Revelation

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

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

Good morning, I'm Doug Bergeson. Wait, wait, you've got to be kidding me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it just a few months ago when Kyle Tolbert, our youth pastor, came up here to speak? And before he uttered a word, before a single word, good or bad, was out of his mouth, you were applauding him. What do I get? I'll tell you what I get. I get bubkis, nada, nothing. Let me tell you something. It's not lost on us, those of us who are asked to speak in the middle of July, but never ever at Christmas time, and for sure not at Easter. It's not lost on us that we're not on God's A-team. We get it. We're not stupid. So given that, it might be nice if you tried to be a little bit more encouraging and supportive. So let's try this again. I would not have done that. You know, the Bible's very clear that we're to test and approve what we hear, to be discerning about what's being taught, not just to accept it willy-nilly. And here you all are already clapping for me, and you haven't the faintest idea what I'm going to say. Come on, people, you're better than that. Anyways, hopefully it's obvious that I'm just goofing around, as I'm not only thrilled to be here, but I feel immense privilege to be sharing this morning. And just for the record, far from expecting applause, my desperate and sincere prayer and hope is that God will make what I say clear and useful to you all. I'm really excited about this new sermon series that we're starting. In the past, when I've been asked to speak, I've always kind of hemmed and hawed, wanted to think about it. But when Nate called me this time and explained that the new series was going to be on the obscure heroes of the Bible, I was, for some strange reason, I was enthused, and I immediately jumped at the chance. A big part of it might be that it's just different than the norm, and different is sometimes really good. Mix it up a little bit, move off the beaten path. But more than simply serving as a nice change of pace, there's a much more consequential reason for studying these obscure heroes. They have a lot to teach us. Now, there are plenty of times when I wish the Bible was easier to understand and didn't avoid so many questions that I'd like answers to. Wish that it explained a whole bunch of things better. A little less ambiguity and mystery would sometimes be nice. But in response to that wish, I've heard it said that God, whose Spirit inspired every word written, must have included what He thought was important, what He thought we needed to know. So rather than worrying about the stuff that wasn't included, we'd be much better served paying attention to the things and those people and those events that God did include in his word to us. And that brings us back to our sermon series. God saw fit to tell us about these characters and their stories. And for that reason, we are not going to ignore or gloss over or relegate these heroes to a footnote any longer. Instead, we're going to exploit them for all their worth and see what they can teach us, what they can reveal to us, how they might strengthen and encourage us. The Apostle Paul said it this way, for everything that was written in the past, even obscure heroes that maybe we've never heard of, was written to teach us so that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. As I said, I was surprisingly enthused when Nate called me. Not only was I pumped for the series, but one name immediately popped into my head and I knew that was my guy. That was who I was going to talk about, Gamaliel, the great Pharisee and teacher of the law, and what he wisely concluded when confronted by the incredible boldness and defiance of Peter and the other disciples in the earliest times of the Christian movement. Now, how many of you have heard of Gamaliel? You don't have to raise your hands. You know, just wink or smile as I look around the room. Nothing but a sea of blank, expressionless faces. That's perfect. But before we get to Gamaliel, I need to set the table a bit for you, provide the backdrop to help explain why what he does, what he acknowledges is so valuable to me, that his was the first name in all the Bible that popped into my head. In other words, I need to make sure that we're on the same page with respect to one significant foundational point in order for us to see why Gamaliel, who himself is not even a believer in Jesus Christ, is a hero for us today. The key foundational point is to identify the overarching story of the Bible. Some of you are probably going, oh, sheesh, we're not going to be out of here until Tuesday. Not to worry, not to worry. It's not that daunting a task. In a nutshell, the opening chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, reveal that God's loving intent was to provide all that we, His creations, need. Our job, our part of the bargain, is to trust that He is both able and willing to do that on our behalf, and for us to resist the temptation to want to decide for ourselves what's best. The rest of the Bible is just a long and involved telling of our incredible struggle to trust in God rather than ourselves, as well as the remarkable lengths God goes to to make it possible for us ultimately to place our full and abiding confidence in Him. Now, most of you are probably familiar with the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The garden was a fantastic place. Those two have a great life. It's a really sweet setup. There's only one rule, don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, growing up in church, I didn't fully understand the significance of the boundary God established for humankind. My general sense was, you know, God likes rules. He's kind of a stickler about rules. And Adam and Eve got in pretty big trouble because they broke one of them. Well, as I've later come to understand, what actually happened was a much bigger deal than simply breaking a rule. What actually happened struck at the very heart of God's intent for creation. In allowing them to eat from any tree but the one, God was establishing the critical boundary for Adam and Eve and for every human since. God was saying, if you want to enjoy all of the good of my creation and live in my kingdom, you have to trust that I and I alone know what's best for you. And even more than that, you have to trust that I'm both able and willing to provide it to you. And so the questions that's faced Adam and Eve, as well as you and me, is do you believe that? Are you convinced that God knows what's best for you and that He is intent on providing it at all times and in all circumstances? When Eve first faced that question, the fate of all humanity hung in the balance. And what did she decide? Well, it turns out Eve wasn't completely convinced that God could be trusted. And she decided and felt the need to trust in someone else. Eve, that's who she decided to trust. She just trusted in herself instead. And now the serpent was cunning and planted the seed in Eve's mind that although God was certainly able to provide what was best for her, He wasn't willing but was holding something back. The serpent said, come on, Eve, you won't die. God's only worried that if you eat that fruit, you'll be like Him and be able to decide for yourself what's best, then you'll be your own God. And that has been humankind's struggle ever since. In the last book of the Bible, Revelation, it wasn't a question of God was willing to provide for his people, but if he was even able. Written at a time when Christ followers were just undergoing terrific persecution, with their very lives at stake, the facts on the ground were so difficult and so dire that only a nut job would conclude that somehow God was still in control and still in charge. And into that terrifically difficult and stressful situation, the Apostle John shared a vision of being transported up to the throne room of heaven where God sort of pulls back the curtain for a second just to show what's really going on behind the scenes. The message, no matter how things look from your perspective, I am God and there is no other. I have your back now and I have it for all eternity. Nothing can ever separate you from my loving care. Your faith and trust are well placed. God is asking each of us, do you believe, are you completely convinced that I'm both able and willing to provide the very best for you? That's the central question running throughout the entire Bible, and it's the central question of our human existence. But our struggle, our temptation, is to say in all different ways, well, God, to tell you the truth, in this particular area of my life, or in this particular relationship, or in this circumstance at this particular time, I'd like to have a say. I'd rather decide for myself what's best for me, what will make me most content, most comfortable, most safe, most fulfilled, most affirmed, most successful, most happy. After all, wouldn't I know better than anyone else what's in my best interest? That's exactly what Eve did. That's exactly what I do. And that is the root of all sin, a failure to trust in God's promise. We're just not entirely convinced, not enough to give up complete control. A famous passage from Proverbs that many of you probably know by heart is, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. But that's not easy. Our world and our culture constantly bombard us from every conceivable angle with arguments that God, even if he does exist, is neither able or willing to provide what's best for us. That life demands we take charge and we're better off when we do. Non-stop appeals to be our own little lords of our own little lives. Now we're going to do a little audience participation here for just a minute. I'd like you all to close your eyes. Alan, keep your eyes closed. Okay. Imagine that you're on the seventh floor of an office building. You are alone, and it's dark. An electrical short circuit has knocked out the lights and started an intense fire, which has engulfed the entire floor and will soon breach the room you're in. The smoke coming in under the door and through the vents is overwhelming, forcing you to drop to your knees. Your eyes are burning and you're beginning to cough uncontrollably. You can open your eyes now. Suddenly, off to your right, you hear a violent pounding on the outside of the far wall. Then the blade of an axe comes crashing through and soon the shape of a firefighter appears in the opening and he shouts, come on, follow me, I'll get you out. Wouldn't he be surprised if you yelled back, oh, thanks, buddy. I'm good. I got this. Of course, no one would do that. No one trapped and on the brink of perishing would respond that way. We would not only listen to the firefighter's commands, we would literally cling to him. We would follow his every word because we implicitly trust him. Not only does he know what he's doing, but he went to great lengths to find and rescue us. And it's plain as day that we desperately need his help. My illustration borders on the ludicrous because we'd never do that. Yet that's what we say to God all the time. I'm good. I got this. Now maybe some of us hear this illustration and say, that's not me. I'm good at trusting. My faith is rock solid. Maybe that's true, at least on the surface. But even for those of us who trust God fully in most areas of our lives, I bet that there are little nooks and crannies. I appreciated you using that earlier. Little pockets where we don't. A relationship, a decision, a priority, a behavior, perhaps, for which we're not convinced God's preferred course of action serves us best. So we plot the course by our own wisdom. We decide for ourselves what's best. And when we do that, we forfeit some portion of the abundant life that God so desperately wants for us. Sadly, doubting God's promises, not being fully convinced that he is both able and willing to provide the best for me in all of life's situations, happens far more than I even recognize. The decision to trust in my own judgment is typically very subtle. So subtle, in fact, that I don't even realize that I'm doing it much of the time. I'll share an example from my own life, but first I have to give you some context. Twenty-six years ago, we moved down here from New Jersey. I quit a really good job on Wall Street. We sold our dream house that we only lived in for two years. We left our beautiful little town and all our friends. We had a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and a newborn. We moved for a lot of reasons, but chief among them was my concern that it was all too consuming and that only over time does the true cost of that kind of investment in one's career become apparent? And by that point, it's often too late. The damage has been done. I believe back then, as I still do today, that wherever your treasure is, wherever you invest most of your time, your energy, your ambition, that's where your heart will ultimately be found. And I knew that for me, I couldn't keep doing that job in that city for very long without it, for all practical purposes, becoming my treasure and stealing my heart. Okay, so we did everything they tell you not to do all at the same time. Moved to a different part of the country, changed careers, sold houses, bought houses, had another baby. Deb had just turned 33, and I was 35. The plan was that I would invest our modest nest egg in the financial markets to support our new downsized life, and we'd live happily ever after. Now, fast forward 15 years. I'm meeting Jeff Hancock, who is Grace's teaching pastor at Carolina Ale House. I think it was on a Wednesday afternoon because that's when they had their specials. It's true. Jeff and I had a relationship built largely on a strong and abiding shared love of beer and for the places that happen to serve beer. Is there any stronger foundation for a friendship? Nevertheless, that was ours. So we'd get together every so often. And that particular afternoon, as soon as I sat down, Jeff asked if there was something wrong. And I started weeping and began to share with him how I was in the midst of suffering what for me was a breathtaking financial loss in the futures market. How I couldn't sleep, how it had stolen all of my joy, how it affected all of my personal interactions, including my most cherished ones with my wife and kids. Excuse me. With the child in college and two in high school, how it jeopardized everything Deb and I had planned. That loss was wreaking havoc in my life. Now, I shared with Jeff that afternoon that, yes, I was obviously sad to have lost so much of our nest egg at such a critical time. Yes, I was sorry for my stubbornness, my stupidity. Yes, I was sorry for my arrogance not to respect the markets. All that was true. Yet the reason I was weeping, what most undid me, was what the loss revealed about where I placed my trust. How it betrayed the fact that much of my confidence, my security, and my hope was wrapped up in our little nest egg, and that the notion that I trusted God was clearly not true, if not a bald-faced lie. And that is what makes it so tricky, because a lot of the time our struggles to trust are in those gray areas, things which in and of themselves don't strike us being all that bad or sinful. Nevertheless, we are not doing what God is asking us to do, to trust him with everything and in every situation. We simply aren't convinced that his way is always the best way. In answer to his question, do you believe that I am both able and willing to provide all that you need, we are saying no, not always. In the example I just shared from my own life, my answer was clearly no, I'm not completely convinced. In addition to trusting you, I would like my nest egg back. When we worry about things, even very serious things, we are wrestling with the question, will I trust God with my crisis? Is He capable to handle it on my behalf? Once again, our worrying says no, as it reveals that we're simply not convinced that God can handle the situation, or at least not to our satisfaction. According to the Bible, worry is the opposite of trust. When we choose not to forgive someone, contrary to God's clear desire and instruction, what are we doing? In not so many words, we are saying, I don't believe that God knows what's best for me. What about how we spend our money? I like to think that I include God in those discussions. But what I really do is only involve him in the discussion about the small portion that I might realistically earmark for charity. Concerning the other much bigger chunk, the 80, 90, or 95%, I say, wait just a second, God. Stay in your lane, buddy. I gave you some. This over here is for me to decide what to do. Scripture encourages us to confess our sins to one another, even and perhaps especially the deepest, darkest, and most shameful ones. My immediate response is to say, no, thank you, over my dead body. No way can that possibly be in my best interest. We're encouraged as believers to always be prepared to share why our hope is in Jesus Christ. I don't do it. I don't want to offend this person or turn them off. I don't want to be thought a weirdo or a creep. I'm a confident person generally. I'll share my opinion on almost any topic with almost anyone. But for some strange reason, I don't trust that God will have my back if I share my faith. God says be thankful at all times and in all circumstances. But I don't want to always be thankful, and there just so happens to be things in my life that I'm not thankful for. Yet having a spirit of appreciation and thankfulness is one command of God's that I've come to acknowledge clearly leads to joy and abundant life. I think of the people I know who are most pleasant and encouraging to be around, the ones that are most nutritious for me. Almost without exception, there are people who live life in a spirit of thanksgiving. The old saying is true, it's not happy people who are thankful, it's thankful people who are happy. Ironically, even knowing this, there are still times when I choose to defy God's good intent for my life and instead choose the way of the woe-is-me, self-pitting grumpus. Now, I could go on and on, but if each of us took a deep dive into our motivations for doing some things and not others, for worrying about things over which we have little control, for habitually engaging in certain behaviors or responding in certain ways, for placing so much importance on what others think, we would understand more clearly that, at least in those instances, we're not fully convinced that God always has our best interests at heart or that His way is always best, that He is completely trustworthy in all of life's circumstances, that He is intent on giving us life to the full, the life that is truly life, if only we would trust. And that, at long last, brings us to our hero, Gamaliel. What he offers is a simple proof, evidence to bolster our conviction that the God we worship deserves our full confidence and trust. I've never been a fan of belief for belief's sake. Don't care how sincere it might be. In other words, if I'm going to believe that God always has my best interest at heart and is able and willing to provide it to me, I want it to be true. More than that, I need to be convinced that it's true if I'm ever going to fully trust in it. Otherwise, as we've seen this morning, I'm going to succumb to the temptation to lean on my own wisdom and judgment. This is where the battle lines are drawn and the war for my trust is waged. And this is where Gamaliel's cool logic and reasoning come through in the clutch. Now let's go to the story in the book of Acts and jump into the action. Our story takes place in Jerusalem, not long after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The Christian church is in its infancy and growing rapidly. The Jewish establishment is nervous and on edge. The disciples, Peter and John, have just healed a beggar who had been crippled from birth. Everyone was amazed, and when Peter saw their reaction, he said, men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if it's by our own power or godliness that we had made this man walk? You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. By faith in the name of Jesus, the man you see and know was made strong. It is in Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see. While they were still speaking, the Jewish leaders, none too pleased with Peter and John's message, arrested them and threw them in jail for the night. The next day, they were brought before their rulers and elders and teachers of the law who questioned them about the healing. By what power or what name did you do this? And Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, replied, Let me interrupt our story for just a second to point out what remarkable change can happen in the hearts and minds of ordinary men and women when convinced of God's truth and imbued with His Spirit. Just a short time ago, these same disciples were the gang that couldn't shoot straight, timid and wavering, untrusting, unreliable, and unconvinced. Now look, there's hope for all of us. Now back to our story. The Jewish leaders were astonished by the courage of Peter and John, especially when they realized they were ordinary unschooled guys and weren't sure what to do as they had to admit that the healing was a fantastic, outstanding miracle which they couldn't deny. And they couldn't really punish them because everybody was running around praising God because of that miracle. So they issued some threats and ordered Peter and John not to speak about this Jesus. However, even after the imprisonment and threats, the disciples continued to preach, teach, and heal until the high priest and his associates could not stand it any longer and arrested them again. But that night, an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail in order the disciples to go back to the temple and tell the people the full message of this new life. When all the rulers assembled the next morning and sent for Peter and John, they were surprised to learn that although the jail was locked and secure, nobody was inside. The Bible says they were puzzled by this. I love the understatement. I bet they were puzzled when they later learned that the men were back in the temple court preaching and teaching. They went and got them, but not by force for fear of what the people might do. The high priest again questioned them, and now reading from Acts 5, 28 through 39. This is the high priest. We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, he said. Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood. Peter and John and the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him. When they heard this, they were furious and wanted to put them to death. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. Then he addressed them, men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men. Some time ago, Thudas appeared, claiming to be someone, and about 400 men rallied to him. He was killed, and all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too wasailed, and the apostles were let go. And now here, for you all this morning, is the $64,000 question of the day. If Gamaliel, the wisest and most esteemed teacher of the day, could be here with us this morning, is there any doubt that he would conclude if their purpose is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men. You will only find yourselves fighting against God. Well, it hasn't been stopped. There has been nothing like it in all of human history. No other power or movement or belief system has come close. Down through all the centuries, across every people group and culture on earth, and reaching the furthest corners of our planet, God has been on the move, faithful to all his promises. The prophet Isaiah wrote about God's faithfulness this way. and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. And that's why Gamaliel is a hero to me. His wisdom and insight remind me again that God is true to his word always and is going to do what he promised to do. If I'm going to trust God completely and not rely on my own wisdom, but surrender control in all areas of my life, not just some of them, I need that assurance. Our God is both able and willing to provide all that we need. My hope and prayer for all of us this morning is that the words of the Apostle Paul might be our words. I know whom I have believed, and I'm convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day. Thank you. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for loving us. Thank you for all these people who carved out time on a hot Sunday morning to come to know you better and to worship you. Lord, thank you for pursuing us. Obviously, forgive us for all the times that we are trust wavers. We're simply not convinced that you're completely trustworthy in all of life's situations. Thank you for the hope that you give us through your son. And it's his name we pray. Amen.

Good morning, I'm Doug Bergeson. Wait, wait, you've got to be kidding me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it just a few months ago when Kyle Tolbert, our youth pastor, came up here to speak? And before he uttered a word, before a single word, good or bad, was out of his mouth, you were applauding him. What do I get? I'll tell you what I get. I get bubkis, nada, nothing. Let me tell you something. It's not lost on us, those of us who are asked to speak in the middle of July, but never ever at Christmas time, and for sure not at Easter. It's not lost on us that we're not on God's A-team. We get it. We're not stupid. So given that, it might be nice if you tried to be a little bit more encouraging and supportive. So let's try this again. I would not have done that. You know, the Bible's very clear that we're to test and approve what we hear, to be discerning about what's being taught, not just to accept it willy-nilly. And here you all are already clapping for me, and you haven't the faintest idea what I'm going to say. Come on, people, you're better than that. Anyways, hopefully it's obvious that I'm just goofing around, as I'm not only thrilled to be here, but I feel immense privilege to be sharing this morning. And just for the record, far from expecting applause, my desperate and sincere prayer and hope is that God will make what I say clear and useful to you all. I'm really excited about this new sermon series that we're starting. In the past, when I've been asked to speak, I've always kind of hemmed and hawed, wanted to think about it. But when Nate called me this time and explained that the new series was going to be on the obscure heroes of the Bible, I was, for some strange reason, I was enthused, and I immediately jumped at the chance. A big part of it might be that it's just different than the norm, and different is sometimes really good. Mix it up a little bit, move off the beaten path. But more than simply serving as a nice change of pace, there's a much more consequential reason for studying these obscure heroes. They have a lot to teach us. Now, there are plenty of times when I wish the Bible was easier to understand and didn't avoid so many questions that I'd like answers to. Wish that it explained a whole bunch of things better. A little less ambiguity and mystery would sometimes be nice. But in response to that wish, I've heard it said that God, whose Spirit inspired every word written, must have included what He thought was important, what He thought we needed to know. So rather than worrying about the stuff that wasn't included, we'd be much better served paying attention to the things and those people and those events that God did include in his word to us. And that brings us back to our sermon series. God saw fit to tell us about these characters and their stories. And for that reason, we are not going to ignore or gloss over or relegate these heroes to a footnote any longer. Instead, we're going to exploit them for all their worth and see what they can teach us, what they can reveal to us, how they might strengthen and encourage us. The Apostle Paul said it this way, for everything that was written in the past, even obscure heroes that maybe we've never heard of, was written to teach us so that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. As I said, I was surprisingly enthused when Nate called me. Not only was I pumped for the series, but one name immediately popped into my head and I knew that was my guy. That was who I was going to talk about, Gamaliel, the great Pharisee and teacher of the law, and what he wisely concluded when confronted by the incredible boldness and defiance of Peter and the other disciples in the earliest times of the Christian movement. Now, how many of you have heard of Gamaliel? You don't have to raise your hands. You know, just wink or smile as I look around the room. Nothing but a sea of blank, expressionless faces. That's perfect. But before we get to Gamaliel, I need to set the table a bit for you, provide the backdrop to help explain why what he does, what he acknowledges is so valuable to me, that his was the first name in all the Bible that popped into my head. In other words, I need to make sure that we're on the same page with respect to one significant foundational point in order for us to see why Gamaliel, who himself is not even a believer in Jesus Christ, is a hero for us today. The key foundational point is to identify the overarching story of the Bible. Some of you are probably going, oh, sheesh, we're not going to be out of here until Tuesday. Not to worry, not to worry. It's not that daunting a task. In a nutshell, the opening chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, reveal that God's loving intent was to provide all that we, His creations, need. Our job, our part of the bargain, is to trust that He is both able and willing to do that on our behalf, and for us to resist the temptation to want to decide for ourselves what's best. The rest of the Bible is just a long and involved telling of our incredible struggle to trust in God rather than ourselves, as well as the remarkable lengths God goes to to make it possible for us ultimately to place our full and abiding confidence in Him. Now, most of you are probably familiar with the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The garden was a fantastic place. Those two have a great life. It's a really sweet setup. There's only one rule, don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, growing up in church, I didn't fully understand the significance of the boundary God established for humankind. My general sense was, you know, God likes rules. He's kind of a stickler about rules. And Adam and Eve got in pretty big trouble because they broke one of them. Well, as I've later come to understand, what actually happened was a much bigger deal than simply breaking a rule. What actually happened struck at the very heart of God's intent for creation. In allowing them to eat from any tree but the one, God was establishing the critical boundary for Adam and Eve and for every human since. God was saying, if you want to enjoy all of the good of my creation and live in my kingdom, you have to trust that I and I alone know what's best for you. And even more than that, you have to trust that I'm both able and willing to provide it to you. And so the questions that's faced Adam and Eve, as well as you and me, is do you believe that? Are you convinced that God knows what's best for you and that He is intent on providing it at all times and in all circumstances? When Eve first faced that question, the fate of all humanity hung in the balance. And what did she decide? Well, it turns out Eve wasn't completely convinced that God could be trusted. And she decided and felt the need to trust in someone else. Eve, that's who she decided to trust. She just trusted in herself instead. And now the serpent was cunning and planted the seed in Eve's mind that although God was certainly able to provide what was best for her, He wasn't willing but was holding something back. The serpent said, come on, Eve, you won't die. God's only worried that if you eat that fruit, you'll be like Him and be able to decide for yourself what's best, then you'll be your own God. And that has been humankind's struggle ever since. In the last book of the Bible, Revelation, it wasn't a question of God was willing to provide for his people, but if he was even able. Written at a time when Christ followers were just undergoing terrific persecution, with their very lives at stake, the facts on the ground were so difficult and so dire that only a nut job would conclude that somehow God was still in control and still in charge. And into that terrifically difficult and stressful situation, the Apostle John shared a vision of being transported up to the throne room of heaven where God sort of pulls back the curtain for a second just to show what's really going on behind the scenes. The message, no matter how things look from your perspective, I am God and there is no other. I have your back now and I have it for all eternity. Nothing can ever separate you from my loving care. Your faith and trust are well placed. God is asking each of us, do you believe, are you completely convinced that I'm both able and willing to provide the very best for you? That's the central question running throughout the entire Bible, and it's the central question of our human existence. But our struggle, our temptation, is to say in all different ways, well, God, to tell you the truth, in this particular area of my life, or in this particular relationship, or in this circumstance at this particular time, I'd like to have a say. I'd rather decide for myself what's best for me, what will make me most content, most comfortable, most safe, most fulfilled, most affirmed, most successful, most happy. After all, wouldn't I know better than anyone else what's in my best interest? That's exactly what Eve did. That's exactly what I do. And that is the root of all sin, a failure to trust in God's promise. We're just not entirely convinced, not enough to give up complete control. A famous passage from Proverbs that many of you probably know by heart is, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. But that's not easy. Our world and our culture constantly bombard us from every conceivable angle with arguments that God, even if he does exist, is neither able or willing to provide what's best for us. That life demands we take charge and we're better off when we do. Non-stop appeals to be our own little lords of our own little lives. Now we're going to do a little audience participation here for just a minute. I'd like you all to close your eyes. Alan, keep your eyes closed. Okay. Imagine that you're on the seventh floor of an office building. You are alone, and it's dark. An electrical short circuit has knocked out the lights and started an intense fire, which has engulfed the entire floor and will soon breach the room you're in. The smoke coming in under the door and through the vents is overwhelming, forcing you to drop to your knees. Your eyes are burning and you're beginning to cough uncontrollably. You can open your eyes now. Suddenly, off to your right, you hear a violent pounding on the outside of the far wall. Then the blade of an axe comes crashing through and soon the shape of a firefighter appears in the opening and he shouts, come on, follow me, I'll get you out. Wouldn't he be surprised if you yelled back, oh, thanks, buddy. I'm good. I got this. Of course, no one would do that. No one trapped and on the brink of perishing would respond that way. We would not only listen to the firefighter's commands, we would literally cling to him. We would follow his every word because we implicitly trust him. Not only does he know what he's doing, but he went to great lengths to find and rescue us. And it's plain as day that we desperately need his help. My illustration borders on the ludicrous because we'd never do that. Yet that's what we say to God all the time. I'm good. I got this. Now maybe some of us hear this illustration and say, that's not me. I'm good at trusting. My faith is rock solid. Maybe that's true, at least on the surface. But even for those of us who trust God fully in most areas of our lives, I bet that there are little nooks and crannies. I appreciated you using that earlier. Little pockets where we don't. A relationship, a decision, a priority, a behavior, perhaps, for which we're not convinced God's preferred course of action serves us best. So we plot the course by our own wisdom. We decide for ourselves what's best. And when we do that, we forfeit some portion of the abundant life that God so desperately wants for us. Sadly, doubting God's promises, not being fully convinced that he is both able and willing to provide the best for me in all of life's situations, happens far more than I even recognize. The decision to trust in my own judgment is typically very subtle. So subtle, in fact, that I don't even realize that I'm doing it much of the time. I'll share an example from my own life, but first I have to give you some context. Twenty-six years ago, we moved down here from New Jersey. I quit a really good job on Wall Street. We sold our dream house that we only lived in for two years. We left our beautiful little town and all our friends. We had a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and a newborn. We moved for a lot of reasons, but chief among them was my concern that it was all too consuming and that only over time does the true cost of that kind of investment in one's career become apparent? And by that point, it's often too late. The damage has been done. I believe back then, as I still do today, that wherever your treasure is, wherever you invest most of your time, your energy, your ambition, that's where your heart will ultimately be found. And I knew that for me, I couldn't keep doing that job in that city for very long without it, for all practical purposes, becoming my treasure and stealing my heart. Okay, so we did everything they tell you not to do all at the same time. Moved to a different part of the country, changed careers, sold houses, bought houses, had another baby. Deb had just turned 33, and I was 35. The plan was that I would invest our modest nest egg in the financial markets to support our new downsized life, and we'd live happily ever after. Now, fast forward 15 years. I'm meeting Jeff Hancock, who is Grace's teaching pastor at Carolina Ale House. I think it was on a Wednesday afternoon because that's when they had their specials. It's true. Jeff and I had a relationship built largely on a strong and abiding shared love of beer and for the places that happen to serve beer. Is there any stronger foundation for a friendship? Nevertheless, that was ours. So we'd get together every so often. And that particular afternoon, as soon as I sat down, Jeff asked if there was something wrong. And I started weeping and began to share with him how I was in the midst of suffering what for me was a breathtaking financial loss in the futures market. How I couldn't sleep, how it had stolen all of my joy, how it affected all of my personal interactions, including my most cherished ones with my wife and kids. Excuse me. With the child in college and two in high school, how it jeopardized everything Deb and I had planned. That loss was wreaking havoc in my life. Now, I shared with Jeff that afternoon that, yes, I was obviously sad to have lost so much of our nest egg at such a critical time. Yes, I was sorry for my stubbornness, my stupidity. Yes, I was sorry for my arrogance not to respect the markets. All that was true. Yet the reason I was weeping, what most undid me, was what the loss revealed about where I placed my trust. How it betrayed the fact that much of my confidence, my security, and my hope was wrapped up in our little nest egg, and that the notion that I trusted God was clearly not true, if not a bald-faced lie. And that is what makes it so tricky, because a lot of the time our struggles to trust are in those gray areas, things which in and of themselves don't strike us being all that bad or sinful. Nevertheless, we are not doing what God is asking us to do, to trust him with everything and in every situation. We simply aren't convinced that his way is always the best way. In answer to his question, do you believe that I am both able and willing to provide all that you need, we are saying no, not always. In the example I just shared from my own life, my answer was clearly no, I'm not completely convinced. In addition to trusting you, I would like my nest egg back. When we worry about things, even very serious things, we are wrestling with the question, will I trust God with my crisis? Is He capable to handle it on my behalf? Once again, our worrying says no, as it reveals that we're simply not convinced that God can handle the situation, or at least not to our satisfaction. According to the Bible, worry is the opposite of trust. When we choose not to forgive someone, contrary to God's clear desire and instruction, what are we doing? In not so many words, we are saying, I don't believe that God knows what's best for me. What about how we spend our money? I like to think that I include God in those discussions. But what I really do is only involve him in the discussion about the small portion that I might realistically earmark for charity. Concerning the other much bigger chunk, the 80, 90, or 95%, I say, wait just a second, God. Stay in your lane, buddy. I gave you some. This over here is for me to decide what to do. Scripture encourages us to confess our sins to one another, even and perhaps especially the deepest, darkest, and most shameful ones. My immediate response is to say, no, thank you, over my dead body. No way can that possibly be in my best interest. We're encouraged as believers to always be prepared to share why our hope is in Jesus Christ. I don't do it. I don't want to offend this person or turn them off. I don't want to be thought a weirdo or a creep. I'm a confident person generally. I'll share my opinion on almost any topic with almost anyone. But for some strange reason, I don't trust that God will have my back if I share my faith. God says be thankful at all times and in all circumstances. But I don't want to always be thankful, and there just so happens to be things in my life that I'm not thankful for. Yet having a spirit of appreciation and thankfulness is one command of God's that I've come to acknowledge clearly leads to joy and abundant life. I think of the people I know who are most pleasant and encouraging to be around, the ones that are most nutritious for me. Almost without exception, there are people who live life in a spirit of thanksgiving. The old saying is true, it's not happy people who are thankful, it's thankful people who are happy. Ironically, even knowing this, there are still times when I choose to defy God's good intent for my life and instead choose the way of the woe-is-me, self-pitting grumpus. Now, I could go on and on, but if each of us took a deep dive into our motivations for doing some things and not others, for worrying about things over which we have little control, for habitually engaging in certain behaviors or responding in certain ways, for placing so much importance on what others think, we would understand more clearly that, at least in those instances, we're not fully convinced that God always has our best interests at heart or that His way is always best, that He is completely trustworthy in all of life's circumstances, that He is intent on giving us life to the full, the life that is truly life, if only we would trust. And that, at long last, brings us to our hero, Gamaliel. What he offers is a simple proof, evidence to bolster our conviction that the God we worship deserves our full confidence and trust. I've never been a fan of belief for belief's sake. Don't care how sincere it might be. In other words, if I'm going to believe that God always has my best interest at heart and is able and willing to provide it to me, I want it to be true. More than that, I need to be convinced that it's true if I'm ever going to fully trust in it. Otherwise, as we've seen this morning, I'm going to succumb to the temptation to lean on my own wisdom and judgment. This is where the battle lines are drawn and the war for my trust is waged. And this is where Gamaliel's cool logic and reasoning come through in the clutch. Now let's go to the story in the book of Acts and jump into the action. Our story takes place in Jerusalem, not long after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The Christian church is in its infancy and growing rapidly. The Jewish establishment is nervous and on edge. The disciples, Peter and John, have just healed a beggar who had been crippled from birth. Everyone was amazed, and when Peter saw their reaction, he said, men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if it's by our own power or godliness that we had made this man walk? You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. By faith in the name of Jesus, the man you see and know was made strong. It is in Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see. While they were still speaking, the Jewish leaders, none too pleased with Peter and John's message, arrested them and threw them in jail for the night. The next day, they were brought before their rulers and elders and teachers of the law who questioned them about the healing. By what power or what name did you do this? And Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, replied, Let me interrupt our story for just a second to point out what remarkable change can happen in the hearts and minds of ordinary men and women when convinced of God's truth and imbued with His Spirit. Just a short time ago, these same disciples were the gang that couldn't shoot straight, timid and wavering, untrusting, unreliable, and unconvinced. Now look, there's hope for all of us. Now back to our story. The Jewish leaders were astonished by the courage of Peter and John, especially when they realized they were ordinary unschooled guys and weren't sure what to do as they had to admit that the healing was a fantastic, outstanding miracle which they couldn't deny. And they couldn't really punish them because everybody was running around praising God because of that miracle. So they issued some threats and ordered Peter and John not to speak about this Jesus. However, even after the imprisonment and threats, the disciples continued to preach, teach, and heal until the high priest and his associates could not stand it any longer and arrested them again. But that night, an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail in order the disciples to go back to the temple and tell the people the full message of this new life. When all the rulers assembled the next morning and sent for Peter and John, they were surprised to learn that although the jail was locked and secure, nobody was inside. The Bible says they were puzzled by this. I love the understatement. I bet they were puzzled when they later learned that the men were back in the temple court preaching and teaching. They went and got them, but not by force for fear of what the people might do. The high priest again questioned them, and now reading from Acts 5, 28 through 39. This is the high priest. We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, he said. Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood. Peter and John and the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him. When they heard this, they were furious and wanted to put them to death. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. Then he addressed them, men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men. Some time ago, Thudas appeared, claiming to be someone, and about 400 men rallied to him. He was killed, and all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too wasailed, and the apostles were let go. And now here, for you all this morning, is the $64,000 question of the day. If Gamaliel, the wisest and most esteemed teacher of the day, could be here with us this morning, is there any doubt that he would conclude if their purpose is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men. You will only find yourselves fighting against God. Well, it hasn't been stopped. There has been nothing like it in all of human history. No other power or movement or belief system has come close. Down through all the centuries, across every people group and culture on earth, and reaching the furthest corners of our planet, God has been on the move, faithful to all his promises. The prophet Isaiah wrote about God's faithfulness this way. and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. And that's why Gamaliel is a hero to me. His wisdom and insight remind me again that God is true to his word always and is going to do what he promised to do. If I'm going to trust God completely and not rely on my own wisdom, but surrender control in all areas of my life, not just some of them, I need that assurance. Our God is both able and willing to provide all that we need. My hope and prayer for all of us this morning is that the words of the Apostle Paul might be our words. I know whom I have believed, and I'm convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day. Thank you. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for loving us. Thank you for all these people who carved out time on a hot Sunday morning to come to know you better and to worship you. Lord, thank you for pursuing us. Obviously, forgive us for all the times that we are trust wavers. We're simply not convinced that you're completely trustworthy in all of life's situations. Thank you for the hope that you give us through your son. And it's his name we pray. Amen.

Good morning, I'm Doug Bergeson. Wait, wait, you've got to be kidding me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it just a few months ago when Kyle Tolbert, our youth pastor, came up here to speak? And before he uttered a word, before a single word, good or bad, was out of his mouth, you were applauding him. What do I get? I'll tell you what I get. I get bubkis, nada, nothing. Let me tell you something. It's not lost on us, those of us who are asked to speak in the middle of July, but never ever at Christmas time, and for sure not at Easter. It's not lost on us that we're not on God's A-team. We get it. We're not stupid. So given that, it might be nice if you tried to be a little bit more encouraging and supportive. So let's try this again. I would not have done that. You know, the Bible's very clear that we're to test and approve what we hear, to be discerning about what's being taught, not just to accept it willy-nilly. And here you all are already clapping for me, and you haven't the faintest idea what I'm going to say. Come on, people, you're better than that. Anyways, hopefully it's obvious that I'm just goofing around, as I'm not only thrilled to be here, but I feel immense privilege to be sharing this morning. And just for the record, far from expecting applause, my desperate and sincere prayer and hope is that God will make what I say clear and useful to you all. I'm really excited about this new sermon series that we're starting. In the past, when I've been asked to speak, I've always kind of hemmed and hawed, wanted to think about it. But when Nate called me this time and explained that the new series was going to be on the obscure heroes of the Bible, I was, for some strange reason, I was enthused, and I immediately jumped at the chance. A big part of it might be that it's just different than the norm, and different is sometimes really good. Mix it up a little bit, move off the beaten path. But more than simply serving as a nice change of pace, there's a much more consequential reason for studying these obscure heroes. They have a lot to teach us. Now, there are plenty of times when I wish the Bible was easier to understand and didn't avoid so many questions that I'd like answers to. Wish that it explained a whole bunch of things better. A little less ambiguity and mystery would sometimes be nice. But in response to that wish, I've heard it said that God, whose Spirit inspired every word written, must have included what He thought was important, what He thought we needed to know. So rather than worrying about the stuff that wasn't included, we'd be much better served paying attention to the things and those people and those events that God did include in his word to us. And that brings us back to our sermon series. God saw fit to tell us about these characters and their stories. And for that reason, we are not going to ignore or gloss over or relegate these heroes to a footnote any longer. Instead, we're going to exploit them for all their worth and see what they can teach us, what they can reveal to us, how they might strengthen and encourage us. The Apostle Paul said it this way, for everything that was written in the past, even obscure heroes that maybe we've never heard of, was written to teach us so that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. As I said, I was surprisingly enthused when Nate called me. Not only was I pumped for the series, but one name immediately popped into my head and I knew that was my guy. That was who I was going to talk about, Gamaliel, the great Pharisee and teacher of the law, and what he wisely concluded when confronted by the incredible boldness and defiance of Peter and the other disciples in the earliest times of the Christian movement. Now, how many of you have heard of Gamaliel? You don't have to raise your hands. You know, just wink or smile as I look around the room. Nothing but a sea of blank, expressionless faces. That's perfect. But before we get to Gamaliel, I need to set the table a bit for you, provide the backdrop to help explain why what he does, what he acknowledges is so valuable to me, that his was the first name in all the Bible that popped into my head. In other words, I need to make sure that we're on the same page with respect to one significant foundational point in order for us to see why Gamaliel, who himself is not even a believer in Jesus Christ, is a hero for us today. The key foundational point is to identify the overarching story of the Bible. Some of you are probably going, oh, sheesh, we're not going to be out of here until Tuesday. Not to worry, not to worry. It's not that daunting a task. In a nutshell, the opening chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, reveal that God's loving intent was to provide all that we, His creations, need. Our job, our part of the bargain, is to trust that He is both able and willing to do that on our behalf, and for us to resist the temptation to want to decide for ourselves what's best. The rest of the Bible is just a long and involved telling of our incredible struggle to trust in God rather than ourselves, as well as the remarkable lengths God goes to to make it possible for us ultimately to place our full and abiding confidence in Him. Now, most of you are probably familiar with the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The garden was a fantastic place. Those two have a great life. It's a really sweet setup. There's only one rule, don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, growing up in church, I didn't fully understand the significance of the boundary God established for humankind. My general sense was, you know, God likes rules. He's kind of a stickler about rules. And Adam and Eve got in pretty big trouble because they broke one of them. Well, as I've later come to understand, what actually happened was a much bigger deal than simply breaking a rule. What actually happened struck at the very heart of God's intent for creation. In allowing them to eat from any tree but the one, God was establishing the critical boundary for Adam and Eve and for every human since. God was saying, if you want to enjoy all of the good of my creation and live in my kingdom, you have to trust that I and I alone know what's best for you. And even more than that, you have to trust that I'm both able and willing to provide it to you. And so the questions that's faced Adam and Eve, as well as you and me, is do you believe that? Are you convinced that God knows what's best for you and that He is intent on providing it at all times and in all circumstances? When Eve first faced that question, the fate of all humanity hung in the balance. And what did she decide? Well, it turns out Eve wasn't completely convinced that God could be trusted. And she decided and felt the need to trust in someone else. Eve, that's who she decided to trust. She just trusted in herself instead. And now the serpent was cunning and planted the seed in Eve's mind that although God was certainly able to provide what was best for her, He wasn't willing but was holding something back. The serpent said, come on, Eve, you won't die. God's only worried that if you eat that fruit, you'll be like Him and be able to decide for yourself what's best, then you'll be your own God. And that has been humankind's struggle ever since. In the last book of the Bible, Revelation, it wasn't a question of God was willing to provide for his people, but if he was even able. Written at a time when Christ followers were just undergoing terrific persecution, with their very lives at stake, the facts on the ground were so difficult and so dire that only a nut job would conclude that somehow God was still in control and still in charge. And into that terrifically difficult and stressful situation, the Apostle John shared a vision of being transported up to the throne room of heaven where God sort of pulls back the curtain for a second just to show what's really going on behind the scenes. The message, no matter how things look from your perspective, I am God and there is no other. I have your back now and I have it for all eternity. Nothing can ever separate you from my loving care. Your faith and trust are well placed. God is asking each of us, do you believe, are you completely convinced that I'm both able and willing to provide the very best for you? That's the central question running throughout the entire Bible, and it's the central question of our human existence. But our struggle, our temptation, is to say in all different ways, well, God, to tell you the truth, in this particular area of my life, or in this particular relationship, or in this circumstance at this particular time, I'd like to have a say. I'd rather decide for myself what's best for me, what will make me most content, most comfortable, most safe, most fulfilled, most affirmed, most successful, most happy. After all, wouldn't I know better than anyone else what's in my best interest? That's exactly what Eve did. That's exactly what I do. And that is the root of all sin, a failure to trust in God's promise. We're just not entirely convinced, not enough to give up complete control. A famous passage from Proverbs that many of you probably know by heart is, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. But that's not easy. Our world and our culture constantly bombard us from every conceivable angle with arguments that God, even if he does exist, is neither able or willing to provide what's best for us. That life demands we take charge and we're better off when we do. Non-stop appeals to be our own little lords of our own little lives. Now we're going to do a little audience participation here for just a minute. I'd like you all to close your eyes. Alan, keep your eyes closed. Okay. Imagine that you're on the seventh floor of an office building. You are alone, and it's dark. An electrical short circuit has knocked out the lights and started an intense fire, which has engulfed the entire floor and will soon breach the room you're in. The smoke coming in under the door and through the vents is overwhelming, forcing you to drop to your knees. Your eyes are burning and you're beginning to cough uncontrollably. You can open your eyes now. Suddenly, off to your right, you hear a violent pounding on the outside of the far wall. Then the blade of an axe comes crashing through and soon the shape of a firefighter appears in the opening and he shouts, come on, follow me, I'll get you out. Wouldn't he be surprised if you yelled back, oh, thanks, buddy. I'm good. I got this. Of course, no one would do that. No one trapped and on the brink of perishing would respond that way. We would not only listen to the firefighter's commands, we would literally cling to him. We would follow his every word because we implicitly trust him. Not only does he know what he's doing, but he went to great lengths to find and rescue us. And it's plain as day that we desperately need his help. My illustration borders on the ludicrous because we'd never do that. Yet that's what we say to God all the time. I'm good. I got this. Now maybe some of us hear this illustration and say, that's not me. I'm good at trusting. My faith is rock solid. Maybe that's true, at least on the surface. But even for those of us who trust God fully in most areas of our lives, I bet that there are little nooks and crannies. I appreciated you using that earlier. Little pockets where we don't. A relationship, a decision, a priority, a behavior, perhaps, for which we're not convinced God's preferred course of action serves us best. So we plot the course by our own wisdom. We decide for ourselves what's best. And when we do that, we forfeit some portion of the abundant life that God so desperately wants for us. Sadly, doubting God's promises, not being fully convinced that he is both able and willing to provide the best for me in all of life's situations, happens far more than I even recognize. The decision to trust in my own judgment is typically very subtle. So subtle, in fact, that I don't even realize that I'm doing it much of the time. I'll share an example from my own life, but first I have to give you some context. Twenty-six years ago, we moved down here from New Jersey. I quit a really good job on Wall Street. We sold our dream house that we only lived in for two years. We left our beautiful little town and all our friends. We had a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and a newborn. We moved for a lot of reasons, but chief among them was my concern that it was all too consuming and that only over time does the true cost of that kind of investment in one's career become apparent? And by that point, it's often too late. The damage has been done. I believe back then, as I still do today, that wherever your treasure is, wherever you invest most of your time, your energy, your ambition, that's where your heart will ultimately be found. And I knew that for me, I couldn't keep doing that job in that city for very long without it, for all practical purposes, becoming my treasure and stealing my heart. Okay, so we did everything they tell you not to do all at the same time. Moved to a different part of the country, changed careers, sold houses, bought houses, had another baby. Deb had just turned 33, and I was 35. The plan was that I would invest our modest nest egg in the financial markets to support our new downsized life, and we'd live happily ever after. Now, fast forward 15 years. I'm meeting Jeff Hancock, who is Grace's teaching pastor at Carolina Ale House. I think it was on a Wednesday afternoon because that's when they had their specials. It's true. Jeff and I had a relationship built largely on a strong and abiding shared love of beer and for the places that happen to serve beer. Is there any stronger foundation for a friendship? Nevertheless, that was ours. So we'd get together every so often. And that particular afternoon, as soon as I sat down, Jeff asked if there was something wrong. And I started weeping and began to share with him how I was in the midst of suffering what for me was a breathtaking financial loss in the futures market. How I couldn't sleep, how it had stolen all of my joy, how it affected all of my personal interactions, including my most cherished ones with my wife and kids. Excuse me. With the child in college and two in high school, how it jeopardized everything Deb and I had planned. That loss was wreaking havoc in my life. Now, I shared with Jeff that afternoon that, yes, I was obviously sad to have lost so much of our nest egg at such a critical time. Yes, I was sorry for my stubbornness, my stupidity. Yes, I was sorry for my arrogance not to respect the markets. All that was true. Yet the reason I was weeping, what most undid me, was what the loss revealed about where I placed my trust. How it betrayed the fact that much of my confidence, my security, and my hope was wrapped up in our little nest egg, and that the notion that I trusted God was clearly not true, if not a bald-faced lie. And that is what makes it so tricky, because a lot of the time our struggles to trust are in those gray areas, things which in and of themselves don't strike us being all that bad or sinful. Nevertheless, we are not doing what God is asking us to do, to trust him with everything and in every situation. We simply aren't convinced that his way is always the best way. In answer to his question, do you believe that I am both able and willing to provide all that you need, we are saying no, not always. In the example I just shared from my own life, my answer was clearly no, I'm not completely convinced. In addition to trusting you, I would like my nest egg back. When we worry about things, even very serious things, we are wrestling with the question, will I trust God with my crisis? Is He capable to handle it on my behalf? Once again, our worrying says no, as it reveals that we're simply not convinced that God can handle the situation, or at least not to our satisfaction. According to the Bible, worry is the opposite of trust. When we choose not to forgive someone, contrary to God's clear desire and instruction, what are we doing? In not so many words, we are saying, I don't believe that God knows what's best for me. What about how we spend our money? I like to think that I include God in those discussions. But what I really do is only involve him in the discussion about the small portion that I might realistically earmark for charity. Concerning the other much bigger chunk, the 80, 90, or 95%, I say, wait just a second, God. Stay in your lane, buddy. I gave you some. This over here is for me to decide what to do. Scripture encourages us to confess our sins to one another, even and perhaps especially the deepest, darkest, and most shameful ones. My immediate response is to say, no, thank you, over my dead body. No way can that possibly be in my best interest. We're encouraged as believers to always be prepared to share why our hope is in Jesus Christ. I don't do it. I don't want to offend this person or turn them off. I don't want to be thought a weirdo or a creep. I'm a confident person generally. I'll share my opinion on almost any topic with almost anyone. But for some strange reason, I don't trust that God will have my back if I share my faith. God says be thankful at all times and in all circumstances. But I don't want to always be thankful, and there just so happens to be things in my life that I'm not thankful for. Yet having a spirit of appreciation and thankfulness is one command of God's that I've come to acknowledge clearly leads to joy and abundant life. I think of the people I know who are most pleasant and encouraging to be around, the ones that are most nutritious for me. Almost without exception, there are people who live life in a spirit of thanksgiving. The old saying is true, it's not happy people who are thankful, it's thankful people who are happy. Ironically, even knowing this, there are still times when I choose to defy God's good intent for my life and instead choose the way of the woe-is-me, self-pitting grumpus. Now, I could go on and on, but if each of us took a deep dive into our motivations for doing some things and not others, for worrying about things over which we have little control, for habitually engaging in certain behaviors or responding in certain ways, for placing so much importance on what others think, we would understand more clearly that, at least in those instances, we're not fully convinced that God always has our best interests at heart or that His way is always best, that He is completely trustworthy in all of life's circumstances, that He is intent on giving us life to the full, the life that is truly life, if only we would trust. And that, at long last, brings us to our hero, Gamaliel. What he offers is a simple proof, evidence to bolster our conviction that the God we worship deserves our full confidence and trust. I've never been a fan of belief for belief's sake. Don't care how sincere it might be. In other words, if I'm going to believe that God always has my best interest at heart and is able and willing to provide it to me, I want it to be true. More than that, I need to be convinced that it's true if I'm ever going to fully trust in it. Otherwise, as we've seen this morning, I'm going to succumb to the temptation to lean on my own wisdom and judgment. This is where the battle lines are drawn and the war for my trust is waged. And this is where Gamaliel's cool logic and reasoning come through in the clutch. Now let's go to the story in the book of Acts and jump into the action. Our story takes place in Jerusalem, not long after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The Christian church is in its infancy and growing rapidly. The Jewish establishment is nervous and on edge. The disciples, Peter and John, have just healed a beggar who had been crippled from birth. Everyone was amazed, and when Peter saw their reaction, he said, men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if it's by our own power or godliness that we had made this man walk? You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. By faith in the name of Jesus, the man you see and know was made strong. It is in Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see. While they were still speaking, the Jewish leaders, none too pleased with Peter and John's message, arrested them and threw them in jail for the night. The next day, they were brought before their rulers and elders and teachers of the law who questioned them about the healing. By what power or what name did you do this? And Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, replied, Let me interrupt our story for just a second to point out what remarkable change can happen in the hearts and minds of ordinary men and women when convinced of God's truth and imbued with His Spirit. Just a short time ago, these same disciples were the gang that couldn't shoot straight, timid and wavering, untrusting, unreliable, and unconvinced. Now look, there's hope for all of us. Now back to our story. The Jewish leaders were astonished by the courage of Peter and John, especially when they realized they were ordinary unschooled guys and weren't sure what to do as they had to admit that the healing was a fantastic, outstanding miracle which they couldn't deny. And they couldn't really punish them because everybody was running around praising God because of that miracle. So they issued some threats and ordered Peter and John not to speak about this Jesus. However, even after the imprisonment and threats, the disciples continued to preach, teach, and heal until the high priest and his associates could not stand it any longer and arrested them again. But that night, an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail in order the disciples to go back to the temple and tell the people the full message of this new life. When all the rulers assembled the next morning and sent for Peter and John, they were surprised to learn that although the jail was locked and secure, nobody was inside. The Bible says they were puzzled by this. I love the understatement. I bet they were puzzled when they later learned that the men were back in the temple court preaching and teaching. They went and got them, but not by force for fear of what the people might do. The high priest again questioned them, and now reading from Acts 5, 28 through 39. This is the high priest. We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, he said. Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood. Peter and John and the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him. When they heard this, they were furious and wanted to put them to death. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. Then he addressed them, men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men. Some time ago, Thudas appeared, claiming to be someone, and about 400 men rallied to him. He was killed, and all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too wasailed, and the apostles were let go. And now here, for you all this morning, is the $64,000 question of the day. If Gamaliel, the wisest and most esteemed teacher of the day, could be here with us this morning, is there any doubt that he would conclude if their purpose is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men. You will only find yourselves fighting against God. Well, it hasn't been stopped. There has been nothing like it in all of human history. No other power or movement or belief system has come close. Down through all the centuries, across every people group and culture on earth, and reaching the furthest corners of our planet, God has been on the move, faithful to all his promises. The prophet Isaiah wrote about God's faithfulness this way. and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. And that's why Gamaliel is a hero to me. His wisdom and insight remind me again that God is true to his word always and is going to do what he promised to do. If I'm going to trust God completely and not rely on my own wisdom, but surrender control in all areas of my life, not just some of them, I need that assurance. Our God is both able and willing to provide all that we need. My hope and prayer for all of us this morning is that the words of the Apostle Paul might be our words. I know whom I have believed, and I'm convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day. Thank you. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for loving us. Thank you for all these people who carved out time on a hot Sunday morning to come to know you better and to worship you. Lord, thank you for pursuing us. Obviously, forgive us for all the times that we are trust wavers. We're simply not convinced that you're completely trustworthy in all of life's situations. Thank you for the hope that you give us through your son. And it's his name we pray. Amen.

Good morning, I'm Doug Bergeson. Wait, wait, you've got to be kidding me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it just a few months ago when Kyle Tolbert, our youth pastor, came up here to speak? And before he uttered a word, before a single word, good or bad, was out of his mouth, you were applauding him. What do I get? I'll tell you what I get. I get bubkis, nada, nothing. Let me tell you something. It's not lost on us, those of us who are asked to speak in the middle of July, but never ever at Christmas time, and for sure not at Easter. It's not lost on us that we're not on God's A-team. We get it. We're not stupid. So given that, it might be nice if you tried to be a little bit more encouraging and supportive. So let's try this again. I would not have done that. You know, the Bible's very clear that we're to test and approve what we hear, to be discerning about what's being taught, not just to accept it willy-nilly. And here you all are already clapping for me, and you haven't the faintest idea what I'm going to say. Come on, people, you're better than that. Anyways, hopefully it's obvious that I'm just goofing around, as I'm not only thrilled to be here, but I feel immense privilege to be sharing this morning. And just for the record, far from expecting applause, my desperate and sincere prayer and hope is that God will make what I say clear and useful to you all. I'm really excited about this new sermon series that we're starting. In the past, when I've been asked to speak, I've always kind of hemmed and hawed, wanted to think about it. But when Nate called me this time and explained that the new series was going to be on the obscure heroes of the Bible, I was, for some strange reason, I was enthused, and I immediately jumped at the chance. A big part of it might be that it's just different than the norm, and different is sometimes really good. Mix it up a little bit, move off the beaten path. But more than simply serving as a nice change of pace, there's a much more consequential reason for studying these obscure heroes. They have a lot to teach us. Now, there are plenty of times when I wish the Bible was easier to understand and didn't avoid so many questions that I'd like answers to. Wish that it explained a whole bunch of things better. A little less ambiguity and mystery would sometimes be nice. But in response to that wish, I've heard it said that God, whose Spirit inspired every word written, must have included what He thought was important, what He thought we needed to know. So rather than worrying about the stuff that wasn't included, we'd be much better served paying attention to the things and those people and those events that God did include in his word to us. And that brings us back to our sermon series. God saw fit to tell us about these characters and their stories. And for that reason, we are not going to ignore or gloss over or relegate these heroes to a footnote any longer. Instead, we're going to exploit them for all their worth and see what they can teach us, what they can reveal to us, how they might strengthen and encourage us. The Apostle Paul said it this way, for everything that was written in the past, even obscure heroes that maybe we've never heard of, was written to teach us so that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. As I said, I was surprisingly enthused when Nate called me. Not only was I pumped for the series, but one name immediately popped into my head and I knew that was my guy. That was who I was going to talk about, Gamaliel, the great Pharisee and teacher of the law, and what he wisely concluded when confronted by the incredible boldness and defiance of Peter and the other disciples in the earliest times of the Christian movement. Now, how many of you have heard of Gamaliel? You don't have to raise your hands. You know, just wink or smile as I look around the room. Nothing but a sea of blank, expressionless faces. That's perfect. But before we get to Gamaliel, I need to set the table a bit for you, provide the backdrop to help explain why what he does, what he acknowledges is so valuable to me, that his was the first name in all the Bible that popped into my head. In other words, I need to make sure that we're on the same page with respect to one significant foundational point in order for us to see why Gamaliel, who himself is not even a believer in Jesus Christ, is a hero for us today. The key foundational point is to identify the overarching story of the Bible. Some of you are probably going, oh, sheesh, we're not going to be out of here until Tuesday. Not to worry, not to worry. It's not that daunting a task. In a nutshell, the opening chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, reveal that God's loving intent was to provide all that we, His creations, need. Our job, our part of the bargain, is to trust that He is both able and willing to do that on our behalf, and for us to resist the temptation to want to decide for ourselves what's best. The rest of the Bible is just a long and involved telling of our incredible struggle to trust in God rather than ourselves, as well as the remarkable lengths God goes to to make it possible for us ultimately to place our full and abiding confidence in Him. Now, most of you are probably familiar with the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The garden was a fantastic place. Those two have a great life. It's a really sweet setup. There's only one rule, don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, growing up in church, I didn't fully understand the significance of the boundary God established for humankind. My general sense was, you know, God likes rules. He's kind of a stickler about rules. And Adam and Eve got in pretty big trouble because they broke one of them. Well, as I've later come to understand, what actually happened was a much bigger deal than simply breaking a rule. What actually happened struck at the very heart of God's intent for creation. In allowing them to eat from any tree but the one, God was establishing the critical boundary for Adam and Eve and for every human since. God was saying, if you want to enjoy all of the good of my creation and live in my kingdom, you have to trust that I and I alone know what's best for you. And even more than that, you have to trust that I'm both able and willing to provide it to you. And so the questions that's faced Adam and Eve, as well as you and me, is do you believe that? Are you convinced that God knows what's best for you and that He is intent on providing it at all times and in all circumstances? When Eve first faced that question, the fate of all humanity hung in the balance. And what did she decide? Well, it turns out Eve wasn't completely convinced that God could be trusted. And she decided and felt the need to trust in someone else. Eve, that's who she decided to trust. She just trusted in herself instead. And now the serpent was cunning and planted the seed in Eve's mind that although God was certainly able to provide what was best for her, He wasn't willing but was holding something back. The serpent said, come on, Eve, you won't die. God's only worried that if you eat that fruit, you'll be like Him and be able to decide for yourself what's best, then you'll be your own God. And that has been humankind's struggle ever since. In the last book of the Bible, Revelation, it wasn't a question of God was willing to provide for his people, but if he was even able. Written at a time when Christ followers were just undergoing terrific persecution, with their very lives at stake, the facts on the ground were so difficult and so dire that only a nut job would conclude that somehow God was still in control and still in charge. And into that terrifically difficult and stressful situation, the Apostle John shared a vision of being transported up to the throne room of heaven where God sort of pulls back the curtain for a second just to show what's really going on behind the scenes. The message, no matter how things look from your perspective, I am God and there is no other. I have your back now and I have it for all eternity. Nothing can ever separate you from my loving care. Your faith and trust are well placed. God is asking each of us, do you believe, are you completely convinced that I'm both able and willing to provide the very best for you? That's the central question running throughout the entire Bible, and it's the central question of our human existence. But our struggle, our temptation, is to say in all different ways, well, God, to tell you the truth, in this particular area of my life, or in this particular relationship, or in this circumstance at this particular time, I'd like to have a say. I'd rather decide for myself what's best for me, what will make me most content, most comfortable, most safe, most fulfilled, most affirmed, most successful, most happy. After all, wouldn't I know better than anyone else what's in my best interest? That's exactly what Eve did. That's exactly what I do. And that is the root of all sin, a failure to trust in God's promise. We're just not entirely convinced, not enough to give up complete control. A famous passage from Proverbs that many of you probably know by heart is, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. But that's not easy. Our world and our culture constantly bombard us from every conceivable angle with arguments that God, even if he does exist, is neither able or willing to provide what's best for us. That life demands we take charge and we're better off when we do. Non-stop appeals to be our own little lords of our own little lives. Now we're going to do a little audience participation here for just a minute. I'd like you all to close your eyes. Alan, keep your eyes closed. Okay. Imagine that you're on the seventh floor of an office building. You are alone, and it's dark. An electrical short circuit has knocked out the lights and started an intense fire, which has engulfed the entire floor and will soon breach the room you're in. The smoke coming in under the door and through the vents is overwhelming, forcing you to drop to your knees. Your eyes are burning and you're beginning to cough uncontrollably. You can open your eyes now. Suddenly, off to your right, you hear a violent pounding on the outside of the far wall. Then the blade of an axe comes crashing through and soon the shape of a firefighter appears in the opening and he shouts, come on, follow me, I'll get you out. Wouldn't he be surprised if you yelled back, oh, thanks, buddy. I'm good. I got this. Of course, no one would do that. No one trapped and on the brink of perishing would respond that way. We would not only listen to the firefighter's commands, we would literally cling to him. We would follow his every word because we implicitly trust him. Not only does he know what he's doing, but he went to great lengths to find and rescue us. And it's plain as day that we desperately need his help. My illustration borders on the ludicrous because we'd never do that. Yet that's what we say to God all the time. I'm good. I got this. Now maybe some of us hear this illustration and say, that's not me. I'm good at trusting. My faith is rock solid. Maybe that's true, at least on the surface. But even for those of us who trust God fully in most areas of our lives, I bet that there are little nooks and crannies. I appreciated you using that earlier. Little pockets where we don't. A relationship, a decision, a priority, a behavior, perhaps, for which we're not convinced God's preferred course of action serves us best. So we plot the course by our own wisdom. We decide for ourselves what's best. And when we do that, we forfeit some portion of the abundant life that God so desperately wants for us. Sadly, doubting God's promises, not being fully convinced that he is both able and willing to provide the best for me in all of life's situations, happens far more than I even recognize. The decision to trust in my own judgment is typically very subtle. So subtle, in fact, that I don't even realize that I'm doing it much of the time. I'll share an example from my own life, but first I have to give you some context. Twenty-six years ago, we moved down here from New Jersey. I quit a really good job on Wall Street. We sold our dream house that we only lived in for two years. We left our beautiful little town and all our friends. We had a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and a newborn. We moved for a lot of reasons, but chief among them was my concern that it was all too consuming and that only over time does the true cost of that kind of investment in one's career become apparent? And by that point, it's often too late. The damage has been done. I believe back then, as I still do today, that wherever your treasure is, wherever you invest most of your time, your energy, your ambition, that's where your heart will ultimately be found. And I knew that for me, I couldn't keep doing that job in that city for very long without it, for all practical purposes, becoming my treasure and stealing my heart. Okay, so we did everything they tell you not to do all at the same time. Moved to a different part of the country, changed careers, sold houses, bought houses, had another baby. Deb had just turned 33, and I was 35. The plan was that I would invest our modest nest egg in the financial markets to support our new downsized life, and we'd live happily ever after. Now, fast forward 15 years. I'm meeting Jeff Hancock, who is Grace's teaching pastor at Carolina Ale House. I think it was on a Wednesday afternoon because that's when they had their specials. It's true. Jeff and I had a relationship built largely on a strong and abiding shared love of beer and for the places that happen to serve beer. Is there any stronger foundation for a friendship? Nevertheless, that was ours. So we'd get together every so often. And that particular afternoon, as soon as I sat down, Jeff asked if there was something wrong. And I started weeping and began to share with him how I was in the midst of suffering what for me was a breathtaking financial loss in the futures market. How I couldn't sleep, how it had stolen all of my joy, how it affected all of my personal interactions, including my most cherished ones with my wife and kids. Excuse me. With the child in college and two in high school, how it jeopardized everything Deb and I had planned. That loss was wreaking havoc in my life. Now, I shared with Jeff that afternoon that, yes, I was obviously sad to have lost so much of our nest egg at such a critical time. Yes, I was sorry for my stubbornness, my stupidity. Yes, I was sorry for my arrogance not to respect the markets. All that was true. Yet the reason I was weeping, what most undid me, was what the loss revealed about where I placed my trust. How it betrayed the fact that much of my confidence, my security, and my hope was wrapped up in our little nest egg, and that the notion that I trusted God was clearly not true, if not a bald-faced lie. And that is what makes it so tricky, because a lot of the time our struggles to trust are in those gray areas, things which in and of themselves don't strike us being all that bad or sinful. Nevertheless, we are not doing what God is asking us to do, to trust him with everything and in every situation. We simply aren't convinced that his way is always the best way. In answer to his question, do you believe that I am both able and willing to provide all that you need, we are saying no, not always. In the example I just shared from my own life, my answer was clearly no, I'm not completely convinced. In addition to trusting you, I would like my nest egg back. When we worry about things, even very serious things, we are wrestling with the question, will I trust God with my crisis? Is He capable to handle it on my behalf? Once again, our worrying says no, as it reveals that we're simply not convinced that God can handle the situation, or at least not to our satisfaction. According to the Bible, worry is the opposite of trust. When we choose not to forgive someone, contrary to God's clear desire and instruction, what are we doing? In not so many words, we are saying, I don't believe that God knows what's best for me. What about how we spend our money? I like to think that I include God in those discussions. But what I really do is only involve him in the discussion about the small portion that I might realistically earmark for charity. Concerning the other much bigger chunk, the 80, 90, or 95%, I say, wait just a second, God. Stay in your lane, buddy. I gave you some. This over here is for me to decide what to do. Scripture encourages us to confess our sins to one another, even and perhaps especially the deepest, darkest, and most shameful ones. My immediate response is to say, no, thank you, over my dead body. No way can that possibly be in my best interest. We're encouraged as believers to always be prepared to share why our hope is in Jesus Christ. I don't do it. I don't want to offend this person or turn them off. I don't want to be thought a weirdo or a creep. I'm a confident person generally. I'll share my opinion on almost any topic with almost anyone. But for some strange reason, I don't trust that God will have my back if I share my faith. God says be thankful at all times and in all circumstances. But I don't want to always be thankful, and there just so happens to be things in my life that I'm not thankful for. Yet having a spirit of appreciation and thankfulness is one command of God's that I've come to acknowledge clearly leads to joy and abundant life. I think of the people I know who are most pleasant and encouraging to be around, the ones that are most nutritious for me. Almost without exception, there are people who live life in a spirit of thanksgiving. The old saying is true, it's not happy people who are thankful, it's thankful people who are happy. Ironically, even knowing this, there are still times when I choose to defy God's good intent for my life and instead choose the way of the woe-is-me, self-pitting grumpus. Now, I could go on and on, but if each of us took a deep dive into our motivations for doing some things and not others, for worrying about things over which we have little control, for habitually engaging in certain behaviors or responding in certain ways, for placing so much importance on what others think, we would understand more clearly that, at least in those instances, we're not fully convinced that God always has our best interests at heart or that His way is always best, that He is completely trustworthy in all of life's circumstances, that He is intent on giving us life to the full, the life that is truly life, if only we would trust. And that, at long last, brings us to our hero, Gamaliel. What he offers is a simple proof, evidence to bolster our conviction that the God we worship deserves our full confidence and trust. I've never been a fan of belief for belief's sake. Don't care how sincere it might be. In other words, if I'm going to believe that God always has my best interest at heart and is able and willing to provide it to me, I want it to be true. More than that, I need to be convinced that it's true if I'm ever going to fully trust in it. Otherwise, as we've seen this morning, I'm going to succumb to the temptation to lean on my own wisdom and judgment. This is where the battle lines are drawn and the war for my trust is waged. And this is where Gamaliel's cool logic and reasoning come through in the clutch. Now let's go to the story in the book of Acts and jump into the action. Our story takes place in Jerusalem, not long after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The Christian church is in its infancy and growing rapidly. The Jewish establishment is nervous and on edge. The disciples, Peter and John, have just healed a beggar who had been crippled from birth. Everyone was amazed, and when Peter saw their reaction, he said, men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if it's by our own power or godliness that we had made this man walk? You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. By faith in the name of Jesus, the man you see and know was made strong. It is in Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see. While they were still speaking, the Jewish leaders, none too pleased with Peter and John's message, arrested them and threw them in jail for the night. The next day, they were brought before their rulers and elders and teachers of the law who questioned them about the healing. By what power or what name did you do this? And Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, replied, Let me interrupt our story for just a second to point out what remarkable change can happen in the hearts and minds of ordinary men and women when convinced of God's truth and imbued with His Spirit. Just a short time ago, these same disciples were the gang that couldn't shoot straight, timid and wavering, untrusting, unreliable, and unconvinced. Now look, there's hope for all of us. Now back to our story. The Jewish leaders were astonished by the courage of Peter and John, especially when they realized they were ordinary unschooled guys and weren't sure what to do as they had to admit that the healing was a fantastic, outstanding miracle which they couldn't deny. And they couldn't really punish them because everybody was running around praising God because of that miracle. So they issued some threats and ordered Peter and John not to speak about this Jesus. However, even after the imprisonment and threats, the disciples continued to preach, teach, and heal until the high priest and his associates could not stand it any longer and arrested them again. But that night, an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail in order the disciples to go back to the temple and tell the people the full message of this new life. When all the rulers assembled the next morning and sent for Peter and John, they were surprised to learn that although the jail was locked and secure, nobody was inside. The Bible says they were puzzled by this. I love the understatement. I bet they were puzzled when they later learned that the men were back in the temple court preaching and teaching. They went and got them, but not by force for fear of what the people might do. The high priest again questioned them, and now reading from Acts 5, 28 through 39. This is the high priest. We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, he said. Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood. Peter and John and the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him. When they heard this, they were furious and wanted to put them to death. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. Then he addressed them, men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men. Some time ago, Thudas appeared, claiming to be someone, and about 400 men rallied to him. He was killed, and all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too wasailed, and the apostles were let go. And now here, for you all this morning, is the $64,000 question of the day. If Gamaliel, the wisest and most esteemed teacher of the day, could be here with us this morning, is there any doubt that he would conclude if their purpose is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men. You will only find yourselves fighting against God. Well, it hasn't been stopped. There has been nothing like it in all of human history. No other power or movement or belief system has come close. Down through all the centuries, across every people group and culture on earth, and reaching the furthest corners of our planet, God has been on the move, faithful to all his promises. The prophet Isaiah wrote about God's faithfulness this way. and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. And that's why Gamaliel is a hero to me. His wisdom and insight remind me again that God is true to his word always and is going to do what he promised to do. If I'm going to trust God completely and not rely on my own wisdom, but surrender control in all areas of my life, not just some of them, I need that assurance. Our God is both able and willing to provide all that we need. My hope and prayer for all of us this morning is that the words of the Apostle Paul might be our words. I know whom I have believed, and I'm convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day. Thank you. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for loving us. Thank you for all these people who carved out time on a hot Sunday morning to come to know you better and to worship you. Lord, thank you for pursuing us. Obviously, forgive us for all the times that we are trust wavers. We're simply not convinced that you're completely trustworthy in all of life's situations. Thank you for the hope that you give us through your son. And it's his name we pray. Amen.

Good morning, I'm Doug Bergeson. Wait, wait, you've got to be kidding me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it just a few months ago when Kyle Tolbert, our youth pastor, came up here to speak? And before he uttered a word, before a single word, good or bad, was out of his mouth, you were applauding him. What do I get? I'll tell you what I get. I get bubkis, nada, nothing. Let me tell you something. It's not lost on us, those of us who are asked to speak in the middle of July, but never ever at Christmas time, and for sure not at Easter. It's not lost on us that we're not on God's A-team. We get it. We're not stupid. So given that, it might be nice if you tried to be a little bit more encouraging and supportive. So let's try this again. I would not have done that. You know, the Bible's very clear that we're to test and approve what we hear, to be discerning about what's being taught, not just to accept it willy-nilly. And here you all are already clapping for me, and you haven't the faintest idea what I'm going to say. Come on, people, you're better than that. Anyways, hopefully it's obvious that I'm just goofing around, as I'm not only thrilled to be here, but I feel immense privilege to be sharing this morning. And just for the record, far from expecting applause, my desperate and sincere prayer and hope is that God will make what I say clear and useful to you all. I'm really excited about this new sermon series that we're starting. In the past, when I've been asked to speak, I've always kind of hemmed and hawed, wanted to think about it. But when Nate called me this time and explained that the new series was going to be on the obscure heroes of the Bible, I was, for some strange reason, I was enthused, and I immediately jumped at the chance. A big part of it might be that it's just different than the norm, and different is sometimes really good. Mix it up a little bit, move off the beaten path. But more than simply serving as a nice change of pace, there's a much more consequential reason for studying these obscure heroes. They have a lot to teach us. Now, there are plenty of times when I wish the Bible was easier to understand and didn't avoid so many questions that I'd like answers to. Wish that it explained a whole bunch of things better. A little less ambiguity and mystery would sometimes be nice. But in response to that wish, I've heard it said that God, whose Spirit inspired every word written, must have included what He thought was important, what He thought we needed to know. So rather than worrying about the stuff that wasn't included, we'd be much better served paying attention to the things and those people and those events that God did include in his word to us. And that brings us back to our sermon series. God saw fit to tell us about these characters and their stories. And for that reason, we are not going to ignore or gloss over or relegate these heroes to a footnote any longer. Instead, we're going to exploit them for all their worth and see what they can teach us, what they can reveal to us, how they might strengthen and encourage us. The Apostle Paul said it this way, for everything that was written in the past, even obscure heroes that maybe we've never heard of, was written to teach us so that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. As I said, I was surprisingly enthused when Nate called me. Not only was I pumped for the series, but one name immediately popped into my head and I knew that was my guy. That was who I was going to talk about, Gamaliel, the great Pharisee and teacher of the law, and what he wisely concluded when confronted by the incredible boldness and defiance of Peter and the other disciples in the earliest times of the Christian movement. Now, how many of you have heard of Gamaliel? You don't have to raise your hands. You know, just wink or smile as I look around the room. Nothing but a sea of blank, expressionless faces. That's perfect. But before we get to Gamaliel, I need to set the table a bit for you, provide the backdrop to help explain why what he does, what he acknowledges is so valuable to me, that his was the first name in all the Bible that popped into my head. In other words, I need to make sure that we're on the same page with respect to one significant foundational point in order for us to see why Gamaliel, who himself is not even a believer in Jesus Christ, is a hero for us today. The key foundational point is to identify the overarching story of the Bible. Some of you are probably going, oh, sheesh, we're not going to be out of here until Tuesday. Not to worry, not to worry. It's not that daunting a task. In a nutshell, the opening chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, reveal that God's loving intent was to provide all that we, His creations, need. Our job, our part of the bargain, is to trust that He is both able and willing to do that on our behalf, and for us to resist the temptation to want to decide for ourselves what's best. The rest of the Bible is just a long and involved telling of our incredible struggle to trust in God rather than ourselves, as well as the remarkable lengths God goes to to make it possible for us ultimately to place our full and abiding confidence in Him. Now, most of you are probably familiar with the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The garden was a fantastic place. Those two have a great life. It's a really sweet setup. There's only one rule, don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, growing up in church, I didn't fully understand the significance of the boundary God established for humankind. My general sense was, you know, God likes rules. He's kind of a stickler about rules. And Adam and Eve got in pretty big trouble because they broke one of them. Well, as I've later come to understand, what actually happened was a much bigger deal than simply breaking a rule. What actually happened struck at the very heart of God's intent for creation. In allowing them to eat from any tree but the one, God was establishing the critical boundary for Adam and Eve and for every human since. God was saying, if you want to enjoy all of the good of my creation and live in my kingdom, you have to trust that I and I alone know what's best for you. And even more than that, you have to trust that I'm both able and willing to provide it to you. And so the questions that's faced Adam and Eve, as well as you and me, is do you believe that? Are you convinced that God knows what's best for you and that He is intent on providing it at all times and in all circumstances? When Eve first faced that question, the fate of all humanity hung in the balance. And what did she decide? Well, it turns out Eve wasn't completely convinced that God could be trusted. And she decided and felt the need to trust in someone else. Eve, that's who she decided to trust. She just trusted in herself instead. And now the serpent was cunning and planted the seed in Eve's mind that although God was certainly able to provide what was best for her, He wasn't willing but was holding something back. The serpent said, come on, Eve, you won't die. God's only worried that if you eat that fruit, you'll be like Him and be able to decide for yourself what's best, then you'll be your own God. And that has been humankind's struggle ever since. In the last book of the Bible, Revelation, it wasn't a question of God was willing to provide for his people, but if he was even able. Written at a time when Christ followers were just undergoing terrific persecution, with their very lives at stake, the facts on the ground were so difficult and so dire that only a nut job would conclude that somehow God was still in control and still in charge. And into that terrifically difficult and stressful situation, the Apostle John shared a vision of being transported up to the throne room of heaven where God sort of pulls back the curtain for a second just to show what's really going on behind the scenes. The message, no matter how things look from your perspective, I am God and there is no other. I have your back now and I have it for all eternity. Nothing can ever separate you from my loving care. Your faith and trust are well placed. God is asking each of us, do you believe, are you completely convinced that I'm both able and willing to provide the very best for you? That's the central question running throughout the entire Bible, and it's the central question of our human existence. But our struggle, our temptation, is to say in all different ways, well, God, to tell you the truth, in this particular area of my life, or in this particular relationship, or in this circumstance at this particular time, I'd like to have a say. I'd rather decide for myself what's best for me, what will make me most content, most comfortable, most safe, most fulfilled, most affirmed, most successful, most happy. After all, wouldn't I know better than anyone else what's in my best interest? That's exactly what Eve did. That's exactly what I do. And that is the root of all sin, a failure to trust in God's promise. We're just not entirely convinced, not enough to give up complete control. A famous passage from Proverbs that many of you probably know by heart is, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. But that's not easy. Our world and our culture constantly bombard us from every conceivable angle with arguments that God, even if he does exist, is neither able or willing to provide what's best for us. That life demands we take charge and we're better off when we do. Non-stop appeals to be our own little lords of our own little lives. Now we're going to do a little audience participation here for just a minute. I'd like you all to close your eyes. Alan, keep your eyes closed. Okay. Imagine that you're on the seventh floor of an office building. You are alone, and it's dark. An electrical short circuit has knocked out the lights and started an intense fire, which has engulfed the entire floor and will soon breach the room you're in. The smoke coming in under the door and through the vents is overwhelming, forcing you to drop to your knees. Your eyes are burning and you're beginning to cough uncontrollably. You can open your eyes now. Suddenly, off to your right, you hear a violent pounding on the outside of the far wall. Then the blade of an axe comes crashing through and soon the shape of a firefighter appears in the opening and he shouts, come on, follow me, I'll get you out. Wouldn't he be surprised if you yelled back, oh, thanks, buddy. I'm good. I got this. Of course, no one would do that. No one trapped and on the brink of perishing would respond that way. We would not only listen to the firefighter's commands, we would literally cling to him. We would follow his every word because we implicitly trust him. Not only does he know what he's doing, but he went to great lengths to find and rescue us. And it's plain as day that we desperately need his help. My illustration borders on the ludicrous because we'd never do that. Yet that's what we say to God all the time. I'm good. I got this. Now maybe some of us hear this illustration and say, that's not me. I'm good at trusting. My faith is rock solid. Maybe that's true, at least on the surface. But even for those of us who trust God fully in most areas of our lives, I bet that there are little nooks and crannies. I appreciated you using that earlier. Little pockets where we don't. A relationship, a decision, a priority, a behavior, perhaps, for which we're not convinced God's preferred course of action serves us best. So we plot the course by our own wisdom. We decide for ourselves what's best. And when we do that, we forfeit some portion of the abundant life that God so desperately wants for us. Sadly, doubting God's promises, not being fully convinced that he is both able and willing to provide the best for me in all of life's situations, happens far more than I even recognize. The decision to trust in my own judgment is typically very subtle. So subtle, in fact, that I don't even realize that I'm doing it much of the time. I'll share an example from my own life, but first I have to give you some context. Twenty-six years ago, we moved down here from New Jersey. I quit a really good job on Wall Street. We sold our dream house that we only lived in for two years. We left our beautiful little town and all our friends. We had a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and a newborn. We moved for a lot of reasons, but chief among them was my concern that it was all too consuming and that only over time does the true cost of that kind of investment in one's career become apparent? And by that point, it's often too late. The damage has been done. I believe back then, as I still do today, that wherever your treasure is, wherever you invest most of your time, your energy, your ambition, that's where your heart will ultimately be found. And I knew that for me, I couldn't keep doing that job in that city for very long without it, for all practical purposes, becoming my treasure and stealing my heart. Okay, so we did everything they tell you not to do all at the same time. Moved to a different part of the country, changed careers, sold houses, bought houses, had another baby. Deb had just turned 33, and I was 35. The plan was that I would invest our modest nest egg in the financial markets to support our new downsized life, and we'd live happily ever after. Now, fast forward 15 years. I'm meeting Jeff Hancock, who is Grace's teaching pastor at Carolina Ale House. I think it was on a Wednesday afternoon because that's when they had their specials. It's true. Jeff and I had a relationship built largely on a strong and abiding shared love of beer and for the places that happen to serve beer. Is there any stronger foundation for a friendship? Nevertheless, that was ours. So we'd get together every so often. And that particular afternoon, as soon as I sat down, Jeff asked if there was something wrong. And I started weeping and began to share with him how I was in the midst of suffering what for me was a breathtaking financial loss in the futures market. How I couldn't sleep, how it had stolen all of my joy, how it affected all of my personal interactions, including my most cherished ones with my wife and kids. Excuse me. With the child in college and two in high school, how it jeopardized everything Deb and I had planned. That loss was wreaking havoc in my life. Now, I shared with Jeff that afternoon that, yes, I was obviously sad to have lost so much of our nest egg at such a critical time. Yes, I was sorry for my stubbornness, my stupidity. Yes, I was sorry for my arrogance not to respect the markets. All that was true. Yet the reason I was weeping, what most undid me, was what the loss revealed about where I placed my trust. How it betrayed the fact that much of my confidence, my security, and my hope was wrapped up in our little nest egg, and that the notion that I trusted God was clearly not true, if not a bald-faced lie. And that is what makes it so tricky, because a lot of the time our struggles to trust are in those gray areas, things which in and of themselves don't strike us being all that bad or sinful. Nevertheless, we are not doing what God is asking us to do, to trust him with everything and in every situation. We simply aren't convinced that his way is always the best way. In answer to his question, do you believe that I am both able and willing to provide all that you need, we are saying no, not always. In the example I just shared from my own life, my answer was clearly no, I'm not completely convinced. In addition to trusting you, I would like my nest egg back. When we worry about things, even very serious things, we are wrestling with the question, will I trust God with my crisis? Is He capable to handle it on my behalf? Once again, our worrying says no, as it reveals that we're simply not convinced that God can handle the situation, or at least not to our satisfaction. According to the Bible, worry is the opposite of trust. When we choose not to forgive someone, contrary to God's clear desire and instruction, what are we doing? In not so many words, we are saying, I don't believe that God knows what's best for me. What about how we spend our money? I like to think that I include God in those discussions. But what I really do is only involve him in the discussion about the small portion that I might realistically earmark for charity. Concerning the other much bigger chunk, the 80, 90, or 95%, I say, wait just a second, God. Stay in your lane, buddy. I gave you some. This over here is for me to decide what to do. Scripture encourages us to confess our sins to one another, even and perhaps especially the deepest, darkest, and most shameful ones. My immediate response is to say, no, thank you, over my dead body. No way can that possibly be in my best interest. We're encouraged as believers to always be prepared to share why our hope is in Jesus Christ. I don't do it. I don't want to offend this person or turn them off. I don't want to be thought a weirdo or a creep. I'm a confident person generally. I'll share my opinion on almost any topic with almost anyone. But for some strange reason, I don't trust that God will have my back if I share my faith. God says be thankful at all times and in all circumstances. But I don't want to always be thankful, and there just so happens to be things in my life that I'm not thankful for. Yet having a spirit of appreciation and thankfulness is one command of God's that I've come to acknowledge clearly leads to joy and abundant life. I think of the people I know who are most pleasant and encouraging to be around, the ones that are most nutritious for me. Almost without exception, there are people who live life in a spirit of thanksgiving. The old saying is true, it's not happy people who are thankful, it's thankful people who are happy. Ironically, even knowing this, there are still times when I choose to defy God's good intent for my life and instead choose the way of the woe-is-me, self-pitting grumpus. Now, I could go on and on, but if each of us took a deep dive into our motivations for doing some things and not others, for worrying about things over which we have little control, for habitually engaging in certain behaviors or responding in certain ways, for placing so much importance on what others think, we would understand more clearly that, at least in those instances, we're not fully convinced that God always has our best interests at heart or that His way is always best, that He is completely trustworthy in all of life's circumstances, that He is intent on giving us life to the full, the life that is truly life, if only we would trust. And that, at long last, brings us to our hero, Gamaliel. What he offers is a simple proof, evidence to bolster our conviction that the God we worship deserves our full confidence and trust. I've never been a fan of belief for belief's sake. Don't care how sincere it might be. In other words, if I'm going to believe that God always has my best interest at heart and is able and willing to provide it to me, I want it to be true. More than that, I need to be convinced that it's true if I'm ever going to fully trust in it. Otherwise, as we've seen this morning, I'm going to succumb to the temptation to lean on my own wisdom and judgment. This is where the battle lines are drawn and the war for my trust is waged. And this is where Gamaliel's cool logic and reasoning come through in the clutch. Now let's go to the story in the book of Acts and jump into the action. Our story takes place in Jerusalem, not long after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The Christian church is in its infancy and growing rapidly. The Jewish establishment is nervous and on edge. The disciples, Peter and John, have just healed a beggar who had been crippled from birth. Everyone was amazed, and when Peter saw their reaction, he said, men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if it's by our own power or godliness that we had made this man walk? You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. By faith in the name of Jesus, the man you see and know was made strong. It is in Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see. While they were still speaking, the Jewish leaders, none too pleased with Peter and John's message, arrested them and threw them in jail for the night. The next day, they were brought before their rulers and elders and teachers of the law who questioned them about the healing. By what power or what name did you do this? And Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, replied, Let me interrupt our story for just a second to point out what remarkable change can happen in the hearts and minds of ordinary men and women when convinced of God's truth and imbued with His Spirit. Just a short time ago, these same disciples were the gang that couldn't shoot straight, timid and wavering, untrusting, unreliable, and unconvinced. Now look, there's hope for all of us. Now back to our story. The Jewish leaders were astonished by the courage of Peter and John, especially when they realized they were ordinary unschooled guys and weren't sure what to do as they had to admit that the healing was a fantastic, outstanding miracle which they couldn't deny. And they couldn't really punish them because everybody was running around praising God because of that miracle. So they issued some threats and ordered Peter and John not to speak about this Jesus. However, even after the imprisonment and threats, the disciples continued to preach, teach, and heal until the high priest and his associates could not stand it any longer and arrested them again. But that night, an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail in order the disciples to go back to the temple and tell the people the full message of this new life. When all the rulers assembled the next morning and sent for Peter and John, they were surprised to learn that although the jail was locked and secure, nobody was inside. The Bible says they were puzzled by this. I love the understatement. I bet they were puzzled when they later learned that the men were back in the temple court preaching and teaching. They went and got them, but not by force for fear of what the people might do. The high priest again questioned them, and now reading from Acts 5, 28 through 39. This is the high priest. We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, he said. Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood. Peter and John and the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him. When they heard this, they were furious and wanted to put them to death. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. Then he addressed them, men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men. Some time ago, Thudas appeared, claiming to be someone, and about 400 men rallied to him. He was killed, and all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too wasailed, and the apostles were let go. And now here, for you all this morning, is the $64,000 question of the day. If Gamaliel, the wisest and most esteemed teacher of the day, could be here with us this morning, is there any doubt that he would conclude if their purpose is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men. You will only find yourselves fighting against God. Well, it hasn't been stopped. There has been nothing like it in all of human history. No other power or movement or belief system has come close. Down through all the centuries, across every people group and culture on earth, and reaching the furthest corners of our planet, God has been on the move, faithful to all his promises. The prophet Isaiah wrote about God's faithfulness this way. and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. And that's why Gamaliel is a hero to me. His wisdom and insight remind me again that God is true to his word always and is going to do what he promised to do. If I'm going to trust God completely and not rely on my own wisdom, but surrender control in all areas of my life, not just some of them, I need that assurance. Our God is both able and willing to provide all that we need. My hope and prayer for all of us this morning is that the words of the Apostle Paul might be our words. I know whom I have believed, and I'm convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day. Thank you. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for loving us. Thank you for all these people who carved out time on a hot Sunday morning to come to know you better and to worship you. Lord, thank you for pursuing us. Obviously, forgive us for all the times that we are trust wavers. We're simply not convinced that you're completely trustworthy in all of life's situations. Thank you for the hope that you give us through your son. And it's his name we pray. Amen.

Good morning, I'm Doug Bergeson. Wait, wait, you've got to be kidding me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it just a few months ago when Kyle Tolbert, our youth pastor, came up here to speak? And before he uttered a word, before a single word, good or bad, was out of his mouth, you were applauding him. What do I get? I'll tell you what I get. I get bubkis, nada, nothing. Let me tell you something. It's not lost on us, those of us who are asked to speak in the middle of July, but never ever at Christmas time, and for sure not at Easter. It's not lost on us that we're not on God's A-team. We get it. We're not stupid. So given that, it might be nice if you tried to be a little bit more encouraging and supportive. So let's try this again. I would not have done that. You know, the Bible's very clear that we're to test and approve what we hear, to be discerning about what's being taught, not just to accept it willy-nilly. And here you all are already clapping for me, and you haven't the faintest idea what I'm going to say. Come on, people, you're better than that. Anyways, hopefully it's obvious that I'm just goofing around, as I'm not only thrilled to be here, but I feel immense privilege to be sharing this morning. And just for the record, far from expecting applause, my desperate and sincere prayer and hope is that God will make what I say clear and useful to you all. I'm really excited about this new sermon series that we're starting. In the past, when I've been asked to speak, I've always kind of hemmed and hawed, wanted to think about it. But when Nate called me this time and explained that the new series was going to be on the obscure heroes of the Bible, I was, for some strange reason, I was enthused, and I immediately jumped at the chance. A big part of it might be that it's just different than the norm, and different is sometimes really good. Mix it up a little bit, move off the beaten path. But more than simply serving as a nice change of pace, there's a much more consequential reason for studying these obscure heroes. They have a lot to teach us. Now, there are plenty of times when I wish the Bible was easier to understand and didn't avoid so many questions that I'd like answers to. Wish that it explained a whole bunch of things better. A little less ambiguity and mystery would sometimes be nice. But in response to that wish, I've heard it said that God, whose Spirit inspired every word written, must have included what He thought was important, what He thought we needed to know. So rather than worrying about the stuff that wasn't included, we'd be much better served paying attention to the things and those people and those events that God did include in his word to us. And that brings us back to our sermon series. God saw fit to tell us about these characters and their stories. And for that reason, we are not going to ignore or gloss over or relegate these heroes to a footnote any longer. Instead, we're going to exploit them for all their worth and see what they can teach us, what they can reveal to us, how they might strengthen and encourage us. The Apostle Paul said it this way, for everything that was written in the past, even obscure heroes that maybe we've never heard of, was written to teach us so that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. As I said, I was surprisingly enthused when Nate called me. Not only was I pumped for the series, but one name immediately popped into my head and I knew that was my guy. That was who I was going to talk about, Gamaliel, the great Pharisee and teacher of the law, and what he wisely concluded when confronted by the incredible boldness and defiance of Peter and the other disciples in the earliest times of the Christian movement. Now, how many of you have heard of Gamaliel? You don't have to raise your hands. You know, just wink or smile as I look around the room. Nothing but a sea of blank, expressionless faces. That's perfect. But before we get to Gamaliel, I need to set the table a bit for you, provide the backdrop to help explain why what he does, what he acknowledges is so valuable to me, that his was the first name in all the Bible that popped into my head. In other words, I need to make sure that we're on the same page with respect to one significant foundational point in order for us to see why Gamaliel, who himself is not even a believer in Jesus Christ, is a hero for us today. The key foundational point is to identify the overarching story of the Bible. Some of you are probably going, oh, sheesh, we're not going to be out of here until Tuesday. Not to worry, not to worry. It's not that daunting a task. In a nutshell, the opening chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, reveal that God's loving intent was to provide all that we, His creations, need. Our job, our part of the bargain, is to trust that He is both able and willing to do that on our behalf, and for us to resist the temptation to want to decide for ourselves what's best. The rest of the Bible is just a long and involved telling of our incredible struggle to trust in God rather than ourselves, as well as the remarkable lengths God goes to to make it possible for us ultimately to place our full and abiding confidence in Him. Now, most of you are probably familiar with the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The garden was a fantastic place. Those two have a great life. It's a really sweet setup. There's only one rule, don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, growing up in church, I didn't fully understand the significance of the boundary God established for humankind. My general sense was, you know, God likes rules. He's kind of a stickler about rules. And Adam and Eve got in pretty big trouble because they broke one of them. Well, as I've later come to understand, what actually happened was a much bigger deal than simply breaking a rule. What actually happened struck at the very heart of God's intent for creation. In allowing them to eat from any tree but the one, God was establishing the critical boundary for Adam and Eve and for every human since. God was saying, if you want to enjoy all of the good of my creation and live in my kingdom, you have to trust that I and I alone know what's best for you. And even more than that, you have to trust that I'm both able and willing to provide it to you. And so the questions that's faced Adam and Eve, as well as you and me, is do you believe that? Are you convinced that God knows what's best for you and that He is intent on providing it at all times and in all circumstances? When Eve first faced that question, the fate of all humanity hung in the balance. And what did she decide? Well, it turns out Eve wasn't completely convinced that God could be trusted. And she decided and felt the need to trust in someone else. Eve, that's who she decided to trust. She just trusted in herself instead. And now the serpent was cunning and planted the seed in Eve's mind that although God was certainly able to provide what was best for her, He wasn't willing but was holding something back. The serpent said, come on, Eve, you won't die. God's only worried that if you eat that fruit, you'll be like Him and be able to decide for yourself what's best, then you'll be your own God. And that has been humankind's struggle ever since. In the last book of the Bible, Revelation, it wasn't a question of God was willing to provide for his people, but if he was even able. Written at a time when Christ followers were just undergoing terrific persecution, with their very lives at stake, the facts on the ground were so difficult and so dire that only a nut job would conclude that somehow God was still in control and still in charge. And into that terrifically difficult and stressful situation, the Apostle John shared a vision of being transported up to the throne room of heaven where God sort of pulls back the curtain for a second just to show what's really going on behind the scenes. The message, no matter how things look from your perspective, I am God and there is no other. I have your back now and I have it for all eternity. Nothing can ever separate you from my loving care. Your faith and trust are well placed. God is asking each of us, do you believe, are you completely convinced that I'm both able and willing to provide the very best for you? That's the central question running throughout the entire Bible, and it's the central question of our human existence. But our struggle, our temptation, is to say in all different ways, well, God, to tell you the truth, in this particular area of my life, or in this particular relationship, or in this circumstance at this particular time, I'd like to have a say. I'd rather decide for myself what's best for me, what will make me most content, most comfortable, most safe, most fulfilled, most affirmed, most successful, most happy. After all, wouldn't I know better than anyone else what's in my best interest? That's exactly what Eve did. That's exactly what I do. And that is the root of all sin, a failure to trust in God's promise. We're just not entirely convinced, not enough to give up complete control. A famous passage from Proverbs that many of you probably know by heart is, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. But that's not easy. Our world and our culture constantly bombard us from every conceivable angle with arguments that God, even if he does exist, is neither able or willing to provide what's best for us. That life demands we take charge and we're better off when we do. Non-stop appeals to be our own little lords of our own little lives. Now we're going to do a little audience participation here for just a minute. I'd like you all to close your eyes. Alan, keep your eyes closed. Okay. Imagine that you're on the seventh floor of an office building. You are alone, and it's dark. An electrical short circuit has knocked out the lights and started an intense fire, which has engulfed the entire floor and will soon breach the room you're in. The smoke coming in under the door and through the vents is overwhelming, forcing you to drop to your knees. Your eyes are burning and you're beginning to cough uncontrollably. You can open your eyes now. Suddenly, off to your right, you hear a violent pounding on the outside of the far wall. Then the blade of an axe comes crashing through and soon the shape of a firefighter appears in the opening and he shouts, come on, follow me, I'll get you out. Wouldn't he be surprised if you yelled back, oh, thanks, buddy. I'm good. I got this. Of course, no one would do that. No one trapped and on the brink of perishing would respond that way. We would not only listen to the firefighter's commands, we would literally cling to him. We would follow his every word because we implicitly trust him. Not only does he know what he's doing, but he went to great lengths to find and rescue us. And it's plain as day that we desperately need his help. My illustration borders on the ludicrous because we'd never do that. Yet that's what we say to God all the time. I'm good. I got this. Now maybe some of us hear this illustration and say, that's not me. I'm good at trusting. My faith is rock solid. Maybe that's true, at least on the surface. But even for those of us who trust God fully in most areas of our lives, I bet that there are little nooks and crannies. I appreciated you using that earlier. Little pockets where we don't. A relationship, a decision, a priority, a behavior, perhaps, for which we're not convinced God's preferred course of action serves us best. So we plot the course by our own wisdom. We decide for ourselves what's best. And when we do that, we forfeit some portion of the abundant life that God so desperately wants for us. Sadly, doubting God's promises, not being fully convinced that he is both able and willing to provide the best for me in all of life's situations, happens far more than I even recognize. The decision to trust in my own judgment is typically very subtle. So subtle, in fact, that I don't even realize that I'm doing it much of the time. I'll share an example from my own life, but first I have to give you some context. Twenty-six years ago, we moved down here from New Jersey. I quit a really good job on Wall Street. We sold our dream house that we only lived in for two years. We left our beautiful little town and all our friends. We had a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and a newborn. We moved for a lot of reasons, but chief among them was my concern that it was all too consuming and that only over time does the true cost of that kind of investment in one's career become apparent? And by that point, it's often too late. The damage has been done. I believe back then, as I still do today, that wherever your treasure is, wherever you invest most of your time, your energy, your ambition, that's where your heart will ultimately be found. And I knew that for me, I couldn't keep doing that job in that city for very long without it, for all practical purposes, becoming my treasure and stealing my heart. Okay, so we did everything they tell you not to do all at the same time. Moved to a different part of the country, changed careers, sold houses, bought houses, had another baby. Deb had just turned 33, and I was 35. The plan was that I would invest our modest nest egg in the financial markets to support our new downsized life, and we'd live happily ever after. Now, fast forward 15 years. I'm meeting Jeff Hancock, who is Grace's teaching pastor at Carolina Ale House. I think it was on a Wednesday afternoon because that's when they had their specials. It's true. Jeff and I had a relationship built largely on a strong and abiding shared love of beer and for the places that happen to serve beer. Is there any stronger foundation for a friendship? Nevertheless, that was ours. So we'd get together every so often. And that particular afternoon, as soon as I sat down, Jeff asked if there was something wrong. And I started weeping and began to share with him how I was in the midst of suffering what for me was a breathtaking financial loss in the futures market. How I couldn't sleep, how it had stolen all of my joy, how it affected all of my personal interactions, including my most cherished ones with my wife and kids. Excuse me. With the child in college and two in high school, how it jeopardized everything Deb and I had planned. That loss was wreaking havoc in my life. Now, I shared with Jeff that afternoon that, yes, I was obviously sad to have lost so much of our nest egg at such a critical time. Yes, I was sorry for my stubbornness, my stupidity. Yes, I was sorry for my arrogance not to respect the markets. All that was true. Yet the reason I was weeping, what most undid me, was what the loss revealed about where I placed my trust. How it betrayed the fact that much of my confidence, my security, and my hope was wrapped up in our little nest egg, and that the notion that I trusted God was clearly not true, if not a bald-faced lie. And that is what makes it so tricky, because a lot of the time our struggles to trust are in those gray areas, things which in and of themselves don't strike us being all that bad or sinful. Nevertheless, we are not doing what God is asking us to do, to trust him with everything and in every situation. We simply aren't convinced that his way is always the best way. In answer to his question, do you believe that I am both able and willing to provide all that you need, we are saying no, not always. In the example I just shared from my own life, my answer was clearly no, I'm not completely convinced. In addition to trusting you, I would like my nest egg back. When we worry about things, even very serious things, we are wrestling with the question, will I trust God with my crisis? Is He capable to handle it on my behalf? Once again, our worrying says no, as it reveals that we're simply not convinced that God can handle the situation, or at least not to our satisfaction. According to the Bible, worry is the opposite of trust. When we choose not to forgive someone, contrary to God's clear desire and instruction, what are we doing? In not so many words, we are saying, I don't believe that God knows what's best for me. What about how we spend our money? I like to think that I include God in those discussions. But what I really do is only involve him in the discussion about the small portion that I might realistically earmark for charity. Concerning the other much bigger chunk, the 80, 90, or 95%, I say, wait just a second, God. Stay in your lane, buddy. I gave you some. This over here is for me to decide what to do. Scripture encourages us to confess our sins to one another, even and perhaps especially the deepest, darkest, and most shameful ones. My immediate response is to say, no, thank you, over my dead body. No way can that possibly be in my best interest. We're encouraged as believers to always be prepared to share why our hope is in Jesus Christ. I don't do it. I don't want to offend this person or turn them off. I don't want to be thought a weirdo or a creep. I'm a confident person generally. I'll share my opinion on almost any topic with almost anyone. But for some strange reason, I don't trust that God will have my back if I share my faith. God says be thankful at all times and in all circumstances. But I don't want to always be thankful, and there just so happens to be things in my life that I'm not thankful for. Yet having a spirit of appreciation and thankfulness is one command of God's that I've come to acknowledge clearly leads to joy and abundant life. I think of the people I know who are most pleasant and encouraging to be around, the ones that are most nutritious for me. Almost without exception, there are people who live life in a spirit of thanksgiving. The old saying is true, it's not happy people who are thankful, it's thankful people who are happy. Ironically, even knowing this, there are still times when I choose to defy God's good intent for my life and instead choose the way of the woe-is-me, self-pitting grumpus. Now, I could go on and on, but if each of us took a deep dive into our motivations for doing some things and not others, for worrying about things over which we have little control, for habitually engaging in certain behaviors or responding in certain ways, for placing so much importance on what others think, we would understand more clearly that, at least in those instances, we're not fully convinced that God always has our best interests at heart or that His way is always best, that He is completely trustworthy in all of life's circumstances, that He is intent on giving us life to the full, the life that is truly life, if only we would trust. And that, at long last, brings us to our hero, Gamaliel. What he offers is a simple proof, evidence to bolster our conviction that the God we worship deserves our full confidence and trust. I've never been a fan of belief for belief's sake. Don't care how sincere it might be. In other words, if I'm going to believe that God always has my best interest at heart and is able and willing to provide it to me, I want it to be true. More than that, I need to be convinced that it's true if I'm ever going to fully trust in it. Otherwise, as we've seen this morning, I'm going to succumb to the temptation to lean on my own wisdom and judgment. This is where the battle lines are drawn and the war for my trust is waged. And this is where Gamaliel's cool logic and reasoning come through in the clutch. Now let's go to the story in the book of Acts and jump into the action. Our story takes place in Jerusalem, not long after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The Christian church is in its infancy and growing rapidly. The Jewish establishment is nervous and on edge. The disciples, Peter and John, have just healed a beggar who had been crippled from birth. Everyone was amazed, and when Peter saw their reaction, he said, men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if it's by our own power or godliness that we had made this man walk? You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. By faith in the name of Jesus, the man you see and know was made strong. It is in Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see. While they were still speaking, the Jewish leaders, none too pleased with Peter and John's message, arrested them and threw them in jail for the night. The next day, they were brought before their rulers and elders and teachers of the law who questioned them about the healing. By what power or what name did you do this? And Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, replied, Let me interrupt our story for just a second to point out what remarkable change can happen in the hearts and minds of ordinary men and women when convinced of God's truth and imbued with His Spirit. Just a short time ago, these same disciples were the gang that couldn't shoot straight, timid and wavering, untrusting, unreliable, and unconvinced. Now look, there's hope for all of us. Now back to our story. The Jewish leaders were astonished by the courage of Peter and John, especially when they realized they were ordinary unschooled guys and weren't sure what to do as they had to admit that the healing was a fantastic, outstanding miracle which they couldn't deny. And they couldn't really punish them because everybody was running around praising God because of that miracle. So they issued some threats and ordered Peter and John not to speak about this Jesus. However, even after the imprisonment and threats, the disciples continued to preach, teach, and heal until the high priest and his associates could not stand it any longer and arrested them again. But that night, an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail in order the disciples to go back to the temple and tell the people the full message of this new life. When all the rulers assembled the next morning and sent for Peter and John, they were surprised to learn that although the jail was locked and secure, nobody was inside. The Bible says they were puzzled by this. I love the understatement. I bet they were puzzled when they later learned that the men were back in the temple court preaching and teaching. They went and got them, but not by force for fear of what the people might do. The high priest again questioned them, and now reading from Acts 5, 28 through 39. This is the high priest. We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, he said. Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood. Peter and John and the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him. When they heard this, they were furious and wanted to put them to death. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. Then he addressed them, men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men. Some time ago, Thudas appeared, claiming to be someone, and about 400 men rallied to him. He was killed, and all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too wasailed, and the apostles were let go. And now here, for you all this morning, is the $64,000 question of the day. If Gamaliel, the wisest and most esteemed teacher of the day, could be here with us this morning, is there any doubt that he would conclude if their purpose is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men. You will only find yourselves fighting against God. Well, it hasn't been stopped. There has been nothing like it in all of human history. No other power or movement or belief system has come close. Down through all the centuries, across every people group and culture on earth, and reaching the furthest corners of our planet, God has been on the move, faithful to all his promises. The prophet Isaiah wrote about God's faithfulness this way. and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. And that's why Gamaliel is a hero to me. His wisdom and insight remind me again that God is true to his word always and is going to do what he promised to do. If I'm going to trust God completely and not rely on my own wisdom, but surrender control in all areas of my life, not just some of them, I need that assurance. Our God is both able and willing to provide all that we need. My hope and prayer for all of us this morning is that the words of the Apostle Paul might be our words. I know whom I have believed, and I'm convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day. Thank you. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for loving us. Thank you for all these people who carved out time on a hot Sunday morning to come to know you better and to worship you. Lord, thank you for pursuing us. Obviously, forgive us for all the times that we are trust wavers. We're simply not convinced that you're completely trustworthy in all of life's situations. Thank you for the hope that you give us through your son. And it's his name we pray. Amen.

Thank you. Hear the word of God from the Gospel of Luke. she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. Thank you, Bill. Good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. Before I just dive into the sermon, I had a couple preliminary thoughts I just wanted to share with you real quick. If you've been a part of Grace for any number of years, you know that we tend to, at the end of the year, give not necessarily more generously, but we tend to give generously at the end of the year. Our year-end giving is usually pretty good. And so one of the things that we've done since I got here is we do a Christmas offering and we say, hey, as end of the year giving comes in this year, we're going to allocate that to these projects and to these ministries and things like that. Well, this year is a little different in that we are pushing to the end of our building campaign that we launched back in, I guess, February of 2020. We had pledged Sunday on March the 1st of 2020. I announced the pledges on March the 8th of 2020, and then the world ended. And that whole time, we've actually been running concurrent to the pandemic. We've been doing a campaign, and you guys have been so faithful, and God has been so good that we are actually in a really good spot. Now, I sent out details about that this week. So if you didn't get an update email from me on the search for the worship pastor and our search for a building and how the campaign is going. If you didn't get that this week, please let me know. All that means is you're not on the list that you need to be on. If you're watching at home or catch this later, fill out a connection card online and let us know. Fill out a connection card here in the service and we'll make sure and get you on the right list so that you can get those updates. So as we look towards the end of the year, basically what we're asking with end of the year giving is this, either designate it for general offering or designate it for the building campaign. If money comes in undesignated, we will by default put that towards the general offering. And then in the new year, depending on what comes in, the missions committee will make decisions about how we want to allocate those to other ministries that we support. Just as a reminder, we give 10% of what we bring in to missions. And this year it's actually been a little bit bigger. This year we've actually given about 12% to ministries going on outside the walls of the church. And that's something that we're really proud of and hold close to our hearts. The other thing I was going to share with you, I have to be careful how I do this, is last week, you know, Kyle preached. Kyle preached so good that about 15 minutes in, at first I was like, dude, this is great. He's crushing it. Good for Kyle. I love this. And then about 15 minutes in, I was like, yo, Kyle, like, chill out, man Like I have to preach next week. I don't have, I don't have that much on Mary right now. So just, let's just take it easy. He did so good. And the whole experience was fantastic. I texted Kirk and Kyle on Saturday and said, hey, you know, I don't have any responsibilities in the service. So I'm actually going to come to the service with my family. I'll get there about 930 9.45. And so last week I had the opportunity to just wake up, help Jen get the kids ready, come to church together, drop our kids off with some folks who really wanted to hug on John and squeeze his big fat baby cheeks. And then Lily went next door with her friends, some folks that care about her. And then I got to talk to my friends and we sat in the back, which I love sitting in the back. I'm jealous of you guys. Yeah, that's it, Scotty. Like, I love sitting back there, and we sang songs. We snuggled up a little bit during the sermon. I sat next to my wife. I was ministered to by the sermon, ministered to by the songs, particularly that last one. And I left here with my heart just full of Jesus. And I thought to myself, that was great. That church is so fun. You guys who just get to show up and don't have to do anything and be ministered to, you don't know how good you got it, man. So just for the record, I'm very envious of you guys. I almost, I considered this week quitting my job just so I could come to church with my family, but I have no marketable skills. So I'm here until the Lord chooses otherwise. Okay. This week, yes, thank you. Thank you, Elaine. For those watching online, there was thunderous applause. This week, we are in part two of our series called Renewed Wonder, where we simply are focusing on looking at Christmas through the eyes of a child. That's why we're doing lighthearted things. That's why we had Christmas Kyle come and do the announcements. But truth be told, we would make Kyle do that no matter how lighthearted the series was. We're decorating cookies after the service. I hope you'll do that. That's for children and adults, too. I'm particularly excited about next week, Christmas Jammy Sunday. Can't wait to see what you show up in. This is going to be very, very fun and very, very festive. Yes, Mike, even you, buddy. This is going to be great. So I'm really looking forward to that as we kind of just look at Christmas through the eyes of a child and just the wonder and the grandeur that comes with Christmas. And so that's what we're doing in the series. And then the sermons, we're looking at the Christmas story through the eyes of different characters within the story. So last week, like I said, Kyle did a great job of looking at Christmas to the eyes of the shepherds. And this week, we want to look at Christmas to the eyes of Mary. What must it have been like for Mary to experience that first Christmas? And what can we learn from her experience? And what about her experience can shape the way that we approach Christmas this year? So as we think about Christmas through the eyes of Mary, it would probably be good to get some context on her, to understand who Mary was and what kind of person that she was. And we really, we don't know a lot. We know that she was from Nazareth. So that makes her pretty simple. Nazareth was a very small town. There's very little archaeological evidence that Nazareth even ever existed. It's just very, very small. It doesn't mean it didn't exist. It just means it's so small that there's not very much there. It's in the north of Israel. It's in the hill country. Like when Jesus is introduced, one time we hear somebody say, can anything good come from Nazareth? It was like the Mississippi of Israel. Just nothing good came from there. So, sorry, that's a Georgia joke. I don't know what the North Carolina, is it West Virginia? Is that who we make fun of in North Carolina? I always make fun of Mississippi. Tennessee, yeah, that's good. We'll go Tennessee. Thank you very much. She was a simple girl from Nazareth. She was probably, culturally, because she was engaged, she was probably 13 to 15 years old. I know that sounds weird for us, but in that culture, typically men had to grow up and establish themselves and have a career and be able to pay a dowry and be able to prove that they could support a wife. So it's reasonable to think that Joseph was probably closer to 30 and that Mary was probably closer to 15 or so, which sounds super weird to us, but then that was how it goes. So she's betrothed to Joseph. To them, engagement was tantamount to marriage. You're essentially married already. You're just waiting for the ceremony, and then you go move in with the groom and his family. So she's getting ready for that. We know that Mary was a young girl of faith. She knew her scriptures. She prayed to God. She clearly listened to the Lord. And that's important because it tells us that when the angel shows up in the passage that Bill read to us and starts to talk about this Messiah figure that's going to come, she knows who that is. She's been told about the Messiah her whole life. Just like we're waiting on the second coming of Christ that we talked about in Revelation for him to come down out of the clouds and rescue us. So she was waiting on the first coming of the Messiah. So when the angel begins to talk about the Messiah, she knows who that is. She was a young girl of faith. And that's important. But she was a simple girl with a simple faith and a very simple life, and I doubt seriously that she had any visions of anything larger than that. And it's to this girl that the angel appears. And I'm going to finish up the passage that Bill began to read because these are the details that he gives Mary about what is you're going to have the Messiah. You're pregnant. God did it. You're all right. And you're going to carry this baby to term and you're going to have the Messiah and he's going to be called Jesus and he's going to be the Lord. He's going to be the most high. He's going to sit on the throne of David. And when we think about Mary and we think about her role in Jesus's life, we only get snippets of her in scripture. And I wonder how in depth we go in our thought process about her, right? Because I always think of her as just, look how lucky she is. Look how fortunate she is. She was favored, we're told. And I saw one author this week as I was kind of reading up on Mary, who just made the point that Mary was favored then so that we could be favored with the son now. And I think that's a pretty great thought. But Mary, God just plucked her out of obscurity and said, yeah, you're the girl. She wasn't expecting it. She wasn't asking for it. At no point do we have any record of Mary praying a prayer and saying, God, you know, I know you're going to bring a Messiah. I don't know how you plan to get him into the world. But if it's through a teenage virgin, I'll sign up for that. So if that's your plan, God, just consider me. She didn't expect that. And I wonder how much we've thought of how much it radically changed her life and the trajectory of her life to be told that she was going to give birth to the Son of God. The angel didn't tell Joseph until after Joseph and Mary had the conversation. So now Mary knows, I've got to have this super tough conversation with my fiance that I'm pregnant and it's not him. And he's got to believe me that it was God. That's a tough conversation. She's got to carry this baby to term. She's got to raise this baby. You ever think when one and a half year old Jesus is sitting at the table in his high chair and he reaches for the butter knife and he's not supposed to touch the butter knife and he's not understanding. No. And Mary wants to slap his hand. She's got to stop and be like, is this okay? Can I hit the Savior? Is that a thing? I don't know what to do. Is that too hard? Oh gosh, I'm so sorry. Can you imagine losing your patience with infant baby Jesus, with Messiah Jesus? When my kid won't sleep, I will walk into his room and sometimes the passage does not get put into his mouth as gently as possibly. Sometimes it's possible that I mutter things in the middle of the night and give him unkind instructions. What if you're married? What if that's Jesus and you lose your patience with baby Jesus? Like it's just a totally different way to think about motherhood. How about when they're on a play date and one of the other moms leans over and she's like, I tell you what, you're Jesus. He is just so well behaved. He's like a little angel. And Mary's like, well, actually, he's in charge of the angels. And then all the other moms are like, that Mary, she's got rose-colored glasses on about her kid. She does not see him realistically. She thinks way too highly of him. Joseph disappears from the gospel narrative. Because culturally he was likely older than Mary, and because this is a time in which the life expectancy is not very high, we presume, a lot of scholars presume, that Joseph died. That somewhere in there that Jesus lost his father. So Joseph experienced the loss of his earthly father and then we have James, the half-brother of Jesus, who writes a book in the Bible and gives us evidence that at some point or another, Mary remarried. So Jesus was a stepson. So for the stepchildren in the room, I think that's pretty cool. Jesus knew what a blended family was and felt like. Can you imagine being Mary and trying to be a mother of Jesus and a mother of these other kids and love them equally and fairly and feeling that weight of importance your whole life? Like I think that we think, oh, what a blessing that Mary received to be able to have the son of God. But part of me thinks like, but was it all the time? Because it was, had to be pretty stressful. Had to be pretty difficult at times. And in this way, the one thing that I've been thinking this week, the one phrase that's kind of rung through my mind is, how did Mary experience Christmas was this idea that Jesus happened to Mary. He just happened to her. She wasn't looking for him. She didn't pray for him. She didn't expect it. She didn't know. There wasn't a prophecy that this is how Jesus is going to come. She just, she didn't know. And all of a sudden, this angel shows up and says, you're going to be pregnant. You're going to have Jesus. And it's going to radically change your whole life. And I think of Jesus happening to Mary, like the Kool-Aid man just bursting through the wall, right? Like, I don't know if you're old enough to remember in the 80s and 90s, Kool-Aid had this great ad campaign with the Kool-Aid man, this oversized pitcher filled with red Kool-Aid, and these kids would be sitting around playing a game and one of them would be like, I'm thirsty, and then the Kool-Aid man would just barge through the wall and be like, I got some Kool-Aid. I don't know what he actually said, but that's the implication, is now you will thirst no more. There's a Kool-Aid man here. I think there was a Saturday Night Live sketch about people sitting around being like, I'm thirsty. And the Kool-Aid man like broke through the wall. And there's this big, huge opening that's plenty big enough for the Kool-Aid man, like right next to where he broke through. And the people are like, you could have just, could just use the door, man. Like knock it off with crashing through these walls. But that's how Jesus shows up in Mary's life. Just a Kool-Aid man just crashing through the wall, announcing his presence. I'm here. And listen, it radically changes everything in her life. It radically changes her priorities. It radically changes the purpose. She had plans for her life. Forget them. She had goals for her life. Rethink them, Mary. Those of us who have walked through spiritual deserts, which is everyone who's been a Christian for more than 60 days, Mary couldn't do that. She had to be on her game all the time. She's raising the Savior. There's no wandering around for you. When Jesus showed up, he radically changed her life. He happened to her. And he changed everything. And in the middle of this, in her wrestling with this, we pick the story back up. She's now brought Jesus to term. She's had him in a manger, right? They go to Bethlehem, they go to Jerusalem, they end up in Bethlehem, they have Jesus in a manger which looked, we think of it as a sort of like barn or stable, but it's really probably more like a cave that they were in in the hills of Bethlehem. And when Jesus is born, the angels appear to the shepherds. The shepherds go and they go decide to visit baby Jesus. This is what Kyle preached about last week. And so that's where we pick it up this week when we look at Luke chapter 2, I noticed something that I had never, ever noticed before in the Christmas story. It says the shepherds see the angels, they hear them, they're told that the Messiah has been born. They're like, this is great, let's go meet him. They go to the manger where Mary and Joseph are. And when they get there, they tell everybody what the angel said. And it says, need it explained to them. They're not wondering. And then you got Mary and Joseph. They know. The angels have told them personally. They showed up in their house and said, hey, here's the deal. So those people know, which leads me to the conclusion, and you guys can follow me here or not. This is just me thinking, okay? So you buy it or not. But it leads me to the conclusion that we've got a little bit of a DJ Khaled situation going on here. Now, here's what I mean. I was in Times Square a couple years ago by myself. I dropped Jen off at the hotel, and then I went to Times Square by myself because I love being in Times Square at night. It's one of the most special places on the planet. I think it's so cool. And I'm just taking it all in. And I noticed people start to just kind of flock. There's a ton of people there and people just start to flock to this one street on this one side of Times Square. And they're like three and four people deep. And I'm like, I wonder what's going on over here. So I go over there and I kind of make my way up on a wall and I'm looking down on the road and everybody's looking at this car and waving at this one car. And I asked, there's some random couple next to me. I'm like, what's the deal? What's going on? They go, we don't know. We think that's DJ Khaled. And I'm like, cool. There he is. I saw him. You know, and if you'd have told me 10 minutes ago, hey, just a heads up, buddy. Well, DJ Khaled's about to pass the street right here. You can go get a good seat for it before everybody else knows. I'd have been like, I'm good. I think we'll let somebody else see DJ Khaled. I still don't know what he looks like. He could be here and I wouldn't know it. As a matter of fact, Deej, if you're here, we're always looking for volunteers in the worship team. We're actually hiring, so let's talk, man. I don't know where your life's at. That'd be cool. But the thing that happened was it was just a commotion. There was just a bunch of people. And then there was some people walking this way and then other people started this way. And then it occurred to me, Mary and Joseph are here on holiday. They're here for a census. They're here for Passover. Do you think that they're the only ones that couldn't get a room in the end? You think they showed up so late? The whole country is descending on Jerusalem. You think the whole country got there before Mary and Joseph did? No. There was other people around. There was other people who couldn't stay in Jerusalem and had to stay in Bethlehem. Which, this is beside the point, but Joseph, get it together, man. You got a pregnant wife. You can't make reservations. You know you've got to go. You've known for a year. You've known for 10 years there's a census coming. You can't make a reservation in Jerusalem. The level of not planning from Joseph here baffles me. They're the people who are in group C when you board Southwest. That's Mary and Joseph. It's the only airline I know that before you can get on the plane, you have to line up in order of personal responsibility, right? And then the C's are in the back. But there's a bunch of people around. And there's lights in the sky, And then there's shepherds who just left their flock moving through the city. And it seems to me, all those who gathered, all those who are around, it seems to me that there was a commotion and that they've all moved towards this manger. And they're craning and they're trying to see what's going on. And then the shepherds tell everybody, this is the Messiah the angels just told us. This is what they said. He's going to be King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is Emmanuel, God with us. And they say that. And the crowds are like, okay. What does that mean? What's that going to look like? And what's cool about that is Mary knew. Mary could have told them. She could have made it so that they didn't have to wonder. And instead, we get this response, which is, I think, my favorite verse in the Christmas story, Luke 2, 19. It says, but Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. That's just a mama's joy right there. That's my baby. And I get to be his mama. And he's the savior. He's the Messiah. He's the one we've all been waiting on. He's the one you grew up longing for. He's the one your soul needs and you don't even know it. And she knew. But for some reason, she didn't tell him. She held that one here. She treasured that in her heart. She said, this moment is between me and you, God. And she pondered, she weighed those things for the rest of her life. And I love that moment. Because in that moment, Mary knows something that nobody else knows. Mary understands something that the rest of the world doesn't understand yet. All those crowds gathered, and what's the with the baby and the shepherds who came over and they were told they don't really fully understand it yet. She's had nine months to ruminate on this. She understands something that the rest of them don't understand. And I'm convinced it's this. Mary knew that Jesus was going to happen to them too. She knew. Just stick around. You'll learn who this is. You'll figure it out. How, Mary? I don't know. I don't know how he's going to tell you. But stick around. And Jesus is going to happen to you too. Whether we're paying attention or whether we're not, she knows. All these people wondering, who's this baby? She knows in her head. You'll know. You'll learn. He's going to happen to you just like he happened to me. And here's the part about this that I love. In this moment, in this moment of confidence that Jesus is going to happen to you too, Mary exists in blissful, confident ignorance. Mary exists in blissful, confident ignorance. And here's what I mean. She knows that Jesus is going to happen. She knows that this little boy is going to grow up and he's going to become the Messiah and he's going to sit on the throne of David. Does she know how that's going to happen? Not a chance. Does Mary know that this little boy is going to grow up and at 30 he's going to recruit 12 disciples and he's going to give them the keys to the kingdom and that he's going to be crucified on a cross and she's going to watch him die and that in three days he's going to resurrect and defeat hell and death for the rest of time and win us for eternity and that one day he's going to watch him die. And then in three days, he's going to resurrect and defeat hell and death for the rest of time and win us for eternity. And that one day he's going to crash down out of the clouds on a white horse and be called faithful and true. And he's going to take us all up to heaven because he came to establish an eternal kingdom and not an earthly kingdom. Does Mary know that? No, no chance. She just knows he's Jesus. And that God sent him and that he's going to take care of things. Does Mary know how Jesus is going to show up in the lives of those gathered around wondering what does all this mean? Does she know how Jesus is going to happen to them? No. Does she know that 33 years later, those same crowds and the children of those crowds might be the same ones gathered around Pilate's governor's mansion when Jesus is about to be crucified, yelling, give us Barabbas and crucify Christ? She doesn't know that. She exists in blissful, confident ignorance. Jesus is going to happen here. How, Mary? I don't know. I don't know, but he is. He's going to show up. When? I don't know. I don't know what to tell you, but he's going to happen. And I love that thought so much because if we'll pay attention, Jesus will happen to us too in big and small ways. If you pay attention, Jesus will happen to you too in big and small ways. See, what we know about Mary is that she was faithful. What we know about Mary is that she listened to God. What we know about Mary is that she knew her Scripture. She was listening. And Jesus happened. And so what I know about us and what Mary knew about us is that if we'll listen, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, Jesus will happen to us too in big and small ways. And I think that's an important delineation in big and small ways. He will happen to us in big ways because when Jesus shows up in our life, make no mistake, he Kool-Aid mans that joker. He shows up and he wrecks shop. He rearranges everything. He totally changes your priorities. He totally changes your heart. You had these goals for your life? No. These are your new goals for your life. You had these plans for yourself? No. I'm going to make these plans for you. You have these priorities? You hold these things precious? Forget them. They're nothing. Hold these things precious. When Jesus explodes into our life, he radically changes our hearts. He radically changes everything. Our lives look completely different once he's bound through the wall. And I think that part of our problem sometimes is that we're the Saturday night live actors going, hey, Jesus, do you think maybe you could just use the door? Do you come in like a, is there like a small Jesus? This one's making a lot of demands, pal. I think that sometimes because we hold on so tightly, we don't let Jesus happen to us the way that he could and the way that he wants to. Mary simply said, when she found out that she was going to have Jesus, she said, I'm your servant. Do whatever you're going to do. And I think some of us, and when I say us, I mean us, tend to think like, Jesus, I'm pretty squared away. But I'd love for you to have some say in these areas. That's not the deal that Jesus makes. He explodes into our life and he radically changes everything. And he doesn't ask us for permission before he does it. And Mary knows that Jesus is going to happen to us. Jesus also happens in small ways. Continually through our life when we need him most. In moments when we desperately need him to happen. I remember being in Honduras years ago. When I was a teacher, I took a class of seniors to Siguarapeque, Honduras. And one of the things that we did there was hand out bags of rice to some of the folks in the village. That's not a critical term. It was literally a village in the hillsides of Saguarapeque. And there was one girl that we took with us named Allison. And Allison was this really sharp, bright girl who I really liked a lot. And she told me one of the nights that we were there that she was really struggling with her faith. I'm just not sure if I believe it. I have so many questions and I kind of don't know what to do. And we talked about it for a little bit and I just let it be. And then the day that we were handing out rice, it's predominantly older and younger women who are in the line for the rice. And we've got like this chain. I'm in the back of a truck and I'm picking up boxes. I'm handing the boxes to somebody and they're picking up bags and they're handing bags and they're handing bags and then they're handing them to the people. And it just so happened that Allison was at the end of the conveyor belt and she was the one actually handing the rice to the women. And I was paying attention to her that day and I saw her face light up in a way that I had never seen before. And I saw the joy of connection that she was having with the women to whom she was handing the rice. And it was this spiritual moment. And so I pulled her aside after dinner that night and I said, hey, listen, I know that you're having questions about your faith, but I watched you come alive when you were helping those women today. I watched a joy in your eyes. And she started to cry. She knew I was right. And I said, I just want you to know that that was Jesus. Scripture tells us that whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me. And you were serving Jesus today. And he showed up for you. So you might not always have all the answers that you want for your faith, but you can cling to Jesus. And today you found him. And it resonated with her. She's a nurse in Denver, specifically at a hospital in a low-income area so that she can continue to serve the least of these. She's dedicated her life to that service because Jesus showed up for her that day. And this Christmas season, some of you, you need Jesus to show up. You need Jesus to happen to you. Some of us in big ways. Some of us, we need to quit asking Jesus to simply walk to the door we provided and let him come in and wreck shop. Some of us, we need Jesus to happen in small ways. Some of us are like Allison, we're struggling with our faith. We don't know what to do. We don't have all the answers. And if maybe Jesus could just show up here, if Jesus could just happen here, that would be what we needed to see a clear path forward. Others of us, we have things going on in our families. We're facing a difficult Christmas or we're facing a tight Christmas or we're facing a stressful Christmas or it's just a hard season of life and we need Jesus to show up. I can remember a month or two ago, I was in a place where I was just feeling really discouraged. And I prayed one morning. I was like, God, listen, man, if you're handing out, I didn't say listen, man. I don't say that to God. I try not to anyway. Sometimes I do. God, I'm sorry. But God, if you're handing out encouragement, I'll take some. I could use it. I need Jesus to happen here. That was a Sunday morning. I won't go into the details. But for the next three days, encouragement after encouragement after encouragement that I didn't expect. And Jesus happened to me that week. And some of you need Jesus to happen to you too. And whatever situations you're in, and whatever stresses you're carrying and burdens you're bearing, you need Jesus to happen. And so my prayer for you this week, that in this place, in grace, this month, and this season, that Jesus would happen here as we move through Christmas season together. And my prayer for you is that Jesus would happen to you. And for some of you, my prayer is that he would happen in really big, life-changing, earth-shattering, priority-changing ways that you didn't anticipate that scare the heck out of you. But I hope that Jesus shows up big time in your life. And still for others, I'm praying that Jesus will happen to you in that small way that you need him so desperately to happen. But let's make our prayer at Grace this season that Jesus will happen here and Jesus will happen in our lives. Join me in that prayer. Father, you're good to us. Thank you for your son. Thank you for Christmas. Thank you for how it focuses us on you and your goodness and on your son. Jesus, we invite you into this place. We pray that you would happen here. We pray that you would have your way here. Give us the faith and the courage to not stand in your way. Give us the wisdom to know that your ways are better than our ways. Give us the courage to overcome any fear we might have about handing things over to you. But let us, God, pray courageous prayers and invite you into our life in a big way. And Father, for those of us who need Jesus in the little ways, for those of us who are struggling, who are hurting, who are stressed or anxious, God, I pray that Jesus would happen in those spaces too. Even this week, God, even today, would Jesus happen to us. It's in his name we ask these things. Amen.

Thank you. Hear the word of God from the Gospel of Luke. she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. Thank you, Bill. Good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. Before I just dive into the sermon, I had a couple preliminary thoughts I just wanted to share with you real quick. If you've been a part of Grace for any number of years, you know that we tend to, at the end of the year, give not necessarily more generously, but we tend to give generously at the end of the year. Our year-end giving is usually pretty good. And so one of the things that we've done since I got here is we do a Christmas offering and we say, hey, as end of the year giving comes in this year, we're going to allocate that to these projects and to these ministries and things like that. Well, this year is a little different in that we are pushing to the end of our building campaign that we launched back in, I guess, February of 2020. We had pledged Sunday on March the 1st of 2020. I announced the pledges on March the 8th of 2020, and then the world ended. And that whole time, we've actually been running concurrent to the pandemic. We've been doing a campaign, and you guys have been so faithful, and God has been so good that we are actually in a really good spot. Now, I sent out details about that this week. So if you didn't get an update email from me on the search for the worship pastor and our search for a building and how the campaign is going. If you didn't get that this week, please let me know. All that means is you're not on the list that you need to be on. If you're watching at home or catch this later, fill out a connection card online and let us know. Fill out a connection card here in the service and we'll make sure and get you on the right list so that you can get those updates. So as we look towards the end of the year, basically what we're asking with end of the year giving is this, either designate it for general offering or designate it for the building campaign. If money comes in undesignated, we will by default put that towards the general offering. And then in the new year, depending on what comes in, the missions committee will make decisions about how we want to allocate those to other ministries that we support. Just as a reminder, we give 10% of what we bring in to missions. And this year it's actually been a little bit bigger. This year we've actually given about 12% to ministries going on outside the walls of the church. And that's something that we're really proud of and hold close to our hearts. The other thing I was going to share with you, I have to be careful how I do this, is last week, you know, Kyle preached. Kyle preached so good that about 15 minutes in, at first I was like, dude, this is great. He's crushing it. Good for Kyle. I love this. And then about 15 minutes in, I was like, yo, Kyle, like, chill out, man Like I have to preach next week. I don't have, I don't have that much on Mary right now. So just, let's just take it easy. He did so good. And the whole experience was fantastic. I texted Kirk and Kyle on Saturday and said, hey, you know, I don't have any responsibilities in the service. So I'm actually going to come to the service with my family. I'll get there about 930 9.45. And so last week I had the opportunity to just wake up, help Jen get the kids ready, come to church together, drop our kids off with some folks who really wanted to hug on John and squeeze his big fat baby cheeks. And then Lily went next door with her friends, some folks that care about her. And then I got to talk to my friends and we sat in the back, which I love sitting in the back. I'm jealous of you guys. Yeah, that's it, Scotty. Like, I love sitting back there, and we sang songs. We snuggled up a little bit during the sermon. I sat next to my wife. I was ministered to by the sermon, ministered to by the songs, particularly that last one. And I left here with my heart just full of Jesus. And I thought to myself, that was great. That church is so fun. You guys who just get to show up and don't have to do anything and be ministered to, you don't know how good you got it, man. So just for the record, I'm very envious of you guys. I almost, I considered this week quitting my job just so I could come to church with my family, but I have no marketable skills. So I'm here until the Lord chooses otherwise. Okay. This week, yes, thank you. Thank you, Elaine. For those watching online, there was thunderous applause. This week, we are in part two of our series called Renewed Wonder, where we simply are focusing on looking at Christmas through the eyes of a child. That's why we're doing lighthearted things. That's why we had Christmas Kyle come and do the announcements. But truth be told, we would make Kyle do that no matter how lighthearted the series was. We're decorating cookies after the service. I hope you'll do that. That's for children and adults, too. I'm particularly excited about next week, Christmas Jammy Sunday. Can't wait to see what you show up in. This is going to be very, very fun and very, very festive. Yes, Mike, even you, buddy. This is going to be great. So I'm really looking forward to that as we kind of just look at Christmas through the eyes of a child and just the wonder and the grandeur that comes with Christmas. And so that's what we're doing in the series. And then the sermons, we're looking at the Christmas story through the eyes of different characters within the story. So last week, like I said, Kyle did a great job of looking at Christmas to the eyes of the shepherds. And this week, we want to look at Christmas to the eyes of Mary. What must it have been like for Mary to experience that first Christmas? And what can we learn from her experience? And what about her experience can shape the way that we approach Christmas this year? So as we think about Christmas through the eyes of Mary, it would probably be good to get some context on her, to understand who Mary was and what kind of person that she was. And we really, we don't know a lot. We know that she was from Nazareth. So that makes her pretty simple. Nazareth was a very small town. There's very little archaeological evidence that Nazareth even ever existed. It's just very, very small. It doesn't mean it didn't exist. It just means it's so small that there's not very much there. It's in the north of Israel. It's in the hill country. Like when Jesus is introduced, one time we hear somebody say, can anything good come from Nazareth? It was like the Mississippi of Israel. Just nothing good came from there. So, sorry, that's a Georgia joke. I don't know what the North Carolina, is it West Virginia? Is that who we make fun of in North Carolina? I always make fun of Mississippi. Tennessee, yeah, that's good. We'll go Tennessee. Thank you very much. She was a simple girl from Nazareth. She was probably, culturally, because she was engaged, she was probably 13 to 15 years old. I know that sounds weird for us, but in that culture, typically men had to grow up and establish themselves and have a career and be able to pay a dowry and be able to prove that they could support a wife. So it's reasonable to think that Joseph was probably closer to 30 and that Mary was probably closer to 15 or so, which sounds super weird to us, but then that was how it goes. So she's betrothed to Joseph. To them, engagement was tantamount to marriage. You're essentially married already. You're just waiting for the ceremony, and then you go move in with the groom and his family. So she's getting ready for that. We know that Mary was a young girl of faith. She knew her scriptures. She prayed to God. She clearly listened to the Lord. And that's important because it tells us that when the angel shows up in the passage that Bill read to us and starts to talk about this Messiah figure that's going to come, she knows who that is. She's been told about the Messiah her whole life. Just like we're waiting on the second coming of Christ that we talked about in Revelation for him to come down out of the clouds and rescue us. So she was waiting on the first coming of the Messiah. So when the angel begins to talk about the Messiah, she knows who that is. She was a young girl of faith. And that's important. But she was a simple girl with a simple faith and a very simple life, and I doubt seriously that she had any visions of anything larger than that. And it's to this girl that the angel appears. And I'm going to finish up the passage that Bill began to read because these are the details that he gives Mary about what is you're going to have the Messiah. You're pregnant. God did it. You're all right. And you're going to carry this baby to term and you're going to have the Messiah and he's going to be called Jesus and he's going to be the Lord. He's going to be the most high. He's going to sit on the throne of David. And when we think about Mary and we think about her role in Jesus's life, we only get snippets of her in scripture. And I wonder how in depth we go in our thought process about her, right? Because I always think of her as just, look how lucky she is. Look how fortunate she is. She was favored, we're told. And I saw one author this week as I was kind of reading up on Mary, who just made the point that Mary was favored then so that we could be favored with the son now. And I think that's a pretty great thought. But Mary, God just plucked her out of obscurity and said, yeah, you're the girl. She wasn't expecting it. She wasn't asking for it. At no point do we have any record of Mary praying a prayer and saying, God, you know, I know you're going to bring a Messiah. I don't know how you plan to get him into the world. But if it's through a teenage virgin, I'll sign up for that. So if that's your plan, God, just consider me. She didn't expect that. And I wonder how much we've thought of how much it radically changed her life and the trajectory of her life to be told that she was going to give birth to the Son of God. The angel didn't tell Joseph until after Joseph and Mary had the conversation. So now Mary knows, I've got to have this super tough conversation with my fiance that I'm pregnant and it's not him. And he's got to believe me that it was God. That's a tough conversation. She's got to carry this baby to term. She's got to raise this baby. You ever think when one and a half year old Jesus is sitting at the table in his high chair and he reaches for the butter knife and he's not supposed to touch the butter knife and he's not understanding. No. And Mary wants to slap his hand. She's got to stop and be like, is this okay? Can I hit the Savior? Is that a thing? I don't know what to do. Is that too hard? Oh gosh, I'm so sorry. Can you imagine losing your patience with infant baby Jesus, with Messiah Jesus? When my kid won't sleep, I will walk into his room and sometimes the passage does not get put into his mouth as gently as possibly. Sometimes it's possible that I mutter things in the middle of the night and give him unkind instructions. What if you're married? What if that's Jesus and you lose your patience with baby Jesus? Like it's just a totally different way to think about motherhood. How about when they're on a play date and one of the other moms leans over and she's like, I tell you what, you're Jesus. He is just so well behaved. He's like a little angel. And Mary's like, well, actually, he's in charge of the angels. And then all the other moms are like, that Mary, she's got rose-colored glasses on about her kid. She does not see him realistically. She thinks way too highly of him. Joseph disappears from the gospel narrative. Because culturally he was likely older than Mary, and because this is a time in which the life expectancy is not very high, we presume, a lot of scholars presume, that Joseph died. That somewhere in there that Jesus lost his father. So Joseph experienced the loss of his earthly father and then we have James, the half-brother of Jesus, who writes a book in the Bible and gives us evidence that at some point or another, Mary remarried. So Jesus was a stepson. So for the stepchildren in the room, I think that's pretty cool. Jesus knew what a blended family was and felt like. Can you imagine being Mary and trying to be a mother of Jesus and a mother of these other kids and love them equally and fairly and feeling that weight of importance your whole life? Like I think that we think, oh, what a blessing that Mary received to be able to have the son of God. But part of me thinks like, but was it all the time? Because it was, had to be pretty stressful. Had to be pretty difficult at times. And in this way, the one thing that I've been thinking this week, the one phrase that's kind of rung through my mind is, how did Mary experience Christmas was this idea that Jesus happened to Mary. He just happened to her. She wasn't looking for him. She didn't pray for him. She didn't expect it. She didn't know. There wasn't a prophecy that this is how Jesus is going to come. She just, she didn't know. And all of a sudden, this angel shows up and says, you're going to be pregnant. You're going to have Jesus. And it's going to radically change your whole life. And I think of Jesus happening to Mary, like the Kool-Aid man just bursting through the wall, right? Like, I don't know if you're old enough to remember in the 80s and 90s, Kool-Aid had this great ad campaign with the Kool-Aid man, this oversized pitcher filled with red Kool-Aid, and these kids would be sitting around playing a game and one of them would be like, I'm thirsty, and then the Kool-Aid man would just barge through the wall and be like, I got some Kool-Aid. I don't know what he actually said, but that's the implication, is now you will thirst no more. There's a Kool-Aid man here. I think there was a Saturday Night Live sketch about people sitting around being like, I'm thirsty. And the Kool-Aid man like broke through the wall. And there's this big, huge opening that's plenty big enough for the Kool-Aid man, like right next to where he broke through. And the people are like, you could have just, could just use the door, man. Like knock it off with crashing through these walls. But that's how Jesus shows up in Mary's life. Just a Kool-Aid man just crashing through the wall, announcing his presence. I'm here. And listen, it radically changes everything in her life. It radically changes her priorities. It radically changes the purpose. She had plans for her life. Forget them. She had goals for her life. Rethink them, Mary. Those of us who have walked through spiritual deserts, which is everyone who's been a Christian for more than 60 days, Mary couldn't do that. She had to be on her game all the time. She's raising the Savior. There's no wandering around for you. When Jesus showed up, he radically changed her life. He happened to her. And he changed everything. And in the middle of this, in her wrestling with this, we pick the story back up. She's now brought Jesus to term. She's had him in a manger, right? They go to Bethlehem, they go to Jerusalem, they end up in Bethlehem, they have Jesus in a manger which looked, we think of it as a sort of like barn or stable, but it's really probably more like a cave that they were in in the hills of Bethlehem. And when Jesus is born, the angels appear to the shepherds. The shepherds go and they go decide to visit baby Jesus. This is what Kyle preached about last week. And so that's where we pick it up this week when we look at Luke chapter 2, I noticed something that I had never, ever noticed before in the Christmas story. It says the shepherds see the angels, they hear them, they're told that the Messiah has been born. They're like, this is great, let's go meet him. They go to the manger where Mary and Joseph are. And when they get there, they tell everybody what the angel said. And it says, need it explained to them. They're not wondering. And then you got Mary and Joseph. They know. The angels have told them personally. They showed up in their house and said, hey, here's the deal. So those people know, which leads me to the conclusion, and you guys can follow me here or not. This is just me thinking, okay? So you buy it or not. But it leads me to the conclusion that we've got a little bit of a DJ Khaled situation going on here. Now, here's what I mean. I was in Times Square a couple years ago by myself. I dropped Jen off at the hotel, and then I went to Times Square by myself because I love being in Times Square at night. It's one of the most special places on the planet. I think it's so cool. And I'm just taking it all in. And I noticed people start to just kind of flock. There's a ton of people there and people just start to flock to this one street on this one side of Times Square. And they're like three and four people deep. And I'm like, I wonder what's going on over here. So I go over there and I kind of make my way up on a wall and I'm looking down on the road and everybody's looking at this car and waving at this one car. And I asked, there's some random couple next to me. I'm like, what's the deal? What's going on? They go, we don't know. We think that's DJ Khaled. And I'm like, cool. There he is. I saw him. You know, and if you'd have told me 10 minutes ago, hey, just a heads up, buddy. Well, DJ Khaled's about to pass the street right here. You can go get a good seat for it before everybody else knows. I'd have been like, I'm good. I think we'll let somebody else see DJ Khaled. I still don't know what he looks like. He could be here and I wouldn't know it. As a matter of fact, Deej, if you're here, we're always looking for volunteers in the worship team. We're actually hiring, so let's talk, man. I don't know where your life's at. That'd be cool. But the thing that happened was it was just a commotion. There was just a bunch of people. And then there was some people walking this way and then other people started this way. And then it occurred to me, Mary and Joseph are here on holiday. They're here for a census. They're here for Passover. Do you think that they're the only ones that couldn't get a room in the end? You think they showed up so late? The whole country is descending on Jerusalem. You think the whole country got there before Mary and Joseph did? No. There was other people around. There was other people who couldn't stay in Jerusalem and had to stay in Bethlehem. Which, this is beside the point, but Joseph, get it together, man. You got a pregnant wife. You can't make reservations. You know you've got to go. You've known for a year. You've known for 10 years there's a census coming. You can't make a reservation in Jerusalem. The level of not planning from Joseph here baffles me. They're the people who are in group C when you board Southwest. That's Mary and Joseph. It's the only airline I know that before you can get on the plane, you have to line up in order of personal responsibility, right? And then the C's are in the back. But there's a bunch of people around. And there's lights in the sky, And then there's shepherds who just left their flock moving through the city. And it seems to me, all those who gathered, all those who are around, it seems to me that there was a commotion and that they've all moved towards this manger. And they're craning and they're trying to see what's going on. And then the shepherds tell everybody, this is the Messiah the angels just told us. This is what they said. He's going to be King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is Emmanuel, God with us. And they say that. And the crowds are like, okay. What does that mean? What's that going to look like? And what's cool about that is Mary knew. Mary could have told them. She could have made it so that they didn't have to wonder. And instead, we get this response, which is, I think, my favorite verse in the Christmas story, Luke 2, 19. It says, but Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. That's just a mama's joy right there. That's my baby. And I get to be his mama. And he's the savior. He's the Messiah. He's the one we've all been waiting on. He's the one you grew up longing for. He's the one your soul needs and you don't even know it. And she knew. But for some reason, she didn't tell him. She held that one here. She treasured that in her heart. She said, this moment is between me and you, God. And she pondered, she weighed those things for the rest of her life. And I love that moment. Because in that moment, Mary knows something that nobody else knows. Mary understands something that the rest of the world doesn't understand yet. All those crowds gathered, and what's the with the baby and the shepherds who came over and they were told they don't really fully understand it yet. She's had nine months to ruminate on this. She understands something that the rest of them don't understand. And I'm convinced it's this. Mary knew that Jesus was going to happen to them too. She knew. Just stick around. You'll learn who this is. You'll figure it out. How, Mary? I don't know. I don't know how he's going to tell you. But stick around. And Jesus is going to happen to you too. Whether we're paying attention or whether we're not, she knows. All these people wondering, who's this baby? She knows in her head. You'll know. You'll learn. He's going to happen to you just like he happened to me. And here's the part about this that I love. In this moment, in this moment of confidence that Jesus is going to happen to you too, Mary exists in blissful, confident ignorance. Mary exists in blissful, confident ignorance. And here's what I mean. She knows that Jesus is going to happen. She knows that this little boy is going to grow up and he's going to become the Messiah and he's going to sit on the throne of David. Does she know how that's going to happen? Not a chance. Does Mary know that this little boy is going to grow up and at 30 he's going to recruit 12 disciples and he's going to give them the keys to the kingdom and that he's going to be crucified on a cross and she's going to watch him die and that in three days he's going to resurrect and defeat hell and death for the rest of time and win us for eternity and that one day he's going to watch him die. And then in three days, he's going to resurrect and defeat hell and death for the rest of time and win us for eternity. And that one day he's going to crash down out of the clouds on a white horse and be called faithful and true. And he's going to take us all up to heaven because he came to establish an eternal kingdom and not an earthly kingdom. Does Mary know that? No, no chance. She just knows he's Jesus. And that God sent him and that he's going to take care of things. Does Mary know how Jesus is going to show up in the lives of those gathered around wondering what does all this mean? Does she know how Jesus is going to happen to them? No. Does she know that 33 years later, those same crowds and the children of those crowds might be the same ones gathered around Pilate's governor's mansion when Jesus is about to be crucified, yelling, give us Barabbas and crucify Christ? She doesn't know that. She exists in blissful, confident ignorance. Jesus is going to happen here. How, Mary? I don't know. I don't know, but he is. He's going to show up. When? I don't know. I don't know what to tell you, but he's going to happen. And I love that thought so much because if we'll pay attention, Jesus will happen to us too in big and small ways. If you pay attention, Jesus will happen to you too in big and small ways. See, what we know about Mary is that she was faithful. What we know about Mary is that she listened to God. What we know about Mary is that she knew her Scripture. She was listening. And Jesus happened. And so what I know about us and what Mary knew about us is that if we'll listen, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, Jesus will happen to us too in big and small ways. And I think that's an important delineation in big and small ways. He will happen to us in big ways because when Jesus shows up in our life, make no mistake, he Kool-Aid mans that joker. He shows up and he wrecks shop. He rearranges everything. He totally changes your priorities. He totally changes your heart. You had these goals for your life? No. These are your new goals for your life. You had these plans for yourself? No. I'm going to make these plans for you. You have these priorities? You hold these things precious? Forget them. They're nothing. Hold these things precious. When Jesus explodes into our life, he radically changes our hearts. He radically changes everything. Our lives look completely different once he's bound through the wall. And I think that part of our problem sometimes is that we're the Saturday night live actors going, hey, Jesus, do you think maybe you could just use the door? Do you come in like a, is there like a small Jesus? This one's making a lot of demands, pal. I think that sometimes because we hold on so tightly, we don't let Jesus happen to us the way that he could and the way that he wants to. Mary simply said, when she found out that she was going to have Jesus, she said, I'm your servant. Do whatever you're going to do. And I think some of us, and when I say us, I mean us, tend to think like, Jesus, I'm pretty squared away. But I'd love for you to have some say in these areas. That's not the deal that Jesus makes. He explodes into our life and he radically changes everything. And he doesn't ask us for permission before he does it. And Mary knows that Jesus is going to happen to us. Jesus also happens in small ways. Continually through our life when we need him most. In moments when we desperately need him to happen. I remember being in Honduras years ago. When I was a teacher, I took a class of seniors to Siguarapeque, Honduras. And one of the things that we did there was hand out bags of rice to some of the folks in the village. That's not a critical term. It was literally a village in the hillsides of Saguarapeque. And there was one girl that we took with us named Allison. And Allison was this really sharp, bright girl who I really liked a lot. And she told me one of the nights that we were there that she was really struggling with her faith. I'm just not sure if I believe it. I have so many questions and I kind of don't know what to do. And we talked about it for a little bit and I just let it be. And then the day that we were handing out rice, it's predominantly older and younger women who are in the line for the rice. And we've got like this chain. I'm in the back of a truck and I'm picking up boxes. I'm handing the boxes to somebody and they're picking up bags and they're handing bags and they're handing bags and then they're handing them to the people. And it just so happened that Allison was at the end of the conveyor belt and she was the one actually handing the rice to the women. And I was paying attention to her that day and I saw her face light up in a way that I had never seen before. And I saw the joy of connection that she was having with the women to whom she was handing the rice. And it was this spiritual moment. And so I pulled her aside after dinner that night and I said, hey, listen, I know that you're having questions about your faith, but I watched you come alive when you were helping those women today. I watched a joy in your eyes. And she started to cry. She knew I was right. And I said, I just want you to know that that was Jesus. Scripture tells us that whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me. And you were serving Jesus today. And he showed up for you. So you might not always have all the answers that you want for your faith, but you can cling to Jesus. And today you found him. And it resonated with her. She's a nurse in Denver, specifically at a hospital in a low-income area so that she can continue to serve the least of these. She's dedicated her life to that service because Jesus showed up for her that day. And this Christmas season, some of you, you need Jesus to show up. You need Jesus to happen to you. Some of us in big ways. Some of us, we need to quit asking Jesus to simply walk to the door we provided and let him come in and wreck shop. Some of us, we need Jesus to happen in small ways. Some of us are like Allison, we're struggling with our faith. We don't know what to do. We don't have all the answers. And if maybe Jesus could just show up here, if Jesus could just happen here, that would be what we needed to see a clear path forward. Others of us, we have things going on in our families. We're facing a difficult Christmas or we're facing a tight Christmas or we're facing a stressful Christmas or it's just a hard season of life and we need Jesus to show up. I can remember a month or two ago, I was in a place where I was just feeling really discouraged. And I prayed one morning. I was like, God, listen, man, if you're handing out, I didn't say listen, man. I don't say that to God. I try not to anyway. Sometimes I do. God, I'm sorry. But God, if you're handing out encouragement, I'll take some. I could use it. I need Jesus to happen here. That was a Sunday morning. I won't go into the details. But for the next three days, encouragement after encouragement after encouragement that I didn't expect. And Jesus happened to me that week. And some of you need Jesus to happen to you too. And whatever situations you're in, and whatever stresses you're carrying and burdens you're bearing, you need Jesus to happen. And so my prayer for you this week, that in this place, in grace, this month, and this season, that Jesus would happen here as we move through Christmas season together. And my prayer for you is that Jesus would happen to you. And for some of you, my prayer is that he would happen in really big, life-changing, earth-shattering, priority-changing ways that you didn't anticipate that scare the heck out of you. But I hope that Jesus shows up big time in your life. And still for others, I'm praying that Jesus will happen to you in that small way that you need him so desperately to happen. But let's make our prayer at Grace this season that Jesus will happen here and Jesus will happen in our lives. Join me in that prayer. Father, you're good to us. Thank you for your son. Thank you for Christmas. Thank you for how it focuses us on you and your goodness and on your son. Jesus, we invite you into this place. We pray that you would happen here. We pray that you would have your way here. Give us the faith and the courage to not stand in your way. Give us the wisdom to know that your ways are better than our ways. Give us the courage to overcome any fear we might have about handing things over to you. But let us, God, pray courageous prayers and invite you into our life in a big way. And Father, for those of us who need Jesus in the little ways, for those of us who are struggling, who are hurting, who are stressed or anxious, God, I pray that Jesus would happen in those spaces too. Even this week, God, even today, would Jesus happen to us. It's in his name we ask these things. Amen.