All right, well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten a chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service, or we could also do it outside. I don't want to confine that to just the lobby. We're starting a new series today called 27. This series, believe it or not, is going to be two summers long. It's going to be the summer series this summer and next summer. And what we're going to do is look at an overview of all 27 books of the New Testament. We're going to start in Matthew and move right through and kind of give you guys an idea of what each book contains, what it's about, what it's for, who wrote it, why they wrote it, and those kinds of things. Now, we're doing this series for a couple of reasons, but the primary one is in an effort, and not that I sense a deficiency, but I think every church needs this, in an effort to continue to raise what I think of as the biblical literacy of the church. How familiar are we with the Bible? How well can we find the books? How well do we know what they're all about and how it all orders together? And I think that we have a wide swath of knowledge and people in the room. So some of us know the Bible really well. And we're grateful and blessed to have a body that is diverse in how well we know Scripture. Some of you could probably teach this series. And so my hope for those who know their Bibles well, know there's four Gospels, that Acts is the lone narrative book in the New Testament, and then we have the Pauline epistles and the general epistles, and they're written to the churches for different reasons and all the things. Like, if you know that stuff, then my hope is, as we zero in on each book, that you can learn something new and different that you may not have thought about or been aware of or exposed to before, and that hopefully something will spark and cause you to want to deep dive into these books a little bit more. Maybe you buy a commentary or start to watch another sermon series on it and dive deeper into this book. We hope that this series will compel you towards scripture. I say as often as I can that the single most important habit that anyone can develop in their life is to wake up every day and spend time in God's Word and time in prayer. I don't think there's any habit more important or valuable than that one. And so we hope that this series will compel you towards that. Now, if you're on the opposite end of the biblical knowledge spectrum and you didn't even know that there was 27 books in the New Testament, as a matter of fact, you're not exactly sure what the New Testament is. You just hear church people use that word. Then this is for you too. The New Testament, by the way, is just the books of the Bible that were written after Jesus was born. There's a more technical explanation of that, but that's essentially what's going on there. All the books that were written before Jesus, Old Testament. After Jesus, New Testament. And in the New Testament, there's 27 books. For those who care, there's 39 in the Old Testament, 66 total. Unless you're Catholic, then there's an apocrypha, and that's just a whole mess. But in the Protestant Bible, 66 books. I don't know. I don't know why I do things. I don't know why I say things sometimes. They just, they happen. And then they come out and I'm like, what was that about? I don't know. I don't know. Sorry, I'm editing. Right now I'm editing to make fun of myself more. Let's get back to the sermon. My hope is that for those of us who feel like, gosh, I don't know anything about the Bible. It's intimidating and unapproachable. I hope that you can make sense of it. And I don't want anyone to feel bad for not knowing where books are. If I say turn to Ephesians, you have to use the table of contents. That's fine. We just want to move in a direction where all of us are learning a little bit more about our Bible and pressed towards the Bible. So the sermons in this series are going to feel, I wouldn't say professorial because I'm not smart enough to be a professor, but they're going to feel more instructive than sermons about how to manage our emotions, which are more practical. So these are just to help us think better and more about the Bible and understand it as we dive into the Bible. That being said, in June, we're doing like a little sub-series within the larger series where we're going to look at the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are what's called synoptic Gospels. They cover pretty much the same chronology. They include a lot of the same stories. Those authors are trying to get a lot of the same points across. They're written to different people and depict Jesus as different things in each We'll be make comparisons. I am like, but he doesn't talk in parables like he does in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And so for the month of June, we're going to move through the Gospels, look at how they're different, which aspects of Jesus they highlight, and what we can learn from that. So this week, we're in the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew was written to the Jews and depicts Jesus as king. Matthew was written to the Jewish people in the first century, and it depicts Jesus as the king. This is really important because, I'm going to move right to it, because the Jewish people needed Matthew's gospel because they missed the Messiah. Matthew needed to be written, and it needed to be written to the Jews, and it needed to be written to prove to them that Jesus was actually the Messiah that he came to be because they missed him. And it's really tragic that they did because for generation after generation, for four millennia, the Jewish people were looking for the Messiah. They had prophecies and prophets trickle in to point them towards the Messiah. They're waiting on him. They're looking for him. His arrival could be any day. You never know. Every lifetime that happens, just like every lifetime that happens, we're convinced that Jesus is going to return while we're here. Everybody thinks that all the time. So must they have thought that about the Messiah arriving. Certainly it will be now. And he didn't, and he didn't, and he didn't. And they waited, and they waited, and they waited. And these are God's people. These are the children of Abraham. These are his descendants. These are the ones of all the world. These are the people who should know, who when the Messiah gets there, they should be like, that's the guy. They should know. And yet, when Jesus shows up and he says, I'm the guy, they go, no, you're not. And he's like, but really I am. And they're like, actually, you're not. And because you claim you are and you're not, we're going to kill you. That is a very loose paraphrase of a non-existent conversation that happened between Jesus and a whole country. But that's the vibe, all right? That's generally what's going on. Unless we think that it really wasn't the Jews who killed him and rejected him, it really wasn't the Israelites who killed him and rejected him, it was just this sect of religious leaders, Caiaphas and his cronies, the high priest and the others around him, and maybe Pilate and not caring, and he had a hand in it, and they did. But before Pilate kills Jesus, he tries to say, hey, we don't need to kill this guy. He didn't really do anything. And the Jewish people say, kill him and let his blood be on our heads and on the heads of our children, which is communal guilt. Okay? They missed Jesus. Now, there's forgiveness and repentance for that. Jesus needed to die that death so that they could be reunited with their father in heaven, and it worked out. But the Jews missed him. The Israelites missed the Messiah. And so they needed the book of Matthew to be written to them, to prove to them that that guy you killed on that cross, he was actually the guy. The guy that you killed for saying he was the guy, he was right. You've got a big blind spot. Let me show you. Let me prove to you that he was who he says he was. That's why in the book of Matthew, as you read it, you'll be following along. If you have a Bible now, you can look. It's right there. You'll be following along. You know how the Bible has two columns on each page? The column will pause and indent, and there will be a quote, sometimes short, sometimes long, and then it will get back to the regular discourse. And there's all sorts of pausing, indented quotes all throughout the book of Matthew. And what those indented quotes are are Old Testament prophecies about Jesus and who he was. And it goes like this. If you open up your Bible to the book of Matthew, you'll see three times that he does this in the first two chapters. I'm just going to run through them real quick so you know what I'm talking about. Matthew chapter 1, verse 22. I'm going to start reading in verse 21. See? All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, and then he breaks down into the quote from the Old Testament prophet. You turn the page, or maybe I don't know how your Bible works out said this had to happen. That is all through the gospel of Matthew. Because the Gospel of Matthew was written to a Jewish community that had rejected the Messiah. And what Matthew is doing is saying, hey, I know that you guys know your Old Testament, the Tanakh, the laws and the prophets, what we would think of as the Old Testament in the Bible. I know that you know that. I know that you know your prophets. I know that you know your prophecies. Their biblical literacy as a culture was much higher than ours is in church. So when Matthew quotes these prophets, they know who it was. They've been taught those prophecies. They've heard those things before. And there ought to be, there ought to be light bulbs going off in their minds going, oh, he does fulfill that. Oh, he does fulfill that. Oh, that is actually true. Oh, my goodness, he is and was the Messiah. So he wrote it to the unbelieving first century Jewish audience to show them that you did actually kill the Messiah and we need to turn and put our faith in him because he still lives. That was the point of the gospel of Matthew. And to me, when I think about why Matthew was written, and I think about some other things that we'll get into here in a second. It causes me to come back to questions like this. If Jesus showed up today, would you need your own gospel to show you that you missed him? If Jesus showed up today in Israel and the world pointed to him and said, that's the Messiah, that's Jesus, would you recognize him? Would you acknowledge him for who he was? Or would you be part of the crowd that rejected him and needed a separate gospel written to you after the fact to show you that he really was who he says he was? A more simple way to ask that is, if Jesus showed up in your life, would you notice him? If Jesus just plopped down right in the middle of grace, would we acknowledge that he was the Messiah? Or would we not be able to recognize him? Would we reject him, call him a weird cult leader, or a crazy person, and have him arrested or ignore him? Or if Jesus showed up, would we recognize him? I think about that question all the time. And I think about it all the time because the very people who were supposed to identify Jesus as Jesus didn't do it. The very people who had all the resources and all the exposure and knew all the quotes and all the scripture, when Jesus showed up, they didn't recognize him. And I don't know about you guys, but in modern Christianity, I'm that person. I've been in church my whole life. I've learned about Jesus from a very young age. I pray to him every day. I'm the one that's supposed to recognize when he shows up. You, most of you, are the people who are supposed to recognize when he shows up. Would you? Or would we do what they did and miss him? To answer that question, we have got to ask, why did they miss him? Right? That's the question. We have to go back and go, what did they do that we can try to avoid doing? Why did they miss who Jesus was? And how can we avoid doing what they did so that if Jesus were to show up today, we would recognize him and see him? I would contend with you that there's a couple different reasons, big reasons, why they missed the Messiah and they didn't recognize him and see him. I would contend with you that there's a couple different reasons, big reasons why they missed the Messiah and they didn't recognize him. But I would contend with you that overall, they couldn't see Jesus because they were blinded by their religious expectations. They had some expectations of who the Messiah was going to be and what the Messiah was going to do. And because they had those expectations, it blinded them from being able to see the actual real Messiah. And here's what's so scary about these expectations. These expectations came from their own religion. They came from their own faith. They came from Judaism. They came from, listen to me, well-meaning teachers over the centuries who were doing the best they could to point God's people towards God. I do not think that there was some grand conspiracy with little pernicious machinations through the decades to just tilt the course a little bit so that God's people could not see their God. I believe that there was good, well-meaning teachers in the Old Testament, men and women who were instructing God's people to be able to point them towards God, and they allowed things to get in there that started to just knock them off by a couple degrees so that by the time Jesus shows up thousands or hundreds of years later, they don't recognize him anymore. Because through the decades and through the centuries and down through the millennia, they began to put expectations on who their Messiah would be that Jesus did not put on himself. They started to think things would be true of Jesus that Jesus never said, that God never said. The biggest one is this. And what I'm about to tell you is so important that if you don't understand this, you really can't understand all of the Gospels. You'll still get the important part of the Gospel. Jesus died for your sins and he reunites you with your Heavenly Father. You'll get that part, but you won't understand the nuances of the gospels if you don't understand what I'm about to say. It is such, it may be, it's one of the most important tensions that's laced throughout all the gospels that helps you understand how Jesus's world interacted with him. You've got to understand this. The biggest expectation they had of Jesus is that he was going to be an earthly king to sit on an earthly throne. They believe with all their heart that when Jesus showed up, in this day, ancient Israel, when Jesus is born, they are a far-flung province of the Roman Empire. They're a corner of the globe. They don't matter. And they believe if the Messiah shows up, he is going to go and kick Herod out of the palace. He's going to take over David's throne. He is going to sit on the throne and rule. He will overthrow Roman rule. He will rise Israel to international prominence, and he will be the king of kings there. That's what they expect is going to happen. And so it's not necessarily that they didn't like Jesus when they met him. It's just that they expected him to sit on the earthly throne and establish an earthly kingdom. And so when Jesus shows up and he says, I'm the guy, they go, that's great. Let's go to the throne. And he's like, no, no, I don to. Chill out. I don't want to do that yet. And they're like, okay, are you ready to do it now? I actually had someone suggest, and I think this is super interesting, that Judas, the one who betrayed Jesus, didn't betray him to betray him and be a jerk, but he was just trying to get the wheels in motion to make this guy king. And he figured something needs to happen, so I'm going to do it. Which is why Judas, it makes sense that Judas would have killed himself after the fact when he found out that he was way wrong about that. But there was tremendous pressure being exerted upon Jesus to become the actual king. There's that scene where he disappears from the midst of the people because they're pressing on him, trying to get him and take him to Jerusalem and make him king. And he's like, that's not what I came for. They took Jesus, Jesus who came to be the king of the universe, the king of all creation, the king of heaven and earth, king of kings and Lord of lords. And they said, that's great. We want to make you the king of Israel. And he said, I didn't come for Israel, that small potatoes. I came for the universe. You guys don't understand. Pilate, at the end of his life, asked him, are you really a king? He's like, yeah, but not the kind you're thinking about. They had that expectation on Jesus that he was going to be an earthly king of an earthly kingdom. And because they were blinded by that expectation, when Jesus didn't want to go sit on the throne, they said, well, you can't possibly be the guy. So they killed him. Their religious expectations blinded them from who Jesus was. Jesus shows up. He starts hanging out with sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, and drunkards. And they're like, if you're the Messiah, you shouldn't be doing that. And he's like, well, I am the Messiah, and I am doing that. So you need to adjust. They were blinded by their own expectations. Which makes really the most important question this morning. And this question, I think, is so important that if it's not already, for me, it rattles around in the back of my head all the time. Because I'm a dad, and I want to raise my children to believe in Jesus. I want to live a life that's authentic to Jesus. I want to be one that if he walked through the doors, I would know him, and I would see him, and I would recognize him. I don't want to be one of the ones who rejects Jesus. I want to be Nicodemus and go, hey, maybe there's something to this. I want to be John the Baptist. And so he must become greater and I must become less. I want to be one of the ones that recognizes Jesus if he walks through the doors. So I'm constantly thinking about, not constantly, but it rattles around there pretty regularly. And this is something that if it's not blazoned in your head, I would write it down somewhere and return at least quarterly and pray through this question. What blinding expectations are we carrying? What expectations do I have of Jesus that if he were to show up would cause me to not recognize him? I think that's an incredibly important question. I don't know how often you do reviews at work. How are you doing? Are you doing well? Are you fulfilling the job description? Are we still on the same page here? This needs to be a quarterly personal review. What expectations have I allowed to trickle into my life that might cause me to miss the Messiah if he showed up? Because I hope you're like me and you want to be someone who recognizes Jesus when he arrives. So I think that question, what blinding expectations am I carrying, is an incredibly important one. So I've got some for you this morning that I think could represent a large swath of the room, but I bet that there's more, and I bet that it's worth praying about, and that's really what I want to encourage you to do. Take that statement home, find some time to pray about it and think on it and chew on it a little bit and let it rattle around in your brain for years and years like it does me. Because I want us to be a church that knows and sees Jesus because I think, I think Jesus is moving now in so many ways that we might not see. I think Jesus is loving us through people that we might not understand as loving us through Jesus, if that makes any sense. We're receiving love and affection from someone, but we don't see Jesus' hand in that because he couldn't use that person. I think Jesus is moving in communities and in movements and is spurring things on in our culture in his subtle ways that we don't recognize or maybe even flat out reject because it doesn't look like we think it should look. It doesn't behave like we think it should behave. And I think that it's highly possible that we don't have to talk about the hypothetical if Jesus showed up, would we recognize him? I think it's actually helpful to say, do we see the Jesus now that's in our life, that's loving on us, that's moving in our community? Do we see his influence in all the places where it actually is or have our religious expectations and our religious baggage and our intellectual baggage put blinders on our eyes so that we can only see portions and snippets of Jesus instead of recognizing all that he's doing in our life. So this isn't just an important hypothetical question for one day, but for right now too, as we look to see Jesus in our lives and in the lives of the people around us. So what are some of the expectations that we can have that could potentially blind us? I think the first one I would mention, and this kind of trickles down into all of them, is we expect Jesus to have a temporal perspective rather than an eternal one. I think we expect Jesus to have a temporal perspective rather than one that is eternal. See, I don't think that we realize, this is kind of an esoteric thought experiment, but I don't think we realize how much our being in a temporal world and a temporal body that's going to last 70, 80, 90 years impacts the way that we think and how much Jesus existing in eternity, seeing eternity for all that it is, actually changes the way that he thinks and interacts with the world. I think that there are some things that we see as tragic because our view is temporal that Jesus sees as merciful because his view is eternal. I think that there is so much that when we get to heaven one day and we are granted this eternal perspective where we will go, oh, that makes so much more sense now. I used to not understand that. Now I completely understand that. I used to be mad at Jesus about that, now I'm not mad at Jesus at all. I think having an eternal perspective changes everything about how we view the world, and it's so hard to get ourselves out of our limited temporal perspective and really truly believe what Paul says when he says that we are like a mist or a vapor, here one day and gone the next. When he says, though we endure this pain for a little while, just a small portion, we have no idea how infinitesimally small, I don't know that word, how really small our life is compared to the whole span of eternity. And it also helps us understand Jesus as we read him in the Gospels. I think this is a really funny question. I heard it years ago, and I think it's great. How come Jesus, knowing everything about everything, when he exists in ancient Israel, and he's teaching people, he's doing the Sermon on the Mount, he's doing the Beatitudes, bless the peacemakers, bless the poor in spirit, bless the meek, don't commit adultery, don't steal from people, we're the salt of the earth, we're the light of the world, all the things. How about at the end of it, why doesn't he just tack on and also, listen, I'm not really going to get into this, okay, because I'm not going to do science on you guys, but just wash your hands. Just wash your hands. Why doesn't he tell ancient Israel, like, just, you know, after the bathroom, just soap up, you know, before you tend to wound? Maybe just wash your hands a little bit. Like, why doesn't he do that? That's not like a big deal. Just a little deal. Just give him a little bit to make the world a little bit better place. Why doesn't he do that? That's not what he came to do. He didn't come then to make the world a better place. He came to live a perfect life, to die a perfect death, to train the disciples, and to leave behind the church. That's what he came to do. He's thinking about eternity. You ever wonder how many people existed in ancient Israel contemporary to Jesus? Hearing about all the miracles that he's performing and all the wonderful things that he's doing and how he's healing people and even raising people from the dead. I wonder how many people there were that were contemporaries of Jesus who got up one day and took themselves to where he was to be healed or took the loved one to where he was to be healed. All the faith and all the ardor and all the desire and they had to walk away with that same disease broken hearted because Jesus didn't heal them. How many people were in the crowds who desperately needed to be healed but they weren't? I bet there was a bunch. And I bet they were pretty miffed. You healed that lady, you wouldn't heal my wife? Don't we do the same thing? You healed that cancer, you won't heal this one? You saved that person, you won't save this one? How many people were walking around doing that back then? And why didn't Jesus walk around healing everyone? Because that's a temporal question. He had an eternal perspective. That's not what he came to do. He had other stuff to do. It was an eternal agenda. So I think a lot of the expectations that we place on Jesus come from this place of a temporal perspective when we really need to see him through the lens of the eternal. Another one, another expectation that can potentially blind us, kind of bleeds into that one, is we expect Jesus to protect us and our families from tragedy. Don't we? We would never say it out loud. No one ever says, I'm a Christian now, and I follow the Bible as well as I can. I pray every day. I go to church. And because of that, God's going to protect me and my family from tragedy. We don't say that out loud, but we certainly think it. And I know that we think it because I can't tell you how many people I've sat with and how many times in my life I've experienced the emotion of, God, how can you let this happen? This isn't fair. Why not? Well, because I love you and follow you and I'm devoted to you and you shouldn't let things like this happen to me. Oh, where'd you pick that one up? Was it the book of Job? Which says the exact opposite of that. I'm not going to beat this drum too hard because I do this sermon about twice a year because it's such a pernicious teaching in God's church. And I hate it so much that we would have this expectation that to follow Jesus means that we get to dodge the raindrops of tragedy in our life. That is not the case, and God never said it would be. He does not promise to prevent those things from happening. He promises to walk through them with us, that in those moments he will be closer to us than any other times. That's what he promises, but he doesn't promise that his children will not endure pain. He actually promises in a bunch of different ways that we will. And yet, people walk away from the faith because something tragic happened in their life and they think that that makes God unfair. It's an expectation that we have of Jesus that blinds him in our life, blinds us from being able to see him in our life. Like I said, I'm not going to belabor it, but I see this belief causing more people to walk away from the faith than to be drawn to Jesus. We need to carefully root that out of our lives. And it's in, even though I say it, it's in me. I know it's in me. We need to always reexamine how we respond to tragedy and the idea of fairness because Jesus did not give us that expectation. Another one that can tend to blind us is that we expect Jesus to be a better version of ourselves. If Jesus were to show up in our lives, we would expect that he's not going to be like us because we've got some rough edges, right? Probably not going to laugh at all the jokes I laugh at. But he's going to laugh at some of them. He's going to be pretty good. He's going to be a little bit sarcastic. He's going to be a little bit funny. He's probably going to be really pragmatic, you know. He's probably going to choose the minivan over the SUV. That's what Jesus would do. He's going to drive the sensible car. Jesus would have driven a Leaf. I don't know if you know that. He would be, that's an old school joke. I used to drive a Leaf years ago and people who have been here for a while still make fun of me for that. And they should. And if we find out you drive one, we're making fun of you too. But we expect Jesus to be like we would, right? Especially in our politics. Jen's like, please, please be careful. If we lean right, we're pretty sure that Jesus would too. And he would have mercy on the godless liberals. And some of them might be Christians, you know, maybe. And God's patient with them. They're just swept up in culture and they're, you know, they're sissies. But God has patience for them. If we lean left, we think God would probably lean left too. He'd probably vote Democrat. And he has patience for his misguided children on the right who live in echo chambers. They're going to be fine. Right? We think Jesus would be like us, and that he has our opinions about all the things. Maybe just a little bit more measured. We tend to remake Jesus in our own image. Here's another way I know this is true. I'm just going to be honest with you. If Jesus shows up and he's from the hills of Appalachia and it turns out he's Pentecostal, I'm going to be real uncomfortable with that. That's going to take some adjusting to do. But he might be. He might be. And that would be great. All those people for all those years would be like, see, stuffy Presbyterians, we told you. And you're like, yep, you did. You did. You tried to tell us. We wouldn't listen. He might be. But because I think Jesus is going to be like I am, probably not. But can you see how if we remake Jesus in our own image, we make him so small that we might not be able to recognize him if he shows up not looking like us? Because, spoiler alert, he will not. Here's another one. I almost didn't include this. This is a little touchy. But I think it's true. I think it's worth saying. I think it needs to be said in church. I think we expect Jesus to prioritize our country. I don't know about you, but I grew up in a country, and I'm American, by the way. I grew up in a country where it wasn't said in the church. I never had a pastor that preached about this because I had a good pastor. But it was in Christian culture that America's really important to Jesus. We are the righteous right hand of God fighting back the godless commies. And if we don't do it, atheism will take over the world. And God needs America to protect his grand plan. So America, because we're a Christian nation, no we're not, is most important to God. No, it's not. I've heard people read America into the Bible, into the prophecies about the end time. Well, that's definitely the United States of America. Okay. Well, it wasn't Rome and it wasn't Greece, so maybe it's us. I've seen people do this. We're trying to read ourselves into the prophecies and into the texts. And we still continue to think that somehow the United States of America is the apple of God's eye. No, it's not. He cares just as much about North Korea as he does about the United States. He cares a little bit less about Canada, and we know that. And that's fine. But we've got to abandon this sort of American nationalistic faith where we put American flags and Christian flags in our churches. And we think that somehow to be a patriot is to be more Christian. No, it's not. It's fine. It's fine. Be patriotic. It's wonderful. But we should not conflate that with faith. And I think that I grew up in a country that did. Maybe you didn't, so I'll leave that right there. But to me, that's a disturbing trend I see in our culture. The last one is we expect Jesus to make sense. Don't we? We expect Jesus, we can tie him up, we can put him in the boxes, we can tie him up neat and in bow. We're going to understand him. We're going to write systematic theologies about him. We're going to be able to understand him. We're going to be able to understand everything that he did to understand everything that he's doing and to predict his future action because he's Jesus and we like to understand everything. So we're going to be able to understand and compartmentalize this Jesus too. When Jesus never, ever wanted to be understood, he's too big for our understanding. Do you realize that he taught in parables to intentionally be misunderstood? He taught in parables. He says, they said, why the disciples go, why do you teach in parables? And he's like, cause I don't want everybody to understand me. What? Doesn't that seem counter to what we would think Jesus would do? And yet that's what he did. Jesus, he's approached by the rich young ruler and the rich young, and this guy, I don't know if it's a rich young ruler, it's a rich guy, and he says, hey, I'm in. I want to follow you. What do I need to do? And Jesus says, you need to sell everything that you have and follow me. And the guy walks away dejected. That doesn't make any sense. That actually feels counterproductive to what Jesus is trying to do. If I were a pastor and Jesus were a pastor, and he came to me for advice, which would totally make sense. And he said, hey, I've got this rich guy and he wants to know what he should do to follow me. That'd be interesting. And I would tell him, that's great. That's great. Share with him the gospel, bring him in, Start to disciple him. Put him with somebody who can disciple him. Make sure he's in Bible studies. And over time, start to gently, when you have these opportunities for conversations, gently nudge him towards the idea of stewardship so that he can come around to this understanding and this belief that everything that he has is really yours. And let's let that progress as it should. But you don't want to hit him with it up front because you'll scare him away like a scared baby deer, and then we might never get him back. Not because he's rich, but because we care about his soul. And Jesus goes, that's stupid. I'm just going to tell him. And the guy runs away. Who knows if he came back or not? That doesn't make sense. Jesus was culling the herd all the time. There was a time when the following got too big, and he just kind of looked at them, and he said, he said, I'll tell you the truth. Unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And people are like, okay, this just became a weird cult. I am out. And they started leaving left and right. And he looks at his disciples. And he goes, are you going to leave too? And this is, I don't think I'll ever get a tattoo. If I do, it might be this phrase. I love this phrase. I love what Peter says in this moment. He says, are you guys going to leave too? And Peter says, you're the Christ. Where are we going to go? I love it. Because what's Peter saying? He's going to be like, dude, I've been following you for two years. You don't make any sense. I don't have a clue what you just were talking about. That's weird, man. But you're Jesus, and I've got nowhere else to go. So I'm in, even if I don't understand you. Because we serve a God that's too big to be understood by you. And if he were, if you could understand him, you wouldn't want to follow him. All through Scripture, Jesus is too big and too marvelous and too miraculous and too wild to be understood and tamed by our intellect. Even at the very beginning, if we look at God introducing himself to the world, he shows up in the burning bush and he tells Moses, hey, go and free my people from Egypt. And Moses is like, all right, cool, got it. What's your name? And God's like, nah, I'm not going to tell you. I am. What's that mean? I'm not going to tell you that either. Just go do what I'm asking you to do, but I'm not going to be reduced to your names. I'm not going to be reduced to your titles. I'm not going to be reduced to a box that you want to put me in. Forget it. I will not do that with you. In Job, Job goes to God and he asks him the question that every generation has asked, which is essentially, why do you let bad things happen to good people, God? And in Job 38, 39, and 40, God tells him in a very not nice way. It's not like kind at all. That basically, I'm not going to tell you because if I did, you wouldn't understand it. So how about you just let me be God and you be Job and we'll keep this train moving. He's not going to explain it to him because he can't understand it. And they come out and tell us in Romans that his ways are higher than our ways. Jesus is far too big and far too wild and far too mysterious and far too wonderful to be reduced to something that's going to make sense to you all the time. And I think that was probably the big sin of the Israelites. Their expectations had reduced Jesus to something he never wanted to be. And when he didn't fit into the mold that they created for him, they killed him because they missed him. And I worry about me, and I worry about my kids, and I worry about my church. That the mold that we are casting for our Savior is so small that he can never fit in it even if he wanted to. And because he doesn't fit into the mold that we've created, we might reject him. I do not want that to be true of us. So how do we make sure that's not true? We constantly examine, what are my expectations of Jesus that he did not give me? We learn, we take in, we read from the Bible what the Bible says. We don't read into it what we want it to say. And I think we pray earnestly, God, where you are, help me see it. But let us not commit the sin of the Israelites and try to reduce our wonderful and wild and miraculous and mysterious God to something that he never wanted to be. That's the message that I get from Matthew. I hope that you'll return to that, that you'll pray about it, and that that question will haunt you as much as it does me, because maybe, maybe that will help us see Jesus when he arrives. Let's pray. God, we love you. We thank you for your son, Jesus. Thank you for who he was and what he did. Lord, we pray that we would have eyes to see and ears to hear. And we know, we know that we cannot see you. We cannot feel you. We cannot identify you. We cannot be moved by you without the Holy Spirit. So give us your spirit in increasing measure that we might see you where you are and where you are acting and where you are loving, that we might be true and authentic worshipers of you and worship you in spirit and in truth. God, help us be okay with you not making sense sometimes. Help us be people who can see how big you are and how wonderful you are. Help us be people who don't reduce you to what we expect, but rather marvel at all the ways you reveal yourself. Again, God, help us be people who worship you in spirit and in truth. In Jesus' name, amen.
All right, well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten a chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service, or we could also do it outside. I don't want to confine that to just the lobby. We're starting a new series today called 27. This series, believe it or not, is going to be two summers long. It's going to be the summer series this summer and next summer. And what we're going to do is look at an overview of all 27 books of the New Testament. We're going to start in Matthew and move right through and kind of give you guys an idea of what each book contains, what it's about, what it's for, who wrote it, why they wrote it, and those kinds of things. Now, we're doing this series for a couple of reasons, but the primary one is in an effort, and not that I sense a deficiency, but I think every church needs this, in an effort to continue to raise what I think of as the biblical literacy of the church. How familiar are we with the Bible? How well can we find the books? How well do we know what they're all about and how it all orders together? And I think that we have a wide swath of knowledge and people in the room. So some of us know the Bible really well. And we're grateful and blessed to have a body that is diverse in how well we know Scripture. Some of you could probably teach this series. And so my hope for those who know their Bibles well, know there's four Gospels, that Acts is the lone narrative book in the New Testament, and then we have the Pauline epistles and the general epistles, and they're written to the churches for different reasons and all the things. Like, if you know that stuff, then my hope is, as we zero in on each book, that you can learn something new and different that you may not have thought about or been aware of or exposed to before, and that hopefully something will spark and cause you to want to deep dive into these books a little bit more. Maybe you buy a commentary or start to watch another sermon series on it and dive deeper into this book. We hope that this series will compel you towards scripture. I say as often as I can that the single most important habit that anyone can develop in their life is to wake up every day and spend time in God's Word and time in prayer. I don't think there's any habit more important or valuable than that one. And so we hope that this series will compel you towards that. Now, if you're on the opposite end of the biblical knowledge spectrum and you didn't even know that there was 27 books in the New Testament, as a matter of fact, you're not exactly sure what the New Testament is. You just hear church people use that word. Then this is for you too. The New Testament, by the way, is just the books of the Bible that were written after Jesus was born. There's a more technical explanation of that, but that's essentially what's going on there. All the books that were written before Jesus, Old Testament. After Jesus, New Testament. And in the New Testament, there's 27 books. For those who care, there's 39 in the Old Testament, 66 total. Unless you're Catholic, then there's an apocrypha, and that's just a whole mess. But in the Protestant Bible, 66 books. I don't know. I don't know why I do things. I don't know why I say things sometimes. They just, they happen. And then they come out and I'm like, what was that about? I don't know. I don't know. Sorry, I'm editing. Right now I'm editing to make fun of myself more. Let's get back to the sermon. My hope is that for those of us who feel like, gosh, I don't know anything about the Bible. It's intimidating and unapproachable. I hope that you can make sense of it. And I don't want anyone to feel bad for not knowing where books are. If I say turn to Ephesians, you have to use the table of contents. That's fine. We just want to move in a direction where all of us are learning a little bit more about our Bible and pressed towards the Bible. So the sermons in this series are going to feel, I wouldn't say professorial because I'm not smart enough to be a professor, but they're going to feel more instructive than sermons about how to manage our emotions, which are more practical. So these are just to help us think better and more about the Bible and understand it as we dive into the Bible. That being said, in June, we're doing like a little sub-series within the larger series where we're going to look at the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are what's called synoptic Gospels. They cover pretty much the same chronology. They include a lot of the same stories. Those authors are trying to get a lot of the same points across. They're written to different people and depict Jesus as different things in each We'll be make comparisons. I am like, but he doesn't talk in parables like he does in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And so for the month of June, we're going to move through the Gospels, look at how they're different, which aspects of Jesus they highlight, and what we can learn from that. So this week, we're in the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew was written to the Jews and depicts Jesus as king. Matthew was written to the Jewish people in the first century, and it depicts Jesus as the king. This is really important because, I'm going to move right to it, because the Jewish people needed Matthew's gospel because they missed the Messiah. Matthew needed to be written, and it needed to be written to the Jews, and it needed to be written to prove to them that Jesus was actually the Messiah that he came to be because they missed him. And it's really tragic that they did because for generation after generation, for four millennia, the Jewish people were looking for the Messiah. They had prophecies and prophets trickle in to point them towards the Messiah. They're waiting on him. They're looking for him. His arrival could be any day. You never know. Every lifetime that happens, just like every lifetime that happens, we're convinced that Jesus is going to return while we're here. Everybody thinks that all the time. So must they have thought that about the Messiah arriving. Certainly it will be now. And he didn't, and he didn't, and he didn't. And they waited, and they waited, and they waited. And these are God's people. These are the children of Abraham. These are his descendants. These are the ones of all the world. These are the people who should know, who when the Messiah gets there, they should be like, that's the guy. They should know. And yet, when Jesus shows up and he says, I'm the guy, they go, no, you're not. And he's like, but really I am. And they're like, actually, you're not. And because you claim you are and you're not, we're going to kill you. That is a very loose paraphrase of a non-existent conversation that happened between Jesus and a whole country. But that's the vibe, all right? That's generally what's going on. Unless we think that it really wasn't the Jews who killed him and rejected him, it really wasn't the Israelites who killed him and rejected him, it was just this sect of religious leaders, Caiaphas and his cronies, the high priest and the others around him, and maybe Pilate and not caring, and he had a hand in it, and they did. But before Pilate kills Jesus, he tries to say, hey, we don't need to kill this guy. He didn't really do anything. And the Jewish people say, kill him and let his blood be on our heads and on the heads of our children, which is communal guilt. Okay? They missed Jesus. Now, there's forgiveness and repentance for that. Jesus needed to die that death so that they could be reunited with their father in heaven, and it worked out. But the Jews missed him. The Israelites missed the Messiah. And so they needed the book of Matthew to be written to them, to prove to them that that guy you killed on that cross, he was actually the guy. The guy that you killed for saying he was the guy, he was right. You've got a big blind spot. Let me show you. Let me prove to you that he was who he says he was. That's why in the book of Matthew, as you read it, you'll be following along. If you have a Bible now, you can look. It's right there. You'll be following along. You know how the Bible has two columns on each page? The column will pause and indent, and there will be a quote, sometimes short, sometimes long, and then it will get back to the regular discourse. And there's all sorts of pausing, indented quotes all throughout the book of Matthew. And what those indented quotes are are Old Testament prophecies about Jesus and who he was. And it goes like this. If you open up your Bible to the book of Matthew, you'll see three times that he does this in the first two chapters. I'm just going to run through them real quick so you know what I'm talking about. Matthew chapter 1, verse 22. I'm going to start reading in verse 21. See? All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, and then he breaks down into the quote from the Old Testament prophet. You turn the page, or maybe I don't know how your Bible works out said this had to happen. That is all through the gospel of Matthew. Because the Gospel of Matthew was written to a Jewish community that had rejected the Messiah. And what Matthew is doing is saying, hey, I know that you guys know your Old Testament, the Tanakh, the laws and the prophets, what we would think of as the Old Testament in the Bible. I know that you know that. I know that you know your prophets. I know that you know your prophecies. Their biblical literacy as a culture was much higher than ours is in church. So when Matthew quotes these prophets, they know who it was. They've been taught those prophecies. They've heard those things before. And there ought to be, there ought to be light bulbs going off in their minds going, oh, he does fulfill that. Oh, he does fulfill that. Oh, that is actually true. Oh, my goodness, he is and was the Messiah. So he wrote it to the unbelieving first century Jewish audience to show them that you did actually kill the Messiah and we need to turn and put our faith in him because he still lives. That was the point of the gospel of Matthew. And to me, when I think about why Matthew was written, and I think about some other things that we'll get into here in a second. It causes me to come back to questions like this. If Jesus showed up today, would you need your own gospel to show you that you missed him? If Jesus showed up today in Israel and the world pointed to him and said, that's the Messiah, that's Jesus, would you recognize him? Would you acknowledge him for who he was? Or would you be part of the crowd that rejected him and needed a separate gospel written to you after the fact to show you that he really was who he says he was? A more simple way to ask that is, if Jesus showed up in your life, would you notice him? If Jesus just plopped down right in the middle of grace, would we acknowledge that he was the Messiah? Or would we not be able to recognize him? Would we reject him, call him a weird cult leader, or a crazy person, and have him arrested or ignore him? Or if Jesus showed up, would we recognize him? I think about that question all the time. And I think about it all the time because the very people who were supposed to identify Jesus as Jesus didn't do it. The very people who had all the resources and all the exposure and knew all the quotes and all the scripture, when Jesus showed up, they didn't recognize him. And I don't know about you guys, but in modern Christianity, I'm that person. I've been in church my whole life. I've learned about Jesus from a very young age. I pray to him every day. I'm the one that's supposed to recognize when he shows up. You, most of you, are the people who are supposed to recognize when he shows up. Would you? Or would we do what they did and miss him? To answer that question, we have got to ask, why did they miss him? Right? That's the question. We have to go back and go, what did they do that we can try to avoid doing? Why did they miss who Jesus was? And how can we avoid doing what they did so that if Jesus were to show up today, we would recognize him and see him? I would contend with you that there's a couple different reasons, big reasons, why they missed the Messiah and they didn't recognize him and see him. I would contend with you that there's a couple different reasons, big reasons why they missed the Messiah and they didn't recognize him. But I would contend with you that overall, they couldn't see Jesus because they were blinded by their religious expectations. They had some expectations of who the Messiah was going to be and what the Messiah was going to do. And because they had those expectations, it blinded them from being able to see the actual real Messiah. And here's what's so scary about these expectations. These expectations came from their own religion. They came from their own faith. They came from Judaism. They came from, listen to me, well-meaning teachers over the centuries who were doing the best they could to point God's people towards God. I do not think that there was some grand conspiracy with little pernicious machinations through the decades to just tilt the course a little bit so that God's people could not see their God. I believe that there was good, well-meaning teachers in the Old Testament, men and women who were instructing God's people to be able to point them towards God, and they allowed things to get in there that started to just knock them off by a couple degrees so that by the time Jesus shows up thousands or hundreds of years later, they don't recognize him anymore. Because through the decades and through the centuries and down through the millennia, they began to put expectations on who their Messiah would be that Jesus did not put on himself. They started to think things would be true of Jesus that Jesus never said, that God never said. The biggest one is this. And what I'm about to tell you is so important that if you don't understand this, you really can't understand all of the Gospels. You'll still get the important part of the Gospel. Jesus died for your sins and he reunites you with your Heavenly Father. You'll get that part, but you won't understand the nuances of the gospels if you don't understand what I'm about to say. It is such, it may be, it's one of the most important tensions that's laced throughout all the gospels that helps you understand how Jesus's world interacted with him. You've got to understand this. The biggest expectation they had of Jesus is that he was going to be an earthly king to sit on an earthly throne. They believe with all their heart that when Jesus showed up, in this day, ancient Israel, when Jesus is born, they are a far-flung province of the Roman Empire. They're a corner of the globe. They don't matter. And they believe if the Messiah shows up, he is going to go and kick Herod out of the palace. He's going to take over David's throne. He is going to sit on the throne and rule. He will overthrow Roman rule. He will rise Israel to international prominence, and he will be the king of kings there. That's what they expect is going to happen. And so it's not necessarily that they didn't like Jesus when they met him. It's just that they expected him to sit on the earthly throne and establish an earthly kingdom. And so when Jesus shows up and he says, I'm the guy, they go, that's great. Let's go to the throne. And he's like, no, no, I don to. Chill out. I don't want to do that yet. And they're like, okay, are you ready to do it now? I actually had someone suggest, and I think this is super interesting, that Judas, the one who betrayed Jesus, didn't betray him to betray him and be a jerk, but he was just trying to get the wheels in motion to make this guy king. And he figured something needs to happen, so I'm going to do it. Which is why Judas, it makes sense that Judas would have killed himself after the fact when he found out that he was way wrong about that. But there was tremendous pressure being exerted upon Jesus to become the actual king. There's that scene where he disappears from the midst of the people because they're pressing on him, trying to get him and take him to Jerusalem and make him king. And he's like, that's not what I came for. They took Jesus, Jesus who came to be the king of the universe, the king of all creation, the king of heaven and earth, king of kings and Lord of lords. And they said, that's great. We want to make you the king of Israel. And he said, I didn't come for Israel, that small potatoes. I came for the universe. You guys don't understand. Pilate, at the end of his life, asked him, are you really a king? He's like, yeah, but not the kind you're thinking about. They had that expectation on Jesus that he was going to be an earthly king of an earthly kingdom. And because they were blinded by that expectation, when Jesus didn't want to go sit on the throne, they said, well, you can't possibly be the guy. So they killed him. Their religious expectations blinded them from who Jesus was. Jesus shows up. He starts hanging out with sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, and drunkards. And they're like, if you're the Messiah, you shouldn't be doing that. And he's like, well, I am the Messiah, and I am doing that. So you need to adjust. They were blinded by their own expectations. Which makes really the most important question this morning. And this question, I think, is so important that if it's not already, for me, it rattles around in the back of my head all the time. Because I'm a dad, and I want to raise my children to believe in Jesus. I want to live a life that's authentic to Jesus. I want to be one that if he walked through the doors, I would know him, and I would see him, and I would recognize him. I don't want to be one of the ones who rejects Jesus. I want to be Nicodemus and go, hey, maybe there's something to this. I want to be John the Baptist. And so he must become greater and I must become less. I want to be one of the ones that recognizes Jesus if he walks through the doors. So I'm constantly thinking about, not constantly, but it rattles around there pretty regularly. And this is something that if it's not blazoned in your head, I would write it down somewhere and return at least quarterly and pray through this question. What blinding expectations are we carrying? What expectations do I have of Jesus that if he were to show up would cause me to not recognize him? I think that's an incredibly important question. I don't know how often you do reviews at work. How are you doing? Are you doing well? Are you fulfilling the job description? Are we still on the same page here? This needs to be a quarterly personal review. What expectations have I allowed to trickle into my life that might cause me to miss the Messiah if he showed up? Because I hope you're like me and you want to be someone who recognizes Jesus when he arrives. So I think that question, what blinding expectations am I carrying, is an incredibly important one. So I've got some for you this morning that I think could represent a large swath of the room, but I bet that there's more, and I bet that it's worth praying about, and that's really what I want to encourage you to do. Take that statement home, find some time to pray about it and think on it and chew on it a little bit and let it rattle around in your brain for years and years like it does me. Because I want us to be a church that knows and sees Jesus because I think, I think Jesus is moving now in so many ways that we might not see. I think Jesus is loving us through people that we might not understand as loving us through Jesus, if that makes any sense. We're receiving love and affection from someone, but we don't see Jesus' hand in that because he couldn't use that person. I think Jesus is moving in communities and in movements and is spurring things on in our culture in his subtle ways that we don't recognize or maybe even flat out reject because it doesn't look like we think it should look. It doesn't behave like we think it should behave. And I think that it's highly possible that we don't have to talk about the hypothetical if Jesus showed up, would we recognize him? I think it's actually helpful to say, do we see the Jesus now that's in our life, that's loving on us, that's moving in our community? Do we see his influence in all the places where it actually is or have our religious expectations and our religious baggage and our intellectual baggage put blinders on our eyes so that we can only see portions and snippets of Jesus instead of recognizing all that he's doing in our life. So this isn't just an important hypothetical question for one day, but for right now too, as we look to see Jesus in our lives and in the lives of the people around us. So what are some of the expectations that we can have that could potentially blind us? I think the first one I would mention, and this kind of trickles down into all of them, is we expect Jesus to have a temporal perspective rather than an eternal one. I think we expect Jesus to have a temporal perspective rather than one that is eternal. See, I don't think that we realize, this is kind of an esoteric thought experiment, but I don't think we realize how much our being in a temporal world and a temporal body that's going to last 70, 80, 90 years impacts the way that we think and how much Jesus existing in eternity, seeing eternity for all that it is, actually changes the way that he thinks and interacts with the world. I think that there are some things that we see as tragic because our view is temporal that Jesus sees as merciful because his view is eternal. I think that there is so much that when we get to heaven one day and we are granted this eternal perspective where we will go, oh, that makes so much more sense now. I used to not understand that. Now I completely understand that. I used to be mad at Jesus about that, now I'm not mad at Jesus at all. I think having an eternal perspective changes everything about how we view the world, and it's so hard to get ourselves out of our limited temporal perspective and really truly believe what Paul says when he says that we are like a mist or a vapor, here one day and gone the next. When he says, though we endure this pain for a little while, just a small portion, we have no idea how infinitesimally small, I don't know that word, how really small our life is compared to the whole span of eternity. And it also helps us understand Jesus as we read him in the Gospels. I think this is a really funny question. I heard it years ago, and I think it's great. How come Jesus, knowing everything about everything, when he exists in ancient Israel, and he's teaching people, he's doing the Sermon on the Mount, he's doing the Beatitudes, bless the peacemakers, bless the poor in spirit, bless the meek, don't commit adultery, don't steal from people, we're the salt of the earth, we're the light of the world, all the things. How about at the end of it, why doesn't he just tack on and also, listen, I'm not really going to get into this, okay, because I'm not going to do science on you guys, but just wash your hands. Just wash your hands. Why doesn't he tell ancient Israel, like, just, you know, after the bathroom, just soap up, you know, before you tend to wound? Maybe just wash your hands a little bit. Like, why doesn't he do that? That's not like a big deal. Just a little deal. Just give him a little bit to make the world a little bit better place. Why doesn't he do that? That's not what he came to do. He didn't come then to make the world a better place. He came to live a perfect life, to die a perfect death, to train the disciples, and to leave behind the church. That's what he came to do. He's thinking about eternity. You ever wonder how many people existed in ancient Israel contemporary to Jesus? Hearing about all the miracles that he's performing and all the wonderful things that he's doing and how he's healing people and even raising people from the dead. I wonder how many people there were that were contemporaries of Jesus who got up one day and took themselves to where he was to be healed or took the loved one to where he was to be healed. All the faith and all the ardor and all the desire and they had to walk away with that same disease broken hearted because Jesus didn't heal them. How many people were in the crowds who desperately needed to be healed but they weren't? I bet there was a bunch. And I bet they were pretty miffed. You healed that lady, you wouldn't heal my wife? Don't we do the same thing? You healed that cancer, you won't heal this one? You saved that person, you won't save this one? How many people were walking around doing that back then? And why didn't Jesus walk around healing everyone? Because that's a temporal question. He had an eternal perspective. That's not what he came to do. He had other stuff to do. It was an eternal agenda. So I think a lot of the expectations that we place on Jesus come from this place of a temporal perspective when we really need to see him through the lens of the eternal. Another one, another expectation that can potentially blind us, kind of bleeds into that one, is we expect Jesus to protect us and our families from tragedy. Don't we? We would never say it out loud. No one ever says, I'm a Christian now, and I follow the Bible as well as I can. I pray every day. I go to church. And because of that, God's going to protect me and my family from tragedy. We don't say that out loud, but we certainly think it. And I know that we think it because I can't tell you how many people I've sat with and how many times in my life I've experienced the emotion of, God, how can you let this happen? This isn't fair. Why not? Well, because I love you and follow you and I'm devoted to you and you shouldn't let things like this happen to me. Oh, where'd you pick that one up? Was it the book of Job? Which says the exact opposite of that. I'm not going to beat this drum too hard because I do this sermon about twice a year because it's such a pernicious teaching in God's church. And I hate it so much that we would have this expectation that to follow Jesus means that we get to dodge the raindrops of tragedy in our life. That is not the case, and God never said it would be. He does not promise to prevent those things from happening. He promises to walk through them with us, that in those moments he will be closer to us than any other times. That's what he promises, but he doesn't promise that his children will not endure pain. He actually promises in a bunch of different ways that we will. And yet, people walk away from the faith because something tragic happened in their life and they think that that makes God unfair. It's an expectation that we have of Jesus that blinds him in our life, blinds us from being able to see him in our life. Like I said, I'm not going to belabor it, but I see this belief causing more people to walk away from the faith than to be drawn to Jesus. We need to carefully root that out of our lives. And it's in, even though I say it, it's in me. I know it's in me. We need to always reexamine how we respond to tragedy and the idea of fairness because Jesus did not give us that expectation. Another one that can tend to blind us is that we expect Jesus to be a better version of ourselves. If Jesus were to show up in our lives, we would expect that he's not going to be like us because we've got some rough edges, right? Probably not going to laugh at all the jokes I laugh at. But he's going to laugh at some of them. He's going to be pretty good. He's going to be a little bit sarcastic. He's going to be a little bit funny. He's probably going to be really pragmatic, you know. He's probably going to choose the minivan over the SUV. That's what Jesus would do. He's going to drive the sensible car. Jesus would have driven a Leaf. I don't know if you know that. He would be, that's an old school joke. I used to drive a Leaf years ago and people who have been here for a while still make fun of me for that. And they should. And if we find out you drive one, we're making fun of you too. But we expect Jesus to be like we would, right? Especially in our politics. Jen's like, please, please be careful. If we lean right, we're pretty sure that Jesus would too. And he would have mercy on the godless liberals. And some of them might be Christians, you know, maybe. And God's patient with them. They're just swept up in culture and they're, you know, they're sissies. But God has patience for them. If we lean left, we think God would probably lean left too. He'd probably vote Democrat. And he has patience for his misguided children on the right who live in echo chambers. They're going to be fine. Right? We think Jesus would be like us, and that he has our opinions about all the things. Maybe just a little bit more measured. We tend to remake Jesus in our own image. Here's another way I know this is true. I'm just going to be honest with you. If Jesus shows up and he's from the hills of Appalachia and it turns out he's Pentecostal, I'm going to be real uncomfortable with that. That's going to take some adjusting to do. But he might be. He might be. And that would be great. All those people for all those years would be like, see, stuffy Presbyterians, we told you. And you're like, yep, you did. You did. You tried to tell us. We wouldn't listen. He might be. But because I think Jesus is going to be like I am, probably not. But can you see how if we remake Jesus in our own image, we make him so small that we might not be able to recognize him if he shows up not looking like us? Because, spoiler alert, he will not. Here's another one. I almost didn't include this. This is a little touchy. But I think it's true. I think it's worth saying. I think it needs to be said in church. I think we expect Jesus to prioritize our country. I don't know about you, but I grew up in a country, and I'm American, by the way. I grew up in a country where it wasn't said in the church. I never had a pastor that preached about this because I had a good pastor. But it was in Christian culture that America's really important to Jesus. We are the righteous right hand of God fighting back the godless commies. And if we don't do it, atheism will take over the world. And God needs America to protect his grand plan. So America, because we're a Christian nation, no we're not, is most important to God. No, it's not. I've heard people read America into the Bible, into the prophecies about the end time. Well, that's definitely the United States of America. Okay. Well, it wasn't Rome and it wasn't Greece, so maybe it's us. I've seen people do this. We're trying to read ourselves into the prophecies and into the texts. And we still continue to think that somehow the United States of America is the apple of God's eye. No, it's not. He cares just as much about North Korea as he does about the United States. He cares a little bit less about Canada, and we know that. And that's fine. But we've got to abandon this sort of American nationalistic faith where we put American flags and Christian flags in our churches. And we think that somehow to be a patriot is to be more Christian. No, it's not. It's fine. It's fine. Be patriotic. It's wonderful. But we should not conflate that with faith. And I think that I grew up in a country that did. Maybe you didn't, so I'll leave that right there. But to me, that's a disturbing trend I see in our culture. The last one is we expect Jesus to make sense. Don't we? We expect Jesus, we can tie him up, we can put him in the boxes, we can tie him up neat and in bow. We're going to understand him. We're going to write systematic theologies about him. We're going to be able to understand him. We're going to be able to understand everything that he did to understand everything that he's doing and to predict his future action because he's Jesus and we like to understand everything. So we're going to be able to understand and compartmentalize this Jesus too. When Jesus never, ever wanted to be understood, he's too big for our understanding. Do you realize that he taught in parables to intentionally be misunderstood? He taught in parables. He says, they said, why the disciples go, why do you teach in parables? And he's like, cause I don't want everybody to understand me. What? Doesn't that seem counter to what we would think Jesus would do? And yet that's what he did. Jesus, he's approached by the rich young ruler and the rich young, and this guy, I don't know if it's a rich young ruler, it's a rich guy, and he says, hey, I'm in. I want to follow you. What do I need to do? And Jesus says, you need to sell everything that you have and follow me. And the guy walks away dejected. That doesn't make any sense. That actually feels counterproductive to what Jesus is trying to do. If I were a pastor and Jesus were a pastor, and he came to me for advice, which would totally make sense. And he said, hey, I've got this rich guy and he wants to know what he should do to follow me. That'd be interesting. And I would tell him, that's great. That's great. Share with him the gospel, bring him in, Start to disciple him. Put him with somebody who can disciple him. Make sure he's in Bible studies. And over time, start to gently, when you have these opportunities for conversations, gently nudge him towards the idea of stewardship so that he can come around to this understanding and this belief that everything that he has is really yours. And let's let that progress as it should. But you don't want to hit him with it up front because you'll scare him away like a scared baby deer, and then we might never get him back. Not because he's rich, but because we care about his soul. And Jesus goes, that's stupid. I'm just going to tell him. And the guy runs away. Who knows if he came back or not? That doesn't make sense. Jesus was culling the herd all the time. There was a time when the following got too big, and he just kind of looked at them, and he said, he said, I'll tell you the truth. Unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And people are like, okay, this just became a weird cult. I am out. And they started leaving left and right. And he looks at his disciples. And he goes, are you going to leave too? And this is, I don't think I'll ever get a tattoo. If I do, it might be this phrase. I love this phrase. I love what Peter says in this moment. He says, are you guys going to leave too? And Peter says, you're the Christ. Where are we going to go? I love it. Because what's Peter saying? He's going to be like, dude, I've been following you for two years. You don't make any sense. I don't have a clue what you just were talking about. That's weird, man. But you're Jesus, and I've got nowhere else to go. So I'm in, even if I don't understand you. Because we serve a God that's too big to be understood by you. And if he were, if you could understand him, you wouldn't want to follow him. All through Scripture, Jesus is too big and too marvelous and too miraculous and too wild to be understood and tamed by our intellect. Even at the very beginning, if we look at God introducing himself to the world, he shows up in the burning bush and he tells Moses, hey, go and free my people from Egypt. And Moses is like, all right, cool, got it. What's your name? And God's like, nah, I'm not going to tell you. I am. What's that mean? I'm not going to tell you that either. Just go do what I'm asking you to do, but I'm not going to be reduced to your names. I'm not going to be reduced to your titles. I'm not going to be reduced to a box that you want to put me in. Forget it. I will not do that with you. In Job, Job goes to God and he asks him the question that every generation has asked, which is essentially, why do you let bad things happen to good people, God? And in Job 38, 39, and 40, God tells him in a very not nice way. It's not like kind at all. That basically, I'm not going to tell you because if I did, you wouldn't understand it. So how about you just let me be God and you be Job and we'll keep this train moving. He's not going to explain it to him because he can't understand it. And they come out and tell us in Romans that his ways are higher than our ways. Jesus is far too big and far too wild and far too mysterious and far too wonderful to be reduced to something that's going to make sense to you all the time. And I think that was probably the big sin of the Israelites. Their expectations had reduced Jesus to something he never wanted to be. And when he didn't fit into the mold that they created for him, they killed him because they missed him. And I worry about me, and I worry about my kids, and I worry about my church. That the mold that we are casting for our Savior is so small that he can never fit in it even if he wanted to. And because he doesn't fit into the mold that we've created, we might reject him. I do not want that to be true of us. So how do we make sure that's not true? We constantly examine, what are my expectations of Jesus that he did not give me? We learn, we take in, we read from the Bible what the Bible says. We don't read into it what we want it to say. And I think we pray earnestly, God, where you are, help me see it. But let us not commit the sin of the Israelites and try to reduce our wonderful and wild and miraculous and mysterious God to something that he never wanted to be. That's the message that I get from Matthew. I hope that you'll return to that, that you'll pray about it, and that that question will haunt you as much as it does me, because maybe, maybe that will help us see Jesus when he arrives. Let's pray. God, we love you. We thank you for your son, Jesus. Thank you for who he was and what he did. Lord, we pray that we would have eyes to see and ears to hear. And we know, we know that we cannot see you. We cannot feel you. We cannot identify you. We cannot be moved by you without the Holy Spirit. So give us your spirit in increasing measure that we might see you where you are and where you are acting and where you are loving, that we might be true and authentic worshipers of you and worship you in spirit and in truth. God, help us be okay with you not making sense sometimes. Help us be people who can see how big you are and how wonderful you are. Help us be people who don't reduce you to what we expect, but rather marvel at all the ways you reveal yourself. Again, God, help us be people who worship you in spirit and in truth. In Jesus' name, amen.
All right, well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten a chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service, or we could also do it outside. I don't want to confine that to just the lobby. We're starting a new series today called 27. This series, believe it or not, is going to be two summers long. It's going to be the summer series this summer and next summer. And what we're going to do is look at an overview of all 27 books of the New Testament. We're going to start in Matthew and move right through and kind of give you guys an idea of what each book contains, what it's about, what it's for, who wrote it, why they wrote it, and those kinds of things. Now, we're doing this series for a couple of reasons, but the primary one is in an effort, and not that I sense a deficiency, but I think every church needs this, in an effort to continue to raise what I think of as the biblical literacy of the church. How familiar are we with the Bible? How well can we find the books? How well do we know what they're all about and how it all orders together? And I think that we have a wide swath of knowledge and people in the room. So some of us know the Bible really well. And we're grateful and blessed to have a body that is diverse in how well we know Scripture. Some of you could probably teach this series. And so my hope for those who know their Bibles well, know there's four Gospels, that Acts is the lone narrative book in the New Testament, and then we have the Pauline epistles and the general epistles, and they're written to the churches for different reasons and all the things. Like, if you know that stuff, then my hope is, as we zero in on each book, that you can learn something new and different that you may not have thought about or been aware of or exposed to before, and that hopefully something will spark and cause you to want to deep dive into these books a little bit more. Maybe you buy a commentary or start to watch another sermon series on it and dive deeper into this book. We hope that this series will compel you towards scripture. I say as often as I can that the single most important habit that anyone can develop in their life is to wake up every day and spend time in God's Word and time in prayer. I don't think there's any habit more important or valuable than that one. And so we hope that this series will compel you towards that. Now, if you're on the opposite end of the biblical knowledge spectrum and you didn't even know that there was 27 books in the New Testament, as a matter of fact, you're not exactly sure what the New Testament is. You just hear church people use that word. Then this is for you too. The New Testament, by the way, is just the books of the Bible that were written after Jesus was born. There's a more technical explanation of that, but that's essentially what's going on there. All the books that were written before Jesus, Old Testament. After Jesus, New Testament. And in the New Testament, there's 27 books. For those who care, there's 39 in the Old Testament, 66 total. Unless you're Catholic, then there's an apocrypha, and that's just a whole mess. But in the Protestant Bible, 66 books. I don't know. I don't know why I do things. I don't know why I say things sometimes. They just, they happen. And then they come out and I'm like, what was that about? I don't know. I don't know. Sorry, I'm editing. Right now I'm editing to make fun of myself more. Let's get back to the sermon. My hope is that for those of us who feel like, gosh, I don't know anything about the Bible. It's intimidating and unapproachable. I hope that you can make sense of it. And I don't want anyone to feel bad for not knowing where books are. If I say turn to Ephesians, you have to use the table of contents. That's fine. We just want to move in a direction where all of us are learning a little bit more about our Bible and pressed towards the Bible. So the sermons in this series are going to feel, I wouldn't say professorial because I'm not smart enough to be a professor, but they're going to feel more instructive than sermons about how to manage our emotions, which are more practical. So these are just to help us think better and more about the Bible and understand it as we dive into the Bible. That being said, in June, we're doing like a little sub-series within the larger series where we're going to look at the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are what's called synoptic Gospels. They cover pretty much the same chronology. They include a lot of the same stories. Those authors are trying to get a lot of the same points across. They're written to different people and depict Jesus as different things in each We'll be make comparisons. I am like, but he doesn't talk in parables like he does in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And so for the month of June, we're going to move through the Gospels, look at how they're different, which aspects of Jesus they highlight, and what we can learn from that. So this week, we're in the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew was written to the Jews and depicts Jesus as king. Matthew was written to the Jewish people in the first century, and it depicts Jesus as the king. This is really important because, I'm going to move right to it, because the Jewish people needed Matthew's gospel because they missed the Messiah. Matthew needed to be written, and it needed to be written to the Jews, and it needed to be written to prove to them that Jesus was actually the Messiah that he came to be because they missed him. And it's really tragic that they did because for generation after generation, for four millennia, the Jewish people were looking for the Messiah. They had prophecies and prophets trickle in to point them towards the Messiah. They're waiting on him. They're looking for him. His arrival could be any day. You never know. Every lifetime that happens, just like every lifetime that happens, we're convinced that Jesus is going to return while we're here. Everybody thinks that all the time. So must they have thought that about the Messiah arriving. Certainly it will be now. And he didn't, and he didn't, and he didn't. And they waited, and they waited, and they waited. And these are God's people. These are the children of Abraham. These are his descendants. These are the ones of all the world. These are the people who should know, who when the Messiah gets there, they should be like, that's the guy. They should know. And yet, when Jesus shows up and he says, I'm the guy, they go, no, you're not. And he's like, but really I am. And they're like, actually, you're not. And because you claim you are and you're not, we're going to kill you. That is a very loose paraphrase of a non-existent conversation that happened between Jesus and a whole country. But that's the vibe, all right? That's generally what's going on. Unless we think that it really wasn't the Jews who killed him and rejected him, it really wasn't the Israelites who killed him and rejected him, it was just this sect of religious leaders, Caiaphas and his cronies, the high priest and the others around him, and maybe Pilate and not caring, and he had a hand in it, and they did. But before Pilate kills Jesus, he tries to say, hey, we don't need to kill this guy. He didn't really do anything. And the Jewish people say, kill him and let his blood be on our heads and on the heads of our children, which is communal guilt. Okay? They missed Jesus. Now, there's forgiveness and repentance for that. Jesus needed to die that death so that they could be reunited with their father in heaven, and it worked out. But the Jews missed him. The Israelites missed the Messiah. And so they needed the book of Matthew to be written to them, to prove to them that that guy you killed on that cross, he was actually the guy. The guy that you killed for saying he was the guy, he was right. You've got a big blind spot. Let me show you. Let me prove to you that he was who he says he was. That's why in the book of Matthew, as you read it, you'll be following along. If you have a Bible now, you can look. It's right there. You'll be following along. You know how the Bible has two columns on each page? The column will pause and indent, and there will be a quote, sometimes short, sometimes long, and then it will get back to the regular discourse. And there's all sorts of pausing, indented quotes all throughout the book of Matthew. And what those indented quotes are are Old Testament prophecies about Jesus and who he was. And it goes like this. If you open up your Bible to the book of Matthew, you'll see three times that he does this in the first two chapters. I'm just going to run through them real quick so you know what I'm talking about. Matthew chapter 1, verse 22. I'm going to start reading in verse 21. See? All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, and then he breaks down into the quote from the Old Testament prophet. You turn the page, or maybe I don't know how your Bible works out said this had to happen. That is all through the gospel of Matthew. Because the Gospel of Matthew was written to a Jewish community that had rejected the Messiah. And what Matthew is doing is saying, hey, I know that you guys know your Old Testament, the Tanakh, the laws and the prophets, what we would think of as the Old Testament in the Bible. I know that you know that. I know that you know your prophets. I know that you know your prophecies. Their biblical literacy as a culture was much higher than ours is in church. So when Matthew quotes these prophets, they know who it was. They've been taught those prophecies. They've heard those things before. And there ought to be, there ought to be light bulbs going off in their minds going, oh, he does fulfill that. Oh, he does fulfill that. Oh, that is actually true. Oh, my goodness, he is and was the Messiah. So he wrote it to the unbelieving first century Jewish audience to show them that you did actually kill the Messiah and we need to turn and put our faith in him because he still lives. That was the point of the gospel of Matthew. And to me, when I think about why Matthew was written, and I think about some other things that we'll get into here in a second. It causes me to come back to questions like this. If Jesus showed up today, would you need your own gospel to show you that you missed him? If Jesus showed up today in Israel and the world pointed to him and said, that's the Messiah, that's Jesus, would you recognize him? Would you acknowledge him for who he was? Or would you be part of the crowd that rejected him and needed a separate gospel written to you after the fact to show you that he really was who he says he was? A more simple way to ask that is, if Jesus showed up in your life, would you notice him? If Jesus just plopped down right in the middle of grace, would we acknowledge that he was the Messiah? Or would we not be able to recognize him? Would we reject him, call him a weird cult leader, or a crazy person, and have him arrested or ignore him? Or if Jesus showed up, would we recognize him? I think about that question all the time. And I think about it all the time because the very people who were supposed to identify Jesus as Jesus didn't do it. The very people who had all the resources and all the exposure and knew all the quotes and all the scripture, when Jesus showed up, they didn't recognize him. And I don't know about you guys, but in modern Christianity, I'm that person. I've been in church my whole life. I've learned about Jesus from a very young age. I pray to him every day. I'm the one that's supposed to recognize when he shows up. You, most of you, are the people who are supposed to recognize when he shows up. Would you? Or would we do what they did and miss him? To answer that question, we have got to ask, why did they miss him? Right? That's the question. We have to go back and go, what did they do that we can try to avoid doing? Why did they miss who Jesus was? And how can we avoid doing what they did so that if Jesus were to show up today, we would recognize him and see him? I would contend with you that there's a couple different reasons, big reasons, why they missed the Messiah and they didn't recognize him and see him. I would contend with you that there's a couple different reasons, big reasons why they missed the Messiah and they didn't recognize him. But I would contend with you that overall, they couldn't see Jesus because they were blinded by their religious expectations. They had some expectations of who the Messiah was going to be and what the Messiah was going to do. And because they had those expectations, it blinded them from being able to see the actual real Messiah. And here's what's so scary about these expectations. These expectations came from their own religion. They came from their own faith. They came from Judaism. They came from, listen to me, well-meaning teachers over the centuries who were doing the best they could to point God's people towards God. I do not think that there was some grand conspiracy with little pernicious machinations through the decades to just tilt the course a little bit so that God's people could not see their God. I believe that there was good, well-meaning teachers in the Old Testament, men and women who were instructing God's people to be able to point them towards God, and they allowed things to get in there that started to just knock them off by a couple degrees so that by the time Jesus shows up thousands or hundreds of years later, they don't recognize him anymore. Because through the decades and through the centuries and down through the millennia, they began to put expectations on who their Messiah would be that Jesus did not put on himself. They started to think things would be true of Jesus that Jesus never said, that God never said. The biggest one is this. And what I'm about to tell you is so important that if you don't understand this, you really can't understand all of the Gospels. You'll still get the important part of the Gospel. Jesus died for your sins and he reunites you with your Heavenly Father. You'll get that part, but you won't understand the nuances of the gospels if you don't understand what I'm about to say. It is such, it may be, it's one of the most important tensions that's laced throughout all the gospels that helps you understand how Jesus's world interacted with him. You've got to understand this. The biggest expectation they had of Jesus is that he was going to be an earthly king to sit on an earthly throne. They believe with all their heart that when Jesus showed up, in this day, ancient Israel, when Jesus is born, they are a far-flung province of the Roman Empire. They're a corner of the globe. They don't matter. And they believe if the Messiah shows up, he is going to go and kick Herod out of the palace. He's going to take over David's throne. He is going to sit on the throne and rule. He will overthrow Roman rule. He will rise Israel to international prominence, and he will be the king of kings there. That's what they expect is going to happen. And so it's not necessarily that they didn't like Jesus when they met him. It's just that they expected him to sit on the earthly throne and establish an earthly kingdom. And so when Jesus shows up and he says, I'm the guy, they go, that's great. Let's go to the throne. And he's like, no, no, I don to. Chill out. I don't want to do that yet. And they're like, okay, are you ready to do it now? I actually had someone suggest, and I think this is super interesting, that Judas, the one who betrayed Jesus, didn't betray him to betray him and be a jerk, but he was just trying to get the wheels in motion to make this guy king. And he figured something needs to happen, so I'm going to do it. Which is why Judas, it makes sense that Judas would have killed himself after the fact when he found out that he was way wrong about that. But there was tremendous pressure being exerted upon Jesus to become the actual king. There's that scene where he disappears from the midst of the people because they're pressing on him, trying to get him and take him to Jerusalem and make him king. And he's like, that's not what I came for. They took Jesus, Jesus who came to be the king of the universe, the king of all creation, the king of heaven and earth, king of kings and Lord of lords. And they said, that's great. We want to make you the king of Israel. And he said, I didn't come for Israel, that small potatoes. I came for the universe. You guys don't understand. Pilate, at the end of his life, asked him, are you really a king? He's like, yeah, but not the kind you're thinking about. They had that expectation on Jesus that he was going to be an earthly king of an earthly kingdom. And because they were blinded by that expectation, when Jesus didn't want to go sit on the throne, they said, well, you can't possibly be the guy. So they killed him. Their religious expectations blinded them from who Jesus was. Jesus shows up. He starts hanging out with sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, and drunkards. And they're like, if you're the Messiah, you shouldn't be doing that. And he's like, well, I am the Messiah, and I am doing that. So you need to adjust. They were blinded by their own expectations. Which makes really the most important question this morning. And this question, I think, is so important that if it's not already, for me, it rattles around in the back of my head all the time. Because I'm a dad, and I want to raise my children to believe in Jesus. I want to live a life that's authentic to Jesus. I want to be one that if he walked through the doors, I would know him, and I would see him, and I would recognize him. I don't want to be one of the ones who rejects Jesus. I want to be Nicodemus and go, hey, maybe there's something to this. I want to be John the Baptist. And so he must become greater and I must become less. I want to be one of the ones that recognizes Jesus if he walks through the doors. So I'm constantly thinking about, not constantly, but it rattles around there pretty regularly. And this is something that if it's not blazoned in your head, I would write it down somewhere and return at least quarterly and pray through this question. What blinding expectations are we carrying? What expectations do I have of Jesus that if he were to show up would cause me to not recognize him? I think that's an incredibly important question. I don't know how often you do reviews at work. How are you doing? Are you doing well? Are you fulfilling the job description? Are we still on the same page here? This needs to be a quarterly personal review. What expectations have I allowed to trickle into my life that might cause me to miss the Messiah if he showed up? Because I hope you're like me and you want to be someone who recognizes Jesus when he arrives. So I think that question, what blinding expectations am I carrying, is an incredibly important one. So I've got some for you this morning that I think could represent a large swath of the room, but I bet that there's more, and I bet that it's worth praying about, and that's really what I want to encourage you to do. Take that statement home, find some time to pray about it and think on it and chew on it a little bit and let it rattle around in your brain for years and years like it does me. Because I want us to be a church that knows and sees Jesus because I think, I think Jesus is moving now in so many ways that we might not see. I think Jesus is loving us through people that we might not understand as loving us through Jesus, if that makes any sense. We're receiving love and affection from someone, but we don't see Jesus' hand in that because he couldn't use that person. I think Jesus is moving in communities and in movements and is spurring things on in our culture in his subtle ways that we don't recognize or maybe even flat out reject because it doesn't look like we think it should look. It doesn't behave like we think it should behave. And I think that it's highly possible that we don't have to talk about the hypothetical if Jesus showed up, would we recognize him? I think it's actually helpful to say, do we see the Jesus now that's in our life, that's loving on us, that's moving in our community? Do we see his influence in all the places where it actually is or have our religious expectations and our religious baggage and our intellectual baggage put blinders on our eyes so that we can only see portions and snippets of Jesus instead of recognizing all that he's doing in our life. So this isn't just an important hypothetical question for one day, but for right now too, as we look to see Jesus in our lives and in the lives of the people around us. So what are some of the expectations that we can have that could potentially blind us? I think the first one I would mention, and this kind of trickles down into all of them, is we expect Jesus to have a temporal perspective rather than an eternal one. I think we expect Jesus to have a temporal perspective rather than one that is eternal. See, I don't think that we realize, this is kind of an esoteric thought experiment, but I don't think we realize how much our being in a temporal world and a temporal body that's going to last 70, 80, 90 years impacts the way that we think and how much Jesus existing in eternity, seeing eternity for all that it is, actually changes the way that he thinks and interacts with the world. I think that there are some things that we see as tragic because our view is temporal that Jesus sees as merciful because his view is eternal. I think that there is so much that when we get to heaven one day and we are granted this eternal perspective where we will go, oh, that makes so much more sense now. I used to not understand that. Now I completely understand that. I used to be mad at Jesus about that, now I'm not mad at Jesus at all. I think having an eternal perspective changes everything about how we view the world, and it's so hard to get ourselves out of our limited temporal perspective and really truly believe what Paul says when he says that we are like a mist or a vapor, here one day and gone the next. When he says, though we endure this pain for a little while, just a small portion, we have no idea how infinitesimally small, I don't know that word, how really small our life is compared to the whole span of eternity. And it also helps us understand Jesus as we read him in the Gospels. I think this is a really funny question. I heard it years ago, and I think it's great. How come Jesus, knowing everything about everything, when he exists in ancient Israel, and he's teaching people, he's doing the Sermon on the Mount, he's doing the Beatitudes, bless the peacemakers, bless the poor in spirit, bless the meek, don't commit adultery, don't steal from people, we're the salt of the earth, we're the light of the world, all the things. How about at the end of it, why doesn't he just tack on and also, listen, I'm not really going to get into this, okay, because I'm not going to do science on you guys, but just wash your hands. Just wash your hands. Why doesn't he tell ancient Israel, like, just, you know, after the bathroom, just soap up, you know, before you tend to wound? Maybe just wash your hands a little bit. Like, why doesn't he do that? That's not like a big deal. Just a little deal. Just give him a little bit to make the world a little bit better place. Why doesn't he do that? That's not what he came to do. He didn't come then to make the world a better place. He came to live a perfect life, to die a perfect death, to train the disciples, and to leave behind the church. That's what he came to do. He's thinking about eternity. You ever wonder how many people existed in ancient Israel contemporary to Jesus? Hearing about all the miracles that he's performing and all the wonderful things that he's doing and how he's healing people and even raising people from the dead. I wonder how many people there were that were contemporaries of Jesus who got up one day and took themselves to where he was to be healed or took the loved one to where he was to be healed. All the faith and all the ardor and all the desire and they had to walk away with that same disease broken hearted because Jesus didn't heal them. How many people were in the crowds who desperately needed to be healed but they weren't? I bet there was a bunch. And I bet they were pretty miffed. You healed that lady, you wouldn't heal my wife? Don't we do the same thing? You healed that cancer, you won't heal this one? You saved that person, you won't save this one? How many people were walking around doing that back then? And why didn't Jesus walk around healing everyone? Because that's a temporal question. He had an eternal perspective. That's not what he came to do. He had other stuff to do. It was an eternal agenda. So I think a lot of the expectations that we place on Jesus come from this place of a temporal perspective when we really need to see him through the lens of the eternal. Another one, another expectation that can potentially blind us, kind of bleeds into that one, is we expect Jesus to protect us and our families from tragedy. Don't we? We would never say it out loud. No one ever says, I'm a Christian now, and I follow the Bible as well as I can. I pray every day. I go to church. And because of that, God's going to protect me and my family from tragedy. We don't say that out loud, but we certainly think it. And I know that we think it because I can't tell you how many people I've sat with and how many times in my life I've experienced the emotion of, God, how can you let this happen? This isn't fair. Why not? Well, because I love you and follow you and I'm devoted to you and you shouldn't let things like this happen to me. Oh, where'd you pick that one up? Was it the book of Job? Which says the exact opposite of that. I'm not going to beat this drum too hard because I do this sermon about twice a year because it's such a pernicious teaching in God's church. And I hate it so much that we would have this expectation that to follow Jesus means that we get to dodge the raindrops of tragedy in our life. That is not the case, and God never said it would be. He does not promise to prevent those things from happening. He promises to walk through them with us, that in those moments he will be closer to us than any other times. That's what he promises, but he doesn't promise that his children will not endure pain. He actually promises in a bunch of different ways that we will. And yet, people walk away from the faith because something tragic happened in their life and they think that that makes God unfair. It's an expectation that we have of Jesus that blinds him in our life, blinds us from being able to see him in our life. Like I said, I'm not going to belabor it, but I see this belief causing more people to walk away from the faith than to be drawn to Jesus. We need to carefully root that out of our lives. And it's in, even though I say it, it's in me. I know it's in me. We need to always reexamine how we respond to tragedy and the idea of fairness because Jesus did not give us that expectation. Another one that can tend to blind us is that we expect Jesus to be a better version of ourselves. If Jesus were to show up in our lives, we would expect that he's not going to be like us because we've got some rough edges, right? Probably not going to laugh at all the jokes I laugh at. But he's going to laugh at some of them. He's going to be pretty good. He's going to be a little bit sarcastic. He's going to be a little bit funny. He's probably going to be really pragmatic, you know. He's probably going to choose the minivan over the SUV. That's what Jesus would do. He's going to drive the sensible car. Jesus would have driven a Leaf. I don't know if you know that. He would be, that's an old school joke. I used to drive a Leaf years ago and people who have been here for a while still make fun of me for that. And they should. And if we find out you drive one, we're making fun of you too. But we expect Jesus to be like we would, right? Especially in our politics. Jen's like, please, please be careful. If we lean right, we're pretty sure that Jesus would too. And he would have mercy on the godless liberals. And some of them might be Christians, you know, maybe. And God's patient with them. They're just swept up in culture and they're, you know, they're sissies. But God has patience for them. If we lean left, we think God would probably lean left too. He'd probably vote Democrat. And he has patience for his misguided children on the right who live in echo chambers. They're going to be fine. Right? We think Jesus would be like us, and that he has our opinions about all the things. Maybe just a little bit more measured. We tend to remake Jesus in our own image. Here's another way I know this is true. I'm just going to be honest with you. If Jesus shows up and he's from the hills of Appalachia and it turns out he's Pentecostal, I'm going to be real uncomfortable with that. That's going to take some adjusting to do. But he might be. He might be. And that would be great. All those people for all those years would be like, see, stuffy Presbyterians, we told you. And you're like, yep, you did. You did. You tried to tell us. We wouldn't listen. He might be. But because I think Jesus is going to be like I am, probably not. But can you see how if we remake Jesus in our own image, we make him so small that we might not be able to recognize him if he shows up not looking like us? Because, spoiler alert, he will not. Here's another one. I almost didn't include this. This is a little touchy. But I think it's true. I think it's worth saying. I think it needs to be said in church. I think we expect Jesus to prioritize our country. I don't know about you, but I grew up in a country, and I'm American, by the way. I grew up in a country where it wasn't said in the church. I never had a pastor that preached about this because I had a good pastor. But it was in Christian culture that America's really important to Jesus. We are the righteous right hand of God fighting back the godless commies. And if we don't do it, atheism will take over the world. And God needs America to protect his grand plan. So America, because we're a Christian nation, no we're not, is most important to God. No, it's not. I've heard people read America into the Bible, into the prophecies about the end time. Well, that's definitely the United States of America. Okay. Well, it wasn't Rome and it wasn't Greece, so maybe it's us. I've seen people do this. We're trying to read ourselves into the prophecies and into the texts. And we still continue to think that somehow the United States of America is the apple of God's eye. No, it's not. He cares just as much about North Korea as he does about the United States. He cares a little bit less about Canada, and we know that. And that's fine. But we've got to abandon this sort of American nationalistic faith where we put American flags and Christian flags in our churches. And we think that somehow to be a patriot is to be more Christian. No, it's not. It's fine. It's fine. Be patriotic. It's wonderful. But we should not conflate that with faith. And I think that I grew up in a country that did. Maybe you didn't, so I'll leave that right there. But to me, that's a disturbing trend I see in our culture. The last one is we expect Jesus to make sense. Don't we? We expect Jesus, we can tie him up, we can put him in the boxes, we can tie him up neat and in bow. We're going to understand him. We're going to write systematic theologies about him. We're going to be able to understand him. We're going to be able to understand everything that he did to understand everything that he's doing and to predict his future action because he's Jesus and we like to understand everything. So we're going to be able to understand and compartmentalize this Jesus too. When Jesus never, ever wanted to be understood, he's too big for our understanding. Do you realize that he taught in parables to intentionally be misunderstood? He taught in parables. He says, they said, why the disciples go, why do you teach in parables? And he's like, cause I don't want everybody to understand me. What? Doesn't that seem counter to what we would think Jesus would do? And yet that's what he did. Jesus, he's approached by the rich young ruler and the rich young, and this guy, I don't know if it's a rich young ruler, it's a rich guy, and he says, hey, I'm in. I want to follow you. What do I need to do? And Jesus says, you need to sell everything that you have and follow me. And the guy walks away dejected. That doesn't make any sense. That actually feels counterproductive to what Jesus is trying to do. If I were a pastor and Jesus were a pastor, and he came to me for advice, which would totally make sense. And he said, hey, I've got this rich guy and he wants to know what he should do to follow me. That'd be interesting. And I would tell him, that's great. That's great. Share with him the gospel, bring him in, Start to disciple him. Put him with somebody who can disciple him. Make sure he's in Bible studies. And over time, start to gently, when you have these opportunities for conversations, gently nudge him towards the idea of stewardship so that he can come around to this understanding and this belief that everything that he has is really yours. And let's let that progress as it should. But you don't want to hit him with it up front because you'll scare him away like a scared baby deer, and then we might never get him back. Not because he's rich, but because we care about his soul. And Jesus goes, that's stupid. I'm just going to tell him. And the guy runs away. Who knows if he came back or not? That doesn't make sense. Jesus was culling the herd all the time. There was a time when the following got too big, and he just kind of looked at them, and he said, he said, I'll tell you the truth. Unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And people are like, okay, this just became a weird cult. I am out. And they started leaving left and right. And he looks at his disciples. And he goes, are you going to leave too? And this is, I don't think I'll ever get a tattoo. If I do, it might be this phrase. I love this phrase. I love what Peter says in this moment. He says, are you guys going to leave too? And Peter says, you're the Christ. Where are we going to go? I love it. Because what's Peter saying? He's going to be like, dude, I've been following you for two years. You don't make any sense. I don't have a clue what you just were talking about. That's weird, man. But you're Jesus, and I've got nowhere else to go. So I'm in, even if I don't understand you. Because we serve a God that's too big to be understood by you. And if he were, if you could understand him, you wouldn't want to follow him. All through Scripture, Jesus is too big and too marvelous and too miraculous and too wild to be understood and tamed by our intellect. Even at the very beginning, if we look at God introducing himself to the world, he shows up in the burning bush and he tells Moses, hey, go and free my people from Egypt. And Moses is like, all right, cool, got it. What's your name? And God's like, nah, I'm not going to tell you. I am. What's that mean? I'm not going to tell you that either. Just go do what I'm asking you to do, but I'm not going to be reduced to your names. I'm not going to be reduced to your titles. I'm not going to be reduced to a box that you want to put me in. Forget it. I will not do that with you. In Job, Job goes to God and he asks him the question that every generation has asked, which is essentially, why do you let bad things happen to good people, God? And in Job 38, 39, and 40, God tells him in a very not nice way. It's not like kind at all. That basically, I'm not going to tell you because if I did, you wouldn't understand it. So how about you just let me be God and you be Job and we'll keep this train moving. He's not going to explain it to him because he can't understand it. And they come out and tell us in Romans that his ways are higher than our ways. Jesus is far too big and far too wild and far too mysterious and far too wonderful to be reduced to something that's going to make sense to you all the time. And I think that was probably the big sin of the Israelites. Their expectations had reduced Jesus to something he never wanted to be. And when he didn't fit into the mold that they created for him, they killed him because they missed him. And I worry about me, and I worry about my kids, and I worry about my church. That the mold that we are casting for our Savior is so small that he can never fit in it even if he wanted to. And because he doesn't fit into the mold that we've created, we might reject him. I do not want that to be true of us. So how do we make sure that's not true? We constantly examine, what are my expectations of Jesus that he did not give me? We learn, we take in, we read from the Bible what the Bible says. We don't read into it what we want it to say. And I think we pray earnestly, God, where you are, help me see it. But let us not commit the sin of the Israelites and try to reduce our wonderful and wild and miraculous and mysterious God to something that he never wanted to be. That's the message that I get from Matthew. I hope that you'll return to that, that you'll pray about it, and that that question will haunt you as much as it does me, because maybe, maybe that will help us see Jesus when he arrives. Let's pray. God, we love you. We thank you for your son, Jesus. Thank you for who he was and what he did. Lord, we pray that we would have eyes to see and ears to hear. And we know, we know that we cannot see you. We cannot feel you. We cannot identify you. We cannot be moved by you without the Holy Spirit. So give us your spirit in increasing measure that we might see you where you are and where you are acting and where you are loving, that we might be true and authentic worshipers of you and worship you in spirit and in truth. God, help us be okay with you not making sense sometimes. Help us be people who can see how big you are and how wonderful you are. Help us be people who don't reduce you to what we expect, but rather marvel at all the ways you reveal yourself. Again, God, help us be people who worship you in spirit and in truth. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning. My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. For the unindoctrinated, for those who haven't been a part of the series the whole time, what we've been doing for our intros for every sermon is we have a song that is loosely about heroes because the series is called Obscure Heroes. So if you're like, why in the world are they playing that song? That's why, because adults aren't in charge and we think that that's funny. So that's what we've done. I do have to tell you that my sermon in no way fits with that song. In fact, it is very far out of place. It's why I woke up on Monday of this week. I knew what sermon that we had planned in the series. And I woke up on Monday and I thought, I don't want to do that sermon. That's a hard one. That's a heavy one. It talks about like pain and grief, and that's not like summertime fare. Like we're going to do some stupid song to start off the sermon, and it's supposed to be just light and fun. And so I had myself convinced that I didn't need to do the sermon. And then on Tuesday afternoon, I had, or maybe Monday, I can't remember, I had lunch with another pastor in the area, actually, because they talk to me sometimes. And I said, hey, man, this is what I'm thinking. I'm thinking that I'm going to bail on this, and I'm going to do this instead. What do you think? And he's like, well, what would you talk about? And I kind of told him and he goes, I don't know, man. Sounds like you need to pray about it. People need to hear that. And I thought, darn it, you and the Holy Spirit. So I knew that I needed to do this one. It's a heavy one. It's a hard one. But my hope and my prayer is that it's exactly what some of us need, and that it's exactly what we need to hear. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pray. I'm just going to pray that this would be a good time and that God's Word will be taught transparently and correctly, and that maybe we can take some comfort out of what we look at today. So let's pray. Father, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for a place where we can have fun. We also thank you for your word. And we understand that life isn't always fun. And it's not always sunshine and lollipops, God. And in those moments, you show up too. And so we just ask that your word would be used to bring comfort to us today as some of us hurt, as some of us grieve, as some of us recover from those things or face those things. Lord, just be with us and in this time today. In Jesus' name, amen. So I want to look today at the story of Eli. We find Eli at the beginning of 1 Samuel. We're going to be specifically looking at a story out of 1 Samuel chapter 3. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, they have free ones on your phone, so you can use those too. Eli was the high priest. Now this is a time in Israel when Israel didn't have a king. They came out of Egypt, led by Moses. They wandered in the desert. Then Moses passes away. Joshua is named the leader. He leads them into Israel. They conquer what we know as the modern nation of Israel. They divide it up amongst the 12 tribes. And now they're living in these territories with God as their king. They have no king. And so the high priest is the mouthpiece of God to the people. So he's the big dog in Israel. He's the guy. If you're the high priest in Israel, you're the most powerful man in the country. And so that's Eli. Eli is the high priest. Now Eli had two sons named Hophni and Phinehas. And they were jerks. Hophni and Phinehas were spoiled, rich kids that were privileged, that took gross advantage of their privilege, okay? Their dad is the most powerful man in the country. I would assume that there was some wealth that went along with it, though I don't know that. I can't back that up with paperwork, but it seems reasonable to make that guess. And they took advantage of their dad's position in their position. They used it to take advantage of women. They threatened, they would steal food from the temple and when the priest tried to stop them, they would threaten to beat up the older priest. Like that's what they did. They were deplorable jerks, okay? And God had decided that he could not trust the priesthood to these two. Because the idea is when the high priest passes away, the next priest comes up was generally his son and it stayed in the family. It was this legacy that the priest would leave behind generation after generation. But there's also this boy named Samuel. Samuel's mom was a woman named Hannah who had a hard time having kids. She went to the temple and she begged God for a kid and she says, if you give me a son, I'll give him back to you. And so that's what she did. She was blessed with a boy named Samuel. And then she gave Samuel back to the temple just as soon as he was old enough to eat food on his own. And he was raised in the temple as like a disciple of Eli. And one night Samuel's asleep and he hears a voice crying out to him. So he wakes up, he assumes it's Eli. He goes into Eli's room. Hey, Eli, what's up, man? And Eli says, I didn't call out to you. Like, go back to bed, kid. You're crazy. So Samuel goes back to bed. This happens a couple more times until finally Eli says, Samuel, that's the Lord speaking to you. Next time you hear that voice, you need to say, speak, Lord, for your servant hears. And so that's what he did. The next time he heard the voice, Samuel said, speak, Lord, for your servant hears. And God told him something. And it was bad news for Eli. So the next morning, Samuel wakes up. And Eli comes and finds him. And he says, tell me what God said to you last night. And Samuel demurs, oh, it was nothing. It was no big deal. It was just about, you know, some cattle and stuff. Don't worry about it. And they kind of keep going back and forth. And finally, Eli says, you tell me what the Lord said or everything that he said that's going to happen is going to happen to you instead. So Samuel, we don't know how old he is, 8, 10, 12 years old. It was terrifying to have to say what he was about to say to Eli, the most powerful man in the country, respected high priest. He didn't want to say it. But under threat, he agrees. And so he tells Eli, the Lord has told me that your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, cannot be trusted with the priesthood, and they're evil in his eyes. So he's going to have them killed. He's going to let them die, and the priesthood is going to be taken from your family. Now, that's the worst news I think any person can receive. It's got to be the worst news. You are going to lose your children. You're going to attend your children's funeral. And the legacy that you want to leave will not be left. I am taking your kids and I am taking your legacy. There is not a more painful thing. I'm convinced after being in the pastorate, after seeing enough life to form this kind of opinion, I've seen these funerals enough times, there is no deeper sadness that I have seen than for a parent to survive a child. I think that's got to be the worst. It breaks my heart. And Eli's just told, you're going to lose both your sons, and you will leave no legacy. I'm going to entrust the priesthood to somebody else. Now, if you were Eli, and you just received that news as the high priest, how would you respond? What would you think? What would you want to say? I know for me, I would want to shake my fist and say, God, that's not fair. That's not right. I serve you, God. I've dedicated my life to serving you. I know that my sons aren't the best, but they're going to come around, God. I pray about them every day. They're going to get there. Just give us a little bit more time, God. This is not fair. This isn't right. I've devoted my life to you, and you're going to let this happen to me. Isn't that what you would say? Isn't that what you would feel? Wouldn't you feel that it was unfair? You have to imagine, and we don't know this to be sure, but don't you think that there's a really good chance that Samuel continued to pray or that Eli continued to pray for his sons? That Eli continued to pray, God, I know that they're not walking with you right now. I know that they're living in sin, but man, they're going to come around. Just please be with them. Please don't forget about them. Don't you think that he hadn't given up hope on them? And then he finds out, I'm going to let them die. And I'm going to take your legacy. Wouldn't you want to shake your fist at God and say, this is not fair. Give me a little more time. And what Eli says is to me one of the most faithful statements in the Bible. If you look, 1 Samuel 3, verse 18, when Eli hears this news, this is his immediate response. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. He's God. He created this. He's the Lord over everything. I trust him. Let him do what seems best to him. Would that be your response? When you take your place, and we've all had them, when you take yourself to your place of deepest grief, is what you were thinking in that moment, the Lord, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. So how was Eli, in the face of this kind of pain and anguish, able to respond like that? I think that he understood some principles that we see more pointedly in the New Testament that can help us understand maybe how Eli was able to have this kind of faith and the choices that he was making even in that moment. In John chapter 11, there's one of my favorite stories in the Bible. Of course, I say that about all the stories that I teach. I really like the Bible. I'm sorry. In John chapter 11, we meet this family, Mary and Martha and Lazarus. And we, the historians believe that these were Jesus, the closest thing that Jesus had to besties, okay? These were his closest friends. These were probably his vacation friends. They wanted to go down to the beaches. This is, they probably went together. He loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus. They lived in a town called Bethany, and that's affectionately known as Jesus's favorite place on earth. That's probably where he felt home and safe. And he's a couple days' journey away, and Lazarus is sick. He's going to die. So Mary and Martha send word to Jesus, hey, our brother's going to die. You should come take care of him, because they know that he has the power to heal. So Jesus says, okay. He gets the message. He waits for two days, and then he travels to Bethany. And while he's traveling there, Lazarus passes away. And Mary and Martha are ticked, rightfully so, because they know that Jesus waited. He should be here by now and he's not. What's he doing? And so as he approaches Bethany, Mary runs out to meet him. And she asks him the question that we would ask. Jesus, why didn't you come sooner? We told you that our brother was going to die and you could have come and done something about it and you didn't. Why didn't you come sooner? And if you're paying attention and you're empathizing and you're thinking about your own life, this is the question that we all ask too. Whenever we experience loss or grief, we lean in with Mary and we say, yeah, Jesus, why? Because here's the thing. Mary knew that Jesus had the power to prevent her brother from dying. She knew that he could have swept in at any moment and healed him. She knew that he could have prayed a prayer from two days away and healed Lazarus and that he didn't need to die and that he didn't need to go through this pain. She knew that he could have stopped it and that he chose not to. So she leans in and she says, why'd you do that? And if you've ever prayed for someone to survive that didn't, then you've asked that question too. If you've ever prayed against a diagnosis, you've asked that question too. If you've walked through a divorce or abuse or an irreconcilable situation, then you lean in with Mary and you've asked that question too. Jesus, you could have stopped this and you didn't. Why? And Jesus' response is not what we would expect. It's the shortest verse in the Bible. It may be the most profound, John 11, 35. As soon as she asked him that question, you could have stopped this and you didn't, Jesus. Why not? He says, or the Bible says, that Jesus wept. Jesus wept. And when I imagine that moment, I don't imagine Jesus as standing coldly back from Mary and looking at her as they just stand and weep together. I imagine Jesus as grabbing her shoulders and bringing her in and embracing the sister that he loved and weeping with her. And when you think about the times in your life when you've hurt the most, that's what you need more than anything. You need people to weep with you. You need people's presence. Have you ever sat with somebody who was hurting? You sat with them at a loved one's funeral. You sat with them in the hospital while they hoped against hope. Have you ever sat with somebody who was hurting? You sat with them at a loved one's funeral. You sat with them in the hospital while they hoped against hope. Have you ever sat in the middle of someone's pain and racked your brain for the right thing to say? And you can't come up with anything because there's nothing to be said. There's nothing to be said. And if you remember your own pain and the way that people ministered to you, it was never what they said. You don't remember what people told you. You remember that they were there. Because words don't help. I think Abraham Lincoln said it best. I love the letter. It circulates just about every Memorial Day that he wrote to the mom who lost five sons in the Union Army that year. And he said, he said, I feel the weakness of my words and any attempt to beguile you from the pain that you must feel. He's admitting that his words are impotent. In fact, usually the only things that are said there that we remember are the dumb things, right? I've heard people say before when someone's endured loss, like, well, God must have needed another angel in heaven. Don't say dumb crap like that. No, he doesn't. God can make any angel he wants. He doesn't need to take someone from you so that he can have another one in heaven. That's silly. It's not helpful. That's what someone told us when we had a miscarriage. Get away from me. It's not helpful. The only thing that we remember is people's presence. When we walked through that, Jen and I did together, I remember her Uncle Edwin, four separate times, called me as the dust was settling to see how I was doing, to encourage me, to tell me that he loved me and that he was praying for me. He didn't have to do that. He's not even my biological uncle. He's Jen's, but he cared for me and he kept calling. I don't remember what he said. I have no idea. But I remember that he showed up. When we are hurting, what we need most is people's presence. So when we hurt, Jesus doesn't offer us words because words don't help. He weeps with us. He offers us his presence. And the truth of it is that we have a God who weeps with us. We have a God that when we hurt, he embraces us. He holds us and he weeps with us and he feels our pain with us. He doesn't give us words to try to explain what we're doing because let's be honest, when you're in that moment and you're asking Jesus, why'd you let this happen to me? Why'd you let this happen? You could have stopped us and you didn't. Listen to me, I'm being honest. I was thinking about this this week. If Jesus sat you down and explained to you exactly why he was letting this thing happen in your life and told you all the reasons in light of history and in light of eternity and with the proper view of time and keeping his promises and how it all works out one day, if he explained everything to you and somehow you were able to understand it, would it make that moment hurt any less? No. When we ask Jesus, why'd you let this happen? What we're really saying is, I need you to make this better. I need you to fix this because this sucks. That's what we're saying. And Jesus knows that words are not going to fix it. So he weeps with us. And he weeps with us, I believe, not just for the pain that we're walking through in the moment, but because he knows that we're going to struggle to understand. He doesn't just weep for our pain, but also because we're going to struggle to understand. He knows that we are not going to understand what's going on around us and that we can't. And that hurts his heart. Several months ago, I think it may have even been last year, we woke up on a Friday. Friday is family day at the rector House. I have that one off because technically I'm working right now. And so on Fridays, we get up and we try to protect that for our family. And we got up and we told Lily this day we're going to go to the new park. To her, Sassafras behind Crabtree is the new park, which is amazing. One of the things we love most about Raleigh is the parks. They're incredible. Back home, they're all dumpy. You need a tetanus shot before you go to the park. So here, it's great. And so we get in the car. We load up. We go to the new park. We get her out of the car. She's excited. Lily excited. Yes. And you put her on the ground. And she runs down the sidewalk to go play at the new park. Comes around the corner. And what she finds is that there's a makeshift chain link fence around the whole park and not a soul there. And we looked online and we realized they're repairing the ground. They're replacing the flooring for the park. Can't play that day. Jen and I are brokenhearted. And we're looking at the disappointment on our little girl's face and it's hurting us. And we had taught her this thing. So I think she was two years old at the time. And when they get fixated on something, it's just all that they can think about. And so we had taught her to be patient. So she would see something and she'd be like, mommy, chips, chips. I want chips, mommy. Give me the chips, chips, chips, chips. And we'd be like, oh my gosh, stop it. So we'd pick her up and I'd look at her and I'd go, Lily, sweetheart, you can have the chips in a little bit, but not right now. I need you to be patient. Can you be patient? And she would repeat back to me, I'd be patient. And for us, that was like our first parenting win. Like the first time she said it, we were like, okay, I think that she will survive. I think we can do this. So we were so happy that she understood what it meant to be patient. And so we get down there, and Lily's up against the fence, and we have to say, oh, sweetheart, we're not going to, we can't play on the playground right now. They're working on it. She doesn't understand what's going on. And I'll never forget, it broke my heart. She's up against that chain link fence. It's like from a dang movie. And she turns around and she looks at me and she says, it's okay, Daddy, I'll be patient. Golly, man. Jen and I started crying on the spot. No, baby, you don't understand. Like, it ain't happening today. And there's nothing we can say to help her understand. She's two. She can't process what's going on. I think that sense of helplessness that we felt in the face of her pain is pretty similar to what God feels sometimes. Not helpless, but just the fact that he knows. I can't explain this to you. Oh, sweetheart. I can't make this better for you right now. It's just not how it's going to work. And I know that answer is going to cause you more pain. And I'm so sorry about that. And it'll get better if you're patient. But you're probably going to have to be patient for longer than you realize. I don't think that God weeps with us just because we're hurting, but because he knows that we're going to have to choose faith. We're going to have to choose him when it doesn't make sense. The story that illustrates this to me is in the book of Matthew, I think around chapter 11. John the Baptist is a prophet that prepared the way for Jesus. And John the Baptist, he was a brave man, he was a man of courage, and he spoke truth to power, and he said the wrong thing to the king, and it got him thrown in jail. And he's been in jail for a little while, and he begins to get this sense that he's going to die there, that they're going to execute him. And so he sends message to Jesus. John the Baptist had disciples. He gathers his disciples around, and he sends the message to Jesus, and he tells him, go ask Jesus, are you the one who is to come, or should I expect someone else? He's saying, are you the Messiah, or have I gotten this wrong? Don't need to keep waiting. And he's referencing a passage in Isaiah that was a prophecy about the Messiah. And he knows that Jesus knows his Bible, and that when he hears this question, he's going to know exactly what John the Baptist is talking about. Because there's a prophecy in Isaiah that says, when the coming one arrives, the one who is to come, when they arrive, the deaf will hear and the blind will see and the lame will walk and the prisoners will be set free. And so what John is asking Jesus is, are you the guy? Because when the guy gets here, the prisoners are supposed to be set free. And I'm still here. And I'm going to die here if you don't do something about it. So are you the guy? Same as Mary. You can do something about this. Are you going to? Same as us. God, it feels like you could prevent this. Are you going to? And Jesus responds to John the Baptist. He tells the disciples, you go tell John that I am the one who is to come and that the blind see and the deaf hear and the lame walk and the prisoners are set free, but John the Baptist will not be. And then he says, blessed are those who do not lose faith on account of me. Blessed are those who are not offended by me. Because he knew. This is going to be painful news for John the Baptist, and I am not meeting the expectations that he has for me, and I am not going to do the thing that he is asking me to do, that it is within my power to do, and he's not going to understand why I'm not going to do it and he's just going to have to choose faith. And blessed are those who in the face of pain choose faith. Because it's hard. Because we don't understand it. Because Romans 11 tells us that God's ways are higher than our ways. And that there's going to be some things that almighty God, all-knowing God, all-wise God does that we can't possibly understand. And sometimes the choices that he makes are going to be choices that don't make sense to us, that don't seem fair to us, that make us angry because it seems like he could have prevented it and he chose not to and we don't understand. And in those moments, it is up to us whether or not we want to respond like Eli. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. And that's a tough thing to say. But here's the deal. When Eli says that, understanding the principles we look at in the New Testament, understanding that we have a God that weeps with us, that offers us his presence because words really aren't what we need. They're not going to fix it at the end of the day. Eli understands that. He understands that sometimes God allows things to happen that seem like he shouldn't let them happen, that we're praying against and he allows them to occur and it frustrates us and we lean in with Mary and say, why'd you do that? And God weeps with us because we hurt and we're not going to understand this pain on this side of eternity. And Eli looks at all of that and he says, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. And I really believe that choosing faith in the face of this pain really comes down to two questions. Do we choose to believe that God is good? Do you believe that God is good? Do you believe that the God of the universe who knows you, created you, do you believe that he is good? And then do you believe that he will keep his promises? Do you believe that God is good and do you believe that he will keep his promises? Do we trust Romans 8, 28 that says, we know that all things work together for the good of those who love him are called according to his purpose. Do we trust that to work out in eternity? Do we trust that one day when we can understand everything, when we can see as God sees, when we get into heaven, when we're on the other side of this life and we look back on everything, do we trust that if we could understand it like God does, that we will go, okay, I get it now. You are good and I love you and thank you. Do we trust that that's true? Do we trust the most hopeful promise in the Bible in Revelation 21 that one day God will be with his people and we will be with our God and there will be no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain anymore? Do we trust that promise? If we choose to believe that God is good and we choose to believe that he will keep his promises, then we can respond like Eli and have faith in the face of pain. And listen, when we miscarried, and I learned about that after trying to get pregnant for a long time, I went home and I got on my knees and I prayed through tears. And I said, Lord, you're good. Let you do what seems good to you. And can I tell you this? I didn't mean that. I didn't mean it. I said it because I was supposed to, because I'm a pastor and I wanted to be a good soldier and I wanted to say the right thing, but I didn't believe that for a second. I was mad, man. I didn't believe a good God would do that. But I said it. And over time, I believed it. And I still do. And I was listening to a song this morning that says, what is true in the light is still true in the dark. And even if we don't feel like we believe it, we can still choose to trust it. We can still choose to respond to pain with faith like Eli. And so I hope that for those of us facing pain, we'll choose to respond with faith. I hope in a kind and gentle and empathetic way, as we see people around us hurting, we can encourage them towards faith, even when it doesn't make sense. I hope that we won't try to help people make sense of their pain, because even Jesus didn't try to do that. He just offered his presence. And I hope that as we move through life and face pain again that we'll remember the message of Eli. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. Let's pray. Father, you are good. You are good even when it doesn't seem like you are. You are good even when we don't understand how. You're good when you don't do the thing we want you to do. You're good when it doesn't go the way we want it to go. You're good when we are disappointed. You're good and patient as we shake our fists at you. God, you are good. I pray that you would give us the faith to believe that when it's hard. I pray that you would continue to be patient with us as we learn what it means to be faithful. We thank you for being a God that weeps with us, that is close to the brokenhearted, that comforts those who are crushed in spirit. And I pray particularly for those this morning who are struggling through some pain, that you would be close to them, that they would be comforted by your word. And that somehow, God, if they know you, you would give them the faith of Eli. And that one day they would be able to really believe what they say. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.
Good morning. My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. For the unindoctrinated, for those who haven't been a part of the series the whole time, what we've been doing for our intros for every sermon is we have a song that is loosely about heroes because the series is called Obscure Heroes. So if you're like, why in the world are they playing that song? That's why, because adults aren't in charge and we think that that's funny. So that's what we've done. I do have to tell you that my sermon in no way fits with that song. In fact, it is very far out of place. It's why I woke up on Monday of this week. I knew what sermon that we had planned in the series. And I woke up on Monday and I thought, I don't want to do that sermon. That's a hard one. That's a heavy one. It talks about like pain and grief, and that's not like summertime fare. Like we're going to do some stupid song to start off the sermon, and it's supposed to be just light and fun. And so I had myself convinced that I didn't need to do the sermon. And then on Tuesday afternoon, I had, or maybe Monday, I can't remember, I had lunch with another pastor in the area, actually, because they talk to me sometimes. And I said, hey, man, this is what I'm thinking. I'm thinking that I'm going to bail on this, and I'm going to do this instead. What do you think? And he's like, well, what would you talk about? And I kind of told him and he goes, I don't know, man. Sounds like you need to pray about it. People need to hear that. And I thought, darn it, you and the Holy Spirit. So I knew that I needed to do this one. It's a heavy one. It's a hard one. But my hope and my prayer is that it's exactly what some of us need, and that it's exactly what we need to hear. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pray. I'm just going to pray that this would be a good time and that God's Word will be taught transparently and correctly, and that maybe we can take some comfort out of what we look at today. So let's pray. Father, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for a place where we can have fun. We also thank you for your word. And we understand that life isn't always fun. And it's not always sunshine and lollipops, God. And in those moments, you show up too. And so we just ask that your word would be used to bring comfort to us today as some of us hurt, as some of us grieve, as some of us recover from those things or face those things. Lord, just be with us and in this time today. In Jesus' name, amen. So I want to look today at the story of Eli. We find Eli at the beginning of 1 Samuel. We're going to be specifically looking at a story out of 1 Samuel chapter 3. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, they have free ones on your phone, so you can use those too. Eli was the high priest. Now this is a time in Israel when Israel didn't have a king. They came out of Egypt, led by Moses. They wandered in the desert. Then Moses passes away. Joshua is named the leader. He leads them into Israel. They conquer what we know as the modern nation of Israel. They divide it up amongst the 12 tribes. And now they're living in these territories with God as their king. They have no king. And so the high priest is the mouthpiece of God to the people. So he's the big dog in Israel. He's the guy. If you're the high priest in Israel, you're the most powerful man in the country. And so that's Eli. Eli is the high priest. Now Eli had two sons named Hophni and Phinehas. And they were jerks. Hophni and Phinehas were spoiled, rich kids that were privileged, that took gross advantage of their privilege, okay? Their dad is the most powerful man in the country. I would assume that there was some wealth that went along with it, though I don't know that. I can't back that up with paperwork, but it seems reasonable to make that guess. And they took advantage of their dad's position in their position. They used it to take advantage of women. They threatened, they would steal food from the temple and when the priest tried to stop them, they would threaten to beat up the older priest. Like that's what they did. They were deplorable jerks, okay? And God had decided that he could not trust the priesthood to these two. Because the idea is when the high priest passes away, the next priest comes up was generally his son and it stayed in the family. It was this legacy that the priest would leave behind generation after generation. But there's also this boy named Samuel. Samuel's mom was a woman named Hannah who had a hard time having kids. She went to the temple and she begged God for a kid and she says, if you give me a son, I'll give him back to you. And so that's what she did. She was blessed with a boy named Samuel. And then she gave Samuel back to the temple just as soon as he was old enough to eat food on his own. And he was raised in the temple as like a disciple of Eli. And one night Samuel's asleep and he hears a voice crying out to him. So he wakes up, he assumes it's Eli. He goes into Eli's room. Hey, Eli, what's up, man? And Eli says, I didn't call out to you. Like, go back to bed, kid. You're crazy. So Samuel goes back to bed. This happens a couple more times until finally Eli says, Samuel, that's the Lord speaking to you. Next time you hear that voice, you need to say, speak, Lord, for your servant hears. And so that's what he did. The next time he heard the voice, Samuel said, speak, Lord, for your servant hears. And God told him something. And it was bad news for Eli. So the next morning, Samuel wakes up. And Eli comes and finds him. And he says, tell me what God said to you last night. And Samuel demurs, oh, it was nothing. It was no big deal. It was just about, you know, some cattle and stuff. Don't worry about it. And they kind of keep going back and forth. And finally, Eli says, you tell me what the Lord said or everything that he said that's going to happen is going to happen to you instead. So Samuel, we don't know how old he is, 8, 10, 12 years old. It was terrifying to have to say what he was about to say to Eli, the most powerful man in the country, respected high priest. He didn't want to say it. But under threat, he agrees. And so he tells Eli, the Lord has told me that your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, cannot be trusted with the priesthood, and they're evil in his eyes. So he's going to have them killed. He's going to let them die, and the priesthood is going to be taken from your family. Now, that's the worst news I think any person can receive. It's got to be the worst news. You are going to lose your children. You're going to attend your children's funeral. And the legacy that you want to leave will not be left. I am taking your kids and I am taking your legacy. There is not a more painful thing. I'm convinced after being in the pastorate, after seeing enough life to form this kind of opinion, I've seen these funerals enough times, there is no deeper sadness that I have seen than for a parent to survive a child. I think that's got to be the worst. It breaks my heart. And Eli's just told, you're going to lose both your sons, and you will leave no legacy. I'm going to entrust the priesthood to somebody else. Now, if you were Eli, and you just received that news as the high priest, how would you respond? What would you think? What would you want to say? I know for me, I would want to shake my fist and say, God, that's not fair. That's not right. I serve you, God. I've dedicated my life to serving you. I know that my sons aren't the best, but they're going to come around, God. I pray about them every day. They're going to get there. Just give us a little bit more time, God. This is not fair. This isn't right. I've devoted my life to you, and you're going to let this happen to me. Isn't that what you would say? Isn't that what you would feel? Wouldn't you feel that it was unfair? You have to imagine, and we don't know this to be sure, but don't you think that there's a really good chance that Samuel continued to pray or that Eli continued to pray for his sons? That Eli continued to pray, God, I know that they're not walking with you right now. I know that they're living in sin, but man, they're going to come around. Just please be with them. Please don't forget about them. Don't you think that he hadn't given up hope on them? And then he finds out, I'm going to let them die. And I'm going to take your legacy. Wouldn't you want to shake your fist at God and say, this is not fair. Give me a little more time. And what Eli says is to me one of the most faithful statements in the Bible. If you look, 1 Samuel 3, verse 18, when Eli hears this news, this is his immediate response. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. He's God. He created this. He's the Lord over everything. I trust him. Let him do what seems best to him. Would that be your response? When you take your place, and we've all had them, when you take yourself to your place of deepest grief, is what you were thinking in that moment, the Lord, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. So how was Eli, in the face of this kind of pain and anguish, able to respond like that? I think that he understood some principles that we see more pointedly in the New Testament that can help us understand maybe how Eli was able to have this kind of faith and the choices that he was making even in that moment. In John chapter 11, there's one of my favorite stories in the Bible. Of course, I say that about all the stories that I teach. I really like the Bible. I'm sorry. In John chapter 11, we meet this family, Mary and Martha and Lazarus. And we, the historians believe that these were Jesus, the closest thing that Jesus had to besties, okay? These were his closest friends. These were probably his vacation friends. They wanted to go down to the beaches. This is, they probably went together. He loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus. They lived in a town called Bethany, and that's affectionately known as Jesus's favorite place on earth. That's probably where he felt home and safe. And he's a couple days' journey away, and Lazarus is sick. He's going to die. So Mary and Martha send word to Jesus, hey, our brother's going to die. You should come take care of him, because they know that he has the power to heal. So Jesus says, okay. He gets the message. He waits for two days, and then he travels to Bethany. And while he's traveling there, Lazarus passes away. And Mary and Martha are ticked, rightfully so, because they know that Jesus waited. He should be here by now and he's not. What's he doing? And so as he approaches Bethany, Mary runs out to meet him. And she asks him the question that we would ask. Jesus, why didn't you come sooner? We told you that our brother was going to die and you could have come and done something about it and you didn't. Why didn't you come sooner? And if you're paying attention and you're empathizing and you're thinking about your own life, this is the question that we all ask too. Whenever we experience loss or grief, we lean in with Mary and we say, yeah, Jesus, why? Because here's the thing. Mary knew that Jesus had the power to prevent her brother from dying. She knew that he could have swept in at any moment and healed him. She knew that he could have prayed a prayer from two days away and healed Lazarus and that he didn't need to die and that he didn't need to go through this pain. She knew that he could have stopped it and that he chose not to. So she leans in and she says, why'd you do that? And if you've ever prayed for someone to survive that didn't, then you've asked that question too. If you've ever prayed against a diagnosis, you've asked that question too. If you've walked through a divorce or abuse or an irreconcilable situation, then you lean in with Mary and you've asked that question too. Jesus, you could have stopped this and you didn't. Why? And Jesus' response is not what we would expect. It's the shortest verse in the Bible. It may be the most profound, John 11, 35. As soon as she asked him that question, you could have stopped this and you didn't, Jesus. Why not? He says, or the Bible says, that Jesus wept. Jesus wept. And when I imagine that moment, I don't imagine Jesus as standing coldly back from Mary and looking at her as they just stand and weep together. I imagine Jesus as grabbing her shoulders and bringing her in and embracing the sister that he loved and weeping with her. And when you think about the times in your life when you've hurt the most, that's what you need more than anything. You need people to weep with you. You need people's presence. Have you ever sat with somebody who was hurting? You sat with them at a loved one's funeral. You sat with them in the hospital while they hoped against hope. Have you ever sat with somebody who was hurting? You sat with them at a loved one's funeral. You sat with them in the hospital while they hoped against hope. Have you ever sat in the middle of someone's pain and racked your brain for the right thing to say? And you can't come up with anything because there's nothing to be said. There's nothing to be said. And if you remember your own pain and the way that people ministered to you, it was never what they said. You don't remember what people told you. You remember that they were there. Because words don't help. I think Abraham Lincoln said it best. I love the letter. It circulates just about every Memorial Day that he wrote to the mom who lost five sons in the Union Army that year. And he said, he said, I feel the weakness of my words and any attempt to beguile you from the pain that you must feel. He's admitting that his words are impotent. In fact, usually the only things that are said there that we remember are the dumb things, right? I've heard people say before when someone's endured loss, like, well, God must have needed another angel in heaven. Don't say dumb crap like that. No, he doesn't. God can make any angel he wants. He doesn't need to take someone from you so that he can have another one in heaven. That's silly. It's not helpful. That's what someone told us when we had a miscarriage. Get away from me. It's not helpful. The only thing that we remember is people's presence. When we walked through that, Jen and I did together, I remember her Uncle Edwin, four separate times, called me as the dust was settling to see how I was doing, to encourage me, to tell me that he loved me and that he was praying for me. He didn't have to do that. He's not even my biological uncle. He's Jen's, but he cared for me and he kept calling. I don't remember what he said. I have no idea. But I remember that he showed up. When we are hurting, what we need most is people's presence. So when we hurt, Jesus doesn't offer us words because words don't help. He weeps with us. He offers us his presence. And the truth of it is that we have a God who weeps with us. We have a God that when we hurt, he embraces us. He holds us and he weeps with us and he feels our pain with us. He doesn't give us words to try to explain what we're doing because let's be honest, when you're in that moment and you're asking Jesus, why'd you let this happen to me? Why'd you let this happen? You could have stopped us and you didn't. Listen to me, I'm being honest. I was thinking about this this week. If Jesus sat you down and explained to you exactly why he was letting this thing happen in your life and told you all the reasons in light of history and in light of eternity and with the proper view of time and keeping his promises and how it all works out one day, if he explained everything to you and somehow you were able to understand it, would it make that moment hurt any less? No. When we ask Jesus, why'd you let this happen? What we're really saying is, I need you to make this better. I need you to fix this because this sucks. That's what we're saying. And Jesus knows that words are not going to fix it. So he weeps with us. And he weeps with us, I believe, not just for the pain that we're walking through in the moment, but because he knows that we're going to struggle to understand. He doesn't just weep for our pain, but also because we're going to struggle to understand. He knows that we are not going to understand what's going on around us and that we can't. And that hurts his heart. Several months ago, I think it may have even been last year, we woke up on a Friday. Friday is family day at the rector House. I have that one off because technically I'm working right now. And so on Fridays, we get up and we try to protect that for our family. And we got up and we told Lily this day we're going to go to the new park. To her, Sassafras behind Crabtree is the new park, which is amazing. One of the things we love most about Raleigh is the parks. They're incredible. Back home, they're all dumpy. You need a tetanus shot before you go to the park. So here, it's great. And so we get in the car. We load up. We go to the new park. We get her out of the car. She's excited. Lily excited. Yes. And you put her on the ground. And she runs down the sidewalk to go play at the new park. Comes around the corner. And what she finds is that there's a makeshift chain link fence around the whole park and not a soul there. And we looked online and we realized they're repairing the ground. They're replacing the flooring for the park. Can't play that day. Jen and I are brokenhearted. And we're looking at the disappointment on our little girl's face and it's hurting us. And we had taught her this thing. So I think she was two years old at the time. And when they get fixated on something, it's just all that they can think about. And so we had taught her to be patient. So she would see something and she'd be like, mommy, chips, chips. I want chips, mommy. Give me the chips, chips, chips, chips. And we'd be like, oh my gosh, stop it. So we'd pick her up and I'd look at her and I'd go, Lily, sweetheart, you can have the chips in a little bit, but not right now. I need you to be patient. Can you be patient? And she would repeat back to me, I'd be patient. And for us, that was like our first parenting win. Like the first time she said it, we were like, okay, I think that she will survive. I think we can do this. So we were so happy that she understood what it meant to be patient. And so we get down there, and Lily's up against the fence, and we have to say, oh, sweetheart, we're not going to, we can't play on the playground right now. They're working on it. She doesn't understand what's going on. And I'll never forget, it broke my heart. She's up against that chain link fence. It's like from a dang movie. And she turns around and she looks at me and she says, it's okay, Daddy, I'll be patient. Golly, man. Jen and I started crying on the spot. No, baby, you don't understand. Like, it ain't happening today. And there's nothing we can say to help her understand. She's two. She can't process what's going on. I think that sense of helplessness that we felt in the face of her pain is pretty similar to what God feels sometimes. Not helpless, but just the fact that he knows. I can't explain this to you. Oh, sweetheart. I can't make this better for you right now. It's just not how it's going to work. And I know that answer is going to cause you more pain. And I'm so sorry about that. And it'll get better if you're patient. But you're probably going to have to be patient for longer than you realize. I don't think that God weeps with us just because we're hurting, but because he knows that we're going to have to choose faith. We're going to have to choose him when it doesn't make sense. The story that illustrates this to me is in the book of Matthew, I think around chapter 11. John the Baptist is a prophet that prepared the way for Jesus. And John the Baptist, he was a brave man, he was a man of courage, and he spoke truth to power, and he said the wrong thing to the king, and it got him thrown in jail. And he's been in jail for a little while, and he begins to get this sense that he's going to die there, that they're going to execute him. And so he sends message to Jesus. John the Baptist had disciples. He gathers his disciples around, and he sends the message to Jesus, and he tells him, go ask Jesus, are you the one who is to come, or should I expect someone else? He's saying, are you the Messiah, or have I gotten this wrong? Don't need to keep waiting. And he's referencing a passage in Isaiah that was a prophecy about the Messiah. And he knows that Jesus knows his Bible, and that when he hears this question, he's going to know exactly what John the Baptist is talking about. Because there's a prophecy in Isaiah that says, when the coming one arrives, the one who is to come, when they arrive, the deaf will hear and the blind will see and the lame will walk and the prisoners will be set free. And so what John is asking Jesus is, are you the guy? Because when the guy gets here, the prisoners are supposed to be set free. And I'm still here. And I'm going to die here if you don't do something about it. So are you the guy? Same as Mary. You can do something about this. Are you going to? Same as us. God, it feels like you could prevent this. Are you going to? And Jesus responds to John the Baptist. He tells the disciples, you go tell John that I am the one who is to come and that the blind see and the deaf hear and the lame walk and the prisoners are set free, but John the Baptist will not be. And then he says, blessed are those who do not lose faith on account of me. Blessed are those who are not offended by me. Because he knew. This is going to be painful news for John the Baptist, and I am not meeting the expectations that he has for me, and I am not going to do the thing that he is asking me to do, that it is within my power to do, and he's not going to understand why I'm not going to do it and he's just going to have to choose faith. And blessed are those who in the face of pain choose faith. Because it's hard. Because we don't understand it. Because Romans 11 tells us that God's ways are higher than our ways. And that there's going to be some things that almighty God, all-knowing God, all-wise God does that we can't possibly understand. And sometimes the choices that he makes are going to be choices that don't make sense to us, that don't seem fair to us, that make us angry because it seems like he could have prevented it and he chose not to and we don't understand. And in those moments, it is up to us whether or not we want to respond like Eli. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. And that's a tough thing to say. But here's the deal. When Eli says that, understanding the principles we look at in the New Testament, understanding that we have a God that weeps with us, that offers us his presence because words really aren't what we need. They're not going to fix it at the end of the day. Eli understands that. He understands that sometimes God allows things to happen that seem like he shouldn't let them happen, that we're praying against and he allows them to occur and it frustrates us and we lean in with Mary and say, why'd you do that? And God weeps with us because we hurt and we're not going to understand this pain on this side of eternity. And Eli looks at all of that and he says, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. And I really believe that choosing faith in the face of this pain really comes down to two questions. Do we choose to believe that God is good? Do you believe that God is good? Do you believe that the God of the universe who knows you, created you, do you believe that he is good? And then do you believe that he will keep his promises? Do you believe that God is good and do you believe that he will keep his promises? Do we trust Romans 8, 28 that says, we know that all things work together for the good of those who love him are called according to his purpose. Do we trust that to work out in eternity? Do we trust that one day when we can understand everything, when we can see as God sees, when we get into heaven, when we're on the other side of this life and we look back on everything, do we trust that if we could understand it like God does, that we will go, okay, I get it now. You are good and I love you and thank you. Do we trust that that's true? Do we trust the most hopeful promise in the Bible in Revelation 21 that one day God will be with his people and we will be with our God and there will be no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain anymore? Do we trust that promise? If we choose to believe that God is good and we choose to believe that he will keep his promises, then we can respond like Eli and have faith in the face of pain. And listen, when we miscarried, and I learned about that after trying to get pregnant for a long time, I went home and I got on my knees and I prayed through tears. And I said, Lord, you're good. Let you do what seems good to you. And can I tell you this? I didn't mean that. I didn't mean it. I said it because I was supposed to, because I'm a pastor and I wanted to be a good soldier and I wanted to say the right thing, but I didn't believe that for a second. I was mad, man. I didn't believe a good God would do that. But I said it. And over time, I believed it. And I still do. And I was listening to a song this morning that says, what is true in the light is still true in the dark. And even if we don't feel like we believe it, we can still choose to trust it. We can still choose to respond to pain with faith like Eli. And so I hope that for those of us facing pain, we'll choose to respond with faith. I hope in a kind and gentle and empathetic way, as we see people around us hurting, we can encourage them towards faith, even when it doesn't make sense. I hope that we won't try to help people make sense of their pain, because even Jesus didn't try to do that. He just offered his presence. And I hope that as we move through life and face pain again that we'll remember the message of Eli. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. Let's pray. Father, you are good. You are good even when it doesn't seem like you are. You are good even when we don't understand how. You're good when you don't do the thing we want you to do. You're good when it doesn't go the way we want it to go. You're good when we are disappointed. You're good and patient as we shake our fists at you. God, you are good. I pray that you would give us the faith to believe that when it's hard. I pray that you would continue to be patient with us as we learn what it means to be faithful. We thank you for being a God that weeps with us, that is close to the brokenhearted, that comforts those who are crushed in spirit. And I pray particularly for those this morning who are struggling through some pain, that you would be close to them, that they would be comforted by your word. And that somehow, God, if they know you, you would give them the faith of Eli. And that one day they would be able to really believe what they say. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.
Good morning. My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. For the unindoctrinated, for those who haven't been a part of the series the whole time, what we've been doing for our intros for every sermon is we have a song that is loosely about heroes because the series is called Obscure Heroes. So if you're like, why in the world are they playing that song? That's why, because adults aren't in charge and we think that that's funny. So that's what we've done. I do have to tell you that my sermon in no way fits with that song. In fact, it is very far out of place. It's why I woke up on Monday of this week. I knew what sermon that we had planned in the series. And I woke up on Monday and I thought, I don't want to do that sermon. That's a hard one. That's a heavy one. It talks about like pain and grief, and that's not like summertime fare. Like we're going to do some stupid song to start off the sermon, and it's supposed to be just light and fun. And so I had myself convinced that I didn't need to do the sermon. And then on Tuesday afternoon, I had, or maybe Monday, I can't remember, I had lunch with another pastor in the area, actually, because they talk to me sometimes. And I said, hey, man, this is what I'm thinking. I'm thinking that I'm going to bail on this, and I'm going to do this instead. What do you think? And he's like, well, what would you talk about? And I kind of told him and he goes, I don't know, man. Sounds like you need to pray about it. People need to hear that. And I thought, darn it, you and the Holy Spirit. So I knew that I needed to do this one. It's a heavy one. It's a hard one. But my hope and my prayer is that it's exactly what some of us need, and that it's exactly what we need to hear. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pray. I'm just going to pray that this would be a good time and that God's Word will be taught transparently and correctly, and that maybe we can take some comfort out of what we look at today. So let's pray. Father, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for a place where we can have fun. We also thank you for your word. And we understand that life isn't always fun. And it's not always sunshine and lollipops, God. And in those moments, you show up too. And so we just ask that your word would be used to bring comfort to us today as some of us hurt, as some of us grieve, as some of us recover from those things or face those things. Lord, just be with us and in this time today. In Jesus' name, amen. So I want to look today at the story of Eli. We find Eli at the beginning of 1 Samuel. We're going to be specifically looking at a story out of 1 Samuel chapter 3. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, they have free ones on your phone, so you can use those too. Eli was the high priest. Now this is a time in Israel when Israel didn't have a king. They came out of Egypt, led by Moses. They wandered in the desert. Then Moses passes away. Joshua is named the leader. He leads them into Israel. They conquer what we know as the modern nation of Israel. They divide it up amongst the 12 tribes. And now they're living in these territories with God as their king. They have no king. And so the high priest is the mouthpiece of God to the people. So he's the big dog in Israel. He's the guy. If you're the high priest in Israel, you're the most powerful man in the country. And so that's Eli. Eli is the high priest. Now Eli had two sons named Hophni and Phinehas. And they were jerks. Hophni and Phinehas were spoiled, rich kids that were privileged, that took gross advantage of their privilege, okay? Their dad is the most powerful man in the country. I would assume that there was some wealth that went along with it, though I don't know that. I can't back that up with paperwork, but it seems reasonable to make that guess. And they took advantage of their dad's position in their position. They used it to take advantage of women. They threatened, they would steal food from the temple and when the priest tried to stop them, they would threaten to beat up the older priest. Like that's what they did. They were deplorable jerks, okay? And God had decided that he could not trust the priesthood to these two. Because the idea is when the high priest passes away, the next priest comes up was generally his son and it stayed in the family. It was this legacy that the priest would leave behind generation after generation. But there's also this boy named Samuel. Samuel's mom was a woman named Hannah who had a hard time having kids. She went to the temple and she begged God for a kid and she says, if you give me a son, I'll give him back to you. And so that's what she did. She was blessed with a boy named Samuel. And then she gave Samuel back to the temple just as soon as he was old enough to eat food on his own. And he was raised in the temple as like a disciple of Eli. And one night Samuel's asleep and he hears a voice crying out to him. So he wakes up, he assumes it's Eli. He goes into Eli's room. Hey, Eli, what's up, man? And Eli says, I didn't call out to you. Like, go back to bed, kid. You're crazy. So Samuel goes back to bed. This happens a couple more times until finally Eli says, Samuel, that's the Lord speaking to you. Next time you hear that voice, you need to say, speak, Lord, for your servant hears. And so that's what he did. The next time he heard the voice, Samuel said, speak, Lord, for your servant hears. And God told him something. And it was bad news for Eli. So the next morning, Samuel wakes up. And Eli comes and finds him. And he says, tell me what God said to you last night. And Samuel demurs, oh, it was nothing. It was no big deal. It was just about, you know, some cattle and stuff. Don't worry about it. And they kind of keep going back and forth. And finally, Eli says, you tell me what the Lord said or everything that he said that's going to happen is going to happen to you instead. So Samuel, we don't know how old he is, 8, 10, 12 years old. It was terrifying to have to say what he was about to say to Eli, the most powerful man in the country, respected high priest. He didn't want to say it. But under threat, he agrees. And so he tells Eli, the Lord has told me that your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, cannot be trusted with the priesthood, and they're evil in his eyes. So he's going to have them killed. He's going to let them die, and the priesthood is going to be taken from your family. Now, that's the worst news I think any person can receive. It's got to be the worst news. You are going to lose your children. You're going to attend your children's funeral. And the legacy that you want to leave will not be left. I am taking your kids and I am taking your legacy. There is not a more painful thing. I'm convinced after being in the pastorate, after seeing enough life to form this kind of opinion, I've seen these funerals enough times, there is no deeper sadness that I have seen than for a parent to survive a child. I think that's got to be the worst. It breaks my heart. And Eli's just told, you're going to lose both your sons, and you will leave no legacy. I'm going to entrust the priesthood to somebody else. Now, if you were Eli, and you just received that news as the high priest, how would you respond? What would you think? What would you want to say? I know for me, I would want to shake my fist and say, God, that's not fair. That's not right. I serve you, God. I've dedicated my life to serving you. I know that my sons aren't the best, but they're going to come around, God. I pray about them every day. They're going to get there. Just give us a little bit more time, God. This is not fair. This isn't right. I've devoted my life to you, and you're going to let this happen to me. Isn't that what you would say? Isn't that what you would feel? Wouldn't you feel that it was unfair? You have to imagine, and we don't know this to be sure, but don't you think that there's a really good chance that Samuel continued to pray or that Eli continued to pray for his sons? That Eli continued to pray, God, I know that they're not walking with you right now. I know that they're living in sin, but man, they're going to come around. Just please be with them. Please don't forget about them. Don't you think that he hadn't given up hope on them? And then he finds out, I'm going to let them die. And I'm going to take your legacy. Wouldn't you want to shake your fist at God and say, this is not fair. Give me a little more time. And what Eli says is to me one of the most faithful statements in the Bible. If you look, 1 Samuel 3, verse 18, when Eli hears this news, this is his immediate response. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. He's God. He created this. He's the Lord over everything. I trust him. Let him do what seems best to him. Would that be your response? When you take your place, and we've all had them, when you take yourself to your place of deepest grief, is what you were thinking in that moment, the Lord, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. So how was Eli, in the face of this kind of pain and anguish, able to respond like that? I think that he understood some principles that we see more pointedly in the New Testament that can help us understand maybe how Eli was able to have this kind of faith and the choices that he was making even in that moment. In John chapter 11, there's one of my favorite stories in the Bible. Of course, I say that about all the stories that I teach. I really like the Bible. I'm sorry. In John chapter 11, we meet this family, Mary and Martha and Lazarus. And we, the historians believe that these were Jesus, the closest thing that Jesus had to besties, okay? These were his closest friends. These were probably his vacation friends. They wanted to go down to the beaches. This is, they probably went together. He loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus. They lived in a town called Bethany, and that's affectionately known as Jesus's favorite place on earth. That's probably where he felt home and safe. And he's a couple days' journey away, and Lazarus is sick. He's going to die. So Mary and Martha send word to Jesus, hey, our brother's going to die. You should come take care of him, because they know that he has the power to heal. So Jesus says, okay. He gets the message. He waits for two days, and then he travels to Bethany. And while he's traveling there, Lazarus passes away. And Mary and Martha are ticked, rightfully so, because they know that Jesus waited. He should be here by now and he's not. What's he doing? And so as he approaches Bethany, Mary runs out to meet him. And she asks him the question that we would ask. Jesus, why didn't you come sooner? We told you that our brother was going to die and you could have come and done something about it and you didn't. Why didn't you come sooner? And if you're paying attention and you're empathizing and you're thinking about your own life, this is the question that we all ask too. Whenever we experience loss or grief, we lean in with Mary and we say, yeah, Jesus, why? Because here's the thing. Mary knew that Jesus had the power to prevent her brother from dying. She knew that he could have swept in at any moment and healed him. She knew that he could have prayed a prayer from two days away and healed Lazarus and that he didn't need to die and that he didn't need to go through this pain. She knew that he could have stopped it and that he chose not to. So she leans in and she says, why'd you do that? And if you've ever prayed for someone to survive that didn't, then you've asked that question too. If you've ever prayed against a diagnosis, you've asked that question too. If you've walked through a divorce or abuse or an irreconcilable situation, then you lean in with Mary and you've asked that question too. Jesus, you could have stopped this and you didn't. Why? And Jesus' response is not what we would expect. It's the shortest verse in the Bible. It may be the most profound, John 11, 35. As soon as she asked him that question, you could have stopped this and you didn't, Jesus. Why not? He says, or the Bible says, that Jesus wept. Jesus wept. And when I imagine that moment, I don't imagine Jesus as standing coldly back from Mary and looking at her as they just stand and weep together. I imagine Jesus as grabbing her shoulders and bringing her in and embracing the sister that he loved and weeping with her. And when you think about the times in your life when you've hurt the most, that's what you need more than anything. You need people to weep with you. You need people's presence. Have you ever sat with somebody who was hurting? You sat with them at a loved one's funeral. You sat with them in the hospital while they hoped against hope. Have you ever sat with somebody who was hurting? You sat with them at a loved one's funeral. You sat with them in the hospital while they hoped against hope. Have you ever sat in the middle of someone's pain and racked your brain for the right thing to say? And you can't come up with anything because there's nothing to be said. There's nothing to be said. And if you remember your own pain and the way that people ministered to you, it was never what they said. You don't remember what people told you. You remember that they were there. Because words don't help. I think Abraham Lincoln said it best. I love the letter. It circulates just about every Memorial Day that he wrote to the mom who lost five sons in the Union Army that year. And he said, he said, I feel the weakness of my words and any attempt to beguile you from the pain that you must feel. He's admitting that his words are impotent. In fact, usually the only things that are said there that we remember are the dumb things, right? I've heard people say before when someone's endured loss, like, well, God must have needed another angel in heaven. Don't say dumb crap like that. No, he doesn't. God can make any angel he wants. He doesn't need to take someone from you so that he can have another one in heaven. That's silly. It's not helpful. That's what someone told us when we had a miscarriage. Get away from me. It's not helpful. The only thing that we remember is people's presence. When we walked through that, Jen and I did together, I remember her Uncle Edwin, four separate times, called me as the dust was settling to see how I was doing, to encourage me, to tell me that he loved me and that he was praying for me. He didn't have to do that. He's not even my biological uncle. He's Jen's, but he cared for me and he kept calling. I don't remember what he said. I have no idea. But I remember that he showed up. When we are hurting, what we need most is people's presence. So when we hurt, Jesus doesn't offer us words because words don't help. He weeps with us. He offers us his presence. And the truth of it is that we have a God who weeps with us. We have a God that when we hurt, he embraces us. He holds us and he weeps with us and he feels our pain with us. He doesn't give us words to try to explain what we're doing because let's be honest, when you're in that moment and you're asking Jesus, why'd you let this happen to me? Why'd you let this happen? You could have stopped us and you didn't. Listen to me, I'm being honest. I was thinking about this this week. If Jesus sat you down and explained to you exactly why he was letting this thing happen in your life and told you all the reasons in light of history and in light of eternity and with the proper view of time and keeping his promises and how it all works out one day, if he explained everything to you and somehow you were able to understand it, would it make that moment hurt any less? No. When we ask Jesus, why'd you let this happen? What we're really saying is, I need you to make this better. I need you to fix this because this sucks. That's what we're saying. And Jesus knows that words are not going to fix it. So he weeps with us. And he weeps with us, I believe, not just for the pain that we're walking through in the moment, but because he knows that we're going to struggle to understand. He doesn't just weep for our pain, but also because we're going to struggle to understand. He knows that we are not going to understand what's going on around us and that we can't. And that hurts his heart. Several months ago, I think it may have even been last year, we woke up on a Friday. Friday is family day at the rector House. I have that one off because technically I'm working right now. And so on Fridays, we get up and we try to protect that for our family. And we got up and we told Lily this day we're going to go to the new park. To her, Sassafras behind Crabtree is the new park, which is amazing. One of the things we love most about Raleigh is the parks. They're incredible. Back home, they're all dumpy. You need a tetanus shot before you go to the park. So here, it's great. And so we get in the car. We load up. We go to the new park. We get her out of the car. She's excited. Lily excited. Yes. And you put her on the ground. And she runs down the sidewalk to go play at the new park. Comes around the corner. And what she finds is that there's a makeshift chain link fence around the whole park and not a soul there. And we looked online and we realized they're repairing the ground. They're replacing the flooring for the park. Can't play that day. Jen and I are brokenhearted. And we're looking at the disappointment on our little girl's face and it's hurting us. And we had taught her this thing. So I think she was two years old at the time. And when they get fixated on something, it's just all that they can think about. And so we had taught her to be patient. So she would see something and she'd be like, mommy, chips, chips. I want chips, mommy. Give me the chips, chips, chips, chips. And we'd be like, oh my gosh, stop it. So we'd pick her up and I'd look at her and I'd go, Lily, sweetheart, you can have the chips in a little bit, but not right now. I need you to be patient. Can you be patient? And she would repeat back to me, I'd be patient. And for us, that was like our first parenting win. Like the first time she said it, we were like, okay, I think that she will survive. I think we can do this. So we were so happy that she understood what it meant to be patient. And so we get down there, and Lily's up against the fence, and we have to say, oh, sweetheart, we're not going to, we can't play on the playground right now. They're working on it. She doesn't understand what's going on. And I'll never forget, it broke my heart. She's up against that chain link fence. It's like from a dang movie. And she turns around and she looks at me and she says, it's okay, Daddy, I'll be patient. Golly, man. Jen and I started crying on the spot. No, baby, you don't understand. Like, it ain't happening today. And there's nothing we can say to help her understand. She's two. She can't process what's going on. I think that sense of helplessness that we felt in the face of her pain is pretty similar to what God feels sometimes. Not helpless, but just the fact that he knows. I can't explain this to you. Oh, sweetheart. I can't make this better for you right now. It's just not how it's going to work. And I know that answer is going to cause you more pain. And I'm so sorry about that. And it'll get better if you're patient. But you're probably going to have to be patient for longer than you realize. I don't think that God weeps with us just because we're hurting, but because he knows that we're going to have to choose faith. We're going to have to choose him when it doesn't make sense. The story that illustrates this to me is in the book of Matthew, I think around chapter 11. John the Baptist is a prophet that prepared the way for Jesus. And John the Baptist, he was a brave man, he was a man of courage, and he spoke truth to power, and he said the wrong thing to the king, and it got him thrown in jail. And he's been in jail for a little while, and he begins to get this sense that he's going to die there, that they're going to execute him. And so he sends message to Jesus. John the Baptist had disciples. He gathers his disciples around, and he sends the message to Jesus, and he tells him, go ask Jesus, are you the one who is to come, or should I expect someone else? He's saying, are you the Messiah, or have I gotten this wrong? Don't need to keep waiting. And he's referencing a passage in Isaiah that was a prophecy about the Messiah. And he knows that Jesus knows his Bible, and that when he hears this question, he's going to know exactly what John the Baptist is talking about. Because there's a prophecy in Isaiah that says, when the coming one arrives, the one who is to come, when they arrive, the deaf will hear and the blind will see and the lame will walk and the prisoners will be set free. And so what John is asking Jesus is, are you the guy? Because when the guy gets here, the prisoners are supposed to be set free. And I'm still here. And I'm going to die here if you don't do something about it. So are you the guy? Same as Mary. You can do something about this. Are you going to? Same as us. God, it feels like you could prevent this. Are you going to? And Jesus responds to John the Baptist. He tells the disciples, you go tell John that I am the one who is to come and that the blind see and the deaf hear and the lame walk and the prisoners are set free, but John the Baptist will not be. And then he says, blessed are those who do not lose faith on account of me. Blessed are those who are not offended by me. Because he knew. This is going to be painful news for John the Baptist, and I am not meeting the expectations that he has for me, and I am not going to do the thing that he is asking me to do, that it is within my power to do, and he's not going to understand why I'm not going to do it and he's just going to have to choose faith. And blessed are those who in the face of pain choose faith. Because it's hard. Because we don't understand it. Because Romans 11 tells us that God's ways are higher than our ways. And that there's going to be some things that almighty God, all-knowing God, all-wise God does that we can't possibly understand. And sometimes the choices that he makes are going to be choices that don't make sense to us, that don't seem fair to us, that make us angry because it seems like he could have prevented it and he chose not to and we don't understand. And in those moments, it is up to us whether or not we want to respond like Eli. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. And that's a tough thing to say. But here's the deal. When Eli says that, understanding the principles we look at in the New Testament, understanding that we have a God that weeps with us, that offers us his presence because words really aren't what we need. They're not going to fix it at the end of the day. Eli understands that. He understands that sometimes God allows things to happen that seem like he shouldn't let them happen, that we're praying against and he allows them to occur and it frustrates us and we lean in with Mary and say, why'd you do that? And God weeps with us because we hurt and we're not going to understand this pain on this side of eternity. And Eli looks at all of that and he says, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. And I really believe that choosing faith in the face of this pain really comes down to two questions. Do we choose to believe that God is good? Do you believe that God is good? Do you believe that the God of the universe who knows you, created you, do you believe that he is good? And then do you believe that he will keep his promises? Do you believe that God is good and do you believe that he will keep his promises? Do we trust Romans 8, 28 that says, we know that all things work together for the good of those who love him are called according to his purpose. Do we trust that to work out in eternity? Do we trust that one day when we can understand everything, when we can see as God sees, when we get into heaven, when we're on the other side of this life and we look back on everything, do we trust that if we could understand it like God does, that we will go, okay, I get it now. You are good and I love you and thank you. Do we trust that that's true? Do we trust the most hopeful promise in the Bible in Revelation 21 that one day God will be with his people and we will be with our God and there will be no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain anymore? Do we trust that promise? If we choose to believe that God is good and we choose to believe that he will keep his promises, then we can respond like Eli and have faith in the face of pain. And listen, when we miscarried, and I learned about that after trying to get pregnant for a long time, I went home and I got on my knees and I prayed through tears. And I said, Lord, you're good. Let you do what seems good to you. And can I tell you this? I didn't mean that. I didn't mean it. I said it because I was supposed to, because I'm a pastor and I wanted to be a good soldier and I wanted to say the right thing, but I didn't believe that for a second. I was mad, man. I didn't believe a good God would do that. But I said it. And over time, I believed it. And I still do. And I was listening to a song this morning that says, what is true in the light is still true in the dark. And even if we don't feel like we believe it, we can still choose to trust it. We can still choose to respond to pain with faith like Eli. And so I hope that for those of us facing pain, we'll choose to respond with faith. I hope in a kind and gentle and empathetic way, as we see people around us hurting, we can encourage them towards faith, even when it doesn't make sense. I hope that we won't try to help people make sense of their pain, because even Jesus didn't try to do that. He just offered his presence. And I hope that as we move through life and face pain again that we'll remember the message of Eli. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. Let's pray. Father, you are good. You are good even when it doesn't seem like you are. You are good even when we don't understand how. You're good when you don't do the thing we want you to do. You're good when it doesn't go the way we want it to go. You're good when we are disappointed. You're good and patient as we shake our fists at you. God, you are good. I pray that you would give us the faith to believe that when it's hard. I pray that you would continue to be patient with us as we learn what it means to be faithful. We thank you for being a God that weeps with us, that is close to the brokenhearted, that comforts those who are crushed in spirit. And I pray particularly for those this morning who are struggling through some pain, that you would be close to them, that they would be comforted by your word. And that somehow, God, if they know you, you would give them the faith of Eli. And that one day they would be able to really believe what they say. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.
Good morning. My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. For the unindoctrinated, for those who haven't been a part of the series the whole time, what we've been doing for our intros for every sermon is we have a song that is loosely about heroes because the series is called Obscure Heroes. So if you're like, why in the world are they playing that song? That's why, because adults aren't in charge and we think that that's funny. So that's what we've done. I do have to tell you that my sermon in no way fits with that song. In fact, it is very far out of place. It's why I woke up on Monday of this week. I knew what sermon that we had planned in the series. And I woke up on Monday and I thought, I don't want to do that sermon. That's a hard one. That's a heavy one. It talks about like pain and grief, and that's not like summertime fare. Like we're going to do some stupid song to start off the sermon, and it's supposed to be just light and fun. And so I had myself convinced that I didn't need to do the sermon. And then on Tuesday afternoon, I had, or maybe Monday, I can't remember, I had lunch with another pastor in the area, actually, because they talk to me sometimes. And I said, hey, man, this is what I'm thinking. I'm thinking that I'm going to bail on this, and I'm going to do this instead. What do you think? And he's like, well, what would you talk about? And I kind of told him and he goes, I don't know, man. Sounds like you need to pray about it. People need to hear that. And I thought, darn it, you and the Holy Spirit. So I knew that I needed to do this one. It's a heavy one. It's a hard one. But my hope and my prayer is that it's exactly what some of us need, and that it's exactly what we need to hear. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pray. I'm just going to pray that this would be a good time and that God's Word will be taught transparently and correctly, and that maybe we can take some comfort out of what we look at today. So let's pray. Father, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for a place where we can have fun. We also thank you for your word. And we understand that life isn't always fun. And it's not always sunshine and lollipops, God. And in those moments, you show up too. And so we just ask that your word would be used to bring comfort to us today as some of us hurt, as some of us grieve, as some of us recover from those things or face those things. Lord, just be with us and in this time today. In Jesus' name, amen. So I want to look today at the story of Eli. We find Eli at the beginning of 1 Samuel. We're going to be specifically looking at a story out of 1 Samuel chapter 3. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, they have free ones on your phone, so you can use those too. Eli was the high priest. Now this is a time in Israel when Israel didn't have a king. They came out of Egypt, led by Moses. They wandered in the desert. Then Moses passes away. Joshua is named the leader. He leads them into Israel. They conquer what we know as the modern nation of Israel. They divide it up amongst the 12 tribes. And now they're living in these territories with God as their king. They have no king. And so the high priest is the mouthpiece of God to the people. So he's the big dog in Israel. He's the guy. If you're the high priest in Israel, you're the most powerful man in the country. And so that's Eli. Eli is the high priest. Now Eli had two sons named Hophni and Phinehas. And they were jerks. Hophni and Phinehas were spoiled, rich kids that were privileged, that took gross advantage of their privilege, okay? Their dad is the most powerful man in the country. I would assume that there was some wealth that went along with it, though I don't know that. I can't back that up with paperwork, but it seems reasonable to make that guess. And they took advantage of their dad's position in their position. They used it to take advantage of women. They threatened, they would steal food from the temple and when the priest tried to stop them, they would threaten to beat up the older priest. Like that's what they did. They were deplorable jerks, okay? And God had decided that he could not trust the priesthood to these two. Because the idea is when the high priest passes away, the next priest comes up was generally his son and it stayed in the family. It was this legacy that the priest would leave behind generation after generation. But there's also this boy named Samuel. Samuel's mom was a woman named Hannah who had a hard time having kids. She went to the temple and she begged God for a kid and she says, if you give me a son, I'll give him back to you. And so that's what she did. She was blessed with a boy named Samuel. And then she gave Samuel back to the temple just as soon as he was old enough to eat food on his own. And he was raised in the temple as like a disciple of Eli. And one night Samuel's asleep and he hears a voice crying out to him. So he wakes up, he assumes it's Eli. He goes into Eli's room. Hey, Eli, what's up, man? And Eli says, I didn't call out to you. Like, go back to bed, kid. You're crazy. So Samuel goes back to bed. This happens a couple more times until finally Eli says, Samuel, that's the Lord speaking to you. Next time you hear that voice, you need to say, speak, Lord, for your servant hears. And so that's what he did. The next time he heard the voice, Samuel said, speak, Lord, for your servant hears. And God told him something. And it was bad news for Eli. So the next morning, Samuel wakes up. And Eli comes and finds him. And he says, tell me what God said to you last night. And Samuel demurs, oh, it was nothing. It was no big deal. It was just about, you know, some cattle and stuff. Don't worry about it. And they kind of keep going back and forth. And finally, Eli says, you tell me what the Lord said or everything that he said that's going to happen is going to happen to you instead. So Samuel, we don't know how old he is, 8, 10, 12 years old. It was terrifying to have to say what he was about to say to Eli, the most powerful man in the country, respected high priest. He didn't want to say it. But under threat, he agrees. And so he tells Eli, the Lord has told me that your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, cannot be trusted with the priesthood, and they're evil in his eyes. So he's going to have them killed. He's going to let them die, and the priesthood is going to be taken from your family. Now, that's the worst news I think any person can receive. It's got to be the worst news. You are going to lose your children. You're going to attend your children's funeral. And the legacy that you want to leave will not be left. I am taking your kids and I am taking your legacy. There is not a more painful thing. I'm convinced after being in the pastorate, after seeing enough life to form this kind of opinion, I've seen these funerals enough times, there is no deeper sadness that I have seen than for a parent to survive a child. I think that's got to be the worst. It breaks my heart. And Eli's just told, you're going to lose both your sons, and you will leave no legacy. I'm going to entrust the priesthood to somebody else. Now, if you were Eli, and you just received that news as the high priest, how would you respond? What would you think? What would you want to say? I know for me, I would want to shake my fist and say, God, that's not fair. That's not right. I serve you, God. I've dedicated my life to serving you. I know that my sons aren't the best, but they're going to come around, God. I pray about them every day. They're going to get there. Just give us a little bit more time, God. This is not fair. This isn't right. I've devoted my life to you, and you're going to let this happen to me. Isn't that what you would say? Isn't that what you would feel? Wouldn't you feel that it was unfair? You have to imagine, and we don't know this to be sure, but don't you think that there's a really good chance that Samuel continued to pray or that Eli continued to pray for his sons? That Eli continued to pray, God, I know that they're not walking with you right now. I know that they're living in sin, but man, they're going to come around. Just please be with them. Please don't forget about them. Don't you think that he hadn't given up hope on them? And then he finds out, I'm going to let them die. And I'm going to take your legacy. Wouldn't you want to shake your fist at God and say, this is not fair. Give me a little more time. And what Eli says is to me one of the most faithful statements in the Bible. If you look, 1 Samuel 3, verse 18, when Eli hears this news, this is his immediate response. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. He's God. He created this. He's the Lord over everything. I trust him. Let him do what seems best to him. Would that be your response? When you take your place, and we've all had them, when you take yourself to your place of deepest grief, is what you were thinking in that moment, the Lord, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. So how was Eli, in the face of this kind of pain and anguish, able to respond like that? I think that he understood some principles that we see more pointedly in the New Testament that can help us understand maybe how Eli was able to have this kind of faith and the choices that he was making even in that moment. In John chapter 11, there's one of my favorite stories in the Bible. Of course, I say that about all the stories that I teach. I really like the Bible. I'm sorry. In John chapter 11, we meet this family, Mary and Martha and Lazarus. And we, the historians believe that these were Jesus, the closest thing that Jesus had to besties, okay? These were his closest friends. These were probably his vacation friends. They wanted to go down to the beaches. This is, they probably went together. He loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus. They lived in a town called Bethany, and that's affectionately known as Jesus's favorite place on earth. That's probably where he felt home and safe. And he's a couple days' journey away, and Lazarus is sick. He's going to die. So Mary and Martha send word to Jesus, hey, our brother's going to die. You should come take care of him, because they know that he has the power to heal. So Jesus says, okay. He gets the message. He waits for two days, and then he travels to Bethany. And while he's traveling there, Lazarus passes away. And Mary and Martha are ticked, rightfully so, because they know that Jesus waited. He should be here by now and he's not. What's he doing? And so as he approaches Bethany, Mary runs out to meet him. And she asks him the question that we would ask. Jesus, why didn't you come sooner? We told you that our brother was going to die and you could have come and done something about it and you didn't. Why didn't you come sooner? And if you're paying attention and you're empathizing and you're thinking about your own life, this is the question that we all ask too. Whenever we experience loss or grief, we lean in with Mary and we say, yeah, Jesus, why? Because here's the thing. Mary knew that Jesus had the power to prevent her brother from dying. She knew that he could have swept in at any moment and healed him. She knew that he could have prayed a prayer from two days away and healed Lazarus and that he didn't need to die and that he didn't need to go through this pain. She knew that he could have stopped it and that he chose not to. So she leans in and she says, why'd you do that? And if you've ever prayed for someone to survive that didn't, then you've asked that question too. If you've ever prayed against a diagnosis, you've asked that question too. If you've walked through a divorce or abuse or an irreconcilable situation, then you lean in with Mary and you've asked that question too. Jesus, you could have stopped this and you didn't. Why? And Jesus' response is not what we would expect. It's the shortest verse in the Bible. It may be the most profound, John 11, 35. As soon as she asked him that question, you could have stopped this and you didn't, Jesus. Why not? He says, or the Bible says, that Jesus wept. Jesus wept. And when I imagine that moment, I don't imagine Jesus as standing coldly back from Mary and looking at her as they just stand and weep together. I imagine Jesus as grabbing her shoulders and bringing her in and embracing the sister that he loved and weeping with her. And when you think about the times in your life when you've hurt the most, that's what you need more than anything. You need people to weep with you. You need people's presence. Have you ever sat with somebody who was hurting? You sat with them at a loved one's funeral. You sat with them in the hospital while they hoped against hope. Have you ever sat with somebody who was hurting? You sat with them at a loved one's funeral. You sat with them in the hospital while they hoped against hope. Have you ever sat in the middle of someone's pain and racked your brain for the right thing to say? And you can't come up with anything because there's nothing to be said. There's nothing to be said. And if you remember your own pain and the way that people ministered to you, it was never what they said. You don't remember what people told you. You remember that they were there. Because words don't help. I think Abraham Lincoln said it best. I love the letter. It circulates just about every Memorial Day that he wrote to the mom who lost five sons in the Union Army that year. And he said, he said, I feel the weakness of my words and any attempt to beguile you from the pain that you must feel. He's admitting that his words are impotent. In fact, usually the only things that are said there that we remember are the dumb things, right? I've heard people say before when someone's endured loss, like, well, God must have needed another angel in heaven. Don't say dumb crap like that. No, he doesn't. God can make any angel he wants. He doesn't need to take someone from you so that he can have another one in heaven. That's silly. It's not helpful. That's what someone told us when we had a miscarriage. Get away from me. It's not helpful. The only thing that we remember is people's presence. When we walked through that, Jen and I did together, I remember her Uncle Edwin, four separate times, called me as the dust was settling to see how I was doing, to encourage me, to tell me that he loved me and that he was praying for me. He didn't have to do that. He's not even my biological uncle. He's Jen's, but he cared for me and he kept calling. I don't remember what he said. I have no idea. But I remember that he showed up. When we are hurting, what we need most is people's presence. So when we hurt, Jesus doesn't offer us words because words don't help. He weeps with us. He offers us his presence. And the truth of it is that we have a God who weeps with us. We have a God that when we hurt, he embraces us. He holds us and he weeps with us and he feels our pain with us. He doesn't give us words to try to explain what we're doing because let's be honest, when you're in that moment and you're asking Jesus, why'd you let this happen to me? Why'd you let this happen? You could have stopped us and you didn't. Listen to me, I'm being honest. I was thinking about this this week. If Jesus sat you down and explained to you exactly why he was letting this thing happen in your life and told you all the reasons in light of history and in light of eternity and with the proper view of time and keeping his promises and how it all works out one day, if he explained everything to you and somehow you were able to understand it, would it make that moment hurt any less? No. When we ask Jesus, why'd you let this happen? What we're really saying is, I need you to make this better. I need you to fix this because this sucks. That's what we're saying. And Jesus knows that words are not going to fix it. So he weeps with us. And he weeps with us, I believe, not just for the pain that we're walking through in the moment, but because he knows that we're going to struggle to understand. He doesn't just weep for our pain, but also because we're going to struggle to understand. He knows that we are not going to understand what's going on around us and that we can't. And that hurts his heart. Several months ago, I think it may have even been last year, we woke up on a Friday. Friday is family day at the rector House. I have that one off because technically I'm working right now. And so on Fridays, we get up and we try to protect that for our family. And we got up and we told Lily this day we're going to go to the new park. To her, Sassafras behind Crabtree is the new park, which is amazing. One of the things we love most about Raleigh is the parks. They're incredible. Back home, they're all dumpy. You need a tetanus shot before you go to the park. So here, it's great. And so we get in the car. We load up. We go to the new park. We get her out of the car. She's excited. Lily excited. Yes. And you put her on the ground. And she runs down the sidewalk to go play at the new park. Comes around the corner. And what she finds is that there's a makeshift chain link fence around the whole park and not a soul there. And we looked online and we realized they're repairing the ground. They're replacing the flooring for the park. Can't play that day. Jen and I are brokenhearted. And we're looking at the disappointment on our little girl's face and it's hurting us. And we had taught her this thing. So I think she was two years old at the time. And when they get fixated on something, it's just all that they can think about. And so we had taught her to be patient. So she would see something and she'd be like, mommy, chips, chips. I want chips, mommy. Give me the chips, chips, chips, chips. And we'd be like, oh my gosh, stop it. So we'd pick her up and I'd look at her and I'd go, Lily, sweetheart, you can have the chips in a little bit, but not right now. I need you to be patient. Can you be patient? And she would repeat back to me, I'd be patient. And for us, that was like our first parenting win. Like the first time she said it, we were like, okay, I think that she will survive. I think we can do this. So we were so happy that she understood what it meant to be patient. And so we get down there, and Lily's up against the fence, and we have to say, oh, sweetheart, we're not going to, we can't play on the playground right now. They're working on it. She doesn't understand what's going on. And I'll never forget, it broke my heart. She's up against that chain link fence. It's like from a dang movie. And she turns around and she looks at me and she says, it's okay, Daddy, I'll be patient. Golly, man. Jen and I started crying on the spot. No, baby, you don't understand. Like, it ain't happening today. And there's nothing we can say to help her understand. She's two. She can't process what's going on. I think that sense of helplessness that we felt in the face of her pain is pretty similar to what God feels sometimes. Not helpless, but just the fact that he knows. I can't explain this to you. Oh, sweetheart. I can't make this better for you right now. It's just not how it's going to work. And I know that answer is going to cause you more pain. And I'm so sorry about that. And it'll get better if you're patient. But you're probably going to have to be patient for longer than you realize. I don't think that God weeps with us just because we're hurting, but because he knows that we're going to have to choose faith. We're going to have to choose him when it doesn't make sense. The story that illustrates this to me is in the book of Matthew, I think around chapter 11. John the Baptist is a prophet that prepared the way for Jesus. And John the Baptist, he was a brave man, he was a man of courage, and he spoke truth to power, and he said the wrong thing to the king, and it got him thrown in jail. And he's been in jail for a little while, and he begins to get this sense that he's going to die there, that they're going to execute him. And so he sends message to Jesus. John the Baptist had disciples. He gathers his disciples around, and he sends the message to Jesus, and he tells him, go ask Jesus, are you the one who is to come, or should I expect someone else? He's saying, are you the Messiah, or have I gotten this wrong? Don't need to keep waiting. And he's referencing a passage in Isaiah that was a prophecy about the Messiah. And he knows that Jesus knows his Bible, and that when he hears this question, he's going to know exactly what John the Baptist is talking about. Because there's a prophecy in Isaiah that says, when the coming one arrives, the one who is to come, when they arrive, the deaf will hear and the blind will see and the lame will walk and the prisoners will be set free. And so what John is asking Jesus is, are you the guy? Because when the guy gets here, the prisoners are supposed to be set free. And I'm still here. And I'm going to die here if you don't do something about it. So are you the guy? Same as Mary. You can do something about this. Are you going to? Same as us. God, it feels like you could prevent this. Are you going to? And Jesus responds to John the Baptist. He tells the disciples, you go tell John that I am the one who is to come and that the blind see and the deaf hear and the lame walk and the prisoners are set free, but John the Baptist will not be. And then he says, blessed are those who do not lose faith on account of me. Blessed are those who are not offended by me. Because he knew. This is going to be painful news for John the Baptist, and I am not meeting the expectations that he has for me, and I am not going to do the thing that he is asking me to do, that it is within my power to do, and he's not going to understand why I'm not going to do it and he's just going to have to choose faith. And blessed are those who in the face of pain choose faith. Because it's hard. Because we don't understand it. Because Romans 11 tells us that God's ways are higher than our ways. And that there's going to be some things that almighty God, all-knowing God, all-wise God does that we can't possibly understand. And sometimes the choices that he makes are going to be choices that don't make sense to us, that don't seem fair to us, that make us angry because it seems like he could have prevented it and he chose not to and we don't understand. And in those moments, it is up to us whether or not we want to respond like Eli. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. And that's a tough thing to say. But here's the deal. When Eli says that, understanding the principles we look at in the New Testament, understanding that we have a God that weeps with us, that offers us his presence because words really aren't what we need. They're not going to fix it at the end of the day. Eli understands that. He understands that sometimes God allows things to happen that seem like he shouldn't let them happen, that we're praying against and he allows them to occur and it frustrates us and we lean in with Mary and say, why'd you do that? And God weeps with us because we hurt and we're not going to understand this pain on this side of eternity. And Eli looks at all of that and he says, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. And I really believe that choosing faith in the face of this pain really comes down to two questions. Do we choose to believe that God is good? Do you believe that God is good? Do you believe that the God of the universe who knows you, created you, do you believe that he is good? And then do you believe that he will keep his promises? Do you believe that God is good and do you believe that he will keep his promises? Do we trust Romans 8, 28 that says, we know that all things work together for the good of those who love him are called according to his purpose. Do we trust that to work out in eternity? Do we trust that one day when we can understand everything, when we can see as God sees, when we get into heaven, when we're on the other side of this life and we look back on everything, do we trust that if we could understand it like God does, that we will go, okay, I get it now. You are good and I love you and thank you. Do we trust that that's true? Do we trust the most hopeful promise in the Bible in Revelation 21 that one day God will be with his people and we will be with our God and there will be no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain anymore? Do we trust that promise? If we choose to believe that God is good and we choose to believe that he will keep his promises, then we can respond like Eli and have faith in the face of pain. And listen, when we miscarried, and I learned about that after trying to get pregnant for a long time, I went home and I got on my knees and I prayed through tears. And I said, Lord, you're good. Let you do what seems good to you. And can I tell you this? I didn't mean that. I didn't mean it. I said it because I was supposed to, because I'm a pastor and I wanted to be a good soldier and I wanted to say the right thing, but I didn't believe that for a second. I was mad, man. I didn't believe a good God would do that. But I said it. And over time, I believed it. And I still do. And I was listening to a song this morning that says, what is true in the light is still true in the dark. And even if we don't feel like we believe it, we can still choose to trust it. We can still choose to respond to pain with faith like Eli. And so I hope that for those of us facing pain, we'll choose to respond with faith. I hope in a kind and gentle and empathetic way, as we see people around us hurting, we can encourage them towards faith, even when it doesn't make sense. I hope that we won't try to help people make sense of their pain, because even Jesus didn't try to do that. He just offered his presence. And I hope that as we move through life and face pain again that we'll remember the message of Eli. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. Let's pray. Father, you are good. You are good even when it doesn't seem like you are. You are good even when we don't understand how. You're good when you don't do the thing we want you to do. You're good when it doesn't go the way we want it to go. You're good when we are disappointed. You're good and patient as we shake our fists at you. God, you are good. I pray that you would give us the faith to believe that when it's hard. I pray that you would continue to be patient with us as we learn what it means to be faithful. We thank you for being a God that weeps with us, that is close to the brokenhearted, that comforts those who are crushed in spirit. And I pray particularly for those this morning who are struggling through some pain, that you would be close to them, that they would be comforted by your word. And that somehow, God, if they know you, you would give them the faith of Eli. And that one day they would be able to really believe what they say. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.
Good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for joining us this November. Whenever I'm supposed to come up without a bumper video, the video that we played between the last song and the sermon is called a bumper video. Whenever I'm supposed to come up during a prayer and there's not a bumper video, I'm always terrified that I'm standing on the stage at the wrong time. There was a time at my old church where I was the host. I had Haley's job. They paid me for it. She does it for free. And I was in the front row, and I thought that the guy gave me the nod. You know, just this is it after this. And I was like, okay. So I come up, and he's standing back looking at me, and he goes, and he just strums the next song and goes, and I literally just walked up and looked at him in horror and then walked off the other side of the stage and sat down over there. And that was a congregation of like 700 people and they were all laughing at me. And I deserved it. That's germane to nothing. I'm just inviting you into the fear that I still fear, feel when I'm standing right here as Aaron is praying. Thank you to Kyle, our student pastor, who stepped in for me last week and did a phenomenal job as he continued on with the series. I appreciate that, man. We are in a series called The Songs We Sing, looking at some of the songs that we sing as a congregation, finding them in Scripture, allowing Scripture to imbue them with a greater meaning for us. And it's been really, really fun to move through this series, hear you guys responding, hear you guys singing, know that these things are connecting and that these songs can have deeper meaning for us. I continue to believe and emphasize that getting together and singing together on a Sunday morning as a body of believers is the most important thing that we do on Sunday mornings together. So I'm glad that we're continuing to do that. This week, we're looking at a song called The Battle Belongs. Next week, I'm preaching on a Christmas song, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, kind of to transition us into the Christmas season. So I'm looking forward to sharing that with you guys next week. But this week, as I said, we're focused on a song called The Battle Belongs. It's one that we've sung around here for a while. You probably know it, but in case you don't, I'm just going to read you the chorus. This will not be on the screen, so you'll just be forced to pay attention to me. But the chorus goes like this. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees with my hands lifted high. Did you guys think I was going to sing this to you? No way. Oh, God, the battle belongs to you. In every fear I lay at your feet, I'll sing through the night. Oh, God, the battle belongs to you. This song comes directly out of, I think, two stories in the Old Testament. Now, as we sing this song, there's songs about you guiding me through the shadow and through the valley. That comes from Psalm 23. There's words about his ways being higher than our ways. That comes from Romans 11, that if God is for us, who can be against us? That comes from Romans 8. So there's different lyrics in the song that come from different places in scripture, but the heart of the song itself comes from two fantastic stories in the Old Testament. Now, if you spent any time at all at Grace, you know that I love my Old Testament. I love my Old Testament stories. It's a really, it tends to be a more entertaining read than the New Testament once you get past Acts, right? So I love the narrative stories of the Old Testament. So if you have a Bible, the one I'm going to focus on primarily today is in 2 Chronicles chapter 20. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you. 2 Chronicles can be hard for some of us to find because maybe we don't have a lot of experience there. It's in the first third of the Bible. There's a lot of pages in 1 and 2 Chronicles, so you're bound to find it if you thumb through a little bit. If you see kings, you're gaining on it. And if you see Ezra or Nehemiah, you've gone too far. All right. So Chronicles chapter 20. And in Chronicles chapter 20, there's a guy who's the king named Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat is the king of Judah. By this point in history, the kingdom has split. After David, we have Solomon. And after Solomon is the king, we have Rehoboam. Rehoboam was a cruddy king. He was a jerk. He was a dummy. And so Jeroboam took the northern kingdoms referred to for the rest of the Old Testament typically as Israel. And Rehoboam kept the southern kingdom typically referred to as Judah. For the rest of the lines of those kings and those stories are told in 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles. The northern tribes of Israel had no good kings. They all did what was right in their own eyes. They all betrayed God. Southern Israel, depending on who you talk to, Judah had between three and five good kings. As I kind of dug into the research, in my opinion, they had three good kings. We're going to talk about two of them this morning. One of them was Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat, 2 Chronicles chapter 20, receives word that the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Ammonites and the Meubites, I don't know how to say the last one, Meubites, were gathering together to attack him. Clearly, they felt like they had seen a weakness and they were ready to exploit it. Now, Judah is not a geopolitical player. They're just trying to carve out their place in the world. They're by no means a superpower. They're not scaring anyone. And so these three tribes assemble against him and decide now's the time we're going to strike. We're going to come in and we're going to conquer Judah. We're going to conquer Jerusalem and overthrow Jehoshaphat. And so word of this planned attack and the three tribes uniting against Jehoshaphat gets back to him., these three tribes have amassed against you. They're coming in to take over. They probably have the advantage. What do you want to do? His very first reaction is he was afraid. After he processes the fact that he's afraid, what should I do? He prays. He prays and he assembles all of Judah. Everyone from the different towns, the different tribes in Judah, come to Jerusalem, fast with me. Implicit in fasting is praying. Pray with me. Let's seek the face of the Lord and what we should do. So that's what they did. All the people of Judah gathered in Jerusalem. And they got on their hands and their knees and they cried out to God and they said, what do we do? God, what do we do here? We're going to be attacked. What should we do? And so they respond in prayer. And God answers them in this way on down the passage, verses 15 through 18. And he said, We say the battle belongs to the Lord. That's where it comes from. It's from the high priest reassuring Jehoshaphat, don't worry about it. Do not be afraid. Do not be dismayed. This battle's not yours anyways. This battle belongs to God. Verse 16. And here's the scene. Jehoshaphat gets word that the Moabites, Ammonites, and the Miites are coming to attack them and overthrow them. He's scared. He prays. He gathers the people of Judah to pray with him. Father, what would you have us do here? At the end of the prayer, the high priest says, the Lord has directed me. And you're supposed to do not be afraid. Do not be dismayed. This is not your battle. This is God's. Go out and align yourself for battle. And the instructions that follow are, lead with the Levites and let them sing worship. Lead with worship and lead with praise. And that's what they did. He fell on his face. He praised God with all the people. And it's important that we understand that worship isn't just singing. Worship can be praying. Worship can be a posture. Worship is living a life of sacrifice. Worship has a large definition. And so he falls on his face. If you're hearing these instructions, he falls on his face with the rest of Judah and they pray to God. And then the next morning they get up. They're not fearful. They go out to the battle lines. They put in front of them the worship pastors, which has to be the worst possible idea, right? Like if we needed to defend grace, would you want Aaron and Greg to do it? Or would you want people with like military experience? I'm just asking the question. I don't think you would want me to do it, but they're not the tops on the list is all I'm saying. But they put the skinny jeans and the beards out in front. This is who we're going to lead with. By the way, all these jokes, none of this is my insight. These are all Aaron's jokes. I'm stealing them. This is a sermon he's done before, this part of it. So I'm authorized to use these things. I mean, just so we're all clear about how tough I am, I raked for like 45 minutes last week. My arm was sore for a day, and I got a blister on one of my fingies, even though I was wearing gloves. All right, so that's what we're dealing with here. But they put the worship leaders out in front, and they praise God. And as they praise God, God incites a riot in the camp of the three different tribes. They conquer each other, and they walk away dismayed. God's army doesn't have to fire a single arrow or throw a single spear. The battle is won because it belongs to the Lord. There's another wonderful example of this, and I believe it's referenced in the chorus when it says, everything I lay at your feet. And I think the most descriptive example of this is in 2 Kings chapter 19. It's a story of Hezekiah. Hezekiah was another one of the good kings of Jerusalem, or yeah, of Jerusalem and of Judah. And what's going on here is that Hezekiah receives word that the king of Assyria, Sennacherib, is sweeping through the Middle East and is storming towards Jerusalem intent on conquering it. And this isn't three random roving tribes that happen to exist around you, Moab and Amman. It's not those places. This is Assyria, the precursor to the Persian empire. This is Sennacherib, a name that strikes fear in everyone that hears it. This is a big deal. And Sennacherib on his way deploys basically propaganda in Jerusalem. It's a letter that he sends that he writes to the people of Jerusalem that says, hey, you're going to want to get out of Dodge because I'm coming to wreck shop. And if you're still there when I get there, you and your family's going to die, just so you know. And someone takes that letter and they hand it to Hezekiah. And this is Hezekiah's response in verse 14. Verse 19. The propaganda letter is brought to King Hezekiah. Hezekiah knows. If Sennacherib wants Jerusalem, he's going to take it. They have as much chance of defending Jerusalem from Sennacherib as my daughter Lily has defending her Reese's peanut butter cups at Halloween from me. I'm going to win that fight. And so what does Hezekiah do? He doesn't do what you think he should do. What he should do is assemble the generals right away. Assemble the quartermaster right away. Assemble the treasurer right away. Whoever's in charge of agriculture, how we're going to feed the people, get them in the room. He needs to assemble the cabinet right away. How do we defend Jerusalem? Someone start boiling some oil. I saw that on Netflix one time. That seems to be a thing you should do when you're defending the city. Get everybody together and let's come up with a plan to repel the Assyrian army. That's what we need to do. That's not what he does. He takes the letter. He goes to the temple. He lays it down at the feet of the Lord, and he prays. And he says, God, this is an affront to you. What would you have us do? His first response is to pray. And similarly to Jehoshaphat, God directs Hezekiah, don't do anything. Don't fire an arrow. Just watch, and I'll win. And the next morning, he incites a riot in the camp of the Assyrians. They rout each other, and they walk back to Assyria licking their wounds. God's armies didn't have to fire an arrow. Because they're good kings, Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah responded in prayer to everything that came their way. And so, of course, when I read these stories and I reflect on them, and I think about these were put here over a thousand years ago for us today. What is it that I should take from them? I think there's myriad applications here. But the biggest one to me is to simply ask, is this what I do? Is this what we do? When I encounter a situation that gives me pause, is my reflexive response to pray? When I'm fearful, like Jehoshaphat was, is my first response to go and pray, or is my first response to go and plan? I don't know about you, but when I'm in a stressful situation, when I feel disappointed or when I feel overwhelmed or when I feel like there's a big task in front of me, the very first thing I do is come up with a plan that I believe in. As soon as I have a plan that I can work, I feel very comforted in life. So the first thing I do in stress is I sit down, I think it through, I make a plan, and then I begin to work the plan. The problem is, prayer didn't precede that plan. It didn't follow that plan. It's just my plan. And I'm not, certainly didn't bring anybody here to make you feel bad about your prayer life. So I'll let you join in judging me about mine. And if it applies to you, fine. But when I read these passages, I can't help but ask myself, how much of my parenthood is prayerless and just reflexive? How much of my marriage and my love for Jen is prayerless and just a representation of my effort? How much of my career? How much of my interactions with others? How many of my important, maybe even difficult conversations? How many small groups in Bible studies have I led prayerlessly just going into them on my own? Is it my reflex in times of stress, in times of trepidation, in times of challenge, in times of fear, in times of uncertainty? Is my reflex to pray or is it to plan? Is it to seek the face of the Lord? Or is it to call a friend? How much in your life, this is where I'll put it on you, how much in your life, in your coming and in your going, as you enter into situations, as you face new situations, when you get phone calls, as you respond, how much in your life do you stop and you pause and you lay down at the foot of God and you say, God, I need you here. I'm not big enough for this. How much of that do you do and how much of it do you just take on yourself and charge right ahead without ever once stopping to pause and pray? I've joked often, and I will do it one day, that one day I'm going to give a sermon on reading the Bible. And I'm going to come out. I'm going to say, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. You should read your Bible more. Let's pray. I'm going to do that one day. Because I genuinely think that when I come out here and I tell a group full of Christians who in your heart love and seek out God's word, when I say, hey guys, we should read the Bible more often, that the Holy Spirit can take it from there. He doesn't need me to talk for 29 and a half more minutes to make that an effective message. I'm probably just going to mess it up. That's enough for the Holy Spirit to go and work. And similarly, this morning is simply that. Hey guys, pray more. Pray more reflexively. Pray more regularly. And grain it into yourselves. Let the Holy Spirit work it into your psyche. Pray more. Because here's what happens when we pray more. I was reflecting as I was preparing. If we can be more like Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah, if we can be people who respond in prayer and not panic or plans, what can happen for us? Because remember, everything that God tells us to do, he tells us to do because it's best for us. So why is it best for us to stop at every moment, every day, and pray multiple times a day? Why is it better for us to pray and consider more? Here's what I think. Prayer provides perspective, place, peace, and priorities. Prayer provides perspective, place, peace, and priorities. Not for nothing. That's the greatest alliterative sentence I've ever written in my life. I'm going to graduate now as a pastor. I've reached the mountaintop, I think. Prayer provides us with perspective. It puts things in their proper focus. I have a son, John, he's two and a half, and he's in that season where every time we go up the stairs, it's an adventure, right? And you always ask him when you're about to go up the stairs, you don't want to upset his delicate sensibilities. Johnny, do you want to hold my hand? You want to do it yourself? And he usually says, I do it myself. Okay. And so he uses the wall and the railings and different things, and he takes the steps one at a time. And I'm right behind him. If he falls, I'm going to catch him. It's going to be okay. But he likes to say, I do it myself. And then I let him do it himself. Listen, every time we go into a situation or circumstance or a scenario, and we do it prayerlessly, what we've just done is we've looked at God and we've said, I do it myself. Do you need help with your career? No, I got this. I'll do it myself. Do you need help in your marriage? No, I got this. I'll do it myself. I can hold your hand. I can guide you through this. I can show you the way. No, it's good. I'll do it myself. This big goal in your life, I'll do it myself. Reconciling a relationship, I'll do it myself. Raising your children, I'll do it myself. Every time we enter into anything prayerlessly, we are saying to God, I'll do it myself. Thanks. When we don't pray, we make ourselves too big and God too small. When we don't pray, when we don't pray about whatever it is, about a health issue, about a relationship, about a career, about parenthood, about our marriage, about trying to transition into being adult parents of adult kids, and that relationship is different, and I don't really know what to do with my hands anymore. I just need to know I need to give them some space. When we approach that prayerlessly, we make God too big and ourselves too small. We forget who we are and who he is. But I want us to actually acknowledge and admit that that any time we approach anything, whether it's just a small sales meeting, a regular business meeting in our place of work, a board meeting or an elder meeting, when we approach a small group, when we approach a delicate conversation with our spouse or with our kids, when we sit at our desk or wherever it is we sit on Monday morning and think about the week ahead, when we do any of those things prayerlessly, we make ourselves far too big and God far too small. And we say to him, I've got this. I'll do it myself. God in his goodness climbs those stairs right behind us, but he's willing to hold our hand and walk us up there if we'll reach for him in prayer. So not only does prayer give us perspective, but prayer puts everything in its proper place, right? Because when we pray, here's what we admit, whether we consciously acknowledge this or not. God is in charge. I am not. This situation is in his hands. When we pray, that's what we acknowledge. God's in charge. I am not. This situation is in his hands. God's the creator of the universe. I'm not the creator of the universe. He's in charge. I am not. And this situation is in his hands and better off for it. When I think about this, that prayer puts us in our proper place, I'm reminded of Genesis 1. Genesis 1.1. God created the heavens and the earth. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And I love to ask the question, why does the Bible begin that way? I don't think it just begins that way because that's where the story begins. I think it begins that way because it sets up the fundamental relationship throughout all of Bible and all of life. God is the creator. We are the creation. This is it. All sin in our life is getting confused about that relationship. That's all it is. God is the Lord. I am not. God is the creator. I am the created. All sin in our life is when we choose to ignore that and say, no, no, no, I'm more important than him. That's it. And so what prayer does is put us in our proper place. What prayer does for us in a humble, quiet way is what God had to do for Job in a bombastic way in Job chapter 38. When Job's tired of life, he's tired of suffering and goes to God and he's like, hey man, you owe me some answers. And so in Job 38 and on, God gives Job those answers, but they're not the ones he wants. He says, Job, you've forgotten your place, pal. You don't know who you are and who I am. You've forgotten. And then Paul reiterates this in Romans 11, when he says, who can understand the mind of God? His ways are higher than our ways. And so when we humble ourselves in prayer, particularly when we bow on our knees if we can, it puts everything in its proper place. You are God. I am not. You're in charge. I'm reliant on you. The situation is bigger than me. It is not bigger than you. I know that you know my kids better than I could ever know them. I know you love them more than I could ever love them. So I'm trusting them with you. Tell me what my part is and I'll do it. Often your part is to hang back and sing worship music and let God do the dirty work. I know that you know my wife better than I'll ever know her and that you love her more than I can ever love her. So can you just show me what my part is in loving her? Can you just help me with that? God, I know that my career, for whatever reason, is important to you. I don't know why it's important to you. I don't know what the end game of it is. I don't know what you would have me to learn or gain there, but I know that it matters to you where I work, who I work for, and how I carry myself in the workplace. I know that matters to you, God. So I'm going to trust you with it and walk in the steps that you would lay out for me. When we pray, it gives us the proper perspective and it puts everything in its proper place. And then, when everything's in its proper place, prayer gives us peace. It offers us peace. I love that in worship, sometimes the Holy Spirit does things like this. In worship, Aaron referenced Philippians 4, 8. Finally, brothers, whatsoever things are true, noble, of good report, honorable, godly, trustworthy, think upon these things. And he was right. That verse is preceded by two verses that tell us what we should do in times of worry. Philippians 4, 6, and 7. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, through prayer and supplication, 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. So Paul writes in Philippians, don't be anxious for anything, which for most dudes, it's like, okay. And for most women, it's like, what are you talking about? Like, I'm anxious about you saying that. Be anxious for nothing. But in everything, through prayer and petition and with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And what will happen when in everything we present our request to God, when in everything we pray, when in every circumstance we reflectively fall on our feet and say, God, what would you have us do? What happens when for everything we present our petitions to God and we have the proper perspective with that thing and who God is and we put ourselves in our proper place and we put God in his proper place and we put the situation in its proper place, then what happens is we are given the peace of God that passes all understanding and he guards our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. Prayerful people are able to walk in a peace that no one else can understand. Why? Because that peace is guarded by God. Because they walk in an understanding that God's got this and I don't and it's okay. The people in your life who pray the most are probably the most peaceful. They have the hardest feathers to ruffle. Now some of my friends are the most anxious and the most prayerful. Those things go hand in hand for them. But at least they've learned to reflexively pray. But when we are people of prayer and we're assured of perspective and place, we can't help but feel peace that follows that. I remember very vividly coming to Grace in April of 2017. And when I got here, I made this point before, I will not belabor it. Things were comically bad. We were going to shut the, if they didn't hire a senior pastor in April, they weren't making it out of May, no doubt about it. And no one who was here at that time would argue that. And I remember getting here and finding out more about how dire it was and going, whoa, well, this is career suicide because no one is going to look at the resume of a guy who's been a senior pastor exactly one time and ran it into the ground in six weeks. That's lifelong small group pastor territory. And then when I get old, they make me care pastor. That's what that is. But in prayer, I honestly, like I wasn't nervous. I wasn't worried. I didn't even really care because it was out of my hands. I knew that God loved this place. I knew that God cares about me and he cares about the people who call this place home. And I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is where God wanted me to be. And so I literally thought back in April of 2017, well, God, you brought me here on purpose. I know you did. It was either to grow it or to kill it. Either way, it's what you want. Let's ride. Let's see what happens. Now, we still don't know that he didn't bring me here to kill it, but so far, it's been to grow. So far, he's walked alongside us, and he's shown up again and again. Whenever we sing that song, Evidence, those are the kinds of things I think about. When we put things in their proper perspective, and we put ourselves in our place through prayer, we can be given the peace of God through prayer. And once we are walking in the peace of God through prayer, when we reflexively go to pray, we can pray with the proper perspective. It gives us the right perspective from which to pray. Because if I want to kneel down and pray for my children, John and Lily, I need to first acknowledge, God, you know them better than I'll ever know them. You see their entire future laid out in front of them. I don't know what they're going to do today. Hopefully, shut up, because we have a seven-hour drive. But I don't know what they're going to do today. You know what they're going to do in 30 years. I don't know how to best love their little hearts and souls. You knit them together. You know them intimately. So it inclines me with that admission to say, God, how would you have me pray for my children? God, what should my heart for Lily be? God, how can I best pray for John? And so when we walk in prayer, it inclines us towards his wisdom and we begin to blanket our prayers with this question of what is wise to pray. Not reflexively, what do I want to pray? What do I feel like praying? What do I want most in the moment? But God, because I know that you know this situation, you know me, you know the other people, you know everything happening, you know them intimately, because I that you know way more than I do about all the things what God is wise to pray. And that question begins to mature our prayers. When I pray for Sunday mornings, I never ever pray that the sermon would be good. I've never once prayed that I would do well. I think that's the wrong perspective. I pray and I write it every week to the elders. Every week to the elders I send out, let's all on these days, let's pray for this thing together. And Sunday has never changed. The prayer for Sunday is always, would the service be exactly what God wants it to be? Good, bad, or ugly, would what happens in here be what God wants to happen in here? When I pray for the band, when we have our pre-service meeting at 915, and sometimes I'm asked to pray over that, I always pray, God, would you help us to care about the things that you care about and not care about the things that you don't care about? Which is code speak for, if the host messes up, but it doesn't detract from the spiritual point of the service, who cares? If the basis starts with the wrong note, don't get bent out of shape about it. God doesn't care about it. You shouldn't either. Let's pursue the throne and praise God together. God, help us to care about what you care about and not care about what you don't care about. The more we walk in prayer, the more we keep the perspective in place right, the more peace we experience. And in that peace, we begin to pray wise prayers. God, how can I pray in accordance with your will about this? So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to invite Aaron and the band, Greg, back up. Back up. And instead of me finishing my sermon on prayer in prayer, I'm going to invite you to a time of prayer. I'm pretty certain if you're a thinking person that at some point during this sermon as I've talked about, hey, in this situation do you respond in prayer? Have you offered that up to prayer? Have you been trying to do this prayerlessly or with your own plans? I would be willing to bet that God has brought something to mind for you. That there's something or someone or some things in your life that probably do need some prayer. And maybe you haven't given them the prayer that they need. Maybe there are things you've been praying for very regularly for a long time, but you just want to lift them up again. So I'm going to step off the stage, and I'm going to give us all some time to pray. Lift those things up to God. Your children, your spouse, your loved ones, the family you'll see this Thanksgiving, that career thing that's just been eating at you, the bills that you don't know how you're going to pay, the health issues of you and your loved one that are just driving you nuts. Whatever it might be that God's brought to mind, take a few minutes and pray for that. And as you pray, Aaron's going to sing over us a little bit, and then at some point he'll invite us to stand. And we'll close out singing The Battle Belongs. And we'll let that be our battle cry that reminds us that our very first reaction, our very first reflex, no matter what's happening in our life, should be to go to God in prayer. Let's pray together, silently.
Good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for joining us this November. Whenever I'm supposed to come up without a bumper video, the video that we played between the last song and the sermon is called a bumper video. Whenever I'm supposed to come up during a prayer and there's not a bumper video, I'm always terrified that I'm standing on the stage at the wrong time. There was a time at my old church where I was the host. I had Haley's job. They paid me for it. She does it for free. And I was in the front row, and I thought that the guy gave me the nod. You know, just this is it after this. And I was like, okay. So I come up, and he's standing back looking at me, and he goes, and he just strums the next song and goes, and I literally just walked up and looked at him in horror and then walked off the other side of the stage and sat down over there. And that was a congregation of like 700 people and they were all laughing at me. And I deserved it. That's germane to nothing. I'm just inviting you into the fear that I still fear, feel when I'm standing right here as Aaron is praying. Thank you to Kyle, our student pastor, who stepped in for me last week and did a phenomenal job as he continued on with the series. I appreciate that, man. We are in a series called The Songs We Sing, looking at some of the songs that we sing as a congregation, finding them in Scripture, allowing Scripture to imbue them with a greater meaning for us. And it's been really, really fun to move through this series, hear you guys responding, hear you guys singing, know that these things are connecting and that these songs can have deeper meaning for us. I continue to believe and emphasize that getting together and singing together on a Sunday morning as a body of believers is the most important thing that we do on Sunday mornings together. So I'm glad that we're continuing to do that. This week, we're looking at a song called The Battle Belongs. Next week, I'm preaching on a Christmas song, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, kind of to transition us into the Christmas season. So I'm looking forward to sharing that with you guys next week. But this week, as I said, we're focused on a song called The Battle Belongs. It's one that we've sung around here for a while. You probably know it, but in case you don't, I'm just going to read you the chorus. This will not be on the screen, so you'll just be forced to pay attention to me. But the chorus goes like this. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees with my hands lifted high. Did you guys think I was going to sing this to you? No way. Oh, God, the battle belongs to you. In every fear I lay at your feet, I'll sing through the night. Oh, God, the battle belongs to you. This song comes directly out of, I think, two stories in the Old Testament. Now, as we sing this song, there's songs about you guiding me through the shadow and through the valley. That comes from Psalm 23. There's words about his ways being higher than our ways. That comes from Romans 11, that if God is for us, who can be against us? That comes from Romans 8. So there's different lyrics in the song that come from different places in scripture, but the heart of the song itself comes from two fantastic stories in the Old Testament. Now, if you spent any time at all at Grace, you know that I love my Old Testament. I love my Old Testament stories. It's a really, it tends to be a more entertaining read than the New Testament once you get past Acts, right? So I love the narrative stories of the Old Testament. So if you have a Bible, the one I'm going to focus on primarily today is in 2 Chronicles chapter 20. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you. 2 Chronicles can be hard for some of us to find because maybe we don't have a lot of experience there. It's in the first third of the Bible. There's a lot of pages in 1 and 2 Chronicles, so you're bound to find it if you thumb through a little bit. If you see kings, you're gaining on it. And if you see Ezra or Nehemiah, you've gone too far. All right. So Chronicles chapter 20. And in Chronicles chapter 20, there's a guy who's the king named Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat is the king of Judah. By this point in history, the kingdom has split. After David, we have Solomon. And after Solomon is the king, we have Rehoboam. Rehoboam was a cruddy king. He was a jerk. He was a dummy. And so Jeroboam took the northern kingdoms referred to for the rest of the Old Testament typically as Israel. And Rehoboam kept the southern kingdom typically referred to as Judah. For the rest of the lines of those kings and those stories are told in 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles. The northern tribes of Israel had no good kings. They all did what was right in their own eyes. They all betrayed God. Southern Israel, depending on who you talk to, Judah had between three and five good kings. As I kind of dug into the research, in my opinion, they had three good kings. We're going to talk about two of them this morning. One of them was Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat, 2 Chronicles chapter 20, receives word that the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Ammonites and the Meubites, I don't know how to say the last one, Meubites, were gathering together to attack him. Clearly, they felt like they had seen a weakness and they were ready to exploit it. Now, Judah is not a geopolitical player. They're just trying to carve out their place in the world. They're by no means a superpower. They're not scaring anyone. And so these three tribes assemble against him and decide now's the time we're going to strike. We're going to come in and we're going to conquer Judah. We're going to conquer Jerusalem and overthrow Jehoshaphat. And so word of this planned attack and the three tribes uniting against Jehoshaphat gets back to him., these three tribes have amassed against you. They're coming in to take over. They probably have the advantage. What do you want to do? His very first reaction is he was afraid. After he processes the fact that he's afraid, what should I do? He prays. He prays and he assembles all of Judah. Everyone from the different towns, the different tribes in Judah, come to Jerusalem, fast with me. Implicit in fasting is praying. Pray with me. Let's seek the face of the Lord and what we should do. So that's what they did. All the people of Judah gathered in Jerusalem. And they got on their hands and their knees and they cried out to God and they said, what do we do? God, what do we do here? We're going to be attacked. What should we do? And so they respond in prayer. And God answers them in this way on down the passage, verses 15 through 18. And he said, We say the battle belongs to the Lord. That's where it comes from. It's from the high priest reassuring Jehoshaphat, don't worry about it. Do not be afraid. Do not be dismayed. This battle's not yours anyways. This battle belongs to God. Verse 16. And here's the scene. Jehoshaphat gets word that the Moabites, Ammonites, and the Miites are coming to attack them and overthrow them. He's scared. He prays. He gathers the people of Judah to pray with him. Father, what would you have us do here? At the end of the prayer, the high priest says, the Lord has directed me. And you're supposed to do not be afraid. Do not be dismayed. This is not your battle. This is God's. Go out and align yourself for battle. And the instructions that follow are, lead with the Levites and let them sing worship. Lead with worship and lead with praise. And that's what they did. He fell on his face. He praised God with all the people. And it's important that we understand that worship isn't just singing. Worship can be praying. Worship can be a posture. Worship is living a life of sacrifice. Worship has a large definition. And so he falls on his face. If you're hearing these instructions, he falls on his face with the rest of Judah and they pray to God. And then the next morning they get up. They're not fearful. They go out to the battle lines. They put in front of them the worship pastors, which has to be the worst possible idea, right? Like if we needed to defend grace, would you want Aaron and Greg to do it? Or would you want people with like military experience? I'm just asking the question. I don't think you would want me to do it, but they're not the tops on the list is all I'm saying. But they put the skinny jeans and the beards out in front. This is who we're going to lead with. By the way, all these jokes, none of this is my insight. These are all Aaron's jokes. I'm stealing them. This is a sermon he's done before, this part of it. So I'm authorized to use these things. I mean, just so we're all clear about how tough I am, I raked for like 45 minutes last week. My arm was sore for a day, and I got a blister on one of my fingies, even though I was wearing gloves. All right, so that's what we're dealing with here. But they put the worship leaders out in front, and they praise God. And as they praise God, God incites a riot in the camp of the three different tribes. They conquer each other, and they walk away dismayed. God's army doesn't have to fire a single arrow or throw a single spear. The battle is won because it belongs to the Lord. There's another wonderful example of this, and I believe it's referenced in the chorus when it says, everything I lay at your feet. And I think the most descriptive example of this is in 2 Kings chapter 19. It's a story of Hezekiah. Hezekiah was another one of the good kings of Jerusalem, or yeah, of Jerusalem and of Judah. And what's going on here is that Hezekiah receives word that the king of Assyria, Sennacherib, is sweeping through the Middle East and is storming towards Jerusalem intent on conquering it. And this isn't three random roving tribes that happen to exist around you, Moab and Amman. It's not those places. This is Assyria, the precursor to the Persian empire. This is Sennacherib, a name that strikes fear in everyone that hears it. This is a big deal. And Sennacherib on his way deploys basically propaganda in Jerusalem. It's a letter that he sends that he writes to the people of Jerusalem that says, hey, you're going to want to get out of Dodge because I'm coming to wreck shop. And if you're still there when I get there, you and your family's going to die, just so you know. And someone takes that letter and they hand it to Hezekiah. And this is Hezekiah's response in verse 14. Verse 19. The propaganda letter is brought to King Hezekiah. Hezekiah knows. If Sennacherib wants Jerusalem, he's going to take it. They have as much chance of defending Jerusalem from Sennacherib as my daughter Lily has defending her Reese's peanut butter cups at Halloween from me. I'm going to win that fight. And so what does Hezekiah do? He doesn't do what you think he should do. What he should do is assemble the generals right away. Assemble the quartermaster right away. Assemble the treasurer right away. Whoever's in charge of agriculture, how we're going to feed the people, get them in the room. He needs to assemble the cabinet right away. How do we defend Jerusalem? Someone start boiling some oil. I saw that on Netflix one time. That seems to be a thing you should do when you're defending the city. Get everybody together and let's come up with a plan to repel the Assyrian army. That's what we need to do. That's not what he does. He takes the letter. He goes to the temple. He lays it down at the feet of the Lord, and he prays. And he says, God, this is an affront to you. What would you have us do? His first response is to pray. And similarly to Jehoshaphat, God directs Hezekiah, don't do anything. Don't fire an arrow. Just watch, and I'll win. And the next morning, he incites a riot in the camp of the Assyrians. They rout each other, and they walk back to Assyria licking their wounds. God's armies didn't have to fire an arrow. Because they're good kings, Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah responded in prayer to everything that came their way. And so, of course, when I read these stories and I reflect on them, and I think about these were put here over a thousand years ago for us today. What is it that I should take from them? I think there's myriad applications here. But the biggest one to me is to simply ask, is this what I do? Is this what we do? When I encounter a situation that gives me pause, is my reflexive response to pray? When I'm fearful, like Jehoshaphat was, is my first response to go and pray, or is my first response to go and plan? I don't know about you, but when I'm in a stressful situation, when I feel disappointed or when I feel overwhelmed or when I feel like there's a big task in front of me, the very first thing I do is come up with a plan that I believe in. As soon as I have a plan that I can work, I feel very comforted in life. So the first thing I do in stress is I sit down, I think it through, I make a plan, and then I begin to work the plan. The problem is, prayer didn't precede that plan. It didn't follow that plan. It's just my plan. And I'm not, certainly didn't bring anybody here to make you feel bad about your prayer life. So I'll let you join in judging me about mine. And if it applies to you, fine. But when I read these passages, I can't help but ask myself, how much of my parenthood is prayerless and just reflexive? How much of my marriage and my love for Jen is prayerless and just a representation of my effort? How much of my career? How much of my interactions with others? How many of my important, maybe even difficult conversations? How many small groups in Bible studies have I led prayerlessly just going into them on my own? Is it my reflex in times of stress, in times of trepidation, in times of challenge, in times of fear, in times of uncertainty? Is my reflex to pray or is it to plan? Is it to seek the face of the Lord? Or is it to call a friend? How much in your life, this is where I'll put it on you, how much in your life, in your coming and in your going, as you enter into situations, as you face new situations, when you get phone calls, as you respond, how much in your life do you stop and you pause and you lay down at the foot of God and you say, God, I need you here. I'm not big enough for this. How much of that do you do and how much of it do you just take on yourself and charge right ahead without ever once stopping to pause and pray? I've joked often, and I will do it one day, that one day I'm going to give a sermon on reading the Bible. And I'm going to come out. I'm going to say, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. You should read your Bible more. Let's pray. I'm going to do that one day. Because I genuinely think that when I come out here and I tell a group full of Christians who in your heart love and seek out God's word, when I say, hey guys, we should read the Bible more often, that the Holy Spirit can take it from there. He doesn't need me to talk for 29 and a half more minutes to make that an effective message. I'm probably just going to mess it up. That's enough for the Holy Spirit to go and work. And similarly, this morning is simply that. Hey guys, pray more. Pray more reflexively. Pray more regularly. And grain it into yourselves. Let the Holy Spirit work it into your psyche. Pray more. Because here's what happens when we pray more. I was reflecting as I was preparing. If we can be more like Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah, if we can be people who respond in prayer and not panic or plans, what can happen for us? Because remember, everything that God tells us to do, he tells us to do because it's best for us. So why is it best for us to stop at every moment, every day, and pray multiple times a day? Why is it better for us to pray and consider more? Here's what I think. Prayer provides perspective, place, peace, and priorities. Prayer provides perspective, place, peace, and priorities. Not for nothing. That's the greatest alliterative sentence I've ever written in my life. I'm going to graduate now as a pastor. I've reached the mountaintop, I think. Prayer provides us with perspective. It puts things in their proper focus. I have a son, John, he's two and a half, and he's in that season where every time we go up the stairs, it's an adventure, right? And you always ask him when you're about to go up the stairs, you don't want to upset his delicate sensibilities. Johnny, do you want to hold my hand? You want to do it yourself? And he usually says, I do it myself. Okay. And so he uses the wall and the railings and different things, and he takes the steps one at a time. And I'm right behind him. If he falls, I'm going to catch him. It's going to be okay. But he likes to say, I do it myself. And then I let him do it himself. Listen, every time we go into a situation or circumstance or a scenario, and we do it prayerlessly, what we've just done is we've looked at God and we've said, I do it myself. Do you need help with your career? No, I got this. I'll do it myself. Do you need help in your marriage? No, I got this. I'll do it myself. I can hold your hand. I can guide you through this. I can show you the way. No, it's good. I'll do it myself. This big goal in your life, I'll do it myself. Reconciling a relationship, I'll do it myself. Raising your children, I'll do it myself. Every time we enter into anything prayerlessly, we are saying to God, I'll do it myself. Thanks. When we don't pray, we make ourselves too big and God too small. When we don't pray, when we don't pray about whatever it is, about a health issue, about a relationship, about a career, about parenthood, about our marriage, about trying to transition into being adult parents of adult kids, and that relationship is different, and I don't really know what to do with my hands anymore. I just need to know I need to give them some space. When we approach that prayerlessly, we make God too big and ourselves too small. We forget who we are and who he is. But I want us to actually acknowledge and admit that that any time we approach anything, whether it's just a small sales meeting, a regular business meeting in our place of work, a board meeting or an elder meeting, when we approach a small group, when we approach a delicate conversation with our spouse or with our kids, when we sit at our desk or wherever it is we sit on Monday morning and think about the week ahead, when we do any of those things prayerlessly, we make ourselves far too big and God far too small. And we say to him, I've got this. I'll do it myself. God in his goodness climbs those stairs right behind us, but he's willing to hold our hand and walk us up there if we'll reach for him in prayer. So not only does prayer give us perspective, but prayer puts everything in its proper place, right? Because when we pray, here's what we admit, whether we consciously acknowledge this or not. God is in charge. I am not. This situation is in his hands. When we pray, that's what we acknowledge. God's in charge. I am not. This situation is in his hands. God's the creator of the universe. I'm not the creator of the universe. He's in charge. I am not. And this situation is in his hands and better off for it. When I think about this, that prayer puts us in our proper place, I'm reminded of Genesis 1. Genesis 1.1. God created the heavens and the earth. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And I love to ask the question, why does the Bible begin that way? I don't think it just begins that way because that's where the story begins. I think it begins that way because it sets up the fundamental relationship throughout all of Bible and all of life. God is the creator. We are the creation. This is it. All sin in our life is getting confused about that relationship. That's all it is. God is the Lord. I am not. God is the creator. I am the created. All sin in our life is when we choose to ignore that and say, no, no, no, I'm more important than him. That's it. And so what prayer does is put us in our proper place. What prayer does for us in a humble, quiet way is what God had to do for Job in a bombastic way in Job chapter 38. When Job's tired of life, he's tired of suffering and goes to God and he's like, hey man, you owe me some answers. And so in Job 38 and on, God gives Job those answers, but they're not the ones he wants. He says, Job, you've forgotten your place, pal. You don't know who you are and who I am. You've forgotten. And then Paul reiterates this in Romans 11, when he says, who can understand the mind of God? His ways are higher than our ways. And so when we humble ourselves in prayer, particularly when we bow on our knees if we can, it puts everything in its proper place. You are God. I am not. You're in charge. I'm reliant on you. The situation is bigger than me. It is not bigger than you. I know that you know my kids better than I could ever know them. I know you love them more than I could ever love them. So I'm trusting them with you. Tell me what my part is and I'll do it. Often your part is to hang back and sing worship music and let God do the dirty work. I know that you know my wife better than I'll ever know her and that you love her more than I can ever love her. So can you just show me what my part is in loving her? Can you just help me with that? God, I know that my career, for whatever reason, is important to you. I don't know why it's important to you. I don't know what the end game of it is. I don't know what you would have me to learn or gain there, but I know that it matters to you where I work, who I work for, and how I carry myself in the workplace. I know that matters to you, God. So I'm going to trust you with it and walk in the steps that you would lay out for me. When we pray, it gives us the proper perspective and it puts everything in its proper place. And then, when everything's in its proper place, prayer gives us peace. It offers us peace. I love that in worship, sometimes the Holy Spirit does things like this. In worship, Aaron referenced Philippians 4, 8. Finally, brothers, whatsoever things are true, noble, of good report, honorable, godly, trustworthy, think upon these things. And he was right. That verse is preceded by two verses that tell us what we should do in times of worry. Philippians 4, 6, and 7. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, through prayer and supplication, 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. So Paul writes in Philippians, don't be anxious for anything, which for most dudes, it's like, okay. And for most women, it's like, what are you talking about? Like, I'm anxious about you saying that. Be anxious for nothing. But in everything, through prayer and petition and with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And what will happen when in everything we present our request to God, when in everything we pray, when in every circumstance we reflectively fall on our feet and say, God, what would you have us do? What happens when for everything we present our petitions to God and we have the proper perspective with that thing and who God is and we put ourselves in our proper place and we put God in his proper place and we put the situation in its proper place, then what happens is we are given the peace of God that passes all understanding and he guards our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. Prayerful people are able to walk in a peace that no one else can understand. Why? Because that peace is guarded by God. Because they walk in an understanding that God's got this and I don't and it's okay. The people in your life who pray the most are probably the most peaceful. They have the hardest feathers to ruffle. Now some of my friends are the most anxious and the most prayerful. Those things go hand in hand for them. But at least they've learned to reflexively pray. But when we are people of prayer and we're assured of perspective and place, we can't help but feel peace that follows that. I remember very vividly coming to Grace in April of 2017. And when I got here, I made this point before, I will not belabor it. Things were comically bad. We were going to shut the, if they didn't hire a senior pastor in April, they weren't making it out of May, no doubt about it. And no one who was here at that time would argue that. And I remember getting here and finding out more about how dire it was and going, whoa, well, this is career suicide because no one is going to look at the resume of a guy who's been a senior pastor exactly one time and ran it into the ground in six weeks. That's lifelong small group pastor territory. And then when I get old, they make me care pastor. That's what that is. But in prayer, I honestly, like I wasn't nervous. I wasn't worried. I didn't even really care because it was out of my hands. I knew that God loved this place. I knew that God cares about me and he cares about the people who call this place home. And I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is where God wanted me to be. And so I literally thought back in April of 2017, well, God, you brought me here on purpose. I know you did. It was either to grow it or to kill it. Either way, it's what you want. Let's ride. Let's see what happens. Now, we still don't know that he didn't bring me here to kill it, but so far, it's been to grow. So far, he's walked alongside us, and he's shown up again and again. Whenever we sing that song, Evidence, those are the kinds of things I think about. When we put things in their proper perspective, and we put ourselves in our place through prayer, we can be given the peace of God through prayer. And once we are walking in the peace of God through prayer, when we reflexively go to pray, we can pray with the proper perspective. It gives us the right perspective from which to pray. Because if I want to kneel down and pray for my children, John and Lily, I need to first acknowledge, God, you know them better than I'll ever know them. You see their entire future laid out in front of them. I don't know what they're going to do today. Hopefully, shut up, because we have a seven-hour drive. But I don't know what they're going to do today. You know what they're going to do in 30 years. I don't know how to best love their little hearts and souls. You knit them together. You know them intimately. So it inclines me with that admission to say, God, how would you have me pray for my children? God, what should my heart for Lily be? God, how can I best pray for John? And so when we walk in prayer, it inclines us towards his wisdom and we begin to blanket our prayers with this question of what is wise to pray. Not reflexively, what do I want to pray? What do I feel like praying? What do I want most in the moment? But God, because I know that you know this situation, you know me, you know the other people, you know everything happening, you know them intimately, because I that you know way more than I do about all the things what God is wise to pray. And that question begins to mature our prayers. When I pray for Sunday mornings, I never ever pray that the sermon would be good. I've never once prayed that I would do well. I think that's the wrong perspective. I pray and I write it every week to the elders. Every week to the elders I send out, let's all on these days, let's pray for this thing together. And Sunday has never changed. The prayer for Sunday is always, would the service be exactly what God wants it to be? Good, bad, or ugly, would what happens in here be what God wants to happen in here? When I pray for the band, when we have our pre-service meeting at 915, and sometimes I'm asked to pray over that, I always pray, God, would you help us to care about the things that you care about and not care about the things that you don't care about? Which is code speak for, if the host messes up, but it doesn't detract from the spiritual point of the service, who cares? If the basis starts with the wrong note, don't get bent out of shape about it. God doesn't care about it. You shouldn't either. Let's pursue the throne and praise God together. God, help us to care about what you care about and not care about what you don't care about. The more we walk in prayer, the more we keep the perspective in place right, the more peace we experience. And in that peace, we begin to pray wise prayers. God, how can I pray in accordance with your will about this? So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to invite Aaron and the band, Greg, back up. Back up. And instead of me finishing my sermon on prayer in prayer, I'm going to invite you to a time of prayer. I'm pretty certain if you're a thinking person that at some point during this sermon as I've talked about, hey, in this situation do you respond in prayer? Have you offered that up to prayer? Have you been trying to do this prayerlessly or with your own plans? I would be willing to bet that God has brought something to mind for you. That there's something or someone or some things in your life that probably do need some prayer. And maybe you haven't given them the prayer that they need. Maybe there are things you've been praying for very regularly for a long time, but you just want to lift them up again. So I'm going to step off the stage, and I'm going to give us all some time to pray. Lift those things up to God. Your children, your spouse, your loved ones, the family you'll see this Thanksgiving, that career thing that's just been eating at you, the bills that you don't know how you're going to pay, the health issues of you and your loved one that are just driving you nuts. Whatever it might be that God's brought to mind, take a few minutes and pray for that. And as you pray, Aaron's going to sing over us a little bit, and then at some point he'll invite us to stand. And we'll close out singing The Battle Belongs. And we'll let that be our battle cry that reminds us that our very first reaction, our very first reflex, no matter what's happening in our life, should be to go to God in prayer. Let's pray together, silently.
Good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for joining us this November. Whenever I'm supposed to come up without a bumper video, the video that we played between the last song and the sermon is called a bumper video. Whenever I'm supposed to come up during a prayer and there's not a bumper video, I'm always terrified that I'm standing on the stage at the wrong time. There was a time at my old church where I was the host. I had Haley's job. They paid me for it. She does it for free. And I was in the front row, and I thought that the guy gave me the nod. You know, just this is it after this. And I was like, okay. So I come up, and he's standing back looking at me, and he goes, and he just strums the next song and goes, and I literally just walked up and looked at him in horror and then walked off the other side of the stage and sat down over there. And that was a congregation of like 700 people and they were all laughing at me. And I deserved it. That's germane to nothing. I'm just inviting you into the fear that I still fear, feel when I'm standing right here as Aaron is praying. Thank you to Kyle, our student pastor, who stepped in for me last week and did a phenomenal job as he continued on with the series. I appreciate that, man. We are in a series called The Songs We Sing, looking at some of the songs that we sing as a congregation, finding them in Scripture, allowing Scripture to imbue them with a greater meaning for us. And it's been really, really fun to move through this series, hear you guys responding, hear you guys singing, know that these things are connecting and that these songs can have deeper meaning for us. I continue to believe and emphasize that getting together and singing together on a Sunday morning as a body of believers is the most important thing that we do on Sunday mornings together. So I'm glad that we're continuing to do that. This week, we're looking at a song called The Battle Belongs. Next week, I'm preaching on a Christmas song, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, kind of to transition us into the Christmas season. So I'm looking forward to sharing that with you guys next week. But this week, as I said, we're focused on a song called The Battle Belongs. It's one that we've sung around here for a while. You probably know it, but in case you don't, I'm just going to read you the chorus. This will not be on the screen, so you'll just be forced to pay attention to me. But the chorus goes like this. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees with my hands lifted high. Did you guys think I was going to sing this to you? No way. Oh, God, the battle belongs to you. In every fear I lay at your feet, I'll sing through the night. Oh, God, the battle belongs to you. This song comes directly out of, I think, two stories in the Old Testament. Now, as we sing this song, there's songs about you guiding me through the shadow and through the valley. That comes from Psalm 23. There's words about his ways being higher than our ways. That comes from Romans 11, that if God is for us, who can be against us? That comes from Romans 8. So there's different lyrics in the song that come from different places in scripture, but the heart of the song itself comes from two fantastic stories in the Old Testament. Now, if you spent any time at all at Grace, you know that I love my Old Testament. I love my Old Testament stories. It's a really, it tends to be a more entertaining read than the New Testament once you get past Acts, right? So I love the narrative stories of the Old Testament. So if you have a Bible, the one I'm going to focus on primarily today is in 2 Chronicles chapter 20. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you. 2 Chronicles can be hard for some of us to find because maybe we don't have a lot of experience there. It's in the first third of the Bible. There's a lot of pages in 1 and 2 Chronicles, so you're bound to find it if you thumb through a little bit. If you see kings, you're gaining on it. And if you see Ezra or Nehemiah, you've gone too far. All right. So Chronicles chapter 20. And in Chronicles chapter 20, there's a guy who's the king named Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat is the king of Judah. By this point in history, the kingdom has split. After David, we have Solomon. And after Solomon is the king, we have Rehoboam. Rehoboam was a cruddy king. He was a jerk. He was a dummy. And so Jeroboam took the northern kingdoms referred to for the rest of the Old Testament typically as Israel. And Rehoboam kept the southern kingdom typically referred to as Judah. For the rest of the lines of those kings and those stories are told in 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles. The northern tribes of Israel had no good kings. They all did what was right in their own eyes. They all betrayed God. Southern Israel, depending on who you talk to, Judah had between three and five good kings. As I kind of dug into the research, in my opinion, they had three good kings. We're going to talk about two of them this morning. One of them was Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat, 2 Chronicles chapter 20, receives word that the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Ammonites and the Meubites, I don't know how to say the last one, Meubites, were gathering together to attack him. Clearly, they felt like they had seen a weakness and they were ready to exploit it. Now, Judah is not a geopolitical player. They're just trying to carve out their place in the world. They're by no means a superpower. They're not scaring anyone. And so these three tribes assemble against him and decide now's the time we're going to strike. We're going to come in and we're going to conquer Judah. We're going to conquer Jerusalem and overthrow Jehoshaphat. And so word of this planned attack and the three tribes uniting against Jehoshaphat gets back to him., these three tribes have amassed against you. They're coming in to take over. They probably have the advantage. What do you want to do? His very first reaction is he was afraid. After he processes the fact that he's afraid, what should I do? He prays. He prays and he assembles all of Judah. Everyone from the different towns, the different tribes in Judah, come to Jerusalem, fast with me. Implicit in fasting is praying. Pray with me. Let's seek the face of the Lord and what we should do. So that's what they did. All the people of Judah gathered in Jerusalem. And they got on their hands and their knees and they cried out to God and they said, what do we do? God, what do we do here? We're going to be attacked. What should we do? And so they respond in prayer. And God answers them in this way on down the passage, verses 15 through 18. And he said, We say the battle belongs to the Lord. That's where it comes from. It's from the high priest reassuring Jehoshaphat, don't worry about it. Do not be afraid. Do not be dismayed. This battle's not yours anyways. This battle belongs to God. Verse 16. And here's the scene. Jehoshaphat gets word that the Moabites, Ammonites, and the Miites are coming to attack them and overthrow them. He's scared. He prays. He gathers the people of Judah to pray with him. Father, what would you have us do here? At the end of the prayer, the high priest says, the Lord has directed me. And you're supposed to do not be afraid. Do not be dismayed. This is not your battle. This is God's. Go out and align yourself for battle. And the instructions that follow are, lead with the Levites and let them sing worship. Lead with worship and lead with praise. And that's what they did. He fell on his face. He praised God with all the people. And it's important that we understand that worship isn't just singing. Worship can be praying. Worship can be a posture. Worship is living a life of sacrifice. Worship has a large definition. And so he falls on his face. If you're hearing these instructions, he falls on his face with the rest of Judah and they pray to God. And then the next morning they get up. They're not fearful. They go out to the battle lines. They put in front of them the worship pastors, which has to be the worst possible idea, right? Like if we needed to defend grace, would you want Aaron and Greg to do it? Or would you want people with like military experience? I'm just asking the question. I don't think you would want me to do it, but they're not the tops on the list is all I'm saying. But they put the skinny jeans and the beards out in front. This is who we're going to lead with. By the way, all these jokes, none of this is my insight. These are all Aaron's jokes. I'm stealing them. This is a sermon he's done before, this part of it. So I'm authorized to use these things. I mean, just so we're all clear about how tough I am, I raked for like 45 minutes last week. My arm was sore for a day, and I got a blister on one of my fingies, even though I was wearing gloves. All right, so that's what we're dealing with here. But they put the worship leaders out in front, and they praise God. And as they praise God, God incites a riot in the camp of the three different tribes. They conquer each other, and they walk away dismayed. God's army doesn't have to fire a single arrow or throw a single spear. The battle is won because it belongs to the Lord. There's another wonderful example of this, and I believe it's referenced in the chorus when it says, everything I lay at your feet. And I think the most descriptive example of this is in 2 Kings chapter 19. It's a story of Hezekiah. Hezekiah was another one of the good kings of Jerusalem, or yeah, of Jerusalem and of Judah. And what's going on here is that Hezekiah receives word that the king of Assyria, Sennacherib, is sweeping through the Middle East and is storming towards Jerusalem intent on conquering it. And this isn't three random roving tribes that happen to exist around you, Moab and Amman. It's not those places. This is Assyria, the precursor to the Persian empire. This is Sennacherib, a name that strikes fear in everyone that hears it. This is a big deal. And Sennacherib on his way deploys basically propaganda in Jerusalem. It's a letter that he sends that he writes to the people of Jerusalem that says, hey, you're going to want to get out of Dodge because I'm coming to wreck shop. And if you're still there when I get there, you and your family's going to die, just so you know. And someone takes that letter and they hand it to Hezekiah. And this is Hezekiah's response in verse 14. Verse 19. The propaganda letter is brought to King Hezekiah. Hezekiah knows. If Sennacherib wants Jerusalem, he's going to take it. They have as much chance of defending Jerusalem from Sennacherib as my daughter Lily has defending her Reese's peanut butter cups at Halloween from me. I'm going to win that fight. And so what does Hezekiah do? He doesn't do what you think he should do. What he should do is assemble the generals right away. Assemble the quartermaster right away. Assemble the treasurer right away. Whoever's in charge of agriculture, how we're going to feed the people, get them in the room. He needs to assemble the cabinet right away. How do we defend Jerusalem? Someone start boiling some oil. I saw that on Netflix one time. That seems to be a thing you should do when you're defending the city. Get everybody together and let's come up with a plan to repel the Assyrian army. That's what we need to do. That's not what he does. He takes the letter. He goes to the temple. He lays it down at the feet of the Lord, and he prays. And he says, God, this is an affront to you. What would you have us do? His first response is to pray. And similarly to Jehoshaphat, God directs Hezekiah, don't do anything. Don't fire an arrow. Just watch, and I'll win. And the next morning, he incites a riot in the camp of the Assyrians. They rout each other, and they walk back to Assyria licking their wounds. God's armies didn't have to fire an arrow. Because they're good kings, Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah responded in prayer to everything that came their way. And so, of course, when I read these stories and I reflect on them, and I think about these were put here over a thousand years ago for us today. What is it that I should take from them? I think there's myriad applications here. But the biggest one to me is to simply ask, is this what I do? Is this what we do? When I encounter a situation that gives me pause, is my reflexive response to pray? When I'm fearful, like Jehoshaphat was, is my first response to go and pray, or is my first response to go and plan? I don't know about you, but when I'm in a stressful situation, when I feel disappointed or when I feel overwhelmed or when I feel like there's a big task in front of me, the very first thing I do is come up with a plan that I believe in. As soon as I have a plan that I can work, I feel very comforted in life. So the first thing I do in stress is I sit down, I think it through, I make a plan, and then I begin to work the plan. The problem is, prayer didn't precede that plan. It didn't follow that plan. It's just my plan. And I'm not, certainly didn't bring anybody here to make you feel bad about your prayer life. So I'll let you join in judging me about mine. And if it applies to you, fine. But when I read these passages, I can't help but ask myself, how much of my parenthood is prayerless and just reflexive? How much of my marriage and my love for Jen is prayerless and just a representation of my effort? How much of my career? How much of my interactions with others? How many of my important, maybe even difficult conversations? How many small groups in Bible studies have I led prayerlessly just going into them on my own? Is it my reflex in times of stress, in times of trepidation, in times of challenge, in times of fear, in times of uncertainty? Is my reflex to pray or is it to plan? Is it to seek the face of the Lord? Or is it to call a friend? How much in your life, this is where I'll put it on you, how much in your life, in your coming and in your going, as you enter into situations, as you face new situations, when you get phone calls, as you respond, how much in your life do you stop and you pause and you lay down at the foot of God and you say, God, I need you here. I'm not big enough for this. How much of that do you do and how much of it do you just take on yourself and charge right ahead without ever once stopping to pause and pray? I've joked often, and I will do it one day, that one day I'm going to give a sermon on reading the Bible. And I'm going to come out. I'm going to say, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. You should read your Bible more. Let's pray. I'm going to do that one day. Because I genuinely think that when I come out here and I tell a group full of Christians who in your heart love and seek out God's word, when I say, hey guys, we should read the Bible more often, that the Holy Spirit can take it from there. He doesn't need me to talk for 29 and a half more minutes to make that an effective message. I'm probably just going to mess it up. That's enough for the Holy Spirit to go and work. And similarly, this morning is simply that. Hey guys, pray more. Pray more reflexively. Pray more regularly. And grain it into yourselves. Let the Holy Spirit work it into your psyche. Pray more. Because here's what happens when we pray more. I was reflecting as I was preparing. If we can be more like Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah, if we can be people who respond in prayer and not panic or plans, what can happen for us? Because remember, everything that God tells us to do, he tells us to do because it's best for us. So why is it best for us to stop at every moment, every day, and pray multiple times a day? Why is it better for us to pray and consider more? Here's what I think. Prayer provides perspective, place, peace, and priorities. Prayer provides perspective, place, peace, and priorities. Not for nothing. That's the greatest alliterative sentence I've ever written in my life. I'm going to graduate now as a pastor. I've reached the mountaintop, I think. Prayer provides us with perspective. It puts things in their proper focus. I have a son, John, he's two and a half, and he's in that season where every time we go up the stairs, it's an adventure, right? And you always ask him when you're about to go up the stairs, you don't want to upset his delicate sensibilities. Johnny, do you want to hold my hand? You want to do it yourself? And he usually says, I do it myself. Okay. And so he uses the wall and the railings and different things, and he takes the steps one at a time. And I'm right behind him. If he falls, I'm going to catch him. It's going to be okay. But he likes to say, I do it myself. And then I let him do it himself. Listen, every time we go into a situation or circumstance or a scenario, and we do it prayerlessly, what we've just done is we've looked at God and we've said, I do it myself. Do you need help with your career? No, I got this. I'll do it myself. Do you need help in your marriage? No, I got this. I'll do it myself. I can hold your hand. I can guide you through this. I can show you the way. No, it's good. I'll do it myself. This big goal in your life, I'll do it myself. Reconciling a relationship, I'll do it myself. Raising your children, I'll do it myself. Every time we enter into anything prayerlessly, we are saying to God, I'll do it myself. Thanks. When we don't pray, we make ourselves too big and God too small. When we don't pray, when we don't pray about whatever it is, about a health issue, about a relationship, about a career, about parenthood, about our marriage, about trying to transition into being adult parents of adult kids, and that relationship is different, and I don't really know what to do with my hands anymore. I just need to know I need to give them some space. When we approach that prayerlessly, we make God too big and ourselves too small. We forget who we are and who he is. But I want us to actually acknowledge and admit that that any time we approach anything, whether it's just a small sales meeting, a regular business meeting in our place of work, a board meeting or an elder meeting, when we approach a small group, when we approach a delicate conversation with our spouse or with our kids, when we sit at our desk or wherever it is we sit on Monday morning and think about the week ahead, when we do any of those things prayerlessly, we make ourselves far too big and God far too small. And we say to him, I've got this. I'll do it myself. God in his goodness climbs those stairs right behind us, but he's willing to hold our hand and walk us up there if we'll reach for him in prayer. So not only does prayer give us perspective, but prayer puts everything in its proper place, right? Because when we pray, here's what we admit, whether we consciously acknowledge this or not. God is in charge. I am not. This situation is in his hands. When we pray, that's what we acknowledge. God's in charge. I am not. This situation is in his hands. God's the creator of the universe. I'm not the creator of the universe. He's in charge. I am not. And this situation is in his hands and better off for it. When I think about this, that prayer puts us in our proper place, I'm reminded of Genesis 1. Genesis 1.1. God created the heavens and the earth. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And I love to ask the question, why does the Bible begin that way? I don't think it just begins that way because that's where the story begins. I think it begins that way because it sets up the fundamental relationship throughout all of Bible and all of life. God is the creator. We are the creation. This is it. All sin in our life is getting confused about that relationship. That's all it is. God is the Lord. I am not. God is the creator. I am the created. All sin in our life is when we choose to ignore that and say, no, no, no, I'm more important than him. That's it. And so what prayer does is put us in our proper place. What prayer does for us in a humble, quiet way is what God had to do for Job in a bombastic way in Job chapter 38. When Job's tired of life, he's tired of suffering and goes to God and he's like, hey man, you owe me some answers. And so in Job 38 and on, God gives Job those answers, but they're not the ones he wants. He says, Job, you've forgotten your place, pal. You don't know who you are and who I am. You've forgotten. And then Paul reiterates this in Romans 11, when he says, who can understand the mind of God? His ways are higher than our ways. And so when we humble ourselves in prayer, particularly when we bow on our knees if we can, it puts everything in its proper place. You are God. I am not. You're in charge. I'm reliant on you. The situation is bigger than me. It is not bigger than you. I know that you know my kids better than I could ever know them. I know you love them more than I could ever love them. So I'm trusting them with you. Tell me what my part is and I'll do it. Often your part is to hang back and sing worship music and let God do the dirty work. I know that you know my wife better than I'll ever know her and that you love her more than I can ever love her. So can you just show me what my part is in loving her? Can you just help me with that? God, I know that my career, for whatever reason, is important to you. I don't know why it's important to you. I don't know what the end game of it is. I don't know what you would have me to learn or gain there, but I know that it matters to you where I work, who I work for, and how I carry myself in the workplace. I know that matters to you, God. So I'm going to trust you with it and walk in the steps that you would lay out for me. When we pray, it gives us the proper perspective and it puts everything in its proper place. And then, when everything's in its proper place, prayer gives us peace. It offers us peace. I love that in worship, sometimes the Holy Spirit does things like this. In worship, Aaron referenced Philippians 4, 8. Finally, brothers, whatsoever things are true, noble, of good report, honorable, godly, trustworthy, think upon these things. And he was right. That verse is preceded by two verses that tell us what we should do in times of worry. Philippians 4, 6, and 7. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, through prayer and supplication, 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. So Paul writes in Philippians, don't be anxious for anything, which for most dudes, it's like, okay. And for most women, it's like, what are you talking about? Like, I'm anxious about you saying that. Be anxious for nothing. But in everything, through prayer and petition and with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And what will happen when in everything we present our request to God, when in everything we pray, when in every circumstance we reflectively fall on our feet and say, God, what would you have us do? What happens when for everything we present our petitions to God and we have the proper perspective with that thing and who God is and we put ourselves in our proper place and we put God in his proper place and we put the situation in its proper place, then what happens is we are given the peace of God that passes all understanding and he guards our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. Prayerful people are able to walk in a peace that no one else can understand. Why? Because that peace is guarded by God. Because they walk in an understanding that God's got this and I don't and it's okay. The people in your life who pray the most are probably the most peaceful. They have the hardest feathers to ruffle. Now some of my friends are the most anxious and the most prayerful. Those things go hand in hand for them. But at least they've learned to reflexively pray. But when we are people of prayer and we're assured of perspective and place, we can't help but feel peace that follows that. I remember very vividly coming to Grace in April of 2017. And when I got here, I made this point before, I will not belabor it. Things were comically bad. We were going to shut the, if they didn't hire a senior pastor in April, they weren't making it out of May, no doubt about it. And no one who was here at that time would argue that. And I remember getting here and finding out more about how dire it was and going, whoa, well, this is career suicide because no one is going to look at the resume of a guy who's been a senior pastor exactly one time and ran it into the ground in six weeks. That's lifelong small group pastor territory. And then when I get old, they make me care pastor. That's what that is. But in prayer, I honestly, like I wasn't nervous. I wasn't worried. I didn't even really care because it was out of my hands. I knew that God loved this place. I knew that God cares about me and he cares about the people who call this place home. And I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is where God wanted me to be. And so I literally thought back in April of 2017, well, God, you brought me here on purpose. I know you did. It was either to grow it or to kill it. Either way, it's what you want. Let's ride. Let's see what happens. Now, we still don't know that he didn't bring me here to kill it, but so far, it's been to grow. So far, he's walked alongside us, and he's shown up again and again. Whenever we sing that song, Evidence, those are the kinds of things I think about. When we put things in their proper perspective, and we put ourselves in our place through prayer, we can be given the peace of God through prayer. And once we are walking in the peace of God through prayer, when we reflexively go to pray, we can pray with the proper perspective. It gives us the right perspective from which to pray. Because if I want to kneel down and pray for my children, John and Lily, I need to first acknowledge, God, you know them better than I'll ever know them. You see their entire future laid out in front of them. I don't know what they're going to do today. Hopefully, shut up, because we have a seven-hour drive. But I don't know what they're going to do today. You know what they're going to do in 30 years. I don't know how to best love their little hearts and souls. You knit them together. You know them intimately. So it inclines me with that admission to say, God, how would you have me pray for my children? God, what should my heart for Lily be? God, how can I best pray for John? And so when we walk in prayer, it inclines us towards his wisdom and we begin to blanket our prayers with this question of what is wise to pray. Not reflexively, what do I want to pray? What do I feel like praying? What do I want most in the moment? But God, because I know that you know this situation, you know me, you know the other people, you know everything happening, you know them intimately, because I that you know way more than I do about all the things what God is wise to pray. And that question begins to mature our prayers. When I pray for Sunday mornings, I never ever pray that the sermon would be good. I've never once prayed that I would do well. I think that's the wrong perspective. I pray and I write it every week to the elders. Every week to the elders I send out, let's all on these days, let's pray for this thing together. And Sunday has never changed. The prayer for Sunday is always, would the service be exactly what God wants it to be? Good, bad, or ugly, would what happens in here be what God wants to happen in here? When I pray for the band, when we have our pre-service meeting at 915, and sometimes I'm asked to pray over that, I always pray, God, would you help us to care about the things that you care about and not care about the things that you don't care about? Which is code speak for, if the host messes up, but it doesn't detract from the spiritual point of the service, who cares? If the basis starts with the wrong note, don't get bent out of shape about it. God doesn't care about it. You shouldn't either. Let's pursue the throne and praise God together. God, help us to care about what you care about and not care about what you don't care about. The more we walk in prayer, the more we keep the perspective in place right, the more peace we experience. And in that peace, we begin to pray wise prayers. God, how can I pray in accordance with your will about this? So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to invite Aaron and the band, Greg, back up. Back up. And instead of me finishing my sermon on prayer in prayer, I'm going to invite you to a time of prayer. I'm pretty certain if you're a thinking person that at some point during this sermon as I've talked about, hey, in this situation do you respond in prayer? Have you offered that up to prayer? Have you been trying to do this prayerlessly or with your own plans? I would be willing to bet that God has brought something to mind for you. That there's something or someone or some things in your life that probably do need some prayer. And maybe you haven't given them the prayer that they need. Maybe there are things you've been praying for very regularly for a long time, but you just want to lift them up again. So I'm going to step off the stage, and I'm going to give us all some time to pray. Lift those things up to God. Your children, your spouse, your loved ones, the family you'll see this Thanksgiving, that career thing that's just been eating at you, the bills that you don't know how you're going to pay, the health issues of you and your loved one that are just driving you nuts. Whatever it might be that God's brought to mind, take a few minutes and pray for that. And as you pray, Aaron's going to sing over us a little bit, and then at some point he'll invite us to stand. And we'll close out singing The Battle Belongs. And we'll let that be our battle cry that reminds us that our very first reaction, our very first reflex, no matter what's happening in our life, should be to go to God in prayer. Let's pray together, silently.
