our faith. And as we grow, and as we move towards glorification through our sanctification, we should allow God to deepen our understanding of what it means to be his child. And we should understand that he's going to restore all of creation to himself, not just us. And we should understand that every day we get to live as Christians is a day that we spend in the presence of God. And at his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. In his presence, there is fullness of joy. We should be happy and proud and grateful if we're already laboring in the vineyard because of our understanding of what salvation is and how much God loves us through it. So let's progress in that and develop a far more deep, rich, helpful, gratitude-inducing understanding of what it means to be saved. Let's pray. Father, thank you for saving us. Thank you for sending your son. Thank you for sharing him with us. Thank you for watching him suffer for us. Thank you for the promise that you will renew and restore us. Thank you for the promise that you will renew and restore creation. Thank you for who you are. God, if there's anybody here who doesn't know you, I pray that your Holy Spirit would beckon them even now to desire to be with you and begin to experience glimpses of eternity here in this life. For those of us who are saved, God, thank you. Thank you for calling us to work early. Thank you for letting us labor in your vineyard. Thank you for the joy that it brings in what it is. God, we pray all these things in the name of your son, Jesus. Amen.

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. Thanks for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors of grace. Somebody over there is stinky because this side is full. You guys, I don't know what you're avoiding over here, but this is ridiculous. It's good to see you. Thanks for coming in May in the rain. I keep expecting for us to get over. There's always a bump in attendance in the spring, January, February, March. And that usually lasts until Easter. And then you guys go to the beach like for the whole until August. I don't see you again. So I keep expecting that every week and you keep showing up. So I'm just I'm going to threaten you with this. You keep showing up. We're going to two services in the fall. OK, you just have to deal with it. I also just want to praise God sincerely for this. Gibby, our worship pastor, Aaron Gibson, Gibby. We have too many Aarons around here, so I have to give them all nicknames, except for Aaron Buchanan. He's just Aaron, which makes sense. If you know him, that fits. Gibby's sick as a dog this morning. Like legit could barely talk to me when he got in this morning. He was late. He was later than he normally is because he's sick. So he can sneeze in the lobby now. But you wouldn't believe how often we look at each other on a Sunday morning and go, I feel terrible. I don't know if I can preach. I don't know if I can sing. And we just pray for God to give us 30 good minutes. And He always does. He always does. That was fantastic. I was moved to tears. It's so fun and good to be a singing church, especially since I inherited a bunch of frozen Presbyterians eight years ago. We've had to work on that a little bit. If you know, you know. This morning we continue in our series that Haley mentioned called FAQs, where we sourced some questions out to the small groups, solicited some responses, and just said, hey, what is it that you're curious about? What do you want to know? What questions do you have? And so we took kind of the most common ones and we said, let's talk about these on a Sunday. And I'm particularly excited to talk about this topic this morning because I feel it's so important. And it came up a lot in a bunch of different ways. But it's basically questions about understanding the doctrine of salvation. What does it mean to be saved? How do I know I'm going to heaven? Am I going to be saved forever? Can I lose it? Why does the question we're going to focus on at the beginning of our time this morning is why does God accept deathbed confessions, which is an interesting question, but there was a lot of questions around this doctrine of salvation and seeking to understand what it does mean to be saved and having a better understanding around that. And I think it's such an important question because once we get into church world, we kind of stop asking about salvation because I think we feel like we're supposed to know. And so we're embarrassed to ask. But here's what I know is that my understanding of salvation has worked progressively through my life that with each year or decade that passes, I come to understand salvation and what it is a little bit better. And I think that your understanding of salvation should progress as well. Even if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, there's a reason you're in church on a random May in the rain. And it has to be because you're at least curious. You're at least thoughtful about it. And so I would love to have the opportunity to tell you more about what it means to be a Christian. And I want the Christians in the room to understand their salvation more deeply. Because it's my suspicion that everybody here who is a Christian has at some point in their life, and many of you, and I have to, I hope that you'll trust me this morning that I'm not trying to be hard on anybody. I'm not trying to make you feel small for the way that you think. I'm not trying to make you feel uneducated or dumb. I just think this is a necessary phase of our understanding of our salvation that every Christian goes through. And I also know from experience that many Christians spend their entire life kind of misunderstanding the doctrine of salvation and being overly reductive about the incredible miracle that it is and what it actually means. And so this morning, what I'm hoping to do is to give us all a more rich understanding of our salvation. So either we're kind of locked into how we initially understand it, and this will kind of open up our minds and help us understand it better, God and more grateful to him for the miraculous event and process of our salvation. So that's where we're going this morning. That's what I want to do. To get there, I want to start with this question that came up in our emails, which is why does God accept a deathbed confession? This is an interesting question because it belies the motives behind it. And the motives behind that question generate a lot of the other questions that we have around salvation. This question comes most of the time from a sense of jealousy or resentment or entitlement or frustration. This question is most likely, and if you're the one that asked this, please hear me. It makes sense to ask it. I understand why you would. Every Christian has asked it. It's asked so often that Jesus talks about it in the Bible, and we're about to go to exactly where Jesus answers this question. But I want us to understand why we're asking it first. Let's just put it out there and be honest about it, because all of us do it. And again, I don't want anyone to feel bad for asking this question. I just want to understand why it comes up. The main motive in my estimation behind this question, why would God accept a deathbed confession, is essentially this, if we're going to use real language. I've been saved for decades. And I've been denying myself and keeping it between the ditches and trying to follow God's rules for years. And I've lived without the freedom of a pagan. And I'm going to use the word pagan this morning because a pagan is someone who doesn't believe in God. I'm not trying to be dismissive of those people, of non-believers. It's just pagans easier to say than non-believer? So we as Christians, and we know this, especially those of us that were Christians in high school and college, we are jealous of the freedom of the pagan, right? We're jealous of what they get to do and what we can't do. We've spent our life trying to follow the rules, trying to do the right things, trying to live the right way. And now here's this person who spent their life as a free pagan doing whatever they wanted to do, following any rules that they felt like they needed to follow, never committed to God, no fidelity, didn't put in the work that I did. And now at the very end, they're just going to slip in the door and we're going to the same heaven. That's not fair. I know it's hard to hear that out loud, but I can see about half of you grinning at me right now. You'll all have these smirks on your face like, yeah, that's pretty true. You got me. We've all thought that, and it's okay to think that. It makes sense why we would. It makes sense that we would think that. But here's Jesus' answer to that question. Why does he accept deathbed confessions? This is actually a parable. In the Gospel of Matthew, you can turn to chapter 20 if you want to. I'm going to read you verses 13 through 16, but first I need to tell you what's going on. Somebody comes up to Jesus and they ask this question. And so Jesus tells this story. He says there's an owner of a vineyard and he goes out one day where he can get some day laborers. And I've told you before, Israel was a poor country. They were impoverished. And so there was hubs where you would go and you could get men to come and put in a day's labor at whatever business you owned. And this was their livelihood. This was all that. They just hope they got picked that day. That was their livelihood. And so there's these people and the owner goes and he says, hey, I need y'all to come work for me in my vineyard. I'm going to pay you one denarius. I don't know how much that is. I could have done the research on what it was, but that feels like a waste of time. Google it if you care. I'm going to give you one denarius. And they're like, okay, great deal. So they go with him, they get in the Ford Ranger and they go to the vineyard and they start to work, right? And I don't know why Ford Ranger is funny, but it is. And they start to work and they're working all day. About the middle of the day, some other workers come by the field and they go, hey, we're looking for work. Can we help you today? And the owner says, yeah, sure. Come on. You can work for me. And so they start working by the middle of the day. And then about the last hour of the day, some other workers show up and they go, hey, we're looking for work. Can we work for you? The owner says, that's great. Yeah, come on. And they're working for him. So then when the work's done, the owner lines them up and begins to pay them. And he starts with the first group of workers that he hired that morning. Here's your one denarius for your day's labor. Thank you very much. And then he goes to the group that he hired in the middle. And he says, here's your one denarius. Thank you very much. And then he goes to the group that he hired with just an hour to go. And he said, here's your one denarius. Thank you very much. And the guys that have been working all day are ticked. Like, that's not fair. I worked eight hours for my denarius. That dude worked two hours, worked one hour. He had missed the smoke breaks and the lunch break and everything and just came in during the last hour. That's not fair. And the owner responds to them like this in verse 13. But he answered one of them, I am not being unfair to unfair to you friend didn't you agree to work for a denarius take your pay and go I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money or are you envious because I am generous so So the last will be first. And the first will be last. I love that response. They go, hey, that's not fair. We've been working for eight hours. They've been working for one hour. And you're giving us the same pay. And he goes, what do you care? That's basically the answer. It's my money. Do you care what I do with my own possession? Do you care what I do with my own resources? What right is it of yours to tell me what I should do? I chose to be generous to him. Are you envious of my generosity? You agreed to a denarius. I gave you a denarius. They agreed to this. I gave them this. It's my resources to do with what I want. And so to our question of why does God accept a deathbed confession where the implication is, hey, I've been laboring in the vineyard all day, my whole life. I've been working at this for decades. I put in a full eight hours. And I get my salvation. I get my eternity in heaven. I get my utopia. But they just slid in at the last minute. They don't deserve what I deserve. Maybe we can believe in purgatory so they have to suffer a little bit before they get the glory that I get. This is the jealousy that we express. And in that is implied exactly what the workers were frustrated about. Hey, that's not fair. I've put in my time and my effort. I've done my work. And the pay shouldn't be the same. And here's what this does. When we ask that question and we think that way. And here's what I wanted to talk about. When we think like that, we make salvation something that we think of in terms of being in or out. And very often, there's a lot of questions that Christians ask about salvation, and the motivation behind that question is, am I in or am I out? Did I say the prayer the right way? Am I in or am I out? Am I in heaven or am I burning in hell forever? That's what we're asking. How much sinning can I do and still be saved? Can I lose my salvation or does God hold on to me and I can't lose my salvation? That's an in or out question. How do I, if I feel like I lost my salvation, can I get it back? If someone wanders away, were they ever truly saved? All these questions that we ask about salvation are indicative of this thought process of in or out. And that's how we think about our salvation. And this is the place where many of us get stuck for our whole lives. But what I want us to see is that in or out salvation is a small salvation. Thinking of it that way reduces it to something that it should have never been. And if you're there, if you think about it this way, if you've thought about it that way, I don't want you to feel bad because that in or out mentality was probably handed to you by a well-meaning teacher in your church who also adopted that, who never got a more expansive view of salvation. I got saved when I was four. I was four and a half years old. We went to a special service on Sunday night, and the teacher taught us about the doctrine of hell. And I don't know if Aaron Winston's in here, but if I find out that we're teaching our four-year-olds about hell and scaring them into salvation, that's not going to be okay. They taught us about hell. They told us what it was. And they said, do you want to go there? No. No way. That sounds terrible. What's in heaven? Well, you sing a lot. I mean, that's better than hell. Okay. What do I have to do to go to heaven? Well, you have to believe in Jesus. Deal. What do I do to believe in Jesus? Will you repeat this prayer after me? Okay. You say the words and I'll do them too. And I was saved into an in or out understanding of salvation. What four-year-old isn't going to take out a fire insurance policy by threat of hell. Of course I got saved. God in his goodness has progressed my understanding of what salvation is over the decades. But many of us get saved into this kind of faith where for us it's a matter of are we in or are we out? And when we think of it that way, we become the jealous workers in the vineyard that get upset that we've been, and some of you will understand this reference, we've been the good brother in Luke 15, the one that stayed home and worked. And then the prodigal son comes home and God lets him into heaven and throws a party for him too. And we're like, what in the world? I've been doing my part the whole time. Because for us, salvation is, am I in? Am I going to heaven? Or am I not? And many of us get saved. And with this reductive view of what salvation is, we spend the rest of our lives just trying to stay in and trying to understand what's going to keep us there. But I think that there is a much bigger, better view of salvation. And I think it's presented to us in plain language in the greatest chapter in the Bible, Romans chapter 8. I'm going to read to you what Paul writes about what salvation is. But before I do, I want you to understand where we're picking this up. The first eight chapters of Romans, the first seven chapters of Romans, are a lengthy explanation of the doctrine of salvation. It's a lengthy explanation of the doctrine of salvation. Now, also, I want to pause here before I read. I forgot to say this, and I want to make sure that we're clear on this. When I talk about salvation, when I say saved or not, I want to just pause and be very clear that we understand what this means together, okay? The way that we explain salvation at grace, and when I say we, I mean me, because I'm the one that does it. The way that we explain salvation at grace is to say, to be saved, to be a Christian means that we believe Jesus is who he says he is. He says he's the son of God who's come to take away the sins of the world. We believe that. We believe that it means that Jesus did what he said he did. He lived a perfect life. He died a perfect death and he resurrected and rescued us from death and sin and shame. And it means that we believe that he's going to do what he says he's going to do, which in Revelation 19 is to come crashing through the clouds to reclaim us and his creation and restore it back to himself and its original glory. To be a Christian is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, did what he said he did, and he's going to do what he says he's going to do. And that to become a Christian, all we need to engage in is the fundamental repentance of Christianity, which Peter describes to us in Acts. He's preaching a sermon. Jesus has been crucified. They're hanging out in the upper room for 40 days trying to figure out what to do. The Holy Spirit descends on them. Peter goes out to the crowd and he preaches. And the sermon is, hey, that guy that you killed was the Messiah and he came to save you. And the crowd believes him. And they say, what do we do? We messed up. And Peter says, repent and be baptized. Repent of what? I believe it's the fundamental repentance of salvation, which is to repent of who you thought Jesus was before you came to agree with him about who he says he is. So to be saved, we repent of who we thought Jesus was before we moved into this moment and this process of salvation. And we accept who he says he is from his word. That's what being a Christian is. Now, Romans is the most detailed theological lesson we get in the Bible. And the first seven chapters are written to help us understand what salvation is and what God did in it and what his responsibility is, what our responsibility is. Then in Romans 8, he culminates that seven chapter argument with what I think is the greatest chapter of the Bible and the culmination of the glory of salvation. And he proclaims to us what salvation is. So I want you to hear how Paul talks about it in Romans chapter 8 and see if this can't begin to expand our view of salvation. I've got my old Bible out. This is the ESV. I was reading this passage this morning in the NIV as I was going through the sermon. Sorry, sorry, DeVos. I know I bought you a Bible and now I'm ruining it. And I just didn't, I don't like the way the NIV reads. This is way better. So if you'll indulge me, I'm going to read you from the ESV. This is the soaring doctrine of salvation that Paul gives us. Verse 19. And I'm going to read all the way down through verse 30, so buckle up. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons in God. The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it. In hopes that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning who have the firstfruits of the Spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he sees, but if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Okay, lock in. You may have faded away, and you're not paying attention to the words anymore, but these three verses are super important. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And this is the important part. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. This is Paul's soaring description of what it means to be saved and what salvation is seeking to do and what God is seeking to work in that salvation. So the first thing that we see is in the very first verse where Paul says, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. What Paul is saying here is, whatever we had to suffer to be Christians, whatever we had to suffer to be in and to build God's kingdom, whatever that work was for the day in the vineyard, and we've put in our time, whatever suffering we've endured for the sake of the kingdom and for the sake of God is not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed to us. In other words, there is no possible way you will spend any time at all being saved, being a Christian, being a child of God, and come to regret it. It is impossible that you would be a Christian your whole life and serve God your whole life and get to heaven and be jealous of the people who partied in college. That will not happen. As a matter of fact, what I want us to see, and Paul's talking to a persecuted church, to people who actually suffer. Very few of us, if any, have suffered for our faith. The bar to entry in the American evangelical church is so low that it costs us nothing to come. We have not suffered. Furthermore, the Bible makes it very clear that life with God is the best life possible. Scripture is replete of verses and passages that remind us that being a Christian is the best life possible. And I can go through the Rolodex, John 10.10, that I talk about all the time. The thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy. But Jesus says, I have come that you might have life and have it to the full, have the most rich, full life possible. We're told in Psalms that at God's right hand are pleasures forevermore, that in his presence, there is a fullness of joy. We're told again in Psalms that one day in his courts is better than thousands elsewhere. We're told that we serve a God in Ephesians that is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine. We're told in John that from his fullness, we receive grace upon grace. We're told these things over and over again in scripture, that life with God is the best life possible. It's the fullest life possible. And so the reality is that if you're a Christian who's been saved your whole life and someone slips in at the last minute and they get to go to heaven too, you shouldn't feel jealousy. You should feel empathy because you just got to live your whole life with God and they missed out on all that joy. It is to our advantage to be picked up early and work in the vineyard all day. It's the life that we should desire and what we want. We should not feel jealousy to the deathbed conversion. We should feel empathy because they had to go through their whole life without God. And that's what salvation is. It's not in or out. It's with or without. You understand? It's not am I in, am I in, am I going or am I not? It's do I, am I living life with God? Am I abiding in him or am I not? And when someone is not saved, when someone doesn't know the Lord, the great tragedy is that they go through their life without experiencing the joy of the Lord and the joy of heaven. Without experiencing that relationship with him and the richness and fullness of life. We should not be jealous of that. We should be empathetic and continue to invite them in because through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. We needn't be jealous of the people who don't put in the work that we do. Because there is joy in that work. So right off the bat, Paul's not talking about in or out. Paul says with or without. And that there is no suffering that will not make it worth the glory that is to be revealed to us. Then, in the rest of this passage, we see this. And this is an important phrase. I want us to rest on it for a little bit. Salvation is a process of restoration and renewal. Salvation is a process of restoration and renewal. This is why this is important. Those words, process is important, restoration, renewal is important, and I want to show you why. But first, we're going to go to that word process. Because I think that many of us think about salvation as this moment in time. I wasn't saved. I prayed the prayer, said the confession, did whatever moment you look to where your belief changed. I wasn't saved. Then I prayed the prayer. I am saved. Done. And that's not true. Salvation is a process. And we know that salvation is a process because of what Paul writes in verse 30 that I said was really important. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. That's a process. So let's walk through it so we understand it. Those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom God knew before time were going to accept his invitation to salvation, he also called them to himself. With the urging of the Holy Spirit, he called you to himself. It wasn't your work that found God. It was God calling you to himself through his love and through his kindness and through his goodness. Now, I know that some of you in the room are Calvinist and you care deeply about these words. I am not and I don't. So I'm not going to last a long time there. OK, but those whom he predestined, he also called those whom he called. He also justified that justification is what many of us think of as the moment of our salvation. That's when you were set righteous. You were clothed in the righteousness of Christ. You were set right in the court of God. You were justified before him. You are no longer guilty. You were absolved from your sin because Jesus died, lived a perfect life and died a perfect death. You are now justified before God. And the good news is that in the culmination of this chapter, there's this incredibly powerful verse of the assurance of salvation where Paul writes, So once you are justified, Paul says, I am convinced that nothing can unjustify you. Nothing can unsave you. But the process doesn't stop there. Those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom he called, he also justified. Those whom he justified, he also glorified. Now Paul speaks as if it's already been done because the work has been done. But we are not yet glorified. We are glorified when we occupy our bodies in heaven. We are glorified when we sit in the presence of God. I love that verse that he sneaks in there in the middle. We do not hope for what we see. We hope for what we do not see. So we wait for it with patience. Meaning, when we get to heaven, we don't need faith and hope anymore because we have God there. So he says that glorification is coming later. So what I want you to understand about your salvation is that it is in process. It's not done. When you are justified, you're secure. You will not be unjustified. But there is another step. And that doesn't happen until eternity. And that's what's in this text. So it's a process, I said, and that's the process. It starts at predestination, at call, at justification, and it's finished at glorification when we're in eternity with God forever. But it's also a process of renewal and restoration. We think about salvation as just our issue. It's just me and God. It's just for me. Jesus died for me, but that's not what we see in the text. In the text, we see that we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and the redemption of our bodies, the completion of the salvation process. But so does the world groans in the pains of childbirth waiting for its redemption and restoration as well. So what I want us to understand about salvation is it's bigger than you. It's about restoring all of creation. When God made heaven and earth in Genesis, he made it perfect. He was pleased with it. And I am convinced that it looks completely different than our earth now. And we have mucked up this earth with sin and brokenness. And that one day he will restore all things. He will return and he will make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. And he will be with us and we will be with our God and the former things will have passed away. And he'll create a new heaven and a new earth. And he will have restored creation back to himself and its original purpose. So when Jesus dies on the cross, he's not just dying for souls. He's dying for everything that he created to restore it back to himself. Because we're told in Romans that all of creation groans for the return of the king. The earth groans for God. And when we think about salvation as being in or being out, we miss virtually everything that's said in Romans 8. We make it so overly reductive as if to think that what we're teaching the kids over there is the greatest understanding that we ever need of this incredible doctrine. And we miss out on what it truly means to be saved. Here's the last thing that I want us to understand about salvation. Being saved allows us to experience glimpses of heaven here and now. If being in heaven is being with God and not being in heaven is being without God, then as people, we are literally experiencing either hell on earth or heaven on earth. Sometimes we get glimpses of what it is when we're in God's presence, at moments with our children, a hike, a sunset, a hug, singing. When we raise our voices, every time we sing and you guys sing loud and Aaron backs off and it's just us, every time that happens, I have to stop singing because I start crying. Because that's what heaven will be like. We will sing together. And so in being believers, we get these glimpses of heaven and what it will be like. And we usher God into our life and and we invite him in, and we allow him in. This is, again, why we should not be envious of the person who gets saved on their deathbed and got, oh, you got this whole life of freedom. No, we're actually taught in Romans that we are slaves to sin. We're slaves to this bondage of corruption, but that by being saved, we are finally free from sin. We live with more freedom than anyone. We should have more joy than anyone. I said this on Easter. Easter is the most joyful day and we are the most joyful people because of the hope that we have in Christ. So I want you to see this morning. I don't know if you can tell I'm fired up about it because I really want you to understand what it means to be saved it's not it's it's too small to understand it as am I going to heaven or am I not am I in or am I out with all gentleness that's a childlike understanding of our faith. And as we grow, and as we move towards glorification through our sanctification, we should allow God to deepen our understanding of what it means to be his child. And we should understand that he's going to restore all of creation to himself, not just us. And we should understand that every day we get to live as Christians is a day that we spend in the presence of God. And at his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. In his presence, there is fullness of joy. We should be happy and proud and grateful if we're already laboring in the vineyard because of our understanding of what salvation is and how much God loves us through it. So let's progress in that and develop a far more deep, rich, helpful, gratitude-inducing understanding of what it means to be saved. Let's pray. Father, thank you for saving us. Thank you for sending your son. Thank you for sharing him with us. Thank you for watching him suffer for us. Thank you for the promise that you will renew and restore us. Thank you for the promise that you will renew and restore creation. Thank you for who you are. God, if there's anybody here who doesn't know you, I pray that your Holy Spirit would beckon them even now to desire to be with you and begin to experience glimpses of eternity here in this life. For those of us who are saved, God, thank you. Thank you for calling us to work early. Thank you for letting us labor in your vineyard. Thank you for the joy that it brings in what it is. God, we pray all these things in the name of your son, Jesus. Amen.

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. Thanks for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors of grace. Somebody over there is stinky because this side is full. You guys, I don't know what you're avoiding over here, but this is ridiculous. It's good to see you. Thanks for coming in May in the rain. I keep expecting for us to get over. There's always a bump in attendance in the spring, January, February, March. And that usually lasts until Easter. And then you guys go to the beach like for the whole until August. I don't see you again. So I keep expecting that every week and you keep showing up. So I'm just I'm going to threaten you with this. You keep showing up. We're going to two services in the fall. OK, you just have to deal with it. I also just want to praise God sincerely for this. Gibby, our worship pastor, Aaron Gibson, Gibby. We have too many Aarons around here, so I have to give them all nicknames, except for Aaron Buchanan. He's just Aaron, which makes sense. If you know him, that fits. Gibby's sick as a dog this morning. Like legit could barely talk to me when he got in this morning. He was late. He was later than he normally is because he's sick. So he can sneeze in the lobby now. But you wouldn't believe how often we look at each other on a Sunday morning and go, I feel terrible. I don't know if I can preach. I don't know if I can sing. And we just pray for God to give us 30 good minutes. And He always does. He always does. That was fantastic. I was moved to tears. It's so fun and good to be a singing church, especially since I inherited a bunch of frozen Presbyterians eight years ago. We've had to work on that a little bit. If you know, you know. This morning we continue in our series that Haley mentioned called FAQs, where we sourced some questions out to the small groups, solicited some responses, and just said, hey, what is it that you're curious about? What do you want to know? What questions do you have? And so we took kind of the most common ones and we said, let's talk about these on a Sunday. And I'm particularly excited to talk about this topic this morning because I feel it's so important. And it came up a lot in a bunch of different ways. But it's basically questions about understanding the doctrine of salvation. What does it mean to be saved? How do I know I'm going to heaven? Am I going to be saved forever? Can I lose it? Why does the question we're going to focus on at the beginning of our time this morning is why does God accept deathbed confessions, which is an interesting question, but there was a lot of questions around this doctrine of salvation and seeking to understand what it does mean to be saved and having a better understanding around that. And I think it's such an important question because once we get into church world, we kind of stop asking about salvation because I think we feel like we're supposed to know. And so we're embarrassed to ask. But here's what I know is that my understanding of salvation has worked progressively through my life that with each year or decade that passes, I come to understand salvation and what it is a little bit better. And I think that your understanding of salvation should progress as well. Even if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, there's a reason you're in church on a random May in the rain. And it has to be because you're at least curious. You're at least thoughtful about it. And so I would love to have the opportunity to tell you more about what it means to be a Christian. And I want the Christians in the room to understand their salvation more deeply. Because it's my suspicion that everybody here who is a Christian has at some point in their life, and many of you, and I have to, I hope that you'll trust me this morning that I'm not trying to be hard on anybody. I'm not trying to make you feel small for the way that you think. I'm not trying to make you feel uneducated or dumb. I just think this is a necessary phase of our understanding of our salvation that every Christian goes through. And I also know from experience that many Christians spend their entire life kind of misunderstanding the doctrine of salvation and being overly reductive about the incredible miracle that it is and what it actually means. And so this morning, what I'm hoping to do is to give us all a more rich understanding of our salvation. So either we're kind of locked into how we initially understand it, and this will kind of open up our minds and help us understand it better, God and more grateful to him for the miraculous event and process of our salvation. So that's where we're going this morning. That's what I want to do. To get there, I want to start with this question that came up in our emails, which is why does God accept a deathbed confession? This is an interesting question because it belies the motives behind it. And the motives behind that question generate a lot of the other questions that we have around salvation. This question comes most of the time from a sense of jealousy or resentment or entitlement or frustration. This question is most likely, and if you're the one that asked this, please hear me. It makes sense to ask it. I understand why you would. Every Christian has asked it. It's asked so often that Jesus talks about it in the Bible, and we're about to go to exactly where Jesus answers this question. But I want us to understand why we're asking it first. Let's just put it out there and be honest about it, because all of us do it. And again, I don't want anyone to feel bad for asking this question. I just want to understand why it comes up. The main motive in my estimation behind this question, why would God accept a deathbed confession, is essentially this, if we're going to use real language. I've been saved for decades. And I've been denying myself and keeping it between the ditches and trying to follow God's rules for years. And I've lived without the freedom of a pagan. And I'm going to use the word pagan this morning because a pagan is someone who doesn't believe in God. I'm not trying to be dismissive of those people, of non-believers. It's just pagans easier to say than non-believer? So we as Christians, and we know this, especially those of us that were Christians in high school and college, we are jealous of the freedom of the pagan, right? We're jealous of what they get to do and what we can't do. We've spent our life trying to follow the rules, trying to do the right things, trying to live the right way. And now here's this person who spent their life as a free pagan doing whatever they wanted to do, following any rules that they felt like they needed to follow, never committed to God, no fidelity, didn't put in the work that I did. And now at the very end, they're just going to slip in the door and we're going to the same heaven. That's not fair. I know it's hard to hear that out loud, but I can see about half of you grinning at me right now. You'll all have these smirks on your face like, yeah, that's pretty true. You got me. We've all thought that, and it's okay to think that. It makes sense why we would. It makes sense that we would think that. But here's Jesus' answer to that question. Why does he accept deathbed confessions? This is actually a parable. In the Gospel of Matthew, you can turn to chapter 20 if you want to. I'm going to read you verses 13 through 16, but first I need to tell you what's going on. Somebody comes up to Jesus and they ask this question. And so Jesus tells this story. He says there's an owner of a vineyard and he goes out one day where he can get some day laborers. And I've told you before, Israel was a poor country. They were impoverished. And so there was hubs where you would go and you could get men to come and put in a day's labor at whatever business you owned. And this was their livelihood. This was all that. They just hope they got picked that day. That was their livelihood. And so there's these people and the owner goes and he says, hey, I need y'all to come work for me in my vineyard. I'm going to pay you one denarius. I don't know how much that is. I could have done the research on what it was, but that feels like a waste of time. Google it if you care. I'm going to give you one denarius. And they're like, okay, great deal. So they go with him, they get in the Ford Ranger and they go to the vineyard and they start to work, right? And I don't know why Ford Ranger is funny, but it is. And they start to work and they're working all day. About the middle of the day, some other workers come by the field and they go, hey, we're looking for work. Can we help you today? And the owner says, yeah, sure. Come on. You can work for me. And so they start working by the middle of the day. And then about the last hour of the day, some other workers show up and they go, hey, we're looking for work. Can we work for you? The owner says, that's great. Yeah, come on. And they're working for him. So then when the work's done, the owner lines them up and begins to pay them. And he starts with the first group of workers that he hired that morning. Here's your one denarius for your day's labor. Thank you very much. And then he goes to the group that he hired in the middle. And he says, here's your one denarius. Thank you very much. And then he goes to the group that he hired with just an hour to go. And he said, here's your one denarius. Thank you very much. And the guys that have been working all day are ticked. Like, that's not fair. I worked eight hours for my denarius. That dude worked two hours, worked one hour. He had missed the smoke breaks and the lunch break and everything and just came in during the last hour. That's not fair. And the owner responds to them like this in verse 13. But he answered one of them, I am not being unfair to unfair to you friend didn't you agree to work for a denarius take your pay and go I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money or are you envious because I am generous so So the last will be first. And the first will be last. I love that response. They go, hey, that's not fair. We've been working for eight hours. They've been working for one hour. And you're giving us the same pay. And he goes, what do you care? That's basically the answer. It's my money. Do you care what I do with my own possession? Do you care what I do with my own resources? What right is it of yours to tell me what I should do? I chose to be generous to him. Are you envious of my generosity? You agreed to a denarius. I gave you a denarius. They agreed to this. I gave them this. It's my resources to do with what I want. And so to our question of why does God accept a deathbed confession where the implication is, hey, I've been laboring in the vineyard all day, my whole life. I've been working at this for decades. I put in a full eight hours. And I get my salvation. I get my eternity in heaven. I get my utopia. But they just slid in at the last minute. They don't deserve what I deserve. Maybe we can believe in purgatory so they have to suffer a little bit before they get the glory that I get. This is the jealousy that we express. And in that is implied exactly what the workers were frustrated about. Hey, that's not fair. I've put in my time and my effort. I've done my work. And the pay shouldn't be the same. And here's what this does. When we ask that question and we think that way. And here's what I wanted to talk about. When we think like that, we make salvation something that we think of in terms of being in or out. And very often, there's a lot of questions that Christians ask about salvation, and the motivation behind that question is, am I in or am I out? Did I say the prayer the right way? Am I in or am I out? Am I in heaven or am I burning in hell forever? That's what we're asking. How much sinning can I do and still be saved? Can I lose my salvation or does God hold on to me and I can't lose my salvation? That's an in or out question. How do I, if I feel like I lost my salvation, can I get it back? If someone wanders away, were they ever truly saved? All these questions that we ask about salvation are indicative of this thought process of in or out. And that's how we think about our salvation. And this is the place where many of us get stuck for our whole lives. But what I want us to see is that in or out salvation is a small salvation. Thinking of it that way reduces it to something that it should have never been. And if you're there, if you think about it this way, if you've thought about it that way, I don't want you to feel bad because that in or out mentality was probably handed to you by a well-meaning teacher in your church who also adopted that, who never got a more expansive view of salvation. I got saved when I was four. I was four and a half years old. We went to a special service on Sunday night, and the teacher taught us about the doctrine of hell. And I don't know if Aaron Winston's in here, but if I find out that we're teaching our four-year-olds about hell and scaring them into salvation, that's not going to be okay. They taught us about hell. They told us what it was. And they said, do you want to go there? No. No way. That sounds terrible. What's in heaven? Well, you sing a lot. I mean, that's better than hell. Okay. What do I have to do to go to heaven? Well, you have to believe in Jesus. Deal. What do I do to believe in Jesus? Will you repeat this prayer after me? Okay. You say the words and I'll do them too. And I was saved into an in or out understanding of salvation. What four-year-old isn't going to take out a fire insurance policy by threat of hell. Of course I got saved. God in his goodness has progressed my understanding of what salvation is over the decades. But many of us get saved into this kind of faith where for us it's a matter of are we in or are we out? And when we think of it that way, we become the jealous workers in the vineyard that get upset that we've been, and some of you will understand this reference, we've been the good brother in Luke 15, the one that stayed home and worked. And then the prodigal son comes home and God lets him into heaven and throws a party for him too. And we're like, what in the world? I've been doing my part the whole time. Because for us, salvation is, am I in? Am I going to heaven? Or am I not? And many of us get saved. And with this reductive view of what salvation is, we spend the rest of our lives just trying to stay in and trying to understand what's going to keep us there. But I think that there is a much bigger, better view of salvation. And I think it's presented to us in plain language in the greatest chapter in the Bible, Romans chapter 8. I'm going to read to you what Paul writes about what salvation is. But before I do, I want you to understand where we're picking this up. The first eight chapters of Romans, the first seven chapters of Romans, are a lengthy explanation of the doctrine of salvation. It's a lengthy explanation of the doctrine of salvation. Now, also, I want to pause here before I read. I forgot to say this, and I want to make sure that we're clear on this. When I talk about salvation, when I say saved or not, I want to just pause and be very clear that we understand what this means together, okay? The way that we explain salvation at grace, and when I say we, I mean me, because I'm the one that does it. The way that we explain salvation at grace is to say, to be saved, to be a Christian means that we believe Jesus is who he says he is. He says he's the son of God who's come to take away the sins of the world. We believe that. We believe that it means that Jesus did what he said he did. He lived a perfect life. He died a perfect death and he resurrected and rescued us from death and sin and shame. And it means that we believe that he's going to do what he says he's going to do, which in Revelation 19 is to come crashing through the clouds to reclaim us and his creation and restore it back to himself and its original glory. To be a Christian is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, did what he said he did, and he's going to do what he says he's going to do. And that to become a Christian, all we need to engage in is the fundamental repentance of Christianity, which Peter describes to us in Acts. He's preaching a sermon. Jesus has been crucified. They're hanging out in the upper room for 40 days trying to figure out what to do. The Holy Spirit descends on them. Peter goes out to the crowd and he preaches. And the sermon is, hey, that guy that you killed was the Messiah and he came to save you. And the crowd believes him. And they say, what do we do? We messed up. And Peter says, repent and be baptized. Repent of what? I believe it's the fundamental repentance of salvation, which is to repent of who you thought Jesus was before you came to agree with him about who he says he is. So to be saved, we repent of who we thought Jesus was before we moved into this moment and this process of salvation. And we accept who he says he is from his word. That's what being a Christian is. Now, Romans is the most detailed theological lesson we get in the Bible. And the first seven chapters are written to help us understand what salvation is and what God did in it and what his responsibility is, what our responsibility is. Then in Romans 8, he culminates that seven chapter argument with what I think is the greatest chapter of the Bible and the culmination of the glory of salvation. And he proclaims to us what salvation is. So I want you to hear how Paul talks about it in Romans chapter 8 and see if this can't begin to expand our view of salvation. I've got my old Bible out. This is the ESV. I was reading this passage this morning in the NIV as I was going through the sermon. Sorry, sorry, DeVos. I know I bought you a Bible and now I'm ruining it. And I just didn't, I don't like the way the NIV reads. This is way better. So if you'll indulge me, I'm going to read you from the ESV. This is the soaring doctrine of salvation that Paul gives us. Verse 19. And I'm going to read all the way down through verse 30, so buckle up. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons in God. The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it. In hopes that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning who have the firstfruits of the Spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he sees, but if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Okay, lock in. You may have faded away, and you're not paying attention to the words anymore, but these three verses are super important. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And this is the important part. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. This is Paul's soaring description of what it means to be saved and what salvation is seeking to do and what God is seeking to work in that salvation. So the first thing that we see is in the very first verse where Paul says, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. What Paul is saying here is, whatever we had to suffer to be Christians, whatever we had to suffer to be in and to build God's kingdom, whatever that work was for the day in the vineyard, and we've put in our time, whatever suffering we've endured for the sake of the kingdom and for the sake of God is not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed to us. In other words, there is no possible way you will spend any time at all being saved, being a Christian, being a child of God, and come to regret it. It is impossible that you would be a Christian your whole life and serve God your whole life and get to heaven and be jealous of the people who partied in college. That will not happen. As a matter of fact, what I want us to see, and Paul's talking to a persecuted church, to people who actually suffer. Very few of us, if any, have suffered for our faith. The bar to entry in the American evangelical church is so low that it costs us nothing to come. We have not suffered. Furthermore, the Bible makes it very clear that life with God is the best life possible. Scripture is replete of verses and passages that remind us that being a Christian is the best life possible. And I can go through the Rolodex, John 10.10, that I talk about all the time. The thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy. But Jesus says, I have come that you might have life and have it to the full, have the most rich, full life possible. We're told in Psalms that at God's right hand are pleasures forevermore, that in his presence, there is a fullness of joy. We're told again in Psalms that one day in his courts is better than thousands elsewhere. We're told that we serve a God in Ephesians that is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine. We're told in John that from his fullness, we receive grace upon grace. We're told these things over and over again in scripture, that life with God is the best life possible. It's the fullest life possible. And so the reality is that if you're a Christian who's been saved your whole life and someone slips in at the last minute and they get to go to heaven too, you shouldn't feel jealousy. You should feel empathy because you just got to live your whole life with God and they missed out on all that joy. It is to our advantage to be picked up early and work in the vineyard all day. It's the life that we should desire and what we want. We should not feel jealousy to the deathbed conversion. We should feel empathy because they had to go through their whole life without God. And that's what salvation is. It's not in or out. It's with or without. You understand? It's not am I in, am I in, am I going or am I not? It's do I, am I living life with God? Am I abiding in him or am I not? And when someone is not saved, when someone doesn't know the Lord, the great tragedy is that they go through their life without experiencing the joy of the Lord and the joy of heaven. Without experiencing that relationship with him and the richness and fullness of life. We should not be jealous of that. We should be empathetic and continue to invite them in because through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. We needn't be jealous of the people who don't put in the work that we do. Because there is joy in that work. So right off the bat, Paul's not talking about in or out. Paul says with or without. And that there is no suffering that will not make it worth the glory that is to be revealed to us. Then, in the rest of this passage, we see this. And this is an important phrase. I want us to rest on it for a little bit. Salvation is a process of restoration and renewal. Salvation is a process of restoration and renewal. This is why this is important. Those words, process is important, restoration, renewal is important, and I want to show you why. But first, we're going to go to that word process. Because I think that many of us think about salvation as this moment in time. I wasn't saved. I prayed the prayer, said the confession, did whatever moment you look to where your belief changed. I wasn't saved. Then I prayed the prayer. I am saved. Done. And that's not true. Salvation is a process. And we know that salvation is a process because of what Paul writes in verse 30 that I said was really important. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. That's a process. So let's walk through it so we understand it. Those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom God knew before time were going to accept his invitation to salvation, he also called them to himself. With the urging of the Holy Spirit, he called you to himself. It wasn't your work that found God. It was God calling you to himself through his love and through his kindness and through his goodness. Now, I know that some of you in the room are Calvinist and you care deeply about these words. I am not and I don't. So I'm not going to last a long time there. OK, but those whom he predestined, he also called those whom he called. He also justified that justification is what many of us think of as the moment of our salvation. That's when you were set righteous. You were clothed in the righteousness of Christ. You were set right in the court of God. You were justified before him. You are no longer guilty. You were absolved from your sin because Jesus died, lived a perfect life and died a perfect death. You are now justified before God. And the good news is that in the culmination of this chapter, there's this incredibly powerful verse of the assurance of salvation where Paul writes, So once you are justified, Paul says, I am convinced that nothing can unjustify you. Nothing can unsave you. But the process doesn't stop there. Those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom he called, he also justified. Those whom he justified, he also glorified. Now Paul speaks as if it's already been done because the work has been done. But we are not yet glorified. We are glorified when we occupy our bodies in heaven. We are glorified when we sit in the presence of God. I love that verse that he sneaks in there in the middle. We do not hope for what we see. We hope for what we do not see. So we wait for it with patience. Meaning, when we get to heaven, we don't need faith and hope anymore because we have God there. So he says that glorification is coming later. So what I want you to understand about your salvation is that it is in process. It's not done. When you are justified, you're secure. You will not be unjustified. But there is another step. And that doesn't happen until eternity. And that's what's in this text. So it's a process, I said, and that's the process. It starts at predestination, at call, at justification, and it's finished at glorification when we're in eternity with God forever. But it's also a process of renewal and restoration. We think about salvation as just our issue. It's just me and God. It's just for me. Jesus died for me, but that's not what we see in the text. In the text, we see that we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and the redemption of our bodies, the completion of the salvation process. But so does the world groans in the pains of childbirth waiting for its redemption and restoration as well. So what I want us to understand about salvation is it's bigger than you. It's about restoring all of creation. When God made heaven and earth in Genesis, he made it perfect. He was pleased with it. And I am convinced that it looks completely different than our earth now. And we have mucked up this earth with sin and brokenness. And that one day he will restore all things. He will return and he will make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. And he will be with us and we will be with our God and the former things will have passed away. And he'll create a new heaven and a new earth. And he will have restored creation back to himself and its original purpose. So when Jesus dies on the cross, he's not just dying for souls. He's dying for everything that he created to restore it back to himself. Because we're told in Romans that all of creation groans for the return of the king. The earth groans for God. And when we think about salvation as being in or being out, we miss virtually everything that's said in Romans 8. We make it so overly reductive as if to think that what we're teaching the kids over there is the greatest understanding that we ever need of this incredible doctrine. And we miss out on what it truly means to be saved. Here's the last thing that I want us to understand about salvation. Being saved allows us to experience glimpses of heaven here and now. If being in heaven is being with God and not being in heaven is being without God, then as people, we are literally experiencing either hell on earth or heaven on earth. Sometimes we get glimpses of what it is when we're in God's presence, at moments with our children, a hike, a sunset, a hug, singing. When we raise our voices, every time we sing and you guys sing loud and Aaron backs off and it's just us, every time that happens, I have to stop singing because I start crying. Because that's what heaven will be like. We will sing together. And so in being believers, we get these glimpses of heaven and what it will be like. And we usher God into our life and and we invite him in, and we allow him in. This is, again, why we should not be envious of the person who gets saved on their deathbed and got, oh, you got this whole life of freedom. No, we're actually taught in Romans that we are slaves to sin. We're slaves to this bondage of corruption, but that by being saved, we are finally free from sin. We live with more freedom than anyone. We should have more joy than anyone. I said this on Easter. Easter is the most joyful day and we are the most joyful people because of the hope that we have in Christ. So I want you to see this morning. I don't know if you can tell I'm fired up about it because I really want you to understand what it means to be saved it's not it's it's too small to understand it as am I going to heaven or am I not am I in or am I out with all gentleness that's a childlike understanding of our faith. And as we grow, and as we move towards glorification through our sanctification, we should allow God to deepen our understanding of what it means to be his child. And we should understand that he's going to restore all of creation to himself, not just us. And we should understand that every day we get to live as Christians is a day that we spend in the presence of God. And at his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. In his presence, there is fullness of joy. We should be happy and proud and grateful if we're already laboring in the vineyard because of our understanding of what salvation is and how much God loves us through it. So let's progress in that and develop a far more deep, rich, helpful, gratitude-inducing understanding of what it means to be saved. Let's pray. Father, thank you for saving us. Thank you for sending your son. Thank you for sharing him with us. Thank you for watching him suffer for us. Thank you for the promise that you will renew and restore us. Thank you for the promise that you will renew and restore creation. Thank you for who you are. God, if there's anybody here who doesn't know you, I pray that your Holy Spirit would beckon them even now to desire to be with you and begin to experience glimpses of eternity here in this life. For those of us who are saved, God, thank you. Thank you for calling us to work early. Thank you for letting us labor in your vineyard. Thank you for the joy that it brings in what it is. God, we pray all these things in the name of your son, Jesus. Amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. It's good to see everybody. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby immediately following the service. If you're watching online, especially if you're doing that habitually, we love that you are, and that is fantastic that you're following along. But I'm just going to tell you as a friend, you're missing the best part of the service. Because the best part of the service is when we all get to worship together. We're just putting up with me in between more songs is all we're doing here. Because that was really great. Thank you, band, for leading us into God's presence in that way. This is our big spring series. This is the series that we have been planning since the fall when we kind of sit around and try to plan in advance what we're going to do. And what we always want to do with the series in the spring as we come out of February, we move into March, is we kind of want to take at least six weeks and point our collective attention towards Easter to prepare our hearts and to prepare our minds for the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, for the victory of victories, for what I believe is the greatest holiday in our calendar. It's the greatest day of the year when we get to celebrate that we are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song. And so the point of the spring series is always to kind of drive us to Easter and to prepare our hearts as a body for that celebration. And so that's absolutely the point of what we're doing this spring as well through a series called The Table. And we've got a couple things I'm going to, we've got a challenge we're going to issue for you. We've got something for you to take home. I'm going to tell you what this is. But the other thing I just want to put on your radar screen is we're going to have a Good Friday service this year for the first time since I've been one of the pastors. Yes, thank you. That's great. Okay, so if you clapped, you have to come. That's part of the deal. You can't be like, oh, I got plans. No, I'm telling you right now. Good Friday service, and for those that don't know, I'm not making a joke here. I'm just being kind. It's the Friday right before Easter. So you can go ahead and mark that off in your calendar. We've got that written and ready to go. We've been thinking about that already, and so we are looking forward to that. And the whole purpose of that service is really and truly to take some time on the Friday of Jesus's crucifixion, that remembers Jesus's crucifixion, and really ask the Lord to prepare our hearts for Easter so that the impact and the weight of it can fully rest on us. And so I hope that you'll be a part of that. This Sunday is intended to be kind of a setup for the rest of the series. So this Sunday, we're just kind of looking at the broad brush of it, why we've landed here, why we are doing this series called The Table. One of my favorite parts about this series is that we have a lady, Carly Buchanan, who is our part-time graphics department, among other things, right? She sings sometimes. Right now, she's over there watching my son and his peers in the hallway. And she gives a lot to the church. This series is her idea. When we sat around pitching things, I had my own idea for what we should do for series. And then she mentioned this, and everybody just immediately latched on to it. And it's a great way for me to highlight to you that you have a really great staff that works for you, that serves your kids, that serves your students, that serves us here. They're really, really great folks who are fun to work with. And almost none of the good ideas that we do are mine. I'm just leeching off of their good ideas. And so she brought this to us and we immediately loved it. And I immediately recognized that this series would resonate with grace. And I should have known that something like this would resonate with grace back when I started here. It was April of 2017 was my first Sunday at grace. It was the Sunday before Easter. And so prior to that, I think somewhere in late February, early March, they offered me the job and I ignorantly accepted it. And then they flew me up one Sunday in the middle of March to introduce me to the church right here in this room. And I should have known that meals were going to be a big deal to grace people because I landed Saturday evening around dinner time. And at the time, the moderator of the board was a guy, a good buddy of mine named Burt Banks and his wife, Terry. Now Terry is one of the elders. And so it's nice to get the good banks on the elder board. Now they picked me up at the airport and we were planning to go out to dinner and they said, hey, is it okay? We made reservations for dinner. I said, that's great, I'm hungry. And they said, we've also invited some other folks from Grace to meet us there that they wanna have a chance to meet you. Is that all right? And I'm like, yeah, sure. I mean, I'm the new pastor. I need to want to meet the people that I'll be working with, going to church with, that kind of thing. So absolutely. So we headed straight from the airport, straight to Winston's, straight to this back room. There was three other couples there, plus the Banks's and myself. And we just sat down and we had a time. And we talked for, it must have been two, two and a half hours. They were peppering me with questions. I was peppering them with questions. We just wanted to get to know each other, and so we sat down over a meal, and we did it. And then a couple weeks later, we moved the family up here. We rented a house off of Teal Briar over in Northridge, and that first week that we were here, I will never forget it. It had to be at least five of the seven nights we were going to somebody's house for dinner. You guys were just, you were peppering us with dinner invites. And over that first month, we went to dinner at more people's houses than I could count because people just wanted to get to know the new pastor and we wanted to get to know the new people. And that's what we did is we got together over meals, right? And when you think about grace culture, who we are as a church, one of our biggest events of the year, Hootenanny in September, what do we do? Well, we sit outside and we eat. You know, grace is big night out. What do we do? We stand around tables. We talk and we drink. That's what we do. This is what we like. We are a communing church. This is who we are, which is why I think that Luke is going to become our new favorite gospel. As we dove into this series, Carly had the idea based on a book, and we're going to see a quote from that book here in a second, based on a book called A Meal with Jesus. And so that book is based out of the Gospel of Luke. And I began to do research for the series. I was listening to that book on Audible. I like to listen to books so I can do other stuff while I'm reading. And the book really is based in the Gospel of Luke. And what I began to learn about Luke is meals are incredibly prevalent in this particular gospel. For those that may not be able to recall right off the top of their head, there's four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are what's called synoptic gospels where they kind of tell the story of Jesus from start to finish. They follow the same chronology. And then John kind of stands independently as its own gospel with its own style and makes its own points and things like that. And so Luke is one of the synoptic Gospels, which means a lot of the stories that it tells are very similar to Matthew and Mark, to the two preceding Gospels. But what we don't necessarily see, or what I've never learned before, and I'm embarrassed to admit it, because I've read Luke dozens of times in my life. I've led Bible studies through it. I've taken classes specifically on the book of Luke. Like, I should know this, and I just never did. And maybe you guys did, because you pay closer attention to Scripture than I do. But Luke is actually called, in in Scripture the hospitality gospel. I didn't know this, but in Luke, there are 10 different instances of Jesus sitting down to a meal with other people. Only three of those meals are recorded in the other gospels, which means in Luke, we have seven completely unique stories of Jesus sitting down to a meal with others. Meals are so prevalent in the book of Luke that the author of A Meal with Jesus, a guy, Tim Chester, said this, in Luke's gospel, Jesus is either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal. That's how prevalent it is in the book of Luke. And so I just thought, frankly, what a grace series to focus on that, the power and the efficacy of meals. And then the author brings up this verse that, again, I had read plenty of times before, but I've never just considered it in an isolated way. It's never jumped off the page like it did to me this time. But if I were to say to you, complete this sentence, the Son of Man came to, how would you complete that sentence? The Son of Man came to what? For me, as I was listening to this and processing it, I would complete that sentence, the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. That's what I've always heard. That's what I understand. And that's what Jesus said, and he did. But in Luke, he also says this in chapter 7, verse 34, the Son of Man has come eating and drinking. And you say, look at him, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors've carried myself in my arrival. The Son of Man has come eating and drinking. Now, I want to provide you some context so we understand what's going on there. Jesus is speaking to people from his hometown who have rejected him, who do not believe that he is a Messiah, who do not affirm his teachings. And they've kind of turned him away and said, he's a glutton and a drunkard. He can't be trusted because of who he's carousing with, because of how he behaves, because of what he's doing. And so Jesus says to them in the verses preceding, you guys, you had John the Baptist. He fasts. He lives in the wilderness in complete piety and austerity. He abstains from everything. He lives this very aesthetic, like this very minimalistic life, and you rejected him as the devil. Then the Son of Man comes eating and drinking, doing the exact opposite of that, and you reject me too. You guys got to pick a side. You have to pick a lane. That's the frustration that Jesus is expressing in this verse, and he gets accused of being a glutton and a drunkard because of the company that he's keeping. And so as we move through the series, we're going to see why Jesus chose to keep that company. But I also think it's powerful that Jesus does say this. Even out of context, I do think it's a powerful statement, the Son of Man comes eating and drinking. The Son of Man understands the power of a meal, of what happens around a table, of how memorable it can be. And we're going to continue to unpack that as we go through the series. But we know meals are powerful because we've experienced that too. I remember, I think it was 2008. It was the year, or maybe it was 2007, the year after Jen and I got married in 2006, we went to Rome with her family. And we went with her family, and then we went with another lady and her two adult sons. There was eight of us total, and we went to Rome. And when we went to Rome, we were there for seven or eight days. We got to see a lot of really cool stuff. We got to see the Parthenon and something called the wedding cake that the people in Rome really don't like very much. We got to see St. Peter's Basilica and St. Peter's Square. And I got to go on Christmas Day to the papal address. He came out and he addressed the throngs of people gathered in St. Peter's Square, and Pope Benedict gave me a plenary indulgence for 2008, which was great. 2008 was the best year of my life. Thank you, Pope Benedict. But the thing that I remember the most from Rome, and I think everybody who went on that trip would agree, is the Christmas Day meal that we had. Somebody in our party got a tip from one of their friends that this is the place you need to go in Rome for a good meal. And we're like, all right, let's go. I had no idea where we were going, what we were doing. So we're walking to this address. We end up on some completely nondescript street in Rome. Gray cobblestones, and it looked like residential. It wasn't rough residential, it was just residential, like row homes or townhomes or something like that, just kind of all together, and we didn't know where to go or what to do. And we're just kind of standing around, looking at the map, like did we come to the right address, what's going on? And then out of this door to my left burst an Italian chef from Central Casting. I'm telling you, he was short, he was rotund, he was thinning on top, but he had his hair knocked back. He was yelling Italian things. He was like a volcano of Italian joy, right? Like just, I'm not going to try to make any Italian noises because A, I think I would sound stupid. And B, I think that might be somehow racist in 2023. I don't know. I don't want to get in any trouble. But he was saying a bunch of Italian things very loudly and very joyfully. And he just comes bolting right up to me and he grabs my hand. He grabs my wrist. He didn't even grab my hand. He wanted me to not be able to resist at all. And he grabs my wrist and he yanks me into the building. He just starts pulling me towards the restaurant. And I'm looking at the other seven, like, don't leave me behind. Like, you got to come too. And he's just spouting off things and making motions. And he pulls me into what I think is going to be a house. And we walk in, and it's a restaurant, and there's tables, and there's people eating. And he just continues to be an Italian volcano of joy. And then we just plunge right into the kitchen. And I'm like, what's going on here? And again, it's like from a movie. There's stainless steel and steam and fire and chopping and Italian words. And I'm like, this is all happening too fast. And then he bursts out of the kitchen into this private dining room, and he points at the table gleefully. We all get around it. And then he grabs my mother-in-law and kisses her square on the lips and sits us down. And nobody was mad. We were a little offended. He didn't kiss the rest of us. Like it was just, he just sat us down. And as soon as he sat us down, somebody else comes out of the kitchen with whatever the first course was, probably prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella and whatever. And they set it down, and he says his stuff, and he asks what kind of wine we want. He's got a great wine pairing, and nobody else there drank wine. And I'm sitting there. It's my first year in marriage. I'm with a teetotaling family, and quietly I'm like, well, this is stupid. I mean, can I get a little bit of wine? But no, no deal. But they kept just bringing the food, right? The first course is done. He comes and he joyfully sweeps it away. Someone comes out of the kitchen with the next course. And this must have happened seven or eight times. I don't know what we had. I don't know what we ate. I know it was the best meal I've ever had in my life. I know that I will never forget it. When you ask me what's the best meal you've ever had, I will always say that meal in Rome. That's what I remember more than anything. And one of the things that sticks out to me is his joy in hospitality and that infectious joy that spread around the table. And that that's a memory as a family that no one can ever touch, that you can never take away. There was power in that afternoon. And the Italians do it right. When you have a meal over there, you're not going anywhere for like three hours. And you better plan for a nap afterwards. He just keeps bringing stuff. And it was so good and so wonderful and clearly so memorable. And you guys know that meals are powerful too. That's why they occupy such an important space in our culture. When someone gets married, biggest day of their life so far, what do we do? Immediately following someone's wedding ceremony, we go eat together. What do we do the night before someone's wedding ceremony? We have a meal with our closest friends so that we can talk more intimately than when we have to invite all the acquaintances and pay for their meals at the big one the next day. When we have a funeral, what do we do at a funeral? While the family is at the graveside service, someone who loves them is back at their house collecting meals from everybody else so that when the family gets there, they can sit down and they eat. When someone comes over to the house, what's the first thing you say if you're a decent human at all? What can I get you? You hungry? You thirsty? When someone comes in town to visit, what do we do? What are we going to eat? What do you guys want? See, whether we realize it or not, meals hold a sacred place in all of our lives. They're special. They're important. The table is an image that all of us know, that all of us share, that all of us gather around. And those moments around those tables are sacred. And Jesus knew this too. And it's why I think on bright display in the Gospel of Luke is Jesus' commitment to sitting down and having meals with people. But he's not simply eating and drinking. That's not all he came to do. As a matter of fact, that's not even at all what he came to do. He came to eat and drink with people because around the table, conversations happen. Stories are shared. Laughter is exchanged. If it's a really good meal, really good meal. We'll tear up together. We'll learn something about the people we're sitting with. It forces us in the busyness of our lives to stop and focus on what we're doing and who we're with. And Jesus understood the power of a meal. And so over the course of this series, as we prepare for Easter, we're going to look at how Jesus uses his meals in the Gospel of Luke. We're going to look at what he uses the table for. Because Jesus used meals as ministry. He uses the table to symbolize provision. He uses the table to include those who feel ostracized. He uses the table to try to convert those who may be lost and wondering. He uses the table to build community. He uses the table near his death to symbolize what he's about to do. He uses the table to help us always remember what he did. And then most powerfully, I think, he uses the table as a shadow of the reality that is to come in eternity when we are promised in Revelation 18 and 19 that we will sit down one day at the greatest banquet of all time, the marriage supper of the Lamb, where we celebrate the bride of Christ, the church being swept up into heaven to exist with God in perfect peace for all eternity. The marriage supper of the Lamb and the truth of it and the existence of it and the hope for it is the hope to which we all cling. And every meal we have is a shadow of what is to come in heaven. And that's what we're going to talk about on Easter. But what we're going to see as we move through this series is Jesus using meals as ministry. And it's going to cause us to ask, kind of that prompt that we left in the video, it's going to cause us to ask, what would happen if we began to think about our meals the way Jesus did? What would happen if we began to look at lunch and dinner, I mean, not breakfast, like nobody does anything for breakfast, okay, so we don't have to worry about that. But what would happen if we looked at lunch and dinner as opportunities for ministry? To bridge gaps with people. To build relationships with people. Even just to solidify things within our own family and have good spiritual conversations. What would happen if just for this season, for these six weeks, we allowed ourselves to think about our meals the way that Jesus thought about his meals. To that end, we have some things to help you do that as we move through this series. The first is this. This is a booklet of conversation prompts, and you can fold it and it sets up like a triangle, like one of those calendars. And so these are all sitting on the information table out there. And what we're encouraging everyone to do, one per family, please, because we didn't print out enough for all you guys to be greedy. What we're encouraging you to do, if it makes sense at all in your universe, and I know that for some this is not going to make sense, and I don't mean to exclude anyone, and I'm sorry about that, but if it makes sense in your family, grab one of these. Every week, there's a couple of verses that tie in with the sermon that you or your kids can read at the beginning of the week so everybody has the right context what we're talking about. And then every day is just a different conversational prompt. It's just one. It's not a list of small group questions. It's very low bar, very attainable. It's just one conversational prompt that has to do with the sermon from that week. It's an opportunity for you guys as families to use your meals with some purpose, to have meaningful, important conversations around your table. And so I would encourage you to take this, set it up, put it on your kitchen table for this Lenten period for the next six weeks or so. Carly did a great job. It's going to fit in with your decor, Okay, it's going to look nice. Don't worry about that. Just go and put it on your table. And then every time you have a meal at that table, I know that it's not realistic to assume that five or six nights a week, we're all going to sit as families around a table. Maybe you do, and that's wonderful. But I know that a lot of us struggle for that. So if you miss days, don't beat yourself up about it. Nobody cares. But when you're sitting at that table as a family, grab it, flip to the day, and ask the prompt, and make everyone around the table answer. Sometimes this won't go anywhere. It'll be two minutes of awkward, and your kids will be mad at you, and then you'll move on to other things. That's okay. But maybe two or three times it'll spark a really important conversation in your house. And if it does, isn't it worth it being awkward a couple of nights? So I think we've got an opportunity to begin to use our dinner tables as families to have some meaningful conversations as we move through this series together. So I would really encourage you to take one of these. The other thing we want you to do in the next six weeks leading up to Easter is what I'm calling the dinner table challenge. Here's the challenge. We would love for you, if you're a grace person, if you feel comfortable doing this, if you're new here this morning, you're like, bro, I did not sign up for this. Okay, I understand. You're adults. Do this if you want. But here's the challenge, okay? Sometime over the next six weeks, we would love for you to invite someone to your table from grace who's never been around your table before. That's simple. Now, you're going to start giving out invites to people who have never been over to your house before. And they're going to go, are you inviting us over because of the challenge? And then you go, yeah, but like, you know, do you like hamburgers? Let's go. Nobody cares. Let's just zoom right through that and have people over to the house from grace that we've never had over before. And I bet we'll start making new friends and new connections. And I bet different parts of the church will start getting connected with other parts of the church, and I bet this can be a very positive thing. The second part of the challenge is have someone around your table who's not from grace, who's never been around your table before. And I know that this is going to look different for different folks. If the idea of having someone around your table is terrifying because you're an awful cook or you're a hoarder and you don't want them to see your shame, like whatever it is, go out to dinner with some people. Make some reservations and go and talk with some folks from grace that you've never done that with, with some folks not from grace that you've never done that with. But I do think, and we're going to talk more about this next week, I do think that there is a power and an efficacy to having people over to the house, to preparing the meal, to going through those things to show hospitality. But however that makes the most sense in your context, that's the dinner table challenge here in the next six weeks. Have someone around your table from grace who's never been there. Have someone around your table not from grace who's never been there. And I'm just telling you, I really think God's going to do some cool stuff with that if we'll walk in it. I really think God is going to spark some good conversations. I really think he's going to make some good connections. And this isn't at all the reason why I'm doing this, but I think it's going to bring some people to grace. And if it doesn't bring them to grace, but it brings them to a church, great. Great. You guys know me. I'm not trying to get more people. We don't have enough room for all your friends anyways, and I'm not going to two services until the fall. Because Aaron Winston would quit. Just today, he would quit. But man, what if you invite somebody from your neighborhood who hasn't prioritized Jesus in a while, but because they interact with you, because they interact with your family, because you express friendship and hospitality to them, they decide that they want to re-engage with their Savior. Isn't that great? And who cares what church they go to after that? So that's the dinner table challenge. That's what we want you to do, and we want you to grab one of these and use that for the next six weeks. This is also probably a good time to mention something that I've been thinking about for a long while. I guess it was maybe the summer where Carly came to me and she said, hey, can I change the logo? And I'm like, what's wrong with the logo? That's grace, you know? It's fancy. And she's like, what? I don't like it. And then I looked at it. I don't know if you guys can see this. I'll show it to you afterwards if you can't. Yeah, but it looks better here, all right? Jeez. It is on the screen, and that is helpful. So you see it on the screen, and here it's all silver. So when it's one color, it looks like a helmet for Mickey Mouse. That's what it looks like. It looks like we stand for Sir Mickey Duke of Raleigh. And here it's in silver, so it's really pronounced. And once you see that, you just, you can't not see it. And here's the thing about the logo is like, what does it mean? Nothing, nothing. Well, there's hexagons. Yep. What do those mean? We don't know. There's a cross. We know what the cross means, and that's good. Pro-cross. But it doesn't really have any significance to it. And so the more I thought about it, the more I was like, I mean, yeah, sure. If there's something better that you can come up with, let's try it. And so with that kind of on the back burner, I also had this other thought about grace. And I think that we can marry the two and the logo. I don't have a logo to unveil for you this morning. I'm not like building to that, so don't get excited. We're working on it, all right? I just realized the anticipation I was building. No, that's not, mm-mm. I don't have anything yet. I can hand-draw you one. But there's a lot of different ways to think about a church. And after walking with you guys for almost seven years, I think I really know how we think about the church and how I think about the church. In Christendom, in church world, you can come across churches that kind of present themselves as almost this weight room, like this machismo, I'm going to just man up and be a good Christian and be a warrior for Jesus. And whether you're a woman or a man, you need to man up and you need to be tough for Jesus. And okay, in some contexts, that's effective and useful for the kingdom, and that's great. But that's not me, and that's not us. I grew up hearing this analogy to help us think about church, that church isn't a cruise ship, it's a battleship, right? Church isn't just this good time gang where you just have the best time possible and you just cruise along trying to have fun and get through life and just enjoying things. It's a battleship where we fight the enemy and we attack and we move forward and we're on mission and we press. And that has a lot of stuff that resonates with me. The problem is, when you think of the church as a battleship, we often get confused about who the enemy is, and we start to shoot at people that we don't have any business shooting at. So I don't really love thinking about the church as a battleship. So as I think about the church, and I think particularly about grace, I think grace is a banquet table, and everyone is invited. I think of grace as just this big party where we're celebrating our Savior, where we sit around a table every week, and we gather to share about our Savior. Where we sit around a table every week and we gather to share about our weeks and to hear what Jesus is doing and where he's taking us. I think about grace as this banquet table where everyone is welcome. If you want to bring your friends, bring them. If we fill up this room too much, I'll just walk around the room going to people who I know who have been going here for a long time and say, go stay in the lobby. Somebody needs your seat. We're fine with that. Everyone is invited to this table. There is not a head to this table. It's round. We're all equals. We're all together just trying to cling to the hope of the promises that we see in Scripture, knowing that one day we will sit around the great banquet table. Grace is a table where if you're sad, you can come here and you can grieve and you can mourn. Grace is a table if you're joyful, you can come here and celebrate and not allow that joy to terminate and the experience that's making you joyful, but turn in reflection to the God who is the author of that joy and share it with the people who love you most and best. Grace is a place for weary pilgrims to come and rest, for wanderers to settle. Grace is a table where the wounded can come and they can heal, where the weary can come and they can rest. It is a place where people who feel lonely, who need community, can come and find it. It is a place for those of us who have community to turn and offer that to other people who need it as well. Grace is a place where everyone is invited to come and celebrate in the majesty of our Savior. It is a place to come where we are loved and we allow ourselves to love others. And we do that in celebration of the God who loves us most and first and best. And so I think this series is most appropriate for who we are and for how God has shaped our faith, for how God has brought us to understand what it means to live the Christian life. And so more and more, I want us to see grace as a table that we bring everybody around to be refreshed and revived, then go back out. And I want us, as we go back out, to think of our meals more purposefully for the next six weeks and ask ourselves the question, how can we use our meals as Jesus did? And as we come back over now five more weeks, we're going to look at how Jesus used meals for ministry every one of those weeks. It'll culminate in that Good Friday service, and then hopefully we'll have the best Easter that we've ever had. But now I'm going to pray, and Aaron of the band is going to come up, and I don't know if we'll have lyrics for it or not, but if we don't, it's no big deal. Just listen for them. And they're going to sing over us a song that I think is thematic, not just for this series, but for Grace as well, and I'm excited for you guys to learn it and experience it. Let's pray. Father, thank you for who you are. Thank you for how you love us. Thank you for the gospel of Luke and all the truth that we find in it. Lord, thank you for opening my eyes to the way that your son used meals in that book in his life. I pray that we would use them in the same way, that we would see meals as sacred spaces, that we would invite others into those, that you would use those of us with gifts of hospitality, with gifts of conversation, that you would break some of us out of our shells and help us to make the connections that honestly our souls need so desperately. God, I pray over this series and what's happening at Grace. I feel like I can see you moving powerfully here, and so I pray that you would continue to do that and that nothing that we would do would get in the way of what you want to do. May we be sensitive to your guiding, sensitive to the Spirit in this season. Even as we consider who to invite, God, that you would move us in the direction of the connections that you want us to make. Lord, use this series in a powerful way, not for the sake of grace, but for the sake of the families and the individuals that comprise this place. We thank you for giving us a table here that we can all gather around. We pray that we would always be grateful to you for that. In Jesus' name, amen.