Revelation

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.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Welcome to Grace. It looks like I'm a little inside information, give a little praise to Gibson, Aaron Gibson and his team. A couple months ago, Aaron, our worship pastor, sent me an email with a link to that song, Honey in the Rock. And he said, hey, what do you think of this? And I listened to it for about 20 seconds and said, I think it's dumb, but you know, do it if you want. And that was it. I didn't like it. I'm not a fool I mean, that was great, wasn't it? That was really, really good. So Aaron, I don't know where you are, but listen to me less. But, you know, another reason that it could have been good is he didn't sing. So that was also helpful. But that was a really, really good worship set, guys. Thank you very much for leading us in that way. As we begin our series, Merry Christmas season to everybody. I'm excited. I love the Christmas season. I love Christmas carols. I spent more time than I should have this last week making this year's Christmas mix for me. It is the only thing that will be playing on my Spotify for the rest of the month. And I just, I love this season. And this week, the idea was to bring an ornament. There's an angel tree out front. You take a card off of that that gives you the opportunity to give charitably to a family that needs it and replace it with your ornament that represents your family. And in that way, that's the Grace Family Christmas tree. So if you didn't do it this week, bring an ornament next week, hang it on the tree, and we'll see a bunch of different ornaments that represent us as a big family. Because we are family and because this is a fun part of Christmas, next week is one of my favorite weeks of the year. We started it last year, and I thought it was great, so we're bringing it back this year, but it's Christmas Jammy Sunday. So dress in your best Christmas jammies. We want your families to be matching. There will be an award that goes to the most festive and I will publicly ridicule the least festive. So let's all participate. The week after that is our first ever holiday hoot. If you've been a part of Grace, you know that hoot nannies are a big deal. So the first ever holiday hoot where we're going to have a Christmas party. Bring something shareable. We'll put it on the table out there. We'll just hang out for a little while after the service. Load your kids up with sugar and then send you home. So that's going to be great. And then, of course, we've got our Christmas Eve celebration. So I'm really looking forward to celebrating December with you as we celebrate Christmas and all that it means. In our new series, Not Home Alone, which is obviously a play off of, it's in my top three Christmas movies of all time. We had a team of folks here this week led by Aaron and Julie, not Aaron Gibson. He didn't have anything to do with it. He's gotten enough credit this morning. Aaron Winston. And Julie and a team of those folks who decorated this place. And it looks amazing, doesn't it? Like all the different Home Alone touches. Yeah, they did such a good job. There's even a Kevin McAllister battle plan up here if you want to come look later. That's really, really great. So they really did a good job decorating the church. But in this series, Not Home Alone, we're going to be looking at Christmas and the different ways that it reminds us that we are not alone. And that it points out that God has actually put people in our life for a reason, to remind us of his presence. And that God actually places us in the lives of other people and gives us eyes to see those who might feel alone. And so as we walk through this month, we're going to be reminded of all the ways that Christmas reminds us that we are not alone. And as we start the series, I'm reminded of this generation of people between Malachi and Matthew. I don't know if you know this about your Bibles. I'm pretty certain that most of you know that there's an Old and New Testament. If you don't, that's all right. But now you do, okay? And you should never be embarrassed again. But there's an Old and New Testament in your Bible. And in the Old Testament, it's a chronology of the people of Israel, of God's chosen people. But it moves from the very beginning of human history in Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and to the flood, to what's called the first 11 chapters of Genesis, the prehistoric narrative. And then in Genesis chapter 12, we meet Abraham. And then the rest of the Old Testament is tracking the family and the descendants of Abraham through history. And it's a pretty good chronology of history starting in the Sumerian dynasty. That's when God shows up and calls Abraham out of the place called Ur in the land of the Chaldeans. That's the Sumerian dynasty. If you can remember all the way back to sixth grade history, that's probably when you learned about that. So for most of you, no, you don't know what I'm talking about. But some of us can remember back that far, and God called Abraham out of Ur. And he spoke to him, and he made him promises. And then the Old Testament tracks those promises, and we see his descendants in Egypt and struggling in the desert. That song, Honey in the Rock, is about that time in the desert. And then the period of the judges and the period of the kings and David. And then it moves into the period of exile and then post-exile when they come back. And then the prophets are speaking into this period. And so you can kind of read the Bible, the first 39 books of the Bible, and get a good chronology, a good history of the world all the way up to a certain point. And that certain point is Malachi. So if you're reading your Bible and you're reading it from page one to the end and you're turning the pages as you go and you're reading through this chronology of history and God's involvement in the generations. And now the Old Testament is important that we understand isn't laid out chronologically. But as you read it, you're getting snippets and you can reorganize it and it does flow from the beginning of history to this point in Malachi. But as you're reading it and you're turning the pages, when you read the last verse in Malachi and flip it over, the Old Testament's done. And then, I don't know, depending on who your publisher is, there'll be maybe a title page for the New Testament, maybe some explanatory notes, but you turn the page and it's Matthew chapter one. And in between the last verse of Malachi and the first verse of Matthew is what's called in church circles 400 years of silence. These are 400 years where there was no recorded books of the Bible written. Where presumably there were no prophets speaking. God didn't have any mouthpieces that he was using to speak to the people. Now I'm sure they were there, but they're lost to history. And I'm positive that God was moving in those generations, but we don't see them. So in the middle of our Bible is this 400-year period called the 400 years of silence. Because from the beginning of time until Malachi, God had been moving. From the beginning of time until Malachi, God had been speaking. From the beginning of time until Malachi, he had been assigning prophets and teachers to speak to his people and to copy down his words and to record his deeds and the deeds of his people here on earth. And in Malachi, that stops. And we don't pick it up again for another 400 years. And I always wonder, what must it have been like for what I think of as the silent generations? What must it have been like for the silent generations of those 400 years to see that God, he spoke to other generations, but he's not speaking to us. He moved in other generations, but he's not moving now. He sent prophets to others where in the past he's given miracles to Elijah and Elisha and he's given words of wisdom to, and he's given prophecies to Isaiah and to Ezekiel, but he's not moving now, and he's not moving here. Why has he spoken to other generations and he hasn't spoken to us? I can't help but wonder if they somehow felt like the neglected generation, the forgotten generation, the waiting generations, the lonely generations. They were unique in the history of Israel and God's voice coming to them. And I think that we can all relate to these silent generations. Because I think for us, we also have times in our life where we feel alone, where we feel isolated, where we feel like we are waiting, where we feel like we are praying and praying and praying and nothing meets us there but silence. And we must think, like the silent generations, we can relate to them by asking, God has shown up for others, why isn't he showing up for me? He's shown up for other people, why isn't he showing up for me? And what I mean can be isolating any number of examples. I remember when Jen and I were walking through our season of childlessness. We wanted very much to have a kid, and we didn't, and we couldn't. And the more you pray about something, and the more it hurts, the more alone you feel in that. And you look around, and your friends are having kids, and the kids you taught, I used to be a high school teacher, the kids you taught in high school are now having kids, and you're like, what gives, God? How come you're not listening to us? I see you blessing them. Why aren't you blessing us? What are we doing wrong? I see you loving them and answering their prayers. Why don't you hear our prayers? And I know the pain of going into meetings and lunches and being asked the question, and you give the painful answer. And in those seasons of loneliness and in those seasons of hurt and of waiting, even holidays like Christmas can feel painful because they only serve as reminders of what you don't yet have. They only serve as reminders of the things that make you feel more isolated, not less. I think of families who have elderly parents who are walking through the struggle of caring for them, who don't have a lot of good options. And my heart goes out to the families that have elderly parents, and those elderly parents have made arrangements and they have ways to take care of themselves, but it's the hard conversations and it's the hard reality and it's sometimes it can begin to consume you like you're facing it alone. But then my heart hurts even more for the folks in our church that I know who there are no good options on how to care for their family. They don't have the resources. Their parents don't have the resources. They don't have the resources. They don't know what to do. They're just stringing every day together, knowing that today is not enough to take care of tomorrow. And I don't really know how to take care of tomorrow either. I don't know what to do. And they're praying and they're crying out and they've got to be thinking, God, I see you moving for other people. Why aren't you moving here? I see you working things out for other families. Why don't you work them out for our family? I think of people in families where you're the only believer. Your spouse doesn't share the faith that you share. In fact, they deride you for it. Your children who you brought up to believe what you believe have walked away from what you believe, and you just feel alone. And you see other families, and it seems to work out for them. Their grandkids come to church with them, and I can't even get my spouse to come to church with me. God, why do you listen to their prayers and not mine? Why do they experience joy that I don't get to experience? I think of the people in our church who walk through depression and mental health disorders. And you see the joy that other people have. You see the laughter that other people experience. And you wonder to yourself, why can't I experience that? God, I see you giving them happiness. I see you answering their prayers. Why don't you answer my prayers? I think of stay-at-home moms who have so much to give and offer to the world around them. But because of seasons of life, they feel that they are reduced to a handmaid, to an 18-month-old tyrant. Not that we can relate to this in any way in our home. Or to an Uber service for the social calendar and practices of a middle school kid, and the world just reduces you to this shell of what you feel like you are and were, and you don't even know yourself anymore, and you feel so isolated in that. You feel so reduced in that. I think of people who have experienced grief, and the grief won't let go. The loss happened two years ago. It happened five years ago, and every now and again, God in his goodness gives you a little bit of reprieve from that where you forget that you're sad, but in your quiet moments, you're still sad. And in the times that you're reminded that God sees you and he's looking out for you, you agree with that in principle, but you don't feel it in your guts and you just feel alone. Or the people in the marriages that when you come to church on Sunday and you hang out with your friends, we're good. And when you're at home, it's hell. And you're just hanging on. And you both know the only reason you're in that marriage is so neither of you have to admit anything to your friends. We can feel isolated. We can feel alone. Sometimes it's because of choices that we make. Sometimes it's because of things that happen to us. Sometimes it's because we're simply isolated. But I think that each one of us has felt like, will again feel like, these silent generations. These generations of people between Malachi and Matthew who have seen God move for others and we just wonder why God isn't moving for us. I've tried to be your faithful servant, God. I know that I'm not perfect, but I try to do the right thing, and it just won't give. And God, if something doesn't give soon, I'm gonna lose my mind. My life is untenable, and I don't know how to hang on. And it's in those moments when we feel alone and when we feel isolated and we feel like maybe God has forgotten to answer our prayers that we most identify with these silent generations. And so if you feel that way, what can you do? Well, you can look to what the silent generations did. And what did they do? The silent generations clung to Christmas. The silent generations clung to Christmas. Now, they wouldn't yet call it Christmas, but they clung to the promises of God. They taught them to their children and to their grandchildren. And they kept them in their homes. And they upheld the law of God and the principles and the teachings of God. And they took their kids to synagogue every week. And they listened to the rabbis and they praised together. And they clung to the promises of God that they believed in in their Bible. It was called the Tanakh at the time, the 39 books of the Old Testament. They clung to the promises in that book. They remembered the promises of Genesis 12 when God isolates Abraham and he takes him to the land of Canaan and he makes him a promise. He makes him three promises that every generation of Jewish person clung to for those thousands of years leading up to Jesus. And the last promise that he made him was that one of your descendants is going to bless the whole earth. One of your descendants is going to be the Messiah. He's going to be the Savior of the world. So just hang on, believe in me and trust me, and one day I will send him to you. And then those generations that followed, and Joseph, and in Moses, and in Joshua, and in the judges, and in Samson, they clung to that promise that God made to Abraham. And then we see David in the middle of the Old Testament, and David up and he starts asking questions and he starts praying and everybody's wondering when is the Messiah going to come, the one who is to come, when will he arrive? And God tells David he's not coming yet. But in 2 Samuel chapter 7, we see the Davidic covenant where God tells David he's not coming yet, but when he does, he's going to sit on your throne forever. And it's this reminder and this restoration of the promise that they've been clinging to that God gives them kind of as a lifting up in the middle of their history to David that Jesus is going to come. You should still look for him. You should still teach your children about him and cling to the promises of the Messiah. And when he comes, he's gonna sit on your throne forever. And then we move into the period of the prophets where God gave visions to some of these great prophets of old, Isaiah and Ezekiel and Jeremiah and Amos. And he gave them messianic prophecies. Prophecies about the Messiah who was to come. And Isaiah prophesies that when the Messiah comes, that the blind will receive their sight and the deaf will receive their hearing and that the people who can't walk will be able to walk and that prisoners will be set free. And we see Isaiah call him Emmanuel, which means God with us, God coming from heaven to earth with us. Isaiah promises that and that when he does that, he will be the king of kings and the Lord of lords and the prince of peace and his name will be called Emmanuel. And then we learn that by his stripes, we will be healed through his sacrifice and through his death. We will be healed and restored forever the way that God intended it at the beginning of creation when he walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening. That God has this grand plan to restore creation and you to himself. And so this Old Testament generation, the silent generations, clung to those promises that they could track throughout their Bible that they taught generation after generation knowing that one day God promised that he was going to send a savior. And then you turn the page to Matthew chapter one and you see the genealogies of all the people who were a part of Israel through the years or grafted into Israel and Ruth and Rahab. And then you see the arrival of Jesus. You have the very first Christmas. And in that Christmas, we see a God who keeps his promises. And I will remind you of this every year that you allow me to be your pastor and Christmas time rolls around, that Christmas is our annual reminder from God that we serve a God who keeps his promises. We serve a God who keeps his promises. Romans 5 tells us that we hope in him and in that hope we will not be put to shame. And I don't know about you, but every other thing that we have hoped in in our life at some point or another lets us down and puts us to shame. Especially if you're a UNC fan. There is nothing in our life that is guaranteed that will not let us down. There is no promise we can receive from anyone that is ironclad and will not eventually disappoint us. But God does not put us to shame. God keeps his promises, and Christmas is our annual reminder that we serve and worship and cling to a God who has not forgotten us, who does see us, that reminds us that we are not alone, who whispers in our ear in the book of Isaiah that the Lord is close to the broken heart, and he comforts those who are crushed in spirit, who reminds us through the Psalms that he is our strong fortress, that we can run to his wings for protection and that with him in Isaiah we are told that we will soar on wings like eagles, that we will run and not be weary, that we will walk and we will not faint, that he will give us strength. We know these things and we can run to him and we can claim those because he's promised us. And Christmas reminds us that he keeps his promises because he promised that baby boy for 4,000 years. For generation after generation, they said, he's coming. He's coming. When? Soon? We hope. But we don't know. He's coming. He's coming. And there's 400 years of silence. And they clung to it. He's coming. We know he is. And then he shows up. And the angels declare him. And the shepherds worship him. And the wise men bow down to him. And his mother Mary stores it all up in her heart. And those generations clung to Christmas. So what do we do when we feel alone? What do we do when we feel forgotten? What do we do when life feels untenable and I don't know the way out and I don't know how this is going to be resolved and I'm praying like crazy and God does not seem to be answering my prayers? What do we do? In our waiting, we cling to Christmas. We cling to what Christmas is. We cling to the reality that we serve a God who keeps His promises. And we acknowledge that not only did God in the Old Testament make promises to the generations before us that He fulfilled in the sending of His Son, but that that Son, when He came, He made us promises too. And the people who came after him made us promises in God's name. We cling to the promises of Jesus when he talked to the disciples and Jesus says, you know, in a little bit, I've got to go. And they're like, where are you going, man? We'll come with you. And he says, where I'm going, you can't go there yet. But I'm going to go and prepare a place for you. I'm going to go and make sure that when you get to heaven, there's going to be a house for you. I'm going where you can't yet go because you're still in your mortal body, but when you are released from your mortal body, you will join me in eternity, and I am preparing a place for you there. It's a promise from Jesus. It's a promise from Jesus in the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation. That there's going to be the greatest banquet of all time when we get to heaven and he saved us a seat. It's a promise. Paul reminds us of these promises all throughout his writings, but most pointedly in Romans. When he tells us in Romans 8 that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of Jesus Christ. Not angels or demon or height nor depth nor any other created thing will be able to separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. If you know Jesus, if you believe that Jesus is who he says he is, he's the son of God, that he did what he said he did, he descended to earth, he took on human form, he died on the cross for our sins and he rose again on the third day. And that he's gonna do what he says he's gonna do, that he's gonna, he's gonna come back crashing into the clouds on a white horse. And on his thigh, it's going to say righteous and true. And he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. He promises us that. That he will restore this creation. And he acknowledges in Romans 8 that all of creation groans for that return. But as Christians in this era, we cling to those promises. We allow Christmas to remind us that God always keeps his promises. And like the 4,000 years of generations before us, and like the 400 years of silence in the generations within there, we cling to God's promises and we know that we serve a God who always keeps his promises and the last promise he makes to us in Revelation 21 that he is going to create a new heaven and a new earth and there will be no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain for the former things, all those things that bring us grief, all those things that make us feel isolated, all those things that make us wonder if God really hears us, the former things have passed away. That's a promise that we have from our God. And we are reminded at Christmas that we serve a God who keeps his promises. So let Christmas season be what it is. Let it be fun. Go see the lights. Decorate the tree. Buy your gifts. Spend your time with your friends, go to your parties, do all the stuff. But please, this December, don't lose sight of the fact that Christmas is a gift from God that reminds us that he keeps his promises. Christmas reminds us that he's done it once and we believe he'll do it again. He sent his son one time and they clung to that promise for 4,000 years. And it's been 2,000 years since he sent his son the last time. But we know that he's going to do it again. And when he does, he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue and all these former things will have passed away. So even when it feels like God can't hear us, he doesn't see us, we feel alone. We remember that generations before us have felt that way too. And so we cling to Christmas because it reminds us that he's done it once and we believe that he'll do it again.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Welcome to Grace. It looks like I'm a little inside information, give a little praise to Gibson, Aaron Gibson and his team. A couple months ago, Aaron, our worship pastor, sent me an email with a link to that song, Honey in the Rock. And he said, hey, what do you think of this? And I listened to it for about 20 seconds and said, I think it's dumb, but you know, do it if you want. And that was it. I didn't like it. I'm not a fool I mean, that was great, wasn't it? That was really, really good. So Aaron, I don't know where you are, but listen to me less. But, you know, another reason that it could have been good is he didn't sing. So that was also helpful. But that was a really, really good worship set, guys. Thank you very much for leading us in that way. As we begin our series, Merry Christmas season to everybody. I'm excited. I love the Christmas season. I love Christmas carols. I spent more time than I should have this last week making this year's Christmas mix for me. It is the only thing that will be playing on my Spotify for the rest of the month. And I just, I love this season. And this week, the idea was to bring an ornament. There's an angel tree out front. You take a card off of that that gives you the opportunity to give charitably to a family that needs it and replace it with your ornament that represents your family. And in that way, that's the Grace Family Christmas tree. So if you didn't do it this week, bring an ornament next week, hang it on the tree, and we'll see a bunch of different ornaments that represent us as a big family. Because we are family and because this is a fun part of Christmas, next week is one of my favorite weeks of the year. We started it last year, and I thought it was great, so we're bringing it back this year, but it's Christmas Jammy Sunday. So dress in your best Christmas jammies. We want your families to be matching. There will be an award that goes to the most festive and I will publicly ridicule the least festive. So let's all participate. The week after that is our first ever holiday hoot. If you've been a part of Grace, you know that hoot nannies are a big deal. So the first ever holiday hoot where we're going to have a Christmas party. Bring something shareable. We'll put it on the table out there. We'll just hang out for a little while after the service. Load your kids up with sugar and then send you home. So that's going to be great. And then, of course, we've got our Christmas Eve celebration. So I'm really looking forward to celebrating December with you as we celebrate Christmas and all that it means. In our new series, Not Home Alone, which is obviously a play off of, it's in my top three Christmas movies of all time. We had a team of folks here this week led by Aaron and Julie, not Aaron Gibson. He didn't have anything to do with it. He's gotten enough credit this morning. Aaron Winston. And Julie and a team of those folks who decorated this place. And it looks amazing, doesn't it? Like all the different Home Alone touches. Yeah, they did such a good job. There's even a Kevin McAllister battle plan up here if you want to come look later. That's really, really great. So they really did a good job decorating the church. But in this series, Not Home Alone, we're going to be looking at Christmas and the different ways that it reminds us that we are not alone. And that it points out that God has actually put people in our life for a reason, to remind us of his presence. And that God actually places us in the lives of other people and gives us eyes to see those who might feel alone. And so as we walk through this month, we're going to be reminded of all the ways that Christmas reminds us that we are not alone. And as we start the series, I'm reminded of this generation of people between Malachi and Matthew. I don't know if you know this about your Bibles. I'm pretty certain that most of you know that there's an Old and New Testament. If you don't, that's all right. But now you do, okay? And you should never be embarrassed again. But there's an Old and New Testament in your Bible. And in the Old Testament, it's a chronology of the people of Israel, of God's chosen people. But it moves from the very beginning of human history in Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and to the flood, to what's called the first 11 chapters of Genesis, the prehistoric narrative. And then in Genesis chapter 12, we meet Abraham. And then the rest of the Old Testament is tracking the family and the descendants of Abraham through history. And it's a pretty good chronology of history starting in the Sumerian dynasty. That's when God shows up and calls Abraham out of the place called Ur in the land of the Chaldeans. That's the Sumerian dynasty. If you can remember all the way back to sixth grade history, that's probably when you learned about that. So for most of you, no, you don't know what I'm talking about. But some of us can remember back that far, and God called Abraham out of Ur. And he spoke to him, and he made him promises. And then the Old Testament tracks those promises, and we see his descendants in Egypt and struggling in the desert. That song, Honey in the Rock, is about that time in the desert. And then the period of the judges and the period of the kings and David. And then it moves into the period of exile and then post-exile when they come back. And then the prophets are speaking into this period. And so you can kind of read the Bible, the first 39 books of the Bible, and get a good chronology, a good history of the world all the way up to a certain point. And that certain point is Malachi. So if you're reading your Bible and you're reading it from page one to the end and you're turning the pages as you go and you're reading through this chronology of history and God's involvement in the generations. And now the Old Testament is important that we understand isn't laid out chronologically. But as you read it, you're getting snippets and you can reorganize it and it does flow from the beginning of history to this point in Malachi. But as you're reading it and you're turning the pages, when you read the last verse in Malachi and flip it over, the Old Testament's done. And then, I don't know, depending on who your publisher is, there'll be maybe a title page for the New Testament, maybe some explanatory notes, but you turn the page and it's Matthew chapter one. And in between the last verse of Malachi and the first verse of Matthew is what's called in church circles 400 years of silence. These are 400 years where there was no recorded books of the Bible written. Where presumably there were no prophets speaking. God didn't have any mouthpieces that he was using to speak to the people. Now I'm sure they were there, but they're lost to history. And I'm positive that God was moving in those generations, but we don't see them. So in the middle of our Bible is this 400-year period called the 400 years of silence. Because from the beginning of time until Malachi, God had been moving. From the beginning of time until Malachi, God had been speaking. From the beginning of time until Malachi, he had been assigning prophets and teachers to speak to his people and to copy down his words and to record his deeds and the deeds of his people here on earth. And in Malachi, that stops. And we don't pick it up again for another 400 years. And I always wonder, what must it have been like for what I think of as the silent generations? What must it have been like for the silent generations of those 400 years to see that God, he spoke to other generations, but he's not speaking to us. He moved in other generations, but he's not moving now. He sent prophets to others where in the past he's given miracles to Elijah and Elisha and he's given words of wisdom to, and he's given prophecies to Isaiah and to Ezekiel, but he's not moving now, and he's not moving here. Why has he spoken to other generations and he hasn't spoken to us? I can't help but wonder if they somehow felt like the neglected generation, the forgotten generation, the waiting generations, the lonely generations. They were unique in the history of Israel and God's voice coming to them. And I think that we can all relate to these silent generations. Because I think for us, we also have times in our life where we feel alone, where we feel isolated, where we feel like we are waiting, where we feel like we are praying and praying and praying and nothing meets us there but silence. And we must think, like the silent generations, we can relate to them by asking, God has shown up for others, why isn't he showing up for me? He's shown up for other people, why isn't he showing up for me? And what I mean can be isolating any number of examples. I remember when Jen and I were walking through our season of childlessness. We wanted very much to have a kid, and we didn't, and we couldn't. And the more you pray about something, and the more it hurts, the more alone you feel in that. And you look around, and your friends are having kids, and the kids you taught, I used to be a high school teacher, the kids you taught in high school are now having kids, and you're like, what gives, God? How come you're not listening to us? I see you blessing them. Why aren't you blessing us? What are we doing wrong? I see you loving them and answering their prayers. Why don't you hear our prayers? And I know the pain of going into meetings and lunches and being asked the question, and you give the painful answer. And in those seasons of loneliness and in those seasons of hurt and of waiting, even holidays like Christmas can feel painful because they only serve as reminders of what you don't yet have. They only serve as reminders of the things that make you feel more isolated, not less. I think of families who have elderly parents who are walking through the struggle of caring for them, who don't have a lot of good options. And my heart goes out to the families that have elderly parents, and those elderly parents have made arrangements and they have ways to take care of themselves, but it's the hard conversations and it's the hard reality and it's sometimes it can begin to consume you like you're facing it alone. But then my heart hurts even more for the folks in our church that I know who there are no good options on how to care for their family. They don't have the resources. Their parents don't have the resources. They don't have the resources. They don't know what to do. They're just stringing every day together, knowing that today is not enough to take care of tomorrow. And I don't really know how to take care of tomorrow either. I don't know what to do. And they're praying and they're crying out and they've got to be thinking, God, I see you moving for other people. Why aren't you moving here? I see you working things out for other families. Why don't you work them out for our family? I think of people in families where you're the only believer. Your spouse doesn't share the faith that you share. In fact, they deride you for it. Your children who you brought up to believe what you believe have walked away from what you believe, and you just feel alone. And you see other families, and it seems to work out for them. Their grandkids come to church with them, and I can't even get my spouse to come to church with me. God, why do you listen to their prayers and not mine? Why do they experience joy that I don't get to experience? I think of the people in our church who walk through depression and mental health disorders. And you see the joy that other people have. You see the laughter that other people experience. And you wonder to yourself, why can't I experience that? God, I see you giving them happiness. I see you answering their prayers. Why don't you answer my prayers? I think of stay-at-home moms who have so much to give and offer to the world around them. But because of seasons of life, they feel that they are reduced to a handmaid, to an 18-month-old tyrant. Not that we can relate to this in any way in our home. Or to an Uber service for the social calendar and practices of a middle school kid, and the world just reduces you to this shell of what you feel like you are and were, and you don't even know yourself anymore, and you feel so isolated in that. You feel so reduced in that. I think of people who have experienced grief, and the grief won't let go. The loss happened two years ago. It happened five years ago, and every now and again, God in his goodness gives you a little bit of reprieve from that where you forget that you're sad, but in your quiet moments, you're still sad. And in the times that you're reminded that God sees you and he's looking out for you, you agree with that in principle, but you don't feel it in your guts and you just feel alone. Or the people in the marriages that when you come to church on Sunday and you hang out with your friends, we're good. And when you're at home, it's hell. And you're just hanging on. And you both know the only reason you're in that marriage is so neither of you have to admit anything to your friends. We can feel isolated. We can feel alone. Sometimes it's because of choices that we make. Sometimes it's because of things that happen to us. Sometimes it's because we're simply isolated. But I think that each one of us has felt like, will again feel like, these silent generations. These generations of people between Malachi and Matthew who have seen God move for others and we just wonder why God isn't moving for us. I've tried to be your faithful servant, God. I know that I'm not perfect, but I try to do the right thing, and it just won't give. And God, if something doesn't give soon, I'm gonna lose my mind. My life is untenable, and I don't know how to hang on. And it's in those moments when we feel alone and when we feel isolated and we feel like maybe God has forgotten to answer our prayers that we most identify with these silent generations. And so if you feel that way, what can you do? Well, you can look to what the silent generations did. And what did they do? The silent generations clung to Christmas. The silent generations clung to Christmas. Now, they wouldn't yet call it Christmas, but they clung to the promises of God. They taught them to their children and to their grandchildren. And they kept them in their homes. And they upheld the law of God and the principles and the teachings of God. And they took their kids to synagogue every week. And they listened to the rabbis and they praised together. And they clung to the promises of God that they believed in in their Bible. It was called the Tanakh at the time, the 39 books of the Old Testament. They clung to the promises in that book. They remembered the promises of Genesis 12 when God isolates Abraham and he takes him to the land of Canaan and he makes him a promise. He makes him three promises that every generation of Jewish person clung to for those thousands of years leading up to Jesus. And the last promise that he made him was that one of your descendants is going to bless the whole earth. One of your descendants is going to be the Messiah. He's going to be the Savior of the world. So just hang on, believe in me and trust me, and one day I will send him to you. And then those generations that followed, and Joseph, and in Moses, and in Joshua, and in the judges, and in Samson, they clung to that promise that God made to Abraham. And then we see David in the middle of the Old Testament, and David up and he starts asking questions and he starts praying and everybody's wondering when is the Messiah going to come, the one who is to come, when will he arrive? And God tells David he's not coming yet. But in 2 Samuel chapter 7, we see the Davidic covenant where God tells David he's not coming yet, but when he does, he's going to sit on your throne forever. And it's this reminder and this restoration of the promise that they've been clinging to that God gives them kind of as a lifting up in the middle of their history to David that Jesus is going to come. You should still look for him. You should still teach your children about him and cling to the promises of the Messiah. And when he comes, he's gonna sit on your throne forever. And then we move into the period of the prophets where God gave visions to some of these great prophets of old, Isaiah and Ezekiel and Jeremiah and Amos. And he gave them messianic prophecies. Prophecies about the Messiah who was to come. And Isaiah prophesies that when the Messiah comes, that the blind will receive their sight and the deaf will receive their hearing and that the people who can't walk will be able to walk and that prisoners will be set free. And we see Isaiah call him Emmanuel, which means God with us, God coming from heaven to earth with us. Isaiah promises that and that when he does that, he will be the king of kings and the Lord of lords and the prince of peace and his name will be called Emmanuel. And then we learn that by his stripes, we will be healed through his sacrifice and through his death. We will be healed and restored forever the way that God intended it at the beginning of creation when he walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening. That God has this grand plan to restore creation and you to himself. And so this Old Testament generation, the silent generations, clung to those promises that they could track throughout their Bible that they taught generation after generation knowing that one day God promised that he was going to send a savior. And then you turn the page to Matthew chapter one and you see the genealogies of all the people who were a part of Israel through the years or grafted into Israel and Ruth and Rahab. And then you see the arrival of Jesus. You have the very first Christmas. And in that Christmas, we see a God who keeps his promises. And I will remind you of this every year that you allow me to be your pastor and Christmas time rolls around, that Christmas is our annual reminder from God that we serve a God who keeps his promises. We serve a God who keeps his promises. Romans 5 tells us that we hope in him and in that hope we will not be put to shame. And I don't know about you, but every other thing that we have hoped in in our life at some point or another lets us down and puts us to shame. Especially if you're a UNC fan. There is nothing in our life that is guaranteed that will not let us down. There is no promise we can receive from anyone that is ironclad and will not eventually disappoint us. But God does not put us to shame. God keeps his promises, and Christmas is our annual reminder that we serve and worship and cling to a God who has not forgotten us, who does see us, that reminds us that we are not alone, who whispers in our ear in the book of Isaiah that the Lord is close to the broken heart, and he comforts those who are crushed in spirit, who reminds us through the Psalms that he is our strong fortress, that we can run to his wings for protection and that with him in Isaiah we are told that we will soar on wings like eagles, that we will run and not be weary, that we will walk and we will not faint, that he will give us strength. We know these things and we can run to him and we can claim those because he's promised us. And Christmas reminds us that he keeps his promises because he promised that baby boy for 4,000 years. For generation after generation, they said, he's coming. He's coming. When? Soon? We hope. But we don't know. He's coming. He's coming. And there's 400 years of silence. And they clung to it. He's coming. We know he is. And then he shows up. And the angels declare him. And the shepherds worship him. And the wise men bow down to him. And his mother Mary stores it all up in her heart. And those generations clung to Christmas. So what do we do when we feel alone? What do we do when we feel forgotten? What do we do when life feels untenable and I don't know the way out and I don't know how this is going to be resolved and I'm praying like crazy and God does not seem to be answering my prayers? What do we do? In our waiting, we cling to Christmas. We cling to what Christmas is. We cling to the reality that we serve a God who keeps His promises. And we acknowledge that not only did God in the Old Testament make promises to the generations before us that He fulfilled in the sending of His Son, but that that Son, when He came, He made us promises too. And the people who came after him made us promises in God's name. We cling to the promises of Jesus when he talked to the disciples and Jesus says, you know, in a little bit, I've got to go. And they're like, where are you going, man? We'll come with you. And he says, where I'm going, you can't go there yet. But I'm going to go and prepare a place for you. I'm going to go and make sure that when you get to heaven, there's going to be a house for you. I'm going where you can't yet go because you're still in your mortal body, but when you are released from your mortal body, you will join me in eternity, and I am preparing a place for you there. It's a promise from Jesus. It's a promise from Jesus in the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation. That there's going to be the greatest banquet of all time when we get to heaven and he saved us a seat. It's a promise. Paul reminds us of these promises all throughout his writings, but most pointedly in Romans. When he tells us in Romans 8 that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of Jesus Christ. Not angels or demon or height nor depth nor any other created thing will be able to separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. If you know Jesus, if you believe that Jesus is who he says he is, he's the son of God, that he did what he said he did, he descended to earth, he took on human form, he died on the cross for our sins and he rose again on the third day. And that he's gonna do what he says he's gonna do, that he's gonna, he's gonna come back crashing into the clouds on a white horse. And on his thigh, it's going to say righteous and true. And he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. He promises us that. That he will restore this creation. And he acknowledges in Romans 8 that all of creation groans for that return. But as Christians in this era, we cling to those promises. We allow Christmas to remind us that God always keeps his promises. And like the 4,000 years of generations before us, and like the 400 years of silence in the generations within there, we cling to God's promises and we know that we serve a God who always keeps his promises and the last promise he makes to us in Revelation 21 that he is going to create a new heaven and a new earth and there will be no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain for the former things, all those things that bring us grief, all those things that make us feel isolated, all those things that make us wonder if God really hears us, the former things have passed away. That's a promise that we have from our God. And we are reminded at Christmas that we serve a God who keeps his promises. So let Christmas season be what it is. Let it be fun. Go see the lights. Decorate the tree. Buy your gifts. Spend your time with your friends, go to your parties, do all the stuff. But please, this December, don't lose sight of the fact that Christmas is a gift from God that reminds us that he keeps his promises. Christmas reminds us that he's done it once and we believe he'll do it again. He sent his son one time and they clung to that promise for 4,000 years. And it's been 2,000 years since he sent his son the last time. But we know that he's going to do it again. And when he does, he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue and all these former things will have passed away. So even when it feels like God can't hear us, he doesn't see us, we feel alone. We remember that generations before us have felt that way too. And so we cling to Christmas because it reminds us that he's done it once and we believe that he'll do it again.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Welcome to Grace. It looks like I'm a little inside information, give a little praise to Gibson, Aaron Gibson and his team. A couple months ago, Aaron, our worship pastor, sent me an email with a link to that song, Honey in the Rock. And he said, hey, what do you think of this? And I listened to it for about 20 seconds and said, I think it's dumb, but you know, do it if you want. And that was it. I didn't like it. I'm not a fool I mean, that was great, wasn't it? That was really, really good. So Aaron, I don't know where you are, but listen to me less. But, you know, another reason that it could have been good is he didn't sing. So that was also helpful. But that was a really, really good worship set, guys. Thank you very much for leading us in that way. As we begin our series, Merry Christmas season to everybody. I'm excited. I love the Christmas season. I love Christmas carols. I spent more time than I should have this last week making this year's Christmas mix for me. It is the only thing that will be playing on my Spotify for the rest of the month. And I just, I love this season. And this week, the idea was to bring an ornament. There's an angel tree out front. You take a card off of that that gives you the opportunity to give charitably to a family that needs it and replace it with your ornament that represents your family. And in that way, that's the Grace Family Christmas tree. So if you didn't do it this week, bring an ornament next week, hang it on the tree, and we'll see a bunch of different ornaments that represent us as a big family. Because we are family and because this is a fun part of Christmas, next week is one of my favorite weeks of the year. We started it last year, and I thought it was great, so we're bringing it back this year, but it's Christmas Jammy Sunday. So dress in your best Christmas jammies. We want your families to be matching. There will be an award that goes to the most festive and I will publicly ridicule the least festive. So let's all participate. The week after that is our first ever holiday hoot. If you've been a part of Grace, you know that hoot nannies are a big deal. So the first ever holiday hoot where we're going to have a Christmas party. Bring something shareable. We'll put it on the table out there. We'll just hang out for a little while after the service. Load your kids up with sugar and then send you home. So that's going to be great. And then, of course, we've got our Christmas Eve celebration. So I'm really looking forward to celebrating December with you as we celebrate Christmas and all that it means. In our new series, Not Home Alone, which is obviously a play off of, it's in my top three Christmas movies of all time. We had a team of folks here this week led by Aaron and Julie, not Aaron Gibson. He didn't have anything to do with it. He's gotten enough credit this morning. Aaron Winston. And Julie and a team of those folks who decorated this place. And it looks amazing, doesn't it? Like all the different Home Alone touches. Yeah, they did such a good job. There's even a Kevin McAllister battle plan up here if you want to come look later. That's really, really great. So they really did a good job decorating the church. But in this series, Not Home Alone, we're going to be looking at Christmas and the different ways that it reminds us that we are not alone. And that it points out that God has actually put people in our life for a reason, to remind us of his presence. And that God actually places us in the lives of other people and gives us eyes to see those who might feel alone. And so as we walk through this month, we're going to be reminded of all the ways that Christmas reminds us that we are not alone. And as we start the series, I'm reminded of this generation of people between Malachi and Matthew. I don't know if you know this about your Bibles. I'm pretty certain that most of you know that there's an Old and New Testament. If you don't, that's all right. But now you do, okay? And you should never be embarrassed again. But there's an Old and New Testament in your Bible. And in the Old Testament, it's a chronology of the people of Israel, of God's chosen people. But it moves from the very beginning of human history in Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and to the flood, to what's called the first 11 chapters of Genesis, the prehistoric narrative. And then in Genesis chapter 12, we meet Abraham. And then the rest of the Old Testament is tracking the family and the descendants of Abraham through history. And it's a pretty good chronology of history starting in the Sumerian dynasty. That's when God shows up and calls Abraham out of the place called Ur in the land of the Chaldeans. That's the Sumerian dynasty. If you can remember all the way back to sixth grade history, that's probably when you learned about that. So for most of you, no, you don't know what I'm talking about. But some of us can remember back that far, and God called Abraham out of Ur. And he spoke to him, and he made him promises. And then the Old Testament tracks those promises, and we see his descendants in Egypt and struggling in the desert. That song, Honey in the Rock, is about that time in the desert. And then the period of the judges and the period of the kings and David. And then it moves into the period of exile and then post-exile when they come back. And then the prophets are speaking into this period. And so you can kind of read the Bible, the first 39 books of the Bible, and get a good chronology, a good history of the world all the way up to a certain point. And that certain point is Malachi. So if you're reading your Bible and you're reading it from page one to the end and you're turning the pages as you go and you're reading through this chronology of history and God's involvement in the generations. And now the Old Testament is important that we understand isn't laid out chronologically. But as you read it, you're getting snippets and you can reorganize it and it does flow from the beginning of history to this point in Malachi. But as you're reading it and you're turning the pages, when you read the last verse in Malachi and flip it over, the Old Testament's done. And then, I don't know, depending on who your publisher is, there'll be maybe a title page for the New Testament, maybe some explanatory notes, but you turn the page and it's Matthew chapter one. And in between the last verse of Malachi and the first verse of Matthew is what's called in church circles 400 years of silence. These are 400 years where there was no recorded books of the Bible written. Where presumably there were no prophets speaking. God didn't have any mouthpieces that he was using to speak to the people. Now I'm sure they were there, but they're lost to history. And I'm positive that God was moving in those generations, but we don't see them. So in the middle of our Bible is this 400-year period called the 400 years of silence. Because from the beginning of time until Malachi, God had been moving. From the beginning of time until Malachi, God had been speaking. From the beginning of time until Malachi, he had been assigning prophets and teachers to speak to his people and to copy down his words and to record his deeds and the deeds of his people here on earth. And in Malachi, that stops. And we don't pick it up again for another 400 years. And I always wonder, what must it have been like for what I think of as the silent generations? What must it have been like for the silent generations of those 400 years to see that God, he spoke to other generations, but he's not speaking to us. He moved in other generations, but he's not moving now. He sent prophets to others where in the past he's given miracles to Elijah and Elisha and he's given words of wisdom to, and he's given prophecies to Isaiah and to Ezekiel, but he's not moving now, and he's not moving here. Why has he spoken to other generations and he hasn't spoken to us? I can't help but wonder if they somehow felt like the neglected generation, the forgotten generation, the waiting generations, the lonely generations. They were unique in the history of Israel and God's voice coming to them. And I think that we can all relate to these silent generations. Because I think for us, we also have times in our life where we feel alone, where we feel isolated, where we feel like we are waiting, where we feel like we are praying and praying and praying and nothing meets us there but silence. And we must think, like the silent generations, we can relate to them by asking, God has shown up for others, why isn't he showing up for me? He's shown up for other people, why isn't he showing up for me? And what I mean can be isolating any number of examples. I remember when Jen and I were walking through our season of childlessness. We wanted very much to have a kid, and we didn't, and we couldn't. And the more you pray about something, and the more it hurts, the more alone you feel in that. And you look around, and your friends are having kids, and the kids you taught, I used to be a high school teacher, the kids you taught in high school are now having kids, and you're like, what gives, God? How come you're not listening to us? I see you blessing them. Why aren't you blessing us? What are we doing wrong? I see you loving them and answering their prayers. Why don't you hear our prayers? And I know the pain of going into meetings and lunches and being asked the question, and you give the painful answer. And in those seasons of loneliness and in those seasons of hurt and of waiting, even holidays like Christmas can feel painful because they only serve as reminders of what you don't yet have. They only serve as reminders of the things that make you feel more isolated, not less. I think of families who have elderly parents who are walking through the struggle of caring for them, who don't have a lot of good options. And my heart goes out to the families that have elderly parents, and those elderly parents have made arrangements and they have ways to take care of themselves, but it's the hard conversations and it's the hard reality and it's sometimes it can begin to consume you like you're facing it alone. But then my heart hurts even more for the folks in our church that I know who there are no good options on how to care for their family. They don't have the resources. Their parents don't have the resources. They don't have the resources. They don't know what to do. They're just stringing every day together, knowing that today is not enough to take care of tomorrow. And I don't really know how to take care of tomorrow either. I don't know what to do. And they're praying and they're crying out and they've got to be thinking, God, I see you moving for other people. Why aren't you moving here? I see you working things out for other families. Why don't you work them out for our family? I think of people in families where you're the only believer. Your spouse doesn't share the faith that you share. In fact, they deride you for it. Your children who you brought up to believe what you believe have walked away from what you believe, and you just feel alone. And you see other families, and it seems to work out for them. Their grandkids come to church with them, and I can't even get my spouse to come to church with me. God, why do you listen to their prayers and not mine? Why do they experience joy that I don't get to experience? I think of the people in our church who walk through depression and mental health disorders. And you see the joy that other people have. You see the laughter that other people experience. And you wonder to yourself, why can't I experience that? God, I see you giving them happiness. I see you answering their prayers. Why don't you answer my prayers? I think of stay-at-home moms who have so much to give and offer to the world around them. But because of seasons of life, they feel that they are reduced to a handmaid, to an 18-month-old tyrant. Not that we can relate to this in any way in our home. Or to an Uber service for the social calendar and practices of a middle school kid, and the world just reduces you to this shell of what you feel like you are and were, and you don't even know yourself anymore, and you feel so isolated in that. You feel so reduced in that. I think of people who have experienced grief, and the grief won't let go. The loss happened two years ago. It happened five years ago, and every now and again, God in his goodness gives you a little bit of reprieve from that where you forget that you're sad, but in your quiet moments, you're still sad. And in the times that you're reminded that God sees you and he's looking out for you, you agree with that in principle, but you don't feel it in your guts and you just feel alone. Or the people in the marriages that when you come to church on Sunday and you hang out with your friends, we're good. And when you're at home, it's hell. And you're just hanging on. And you both know the only reason you're in that marriage is so neither of you have to admit anything to your friends. We can feel isolated. We can feel alone. Sometimes it's because of choices that we make. Sometimes it's because of things that happen to us. Sometimes it's because we're simply isolated. But I think that each one of us has felt like, will again feel like, these silent generations. These generations of people between Malachi and Matthew who have seen God move for others and we just wonder why God isn't moving for us. I've tried to be your faithful servant, God. I know that I'm not perfect, but I try to do the right thing, and it just won't give. And God, if something doesn't give soon, I'm gonna lose my mind. My life is untenable, and I don't know how to hang on. And it's in those moments when we feel alone and when we feel isolated and we feel like maybe God has forgotten to answer our prayers that we most identify with these silent generations. And so if you feel that way, what can you do? Well, you can look to what the silent generations did. And what did they do? The silent generations clung to Christmas. The silent generations clung to Christmas. Now, they wouldn't yet call it Christmas, but they clung to the promises of God. They taught them to their children and to their grandchildren. And they kept them in their homes. And they upheld the law of God and the principles and the teachings of God. And they took their kids to synagogue every week. And they listened to the rabbis and they praised together. And they clung to the promises of God that they believed in in their Bible. It was called the Tanakh at the time, the 39 books of the Old Testament. They clung to the promises in that book. They remembered the promises of Genesis 12 when God isolates Abraham and he takes him to the land of Canaan and he makes him a promise. He makes him three promises that every generation of Jewish person clung to for those thousands of years leading up to Jesus. And the last promise that he made him was that one of your descendants is going to bless the whole earth. One of your descendants is going to be the Messiah. He's going to be the Savior of the world. So just hang on, believe in me and trust me, and one day I will send him to you. And then those generations that followed, and Joseph, and in Moses, and in Joshua, and in the judges, and in Samson, they clung to that promise that God made to Abraham. And then we see David in the middle of the Old Testament, and David up and he starts asking questions and he starts praying and everybody's wondering when is the Messiah going to come, the one who is to come, when will he arrive? And God tells David he's not coming yet. But in 2 Samuel chapter 7, we see the Davidic covenant where God tells David he's not coming yet, but when he does, he's going to sit on your throne forever. And it's this reminder and this restoration of the promise that they've been clinging to that God gives them kind of as a lifting up in the middle of their history to David that Jesus is going to come. You should still look for him. You should still teach your children about him and cling to the promises of the Messiah. And when he comes, he's gonna sit on your throne forever. And then we move into the period of the prophets where God gave visions to some of these great prophets of old, Isaiah and Ezekiel and Jeremiah and Amos. And he gave them messianic prophecies. Prophecies about the Messiah who was to come. And Isaiah prophesies that when the Messiah comes, that the blind will receive their sight and the deaf will receive their hearing and that the people who can't walk will be able to walk and that prisoners will be set free. And we see Isaiah call him Emmanuel, which means God with us, God coming from heaven to earth with us. Isaiah promises that and that when he does that, he will be the king of kings and the Lord of lords and the prince of peace and his name will be called Emmanuel. And then we learn that by his stripes, we will be healed through his sacrifice and through his death. We will be healed and restored forever the way that God intended it at the beginning of creation when he walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening. That God has this grand plan to restore creation and you to himself. And so this Old Testament generation, the silent generations, clung to those promises that they could track throughout their Bible that they taught generation after generation knowing that one day God promised that he was going to send a savior. And then you turn the page to Matthew chapter one and you see the genealogies of all the people who were a part of Israel through the years or grafted into Israel and Ruth and Rahab. And then you see the arrival of Jesus. You have the very first Christmas. And in that Christmas, we see a God who keeps his promises. And I will remind you of this every year that you allow me to be your pastor and Christmas time rolls around, that Christmas is our annual reminder from God that we serve a God who keeps his promises. We serve a God who keeps his promises. Romans 5 tells us that we hope in him and in that hope we will not be put to shame. And I don't know about you, but every other thing that we have hoped in in our life at some point or another lets us down and puts us to shame. Especially if you're a UNC fan. There is nothing in our life that is guaranteed that will not let us down. There is no promise we can receive from anyone that is ironclad and will not eventually disappoint us. But God does not put us to shame. God keeps his promises, and Christmas is our annual reminder that we serve and worship and cling to a God who has not forgotten us, who does see us, that reminds us that we are not alone, who whispers in our ear in the book of Isaiah that the Lord is close to the broken heart, and he comforts those who are crushed in spirit, who reminds us through the Psalms that he is our strong fortress, that we can run to his wings for protection and that with him in Isaiah we are told that we will soar on wings like eagles, that we will run and not be weary, that we will walk and we will not faint, that he will give us strength. We know these things and we can run to him and we can claim those because he's promised us. And Christmas reminds us that he keeps his promises because he promised that baby boy for 4,000 years. For generation after generation, they said, he's coming. He's coming. When? Soon? We hope. But we don't know. He's coming. He's coming. And there's 400 years of silence. And they clung to it. He's coming. We know he is. And then he shows up. And the angels declare him. And the shepherds worship him. And the wise men bow down to him. And his mother Mary stores it all up in her heart. And those generations clung to Christmas. So what do we do when we feel alone? What do we do when we feel forgotten? What do we do when life feels untenable and I don't know the way out and I don't know how this is going to be resolved and I'm praying like crazy and God does not seem to be answering my prayers? What do we do? In our waiting, we cling to Christmas. We cling to what Christmas is. We cling to the reality that we serve a God who keeps His promises. And we acknowledge that not only did God in the Old Testament make promises to the generations before us that He fulfilled in the sending of His Son, but that that Son, when He came, He made us promises too. And the people who came after him made us promises in God's name. We cling to the promises of Jesus when he talked to the disciples and Jesus says, you know, in a little bit, I've got to go. And they're like, where are you going, man? We'll come with you. And he says, where I'm going, you can't go there yet. But I'm going to go and prepare a place for you. I'm going to go and make sure that when you get to heaven, there's going to be a house for you. I'm going where you can't yet go because you're still in your mortal body, but when you are released from your mortal body, you will join me in eternity, and I am preparing a place for you there. It's a promise from Jesus. It's a promise from Jesus in the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation. That there's going to be the greatest banquet of all time when we get to heaven and he saved us a seat. It's a promise. Paul reminds us of these promises all throughout his writings, but most pointedly in Romans. When he tells us in Romans 8 that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of Jesus Christ. Not angels or demon or height nor depth nor any other created thing will be able to separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. If you know Jesus, if you believe that Jesus is who he says he is, he's the son of God, that he did what he said he did, he descended to earth, he took on human form, he died on the cross for our sins and he rose again on the third day. And that he's gonna do what he says he's gonna do, that he's gonna, he's gonna come back crashing into the clouds on a white horse. And on his thigh, it's going to say righteous and true. And he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. He promises us that. That he will restore this creation. And he acknowledges in Romans 8 that all of creation groans for that return. But as Christians in this era, we cling to those promises. We allow Christmas to remind us that God always keeps his promises. And like the 4,000 years of generations before us, and like the 400 years of silence in the generations within there, we cling to God's promises and we know that we serve a God who always keeps his promises and the last promise he makes to us in Revelation 21 that he is going to create a new heaven and a new earth and there will be no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain for the former things, all those things that bring us grief, all those things that make us feel isolated, all those things that make us wonder if God really hears us, the former things have passed away. That's a promise that we have from our God. And we are reminded at Christmas that we serve a God who keeps his promises. So let Christmas season be what it is. Let it be fun. Go see the lights. Decorate the tree. Buy your gifts. Spend your time with your friends, go to your parties, do all the stuff. But please, this December, don't lose sight of the fact that Christmas is a gift from God that reminds us that he keeps his promises. Christmas reminds us that he's done it once and we believe he'll do it again. He sent his son one time and they clung to that promise for 4,000 years. And it's been 2,000 years since he sent his son the last time. But we know that he's going to do it again. And when he does, he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue and all these former things will have passed away. So even when it feels like God can't hear us, he doesn't see us, we feel alone. We remember that generations before us have felt that way too. And so we cling to Christmas because it reminds us that he's done it once and we believe that he'll do it again.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Welcome to Grace. It looks like I'm a little inside information, give a little praise to Gibson, Aaron Gibson and his team. A couple months ago, Aaron, our worship pastor, sent me an email with a link to that song, Honey in the Rock. And he said, hey, what do you think of this? And I listened to it for about 20 seconds and said, I think it's dumb, but you know, do it if you want. And that was it. I didn't like it. I'm not a fool I mean, that was great, wasn't it? That was really, really good. So Aaron, I don't know where you are, but listen to me less. But, you know, another reason that it could have been good is he didn't sing. So that was also helpful. But that was a really, really good worship set, guys. Thank you very much for leading us in that way. As we begin our series, Merry Christmas season to everybody. I'm excited. I love the Christmas season. I love Christmas carols. I spent more time than I should have this last week making this year's Christmas mix for me. It is the only thing that will be playing on my Spotify for the rest of the month. And I just, I love this season. And this week, the idea was to bring an ornament. There's an angel tree out front. You take a card off of that that gives you the opportunity to give charitably to a family that needs it and replace it with your ornament that represents your family. And in that way, that's the Grace Family Christmas tree. So if you didn't do it this week, bring an ornament next week, hang it on the tree, and we'll see a bunch of different ornaments that represent us as a big family. Because we are family and because this is a fun part of Christmas, next week is one of my favorite weeks of the year. We started it last year, and I thought it was great, so we're bringing it back this year, but it's Christmas Jammy Sunday. So dress in your best Christmas jammies. We want your families to be matching. There will be an award that goes to the most festive and I will publicly ridicule the least festive. So let's all participate. The week after that is our first ever holiday hoot. If you've been a part of Grace, you know that hoot nannies are a big deal. So the first ever holiday hoot where we're going to have a Christmas party. Bring something shareable. We'll put it on the table out there. We'll just hang out for a little while after the service. Load your kids up with sugar and then send you home. So that's going to be great. And then, of course, we've got our Christmas Eve celebration. So I'm really looking forward to celebrating December with you as we celebrate Christmas and all that it means. In our new series, Not Home Alone, which is obviously a play off of, it's in my top three Christmas movies of all time. We had a team of folks here this week led by Aaron and Julie, not Aaron Gibson. He didn't have anything to do with it. He's gotten enough credit this morning. Aaron Winston. And Julie and a team of those folks who decorated this place. And it looks amazing, doesn't it? Like all the different Home Alone touches. Yeah, they did such a good job. There's even a Kevin McAllister battle plan up here if you want to come look later. That's really, really great. So they really did a good job decorating the church. But in this series, Not Home Alone, we're going to be looking at Christmas and the different ways that it reminds us that we are not alone. And that it points out that God has actually put people in our life for a reason, to remind us of his presence. And that God actually places us in the lives of other people and gives us eyes to see those who might feel alone. And so as we walk through this month, we're going to be reminded of all the ways that Christmas reminds us that we are not alone. And as we start the series, I'm reminded of this generation of people between Malachi and Matthew. I don't know if you know this about your Bibles. I'm pretty certain that most of you know that there's an Old and New Testament. If you don't, that's all right. But now you do, okay? And you should never be embarrassed again. But there's an Old and New Testament in your Bible. And in the Old Testament, it's a chronology of the people of Israel, of God's chosen people. But it moves from the very beginning of human history in Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and to the flood, to what's called the first 11 chapters of Genesis, the prehistoric narrative. And then in Genesis chapter 12, we meet Abraham. And then the rest of the Old Testament is tracking the family and the descendants of Abraham through history. And it's a pretty good chronology of history starting in the Sumerian dynasty. That's when God shows up and calls Abraham out of the place called Ur in the land of the Chaldeans. That's the Sumerian dynasty. If you can remember all the way back to sixth grade history, that's probably when you learned about that. So for most of you, no, you don't know what I'm talking about. But some of us can remember back that far, and God called Abraham out of Ur. And he spoke to him, and he made him promises. And then the Old Testament tracks those promises, and we see his descendants in Egypt and struggling in the desert. That song, Honey in the Rock, is about that time in the desert. And then the period of the judges and the period of the kings and David. And then it moves into the period of exile and then post-exile when they come back. And then the prophets are speaking into this period. And so you can kind of read the Bible, the first 39 books of the Bible, and get a good chronology, a good history of the world all the way up to a certain point. And that certain point is Malachi. So if you're reading your Bible and you're reading it from page one to the end and you're turning the pages as you go and you're reading through this chronology of history and God's involvement in the generations. And now the Old Testament is important that we understand isn't laid out chronologically. But as you read it, you're getting snippets and you can reorganize it and it does flow from the beginning of history to this point in Malachi. But as you're reading it and you're turning the pages, when you read the last verse in Malachi and flip it over, the Old Testament's done. And then, I don't know, depending on who your publisher is, there'll be maybe a title page for the New Testament, maybe some explanatory notes, but you turn the page and it's Matthew chapter one. And in between the last verse of Malachi and the first verse of Matthew is what's called in church circles 400 years of silence. These are 400 years where there was no recorded books of the Bible written. Where presumably there were no prophets speaking. God didn't have any mouthpieces that he was using to speak to the people. Now I'm sure they were there, but they're lost to history. And I'm positive that God was moving in those generations, but we don't see them. So in the middle of our Bible is this 400-year period called the 400 years of silence. Because from the beginning of time until Malachi, God had been moving. From the beginning of time until Malachi, God had been speaking. From the beginning of time until Malachi, he had been assigning prophets and teachers to speak to his people and to copy down his words and to record his deeds and the deeds of his people here on earth. And in Malachi, that stops. And we don't pick it up again for another 400 years. And I always wonder, what must it have been like for what I think of as the silent generations? What must it have been like for the silent generations of those 400 years to see that God, he spoke to other generations, but he's not speaking to us. He moved in other generations, but he's not moving now. He sent prophets to others where in the past he's given miracles to Elijah and Elisha and he's given words of wisdom to, and he's given prophecies to Isaiah and to Ezekiel, but he's not moving now, and he's not moving here. Why has he spoken to other generations and he hasn't spoken to us? I can't help but wonder if they somehow felt like the neglected generation, the forgotten generation, the waiting generations, the lonely generations. They were unique in the history of Israel and God's voice coming to them. And I think that we can all relate to these silent generations. Because I think for us, we also have times in our life where we feel alone, where we feel isolated, where we feel like we are waiting, where we feel like we are praying and praying and praying and nothing meets us there but silence. And we must think, like the silent generations, we can relate to them by asking, God has shown up for others, why isn't he showing up for me? He's shown up for other people, why isn't he showing up for me? And what I mean can be isolating any number of examples. I remember when Jen and I were walking through our season of childlessness. We wanted very much to have a kid, and we didn't, and we couldn't. And the more you pray about something, and the more it hurts, the more alone you feel in that. And you look around, and your friends are having kids, and the kids you taught, I used to be a high school teacher, the kids you taught in high school are now having kids, and you're like, what gives, God? How come you're not listening to us? I see you blessing them. Why aren't you blessing us? What are we doing wrong? I see you loving them and answering their prayers. Why don't you hear our prayers? And I know the pain of going into meetings and lunches and being asked the question, and you give the painful answer. And in those seasons of loneliness and in those seasons of hurt and of waiting, even holidays like Christmas can feel painful because they only serve as reminders of what you don't yet have. They only serve as reminders of the things that make you feel more isolated, not less. I think of families who have elderly parents who are walking through the struggle of caring for them, who don't have a lot of good options. And my heart goes out to the families that have elderly parents, and those elderly parents have made arrangements and they have ways to take care of themselves, but it's the hard conversations and it's the hard reality and it's sometimes it can begin to consume you like you're facing it alone. But then my heart hurts even more for the folks in our church that I know who there are no good options on how to care for their family. They don't have the resources. Their parents don't have the resources. They don't have the resources. They don't know what to do. They're just stringing every day together, knowing that today is not enough to take care of tomorrow. And I don't really know how to take care of tomorrow either. I don't know what to do. And they're praying and they're crying out and they've got to be thinking, God, I see you moving for other people. Why aren't you moving here? I see you working things out for other families. Why don't you work them out for our family? I think of people in families where you're the only believer. Your spouse doesn't share the faith that you share. In fact, they deride you for it. Your children who you brought up to believe what you believe have walked away from what you believe, and you just feel alone. And you see other families, and it seems to work out for them. Their grandkids come to church with them, and I can't even get my spouse to come to church with me. God, why do you listen to their prayers and not mine? Why do they experience joy that I don't get to experience? I think of the people in our church who walk through depression and mental health disorders. And you see the joy that other people have. You see the laughter that other people experience. And you wonder to yourself, why can't I experience that? God, I see you giving them happiness. I see you answering their prayers. Why don't you answer my prayers? I think of stay-at-home moms who have so much to give and offer to the world around them. But because of seasons of life, they feel that they are reduced to a handmaid, to an 18-month-old tyrant. Not that we can relate to this in any way in our home. Or to an Uber service for the social calendar and practices of a middle school kid, and the world just reduces you to this shell of what you feel like you are and were, and you don't even know yourself anymore, and you feel so isolated in that. You feel so reduced in that. I think of people who have experienced grief, and the grief won't let go. The loss happened two years ago. It happened five years ago, and every now and again, God in his goodness gives you a little bit of reprieve from that where you forget that you're sad, but in your quiet moments, you're still sad. And in the times that you're reminded that God sees you and he's looking out for you, you agree with that in principle, but you don't feel it in your guts and you just feel alone. Or the people in the marriages that when you come to church on Sunday and you hang out with your friends, we're good. And when you're at home, it's hell. And you're just hanging on. And you both know the only reason you're in that marriage is so neither of you have to admit anything to your friends. We can feel isolated. We can feel alone. Sometimes it's because of choices that we make. Sometimes it's because of things that happen to us. Sometimes it's because we're simply isolated. But I think that each one of us has felt like, will again feel like, these silent generations. These generations of people between Malachi and Matthew who have seen God move for others and we just wonder why God isn't moving for us. I've tried to be your faithful servant, God. I know that I'm not perfect, but I try to do the right thing, and it just won't give. And God, if something doesn't give soon, I'm gonna lose my mind. My life is untenable, and I don't know how to hang on. And it's in those moments when we feel alone and when we feel isolated and we feel like maybe God has forgotten to answer our prayers that we most identify with these silent generations. And so if you feel that way, what can you do? Well, you can look to what the silent generations did. And what did they do? The silent generations clung to Christmas. The silent generations clung to Christmas. Now, they wouldn't yet call it Christmas, but they clung to the promises of God. They taught them to their children and to their grandchildren. And they kept them in their homes. And they upheld the law of God and the principles and the teachings of God. And they took their kids to synagogue every week. And they listened to the rabbis and they praised together. And they clung to the promises of God that they believed in in their Bible. It was called the Tanakh at the time, the 39 books of the Old Testament. They clung to the promises in that book. They remembered the promises of Genesis 12 when God isolates Abraham and he takes him to the land of Canaan and he makes him a promise. He makes him three promises that every generation of Jewish person clung to for those thousands of years leading up to Jesus. And the last promise that he made him was that one of your descendants is going to bless the whole earth. One of your descendants is going to be the Messiah. He's going to be the Savior of the world. So just hang on, believe in me and trust me, and one day I will send him to you. And then those generations that followed, and Joseph, and in Moses, and in Joshua, and in the judges, and in Samson, they clung to that promise that God made to Abraham. And then we see David in the middle of the Old Testament, and David up and he starts asking questions and he starts praying and everybody's wondering when is the Messiah going to come, the one who is to come, when will he arrive? And God tells David he's not coming yet. But in 2 Samuel chapter 7, we see the Davidic covenant where God tells David he's not coming yet, but when he does, he's going to sit on your throne forever. And it's this reminder and this restoration of the promise that they've been clinging to that God gives them kind of as a lifting up in the middle of their history to David that Jesus is going to come. You should still look for him. You should still teach your children about him and cling to the promises of the Messiah. And when he comes, he's gonna sit on your throne forever. And then we move into the period of the prophets where God gave visions to some of these great prophets of old, Isaiah and Ezekiel and Jeremiah and Amos. And he gave them messianic prophecies. Prophecies about the Messiah who was to come. And Isaiah prophesies that when the Messiah comes, that the blind will receive their sight and the deaf will receive their hearing and that the people who can't walk will be able to walk and that prisoners will be set free. And we see Isaiah call him Emmanuel, which means God with us, God coming from heaven to earth with us. Isaiah promises that and that when he does that, he will be the king of kings and the Lord of lords and the prince of peace and his name will be called Emmanuel. And then we learn that by his stripes, we will be healed through his sacrifice and through his death. We will be healed and restored forever the way that God intended it at the beginning of creation when he walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening. That God has this grand plan to restore creation and you to himself. And so this Old Testament generation, the silent generations, clung to those promises that they could track throughout their Bible that they taught generation after generation knowing that one day God promised that he was going to send a savior. And then you turn the page to Matthew chapter one and you see the genealogies of all the people who were a part of Israel through the years or grafted into Israel and Ruth and Rahab. And then you see the arrival of Jesus. You have the very first Christmas. And in that Christmas, we see a God who keeps his promises. And I will remind you of this every year that you allow me to be your pastor and Christmas time rolls around, that Christmas is our annual reminder from God that we serve a God who keeps his promises. We serve a God who keeps his promises. Romans 5 tells us that we hope in him and in that hope we will not be put to shame. And I don't know about you, but every other thing that we have hoped in in our life at some point or another lets us down and puts us to shame. Especially if you're a UNC fan. There is nothing in our life that is guaranteed that will not let us down. There is no promise we can receive from anyone that is ironclad and will not eventually disappoint us. But God does not put us to shame. God keeps his promises, and Christmas is our annual reminder that we serve and worship and cling to a God who has not forgotten us, who does see us, that reminds us that we are not alone, who whispers in our ear in the book of Isaiah that the Lord is close to the broken heart, and he comforts those who are crushed in spirit, who reminds us through the Psalms that he is our strong fortress, that we can run to his wings for protection and that with him in Isaiah we are told that we will soar on wings like eagles, that we will run and not be weary, that we will walk and we will not faint, that he will give us strength. We know these things and we can run to him and we can claim those because he's promised us. And Christmas reminds us that he keeps his promises because he promised that baby boy for 4,000 years. For generation after generation, they said, he's coming. He's coming. When? Soon? We hope. But we don't know. He's coming. He's coming. And there's 400 years of silence. And they clung to it. He's coming. We know he is. And then he shows up. And the angels declare him. And the shepherds worship him. And the wise men bow down to him. And his mother Mary stores it all up in her heart. And those generations clung to Christmas. So what do we do when we feel alone? What do we do when we feel forgotten? What do we do when life feels untenable and I don't know the way out and I don't know how this is going to be resolved and I'm praying like crazy and God does not seem to be answering my prayers? What do we do? In our waiting, we cling to Christmas. We cling to what Christmas is. We cling to the reality that we serve a God who keeps His promises. And we acknowledge that not only did God in the Old Testament make promises to the generations before us that He fulfilled in the sending of His Son, but that that Son, when He came, He made us promises too. And the people who came after him made us promises in God's name. We cling to the promises of Jesus when he talked to the disciples and Jesus says, you know, in a little bit, I've got to go. And they're like, where are you going, man? We'll come with you. And he says, where I'm going, you can't go there yet. But I'm going to go and prepare a place for you. I'm going to go and make sure that when you get to heaven, there's going to be a house for you. I'm going where you can't yet go because you're still in your mortal body, but when you are released from your mortal body, you will join me in eternity, and I am preparing a place for you there. It's a promise from Jesus. It's a promise from Jesus in the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation. That there's going to be the greatest banquet of all time when we get to heaven and he saved us a seat. It's a promise. Paul reminds us of these promises all throughout his writings, but most pointedly in Romans. When he tells us in Romans 8 that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of Jesus Christ. Not angels or demon or height nor depth nor any other created thing will be able to separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. If you know Jesus, if you believe that Jesus is who he says he is, he's the son of God, that he did what he said he did, he descended to earth, he took on human form, he died on the cross for our sins and he rose again on the third day. And that he's gonna do what he says he's gonna do, that he's gonna, he's gonna come back crashing into the clouds on a white horse. And on his thigh, it's going to say righteous and true. And he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. He promises us that. That he will restore this creation. And he acknowledges in Romans 8 that all of creation groans for that return. But as Christians in this era, we cling to those promises. We allow Christmas to remind us that God always keeps his promises. And like the 4,000 years of generations before us, and like the 400 years of silence in the generations within there, we cling to God's promises and we know that we serve a God who always keeps his promises and the last promise he makes to us in Revelation 21 that he is going to create a new heaven and a new earth and there will be no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain for the former things, all those things that bring us grief, all those things that make us feel isolated, all those things that make us wonder if God really hears us, the former things have passed away. That's a promise that we have from our God. And we are reminded at Christmas that we serve a God who keeps his promises. So let Christmas season be what it is. Let it be fun. Go see the lights. Decorate the tree. Buy your gifts. Spend your time with your friends, go to your parties, do all the stuff. But please, this December, don't lose sight of the fact that Christmas is a gift from God that reminds us that he keeps his promises. Christmas reminds us that he's done it once and we believe he'll do it again. He sent his son one time and they clung to that promise for 4,000 years. And it's been 2,000 years since he sent his son the last time. But we know that he's going to do it again. And when he does, he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue and all these former things will have passed away. So even when it feels like God can't hear us, he doesn't see us, we feel alone. We remember that generations before us have felt that way too. And so we cling to Christmas because it reminds us that he's done it once and we believe that he'll do it again.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Welcome to Grace. It looks like I'm a little inside information, give a little praise to Gibson, Aaron Gibson and his team. A couple months ago, Aaron, our worship pastor, sent me an email with a link to that song, Honey in the Rock. And he said, hey, what do you think of this? And I listened to it for about 20 seconds and said, I think it's dumb, but you know, do it if you want. And that was it. I didn't like it. I'm not a fool I mean, that was great, wasn't it? That was really, really good. So Aaron, I don't know where you are, but listen to me less. But, you know, another reason that it could have been good is he didn't sing. So that was also helpful. But that was a really, really good worship set, guys. Thank you very much for leading us in that way. As we begin our series, Merry Christmas season to everybody. I'm excited. I love the Christmas season. I love Christmas carols. I spent more time than I should have this last week making this year's Christmas mix for me. It is the only thing that will be playing on my Spotify for the rest of the month. And I just, I love this season. And this week, the idea was to bring an ornament. There's an angel tree out front. You take a card off of that that gives you the opportunity to give charitably to a family that needs it and replace it with your ornament that represents your family. And in that way, that's the Grace Family Christmas tree. So if you didn't do it this week, bring an ornament next week, hang it on the tree, and we'll see a bunch of different ornaments that represent us as a big family. Because we are family and because this is a fun part of Christmas, next week is one of my favorite weeks of the year. We started it last year, and I thought it was great, so we're bringing it back this year, but it's Christmas Jammy Sunday. So dress in your best Christmas jammies. We want your families to be matching. There will be an award that goes to the most festive and I will publicly ridicule the least festive. So let's all participate. The week after that is our first ever holiday hoot. If you've been a part of Grace, you know that hoot nannies are a big deal. So the first ever holiday hoot where we're going to have a Christmas party. Bring something shareable. We'll put it on the table out there. We'll just hang out for a little while after the service. Load your kids up with sugar and then send you home. So that's going to be great. And then, of course, we've got our Christmas Eve celebration. So I'm really looking forward to celebrating December with you as we celebrate Christmas and all that it means. In our new series, Not Home Alone, which is obviously a play off of, it's in my top three Christmas movies of all time. We had a team of folks here this week led by Aaron and Julie, not Aaron Gibson. He didn't have anything to do with it. He's gotten enough credit this morning. Aaron Winston. And Julie and a team of those folks who decorated this place. And it looks amazing, doesn't it? Like all the different Home Alone touches. Yeah, they did such a good job. There's even a Kevin McAllister battle plan up here if you want to come look later. That's really, really great. So they really did a good job decorating the church. But in this series, Not Home Alone, we're going to be looking at Christmas and the different ways that it reminds us that we are not alone. And that it points out that God has actually put people in our life for a reason, to remind us of his presence. And that God actually places us in the lives of other people and gives us eyes to see those who might feel alone. And so as we walk through this month, we're going to be reminded of all the ways that Christmas reminds us that we are not alone. And as we start the series, I'm reminded of this generation of people between Malachi and Matthew. I don't know if you know this about your Bibles. I'm pretty certain that most of you know that there's an Old and New Testament. If you don't, that's all right. But now you do, okay? And you should never be embarrassed again. But there's an Old and New Testament in your Bible. And in the Old Testament, it's a chronology of the people of Israel, of God's chosen people. But it moves from the very beginning of human history in Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and to the flood, to what's called the first 11 chapters of Genesis, the prehistoric narrative. And then in Genesis chapter 12, we meet Abraham. And then the rest of the Old Testament is tracking the family and the descendants of Abraham through history. And it's a pretty good chronology of history starting in the Sumerian dynasty. That's when God shows up and calls Abraham out of the place called Ur in the land of the Chaldeans. That's the Sumerian dynasty. If you can remember all the way back to sixth grade history, that's probably when you learned about that. So for most of you, no, you don't know what I'm talking about. But some of us can remember back that far, and God called Abraham out of Ur. And he spoke to him, and he made him promises. And then the Old Testament tracks those promises, and we see his descendants in Egypt and struggling in the desert. That song, Honey in the Rock, is about that time in the desert. And then the period of the judges and the period of the kings and David. And then it moves into the period of exile and then post-exile when they come back. And then the prophets are speaking into this period. And so you can kind of read the Bible, the first 39 books of the Bible, and get a good chronology, a good history of the world all the way up to a certain point. And that certain point is Malachi. So if you're reading your Bible and you're reading it from page one to the end and you're turning the pages as you go and you're reading through this chronology of history and God's involvement in the generations. And now the Old Testament is important that we understand isn't laid out chronologically. But as you read it, you're getting snippets and you can reorganize it and it does flow from the beginning of history to this point in Malachi. But as you're reading it and you're turning the pages, when you read the last verse in Malachi and flip it over, the Old Testament's done. And then, I don't know, depending on who your publisher is, there'll be maybe a title page for the New Testament, maybe some explanatory notes, but you turn the page and it's Matthew chapter one. And in between the last verse of Malachi and the first verse of Matthew is what's called in church circles 400 years of silence. These are 400 years where there was no recorded books of the Bible written. Where presumably there were no prophets speaking. God didn't have any mouthpieces that he was using to speak to the people. Now I'm sure they were there, but they're lost to history. And I'm positive that God was moving in those generations, but we don't see them. So in the middle of our Bible is this 400-year period called the 400 years of silence. Because from the beginning of time until Malachi, God had been moving. From the beginning of time until Malachi, God had been speaking. From the beginning of time until Malachi, he had been assigning prophets and teachers to speak to his people and to copy down his words and to record his deeds and the deeds of his people here on earth. And in Malachi, that stops. And we don't pick it up again for another 400 years. And I always wonder, what must it have been like for what I think of as the silent generations? What must it have been like for the silent generations of those 400 years to see that God, he spoke to other generations, but he's not speaking to us. He moved in other generations, but he's not moving now. He sent prophets to others where in the past he's given miracles to Elijah and Elisha and he's given words of wisdom to, and he's given prophecies to Isaiah and to Ezekiel, but he's not moving now, and he's not moving here. Why has he spoken to other generations and he hasn't spoken to us? I can't help but wonder if they somehow felt like the neglected generation, the forgotten generation, the waiting generations, the lonely generations. They were unique in the history of Israel and God's voice coming to them. And I think that we can all relate to these silent generations. Because I think for us, we also have times in our life where we feel alone, where we feel isolated, where we feel like we are waiting, where we feel like we are praying and praying and praying and nothing meets us there but silence. And we must think, like the silent generations, we can relate to them by asking, God has shown up for others, why isn't he showing up for me? He's shown up for other people, why isn't he showing up for me? And what I mean can be isolating any number of examples. I remember when Jen and I were walking through our season of childlessness. We wanted very much to have a kid, and we didn't, and we couldn't. And the more you pray about something, and the more it hurts, the more alone you feel in that. And you look around, and your friends are having kids, and the kids you taught, I used to be a high school teacher, the kids you taught in high school are now having kids, and you're like, what gives, God? How come you're not listening to us? I see you blessing them. Why aren't you blessing us? What are we doing wrong? I see you loving them and answering their prayers. Why don't you hear our prayers? And I know the pain of going into meetings and lunches and being asked the question, and you give the painful answer. And in those seasons of loneliness and in those seasons of hurt and of waiting, even holidays like Christmas can feel painful because they only serve as reminders of what you don't yet have. They only serve as reminders of the things that make you feel more isolated, not less. I think of families who have elderly parents who are walking through the struggle of caring for them, who don't have a lot of good options. And my heart goes out to the families that have elderly parents, and those elderly parents have made arrangements and they have ways to take care of themselves, but it's the hard conversations and it's the hard reality and it's sometimes it can begin to consume you like you're facing it alone. But then my heart hurts even more for the folks in our church that I know who there are no good options on how to care for their family. They don't have the resources. Their parents don't have the resources. They don't have the resources. They don't know what to do. They're just stringing every day together, knowing that today is not enough to take care of tomorrow. And I don't really know how to take care of tomorrow either. I don't know what to do. And they're praying and they're crying out and they've got to be thinking, God, I see you moving for other people. Why aren't you moving here? I see you working things out for other families. Why don't you work them out for our family? I think of people in families where you're the only believer. Your spouse doesn't share the faith that you share. In fact, they deride you for it. Your children who you brought up to believe what you believe have walked away from what you believe, and you just feel alone. And you see other families, and it seems to work out for them. Their grandkids come to church with them, and I can't even get my spouse to come to church with me. God, why do you listen to their prayers and not mine? Why do they experience joy that I don't get to experience? I think of the people in our church who walk through depression and mental health disorders. And you see the joy that other people have. You see the laughter that other people experience. And you wonder to yourself, why can't I experience that? God, I see you giving them happiness. I see you answering their prayers. Why don't you answer my prayers? I think of stay-at-home moms who have so much to give and offer to the world around them. But because of seasons of life, they feel that they are reduced to a handmaid, to an 18-month-old tyrant. Not that we can relate to this in any way in our home. Or to an Uber service for the social calendar and practices of a middle school kid, and the world just reduces you to this shell of what you feel like you are and were, and you don't even know yourself anymore, and you feel so isolated in that. You feel so reduced in that. I think of people who have experienced grief, and the grief won't let go. The loss happened two years ago. It happened five years ago, and every now and again, God in his goodness gives you a little bit of reprieve from that where you forget that you're sad, but in your quiet moments, you're still sad. And in the times that you're reminded that God sees you and he's looking out for you, you agree with that in principle, but you don't feel it in your guts and you just feel alone. Or the people in the marriages that when you come to church on Sunday and you hang out with your friends, we're good. And when you're at home, it's hell. And you're just hanging on. And you both know the only reason you're in that marriage is so neither of you have to admit anything to your friends. We can feel isolated. We can feel alone. Sometimes it's because of choices that we make. Sometimes it's because of things that happen to us. Sometimes it's because we're simply isolated. But I think that each one of us has felt like, will again feel like, these silent generations. These generations of people between Malachi and Matthew who have seen God move for others and we just wonder why God isn't moving for us. I've tried to be your faithful servant, God. I know that I'm not perfect, but I try to do the right thing, and it just won't give. And God, if something doesn't give soon, I'm gonna lose my mind. My life is untenable, and I don't know how to hang on. And it's in those moments when we feel alone and when we feel isolated and we feel like maybe God has forgotten to answer our prayers that we most identify with these silent generations. And so if you feel that way, what can you do? Well, you can look to what the silent generations did. And what did they do? The silent generations clung to Christmas. The silent generations clung to Christmas. Now, they wouldn't yet call it Christmas, but they clung to the promises of God. They taught them to their children and to their grandchildren. And they kept them in their homes. And they upheld the law of God and the principles and the teachings of God. And they took their kids to synagogue every week. And they listened to the rabbis and they praised together. And they clung to the promises of God that they believed in in their Bible. It was called the Tanakh at the time, the 39 books of the Old Testament. They clung to the promises in that book. They remembered the promises of Genesis 12 when God isolates Abraham and he takes him to the land of Canaan and he makes him a promise. He makes him three promises that every generation of Jewish person clung to for those thousands of years leading up to Jesus. And the last promise that he made him was that one of your descendants is going to bless the whole earth. One of your descendants is going to be the Messiah. He's going to be the Savior of the world. So just hang on, believe in me and trust me, and one day I will send him to you. And then those generations that followed, and Joseph, and in Moses, and in Joshua, and in the judges, and in Samson, they clung to that promise that God made to Abraham. And then we see David in the middle of the Old Testament, and David up and he starts asking questions and he starts praying and everybody's wondering when is the Messiah going to come, the one who is to come, when will he arrive? And God tells David he's not coming yet. But in 2 Samuel chapter 7, we see the Davidic covenant where God tells David he's not coming yet, but when he does, he's going to sit on your throne forever. And it's this reminder and this restoration of the promise that they've been clinging to that God gives them kind of as a lifting up in the middle of their history to David that Jesus is going to come. You should still look for him. You should still teach your children about him and cling to the promises of the Messiah. And when he comes, he's gonna sit on your throne forever. And then we move into the period of the prophets where God gave visions to some of these great prophets of old, Isaiah and Ezekiel and Jeremiah and Amos. And he gave them messianic prophecies. Prophecies about the Messiah who was to come. And Isaiah prophesies that when the Messiah comes, that the blind will receive their sight and the deaf will receive their hearing and that the people who can't walk will be able to walk and that prisoners will be set free. And we see Isaiah call him Emmanuel, which means God with us, God coming from heaven to earth with us. Isaiah promises that and that when he does that, he will be the king of kings and the Lord of lords and the prince of peace and his name will be called Emmanuel. And then we learn that by his stripes, we will be healed through his sacrifice and through his death. We will be healed and restored forever the way that God intended it at the beginning of creation when he walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening. That God has this grand plan to restore creation and you to himself. And so this Old Testament generation, the silent generations, clung to those promises that they could track throughout their Bible that they taught generation after generation knowing that one day God promised that he was going to send a savior. And then you turn the page to Matthew chapter one and you see the genealogies of all the people who were a part of Israel through the years or grafted into Israel and Ruth and Rahab. And then you see the arrival of Jesus. You have the very first Christmas. And in that Christmas, we see a God who keeps his promises. And I will remind you of this every year that you allow me to be your pastor and Christmas time rolls around, that Christmas is our annual reminder from God that we serve a God who keeps his promises. We serve a God who keeps his promises. Romans 5 tells us that we hope in him and in that hope we will not be put to shame. And I don't know about you, but every other thing that we have hoped in in our life at some point or another lets us down and puts us to shame. Especially if you're a UNC fan. There is nothing in our life that is guaranteed that will not let us down. There is no promise we can receive from anyone that is ironclad and will not eventually disappoint us. But God does not put us to shame. God keeps his promises, and Christmas is our annual reminder that we serve and worship and cling to a God who has not forgotten us, who does see us, that reminds us that we are not alone, who whispers in our ear in the book of Isaiah that the Lord is close to the broken heart, and he comforts those who are crushed in spirit, who reminds us through the Psalms that he is our strong fortress, that we can run to his wings for protection and that with him in Isaiah we are told that we will soar on wings like eagles, that we will run and not be weary, that we will walk and we will not faint, that he will give us strength. We know these things and we can run to him and we can claim those because he's promised us. And Christmas reminds us that he keeps his promises because he promised that baby boy for 4,000 years. For generation after generation, they said, he's coming. He's coming. When? Soon? We hope. But we don't know. He's coming. He's coming. And there's 400 years of silence. And they clung to it. He's coming. We know he is. And then he shows up. And the angels declare him. And the shepherds worship him. And the wise men bow down to him. And his mother Mary stores it all up in her heart. And those generations clung to Christmas. So what do we do when we feel alone? What do we do when we feel forgotten? What do we do when life feels untenable and I don't know the way out and I don't know how this is going to be resolved and I'm praying like crazy and God does not seem to be answering my prayers? What do we do? In our waiting, we cling to Christmas. We cling to what Christmas is. We cling to the reality that we serve a God who keeps His promises. And we acknowledge that not only did God in the Old Testament make promises to the generations before us that He fulfilled in the sending of His Son, but that that Son, when He came, He made us promises too. And the people who came after him made us promises in God's name. We cling to the promises of Jesus when he talked to the disciples and Jesus says, you know, in a little bit, I've got to go. And they're like, where are you going, man? We'll come with you. And he says, where I'm going, you can't go there yet. But I'm going to go and prepare a place for you. I'm going to go and make sure that when you get to heaven, there's going to be a house for you. I'm going where you can't yet go because you're still in your mortal body, but when you are released from your mortal body, you will join me in eternity, and I am preparing a place for you there. It's a promise from Jesus. It's a promise from Jesus in the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation. That there's going to be the greatest banquet of all time when we get to heaven and he saved us a seat. It's a promise. Paul reminds us of these promises all throughout his writings, but most pointedly in Romans. When he tells us in Romans 8 that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of Jesus Christ. Not angels or demon or height nor depth nor any other created thing will be able to separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. If you know Jesus, if you believe that Jesus is who he says he is, he's the son of God, that he did what he said he did, he descended to earth, he took on human form, he died on the cross for our sins and he rose again on the third day. And that he's gonna do what he says he's gonna do, that he's gonna, he's gonna come back crashing into the clouds on a white horse. And on his thigh, it's going to say righteous and true. And he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. He promises us that. That he will restore this creation. And he acknowledges in Romans 8 that all of creation groans for that return. But as Christians in this era, we cling to those promises. We allow Christmas to remind us that God always keeps his promises. And like the 4,000 years of generations before us, and like the 400 years of silence in the generations within there, we cling to God's promises and we know that we serve a God who always keeps his promises and the last promise he makes to us in Revelation 21 that he is going to create a new heaven and a new earth and there will be no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain for the former things, all those things that bring us grief, all those things that make us feel isolated, all those things that make us wonder if God really hears us, the former things have passed away. That's a promise that we have from our God. And we are reminded at Christmas that we serve a God who keeps his promises. So let Christmas season be what it is. Let it be fun. Go see the lights. Decorate the tree. Buy your gifts. Spend your time with your friends, go to your parties, do all the stuff. But please, this December, don't lose sight of the fact that Christmas is a gift from God that reminds us that he keeps his promises. Christmas reminds us that he's done it once and we believe he'll do it again. He sent his son one time and they clung to that promise for 4,000 years. And it's been 2,000 years since he sent his son the last time. But we know that he's going to do it again. And when he does, he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue and all these former things will have passed away. So even when it feels like God can't hear us, he doesn't see us, we feel alone. We remember that generations before us have felt that way too. And so we cling to Christmas because it reminds us that he's done it once and we believe that he'll do it again.

Well, good morning. Thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I am the senior pastor here. If you're here this morning and I haven't yet had the chance to meet you, I would love to do that. So please say hello in the lobby after the service. If you're watching online, thanks for doing that. Particularly if you're on vacation, thanks for making us a part of your Sunday, even while you're away. This is the last sermon in our series, One Hit Wonders, where we have been pausing and looking at some verses and passages that we don't often get to stop at in a normal series or in our normal Bible study. Some of the lesser known verses and passages that we find in Scripture, a lot of them have been in the Minor Prophets, which is a whole section of the Old Testament that we don't often explore. But this morning is admittedly more of a greatest hit than a one-hit wonder. It's actually apropos with the last question of our little game, trivia game that we were playing there in the bumper video. Steve, I don't know if you did that on purpose, but I'm actually going to pull this one out of Psalms, which is that's the Beatles of the Bible. All the greatest hits there are in Psalms. And so the one that I'm pulling out this morning is one that we have framed and in our house. It's a very frameable verse. I would encourage you to do that. If you've never heard Psalm 1611 before, I think it's going to be one that you'll identify with and appreciate, and hopefully we can leave today thinking about in a different way, especially if you are aware of this verse. But Psalm 1611 simply says this. This is where we're going to focus this morning. David writes, you make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. You make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. That's a heck of a verse, isn't it? I mean, that's a really encouraging, life-giving verse. That's a great promise that David makes to us through the voice of God in Psalms. And as we walk through it, that first sentence, you make known to me the paths of life. Often in Psalms, David adopts kind of the motif of a shepherd, us as the sheep and God as our good shepherd. Psalm 23 is a very familiar Psalm where it says, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. So maintaining that illustration, you make known to me the paths of life is this picture of a shepherd leading his sheep to the good places, leading his sheep to where they can eat, to where they can drink, to where they can rest, to where they'll be protected. And so he's saying, and in the onset, you lead me to the life-giving paths, to fullness of life. You lead me, God, to the best possible places. And then he says, in your presence, there's fullness of joy. Now, I don't know if you've ever thought about this. Not everyone here is a scientist. You may not be aware of this fact, but you can't get fuller than full, man. When you're full, that's it. This idea in sports that we give 110%, that's bupkis. You can't do it. It's 100%. That's it. When you're full, you're full. So what he's saying is in God's presence, you will experience maximum joy. It is impossible to find any other place in the known universe, any other scenario, any other situation. It is impossible to pursue any other relationship in which you will find more joy than in your relationship with God, than in the presence of the Father, there is fullness of joy. And then he says, and at the right hand of the Father are pleasures forevermore. And we learn in Romans and Hebrews that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for us as our high priest. So what that is saying is, in Christ, if we obey John 15, when Jesus says, abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit, if we abide in Christ, if we pursue him, if we love him, if we chase him, if we know him, if we are intimate with him, then we will experience pleasures forevermore. That's some astounding promises, right? He's going to lead us to the best places possible in God's presence as we pursue him, as Steve and Lisa invited us into worship, as we go into worship, as we take ourselves like in Isaiah 6 into the throne room of God in prayer, in his presence, we will experience the fullness of joy. And then as we pursue Jesus and we go to his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. That's a pretty good promise, isn't it? Isn't that what we're all chasing anyways? Just better days and a happier existence? If we were to say for ourselves, what do you want in 20, 30 years? We'd say, I just want to be happy. If you have kids and you say, what do you want for your kids? One of the things I promise would be in your top five answers is, top three answers is, I just want them to be happy. This verse promises that. So I actually think that if we really believe that, if we really believe Psalm 1611, that our own selfishness would drive us to God. If we really believe this verse, that he's going to lead us to try to be generous or unselfish. We can do the most selfish thing possible, and that selfishness should, in theory, based on these promises, drive us straight to the throne of God. We should respond to this verse. Like I responded to the news in my mid-twenties that places like Fogo de Chão existed. Now, I don't know if you know what Fogo de Chão is, because we had one in Atlanta. That's where I'm from. We don't have one in Raleigh. It's a Churras, Korea. It's a Brazilian steakhouse. There's one over in Briar Creek, I think. I still need to get over there. But in a Brazilian steakhouse, let me just, let me just tell you what they do there. Okay. This is unbelievable. Some of y'all know. If you know me, you know, I love steak. I really do. I had steak the other night for the first time since John was born because I like to make it myself and it's a whole process and I was in heaven watching the recorded Open Championship. Anyways, I love steak. And they told me, and I was like 25, 26, you know there's this place called Fogo de Chão. And when you go there, there's a card next to your plate. And one side is red and one side is green. And when you put it on the green side, they just bring you steak until you flip it back to red. And I'm like, what now? And so I go to this place, right? And there's these men and they walk around with these skewers of perfectly cooked steak. And they bring it up to you. Your card is green. They go, would you like some, sir? Yes, I would. I'm glad that you came. And they start to slice the filet or the top sirloin or the skirt steak or the bottom sirloin or the lamb or whatever it is. Jen, we need to go to this place for lunch today. They just start shaving it until you tell them to stop. If you want a steak mountain on your plate, you can have a steak mountain. It's amazing. And I'm just telling you, if you leave there without the meat sweats, you're not a good American. It's a remarkable place. And so when they told me that this place existed, with all of my heart, all I thought is, I want to go to there. I want to go. I'll save my money. I will lie to people. I will disappear for three days so I can go to this place and experience phogo to chow. That's where I want to go. That's how we should respond to this verse. What? There's a place I can go and there is fullness of joy. There are pleasures forevermore. There's someone I can follow who will lead me to only the best places. That's a thing? I want to go to there. I'll disappear for three days. I'll sever relationships. I'll give up whatever I do. I'll save up whatever I gotta do. I want to go to there. That's how we should respond to this verse. If we believe that the Bible is the word of God and that what's in here is eternally true and good and right and worth staking our life on, if we really believe that this is God's word and that what he's telling us, what David is saying is true, then why don't we treat the kingdom of God like Jesus tells us to when he said the kingdom of God is like someone who finds a pearl in a field and they sell everything they have so they can buy that field and have that pearl. We would forsake everything for the kingdom of God and for the presence of God and to walk and abide with Jesus if we really believe this. But see, for me, I'm just talking about me. I'm not talking about you guys. For me, my actions don't bear out that I really believe this. If I really, truly believe that in the presence of God, I would find the fullness of joy, then I would betray everything that's not associated with that presence and chase after it as hard as I could. But I don't. And see, I'm preaching this because I've been a Christian about as far back as my memory goes. I've been around Christians for 40 years. I've talked to a lot of them. I have yet to meet a single Christian that when I ask them, how's your relationship with God going? How you doing? How's your spiritual health? I've never heard a single one of them say, I'm nailing it. I mean, I'm really good at this. I mean, about five, 10 years ago, I got to this place where I was just really walking with the Lord and now I'm just waiting on him to come down here and carry me up to heaven in a chariot without having to experience death. How can I help you? I've never met that person. Everyone I talk to has this profound sense of, I ought to be doing better by now. I know better than to do the things that I do. I thought I'd be closer with Jesus by now. I thought I'd be further along. I thought I'd be more spiritually mature and spiritually healthy. That's my experience of faith. There's this constant voice going, why aren't you better at this? And I think it's because we don't really believe that verse. We say we do. Do you believe the Bible? Yes. Every word? Yes. All of them. Okay, well, we don't seem to believe this one. So the interesting question becomes, why is that? Why do we have such a hard time trusting this verse in Psalms that says that in the presence of God, in the presence of Jesus, there are pleasures forevermore, which we all would agree we want. Then why doesn't our life look like we believe it? I think one of the big reasons is that we have an impoverished view of Jesus. We just have this impoverished view of who Jesus is. I've told you guys this before. I do premarital counseling with couples that are getting married. And one of the things I always ask them, so I won't belabor this because I really have told you guys this before, but the point that I'm making is important. I'll ask them on a scale of one to 10, place yourself on that scale of spiritual health. 10 is just zealot on fire for God, Elijah in the Old Testament, John the Baptist, just going and doing everything for Jesus, just totally on fire zealot. And then one is just very, very far from God. And I'll ask them, where are you in your spiritual health? And without fail, people will answer four to six, okay? Because no one wants to say, well, I'm currently doing great. And no one's going to admit to being a two. So everybody says four to six, okay? And then I'll say, and this is the important part, all right, that's great. In five years, where would you like to be? And it's really a vehicle, the numbers don't matter, it's a vehicle to talk about what steps can we take to grow in our spiritual health. That's what it's there for, to help us get into that discussion. But what's interesting to me is when I ask people, and where do you want to be in five years without fail? Eight. I've had one person in 11 years of premarital counseling say 10. One person. Everybody else, eight. I don't want to be like, I don't want to be crazy zealot. I don't want to be that person. Just make me an eight. That'd be great. And what they probably really mean is seven, but they're telling the pastor, so let's bump it up. And I can't help but think that that's probably due at least in part to the fact that they probably don't think that walking with Jesus is that big of a deal. They probably aren't that enraptured with Jesus. I probably just don't think he's as big of a deal as he is. Whatever picture we have in our head of what it would be like to be a 10 isn't that attractive. It's just not that great. We're not that compelled by it, so we don't pursue it. Why don't we say 10? Because we don't want to be. Because whatever's at 10 is not really something that we would enjoy. Because I think we have this small view of who Jesus is. Because for some reason or another, we've never just fallen in love with scriptures and made it a habit to get up and read it every day and see Jesus on these pages and read the gospels and walk through his life and see how he forgave and see how he was generous and see how he loved and see how he sacrificed and fallen in love with him. We haven't allowed the sin and the weight that so easily entangles in Hebrews. We haven't allowed that to fall to the wayside to a degree that we can begin to experience our savior. We haven't engaged in worship in such a way that we turn our heart to God and let him fill it up with his joy. We haven't stopped and reflected on the fact that Jesus, God, condescended, came down from heaven, became one of us, walked with us in our filth, was patient and gracious with us, marched to the cross, died there on the cross for us, even though he knew that we would crud on it with our own life and with our own actions and with our own hypocrisy and sits at the right hand of the Father despite all of that and intercedes for us. We don't sit in the weight of that reality and allow the gratitude and the grandeur of his forgiveness and grace to wash over us. And it allows us to create this impoverished view of Jesus that isn't really all that compelling. And I think one of the reasons we keep our view of Jesus small is the second reason why we struggle sometimes, I think, to believe Psalm 1611, which is that we like making mud pies. We like making mud pies. C.S. Lewis was an author in England prior to and through World War II, and one of the greatest authors of all time. And he described sin in this way. This is a very gross, loose paraphrase. But he described sin like this. He said, it's as if we are children and our parents want to take us on the most amazing holiday. For us in America, it'd be a vacation. Our parents want to take us on the most amazing vacation, but we content ourselves sitting in the backyard making mud pies. We'll sit in the backyard playing with mud because we don't believe that anything could possibly be better than this, and our parents have the most amazing vacation on the planet planned for us, and we're totally disinterested in it. That's how he describes sin. That God has the fullness of joy. He has pleasures forevermore. He leads us to the paths of life. He has something better for us that he's trying to draw us to and we content ourselves with making mud pies in our backyard because we just don't believe there could be anything better. This is actually a trick of the enemy. This is a lie of Satan. You understand that, right? Think of it this way. One of Satan's best lies is to trick us into sacrificing long-term joy on the altar of short-term pleasure. One of the enemy's greatest tactics is to trick us into sacrificing long-term joy on the altar of short-term pleasure, on what we can have right now. Isn't this why most of us fail at diets? Not me, but you fail at diets. Because I want to be in good shape. I want to exercise and have the sweat show up here before it shows up here. I want that very much. But I also want a steak right now. I also want Cinnabon. I also want a Chick-fil-A, number one. And I want the sweet tea and I want it to be large. We also want those things. And so we sacrifice long-term things on the altar of the immediate. And this is a trick that Satan plays on us, where God offers us the fullness of joy in this process. God is thinking long-term. He's promising us things years down the road, and we sacrifice those things on what we want right now. Marriage is probably the easiest example of this, where God makes it very clear in Scripture, in Genesis, and then repeated again in Mark, that for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh. And what God has put together, let no man separate. It is God's will for your life. When you are born, it is his will and hope that you would meet one person, that you would marry them, that you would become one flesh, and that you would experience the fullness of joy that comes from being in this lifelong giving relationship. Now, I'm not trying to diminish people who have walked through divorce or are currently divorced or whatever and diminish you as being outside of God's will. I believe that divorce happens because we're broken people and that there is redemption after that. But if we want to talk about what God wants for us, he wants a husband and wife to be united in one flesh and he wants them to walk down the years and the decades following him and knowing him and raising children together and walking through things together and experiencing the depth of love that can only come through that level of commitment sustained through the decades. That's what he wants for us. There's joy and happiness there. Just last night, I'm going to embarrass Jen here, I'm sorry, but just last night, Jen and I, we've got an 11-week-old and we've got a five-and-a-half-year-old, and sometimes, just sometimes, only me, this is not true of Jen, but sometimes I don't like either of them. I just want to sit. Yesterday may or may not have been one of those times. But we had a plan. That last night, we had a plan. We're going to get the kids to bed, and we're going to go get Chinese, and we're going to bring it back. There's this knee Asian kitchen that's really, really good. And we went, and we got the stuff. And I bring it back, and we set it out on the console table and we sit down on the floor and we eat Chinese and we watch Hometown with Ben and Aaron who are charming. If you're not watching Hometown, I mean, you're missing out. They're great folks. And we watched that and we laughed together and we ate together and we talked about how good the food was and then afterwards we laughed at Instagram videos and then both of us couldn't stop commenting on how great it was to have that night and how much we loved each other. Give me that. Give me that love after 15 years, all day long over our honeymoon in St. Lucia. When we were 25 years old, we went to St. Lucia for our honeymoon and we thought it was great and it was the best and we're so in love and it was wonderful. Man, that's nothing compared to what we experienced last night. Give me Chinese on the floor hiding from our children and our dog over a week in St. Lucia because the love 15 years in and what we've walked through and what we experienced and what we know about each other and the ways that our love has changed over the years is so much richer than it was 15 years ago. Now, I can't wait to experience what some of you guys have experienced being 10 and 20 years beyond where we are and the fullness of love that comes there. That's what God wants for us. He wants us to experience that fullness, but there's a process and it takes time. And Satan, Satan would will to steal that joy from us by tempting us to just fade in our marriage and not put in the work that we need by tempting us to just be selfish. And today I know I should help with the kids. I know I should do these things. I know I should love. I know we should go to counseling. I know that we need to work on this marriage, but today it's hard and I don't want to. So we sacrifice future joy on the altar of the immediate. Or even worse, he begins to tempt us to look outside our marriage and that would be fun and that would be entertaining for a season and that would be a type of joy and pleasure that we don't get to experience. And so we do and we sacrifice what could be long-term joy on the altar of immediate pleasure. It's true in our quiet times. I've said dozens of times from this stage, there's no more important habit in our life than to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and spend time in prayer. And we know this. And we know that through doing that, we will find Jesus, we will be drawn to him, we will be caught up in him, that life will be better, that our attitude will be better, that our spiritual health will be better. We know it's good for us. Most of the whole room would agree with me that that would be an excellent practice in our lives, and yet for many of us, we don't have it. Why? Because it's easier to hit the snooze button. It's easier to flick through Twitter. It's easier to turn on SportsCenter or to get to work early or to just sit in the quiet or to read a book. There's so many different things that we could do besides dive into God's Word. And so once again, we sacrifice the joy that waits for us in the presence of God on the altar of the immediate, doing what we want. This is one of the greatest tricks of Satan, just to trick Christians into wasting their days and pursuing temporary pleasures instead of long-term joy. I came across a quote this week, and I that it was timely from some pastor that I didn't recognize and he just simply said, all of Satan's promises are for the right now. Promises without process are lies. God promises us the future. Satan promises us today. And we so very easily choose today. But really, I think in a room full, for the most part, of believers, the reason, probably the predominant reason, we struggle to believe Psalm 1611, is if we're being honest, I think we're afraid to be on fire. I think we're afraid to be a 10. I think we're afraid to be zealots. We're afraid to be on fire for Jesus. We don't want to be that person. We don't want to have to give up everything and move to Malawi and teach and write the Bible in another language. We don't want to have to do that. We don't want to have to sell all the things that we've acquired. We don't want to have to give up the pleasures that we enjoy. I know for me, the thing that makes me scared to be a zealot, and listen, I'm speaking to me more than you right now. The thing that makes me scared is I just don't want to be weird. I want people to like me. I like having friends. So I think we're scared to be on fire. And after being around church people my whole life, I'm convinced that this is true. And when I say this, just know I'm saying this to me, okay? I'm saying this to me. I am convicted by this. I am stepping on my own toes. If this doesn't apply to you, great. If it does, welcome into my conviction. But I'm saying it to me. I'm convinced that we carve out for ourselves a moderate middle ground that appears spiritually healthy while still leaving us the Lord of our own lives. I'm convinced that a vast majority of Christians are afraid to be on fire, and so what we do is we carve out for ourselves a moderate middle ground of spirituality that makes us appear spiritually healthy while still giving us space to hang on to some of the things that bring us joy and pleasure and therefore still being the lords of our own lives. I'm going to go to church. I'm going to go to Bible study. I'm going to say the things. I'm going to have the right friends. I'm going to reorient my life. I'm going to look different now than I did years ago. And now I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing okay. I'm not a 10, but I'm like a seven. And this is a pretty comfortable place for me. Maybe I'm the only one that does that. But we carve out this moderate middle ground. I'm not John the Baptist. Okay. I'm not one of the disciples, but I'm not one of the bad ones either. I'm good. Could I be doing better? Sure. Everybody could be doing better. Could I be doing worse? A lot worse. You should have known me five years ago. And so we carve out this middle ground. Well, we're not on fire. We're not totally cold and turned off to the Lord. We're just like a seven. And we're good with it. When we do that, the Bible has something to say about it. About specifically that. In Revelation chapter three, Jesus has written letters to seven churches in Revelation two and three. And in chapter three, he says, you're pretty good. You do a lot of good things to this particular church. But then in 3.16, he says this, but you are lukewarm. And because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. That word spit there is better translated as vomit or spew. That's what Jesus thinks of the middle ground that we carve out for ourselves. Well, we're comfortable and happy and sure, I could give more, I could do more, I could grow more, I could sacrifice more, but that's scary, I don't want to do it. I'm doing pretty good here as a seven. God, if you'll just kind of leave me alone and worry about some of those threes, I'll be happy to invite them to my house. I'll be good. And Jesus says, couldn't be less interested in that. To me, Nate, I couldn't be less interested in your moderate middle ground of spirituality here. He calls us to be on fire. He calls us to be zealots. And if you're in this conviction with me, of this middle ground that we carve out for ourselves, I would invite you into this question. What is it that you're afraid of? If you light your hair on fire for Jesus and go burn the world down, what is it that you're afraid of? What is it that worries you about getting up every day and reading God's word? What is it that worries you about inviting Jesus into every moment of your life? What is it that worries you about being a zealot? Is it that you'll have to give up something that brings you pleasure? God has more pleasure waiting for you if you'll just trust him, if you'll just drop your mud pies and go with him on vacation, what are we scared of? Is there some pleasure or friend group or thing that you like to do that you're worried, well, if I really sell out, then I can't engage in that anymore. So what? God's got something better. Well, I'm worried that, this is me, I'm worried that I'm going to be weird. People won't like me, that I won't be relatable. Who cares? Jesus didn't call me to be relatable. He called me to be passionate about him. And I bet the joy that I'll find there and the relationships that are there and the magnanimity of the love that's found there will do just fine with the weirdness. What are we afraid of that God's not going to give us back? What kind of pleasures are we embracing in our middle ground that we don't want to let go because I don't want to go too far? Why? Are you afraid he's going to ask you to sell everything and move to Ghana? He's probably not. If all American Christians moved to Ghana at once, that would be inconvenient. He's probably not going to do that. But even if he did, you'll find pleasures forevermore and fullness of joy in Ghana, so go to Ghana, man. What are we scared of? I think we're scared of being zealots. And so maybe what we need to do is understand what that means. I don't think that being a zealot is selling everything and becoming a weirdo and moving out into the wilderness like John the Baptist and wearing camel skins and eating locusts. I think that being a zealot means inviting Jesus into every moment of your life. Into every conversation. Inviting him in. How would you have me handle this? How can I reflect you here? Into every quiet, peaceful moment. Into every still morning. Into every late night. Into every dinner conversation. Into every relationship, into every work interaction, inviting him into every email, into every prayer. I think being a zealot looks like simply inviting Jesus into every moment of your life. What harm can come if we do that? What possible thing could we give up that's worth anything at all if we simply start by inviting Jesus into every moment of our life? If we do that, you know what we'll find? That our view of him begins to enlargen. That the lies of Satan become less convincing. That the fear of being on fire becomes a lot less fearful. So let's do that, Grace. Let's collectively light our hair on fire and light the world on fire for Jesus. Let's collectively be zealots. Let's collectively trust that this verse is true. And let's collectively ask ourselves the tough question, what am I hanging on to that's preventing me from pursuing God? That's preventing me from pursuing Jesus, from abiding in his presence and creating a larger view of him in my life. And then let's ask ourselves if it's worth it. I know that for me this week, as I've sat in this verse, I've developed a more deep conviction than ever that I want to trust this verse. I want to believe it. I want to live it out. I want to go be a zealot. And I want the church to come with me. Let's pray. Father, we love you. I'll be the first to admit, God, sometimes I just, all the time, I love you the best way I know how. It's an imperfect, insufficient, hypocritical, broken love. But God, we love you. We're grateful for Jesus. We really are. We know that sometimes it doesn't seem like that. We know that we demand a lot of your forgiveness. God, we are grateful for it. Lord, I know that I have been afraid to give up some of the things that I think are actually bringing me joy when all they're doing is keeping me from you. So I pray that you would give me the strength to walk away from those things and the strength of faith and hope to trust that you're going to bring me to these paths of life, to the best places possible. God, would you give us the strength this morning to put down our mud pies and trust that where you're taking us is exponentially better than anything we could ever cook up for ourselves. I pray that we would grow in our view of Jesus and be so enamored with him that we would just sprint towards him with all of our might. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

Well, good morning. Thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I am the senior pastor here. If you're here this morning and I haven't yet had the chance to meet you, I would love to do that. So please say hello in the lobby after the service. If you're watching online, thanks for doing that. Particularly if you're on vacation, thanks for making us a part of your Sunday, even while you're away. This is the last sermon in our series, One Hit Wonders, where we have been pausing and looking at some verses and passages that we don't often get to stop at in a normal series or in our normal Bible study. Some of the lesser known verses and passages that we find in Scripture, a lot of them have been in the Minor Prophets, which is a whole section of the Old Testament that we don't often explore. But this morning is admittedly more of a greatest hit than a one-hit wonder. It's actually apropos with the last question of our little game, trivia game that we were playing there in the bumper video. Steve, I don't know if you did that on purpose, but I'm actually going to pull this one out of Psalms, which is that's the Beatles of the Bible. All the greatest hits there are in Psalms. And so the one that I'm pulling out this morning is one that we have framed and in our house. It's a very frameable verse. I would encourage you to do that. If you've never heard Psalm 1611 before, I think it's going to be one that you'll identify with and appreciate, and hopefully we can leave today thinking about in a different way, especially if you are aware of this verse. But Psalm 1611 simply says this. This is where we're going to focus this morning. David writes, you make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. You make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. That's a heck of a verse, isn't it? I mean, that's a really encouraging, life-giving verse. That's a great promise that David makes to us through the voice of God in Psalms. And as we walk through it, that first sentence, you make known to me the paths of life. Often in Psalms, David adopts kind of the motif of a shepherd, us as the sheep and God as our good shepherd. Psalm 23 is a very familiar Psalm where it says, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. So maintaining that illustration, you make known to me the paths of life is this picture of a shepherd leading his sheep to the good places, leading his sheep to where they can eat, to where they can drink, to where they can rest, to where they'll be protected. And so he's saying, and in the onset, you lead me to the life-giving paths, to fullness of life. You lead me, God, to the best possible places. And then he says, in your presence, there's fullness of joy. Now, I don't know if you've ever thought about this. Not everyone here is a scientist. You may not be aware of this fact, but you can't get fuller than full, man. When you're full, that's it. This idea in sports that we give 110%, that's bupkis. You can't do it. It's 100%. That's it. When you're full, you're full. So what he's saying is in God's presence, you will experience maximum joy. It is impossible to find any other place in the known universe, any other scenario, any other situation. It is impossible to pursue any other relationship in which you will find more joy than in your relationship with God, than in the presence of the Father, there is fullness of joy. And then he says, and at the right hand of the Father are pleasures forevermore. And we learn in Romans and Hebrews that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for us as our high priest. So what that is saying is, in Christ, if we obey John 15, when Jesus says, abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit, if we abide in Christ, if we pursue him, if we love him, if we chase him, if we know him, if we are intimate with him, then we will experience pleasures forevermore. That's some astounding promises, right? He's going to lead us to the best places possible in God's presence as we pursue him, as Steve and Lisa invited us into worship, as we go into worship, as we take ourselves like in Isaiah 6 into the throne room of God in prayer, in his presence, we will experience the fullness of joy. And then as we pursue Jesus and we go to his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. That's a pretty good promise, isn't it? Isn't that what we're all chasing anyways? Just better days and a happier existence? If we were to say for ourselves, what do you want in 20, 30 years? We'd say, I just want to be happy. If you have kids and you say, what do you want for your kids? One of the things I promise would be in your top five answers is, top three answers is, I just want them to be happy. This verse promises that. So I actually think that if we really believe that, if we really believe Psalm 1611, that our own selfishness would drive us to God. If we really believe this verse, that he's going to lead us to try to be generous or unselfish. We can do the most selfish thing possible, and that selfishness should, in theory, based on these promises, drive us straight to the throne of God. We should respond to this verse. Like I responded to the news in my mid-twenties that places like Fogo de Chão existed. Now, I don't know if you know what Fogo de Chão is, because we had one in Atlanta. That's where I'm from. We don't have one in Raleigh. It's a Churras, Korea. It's a Brazilian steakhouse. There's one over in Briar Creek, I think. I still need to get over there. But in a Brazilian steakhouse, let me just, let me just tell you what they do there. Okay. This is unbelievable. Some of y'all know. If you know me, you know, I love steak. I really do. I had steak the other night for the first time since John was born because I like to make it myself and it's a whole process and I was in heaven watching the recorded Open Championship. Anyways, I love steak. And they told me, and I was like 25, 26, you know there's this place called Fogo de Chão. And when you go there, there's a card next to your plate. And one side is red and one side is green. And when you put it on the green side, they just bring you steak until you flip it back to red. And I'm like, what now? And so I go to this place, right? And there's these men and they walk around with these skewers of perfectly cooked steak. And they bring it up to you. Your card is green. They go, would you like some, sir? Yes, I would. I'm glad that you came. And they start to slice the filet or the top sirloin or the skirt steak or the bottom sirloin or the lamb or whatever it is. Jen, we need to go to this place for lunch today. They just start shaving it until you tell them to stop. If you want a steak mountain on your plate, you can have a steak mountain. It's amazing. And I'm just telling you, if you leave there without the meat sweats, you're not a good American. It's a remarkable place. And so when they told me that this place existed, with all of my heart, all I thought is, I want to go to there. I want to go. I'll save my money. I will lie to people. I will disappear for three days so I can go to this place and experience phogo to chow. That's where I want to go. That's how we should respond to this verse. What? There's a place I can go and there is fullness of joy. There are pleasures forevermore. There's someone I can follow who will lead me to only the best places. That's a thing? I want to go to there. I'll disappear for three days. I'll sever relationships. I'll give up whatever I do. I'll save up whatever I gotta do. I want to go to there. That's how we should respond to this verse. If we believe that the Bible is the word of God and that what's in here is eternally true and good and right and worth staking our life on, if we really believe that this is God's word and that what he's telling us, what David is saying is true, then why don't we treat the kingdom of God like Jesus tells us to when he said the kingdom of God is like someone who finds a pearl in a field and they sell everything they have so they can buy that field and have that pearl. We would forsake everything for the kingdom of God and for the presence of God and to walk and abide with Jesus if we really believe this. But see, for me, I'm just talking about me. I'm not talking about you guys. For me, my actions don't bear out that I really believe this. If I really, truly believe that in the presence of God, I would find the fullness of joy, then I would betray everything that's not associated with that presence and chase after it as hard as I could. But I don't. And see, I'm preaching this because I've been a Christian about as far back as my memory goes. I've been around Christians for 40 years. I've talked to a lot of them. I have yet to meet a single Christian that when I ask them, how's your relationship with God going? How you doing? How's your spiritual health? I've never heard a single one of them say, I'm nailing it. I mean, I'm really good at this. I mean, about five, 10 years ago, I got to this place where I was just really walking with the Lord and now I'm just waiting on him to come down here and carry me up to heaven in a chariot without having to experience death. How can I help you? I've never met that person. Everyone I talk to has this profound sense of, I ought to be doing better by now. I know better than to do the things that I do. I thought I'd be closer with Jesus by now. I thought I'd be further along. I thought I'd be more spiritually mature and spiritually healthy. That's my experience of faith. There's this constant voice going, why aren't you better at this? And I think it's because we don't really believe that verse. We say we do. Do you believe the Bible? Yes. Every word? Yes. All of them. Okay, well, we don't seem to believe this one. So the interesting question becomes, why is that? Why do we have such a hard time trusting this verse in Psalms that says that in the presence of God, in the presence of Jesus, there are pleasures forevermore, which we all would agree we want. Then why doesn't our life look like we believe it? I think one of the big reasons is that we have an impoverished view of Jesus. We just have this impoverished view of who Jesus is. I've told you guys this before. I do premarital counseling with couples that are getting married. And one of the things I always ask them, so I won't belabor this because I really have told you guys this before, but the point that I'm making is important. I'll ask them on a scale of one to 10, place yourself on that scale of spiritual health. 10 is just zealot on fire for God, Elijah in the Old Testament, John the Baptist, just going and doing everything for Jesus, just totally on fire zealot. And then one is just very, very far from God. And I'll ask them, where are you in your spiritual health? And without fail, people will answer four to six, okay? Because no one wants to say, well, I'm currently doing great. And no one's going to admit to being a two. So everybody says four to six, okay? And then I'll say, and this is the important part, all right, that's great. In five years, where would you like to be? And it's really a vehicle, the numbers don't matter, it's a vehicle to talk about what steps can we take to grow in our spiritual health. That's what it's there for, to help us get into that discussion. But what's interesting to me is when I ask people, and where do you want to be in five years without fail? Eight. I've had one person in 11 years of premarital counseling say 10. One person. Everybody else, eight. I don't want to be like, I don't want to be crazy zealot. I don't want to be that person. Just make me an eight. That'd be great. And what they probably really mean is seven, but they're telling the pastor, so let's bump it up. And I can't help but think that that's probably due at least in part to the fact that they probably don't think that walking with Jesus is that big of a deal. They probably aren't that enraptured with Jesus. I probably just don't think he's as big of a deal as he is. Whatever picture we have in our head of what it would be like to be a 10 isn't that attractive. It's just not that great. We're not that compelled by it, so we don't pursue it. Why don't we say 10? Because we don't want to be. Because whatever's at 10 is not really something that we would enjoy. Because I think we have this small view of who Jesus is. Because for some reason or another, we've never just fallen in love with scriptures and made it a habit to get up and read it every day and see Jesus on these pages and read the gospels and walk through his life and see how he forgave and see how he was generous and see how he loved and see how he sacrificed and fallen in love with him. We haven't allowed the sin and the weight that so easily entangles in Hebrews. We haven't allowed that to fall to the wayside to a degree that we can begin to experience our savior. We haven't engaged in worship in such a way that we turn our heart to God and let him fill it up with his joy. We haven't stopped and reflected on the fact that Jesus, God, condescended, came down from heaven, became one of us, walked with us in our filth, was patient and gracious with us, marched to the cross, died there on the cross for us, even though he knew that we would crud on it with our own life and with our own actions and with our own hypocrisy and sits at the right hand of the Father despite all of that and intercedes for us. We don't sit in the weight of that reality and allow the gratitude and the grandeur of his forgiveness and grace to wash over us. And it allows us to create this impoverished view of Jesus that isn't really all that compelling. And I think one of the reasons we keep our view of Jesus small is the second reason why we struggle sometimes, I think, to believe Psalm 1611, which is that we like making mud pies. We like making mud pies. C.S. Lewis was an author in England prior to and through World War II, and one of the greatest authors of all time. And he described sin in this way. This is a very gross, loose paraphrase. But he described sin like this. He said, it's as if we are children and our parents want to take us on the most amazing holiday. For us in America, it'd be a vacation. Our parents want to take us on the most amazing vacation, but we content ourselves sitting in the backyard making mud pies. We'll sit in the backyard playing with mud because we don't believe that anything could possibly be better than this, and our parents have the most amazing vacation on the planet planned for us, and we're totally disinterested in it. That's how he describes sin. That God has the fullness of joy. He has pleasures forevermore. He leads us to the paths of life. He has something better for us that he's trying to draw us to and we content ourselves with making mud pies in our backyard because we just don't believe there could be anything better. This is actually a trick of the enemy. This is a lie of Satan. You understand that, right? Think of it this way. One of Satan's best lies is to trick us into sacrificing long-term joy on the altar of short-term pleasure. One of the enemy's greatest tactics is to trick us into sacrificing long-term joy on the altar of short-term pleasure, on what we can have right now. Isn't this why most of us fail at diets? Not me, but you fail at diets. Because I want to be in good shape. I want to exercise and have the sweat show up here before it shows up here. I want that very much. But I also want a steak right now. I also want Cinnabon. I also want a Chick-fil-A, number one. And I want the sweet tea and I want it to be large. We also want those things. And so we sacrifice long-term things on the altar of the immediate. And this is a trick that Satan plays on us, where God offers us the fullness of joy in this process. God is thinking long-term. He's promising us things years down the road, and we sacrifice those things on what we want right now. Marriage is probably the easiest example of this, where God makes it very clear in Scripture, in Genesis, and then repeated again in Mark, that for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh. And what God has put together, let no man separate. It is God's will for your life. When you are born, it is his will and hope that you would meet one person, that you would marry them, that you would become one flesh, and that you would experience the fullness of joy that comes from being in this lifelong giving relationship. Now, I'm not trying to diminish people who have walked through divorce or are currently divorced or whatever and diminish you as being outside of God's will. I believe that divorce happens because we're broken people and that there is redemption after that. But if we want to talk about what God wants for us, he wants a husband and wife to be united in one flesh and he wants them to walk down the years and the decades following him and knowing him and raising children together and walking through things together and experiencing the depth of love that can only come through that level of commitment sustained through the decades. That's what he wants for us. There's joy and happiness there. Just last night, I'm going to embarrass Jen here, I'm sorry, but just last night, Jen and I, we've got an 11-week-old and we've got a five-and-a-half-year-old, and sometimes, just sometimes, only me, this is not true of Jen, but sometimes I don't like either of them. I just want to sit. Yesterday may or may not have been one of those times. But we had a plan. That last night, we had a plan. We're going to get the kids to bed, and we're going to go get Chinese, and we're going to bring it back. There's this knee Asian kitchen that's really, really good. And we went, and we got the stuff. And I bring it back, and we set it out on the console table and we sit down on the floor and we eat Chinese and we watch Hometown with Ben and Aaron who are charming. If you're not watching Hometown, I mean, you're missing out. They're great folks. And we watched that and we laughed together and we ate together and we talked about how good the food was and then afterwards we laughed at Instagram videos and then both of us couldn't stop commenting on how great it was to have that night and how much we loved each other. Give me that. Give me that love after 15 years, all day long over our honeymoon in St. Lucia. When we were 25 years old, we went to St. Lucia for our honeymoon and we thought it was great and it was the best and we're so in love and it was wonderful. Man, that's nothing compared to what we experienced last night. Give me Chinese on the floor hiding from our children and our dog over a week in St. Lucia because the love 15 years in and what we've walked through and what we experienced and what we know about each other and the ways that our love has changed over the years is so much richer than it was 15 years ago. Now, I can't wait to experience what some of you guys have experienced being 10 and 20 years beyond where we are and the fullness of love that comes there. That's what God wants for us. He wants us to experience that fullness, but there's a process and it takes time. And Satan, Satan would will to steal that joy from us by tempting us to just fade in our marriage and not put in the work that we need by tempting us to just be selfish. And today I know I should help with the kids. I know I should do these things. I know I should love. I know we should go to counseling. I know that we need to work on this marriage, but today it's hard and I don't want to. So we sacrifice future joy on the altar of the immediate. Or even worse, he begins to tempt us to look outside our marriage and that would be fun and that would be entertaining for a season and that would be a type of joy and pleasure that we don't get to experience. And so we do and we sacrifice what could be long-term joy on the altar of immediate pleasure. It's true in our quiet times. I've said dozens of times from this stage, there's no more important habit in our life than to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and spend time in prayer. And we know this. And we know that through doing that, we will find Jesus, we will be drawn to him, we will be caught up in him, that life will be better, that our attitude will be better, that our spiritual health will be better. We know it's good for us. Most of the whole room would agree with me that that would be an excellent practice in our lives, and yet for many of us, we don't have it. Why? Because it's easier to hit the snooze button. It's easier to flick through Twitter. It's easier to turn on SportsCenter or to get to work early or to just sit in the quiet or to read a book. There's so many different things that we could do besides dive into God's Word. And so once again, we sacrifice the joy that waits for us in the presence of God on the altar of the immediate, doing what we want. This is one of the greatest tricks of Satan, just to trick Christians into wasting their days and pursuing temporary pleasures instead of long-term joy. I came across a quote this week, and I that it was timely from some pastor that I didn't recognize and he just simply said, all of Satan's promises are for the right now. Promises without process are lies. God promises us the future. Satan promises us today. And we so very easily choose today. But really, I think in a room full, for the most part, of believers, the reason, probably the predominant reason, we struggle to believe Psalm 1611, is if we're being honest, I think we're afraid to be on fire. I think we're afraid to be a 10. I think we're afraid to be zealots. We're afraid to be on fire for Jesus. We don't want to be that person. We don't want to have to give up everything and move to Malawi and teach and write the Bible in another language. We don't want to have to do that. We don't want to have to sell all the things that we've acquired. We don't want to have to give up the pleasures that we enjoy. I know for me, the thing that makes me scared to be a zealot, and listen, I'm speaking to me more than you right now. The thing that makes me scared is I just don't want to be weird. I want people to like me. I like having friends. So I think we're scared to be on fire. And after being around church people my whole life, I'm convinced that this is true. And when I say this, just know I'm saying this to me, okay? I'm saying this to me. I am convicted by this. I am stepping on my own toes. If this doesn't apply to you, great. If it does, welcome into my conviction. But I'm saying it to me. I'm convinced that we carve out for ourselves a moderate middle ground that appears spiritually healthy while still leaving us the Lord of our own lives. I'm convinced that a vast majority of Christians are afraid to be on fire, and so what we do is we carve out for ourselves a moderate middle ground of spirituality that makes us appear spiritually healthy while still giving us space to hang on to some of the things that bring us joy and pleasure and therefore still being the lords of our own lives. I'm going to go to church. I'm going to go to Bible study. I'm going to say the things. I'm going to have the right friends. I'm going to reorient my life. I'm going to look different now than I did years ago. And now I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing okay. I'm not a 10, but I'm like a seven. And this is a pretty comfortable place for me. Maybe I'm the only one that does that. But we carve out this moderate middle ground. I'm not John the Baptist. Okay. I'm not one of the disciples, but I'm not one of the bad ones either. I'm good. Could I be doing better? Sure. Everybody could be doing better. Could I be doing worse? A lot worse. You should have known me five years ago. And so we carve out this middle ground. Well, we're not on fire. We're not totally cold and turned off to the Lord. We're just like a seven. And we're good with it. When we do that, the Bible has something to say about it. About specifically that. In Revelation chapter three, Jesus has written letters to seven churches in Revelation two and three. And in chapter three, he says, you're pretty good. You do a lot of good things to this particular church. But then in 3.16, he says this, but you are lukewarm. And because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. That word spit there is better translated as vomit or spew. That's what Jesus thinks of the middle ground that we carve out for ourselves. Well, we're comfortable and happy and sure, I could give more, I could do more, I could grow more, I could sacrifice more, but that's scary, I don't want to do it. I'm doing pretty good here as a seven. God, if you'll just kind of leave me alone and worry about some of those threes, I'll be happy to invite them to my house. I'll be good. And Jesus says, couldn't be less interested in that. To me, Nate, I couldn't be less interested in your moderate middle ground of spirituality here. He calls us to be on fire. He calls us to be zealots. And if you're in this conviction with me, of this middle ground that we carve out for ourselves, I would invite you into this question. What is it that you're afraid of? If you light your hair on fire for Jesus and go burn the world down, what is it that you're afraid of? What is it that worries you about getting up every day and reading God's word? What is it that worries you about inviting Jesus into every moment of your life? What is it that worries you about being a zealot? Is it that you'll have to give up something that brings you pleasure? God has more pleasure waiting for you if you'll just trust him, if you'll just drop your mud pies and go with him on vacation, what are we scared of? Is there some pleasure or friend group or thing that you like to do that you're worried, well, if I really sell out, then I can't engage in that anymore. So what? God's got something better. Well, I'm worried that, this is me, I'm worried that I'm going to be weird. People won't like me, that I won't be relatable. Who cares? Jesus didn't call me to be relatable. He called me to be passionate about him. And I bet the joy that I'll find there and the relationships that are there and the magnanimity of the love that's found there will do just fine with the weirdness. What are we afraid of that God's not going to give us back? What kind of pleasures are we embracing in our middle ground that we don't want to let go because I don't want to go too far? Why? Are you afraid he's going to ask you to sell everything and move to Ghana? He's probably not. If all American Christians moved to Ghana at once, that would be inconvenient. He's probably not going to do that. But even if he did, you'll find pleasures forevermore and fullness of joy in Ghana, so go to Ghana, man. What are we scared of? I think we're scared of being zealots. And so maybe what we need to do is understand what that means. I don't think that being a zealot is selling everything and becoming a weirdo and moving out into the wilderness like John the Baptist and wearing camel skins and eating locusts. I think that being a zealot means inviting Jesus into every moment of your life. Into every conversation. Inviting him in. How would you have me handle this? How can I reflect you here? Into every quiet, peaceful moment. Into every still morning. Into every late night. Into every dinner conversation. Into every relationship, into every work interaction, inviting him into every email, into every prayer. I think being a zealot looks like simply inviting Jesus into every moment of your life. What harm can come if we do that? What possible thing could we give up that's worth anything at all if we simply start by inviting Jesus into every moment of our life? If we do that, you know what we'll find? That our view of him begins to enlargen. That the lies of Satan become less convincing. That the fear of being on fire becomes a lot less fearful. So let's do that, Grace. Let's collectively light our hair on fire and light the world on fire for Jesus. Let's collectively be zealots. Let's collectively trust that this verse is true. And let's collectively ask ourselves the tough question, what am I hanging on to that's preventing me from pursuing God? That's preventing me from pursuing Jesus, from abiding in his presence and creating a larger view of him in my life. And then let's ask ourselves if it's worth it. I know that for me this week, as I've sat in this verse, I've developed a more deep conviction than ever that I want to trust this verse. I want to believe it. I want to live it out. I want to go be a zealot. And I want the church to come with me. Let's pray. Father, we love you. I'll be the first to admit, God, sometimes I just, all the time, I love you the best way I know how. It's an imperfect, insufficient, hypocritical, broken love. But God, we love you. We're grateful for Jesus. We really are. We know that sometimes it doesn't seem like that. We know that we demand a lot of your forgiveness. God, we are grateful for it. Lord, I know that I have been afraid to give up some of the things that I think are actually bringing me joy when all they're doing is keeping me from you. So I pray that you would give me the strength to walk away from those things and the strength of faith and hope to trust that you're going to bring me to these paths of life, to the best places possible. God, would you give us the strength this morning to put down our mud pies and trust that where you're taking us is exponentially better than anything we could ever cook up for ourselves. I pray that we would grow in our view of Jesus and be so enamored with him that we would just sprint towards him with all of our might. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

Well, good morning. Thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I am the senior pastor here. If you're here this morning and I haven't yet had the chance to meet you, I would love to do that. So please say hello in the lobby after the service. If you're watching online, thanks for doing that. Particularly if you're on vacation, thanks for making us a part of your Sunday, even while you're away. This is the last sermon in our series, One Hit Wonders, where we have been pausing and looking at some verses and passages that we don't often get to stop at in a normal series or in our normal Bible study. Some of the lesser known verses and passages that we find in Scripture, a lot of them have been in the Minor Prophets, which is a whole section of the Old Testament that we don't often explore. But this morning is admittedly more of a greatest hit than a one-hit wonder. It's actually apropos with the last question of our little game, trivia game that we were playing there in the bumper video. Steve, I don't know if you did that on purpose, but I'm actually going to pull this one out of Psalms, which is that's the Beatles of the Bible. All the greatest hits there are in Psalms. And so the one that I'm pulling out this morning is one that we have framed and in our house. It's a very frameable verse. I would encourage you to do that. If you've never heard Psalm 1611 before, I think it's going to be one that you'll identify with and appreciate, and hopefully we can leave today thinking about in a different way, especially if you are aware of this verse. But Psalm 1611 simply says this. This is where we're going to focus this morning. David writes, you make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. You make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. That's a heck of a verse, isn't it? I mean, that's a really encouraging, life-giving verse. That's a great promise that David makes to us through the voice of God in Psalms. And as we walk through it, that first sentence, you make known to me the paths of life. Often in Psalms, David adopts kind of the motif of a shepherd, us as the sheep and God as our good shepherd. Psalm 23 is a very familiar Psalm where it says, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. So maintaining that illustration, you make known to me the paths of life is this picture of a shepherd leading his sheep to the good places, leading his sheep to where they can eat, to where they can drink, to where they can rest, to where they'll be protected. And so he's saying, and in the onset, you lead me to the life-giving paths, to fullness of life. You lead me, God, to the best possible places. And then he says, in your presence, there's fullness of joy. Now, I don't know if you've ever thought about this. Not everyone here is a scientist. You may not be aware of this fact, but you can't get fuller than full, man. When you're full, that's it. This idea in sports that we give 110%, that's bupkis. You can't do it. It's 100%. That's it. When you're full, you're full. So what he's saying is in God's presence, you will experience maximum joy. It is impossible to find any other place in the known universe, any other scenario, any other situation. It is impossible to pursue any other relationship in which you will find more joy than in your relationship with God, than in the presence of the Father, there is fullness of joy. And then he says, and at the right hand of the Father are pleasures forevermore. And we learn in Romans and Hebrews that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for us as our high priest. So what that is saying is, in Christ, if we obey John 15, when Jesus says, abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit, if we abide in Christ, if we pursue him, if we love him, if we chase him, if we know him, if we are intimate with him, then we will experience pleasures forevermore. That's some astounding promises, right? He's going to lead us to the best places possible in God's presence as we pursue him, as Steve and Lisa invited us into worship, as we go into worship, as we take ourselves like in Isaiah 6 into the throne room of God in prayer, in his presence, we will experience the fullness of joy. And then as we pursue Jesus and we go to his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. That's a pretty good promise, isn't it? Isn't that what we're all chasing anyways? Just better days and a happier existence? If we were to say for ourselves, what do you want in 20, 30 years? We'd say, I just want to be happy. If you have kids and you say, what do you want for your kids? One of the things I promise would be in your top five answers is, top three answers is, I just want them to be happy. This verse promises that. So I actually think that if we really believe that, if we really believe Psalm 1611, that our own selfishness would drive us to God. If we really believe this verse, that he's going to lead us to try to be generous or unselfish. We can do the most selfish thing possible, and that selfishness should, in theory, based on these promises, drive us straight to the throne of God. We should respond to this verse. Like I responded to the news in my mid-twenties that places like Fogo de Chão existed. Now, I don't know if you know what Fogo de Chão is, because we had one in Atlanta. That's where I'm from. We don't have one in Raleigh. It's a Churras, Korea. It's a Brazilian steakhouse. There's one over in Briar Creek, I think. I still need to get over there. But in a Brazilian steakhouse, let me just, let me just tell you what they do there. Okay. This is unbelievable. Some of y'all know. If you know me, you know, I love steak. I really do. I had steak the other night for the first time since John was born because I like to make it myself and it's a whole process and I was in heaven watching the recorded Open Championship. Anyways, I love steak. And they told me, and I was like 25, 26, you know there's this place called Fogo de Chão. And when you go there, there's a card next to your plate. And one side is red and one side is green. And when you put it on the green side, they just bring you steak until you flip it back to red. And I'm like, what now? And so I go to this place, right? And there's these men and they walk around with these skewers of perfectly cooked steak. And they bring it up to you. Your card is green. They go, would you like some, sir? Yes, I would. I'm glad that you came. And they start to slice the filet or the top sirloin or the skirt steak or the bottom sirloin or the lamb or whatever it is. Jen, we need to go to this place for lunch today. They just start shaving it until you tell them to stop. If you want a steak mountain on your plate, you can have a steak mountain. It's amazing. And I'm just telling you, if you leave there without the meat sweats, you're not a good American. It's a remarkable place. And so when they told me that this place existed, with all of my heart, all I thought is, I want to go to there. I want to go. I'll save my money. I will lie to people. I will disappear for three days so I can go to this place and experience phogo to chow. That's where I want to go. That's how we should respond to this verse. What? There's a place I can go and there is fullness of joy. There are pleasures forevermore. There's someone I can follow who will lead me to only the best places. That's a thing? I want to go to there. I'll disappear for three days. I'll sever relationships. I'll give up whatever I do. I'll save up whatever I gotta do. I want to go to there. That's how we should respond to this verse. If we believe that the Bible is the word of God and that what's in here is eternally true and good and right and worth staking our life on, if we really believe that this is God's word and that what he's telling us, what David is saying is true, then why don't we treat the kingdom of God like Jesus tells us to when he said the kingdom of God is like someone who finds a pearl in a field and they sell everything they have so they can buy that field and have that pearl. We would forsake everything for the kingdom of God and for the presence of God and to walk and abide with Jesus if we really believe this. But see, for me, I'm just talking about me. I'm not talking about you guys. For me, my actions don't bear out that I really believe this. If I really, truly believe that in the presence of God, I would find the fullness of joy, then I would betray everything that's not associated with that presence and chase after it as hard as I could. But I don't. And see, I'm preaching this because I've been a Christian about as far back as my memory goes. I've been around Christians for 40 years. I've talked to a lot of them. I have yet to meet a single Christian that when I ask them, how's your relationship with God going? How you doing? How's your spiritual health? I've never heard a single one of them say, I'm nailing it. I mean, I'm really good at this. I mean, about five, 10 years ago, I got to this place where I was just really walking with the Lord and now I'm just waiting on him to come down here and carry me up to heaven in a chariot without having to experience death. How can I help you? I've never met that person. Everyone I talk to has this profound sense of, I ought to be doing better by now. I know better than to do the things that I do. I thought I'd be closer with Jesus by now. I thought I'd be further along. I thought I'd be more spiritually mature and spiritually healthy. That's my experience of faith. There's this constant voice going, why aren't you better at this? And I think it's because we don't really believe that verse. We say we do. Do you believe the Bible? Yes. Every word? Yes. All of them. Okay, well, we don't seem to believe this one. So the interesting question becomes, why is that? Why do we have such a hard time trusting this verse in Psalms that says that in the presence of God, in the presence of Jesus, there are pleasures forevermore, which we all would agree we want. Then why doesn't our life look like we believe it? I think one of the big reasons is that we have an impoverished view of Jesus. We just have this impoverished view of who Jesus is. I've told you guys this before. I do premarital counseling with couples that are getting married. And one of the things I always ask them, so I won't belabor this because I really have told you guys this before, but the point that I'm making is important. I'll ask them on a scale of one to 10, place yourself on that scale of spiritual health. 10 is just zealot on fire for God, Elijah in the Old Testament, John the Baptist, just going and doing everything for Jesus, just totally on fire zealot. And then one is just very, very far from God. And I'll ask them, where are you in your spiritual health? And without fail, people will answer four to six, okay? Because no one wants to say, well, I'm currently doing great. And no one's going to admit to being a two. So everybody says four to six, okay? And then I'll say, and this is the important part, all right, that's great. In five years, where would you like to be? And it's really a vehicle, the numbers don't matter, it's a vehicle to talk about what steps can we take to grow in our spiritual health. That's what it's there for, to help us get into that discussion. But what's interesting to me is when I ask people, and where do you want to be in five years without fail? Eight. I've had one person in 11 years of premarital counseling say 10. One person. Everybody else, eight. I don't want to be like, I don't want to be crazy zealot. I don't want to be that person. Just make me an eight. That'd be great. And what they probably really mean is seven, but they're telling the pastor, so let's bump it up. And I can't help but think that that's probably due at least in part to the fact that they probably don't think that walking with Jesus is that big of a deal. They probably aren't that enraptured with Jesus. I probably just don't think he's as big of a deal as he is. Whatever picture we have in our head of what it would be like to be a 10 isn't that attractive. It's just not that great. We're not that compelled by it, so we don't pursue it. Why don't we say 10? Because we don't want to be. Because whatever's at 10 is not really something that we would enjoy. Because I think we have this small view of who Jesus is. Because for some reason or another, we've never just fallen in love with scriptures and made it a habit to get up and read it every day and see Jesus on these pages and read the gospels and walk through his life and see how he forgave and see how he was generous and see how he loved and see how he sacrificed and fallen in love with him. We haven't allowed the sin and the weight that so easily entangles in Hebrews. We haven't allowed that to fall to the wayside to a degree that we can begin to experience our savior. We haven't engaged in worship in such a way that we turn our heart to God and let him fill it up with his joy. We haven't stopped and reflected on the fact that Jesus, God, condescended, came down from heaven, became one of us, walked with us in our filth, was patient and gracious with us, marched to the cross, died there on the cross for us, even though he knew that we would crud on it with our own life and with our own actions and with our own hypocrisy and sits at the right hand of the Father despite all of that and intercedes for us. We don't sit in the weight of that reality and allow the gratitude and the grandeur of his forgiveness and grace to wash over us. And it allows us to create this impoverished view of Jesus that isn't really all that compelling. And I think one of the reasons we keep our view of Jesus small is the second reason why we struggle sometimes, I think, to believe Psalm 1611, which is that we like making mud pies. We like making mud pies. C.S. Lewis was an author in England prior to and through World War II, and one of the greatest authors of all time. And he described sin in this way. This is a very gross, loose paraphrase. But he described sin like this. He said, it's as if we are children and our parents want to take us on the most amazing holiday. For us in America, it'd be a vacation. Our parents want to take us on the most amazing vacation, but we content ourselves sitting in the backyard making mud pies. We'll sit in the backyard playing with mud because we don't believe that anything could possibly be better than this, and our parents have the most amazing vacation on the planet planned for us, and we're totally disinterested in it. That's how he describes sin. That God has the fullness of joy. He has pleasures forevermore. He leads us to the paths of life. He has something better for us that he's trying to draw us to and we content ourselves with making mud pies in our backyard because we just don't believe there could be anything better. This is actually a trick of the enemy. This is a lie of Satan. You understand that, right? Think of it this way. One of Satan's best lies is to trick us into sacrificing long-term joy on the altar of short-term pleasure. One of the enemy's greatest tactics is to trick us into sacrificing long-term joy on the altar of short-term pleasure, on what we can have right now. Isn't this why most of us fail at diets? Not me, but you fail at diets. Because I want to be in good shape. I want to exercise and have the sweat show up here before it shows up here. I want that very much. But I also want a steak right now. I also want Cinnabon. I also want a Chick-fil-A, number one. And I want the sweet tea and I want it to be large. We also want those things. And so we sacrifice long-term things on the altar of the immediate. And this is a trick that Satan plays on us, where God offers us the fullness of joy in this process. God is thinking long-term. He's promising us things years down the road, and we sacrifice those things on what we want right now. Marriage is probably the easiest example of this, where God makes it very clear in Scripture, in Genesis, and then repeated again in Mark, that for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh. And what God has put together, let no man separate. It is God's will for your life. When you are born, it is his will and hope that you would meet one person, that you would marry them, that you would become one flesh, and that you would experience the fullness of joy that comes from being in this lifelong giving relationship. Now, I'm not trying to diminish people who have walked through divorce or are currently divorced or whatever and diminish you as being outside of God's will. I believe that divorce happens because we're broken people and that there is redemption after that. But if we want to talk about what God wants for us, he wants a husband and wife to be united in one flesh and he wants them to walk down the years and the decades following him and knowing him and raising children together and walking through things together and experiencing the depth of love that can only come through that level of commitment sustained through the decades. That's what he wants for us. There's joy and happiness there. Just last night, I'm going to embarrass Jen here, I'm sorry, but just last night, Jen and I, we've got an 11-week-old and we've got a five-and-a-half-year-old, and sometimes, just sometimes, only me, this is not true of Jen, but sometimes I don't like either of them. I just want to sit. Yesterday may or may not have been one of those times. But we had a plan. That last night, we had a plan. We're going to get the kids to bed, and we're going to go get Chinese, and we're going to bring it back. There's this knee Asian kitchen that's really, really good. And we went, and we got the stuff. And I bring it back, and we set it out on the console table and we sit down on the floor and we eat Chinese and we watch Hometown with Ben and Aaron who are charming. If you're not watching Hometown, I mean, you're missing out. They're great folks. And we watched that and we laughed together and we ate together and we talked about how good the food was and then afterwards we laughed at Instagram videos and then both of us couldn't stop commenting on how great it was to have that night and how much we loved each other. Give me that. Give me that love after 15 years, all day long over our honeymoon in St. Lucia. When we were 25 years old, we went to St. Lucia for our honeymoon and we thought it was great and it was the best and we're so in love and it was wonderful. Man, that's nothing compared to what we experienced last night. Give me Chinese on the floor hiding from our children and our dog over a week in St. Lucia because the love 15 years in and what we've walked through and what we experienced and what we know about each other and the ways that our love has changed over the years is so much richer than it was 15 years ago. Now, I can't wait to experience what some of you guys have experienced being 10 and 20 years beyond where we are and the fullness of love that comes there. That's what God wants for us. He wants us to experience that fullness, but there's a process and it takes time. And Satan, Satan would will to steal that joy from us by tempting us to just fade in our marriage and not put in the work that we need by tempting us to just be selfish. And today I know I should help with the kids. I know I should do these things. I know I should love. I know we should go to counseling. I know that we need to work on this marriage, but today it's hard and I don't want to. So we sacrifice future joy on the altar of the immediate. Or even worse, he begins to tempt us to look outside our marriage and that would be fun and that would be entertaining for a season and that would be a type of joy and pleasure that we don't get to experience. And so we do and we sacrifice what could be long-term joy on the altar of immediate pleasure. It's true in our quiet times. I've said dozens of times from this stage, there's no more important habit in our life than to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and spend time in prayer. And we know this. And we know that through doing that, we will find Jesus, we will be drawn to him, we will be caught up in him, that life will be better, that our attitude will be better, that our spiritual health will be better. We know it's good for us. Most of the whole room would agree with me that that would be an excellent practice in our lives, and yet for many of us, we don't have it. Why? Because it's easier to hit the snooze button. It's easier to flick through Twitter. It's easier to turn on SportsCenter or to get to work early or to just sit in the quiet or to read a book. There's so many different things that we could do besides dive into God's Word. And so once again, we sacrifice the joy that waits for us in the presence of God on the altar of the immediate, doing what we want. This is one of the greatest tricks of Satan, just to trick Christians into wasting their days and pursuing temporary pleasures instead of long-term joy. I came across a quote this week, and I that it was timely from some pastor that I didn't recognize and he just simply said, all of Satan's promises are for the right now. Promises without process are lies. God promises us the future. Satan promises us today. And we so very easily choose today. But really, I think in a room full, for the most part, of believers, the reason, probably the predominant reason, we struggle to believe Psalm 1611, is if we're being honest, I think we're afraid to be on fire. I think we're afraid to be a 10. I think we're afraid to be zealots. We're afraid to be on fire for Jesus. We don't want to be that person. We don't want to have to give up everything and move to Malawi and teach and write the Bible in another language. We don't want to have to do that. We don't want to have to sell all the things that we've acquired. We don't want to have to give up the pleasures that we enjoy. I know for me, the thing that makes me scared to be a zealot, and listen, I'm speaking to me more than you right now. The thing that makes me scared is I just don't want to be weird. I want people to like me. I like having friends. So I think we're scared to be on fire. And after being around church people my whole life, I'm convinced that this is true. And when I say this, just know I'm saying this to me, okay? I'm saying this to me. I am convicted by this. I am stepping on my own toes. If this doesn't apply to you, great. If it does, welcome into my conviction. But I'm saying it to me. I'm convinced that we carve out for ourselves a moderate middle ground that appears spiritually healthy while still leaving us the Lord of our own lives. I'm convinced that a vast majority of Christians are afraid to be on fire, and so what we do is we carve out for ourselves a moderate middle ground of spirituality that makes us appear spiritually healthy while still giving us space to hang on to some of the things that bring us joy and pleasure and therefore still being the lords of our own lives. I'm going to go to church. I'm going to go to Bible study. I'm going to say the things. I'm going to have the right friends. I'm going to reorient my life. I'm going to look different now than I did years ago. And now I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing okay. I'm not a 10, but I'm like a seven. And this is a pretty comfortable place for me. Maybe I'm the only one that does that. But we carve out this moderate middle ground. I'm not John the Baptist. Okay. I'm not one of the disciples, but I'm not one of the bad ones either. I'm good. Could I be doing better? Sure. Everybody could be doing better. Could I be doing worse? A lot worse. You should have known me five years ago. And so we carve out this middle ground. Well, we're not on fire. We're not totally cold and turned off to the Lord. We're just like a seven. And we're good with it. When we do that, the Bible has something to say about it. About specifically that. In Revelation chapter three, Jesus has written letters to seven churches in Revelation two and three. And in chapter three, he says, you're pretty good. You do a lot of good things to this particular church. But then in 3.16, he says this, but you are lukewarm. And because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. That word spit there is better translated as vomit or spew. That's what Jesus thinks of the middle ground that we carve out for ourselves. Well, we're comfortable and happy and sure, I could give more, I could do more, I could grow more, I could sacrifice more, but that's scary, I don't want to do it. I'm doing pretty good here as a seven. God, if you'll just kind of leave me alone and worry about some of those threes, I'll be happy to invite them to my house. I'll be good. And Jesus says, couldn't be less interested in that. To me, Nate, I couldn't be less interested in your moderate middle ground of spirituality here. He calls us to be on fire. He calls us to be zealots. And if you're in this conviction with me, of this middle ground that we carve out for ourselves, I would invite you into this question. What is it that you're afraid of? If you light your hair on fire for Jesus and go burn the world down, what is it that you're afraid of? What is it that worries you about getting up every day and reading God's word? What is it that worries you about inviting Jesus into every moment of your life? What is it that worries you about being a zealot? Is it that you'll have to give up something that brings you pleasure? God has more pleasure waiting for you if you'll just trust him, if you'll just drop your mud pies and go with him on vacation, what are we scared of? Is there some pleasure or friend group or thing that you like to do that you're worried, well, if I really sell out, then I can't engage in that anymore. So what? God's got something better. Well, I'm worried that, this is me, I'm worried that I'm going to be weird. People won't like me, that I won't be relatable. Who cares? Jesus didn't call me to be relatable. He called me to be passionate about him. And I bet the joy that I'll find there and the relationships that are there and the magnanimity of the love that's found there will do just fine with the weirdness. What are we afraid of that God's not going to give us back? What kind of pleasures are we embracing in our middle ground that we don't want to let go because I don't want to go too far? Why? Are you afraid he's going to ask you to sell everything and move to Ghana? He's probably not. If all American Christians moved to Ghana at once, that would be inconvenient. He's probably not going to do that. But even if he did, you'll find pleasures forevermore and fullness of joy in Ghana, so go to Ghana, man. What are we scared of? I think we're scared of being zealots. And so maybe what we need to do is understand what that means. I don't think that being a zealot is selling everything and becoming a weirdo and moving out into the wilderness like John the Baptist and wearing camel skins and eating locusts. I think that being a zealot means inviting Jesus into every moment of your life. Into every conversation. Inviting him in. How would you have me handle this? How can I reflect you here? Into every quiet, peaceful moment. Into every still morning. Into every late night. Into every dinner conversation. Into every relationship, into every work interaction, inviting him into every email, into every prayer. I think being a zealot looks like simply inviting Jesus into every moment of your life. What harm can come if we do that? What possible thing could we give up that's worth anything at all if we simply start by inviting Jesus into every moment of our life? If we do that, you know what we'll find? That our view of him begins to enlargen. That the lies of Satan become less convincing. That the fear of being on fire becomes a lot less fearful. So let's do that, Grace. Let's collectively light our hair on fire and light the world on fire for Jesus. Let's collectively be zealots. Let's collectively trust that this verse is true. And let's collectively ask ourselves the tough question, what am I hanging on to that's preventing me from pursuing God? That's preventing me from pursuing Jesus, from abiding in his presence and creating a larger view of him in my life. And then let's ask ourselves if it's worth it. I know that for me this week, as I've sat in this verse, I've developed a more deep conviction than ever that I want to trust this verse. I want to believe it. I want to live it out. I want to go be a zealot. And I want the church to come with me. Let's pray. Father, we love you. I'll be the first to admit, God, sometimes I just, all the time, I love you the best way I know how. It's an imperfect, insufficient, hypocritical, broken love. But God, we love you. We're grateful for Jesus. We really are. We know that sometimes it doesn't seem like that. We know that we demand a lot of your forgiveness. God, we are grateful for it. Lord, I know that I have been afraid to give up some of the things that I think are actually bringing me joy when all they're doing is keeping me from you. So I pray that you would give me the strength to walk away from those things and the strength of faith and hope to trust that you're going to bring me to these paths of life, to the best places possible. God, would you give us the strength this morning to put down our mud pies and trust that where you're taking us is exponentially better than anything we could ever cook up for ourselves. I pray that we would grow in our view of Jesus and be so enamored with him that we would just sprint towards him with all of our might. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

Well, good morning. Thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I am the senior pastor here. If you're here this morning and I haven't yet had the chance to meet you, I would love to do that. So please say hello in the lobby after the service. If you're watching online, thanks for doing that. Particularly if you're on vacation, thanks for making us a part of your Sunday, even while you're away. This is the last sermon in our series, One Hit Wonders, where we have been pausing and looking at some verses and passages that we don't often get to stop at in a normal series or in our normal Bible study. Some of the lesser known verses and passages that we find in Scripture, a lot of them have been in the Minor Prophets, which is a whole section of the Old Testament that we don't often explore. But this morning is admittedly more of a greatest hit than a one-hit wonder. It's actually apropos with the last question of our little game, trivia game that we were playing there in the bumper video. Steve, I don't know if you did that on purpose, but I'm actually going to pull this one out of Psalms, which is that's the Beatles of the Bible. All the greatest hits there are in Psalms. And so the one that I'm pulling out this morning is one that we have framed and in our house. It's a very frameable verse. I would encourage you to do that. If you've never heard Psalm 1611 before, I think it's going to be one that you'll identify with and appreciate, and hopefully we can leave today thinking about in a different way, especially if you are aware of this verse. But Psalm 1611 simply says this. This is where we're going to focus this morning. David writes, you make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. You make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. That's a heck of a verse, isn't it? I mean, that's a really encouraging, life-giving verse. That's a great promise that David makes to us through the voice of God in Psalms. And as we walk through it, that first sentence, you make known to me the paths of life. Often in Psalms, David adopts kind of the motif of a shepherd, us as the sheep and God as our good shepherd. Psalm 23 is a very familiar Psalm where it says, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. So maintaining that illustration, you make known to me the paths of life is this picture of a shepherd leading his sheep to the good places, leading his sheep to where they can eat, to where they can drink, to where they can rest, to where they'll be protected. And so he's saying, and in the onset, you lead me to the life-giving paths, to fullness of life. You lead me, God, to the best possible places. And then he says, in your presence, there's fullness of joy. Now, I don't know if you've ever thought about this. Not everyone here is a scientist. You may not be aware of this fact, but you can't get fuller than full, man. When you're full, that's it. This idea in sports that we give 110%, that's bupkis. You can't do it. It's 100%. That's it. When you're full, you're full. So what he's saying is in God's presence, you will experience maximum joy. It is impossible to find any other place in the known universe, any other scenario, any other situation. It is impossible to pursue any other relationship in which you will find more joy than in your relationship with God, than in the presence of the Father, there is fullness of joy. And then he says, and at the right hand of the Father are pleasures forevermore. And we learn in Romans and Hebrews that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for us as our high priest. So what that is saying is, in Christ, if we obey John 15, when Jesus says, abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit, if we abide in Christ, if we pursue him, if we love him, if we chase him, if we know him, if we are intimate with him, then we will experience pleasures forevermore. That's some astounding promises, right? He's going to lead us to the best places possible in God's presence as we pursue him, as Steve and Lisa invited us into worship, as we go into worship, as we take ourselves like in Isaiah 6 into the throne room of God in prayer, in his presence, we will experience the fullness of joy. And then as we pursue Jesus and we go to his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. That's a pretty good promise, isn't it? Isn't that what we're all chasing anyways? Just better days and a happier existence? If we were to say for ourselves, what do you want in 20, 30 years? We'd say, I just want to be happy. If you have kids and you say, what do you want for your kids? One of the things I promise would be in your top five answers is, top three answers is, I just want them to be happy. This verse promises that. So I actually think that if we really believe that, if we really believe Psalm 1611, that our own selfishness would drive us to God. If we really believe this verse, that he's going to lead us to try to be generous or unselfish. We can do the most selfish thing possible, and that selfishness should, in theory, based on these promises, drive us straight to the throne of God. We should respond to this verse. Like I responded to the news in my mid-twenties that places like Fogo de Chão existed. Now, I don't know if you know what Fogo de Chão is, because we had one in Atlanta. That's where I'm from. We don't have one in Raleigh. It's a Churras, Korea. It's a Brazilian steakhouse. There's one over in Briar Creek, I think. I still need to get over there. But in a Brazilian steakhouse, let me just, let me just tell you what they do there. Okay. This is unbelievable. Some of y'all know. If you know me, you know, I love steak. I really do. I had steak the other night for the first time since John was born because I like to make it myself and it's a whole process and I was in heaven watching the recorded Open Championship. Anyways, I love steak. And they told me, and I was like 25, 26, you know there's this place called Fogo de Chão. And when you go there, there's a card next to your plate. And one side is red and one side is green. And when you put it on the green side, they just bring you steak until you flip it back to red. And I'm like, what now? And so I go to this place, right? And there's these men and they walk around with these skewers of perfectly cooked steak. And they bring it up to you. Your card is green. They go, would you like some, sir? Yes, I would. I'm glad that you came. And they start to slice the filet or the top sirloin or the skirt steak or the bottom sirloin or the lamb or whatever it is. Jen, we need to go to this place for lunch today. They just start shaving it until you tell them to stop. If you want a steak mountain on your plate, you can have a steak mountain. It's amazing. And I'm just telling you, if you leave there without the meat sweats, you're not a good American. It's a remarkable place. And so when they told me that this place existed, with all of my heart, all I thought is, I want to go to there. I want to go. I'll save my money. I will lie to people. I will disappear for three days so I can go to this place and experience phogo to chow. That's where I want to go. That's how we should respond to this verse. What? There's a place I can go and there is fullness of joy. There are pleasures forevermore. There's someone I can follow who will lead me to only the best places. That's a thing? I want to go to there. I'll disappear for three days. I'll sever relationships. I'll give up whatever I do. I'll save up whatever I gotta do. I want to go to there. That's how we should respond to this verse. If we believe that the Bible is the word of God and that what's in here is eternally true and good and right and worth staking our life on, if we really believe that this is God's word and that what he's telling us, what David is saying is true, then why don't we treat the kingdom of God like Jesus tells us to when he said the kingdom of God is like someone who finds a pearl in a field and they sell everything they have so they can buy that field and have that pearl. We would forsake everything for the kingdom of God and for the presence of God and to walk and abide with Jesus if we really believe this. But see, for me, I'm just talking about me. I'm not talking about you guys. For me, my actions don't bear out that I really believe this. If I really, truly believe that in the presence of God, I would find the fullness of joy, then I would betray everything that's not associated with that presence and chase after it as hard as I could. But I don't. And see, I'm preaching this because I've been a Christian about as far back as my memory goes. I've been around Christians for 40 years. I've talked to a lot of them. I have yet to meet a single Christian that when I ask them, how's your relationship with God going? How you doing? How's your spiritual health? I've never heard a single one of them say, I'm nailing it. I mean, I'm really good at this. I mean, about five, 10 years ago, I got to this place where I was just really walking with the Lord and now I'm just waiting on him to come down here and carry me up to heaven in a chariot without having to experience death. How can I help you? I've never met that person. Everyone I talk to has this profound sense of, I ought to be doing better by now. I know better than to do the things that I do. I thought I'd be closer with Jesus by now. I thought I'd be further along. I thought I'd be more spiritually mature and spiritually healthy. That's my experience of faith. There's this constant voice going, why aren't you better at this? And I think it's because we don't really believe that verse. We say we do. Do you believe the Bible? Yes. Every word? Yes. All of them. Okay, well, we don't seem to believe this one. So the interesting question becomes, why is that? Why do we have such a hard time trusting this verse in Psalms that says that in the presence of God, in the presence of Jesus, there are pleasures forevermore, which we all would agree we want. Then why doesn't our life look like we believe it? I think one of the big reasons is that we have an impoverished view of Jesus. We just have this impoverished view of who Jesus is. I've told you guys this before. I do premarital counseling with couples that are getting married. And one of the things I always ask them, so I won't belabor this because I really have told you guys this before, but the point that I'm making is important. I'll ask them on a scale of one to 10, place yourself on that scale of spiritual health. 10 is just zealot on fire for God, Elijah in the Old Testament, John the Baptist, just going and doing everything for Jesus, just totally on fire zealot. And then one is just very, very far from God. And I'll ask them, where are you in your spiritual health? And without fail, people will answer four to six, okay? Because no one wants to say, well, I'm currently doing great. And no one's going to admit to being a two. So everybody says four to six, okay? And then I'll say, and this is the important part, all right, that's great. In five years, where would you like to be? And it's really a vehicle, the numbers don't matter, it's a vehicle to talk about what steps can we take to grow in our spiritual health. That's what it's there for, to help us get into that discussion. But what's interesting to me is when I ask people, and where do you want to be in five years without fail? Eight. I've had one person in 11 years of premarital counseling say 10. One person. Everybody else, eight. I don't want to be like, I don't want to be crazy zealot. I don't want to be that person. Just make me an eight. That'd be great. And what they probably really mean is seven, but they're telling the pastor, so let's bump it up. And I can't help but think that that's probably due at least in part to the fact that they probably don't think that walking with Jesus is that big of a deal. They probably aren't that enraptured with Jesus. I probably just don't think he's as big of a deal as he is. Whatever picture we have in our head of what it would be like to be a 10 isn't that attractive. It's just not that great. We're not that compelled by it, so we don't pursue it. Why don't we say 10? Because we don't want to be. Because whatever's at 10 is not really something that we would enjoy. Because I think we have this small view of who Jesus is. Because for some reason or another, we've never just fallen in love with scriptures and made it a habit to get up and read it every day and see Jesus on these pages and read the gospels and walk through his life and see how he forgave and see how he was generous and see how he loved and see how he sacrificed and fallen in love with him. We haven't allowed the sin and the weight that so easily entangles in Hebrews. We haven't allowed that to fall to the wayside to a degree that we can begin to experience our savior. We haven't engaged in worship in such a way that we turn our heart to God and let him fill it up with his joy. We haven't stopped and reflected on the fact that Jesus, God, condescended, came down from heaven, became one of us, walked with us in our filth, was patient and gracious with us, marched to the cross, died there on the cross for us, even though he knew that we would crud on it with our own life and with our own actions and with our own hypocrisy and sits at the right hand of the Father despite all of that and intercedes for us. We don't sit in the weight of that reality and allow the gratitude and the grandeur of his forgiveness and grace to wash over us. And it allows us to create this impoverished view of Jesus that isn't really all that compelling. And I think one of the reasons we keep our view of Jesus small is the second reason why we struggle sometimes, I think, to believe Psalm 1611, which is that we like making mud pies. We like making mud pies. C.S. Lewis was an author in England prior to and through World War II, and one of the greatest authors of all time. And he described sin in this way. This is a very gross, loose paraphrase. But he described sin like this. He said, it's as if we are children and our parents want to take us on the most amazing holiday. For us in America, it'd be a vacation. Our parents want to take us on the most amazing vacation, but we content ourselves sitting in the backyard making mud pies. We'll sit in the backyard playing with mud because we don't believe that anything could possibly be better than this, and our parents have the most amazing vacation on the planet planned for us, and we're totally disinterested in it. That's how he describes sin. That God has the fullness of joy. He has pleasures forevermore. He leads us to the paths of life. He has something better for us that he's trying to draw us to and we content ourselves with making mud pies in our backyard because we just don't believe there could be anything better. This is actually a trick of the enemy. This is a lie of Satan. You understand that, right? Think of it this way. One of Satan's best lies is to trick us into sacrificing long-term joy on the altar of short-term pleasure. One of the enemy's greatest tactics is to trick us into sacrificing long-term joy on the altar of short-term pleasure, on what we can have right now. Isn't this why most of us fail at diets? Not me, but you fail at diets. Because I want to be in good shape. I want to exercise and have the sweat show up here before it shows up here. I want that very much. But I also want a steak right now. I also want Cinnabon. I also want a Chick-fil-A, number one. And I want the sweet tea and I want it to be large. We also want those things. And so we sacrifice long-term things on the altar of the immediate. And this is a trick that Satan plays on us, where God offers us the fullness of joy in this process. God is thinking long-term. He's promising us things years down the road, and we sacrifice those things on what we want right now. Marriage is probably the easiest example of this, where God makes it very clear in Scripture, in Genesis, and then repeated again in Mark, that for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh. And what God has put together, let no man separate. It is God's will for your life. When you are born, it is his will and hope that you would meet one person, that you would marry them, that you would become one flesh, and that you would experience the fullness of joy that comes from being in this lifelong giving relationship. Now, I'm not trying to diminish people who have walked through divorce or are currently divorced or whatever and diminish you as being outside of God's will. I believe that divorce happens because we're broken people and that there is redemption after that. But if we want to talk about what God wants for us, he wants a husband and wife to be united in one flesh and he wants them to walk down the years and the decades following him and knowing him and raising children together and walking through things together and experiencing the depth of love that can only come through that level of commitment sustained through the decades. That's what he wants for us. There's joy and happiness there. Just last night, I'm going to embarrass Jen here, I'm sorry, but just last night, Jen and I, we've got an 11-week-old and we've got a five-and-a-half-year-old, and sometimes, just sometimes, only me, this is not true of Jen, but sometimes I don't like either of them. I just want to sit. Yesterday may or may not have been one of those times. But we had a plan. That last night, we had a plan. We're going to get the kids to bed, and we're going to go get Chinese, and we're going to bring it back. There's this knee Asian kitchen that's really, really good. And we went, and we got the stuff. And I bring it back, and we set it out on the console table and we sit down on the floor and we eat Chinese and we watch Hometown with Ben and Aaron who are charming. If you're not watching Hometown, I mean, you're missing out. They're great folks. And we watched that and we laughed together and we ate together and we talked about how good the food was and then afterwards we laughed at Instagram videos and then both of us couldn't stop commenting on how great it was to have that night and how much we loved each other. Give me that. Give me that love after 15 years, all day long over our honeymoon in St. Lucia. When we were 25 years old, we went to St. Lucia for our honeymoon and we thought it was great and it was the best and we're so in love and it was wonderful. Man, that's nothing compared to what we experienced last night. Give me Chinese on the floor hiding from our children and our dog over a week in St. Lucia because the love 15 years in and what we've walked through and what we experienced and what we know about each other and the ways that our love has changed over the years is so much richer than it was 15 years ago. Now, I can't wait to experience what some of you guys have experienced being 10 and 20 years beyond where we are and the fullness of love that comes there. That's what God wants for us. He wants us to experience that fullness, but there's a process and it takes time. And Satan, Satan would will to steal that joy from us by tempting us to just fade in our marriage and not put in the work that we need by tempting us to just be selfish. And today I know I should help with the kids. I know I should do these things. I know I should love. I know we should go to counseling. I know that we need to work on this marriage, but today it's hard and I don't want to. So we sacrifice future joy on the altar of the immediate. Or even worse, he begins to tempt us to look outside our marriage and that would be fun and that would be entertaining for a season and that would be a type of joy and pleasure that we don't get to experience. And so we do and we sacrifice what could be long-term joy on the altar of immediate pleasure. It's true in our quiet times. I've said dozens of times from this stage, there's no more important habit in our life than to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and spend time in prayer. And we know this. And we know that through doing that, we will find Jesus, we will be drawn to him, we will be caught up in him, that life will be better, that our attitude will be better, that our spiritual health will be better. We know it's good for us. Most of the whole room would agree with me that that would be an excellent practice in our lives, and yet for many of us, we don't have it. Why? Because it's easier to hit the snooze button. It's easier to flick through Twitter. It's easier to turn on SportsCenter or to get to work early or to just sit in the quiet or to read a book. There's so many different things that we could do besides dive into God's Word. And so once again, we sacrifice the joy that waits for us in the presence of God on the altar of the immediate, doing what we want. This is one of the greatest tricks of Satan, just to trick Christians into wasting their days and pursuing temporary pleasures instead of long-term joy. I came across a quote this week, and I that it was timely from some pastor that I didn't recognize and he just simply said, all of Satan's promises are for the right now. Promises without process are lies. God promises us the future. Satan promises us today. And we so very easily choose today. But really, I think in a room full, for the most part, of believers, the reason, probably the predominant reason, we struggle to believe Psalm 1611, is if we're being honest, I think we're afraid to be on fire. I think we're afraid to be a 10. I think we're afraid to be zealots. We're afraid to be on fire for Jesus. We don't want to be that person. We don't want to have to give up everything and move to Malawi and teach and write the Bible in another language. We don't want to have to do that. We don't want to have to sell all the things that we've acquired. We don't want to have to give up the pleasures that we enjoy. I know for me, the thing that makes me scared to be a zealot, and listen, I'm speaking to me more than you right now. The thing that makes me scared is I just don't want to be weird. I want people to like me. I like having friends. So I think we're scared to be on fire. And after being around church people my whole life, I'm convinced that this is true. And when I say this, just know I'm saying this to me, okay? I'm saying this to me. I am convicted by this. I am stepping on my own toes. If this doesn't apply to you, great. If it does, welcome into my conviction. But I'm saying it to me. I'm convinced that we carve out for ourselves a moderate middle ground that appears spiritually healthy while still leaving us the Lord of our own lives. I'm convinced that a vast majority of Christians are afraid to be on fire, and so what we do is we carve out for ourselves a moderate middle ground of spirituality that makes us appear spiritually healthy while still giving us space to hang on to some of the things that bring us joy and pleasure and therefore still being the lords of our own lives. I'm going to go to church. I'm going to go to Bible study. I'm going to say the things. I'm going to have the right friends. I'm going to reorient my life. I'm going to look different now than I did years ago. And now I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing okay. I'm not a 10, but I'm like a seven. And this is a pretty comfortable place for me. Maybe I'm the only one that does that. But we carve out this moderate middle ground. I'm not John the Baptist. Okay. I'm not one of the disciples, but I'm not one of the bad ones either. I'm good. Could I be doing better? Sure. Everybody could be doing better. Could I be doing worse? A lot worse. You should have known me five years ago. And so we carve out this middle ground. Well, we're not on fire. We're not totally cold and turned off to the Lord. We're just like a seven. And we're good with it. When we do that, the Bible has something to say about it. About specifically that. In Revelation chapter three, Jesus has written letters to seven churches in Revelation two and three. And in chapter three, he says, you're pretty good. You do a lot of good things to this particular church. But then in 3.16, he says this, but you are lukewarm. And because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. That word spit there is better translated as vomit or spew. That's what Jesus thinks of the middle ground that we carve out for ourselves. Well, we're comfortable and happy and sure, I could give more, I could do more, I could grow more, I could sacrifice more, but that's scary, I don't want to do it. I'm doing pretty good here as a seven. God, if you'll just kind of leave me alone and worry about some of those threes, I'll be happy to invite them to my house. I'll be good. And Jesus says, couldn't be less interested in that. To me, Nate, I couldn't be less interested in your moderate middle ground of spirituality here. He calls us to be on fire. He calls us to be zealots. And if you're in this conviction with me, of this middle ground that we carve out for ourselves, I would invite you into this question. What is it that you're afraid of? If you light your hair on fire for Jesus and go burn the world down, what is it that you're afraid of? What is it that worries you about getting up every day and reading God's word? What is it that worries you about inviting Jesus into every moment of your life? What is it that worries you about being a zealot? Is it that you'll have to give up something that brings you pleasure? God has more pleasure waiting for you if you'll just trust him, if you'll just drop your mud pies and go with him on vacation, what are we scared of? Is there some pleasure or friend group or thing that you like to do that you're worried, well, if I really sell out, then I can't engage in that anymore. So what? God's got something better. Well, I'm worried that, this is me, I'm worried that I'm going to be weird. People won't like me, that I won't be relatable. Who cares? Jesus didn't call me to be relatable. He called me to be passionate about him. And I bet the joy that I'll find there and the relationships that are there and the magnanimity of the love that's found there will do just fine with the weirdness. What are we afraid of that God's not going to give us back? What kind of pleasures are we embracing in our middle ground that we don't want to let go because I don't want to go too far? Why? Are you afraid he's going to ask you to sell everything and move to Ghana? He's probably not. If all American Christians moved to Ghana at once, that would be inconvenient. He's probably not going to do that. But even if he did, you'll find pleasures forevermore and fullness of joy in Ghana, so go to Ghana, man. What are we scared of? I think we're scared of being zealots. And so maybe what we need to do is understand what that means. I don't think that being a zealot is selling everything and becoming a weirdo and moving out into the wilderness like John the Baptist and wearing camel skins and eating locusts. I think that being a zealot means inviting Jesus into every moment of your life. Into every conversation. Inviting him in. How would you have me handle this? How can I reflect you here? Into every quiet, peaceful moment. Into every still morning. Into every late night. Into every dinner conversation. Into every relationship, into every work interaction, inviting him into every email, into every prayer. I think being a zealot looks like simply inviting Jesus into every moment of your life. What harm can come if we do that? What possible thing could we give up that's worth anything at all if we simply start by inviting Jesus into every moment of our life? If we do that, you know what we'll find? That our view of him begins to enlargen. That the lies of Satan become less convincing. That the fear of being on fire becomes a lot less fearful. So let's do that, Grace. Let's collectively light our hair on fire and light the world on fire for Jesus. Let's collectively be zealots. Let's collectively trust that this verse is true. And let's collectively ask ourselves the tough question, what am I hanging on to that's preventing me from pursuing God? That's preventing me from pursuing Jesus, from abiding in his presence and creating a larger view of him in my life. And then let's ask ourselves if it's worth it. I know that for me this week, as I've sat in this verse, I've developed a more deep conviction than ever that I want to trust this verse. I want to believe it. I want to live it out. I want to go be a zealot. And I want the church to come with me. Let's pray. Father, we love you. I'll be the first to admit, God, sometimes I just, all the time, I love you the best way I know how. It's an imperfect, insufficient, hypocritical, broken love. But God, we love you. We're grateful for Jesus. We really are. We know that sometimes it doesn't seem like that. We know that we demand a lot of your forgiveness. God, we are grateful for it. Lord, I know that I have been afraid to give up some of the things that I think are actually bringing me joy when all they're doing is keeping me from you. So I pray that you would give me the strength to walk away from those things and the strength of faith and hope to trust that you're going to bring me to these paths of life, to the best places possible. God, would you give us the strength this morning to put down our mud pies and trust that where you're taking us is exponentially better than anything we could ever cook up for ourselves. I pray that we would grow in our view of Jesus and be so enamored with him that we would just sprint towards him with all of our might. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.