27

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Something that many of you know about me, but not everyone knows about me, is that I am saddled with being a Georgia Tech fan, which today doesn't feel like such a burden. I wanted to come up on stage to the fight song, but Jen told me that I couldn't because it says hell in it, and we're not allowed to say that at church unless we're actually talking about hell, then we can't. But anyways, for what it's worth, Go Jackets, I know that our demise is soon, and I'm squeezing all the juice out of this lemon that I possibly can. This is the last part in our series called 27, where we have been moving through the books of the New Testament. And it's our last, really, Sunday of the summer. So thank you for being a part of the summer. Thank you for being here now. Next week, as Michelle mentioned in the announcements, we've got Facelift Sunday, where we're just kind of touching things up and getting things ready for September. To me, in my mind, our ministry year runs from September to summer extreme in the second year of June. We push pretty hard during those months. And so to kick that off, we just want to get the church up and ready to go. And we're expecting visitors, so we want to get our house ready. So if you're in town next week and you'd like to participate in that, we'd love for you to do that. Just a quick note, if you're newer to Gray, so you don't feel very plugged in yet, things like that are a great way to get to know some folks. So I hope that you'll consider being a part of that. I had not wanted to do 1st and 2nd Corinthians together because I think these books often get short shrifted. They often get, they're misunderstood. They're not deeply appreciated enough because they're part of Paul's letters. And I think in our heads, those of us that know the Bible, we, some of us don't have any opinions at all on first and second Corinthians, but I think for those of us who are kind of familiar with the Bible, we can sometimes equate these books to like, like, like a shorter one, like Philippians or like an Ephesians or Galatians, like just something short and quick that makes a couple of points and we're good to study it. But that's really not the case with the books of 1 and 2 Corinthians. They're long books. They're more like Romans than they are like Ephesians. There's a lot of depth there. And so I had not wanted to do them both in one Sunday, but the schedule demanded that I did. And so I'm not going to do justice to them. But I do think that this morning, what I can give you is a good overview of 1 Corinthians and how it relates so much to us today in the questions and the problems facing our church. Because let's be honest, to be a church in 2024 is fraught with problems and questions, right? Being church, doing church, doing church well, doing church right, existing as a church is a challenge in 2024. What I want to assert this morning is, as a church, we face questions of divisions, standards, policies, and beliefs. As a church in 2024, we face questions of division, things that would seek to divide us, things of standards, personal standards for holiness, of policies, how should we carry out things in the gathering and how should we interact interpersonally, and in our beliefs, what's important to believe, where can we disagree. We face questions of that nature in our church today and have for years. When I say questions of division, I just mean things that would seek to kind of sneak into God's body and God's family and divide it against itself. Because we understand that we are unified in Christ, but that unification is threatened from within and from without constantly. I probably shouldn't tell you this story. I know that if I had asked Jen, hey, I think I'm going to tell a story. I know she would say, please don't do that. Um, so this John was up most of the night. So Jen, Jen, Jen, uh, is home with them. If your husband preached every week, you wouldn't keep up online either. Okay. So she's not going to watch this. All right. So we don't, she doesn't have to know what I'm about to say. All right. And, uh, and, and please don't mention this to Lily because she is embarrassed by this. It was something that happened this week that in some ways is objectively funny. At our house, me personally, I'm just very interested in politics. I'm pretty politically in tune. I consume a lot of news. And so it's something that from time to time is on the television in our house, and that'll cause Lily to ask questions about the different candidates in the election and things like that. And I'm very careful. Jen doesn't have to be very careful with this. I do. I'm very careful around, especially around Lily to never, ever talk down about any of the candidates running for any office or either of the political parties or people who vote for those parties. I'm very, very careful to always try to be as positive as I can and uplifting as I can, because by the way, this is just an aside. This is not part of the sermon. I'm just saying this in general. This is my opinion as a pastor that when we participate in the world's degradation of the opposing team, all we do is act like the world and model nothing that looks like Christianity to the people around us. Okay. So we talk about it sometimes, but I'm very careful to be aboveboard I don't because I don't want her parenting something clumsy and thoughtless to her classmates or to one of your kids over there or to one of you Okay, so I'm careful apparently the other parents that send their kids to Lily's school are not as careful. And so, at their desk or at lunch or something this week, the little girl that was sitting across from Lily said, Kamala Harris is stupid. Great. I don't know what Lily said. I do know that Lily has told me that if she could vote, she would vote for Kamala because Kamala's a girl and she's a girl. Fine. Fine. Don't care. You're eight. That'll get, needs to be more nuanced than that when you're 18, but that's, you're eight. So I don't know what she said, but apparently she defended Mrs. Harris. And that little girl, upon Lilly's defense of Kamala, upon Lilly's defense of Kamala, went and told all the classmates that Lilly is a Democrat. And I know, it's particularly funny because I also grew up in a private Christian school where the word Democrat was a cuss word. And so like that got around, news got around the third grade and now Lilly is labeled, man. And it's funny. It's funny. But the more I thought about it, I thought I need to write an email. And I did. I wrote an email to the teacher and the administrator. And I was very kind in my email. I did not fault anyone for anything. As a matter of fact, the next day, Jen saw the principal in the car line. And the principal came over and told her how much she appreciated the email and tone up and whatever. So I was very nice. All right, don't worry. But what I said is, hey, maybe this year in particular, it would be good to have a policy in the classrooms that we don't talk about, we don't have political discussions that are not moderated by a teacher or a faculty member. Because maybe these kids don't need to be just parroting their parents' views back and forth to each other. And the reason is, the reason is, and here's why I was concerned. I said it would be a shame if we allowed the division of the world to slither into God's family of faith that is unified in Christ and allowed that division to begin to tear apart our unity in such a way that kids are isolated and mocked. If that's happening in the third grade at NRCA, it's happening everywhere. It's happening everywhere where the enemy is trying to sneak in and divide and sow discord and make us forget that we are unified in Christ first. So we face questions of division. We face questions of standards all the time. Should I drink this? Can I have one more? Is that bad? Is it bad to watch this thing? Is it bad to go to this place? It's a question that the church has asked through the centuries. Every generation of Christian has asked this question, is blank a sin? Is it okay to do this? Is it okay to go there? Is it okay to see this? Is it okay to stay there? We are always constantly asking, is this a sin? And when we're asking that, what we're really asking is, what should a Christian's standard of holiness be? That's what we're asking. So we face questions of standards of holiness, and we have throughout the generations. We face questions of policies. What should I do when I'm around other people? How should I handle myself? What kind of rules should we have in the church? Who's allowed to serve here and serve there? And when just this week I had what is essentially a policy conversation with someone when they said, hey, I don't have any problems with it, but I'm just wondering how did the church decide to do communion once a month? Why don't we do it more or less? And so we talked about that. That's a policy conversation. How do we make this decision about this thing? And then we face questions of belief. Just in the spring, I preached a sermon about unity in Christ, and that being Christ's prayer for us in John 17, the high priestly prayer. And I talked about the things that threaten that unity. And I talked about how Jesus, that was the primary thing that he wanted for us is, is that we would be unified. And I said that we cannot be unified if we insist on a homogeny of doctrinal thought, if we have to believe all the same things about all the same things, right? And so what we said is there's secondary and tertiary issues. And on those things, we don't have to agree to be in fellowship together, but there are primary issues on which we do need to agree if we're going to exist in fellowship together and move forward as a body of Christ. And so when we say that we have questions of belief, really it's okay, that's great. What are the primary issues? What are the non-negotiables? What do we absolutely have to believe and what are the things about which we can disagree and have conversations? So we have questions of belief. These same questions are the same questions that was facing the church in Corinth. They're the questions that Paul actually writes the letter to specifically address. Paul writes the letter to Corinth because he had heard some stuff was going on there. Paul spent about a year and a half in Corinth planting this church. That's more time, to my knowledge, than he spends anywhere else. For him to spend a year and a half during this season of his life in one place planting one church is a big deal. It was a lot of work and it was hard work. And so this church is near and dear to his heart. And as he goes and he's going around Asia Minor planting the other churches, he starts hearing that there's some stuff going on in Corinthians, in the church in Corinth. And so he writes this very long letter, this 15-chapter letter of 1 Corinthians back to the church in Corinth and says, hey, I've heard this stuff is going on. I heard that you're facing some questions. Let me tell you how I want you to address those things. And what I want us to see is that the answer to each question in the church in Corinth is the gospel. The answer to each question facing the church in Corinth is the gospel. No matter what they're dealing with, he takes their collective attention and he focuses it on the gospel. The first thing he does, the first thing he does is in chapters one through four, you can kind of break it out this way. In chapters one through four, they are facing questions of division. What had happened is after Paul left, other apostles came around and preached in Corinth. Peter came and preached. Apollos came and preached. And what he finds out is there is disunity amongst the body of the church in Corinth around which apostle they prefer. Some prefer Apollos. Apollos was an eloquent speaker. Paul was not a very good speaker. They said, Paul writes a heck of a letter, but his sermons aren't very good. And so they were arguing over who their favorite pastor was, is what they were doing, which is a very human thing to do. It's been happening since the church started. And so now we still do that. We go to this church because we like this pastor, that church because we like that pastor. And honestly, I think all of that is really silly. Whenever I'm talking to anybody who's looking for a church, I always tell them people vastly overemphasize the importance of the senior pastor. You can download the best sermons in the world every Wednesday. You cannot download worship and you cannot download community. So if the sermons are passable, but it feels like your people go there, which is really all we're going for here. They were choosing their favorite pastor and Paul writes back and he points them to the gospel. He says, Hey, that's not what you need to do. And so one of the reasons he points to the gospel is that, and what I want you to see is that we are unified by the gospel. Paul goes, you don't need to be doing this. You don't need to be having these divisions. We are unified in the gospel. I have these verses notated in your notes. So you see the references there, but I'm not going to pull them, put them up on the screen because we'd just be looking up and down for the next 10 minutes. But this is how Paul answers that question of division in 1 Corinthians 4, verse 1. He writes this, This, then, is how you ought to regard us, as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed. So this is what he says. You prefer Apollos. You prefer Peter. You say you prefer me. You prefer this pastor or that pastor. Nobody cares. All of us. Me, Peter, Apollos, and anyone else that you might prefer. We are children of God. We are tools in the hands of the creator. We are instruments to bring you to him. We do not care who you follow. We do not care who you listen to. We care that you grow closer to Jesus. That's what we care about. I had an honest conversation with a pastor friend of mine this week who was meeting with someone who was, that person was trying to decide whether or not they wanted to come to his church, and so they wanted to meet with him. And when you do that, it's in some ways like a job interview. I'm visiting around, I'm interviewing different candidates for the role of being my pastor, and I'd like to see if you are going to fit the bill. Every now and again, you get into those, and my buddy said, I wish I could just tell him, come to Journey or don't. I know you're going to land somewhere. We'd love to have you, but I'm too exhausted to try to figure out what you want me to say. That's what Paul is saying. Listen to whomever you want to listen to. We are tools in the hands of our maker. It is our job to point you to Christ. It is not our job to be your favorite. And I'll tell you who does this really well week in and week out is Aaron, our worship pastor. Week in and week out as we worship, there are times, there are moments when he backs away and he lets you sing. And he doesn't put his voice over top of ours. He does this when he could belt it, when he could do solos, when he could carry on, when he could use this as an opportunity to show off and to show out and to show how talented he is. He backs up and he gets small because he understands that Sunday morning, his opportunity to lead worship is not about impressing you with his voice. It's about compelling you to raise your voice. And so he backs away because it's his job to bring you to Jesus. It's not his job to get in the way and impress you with what he does. This is what Paul says here. So he says, listen, it doesn't matter which pastor you prefer. We are all servants of Christ. So he takes the gospel and he puts that front and center and he says, think about who you follow in light of the gospel. And just so we're clear, when I say the gospel, because that's what we're talking about a lot this morning, the way that we define the gospel of grace, the way that I say it when I say it, is that to be a Christian is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, believe that he did what he said he did, and believe that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. He's the son of God. He died and he rose again on the third day and he ascended into heaven and one day he's going to come back and he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. And he's going to take his family where we belong. That's what we believe. That's, that's the gospel. It's the, it's the, it's the miraculous work and reality of Jesus Christ. And so to the questions of division and disunity, Jesus take, or Paul takes our attention and he focuses it squarely on the gospel. You need the gospel to fix this situation. So that was the first time. That's divisions. Next is the standards of holiness. He heard that there was an issue going on in the church in Corinth. It's one of the more salacious passages in all the Bible where it comes to Paul's, it occurs to him, it came to his knowledge that there was a man in the church who was being intimate with his mother-in-law. And everybody just kind of knew that this was happening and nobody was correcting it. And he was just still in the back, shaking hands, collecting money every week, working as an usher. They were just cool with it. And Paul has to go, Hey, Hey, I know that you live in a city that has these standards of sexual purity that are incredibly low and that this doesn't seem like it's a big deal, but it's a big deal. You can't do that. You need to tell him that he can't do that. And so in questions of holiness, what we see is that we are compelled by the gospel. We are compelled towards holiness by the gospel. And here's what I mean. In chapter 6, verses 19 and 20, Paul says this, Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own. You were bought with a price. Therefore, honor God with your bodies. Paul says, I've heard that this sexual immorality, this impurity is going on in the church. We need to knock it off. And here's why we need to knock it off. Because your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. It was bought with a price. It is not your own. And I want to pause and talk about what that verse means a little bit, because I think it's important. The temple in the Old Testament was the place of sacrifice and worship. You went there to worship your God. You went there to make sacrifices to your God. And so in the New Testament, when it says the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, that means that once you are a Christian, the Holy Spirit dwells in you. You are the primary dwelling place of the Spirit. And as such, it is your job to make sure that there is nothing that happens with your body that prevents you from worshiping and prevents you from living as a living sacrifice. Does that make sense? Your body is the primary vessel through which we worship and we sacrifice. And so what that verse means is that body no longer belongs to you. You can't do whatever you want to with it. You can't sully it however you want to. Wherever you go, you take the Holy Spirit. Whatever you watch, the Holy Spirit watches with you. When we do things that harm ourselves, we grieve the Spirit. We grieve Christ. Your bodies are bought with a price. That price is the gospel. It's the death of Christ. Reminds you that he did what he said he did. That he died for those sins. And now you belong to him. So you cannot use your bodies as recreational vehicles. They are the temples of the Holy Spirit. And so what Paul does in an issue of immorality and a lack of holiness, poor standards, is he takes the attention of the church and he focuses it on the cross, on the gospel, and he says, in light of the gospel, you cannot go on like that. I don't know what your standards are for your personal holiness. I don't know what you allow in your life and in your private thoughts. But I'd be willing to bet that most of us, if not all of us, could step it up a little bit in our standards of personal holiness. I bet all of us are kind of letting a bit too much hang out. We need to tighten it up a little bit and our standards of personal holiness I bet I bet all of us are kind of letting a bit too much hang out when you tighten it up when we do that it's hard you guys have taken steps towards holding this before you've set new standards for yourself before you've said I'm not gonna do this I am gonna do this I'm not gonna think this I am gonna think this you, and then you've fallen short. Pursuing holiness is hard. And so what is it that gets us up and gets us focused and gets us willing to continue to pursue that holiness? By focusing ourselves on the gospel. By being overwhelmed with our gratitude for Christ that he died to save our sins. That he's fought that battle and he's already won that battle. Belting that song out loudly, reminding ourselves that Jesus has won this. We remind ourselves of the gospel and out of gratitude for the gospel, we pursue holiness. Then in chapters 8 through 14, Paul gets into some discourse. There's some different questions of policies happening. What should we do about this? What should our standards be about this? There's one about interpersonal relationships. There's one about standards of the church and of the gathering. The interpersonal relationship one is interesting because a portion of the congregation was made up of Jewish people. The rest of the congregation was made up of Gentiles. Well, Jews famously have much more restricting dietary laws and standards than Gentiles do. So the question came up in the church, what are we allowed to eat? Can we have bacon? And the Gentiles said, God's made everything. Everything's fine. We can eat it. And the Jews said, yeah, but that's still deeply offensive. Maybe not around us. And then other Jews said, no, no, no. You need to follow. You need to adopt our standards for holiness. You need to adopt our policies. And to this, Paul infuses this idea. He says, hey, listen. You need to act in ways where you love the other person more than yourself. And in this way, we are pointed to love by the gospel. When he answers this question with the gospel, we are pointed to love by the gospel. Here's what I mean in 1 Corinthians 9, 22. To the weak, I became weak to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel that I may share in its blessings. So Paul's going through this long diatribe. And he says, listen, those of you who say God made everything, I can eat everything, it's holy and blessed in his name, you're right. Bon appetit, live it up. But when you're around someone who will be offended or misled by your consumption of that thing, love them more than you love your freedom. Love them more than you love eating that thing. Love them more than you love yourself. Be all things to all people so that by all means you might win one. I've said many times from this stage, what is the only reason that the very second we are saved and accept Christ as our Savior and in God's family, what is the only reason that the very second we receive salvation, God doesn't immediately take us up to heaven so that we can be with him for all of eternity? The only reason you and I are still here on this side of Christendom and not yet in eternity is so that on our way to Jesus, we can bring as many people as we possibly can with us. It's the only reason we exist is to take people to the throne with us. And so what Paul is saying is, if your freedoms, if what you allow yourself, if your standards of holiness that you're fine with before the spirit, they don't prohibit your temple from being a place of worship and a place of sacrifice. If those standards, when you are around others, cause other people to stumble, cause other people to have issues in their hearts, to think of you as someone who is a sinner and possibly a hypocrite, then you need to raise your standards to their standards. If they're weak in their faith and this thing causes them to struggle, then you be weak with them. Love others to the idea of policies. How do we interact interpersonally with one another? Paul says, love other people more than you love yourself and more than you love your freedom. Love them as Jesus did, and he points this to the gospel. He also does it corporately because their worship was a little bit disheveled. They were having issues in their worship where people were talking over one another. I don't think just one person would get up and preach. You guys all know the drill. You come in, you sit down, you sing. Then you stand up, you sing, you sit down. Nate's going to talk for a while. It's rude to talk. I'm not going to talk while Nate's talking. No matter how bad or boring it gets, we just sit here and endure until we can go to lunch. Then we sing and we go home. They didn't have that order. They didn't know that. And so they had the gifts of tongues and people are standing up speaking in other languages or unidentifiable languages. They're teaching over one another. They're having faith movements and moments over one another, and it was very disordered. And so Paul, to address this problem of policy, what's our policy around the gathering? He says, listen, everybody has their part to play. This is famous chapter of 1 Corinthians 12 when he talks about the gifts of the Spirit and the body of Christ. Everybody has their parts to play. Everybody has their things to do. The body is made up of many parts and without those parts, the body cannot function. We just need to know our role and stay in our lane and do what we've been asked to do. And so he talks about order within the body. And then he caps off everything. He talks about the spiritual gifts and what they're for and how they should be used. And he caps off everything with this wonderful, wonderful discourse on love. And he says this in chapter 13, 13. And now these three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. Everything that happens on Sunday, everything that happens in the body, all the things that you experience, all the gifts, all the roles, all the things, it all boils down to these three things, faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these, the greatest of these virtues is love. And what is the single greatest act of love in the history of history? Christ's sacrifice on the cross. He again, to the question of policies, points us to the gospel. Love other people more than you love yourself. And then finally, in chapter 15, there's a question of beliefs. There was a group of people within the church who did not believe that the resurrection was a real thing. They thought it was a fable, that Jesus didn't really rise from the dead, that people made it up and now they're evangelizing that truth, but that's not true, that Jesus didn't really rise from the dead. And Paul writes and addresses that. And he says, listen, listen, that can't be right because if that's true and the resurrection's not real and it didn't happen, then we may as well just be a glee club. We're totally wasting our time. And that's true. If we don't celebrate Easter every year, if Easter's not a real thing that acknowledges a real event that happened in real history, then we're wasting our time. And we should find something else to do on Sunday mornings. And that's what he told them. He said, no, the resurrection is a non-negotiable. It is a non-negotiable of our faith. We Jesus has already secured our future. Because Jesus is going to do what he says he's going to do. And he's going to come crashing down through the clouds with righteous and true written on his thigh. And he's going to rescue his bride, the church back up to heaven. He's going to do that. And that's impossible without the resurrection. So when we talk about these questions of what do we believe, what are the primary and secondary and tertiary issues? On what things are we allowed to disagree? Paul points them and us to the gospel. He says, here are the primary issues that you must agree upon in the church. That Jesus is who he says he is. He's the son of God. And because of the way he frames it up, we know that Jesus is the son of God. And when I say Son of God, I mean the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, creator God. John tells us at the beginning of his gospel that Jesus was the Word. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God. Through him all things were made. Without him nothing is made. In the first three verses of the Bible, we see that the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, is hovering over the surface of the deep, and we see the words of God come in the form of Christ to bring about creation. So when I say Jesus is who he says he is, that's what I'm talking about, the Son of the Triune God. He did what he said he did. He came, he lived a perfect life, he died a perfect death, he rose again on the third day after offering propitiation for our sins. And he ascended into heaven where he exists and he waits until one day he's going to come back down to get us. Those are the fundamentals of the Christian faith. Every mainline Protestant church, every Catholic church agrees with those fundamentals of the Christian faith. They are the absolute non-negotiables. So when we talk about beliefs in our modern day church, what do we believe about this or about that? Here's what we believe. We believe in the gospel. We believe in the person and the work of Jesus Christ. That's what we believe. That's what we're centered on. That's what we're focused on. And it's true that every Sunday morning should bring your focus back to this. It's true that every time we read the Bible, our focus should be taken at some point or another to Christ. It's true that that is the central figure and moment and belief of the Christian life and of the Christian faith. And I love the consistency of Paul in all of these questions, all of the issues facing the ancient church, all of the issues facing the modern church. What do we do about this? How do we fix this? Here's an issue that's happening in our church or in our life. What's the answer? Jesus. Where do we look? The cross. What do we remind ourselves of? The gospel and the miraculous work that is. And I love that this is really the point of the letter to the church in 1 Corinthians. The point is to point them towards the gospel. And I love that we're ending our series on the New Testament with this message. Because the whole point of the New Testament is to point us towards the gospel. Really the whole point of the Bible is to point us towards the gospel. And what is true is that just like they were then, we are still unified, compelled, engendered, and reminded by the same marvelous, miraculous, and mysterious gospel today. The same truths to which Paul pointed the collective attention of the church in Corinth. He grabs our head and he points us towards those truths today. We are still walking in light of this beautiful gospel. And as we wrap up today, just a little touch on 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians really is a letter that shows the church what happens when they do and they do not live in light of the gospel. And one of the beautiful things that happens when we live our lives in light of the gospel, when we solve our problems in light and in view of the gospel, is this thing that Paul writes about in 2 Corinthians, I believe it's chapter 5, where he says, and I love this verse. He says, for we are led in triumphal procession by Christ, and through us, listen to this phrase, and through us is spread the fragrance of the knowledge of God. It's this idea that Jesus is a triumphant conqueror of us and of our souls, and he leads us through this life in procession behind him. And without our even saying a word, through us passively spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. That the people who interact with us in our life are somehow drawn closer, more nearly to Jesus because of our simple presence, because of the fragrance of the knowledge of God that our life and our love emits. Do you know how you live life emitting the fragrance of the knowledge of God? You view all questions and all problems and all your days and all reality through the lens of the gospel. And we live out of gratitude for the gospel. So I'm going to pray. And then Michelle's going to come up and lead us in communion as we continue to celebrate this miraculous gospel in our lives. Father, thank you for who you are. Thank you for how you've loved us. God, thank you for the gospel, for the truth of it. Thank you for sending your son to die for us, for being willing to watch him die. God, I pray that in every situation, in every moment, in every predicament, that we would ask how the gospel informs what our response or behavior or prayer should be. Help us live in light of that and fueled by gratitude for that incredible miracle. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making grace a part of your Sunday morning. I just want to say up front, if I seem a little bit off my game this morning, it's because Greg and Liz Roberg took my seats, and I was very thrown off having to sit right there. I really don't know what to do with myself. Do not appreciate this at all. This is going to be a difficult Sunday, but we're going to get through it together. We are continuing our series called 27 from last summer and this summer, where we're moving through the 27 books of the New Testament. Next week, we will tackle 1st and 2nd Corinthians. I will not do them justice. I didn't want to do them together, but it's just the way the timing worked out. This week, we're going to focus on the book of Philemon, which handles this idea of talking a slave owner out of punishing a runaway slave. So it's super just easy content. I hope you brought your guests this morning. This is the perfect sermon for that. But as we approach Philemon together, I kind of wanted to frame it up like this. Can you think of a time in your life when you felt compelled to attempt to alter the thinking or the behavior of someone else? Typically in those situations, it's someone that we care about or someone that we interact with regularly. But can you think of a time in your life when you felt compelled to attempt to alter the thinking or the behavior of someone else in your life? Really, the question is, can you think of a time when you felt compelled to confront someone and you needed to have a hard conversation? You needed to try to convince them, hey, what you're doing is not good. You need to do this, not that. You need to think this way, not that way. Now, we do this in our house every day because we have a three-year-old and every day we sit down and we try to have lunch and we make for lunch something that we know he likes because we've seen him eat it before. He may even have the audacity to tell us in the preparation, I'd like to have this, and we'll make him that. And then we sit at the table, and he no longer wants that. And we engage in the painful negotiations of trying to get a three-year-old to eat his stupid lunch, right? It is very difficult to compel someone to change their thoughts and behavior. And on some levels, we do this often, particularly as parents. But there are other situations in life where we feel compelled to do that, and the stakes are much higher than whether or not they nap well after the meal. There are times in life when we notice a friend, maybe a co-worker, maybe a family member engaged in habits and patterns that are not good and we feel compelled to confront them and say, hey the way you're thinking about this is not right. The things you're doing are not best for you. We feel that it's our responsibility. We think about it, we pray about it, and we know we need to go to them. We need to have that hard conversation. There are times in life when we have to do that. Some of you, as I mentioned that, are thinking of a real life situation right now where you know you need to do that. So the question this morning is, how do we act? What do we do when we feel compelled to confront? And where I want us to start is with this idea of this is the way that the world does this. The way the world confronts, attempts to seek to change the mind and behaviors of individuals, is to demonize and degrade. The way the world confronts is to demonize and degrade. Now, if you don't think that's true, I would like to invite you to watch TV ever. Especially in 2024, an election year. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of highly paid strategists and highly skilled politicians who are trying to convince you how to think and how to behave and who you vote for. How do they go about doing that? By demonizing and degrading the opponent. That's how they do it. That's why we have the phrase attack ads. That's what the world does to try to convince people. We demonize and degrade. They immediately attack each other. And if you think about this interpersonally, when you're talking with someone who doesn't align with your political views, and you tell them who you think you might vote for in whatever race you might be thinking about, do they respond by talking to you about the issues or did they respond by immediately attacking your candidate, telling you why your candidate is a worse candidate than their candidate? This is what we do to try to change minds. We demonize and degrade. We talk down about the people that need to change and we degrade them and we make you feel guilt and shame to change your behavior. More pointedly, I have seen and am guilty of, I've seen parents do this. I've met with people who have adult kids. And they have, those kids are making decisions that they don't agree with. That they think are wrong. That are not good for them. And they'll sit and they'll tell me. I told them I'm disappointed in them. I told them that's not how I raised them. I told them that's not who you're supposed to be. I told them that they shouldn't do that, that you were raised better than this. You shouldn't be making those decisions. That's not how we taught you. And when we do that, not intentionally, not intentionally, but when we do that, we're falling into the pattern of the world and the way the world confronts by demonizing and degrading the person. Often, our default setting, when we are compelled to confront, because it's the pattern we've inherited from the world, often our default setting is to use guilt and shame to compel someone to change their behavior or their way of thinking. Isn't it? How often do we do that with our kids? How often do we do that with our peers, with our friends? How often do we do that with our spouses? When we get on to one another and we talk down to one another, trying to guilt and shame them into being who you think they need to be. I think this is the pattern of the world. And I bring that up because I think the letter to Philemon gives us a much better model of how to confront. Here's what's going on in the book of Philemon. It's a short book. It's one chapter. I bet very few in the room have a verse from Philemon that they love. All right? I don't have anybody, I've never been to any of your houses and seen a verse from Philemon on the wall. Okay. We often don't pay attention to it. We don't regard it. We don't think about it, but the message within it and the model that Paul gives us is critical and crucial to our lives and absolutely applicable to everyone in here. So what's happening in Philemon is Paul came into the company of a man named Onesimus. And Onesimus was a slave owned by Philemon. And sometimes you'll hear pastors or people or teachers try to talk about slavery in the New Testament as if that was really more like they were employees. It's not how we think of slavery. Bull hockey. Yes, it's exactly how we think of slavery. Whatever you think of the worst slavery, that's what this slavery was. That's what Roman slavery was. You are owned and you have no rights and your owner has all the rights there in charge of you. That's slavery, the bad kind, really the only kind. Onesimus had gotten separated from Philemon. It's unclear whether he ran away or there was maybe a shipwreck or an incident or something like that, but he had gotten away from Philemon, and he was in the company of Paul. And Paul is writing this letter to Philemon to be carried by Onesimus to request that Philemon would release Onesimus, receive him as a brother, and let him go back and continue his work with Paul. So Paul, listen, is writing to someone who's a slave owner, who's apparently also a believer. And we know from our country's past that it is entirely possible to be someone who ardently believes in Jesus Christ and someone who owns slaves without the cognitive dissonance that those things do not correlate. We know it is entirely possible as Christians to have a blind spot in our life to sins and moral ineptitude that we simply don't see, but we commit all the time. Philemon is in the middle of one of those situations. He's a slave owner and a Christian, and those things don't go together. So Paul is writing him to address that problem and to request Onesimus. And the way that he does it gives us a roadmap for how we are to confront people when we need to in our lives. So I'm not going to read the whole book. I could. It wouldn't take very long. I would highly encourage you to read it. I'm just going to highlight a couple of verses, but you should sit down and read this and follow the narrative all the way. But this kind of helps us follow along with his reasoning. If we start in verse 4 with the question of how does Paul confront a Christian brother who's got a moral blind spot and needs to change their thoughts or behavior, this is how sake of Christ. Now listen, if you had a friend who was a slave owner and you wrote them a letter to get them to knock it off, I don't think you would start your letter, I always thank my God whenever I remember you. It's a remarkably gracious opening for Paul to start this way. He immediately says to Philemon, this is, I'm grateful for you. I love you. Here's why I'm grateful for you. Here's our joint goal together. That's how he chooses to open. Then once he dignifies him, says, I love you. God loves you. We have this joint goal together. I'm grateful for you. I pray for you. Then he says this, and I think this is fascinating. Therefore, although in Christ, this is verse eight. Therefore, although in Christ, I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do. Yet I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love. Paul says it out loud. He says, hey, listen, I could be bold in Christ and tell you what you ought to do. And in our language and the way we're thinking about it this morning, what he's saying is I could do this the world's way and demonize and degrade you and tell you what you ought to do. And in our language and the way we're thinking about it this morning, what he's saying is I could do this the world's way and demonize and degrade you and tell you what you're doing wrong. I could bully you into what we're supposed to do right. I mean, this is the most influential church planter, pastor, Christian of all time who's not named Jesus. And he has every right and every authority to burn the face off of Philemon. Right? He's got every right to just let him have it. To get after him. And he acknowledges that he does. I could, in boldness, correct you in the name of Christ, but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to choose to appeal to you, and I love this phrase, on the basis of love. And I think it's important to point out that I believe that there is a twofold love that Paul's talking about there. I think it's on the basis of love for Jesus and a basis of love for Philemon. Because Paul loves Jesus and he knows that Jesus loves Philemon. So he knows that he is approaching someone for whom Christ died, whom Christ is pursuing, whom Christ is shaping and molding and cultivating and sanctifying. And it is good to remind ourselves in moments of confrontation when someone's not behaving or thinking the way that they should, to first remind ourselves to appeal to them on the basis of love and allow that first love that we think about to be Christ's love for them. Remind ourselves, I am going to sit down and talk with someone that Jesus loves dearly, that Jesus gave his life for, that Jesus pursues and calls to and sanctifies and forgives and redeems. And this is what Paul does at the onset of the letter when he says, I thank my God when I remember you. He talks about this commonality that they have in Christ. So there's this two-fold love when we confront. First, we remind ourselves that this person is loved by Jesus. This person is saved and pursued by Jesus. Then we remind ourselves that we love them too. We love them. If we did not love them, we would not be in this situation. If we never confront them, we can't possibly love them. If we just allow people in our lives to be in patterns and habits that are not healthy for them and we don't say anything, then we're not truly loving them. So to love them sometimes is to address the issue. And when we do that, we should remember that they are loved by Christ and they are loved by me and I'm going to approach it in that way I'm going to appeal to them on the basis of love not guilt and shame so once he says that I could get after you I'm not going to do that I'm going to appeal to you on the basis of love. How does he do that? We see that in 15 and 16. This is Paul appealing. It's going to be fun. So he says, here's what I want you to do. I'm appealing to you on the basis of love. My hope is that you'll receive Onesimus back. Now, a slave returning to an owner that had run away and stayed separated is someone who is going to be punished. They're going to be punished in a really terrible way. And Paul is saying, don't do that. As a matter of fact, don't just not punish him, but receive him back, not as a slave, but as your brother. And then he continues to compel him. Once you do that, please send him back to me so he can continue the work with me. He's incredibly valuable to me and is helping me a great deal. Please basically free him and let me travel with him so that he and I can work together. This is the request that Paul is making of Philemon. And in this, we see the biblical and Christian model for confrontation, for how we should act and what we should do when we feel compelled to change the way someone behaves or thinks. And I'm summing that model up this way. The world says to demonize and degrade. Christians say dignify and direct. When we approach someone, how should we approach them? What does it mean to appeal on the basis of love beyond simply remembering that Jesus loves them and I love them? It means to dignify the person and direct the person. And I mean direct there in both ways. I mean be direct. Don't beat around the bush. Don't be unclear. Don't imply. Don't be subtle. When we are confronting a brother or sister because we feel compelled to do so, we feel convicted to do that, we need to have the courage and the love and the humility to be direct with them. Here is what I'm asking you to do. And that's exactly what Paul did. He was direct. I'm asking you to receive him as a brother, and then once you do, send him back to me. Release him to me so that he and I can work together. He was very direct in what he was asking. And when we confront, we should love people enough to have the honesty to be direct with them. But he also, before he's direct, he dignifies. I thank my God when I remember you. You are a child of Christ. We have done these things together. We have labored for the gospel together. Here are all the reasons I'm grateful that God was good enough to place you in my life. We dignify. This is the Christian model for confrontation. And just to contrast it a little bit, think about the power of this. And let's say that we have an adult child that's not doing, not making the choices that we think they should make. And we feel like we need to step in and confront them. If the world's way of demonizing and degrading them leads us to say things like, hey, I've noticed this in your life. I'm disappointed in those decisions. I'm disappointed in you, implying I'm not proud of you. And I think you need to change your behavior because your behavior is going to lead to this. And I don't want to see this happen. And we just use guilt and shame to try to compel them to see what we see. I'm disappointed in you. We didn't raise you like this. You need to do better. Let me help you do better. That's one way to do it. But if we do it Paul's way, the way that he confronts Philemon, if we dignify and direct, if we appeal on the basis of love, think about how much more powerful it could be in our lives if we confronted people this way. I love you. How can I better love you towards who you know you want to be and who God created you to be. What if we started confronting like that? How much better would you receive it if your spouse came to you and said, you're really bothering me. You're really annoying me. You're really doing this wrong. You need to do this better the way that spouses do. Except Jen, she never says that to me. How much better would you receive it if someone you love sat down with you and said, hey, I love you. How can I better love you towards who you know you want to be and who God created you to be? It's a simple question because here's the thing. We know in our own lives that when we're not being who we're supposed to be, when we're not being who we want to be, when we're not being who God created us to be because we're allowing habits and sins and patterns into our lives that are not good, we know that we know that. We carry it every day. When we're not walking with God and living the life that we're supposed to live and making the choices that we're supposed to make when we're in unhealthy patterns. We are aware of that all the time. We know that it's not good. We already feel guilt and shame. So I don't, no one needs to come to me to challenge me to be better, to point out all the things that I'm doing wrong. I know them. How much more effective would it be if someone were to point out the things that you're not doing well by simply, instead of denigrating you, making you feel more guilt and shame, heaping on what you already feel, if they actually came to you and said, hey, I love you dearly. You matter so much to me. I'm so grateful that you're in my life because of this and this and this. And right now, you're not living up. You're not living as the person that I know you want to be and you know God wants you to be. So how can I better love you towards that person? That's what Paul does. Paul is confronting a slave owner to free a slave, an egregious sin that none of us would ever consider. He has every right to attack him and demonize him and guilt and shame him, and he doesn't do that. That's not how Christians change minds. That's not how Christians confront. And it works in polar opposite. It sits in stark contrast and juxtaposition to how the world does. That defaults to demonizing and degrading and to belittling and to bemoaning and degradation and guilt and shame. The Christian model for confrontation operates in a very stark contrast to the worldly model of confrontation. We are to confront in those situations where we feel compelled to. Like Paul does, an appeal to our friends, our brothers and sisters, spouses, children, on the basis of love. How do we do that? We dignify them. We remember that Jesus loves them and that we love them. And we direct them. We be honest with them. And we point them in the way that God wants them to go. Think about how much more powerful it is to appeal to someone on the basis of love and equipping to become who God has made them to be rather than shame and guilting them into who we think they're supposed to be. And here's what I love about this book of Philemon. It's Paul practicing what he preaches. It's one thing to say it. It's another thing to do it. Because in Galatians chapter 6 verse 1, Paul's writing to the church in Galatia. He's giving them instructions about how to be a church and what they need to do. And one of his instructions in chapter six, verse one is this. Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the spirit should restore that person gently, but watch yourselves or you also may be tempted. Paul tells the church in Galatia, and he tells all churches for all time, you who are spiritual, you who love Jesus, you who are mature in your faith, when you feel compelled to confront someone, do it gently. Raise them up with kindness. Do not be harsh in that confrontation. This is the instruction that he gives to the church in Galatia. And then, at another point in his life, Paul's in a situation where there is someone whom he loves caught in a sin and he feels compelled to confront. And how does he do it? He appeals to him on the basis of love. This is how the children of God are to confront one another. Be gentle with one another. Do it on the basis of love, reminding ourselves that Jesus loves them and I love them. And I am here to see them become who God created them to be, not denigrate them and guilt and shame them into better behavior. Now, here's the thing. I've felt like it was important for us as a church and as a family of faith to understand and be familiar with the book of Philemon. There's a reason God's included it in the Bible. We are edified to understand it and know it. And it is a model for us for how Christians ought to confront by dignifying and directing, appealing to people on the basis of love. But I also know that it's not very often in life that we feel compelled to do that, to use the lessons here. It's not very often that we're so compelled by the behavior of a friend or a spouse that we need to sit them down in a serious way and try to get them to change their mind or their behavior. We don't do that very regularly, and not everyone in the room has an instance they're thinking of in their life right now. I know that. So this is one of those sermons that sometimes I encourage you to tuck it away for later. Just be aware of this. And the next time you need to confront, hopefully the Holy Spirit will spark something in you. And you'll remember the message of Philemon. And you'll confront in love and appeal on the basis of love. But here's the other thing that I just want to mention as I close. We confront ourselves every day. We attack and accuse ourselves every day. We have a negative voice in our head that tells us that we're not who we're supposed to be. We're not who God created us to be. If people knew who you were, you would be ashamed. We have negative voices in our head from ourselves where we confront ourselves about our own behaviors and our own patterns every day. And we carry that guilt and shame every day. If you're willing to sit in a sermon and listen to how we should confront others and to know that we should do it with grace and love and dignity and kindness and gentleness. And that's what you would offer to every person in your life if you needed to confront them. Why would you not offer yourself the same love, the same gentleness, the same kindness? So tuck this away for when you do find yourself in a situation in life where you need to confront. Tuck this away. But also use it every day as you confront and convict yourself. Offer yourself the same grace, the same kindness, the same gentleness. Appeal to yourself on the basis of love. Remind yourself that Jesus loves you, he's grateful for you, and he is pursuing you. And when we do that, we will confront ourselves and others as Christ directs us to do it, not as the world does it. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for tucking the book of Philemon into the New Testament. Thank you for the lesson that it offers, for the model that it is of how to confront someone with gentleness. Lord, if there are people who have listened today and feel compelled to confront, I pray that you would give them the courage to do that, the humility to do it well, the love and the compassion to do it with gentleness. And I pray that the recipients would be restored and built up. Father, as we confront ourselves and experience our own convictions, first of all, God, I pray that we would listen and that we would allow you to love us towards health and towards who you created us to be. God, as we go, I pray that we would be more desirous of you when we leave than when we came. I pray that you would walk with us through this week. Bring yourself to our minds and to our consciences that we might focus on you this week and that we might grow closer to you. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, well, good morning, everybody. Thanks for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Kyle, another one of the pastors here. We need to put out more chairs this week, all right? It's full. You guys didn't get the memo. It's summertime. You're not supposed to do this until September, but we are sure glad that you are here. We have been going through a series last summer and this summer called 27 that Mikey alluded to in the announcements, which were fantastic. Also, at the end, Mikey said, please rise. That's new. I like that language. A little courtroom drama in here. All rise. That's fantastic. Anyway, sorry, I got sidetracked. We've been going through last summer and this summer, 27, where we're going through the books of the New Testament. This morning, we arrive at the one that I've been avoiding for the duration of the series, last summer and this summer, because it's the book of Romans. Some of you know, others of you will, that Romans is the most theologically dense and rich book of the Bible that there is. You can make some arguments about some other stuff, but Romans is a, but I will do my best to give you a grasp of what it is to make it hopefully more approachable for those of us who have never read it before, to make it more approachable so we can know how we are reading it and what we are reading. And for those of us who know it well, to kind of think of it in this succinct way. Because here's one of the benefits of going through the whole book of Romans or the whole book of Philippians on a Sunday. And we're not going to hit all of the great details here. But here's one reason why it may actually be a helpful approach. Because when Paul wrote these letters, or when the other apostles wrote the other epistles, they wrote them to be read aloud to the church all at once in one sitting. These letters were not written by Paul to parse out and dissect and look at the Greek tense and the original meaning of this one particular word and have that compared to all the other times that word shows up in Scripture. Now listen, listen. That's good research. That's helpful knowledge. It's okay and good to dissect the Bible in that way. It's helpful to us, helps us understand. But please hear me when I say, it was not written for that to happen. It was written to be read at once to give us a big understanding of the large points that Paul or the other authors are attempting to make in the books or the letters that they wrote. So we need to be careful when we read scripture that we don't miss the forest for the trees. To that end, I would highly encourage you, if you've never done it, to sit down and read Romans from beginning to end. I would highly encourage you to sit down and read it all at once. I did it on a flight one time and not to be too whatever, but it was a really moving experience for me. I would really encourage you to read it from beginning to end. It takes about 45 minutes maybe, unless you're from Tennessee. It'll take a little longer. So it's difficult, it's difficult to synopsize all of Romans in a single verse or to point to a verse and go, this is the book of Romans. I'm going to open the argument with Romans chapter 12, verse 1. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you know your Bible well, you may be able to fabricate another argument from Romans. Maybe you think it's Romans 8.28. We could pull out other verses that I could anchor us in this morning, and they would be absolutely appropriate. But I'm going to anchor us in Romans chapter 12, verse 1, as kind of a synopsizing summary verse of the whole book. And this is what it says. Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. I think this is a good encapsulating verse for the thrust of the book of Romans. Therefore, I urge you brothers, in view of God's mercy, and I memorized it this way, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. Paul's encouragement, his pleading with us, is to live our lives as a living sacrifice. And this imagery of being a living sacrifice was very clear to the Jewish audience. Much of the early church was made up of people of Jewish heritage. They understood the sacrificial system. So they understood what it was to be a sacrifice. They had probably grown up sacrificing lambs and doves and bulls and goats and whatever. There's a whole book of the Old Testament, Leviticus, that details the sacrificial system. So they understood this language well. But that's why it would be striking to them, this concept of being a living sacrifice, because being a living sacrifice is a daily choice. In some ways, I don't mean to be too crass about it, but the goats got off easy in the Old Testament. Just one time, and that was it. Done. Forever. But Paul says that we are to be living sacrifices. Sacrificing ourselves every day. And when I think of what it means to be a living sacrifice, to live your life for the sake of others, I think right now, in my context, I think of moms of young children. Okay? I know that I'm biased. I know that that's my perspective right now. We have Lily, she's eight. John, he's three. And so our house takes a lot of energy to run right now. It is physically and emotionally draining. And I don't, listen, I don't have the experience of late elementary school, middle school kids, high school kids, so I'm not up here trying to play the suffering Olympics with you. I just, this is our perspective. And I just know from what I can see that Jen, as a stay-atat-home mom lives an exhausting life. Just yesterday, we spent the day, we're getting ready, we're going out to dinner with some friends and we spent the day getting the house cleaned because apparently you have to clean your house when a 17-year-old kid's coming over that's never cleaned a house in their life. I don't know why you have to do this. We have, you got to make sure the vacuum marks are upstairs, you know? So we're cleaning the house. We're scurrying around, you know, we're doing, we're doing things. And, uh, Johnny, we refer to him, uh, as Jen shadow, just her little buddy, just always right there with her all the time. Right. And so, and he's a lot, I was, uh, I was, I was telling somebody, I was watching some somebody I was watching some sprinting, some Olympics, I think yesterday. And I was locked into this particular race. They're doing the whole preamble. Sprinting races take forever to start, forever. It's absurd. So they're going through the whole preamble, and then it's the actual race, and it's like the 4x400 or whatever it is, and I'm watching the whole thing. And I realized, I'm standing in front of the TV just looking at it, and I realized when it ended that John had been talking to me the entire time. He had been talking the whole time. No idea what he said. We sat down yesterday at the end of the day to watch some more Olympics, and he sat on the couch next to me and sang a song about elephants and grass. He's just all day long. He's going, and Lily makes her presence known sometimes. So it's just all day, right? We get a little respite going to dinner. We come back after about a 90-minute reprieve, and as soon as we get home, both kids are awake, and they're waiting for mommy to get home. They have now got to this place where they just won't go to sleep until she tells them goodnight. They're not interested in me, and I'm fine with this for a couple reasons, because I can get right back to Olympic coverage, and if you lived in a house with Jen and two young kids, you wouldn't be their favorite either. Okay. I just admit defeat there. And it's fine. So John has gotten out of bed. He's turned his light on and his noisemaker off. And we lock it. We keep him locked in. So he doesn't wander in the night. He's banging the door. So she's got to go up there, get him to sleep. I leave, I read Lily, her devotional. Then Jen comes in and helps Lily get to bed. And then Jen comes downstairs, and we're watching TV, talking on the couch. And it was like maybe 15 minutes of quiet, right? And then we hear footsteps. Oh, no. So Lily comes down the stairs. She curls up on Jen's lap. She says, I don't feel well. Will you come lay down with me? And Jen looks at me over Lily's head and she goes, this started at 6.15 this morning. I am exhausted. She goes and she lays down with Lily. This morning, I get up. I get up early on Sundays, take a shower. Get out of the shower about 5.45, 6 o'clock. Jen's not in the bed anymore. I go in, check in John's room. She's in the seat holding John with a blanket over her. And I just kind of shook my head, kissed her on the head, came to church. That's exhausting. And that's what it is to be a living sacrifice. A living sacrifice organizes their life around the needs of others. That's what a living sacrifice does. A living sacrifice wakes up every day and says, I don't exist for me. I exist for them. My days are not my days. My days are their days. My resources are not my resources. They are their resources. My time, my quiet, my solitude, my needs are not my needs. They're their needs. And this is the life that God calls us to. It is, admittedly, a remarkably high bar that Paul would say you should live your lives as living sacrifices, sacrificing every day for the sake of God's kingdom, not your kingdom. In every meeting that you are in, in your workplace, this is an opportunity to minister and to pour Christ into the lives of the people around you. Every interaction with another customer or an employee at Harris Teeter is an opportunity. It is not your time to be quiet and put your head down and get out of there quickly. It is an opportunity for ministry that God is giving you. We are living our lives as living sacrifices. When the person calls you that you don't want to talk to, but you know you need to, you take that call with a smile on your face because we are living sacrifices. We are to live every day offering every moment to the service of God's kingdom. And that is a very tall order. But nobody demonstrated this better than Jesus himself. I am blown away every time I read through the gospels, noting how Jesus sacrificially loved everybody around him all the time. You read the Gospels and pay attention to all the times when Jesus just did a thing. He just performed a bunch of miracles. He just spoke to a big crowd. He just healed a bunch of people. He just taught the disciples. He just did a big thing that would be exhausting that we'd all want to rest from. as he's leaving it says he went to be in a quiet place alone and pray and people track him down and they ask him for more things and more teachings and more questions and it was just relentless but he lived his life. He lived and died and rose again as a living sacrifice and this is the standard to which all Christians are called. Now, how can God place such a tall order on us? Because if you're like me, you'll be lucky to live a third of your day as a living sacrifice. The other two thirds are going to my bank. If you're like me, you're lucky to be cognitively aware of your call to live as a living sacrifice every day. But we sang in the third song this morning that we worship God. I will worship you. I will worship you. I will worship you. Will you? Because your spiritual act of worship isn't to sit in church on Sunday and sing praise to God. That's part of it. But your spiritual act of worship, if you mean what you sing, is that we offer our lives as living sacrifices, living every moment for the service of God's kingdom, not ourselves. And so to me, the question becomes, how can God place that burden on us? What could possibly compel us to be obedient in that way? And historically, the answer to questions like this in church, at least to me, has been because God told you to. Because he told you to. Because you're supposed to. Because he's the boss. He is Lord and you are not. He's the he's the creator we are the creature we are the creation we have to do what he says because god made you created you destined you saved you now you should live your life in service to him out of a sense of ought but i just don't think that's a very satisfying answer. And I actually think that the book of Romans offers us in total a much better answer to that question. How can God, what should compel me to offer my life as a living sacrifice? Because that's a tall order. So here's what we're going to do. If you look at your notes, Shane grabbed me. Shane, a longtime Grace partner, grabbed me in the lobby, and he held up the notes. And he goes, what are you doing to us today, man? What's going on here? He goes, this feels like class. I know. I'm going to try to make this as not boring as possible, but I just thought, here's my thinking. If I can, in very simple language, tell you what each chapter means as we build to the back half of Romans, then you'll be able to follow the reasoning narrative that Paul is writing. It's like he's laying out a case to help us understand what salvation is, how it came into being, why it's so important, and what it means to us. And so he lays out over the course of eight chapters this doctrine of salvation and I think if I can explain to you basically the theme in every chapter that you may be able to leave here with a much better understanding of what the book of Romans is and how we can approach it so that if you want to read it on your own you can and you don't have to be intimidated by it so if it's's helpful at all to you, write these down. I'm going to go kind of quick through the chapters. We'll get you out of here by one o'clock. I promise. And you can keep this and it can help hopefully make Romans more approachable and understandable. And these are, listen, some of y'all know the Bible better than I do. And you're going to see my summaries of the chapters and you're going to think, that's dumb. That's not what I would have done. You're probably right. Okay. But these are mine. So I hope that they're true to scripture. But here's the flow of Romans and how it gives us an answer to the question, what compels us to live as living sacrifices? Romans chapter 1, you open it up, starts with some basic greetings and stuff like that, and then he gets into this discourse, and the point of the discourse is to say, hey, man has rejected God. Mankind, on the whole, has rejected God and is living as if God is not existent. Living as if God doesn't matter. Most of the world carries on agnostically, is what Paul is saying. And the culmination of this chapter is to say that not only does mankind, does everybody in our current culture and society, sin with freedom, but they encourage it when other people sin too. They embrace it and they love it. This, I think, is very relatable. It's hard to exist in our culture today and not see the idea that the trend over the last few decades has been moving, sometimes slowly, sometimes not, towards a godless society where society conducts itself as if God does not exist. So that's what he's saying in Romans chapter 1. Man has rejected God with the way that they live. Romans chapter 2, he follows that up. Because of that rejection, God is angry. The rejection has angered God. He created us. He purposed us. He provides us with life and sustenance. He sent His Son to die for us to make a path to reconciliation to Him. And what do we do with all of those gifts? We stomp on them and we reject them and we turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to them and we live as if He doesn't exist. So chapter 2 is about the earned wrath of God. He's ticked off that we have rejected him. That's the point that Paul is making. Then chapter three, he makes the point to a largely Jewish audience at the time. Hey, we cannot behave our way back into reconciliation. Our sin, that rejection of God, has broken our relationship with God, has severed it irrevocably, and we cannot white-knuckle or behave our way back into right relationship with God. We can't follow the rules well enough to make God okay with us again, to defer and overcome that wrath and that anger at our rejection, to make up for rejecting Him. We can't follow the rules well enough. That just, that can't happen. We're not going to behave our way into heaven. Chapter 4 moves through that, and he says what we can do, we cannot behave our way into reconciliation, and then chapter 4, for reconciliation, God requires our trust, not our behavior. That's why the first song we sang today was about believing in Christ. Because this is what God requires of us. He requires our trust, not our behavior. Chapter 5 tells us where to place that trust. Chapter 5, we placed that trust in Jesus Christ and what he did on the cross. There's this beautiful dissertation in 5 where he compares Adam to Jesus and he says, just as in Adam through one man sin entered the world, so now in Christ through one man salvation enters the world. And so we see Adam as a type Christ from the Old Testament reflecting to us who Jesus really is in the New Testament. He says we place our faith in Christ. And when I preach it, I always say that to be a Christian is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, that he did what he said he did, and that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. And we're told what he does in chapter 5. In 6, then, we learn that we are not just delivered from God's anger, but into a new eternal life. In chapter 6, he introduces this idea of us being a new creature. And he paints this picture of baptism, where we are buried with Christ in death, and we are raised to walk in newness of life. We preach the gospel of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ when we physically, invisibly baptize people. That's why we do it in the service. That's why we go all the way under the water because it's a picture that he paints in Romans chapter 6. That because we are saved, we are reconciled with God, we are not just reconciled to heaven for eternity, but we are also reconciled from ourselves. We are no longer slaves to sin. We are rescued from sin and we are raised to walk in a newness of life. We can walk as a new creature where it is possible to sin no more. That brings up a really interesting pickle that we're all in because all of us still sin. And that's what Paul talks about in chapter 7. It's to me maybe the most human chapter in the whole Bible. And the way I would sum it up is to say this new life causes us to be at war with ourselves. We're told in scripture that we're a new creature. That we're not a slave to sin. I don't feel like that most days. I don't feel like this new creature that doesn't have to sin. I feel like this old creature that gets really disappointed in himself for how he carries on sometimes. And this is what Paul captures in the closing verses of chapter 7. Where he says essentially, the things I want to do, I do not do. The things I want to do, the things I do not want to do, I do. The things I do want to do, I do not do. And then exasperatedly cries out, oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? I don't have any tattoos, but if I were to get one, that would be in the running. O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Man, if you haven't come there in your Christian walk, you just got saved last week. Because I feel like to be a believer is to know the good that you ought to do, is to know the bad that you ought not do, and to still struggle so much with those things. And Paul cries out and says, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God who provided a way in Christ Jesus. And then that gives way, chapter 7, that war, because we're a new creature, we're going to be at war with ourselves, that gives way to chapter 8. Romans chapter 8 is the greatest chapter in the Bible. To give you a sense of how inadequately I am handling the book of Romans today. A few years ago, we did an eight-week-long series in Romans chapter 8 called The Greatest Chapter, and I could have made it 12. I just didn't want to wear you guys out. Romans chapter 8 is a soaring chapter, and it says Jesus has won the war, and nothing can ever change that. He's won the war that you fight in yourself, and he's won the war against sin and death, and there is nothing that can ever change that. Romans chapter 8 is a culmination and climax of certainty. It is a beacon of Christendom that declares the power of Christ, and it ends with such a flourish where Paul says, for I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor demons nor rulers nor principality nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor anything in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. That's a powerful statement that Jesus loves you so much that he died for you, he's renewed your soul, he's reconciled you to Christ or to God and now he holds you in his grip so tightly that nothing in all creation, not even you, can separate yourself from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. It's magisterial when we look at it all the way through. And we see him build from Romans 1. We've rejected God. Romans 2, God's been angered by that rejection and hurt. Romans chapter 3, we cannot behave our way into fixing that. Romans chapter 4, we have to have faith, not behavior. Romans chapter 5, we place that faith in Christ. Romans chapter 6, because of our faith in Christ, we're a new creature. Romans chapter 7, that new creature wars with itself. Romans chapter 8, Jesus has won that war. Now and in eternity. And we can rest in that. Then we have the back half of Romans. Romans 9 through 16. And this is a gross oversimplification of those chapters. But the essential question that's being answered for the rest of the book is do we live in response to the first half of Romans? And I think Paul most succinctly answers that question in chapter 12, verse 1, when he says, therefore, my brothers. Now listen, when you're reading the Bible, especially Romans, and you see the word therefore, you have to ask, what's the therefore? Based on what? Therefore, what? Therefore, in view of God's mercy. Because of everything I just told you about in Romans 1 through 8, therefore, brothers, in view of God's mercy, in light of the rest of the message of this book and the glorious salvation offered to us by Christ, in light of that, in view of God's mercy, I urge you to live your lives as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. You see, it is not a sense of ought that compels us to live our life for God's kingdom and not our own. It is an overwhelming sense of gratitude that drives us. Out of an overflow of gratitude, we live lives of sacrifice. Out of an overflow of the truths of gratitude of the truths of Romans chapters 1 through 8 we live lives of sacrifice we are so compelled by what that by what he has done for us that we spend the rest of our lives trying to help other people see what he has done for them. You understand? We steep ourselves in the gospel. We steep ourselves in the truth of scripture. We steep ourselves in the sacrifice of Christ with the daily awareness of what he does for us and that he's won the war for us and that he calls for us and that he loves us. He loves us. He really loves us. And he chases after us and he won't let us convince ourselves that he doesn't love us. He won't let us convince ourselves that we're not good enough for him or that we don't deserve him. He chases after us, and he comes for us, and he died for us. And if we will daily steep ourselves in that reality, we will live a life of such gratitude that we will be compelled to live a life for the sake of others as a living sacrifice. We will be so overwhelmed by the reality of what he's done for us that we will spend our lives trying to help other people see what he's done for them too. And when that is our mentality that changes our attitude in the drive-thru, that changes our interactions with our children, with our coworkers, with our employees and employers, when we walk in that sense of gratitude, it will be easy to live our lives as living sacrifices because we are so overwhelmed by what God has done for us that we want to spend our days helping other people see what God has done for them. I am reminded of that great verse, John 1 16, and And from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. So here's what I hope you'll do. And here's my prayer to you this week, for you this week. The idea of offering our lives every moment of every day for the sake of others and not ourselves, is daunting. Really, in our power, it's impossible. Our only hope is to remember the message of Romans and be so grateful for all that God has done for us, for all that he's given us, and for the way that he saves us and forgives us and pursues us. To be so steeped in that gratitude that we cannot help but sacrifice for others so that we're not the only ones who realize all that God has done for us. I hope that we'll do that. I hope you'll do that. And I hope that this is just whetting your appetite for Romans and that you'll sit down and read it on your own too. Let's pray. Father, we are grateful to you. We are grateful for your son and for your sacrifice. God, help us to live lives of gratitude so that we might live as sacrifices for others as your son lived for us. God, if there is someone here who doesn't yet know you, I pray that they would. And maybe by simply walking through this wonderful book, they can better understand how to approach you and why they need you. God, be with us in our weeks. We're going to wake up tomorrow trying to live a life of sacrifice and we're going to stub our toe and we're going to mess up and we're going to say selfish things. But God, I pray that you would give us the grace for ourselves to get back up and let you lead us more and further and deeper. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you've been following along, you know that normally I preach, but the past few weeks I haven't been doing that. So it's very good to be back and get to see you guys from up here. It was fun to prepare a message this week, and I'm excited to share that with you. The other thing I'm excited about right now is the Olympics. Who else has been watching every possible minute of Olympic coverage? It's been fantastic. We love it in our house and it's been really special this time around. Lily, our daughter, is eight so she can enjoy it with us. We stay up late and watch it and then we hit pause and then we get up in the morning and we finish and it's just been really, really fun. And for those of you who have been following along, you know that one of the stories of the Olympics so far has been the United States men's gymnastics team. In the all-around competition earlier this week for those who have been hiding under a rock and don't know this I want to set the scene for you. In the men's all-around competition what they do is members of the team, three members of the team, it's a five-man team, participate in all of the events, and then the highest cumulative score wins the medal. They win the gold medal. And going into the event, you know that China and Japan are going to win gold and silver. There's really no one else that can touch them. But the U.S. has a chance to medal, to get the bronze for the first time in 16 years. And so hopes are high. And we are watching this earlier in the week. I think it was maybe Monday or Tuesday. We're watching it and it was so fun. We're so enthusiastic about it. And everyone's doing what they're supposed to do. Everyone's doing their routines like they're supposed to do their routines. They're hitting their prime position. And then it gets to the final event. The final event is the pommel horse, which if you don't know what the pommel horse is, you're not missing much. It's real stupid. I don't know why it's an event. It doesn't make any sense to me. They spin around, and then they're on the ground. Fine. Listen, incredible amount of talent. It's just dumb to watch. That's the final event. And we've got one person who did pommel horse in college. They're never coming back. Sorry. It's the final event. And the Americans have this one guy on their team. And his specialty is the pommel horse. This is the only reason he's on the team. He doesn't participate in anything else. He's only there as a pommel horse assassin. That's his whole job. And he's the last one to go, the last event of the night. And all night, they keep panning over to him, telling him he's coming up. He's the pommel horse guy, and they're showing him, and he's just sitting in the back brooding. He's not looking at anything or anybody. He's totally expressionless. Every now and again you can tell he's mentally going through his routine and he's just sitting there stiff all night. And then he gets up and he does his routine and he nails it. And it was great. There was tears in our house. And listen, a lot of you probably know the story. You probably know who I'm talking about. But if you don't, I want you to picture in your head the hero of American gymnastics and national sport in general. And I want you to picture what you think this athletic hero looks like. Because whatever you're picturing ain't this. It's not that guy. That's not who you had in your head. That guy looks like an NC State grad who's writing code at a startup. That's what he looks like. If he didn't have that medal around his neck, you'd just think he was there for fun, like as a fan. But that's the guy, Steven Nedarosik. That's the guy. And he, the reason I bring him up is he embodies to me what is one of my favorite principles in life, which is this idea that no matter what people see in you, no matter what people say about you, no matter what you might say about yourself, don't try to convince them they're wrong with your words. Just put your head down, do the work, and let the results speak for themselves. Don't worry about what other people say. Don't worry about what other people might think. Just put your head down, control what you can control, do your work, and let the outcome of that work and of that effort speak for itself. And that's what he did. He steps up to the pommel horse, and he takes his glasses off, and he gets real squinty. And Chris Rock, in his commentary, said, don't tell him. He thinks he's doing the rings right now. He can't see nothing. But you're looking at this guy and you're like, this can't be the guy. But he put his head down. He did the work. And he was the guy. The results speak for themselves. I love this principle in life. I think it's such an important one that gets us through a lot of seasons and allows us to accomplish a lot of things. And one of the reasons I love this principle is because it's a very Christian principle. That principle of put your head down, do the work, don't worry about what other people think, just let the results speak for themselves. That's a very biblical principle. As a matter of fact, you can pull that right out of the book of 1 Timothy. So if you have a Bible, I'd love to invite you to turn to 1 Timothy 4, verse 12. It's going to be on the screen. If you have a Bible, if you read the one in front of you, it's the NIV. I learned this verse. It's been an important verse to me for most of my life. If you've ever done any youth ministry, this is a big, important verse. It's on the other side of that wall right there in our fourth and fifth grade classroom. But I memorized it young at a Baptist church in the King's English. So if you don't mind, I'm going to say it like that, but you guys read along. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 4.12, let no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example to the believers in word and conversation and charity and spirit and faith and in purity. So a little context for this verse so you understand a little bit more about what's going on and what Paul is saying specifically to Timothy. We're in a series now called 27 where last summer and this summer we took one book a week and we're going through all the books of the New Testament the 27 books of the New Testament last summer in this summer trying to give you a synopsis or a sense of what each book is about so for those who are not super familiar with the Bible maybe it becomes a little bit more approachable because you know what the books are about you know what you're gonna read when you sit down to read it's to raise the biblical literacy of the partnership of grace and our hope is if you know the Bible books are about, you know what you're going to read when you sit down to read it. It's to raise the biblical literacy of the partnership of grace. And our hope is if you know the Bible well, that as we highlight these books, that you see them through fresh eyes and maybe it inspires you to dive back into scripture on your own. This Sunday, we're actually going to cover or talk about, not going to cover, talk about the books of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. Because together, those make up what are referred to as the pastoral epistles. Those are letters, most of Paul's letters were written to churches. To the church in Ephesus, to the church in Galatia, to the church in Thessalonica, and so on and so on. But these books, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, were written to individuals. 1 and 2 Timothy, you can figure out who that was written to. Titus, you know who that was written to. It's written to those men in particular that Paul had left behind and installed essentially as senior pastors over the churches that he had been planting. And so the letters to Timothy are to him as he takes over the church in Ephesus, one of the most impactful churches in early Christendom. Early Christendom may not have survived without the church in Ephesus. And so he installs Timothy as the pastor there, and he writes in these two letters as books of advice, words of advice to a young disciple as he takes over a church. And in that is a lot of wonderful things about what church should be and how it should operate and what the qualifications for the elders should be. We see that in Timothy and in Titus. If you're an elder at the church, you should be very familiar with these books. If you're a believer, you should be very interested in these books. But there was no way to group them together and cover everything in them. But what I thought we could do is pull out this one verse in 1 Timothy 4 and talk about that, because that is a verse that is universally applicable to every Christian. That's not pastoral advice. That's Christian advice. Let no man despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word and conversation and charity charity and spirit and faith and in purity. And word and conversation means the way that you carry yourself, the way that you interact with people. In charity and in spirit, charity is love. It means the way that you love others. In spirit, it's the way that you carry yourself. In purity, it's this pursuit of holiness. So the way that I would sum this up is that Paul is telling Timothy, I know you think you're young. And I know you think that it's going to be difficult for people to listen to you. And trust me, this has been a very encouraging verse for me. Right now, I'm the ripe old age of 43, and I look every bit 46. But when I took the church over, I was 36. And I was worried about this. And this verse brought me comfort. Because Paul says, put your head down, do the work, be an example to those around you in your pursuit of holiness and the way you love others. That's a really simple way to understand it. Put your head down, do the work, and be an example to the believers in the way that you pursue holiness and in the way that you love others. And I believe that this verse applies to all of us equally. That when Paul is telling Timothy to do that, he's telling all Christians for all time to do that. And here's why I think this is true and why I think we need this advice from Paul this morning. Because there's two things about each and every one of you that are here right now or that can hear my voice right now from your home or wherever you're listening further into this week as you catch up. Here's something I know to be true of every single person who can hear me. Two things. The first is we are called and created to live spiritually impactful lives. Every single one of you, no matter how much you know it, no matter how much you admit it to yourself, no matter how comfortable or uncomfortable you are with that. Even if you're here this morning and you wouldn't yet call yourself a believer, you're here to support family, you're here because you're curious, you're here because church is nice, whatever brought you here, I believe that God has a purpose for your life. The Bible teaches that God has a purpose for your life, that you are called to live a spiritually impactful life that matters for all of eternity. Every single one is called to that, whether you realize it or acknowledge it or not. And I know this to be true because in myriad places and myriad ways throughout scripture, the authors emphasize this point. In 1 Corinthians chapters 12 and 13, we see this big long list of spiritual gifts. We're taught about the church as the body of Christ and how every part of the body has a part to play and a job to do, has a responsibility. And we're told that the Holy Spirit actually gifts us upon salvation to play our part, to contribute to God's kingdom. And that's not for pastors. That's not for leaders. That's not for the charismatic. That's not for the people who are bold and out there and in front of you. That's not an instruction for the elite few, for the spiritual Marines. That's not for them. It's for everyone. We are all given gifts. In Ephesians chapter four, those are the gifts of the spirit we see in first Corinthians 12 and 13 and we see again in Romans. But in Ephesians 4, we're told that Christ gives us gifts. That every one of us is gifted to be either an apostle, a prophet, an evangelist, a shepherd, or a teacher. That Christ himself imbues us with those gifts to be used in his kingdom to build his kingdom. Every one of us, I'm going to talk about this in a few weeks, every one of us is a kingdom builder of the kingdom of God. And we've been gifted to that end. And if those two things don't convince you, then maybe the verse that I bring up all the time will help you see. Ephesians 2.10, I love to remind you of this verse. It says that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that you might walk in them. It teaches me that my job as a parent to John and Lily is not to craft them into who I want them to be. It's not to mold them into who I think they should be. It's to raise them in such a way that they can identify their good works and walk in those that were prepared for them before time. You, each of you, each and every one of you, it's absolutely true of you that when God knit you in your mother's womb, he knew your story, the gifts that he was going to give you, and the role that he had you to play in his kingdom. He's purposed every single one of you to live a spiritually impactful life, to impact the people around you for Christ. I'm reminded of the verse in Colossians that says that we are led in triumphal procession by Christ and through us will spread the fragrance of the knowledge of God. Each one of us as a believer is designed, created, called, and purposed to live lives that impact the people around us towards Christ. Every single one of us. I know that to be true of you. I know it to be true of you that you are called and created to live a spiritually impactful life. Here's the other thing I know to be true of you. We all doubt our capacity to actually do it. Every single one of us, as I'm up here ranting about your purpose to live a spiritually impactful life, all but the most arrogant and least self-aware of us are thinking to ourselves all the reasons why we can't make an impact, but we can't make that big of an impact. All of us have disqualifying voices in our life that keep us from fully embracing that. Timothy's disqualifying voice was, I might be too young. They might not listen. And Paul says, hey, don't listen to that voice. Put your head down, be an example to the believers in the way that you pursue purity and in the way that you love others. Let the outcome of those actions speak for themselves. As I sit here and tell you, you are called to live a spiritually impactful life. There is no doubt in my mind that all kinds of things are running through your head as to why you can't live a spiritually impactful life as that person over there. Each of you thinks that your counterpart on the other side of the room has a better chance of living a spiritually impactful life than you do, and you're all wrong. We're all called to that, but we all, here's the problem, have in our life these disqualifying voices that we're tempted to listen to. And more often than not, the loudest voice of disqualification is in your own head. The loudest voice that tells you, I really don't have much of a shot at making a difference in God's kingdom. I really am not going to be that impactful in my life. That voice, more often than not, comes from you, not the world. And we think things like maybe when you hear me talk about that, maybe your thought is Timothy's thought. I'm too young. No one will listen to me. I don't have enough experience. I don't have the resume to be spiritually impactful, to impact people towards Christ. Maybe you're on the other end of the spectrum. I'm too old. All my years are behind me. Whatever chance I had to make an impact has passed. I've missed my sweet spot. Now I'm just cruising it to home. There's nothing left for me to do. Maybe you think to yourself, I'm not that articulate. I don't like being in front of people. I'm not winsome. I'm not charismatic. Maybe when I talk about making a spiritual impact, you think, yeah, well, I'm a stay-at-home mom. And my world is so very small right now. And this sermon is for other people. It's not for me. Maybe you would disqualify yourself with your past. Say, yeah, man, you don't know what I've been and what I've done and where I've come from. Ain't nobody listening to me. Maybe you're new to Christianity. Maybe you're not new to Christianity, but you're new to taking it seriously. And so when I open up the Bible and talk about the different books in the Bible, you're not really familiar with them at all. And you're just thinking, I'm just trying to play catch up here, man. I'm not ready to go impact other people. I'm new to this. I don't know. They're going to ask me questions and I'm not going to know the answers. So I can't make an impact yet. I don't know what your disqualifying voice is trying to convince you of to make you step out of the race and not believe about yourself that you were created to live a spiritually impactful life. I don't know what's trying to convince you that you don't have a part to play in building God's kingdom while you're here on earth. But I do know that to our doubts, Paul tells us to put our heads down and pursue holiness. To whatever doubts you have in your head, to whatever your disqualifying voice is from spiritual service, Paul says to that voice, ignore it, put your head down, pursue holiness, love others, and watch what God does. He says to you, Paul says, let no man despise your past. Judge you based on mistakes that you've made before. Put your head down, pursue holiness, love others well, and watch what God does. Let nobody look down on your inexperience. You know the remedy to a past? A pure future. You know the remedy to inexperience? Experience. You know the remedy to thinking that you're too old or you're too young? Get in the ring and watch what God does. We write ourselves off from living spiritually impactful lives for so many reasons. And they're all lies. They're all lies that you tell yourself and that the enemy tells us to disqualify you from service in God's kingdom. And here's a really scary thing that dawned on me as I was preparing this. When we listen to the disqualifying voices, we do harm to those we love the most. Do you understand this? When we allow the voices from within and from without to convince us that we can't really take our faith that seriously because no one takes us seriously and God doesn't really have something he wants me to do and people he wants me to impact. When we believe that, when we fall prey to that and we step out of the ring and we're just coasting through our spiritual lives, we do the most harm to the people we love the most. What would have happened in Ephesus if Timothy had let those voices win? If Timothy had convinced himself that he was too young to be effective, and he stepped into the pulpit with timidity? Would Ephesus have slowly crumbled and dissolved away without leadership? I don't know. But if he was to choose to listen to those disqualifying voices, then he would not have served the people nearly like he needed to. More pointedly, parents, listen to me. If you don't take seriously your call to live a spiritually impactful life, if you let the voices talk you out of putting your head down and pursuing holiness and loving other people well. If you mail in your spiritual life and be content to be slightly above average. I'm good enough to check the box. I'm a good person. I'm going to heaven. My kids are going to heaven. If you just mail it in and go into cruise control for the rest of your life without pursuing God. Who's going to disciple your kids? Who's going to show your kids how to follow Christ? Who's going to model it for your children? If you refuse to put your head down and pursue holiness and love others well and let God in to let him use the gifts that he's given you, if you refuse to engage spiritually and don't take your spiritual health seriously and don't believe that you were placed in the life of your children to impact them towards Christ, if you won't do that for them, who will? Aaron? Children's pastor? Kyle? They get your kids for one hour a week. And let's just be honest about this. That's not even 52 weeks a year, okay? I've seen your church attendance. Let's be generous and call it like 40. They get your kids for 40 hours a year. They're going to disciple a kid in 40 hours a year? You get your kids for 100 hours a week. There is no one in your child's life better postured to love them towards Jesus than you. And when you refuse to engage in your own spiritual growth because the voices talk you out of it, you abscond on your duty to raise your kids in Christ and you thrust it on someone else and we shortchange them. When we choose to believe the disqualifying voices in our life, we hurt the people around us the most. The Bible tells us that marriage is to be a picture that reminds us of the way that Christ sacrificially loves the church. If you don't show your spouse day in and day out how Jesus loves the church by sacrificially loving them, if you're not trying to do that every day, if you're not taking seriously the call to impact your spouse towards Christ and watch God work in them, who's going to do that for you? If you don't take seriously the call in scripture to live a life building God's kingdom, pursuing holiness and loving others well, and letting God do what he will with the gifts, with the people around you? Who's going to be the pastor that your workplace so desperately needs? Who is your coworker going to come to when they need prayer because their mom's in the hospital? Who's going to invite your neighbor to the thing that's going to ignite them spiritually and reengage them with the church? Who's going to work in your circles of influence as only you can to impact people towards Christ? If you choose to allow the voices that disqualify you from Christian service, if you choose to allow them to win, if we don't take seriously this call from Paul to be an example to the believers in word and conversation and charity and spirit and faith and purity, if we don't do that, who's going to step in and do our job for us? We are all called to live spiritually impactful lives. And we must take seriously that call. Now, on the flip side, can you imagine what could happen if we choose to pursue holiness and allow God to use the gifts he's given you. Can you imagine what could happen in your life if you left here and you said, okay, God, listen, I don't know what your plan is for me. I'm not even sure what the gifts you've given me are. I have no idea. But I'm going to put my head down. I'm going to pursue holiness. I'm going to love others well. I'm going to make my life available to you. You use my life to impact the people around me however you want. God, I want to live the rest of my life building your kingdom. What would happen if you left this place and you got on your knees this afternoon, tonight, tomorrow morning, and you said, God, I'm yours. Use me. I don't know to what end. I'm not convinced that I'm going to make any great impact. But I am convinced that I need to live the rest of my life opened up to the possibility that you want to use me in the lives of the people around me. So here, it's yours. I'm going to put my head down. I'm not going to listen to my disqualifying voices. I'm not going to listen to the disqualifying voices of the people around me. I'm going to put my head down. I'm going to do the work. I'm going to pursue holiness. I'm going to be an example to the believers in the way that I love others. And I'm going to trust you with the results and let those speak for themselves. What could happen if we let God in our lives to use the gifts that he's given us? Well, I'll tell you one thing that could happen because we've seen it happen in real time here in this church over the last five or so years. I'm about to just, she probably will never come back to the church. But she's on staff, so she has to. I'm going to embarrass the heck out of Carly. You can leave the room now if you want to, Carly. I don't know how long ago it was that she started singing. Carly was the lady singing right here this morning. I don't know how long ago it was that she started singing, four or five years ago. But her origin story is she was our previous worship pastor's wife, Lisa, was in the restroom on a Sunday morning and heard an angelic voice coming out of a stall and stalked her and said, we need you on the worship team. You should try out. And Carly had to be cajoled. She had to be talked into it. Because she's not big on, she's not the first one to raise her hand and be like, yes, I would like to be in front of others and let them hear my voice every Sunday publicly. That's not her jam. So she had to be talked into it. And she reluctantly agreed. She auditioned. She did well. Let's get you on the team. So she starts coming up and leading worship. And here's the thing. I'm pretty sure that Carly led worship for about two full years before I actually heard her voice. Because it takes, it's true, isn't it? I don't know if you guys have ever thought about this. I've watched it happen whenever we recruit someone new to the team. It's one thing to have a pretty voice and be told that you have a nice voice. It's another thing to sing loudly enough and confidently enough into the microphone in front of other people to be heard above the mix. When there's someone up here singing and you can't hear them, it's not because Cindy doesn't have them turned up loud enough. It's because their Sunday morning voice is a little bit different than their Wednesday night voice. There's people in the room. It takes guts to step into that. But over time and over the years, Carly trusted us with her gift. She started to believe in God's purpose for her life in this area. And she started to trust it to God. And she started to trust it to us. And in the last, I would say, six to eight months, now when Carly leads a song, buddy, she's leading. She's belting. She's letting it rip. And every time she does it, I'm getting emotional right now. Every time she does it, I get emotional. And I get emotional because I think it's so beautiful when a child of God is using their gift from God to do exactly what he gave that gift to them to do. It is so powerful to think about the fact that when she was knit in her mother's womb, God says, I'm going to give this one a voice. And he didn't give her a voice so that she could sing pretty and entertain people. He didn't give her a voice so that she could bring attention to herself. Do you know why he gave her a voice? He gave her a voice so that he could hear it sing praises to him, so that he could hear his daughter sing to him in a way that he enjoyed. And he gave her a voice for his daughter to use to bring his other children into praise before his throne, into his presence. When she sings on Sunday and belts it out and lets it rip, she's using the gift that God gave her for the exact reason he gave it to her, and it's beautiful. And we would never experience it and be led into worship through her and through her gifting if she allowed the disqualifying voices to talk her out of it when she auditioned. If she allowed the disqualifying voice in her head to talk her out of it in the early years as she was getting her feet wet. And so we see what can happen in real time when we say, God, I don't know what you have for me and I don't know what my purpose is here, but I'm going to make my gifts available for you to use however you want to use them. In the meantime, I'm going to be an example to the believers in the way that I pursue you and in the way that I love others. Can you imagine what a church could look like if everyone in that church prayed that prayer and said, God, I don't know what you have for me to do. I don't even know how you've gifted me to do it. But I'm going to pursue you and I'm going to love others and whatever impact you want me to have, God, I'm ready to have it. Can you imagine what could happen with a church full of people who believe that? I'll tell you this. I'd like to find out. Let's pray. Father, we love you. Thank you for imbuing our lives with purpose that's bigger than us. Thank you for always encouraging us to put our heads down and to trust you with the gifts that you've given us. Thank you for being a steady voice in our life that tells us we don't have to believe the disqualifying things about ourselves. God, I pray that every person in here, whether it's today or five years from now, would allow you to open their eyes to the fact that you've called and created them to live spiritually impactful lives. Would those of us who've just been cruising, not taking things seriously, not being engaged, God, would we re-engage with you? Would we make disciples of our children? Would we be a pastor to our communities? Show us how you can use us if we simply get our doubts and our fears and our hesitancies out of the way and let you begin to work. God, I pray that you would bring it about. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, Grace. Oh, look at that. See, they clap and they answer. I don't know how I did that, but thank you all for being here. As Nate said, I'm Erin. I am the children's pastor, so I'm very excited to be out of little church and part of big church this morning. It's kind of a fun place to be. I'm also a little apprehensive to stand up here for a couple of different reasons. One, there's people in the audience that I didn't expect to be here, so that one adds a whole other layer to my morning, which is fun. But the other one too is that the book of Philippians that we get to talk about today is a really cool book, and it's a lot of fun, but it's also a very personal book. And I found it to be very personal for Paul as well as for me. So as I jumped in and started to study, I came very quickly upon the area that I felt is where I wanted to land. And so I continued to study. I continued to do my research. And then on top of it, I met with Nate, who helped me to even narrow my focus a little bit more. Because you guys know me. I have lots of words. He does not. And so the two of us hopefully could, yeah, pare it down just a little. But I got all of that together. So I now have my outline. I'm so excited. And I sat down to try to write, and I had no words. Zero. And again, if you know me, that's a rarity. And so I struggled for a long time, and there was one night after a particularly hard day of no words, I came home and I was talking to Harris, my sweet husband, lamenting the fact that I had no words. And he stops me in my tracks and he says, hey, Aaron, have you ever thought about the fact that you have no words because you're trying to protect yourself? And I said, what? No, I don't do that. And he said, well, yeah. He goes, you have been trying in all of your power to live out what you want to talk about for the last two and a half years. And he said, maybe it's time for you to break down the walls that you're using to protect yourself and put your words on paper. And so I took his great advice, And I must admit he was right. It's hard to say that. No, I'm kidding. But seriously, I took his advice. And the next day I looked at the passage with new eyes. And the words began to flow. So to you, Nate, a small apology. Because this may not be exactly what we talked about, but I hope that what I do get to present today is honoring to Paul and Paul's message to the Philippians, which I think is also very relevant to us today. So, let's jump in. One of the things about me that you may or may not know also is I am a huge history lover. I actually went to school to teach history. I never actually did that officially, but that's okay. But I believe that in history, in order to completely understand it, sometimes you have to get a full, like the back story. And then it all starts to make a whole lot more sense. So in our morning this morning, you're going to hear some of the backstory about the book of Philippians, so hopefully we understand where Paul is writing from. So we'll start though with the book of Philippians. Paul, it's AD 62. Paul is in a prison cell in Rome awaiting trial. This beautiful trial is going to basically allow, tell him whether he's going to live or die. That's kind of what he's waiting on. So in order to pass the time, he is ministering to those people who are visiting him. He is writing letters of correction and encouragement to his churches. Now, the prison cell that he sits in is not like anything we would understand today. He's in shackles all of the time, most likely shackled to a Roman soldier. And then the Roman penal system required him to provide his own room and board. So he sits in a prison cell, can't go anywhere, can't do anything, but they expect him to be able to pay his way. So he is completely and totally reliant on people for his care. This is where the sweet church of Philippi actually comes in. So now if we back up 10 years, we find Paul and Silas and Timothy and Luke all heading out on their second missionary journey. And as they have gone to left Antioch, they're in Galatia, they're running around Galatia, they've done their thing. They say, I want to move west. And so they try to go westward. And every time they make that trip towards the west, which would be Asia, they run into these roadblocks. And if you go into Acts 16, which is where this story is, you find out Paul attributes every single one of those roadblocks to the Holy Spirit, saying it's not time for you guys to go to Asia yet. And so like every good southerner, Paul and his friends decide to regroup and they head to the beach. They head to a little town called Troas, which sits on the Aegean Sea. And they camp out there for a while to try to discern what their next steps are. And then one night, Paul has a dream. And in this dream, there's a Macedonian man who appears to him and begs him to come to Macedonia. So you know where this is headed. He tells his friends. They get into a boat. They cross the Aegean Sea, and they head to Macedonia. The really cool side note to this is Macedonia is present-day Europe. So what we're talking about now is the first time the gospel has ever reached Europe, which I just think that's really, really cool. So they end up on the coast. They get off. They jump on what's called the Ignatian, if I pronounced that right. Who knows? Way. Which was a road that was constructed by the Roman Empire to connect all of the Roman colonies. One of those Roman colonies was Philippi. Philippi had become a Roman colony at the end of a civil war. The winner of the civil war had then become emperor. And he chose Philippi as a colony because it was rich in gold. It had fabulous location to the coast. And he'd also then decided that it was a great retirement location for all the Roman soldiers. So kind of like the villages in Florida. So this Philippi that Paul and his friends would have been walking up on held great prominence in Macedonia. They would have walked up to these amazing walls that were there to protect the city and a spectacular road system, which was all testimony to its strategic importance and all of the Roman influence. And then as they walked down the city streets, they would see this amazing Roman architecture. There would be temples to the Roman gods. There would be a bustling city life. And on top of that, the population would have been pretty diverse. You would have had the retired Roman soldiers. You also would have had other Roman citizens that had come to Philippi because, you know, it's kind of a cool city. And then on top of it, you're going to have the local Greek population. The one thing, however, that there were, I guess I should say, there were a few things that were missing. So as Paul and his friends are in the middle of Philippi, it becomes the Sabbath and they go to look for a place to worship. Now, Paul and the previous places that he would visit, they would always head to a synagogue as a place of worship. There was not a single synagogue in Philippi. And so the interesting part to this is it only takes 10 Jewish men in order to be classified as a synagogue. So there's a whole population of people that would have been familiar to Paul and his friends that are completely missing. So Paul leaves. He heads outside the city and goes to the river to worship. When he gets to the river, he meets a woman by the name of Lydia and some of her followers or her friends. They were all followers of God. He had a moment with them. Their hearts were open. He was able to preach the gospel. Lydia and her entire family are baptized. They come to know Christ. They are now officially the first recorded believers of Christ in Europe. I think that's just really cool. And so then you have this moment. Lydia says, okay, you guys now have to use my house. It needs to be your headquarters. You can just come and rest and eat and do all that stuff and travel and whatever you need to do. This is where you need to go. So they did. They used her house as headquarters. They ran back and forth. They continued to preach and they teach. They managed to get themselves in more trouble. Paul and Silas end up in jail again. Paul seems to like jail. It's just a good thing for him. But he ends up in jail again. Something about a slave girl and a demon. He cast them out and made people mad. I don't know. They ended up in jail. But while he's in jail, there's an earthquake. And because of that earthquake, the jailer and his whole family come to Jesus. So now all of a sudden we have two groups of people that are going to come together to form this beautiful church of Philippi. And so at this, he is released from jail and he decides it's probably a good idea if he leaves Philippi. They're not sure that they really like him there. So as they pack up to leave, he leaves Lydia and her family and the Roman soldier and his family to form this sweet church of Philippi. And so it's a church that sits in a city of prominence. It's a church full of believers that are now going to face a great deal of resistance and a great deal of persecution. If you go back to what we're looking at, Roman soldiers who believe in the Roman Empire, they believe in the Roman Emperor as God. There's going to be a lot of resistance. There'll be a lot of persecution, but they're in it. So here we now find Paul sitting and writing letters, and he picks to write a letter to his friends in Philippi. But the really cool thing about this letter is that it's really, really different from all of the other letters that he's written. You heard from both Aaron and Doug on Galatians and Ephesians, and there was moments of correction in there. He had heard that there were things going wrong in these churches, and he needed to correct it. That's not what this letter's about. This letter, Paul's basically, it's like you would sit down to write a letter to a friend. How are you doing? This is what I've been up to. What have you been up to? I hope you are well. Thank you so much for the gift that you sent me. It's done X, Y, and Z to help me. And that's what he does here. Because see, the church of Philippi had been a partner with Paul from the very beginning in his spread of the gospel. They had supported him in every way possible, whether it was people, whether it was money, whatever Paul needed, the Church of Philippi was consistent in their support. And so this letter shows that as he writes to them. You can also tell through the words that he uses and the way that the letter is phrased that he knows that he's writing to a mature group of Christians, a group of Christians who totally understand who the person of Christ is, the sacrifice that he made, as well as understanding that their citizenship is not quite here. It's in heaven. But also knowing that they have to figure out how to live in the here and now, in the city where it's full of the struggle of temptations of the flesh, its struggle with the constant fears of persecution. And so I can also say it kind of sounds like the world we live in today, right? We're believers. We sit knowing who Christ is. We sit understanding what he did for us, but also knowing our citizenship's in heaven. But how do I live right here and right now? We live in a world with a 24-hour news cycle. There's a little fear there, right? We live in the world with social media that can make us feel so often about that we're just not good enough. We've lived through a pandemic. We've come out the other side. It may have given us a few layers of fear now. Also can it happen again. And what's it going to be like if it does. And then if you're a parent or a grandparent. There may be a whole other layer of fear that you have. Because you are talking about your kids. Or your grandkids. And what the world is like. And the things that they have to face. So in this thank you note, Paul says to them as well as to us, it becomes this letter of an encouragement. And he says, you need to hold fast and hold strong. And you need to be there with a mindset like Christ, because he knows if you can control, if they can control their thoughts, that they can change the direction of their lives. He knows that the renewed mind leads to a life transformed. And this is what he actually says that the Christ-like mindset is. If you look at Philippians chapter 4, verse 8, it states, Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things. So Paul says to him, you need to shift your focus and fill your thoughts with the truth of God's word. You need to look at the world with the eyes and the lens of humility, of justice, of finding ways that your thoughts and your actions are attractive to others, that they're filled with gratitude and praise, and that you're grounding yourself in this present moment that we live in and finding God in the circumstances. I believe Paul knew his audience exceptionally well, because as I read this, and I imagine the Philippians heard it as well in his letter and went, hmm, that might be easier said than done. And it's true. This is not easy. But I believe Paul then gives us an action plan to help us learn how to renew our minds. And it's important to note that like any other action plan that you may have in your life, like to lose weight or to exercise more, whatever it may be, if you're not consistent in it and if you don't put in the time and the energy and the work, it's not going to do anything. So we need to be focused on it. So if you want to renew your mind so that you live a transformed life, the first thing that he talks about is that we must learn to choose joy. And if you look at Philippians chapter four, verse four, he says it, rejoice in the Lord always. I say it again, rejoice. And like any good pastor, if he wants you to remember it, he says it twice. Rejoice. I say it again, rejoice. I was in a small group leader for many years for a really cool group of girls. And from 6th grade to 12th grade for them. And when they graduated, they gave me a ring, which I still wear periodically. Inscribed on the ring, it says, choose joy. Come to find out, this may have been one my favorite phrases for them because, you know, sixth to 12th grade is the crazy time anyway. And what I wanted them to understand, and that's what Paul talks about in this passage, is the fact that you don't always have control over your circumstances. Circumstances change all the time. We may not be able to control them, but we do have control how we choose to respond to that circumstance. So, you know, we'd hear it from them. But, you know, I can't have joy because so-and-so broke up with me. Or I can't have joy because I can't go to the party next week or in our situation it may be more things like I can't have joy because I just got that medical diagnosis. I can't have joy because I lost my job. But my response to that is this is where we get to choose to have joy. I can't, I can't help the medical diagnosis, but I can shift my focus and choose to have joy in that moment. And what this comes down to is that we change our thinking from the what, which is very temporal, to the who, which is very internal, our joy abounds. I can have joy in that situation because he is the author and perfecter of my faith. I can have joy in that situation because he says he will never leave me nor forsake me. So, choose joy. The next thing he says that we need to do is we need to learn to release it. And I'm not talking about releasing your joy. We want to hold on to that joy. What he's talking about here is releasing your control. Let me, let me expand upon that. Verse six in Philippians four says, So we walk in a world today where we face stress, we face anxiety, we face fear, we face worry. It's all very normal. The thing that isn't is when it has control over us. And I think as a side note I need to put in here is that this anxiety, this fear, this worry that I speak of is the stuff that we just normally have as a human being living in the world, the fallen world that we live in today. There are other people who fear, worry, and anxiety are actually part of a mental health situation. And to them, I say, what we talk about today, it helps. But your medication and your therapist and everything else that you're doing helps also. You bring God into the situation, but you don't. I'm not going to stand up here and say you're praying away anything because that's not true. Okay. So now I come back to where I was. So fear, anxiety, et cetera, the world we live in, it causes it. It's normal. We don't want it to have control over us. That's just what we don't, we don't want to do it. Um, and when it starts to have control over us, what we start to see is because we're humans and because we hate pain and we want to do everything in our life to avoid pain, we will try to control or we will try to fix the situation that we're in. Because that pain of failure, that pain of loss, that pain of rejection is too much. So we choose to hold on super, super tight to it. Because then that way it's safe, right? I'm safe. I'm not hurt. But guess what? I'm exhausted because I'm working so hard not to release it, but to control it and to hold on to it. And, you know, it also states in Scripture, God says, cast all your cares on me because he cares for you. And so he cares so much he sent Jesus to die for you. So why are you still holding on to it? And if you look at verse 7, and then it puts up protectors around your heart and around your mind. So the next time you walk into the next situation, that peace is there if you're willing to let go of the control and stop thinking that you can hold on to it. So what circumstance is it that you are holding on to and refusing to allow God to work in it? What situation keeps you up at night? Who's had that 3 a.m. wake up call? I know. Go ahead and nod your head because it happens. But what are you holding on to so tightly that you can't allow God's peace to enter into it because you want to control it? Think about what would happen if you gave it all over to him. Because here's the thing, when we're in those situations where we're stressed, we're worried, we're anxious, etc. How are you as a person? How do you respond to your family? I don't know. Harris has seen it before. The more stress I'm under, the shorter I am, the grumpier I am, the angrier I can be. But yet if the peace comes in, now what happens? Then I'm hopefully responding to situations where I'm annoyed with a little bit more patience. Or maybe some more joy or love or gentleness or kindness or whatever it is. So when we talk about renewing your mind to transform your life, this is the kind of things that we're talking about. The change that can happen inside of relationships just because. You may not realize it, but that angst that you have, that stress that you're carrying is affecting those around you. And so by accepting God's peace and walking in it, it changes that. So this also then brings us back to where we started in verse 8. Because here we are. We now know that we want to choose joy. We now know that we want to release it all. But that still does not really help us out with, again, that mindset and how to live directly in the here and now. Because, again, we live here. You're going to have thoughts, right? The world that we live in today, there are a thousand things vying for your attention and your thought life. But guess what? I'm going to tell you again. You have control over your thought life. Huh? And I know that one seems big, but you really and truly do. You get to choose and decide what takes up real estate in your brain. You get to choose and decide what it is that you want to focus your thoughts on. The thing about the human brain is the way that it's actually wired is to conserve energy. So if your normal thought pattern is kind of negative, goes down that what-if trail often, so every time thoughts come in, that's where they're going to go. So this is the renewing of the mind part is that we don't want it to go down a negative path anymore. We want to renew it so it has the mindset of Christ so that we're now, when the thoughts come in, they take a different path because that's become the easy path. So what's that filter? That filter again is verse eight. You think about these things. You run all of those thoughts through what verse eight says. The truth of God. You have the truth of God in your hands. If it doesn't meet up with the truth of God, throw it away and don't give it time in your thoughts. If it isn't lovely, if it isn't pure, if it isn't honoring, if it isn't praiseworthy, just don't even give it your time or your attention. Is it going to be easy? No, it's not. Because again, what's the easiest thing for us to think on? Right? Where's your brain? The easiest place to think on quite often for us is the what ifs and the oh noes because that's where we've been. Another way to possibly think about this that I love is we are our own worst critic, right? So we have to stop listening to ourselves and start talking to ourselves instead. Quit listening to the lies that the world tells us. Quit listening to that little voice inside your head that tells you you're not enough, you're not good enough. You can't stand up in front of all those people. Like whatever it is that that little voice is telling you, you got to push it aside. And when I say you start talking to yourself, start talking to yourself through the lens of 4-8. Start talking to yourself like a coach. Yeah, we messed up this time. But guess what? We're going to get it right next time. And soon, you'll be hearing the words of God reiterating who you are in him. That you are capable. That you are lovely. That you are worthy, that he loves you. And that you can trust him. That even though my circumstances stink, he's right here with me. And then eventually we begin to interpret our circumstances through the goodness of God. And as we step into truth, we hear his voice and the words of scripture and we learn to trust. A few years ago, my circumstances changed. My parents were living part-time lives halfway in Florida, halfway in North Carolina. They were in their 80s and very independent and doing exceptionally well. Then one summer when my mom was home, we had some health issues. There was a fall,ed up with a little memory issues, kind of hiccups, whatever you want to call them. They made the decision not to go down to Florida that summer. And instead, or that winter, I should say. Instead, hang out in North Carolina and see if we could see where we were headed, right? Needless to say, her health continued to decline some. Dad made the decision, we're done, sold the place in Florida. They're now in Pinehurst full-time. It's fabulous because they're close, and we get to run back and forth. We get to hang out together, and the world is really good. But my mom's health and her mobility continued to decline over this time. And then in my dad, I began to see a lot of what we talked about today. His circumstances were not ones he wanted to be living in. And the fear of losing my mom did this to him. And he tried to control and fix all the things. Because, you know, she was his best friend. She was his soulmate. They had been together at this point like 62 years. And so he's holding on like this. And what he was doing by holding on like this, he turned into somebody who, for us, was hard to deal with sometimes. He got kind of, there were moments of anger. There were moments just pure frustration. We also had anxiety. It was all there, all the things that we've talked about. And he was grumpy, which if you've ever met my dad, grumpy was not a word that you would have used to describe him. So he's holding on for dear life. And in turn, I'm caught in the middle because I'm dealing with my mom as well as my dad and all of the frustrations that come trying to not choose sides. I can see his side. I can see hers. I'm trying to, you know, all the things, right? And the other thing I was trying to do too was fix it and control it. There were days that I will stand up before you and honestly admit I did not choose joy. There were days that trying to think about that which was true and lovely and pure and honest, and that just was not thoughts that crossed my brain. I tried, but it's not things that always came easy. Stress levels continued to increase. Then my dad had some health issues. We go down that rabbit trail because my mom's of no help, so it falls on my shoulders to help manage his care as well. So lots of running back and forth, lots of doing all that. The end of 2022 is the beginning of my mom's major decline. We end up in the hospital for many days. The hospice is called in. And then my mom passes away at the beginning of December of 2022. My dad was wrecked. The grief that hit my father at that point in time was beyond anything I'd had experienced. His wife of 63 years, it was hard. And again, he still had hoped so much to control, and that control just didn't work. So as you can only guess, I jumped in because he's a mess and he needs somebody to take care of him. So I went immediately into caregiver mode. I took off. We had to find him a place up here because, you know, he can't be in Pounders by himself. So thankfully I was gifted with, right? We found a really cool independent living community. He's actually across the street from me. We get him up here. We get him settled. And it is good. So I call this kind of our year of temporary peace. His veil of grief lifts a little. He makes friends. He's hanging out. He finds his new routine. He misses my mom every single day. But he's enjoying his time with us and we're loving having him with us. He's there for all of the birthdays and the holidays. We got to celebrate his 90th and it was fantastic. He was here when Haley and Zach got engaged. It was just an amazing year together. I think at this point in time for all of us, joy became a little easier to choose. We may have let go of control just a little bit. Because the one thing that I probably didn't mention about me and my control was this, to me me became my lifeline. Because the one thing I knew in dealing with both my mommy and my dad was that if I let go of this in my heart, in my brain, I felt I would drown. And so I held on with everything that I had because I, yeah, I was scared to death to let go for fear of not being able to come back up. And so last, this past April, my dad had a fall. So my temporary peace has now gone to here. It wasn't a big fall. It scared us all a little. It wasn't a big deal. We moved on. Harris and I are going out of town. We came back from out of town. My dad is in basically excruciating back pain. There's no explanation for it. So we spent the next week trying to figure out what's going on. Thought we were headed towards some answers and then we had another fall. Ended up in the hospital because of the fall. That was on a Monday. That Wednesday evening and the hospital stays were something that's for a whole other sermon. But that Wednesday evening, we finally got him to a place of rest. I kissed him on the top of his head. I told him I loved him, and I said, I'll see you tomorrow. Remember, I've got you. I went home. I went to bed. Middle of the night, I got a phone call. Your dad's taking a turn. We need you to come to the hospital. I'm holding at this point in time. Still holding on as tight as I can. But y'all, I got into that car and said, I can't do this. And I let go. And the whole way to the hospital, I just prayed, Lord, your will, not mine. Lord, I need you to be my rock and my strength in this moment. Your will, not mine. Now, come to find out, I pulled into the parking lot at Wake Med. And I know now that that was when my daddy went and met Jesus. And so when I walked into his room, y'all, he had a smile on his face. And I know in my heart that daddy came to his peace in the arms of Jesus. And he saw my mama. And the thing is, I found my peace too. I released it. I let it go and I let him have it. And that one moment of release was what I needed. Now, my circumstances are, I don't know that they've changed. I can't say that they've changed. They're just different. I now stand before you. I've lost both of my parents in the last 17 months. I'm dealing with all of the things related to dad and what's left behind. But the one thing I do know is that I live each day now in the moment. I don't focus on the what ifs. I don't go to those things that I can't, I have no control over. I try to stay grounded, choosing my joy, choosing to come at it with prayer and open hands and trying my very best that when those thoughts and those what ifs and all the things try to come into my brain, that I don't let it take up real estate and I push it aside. It's not easy. But the peace that I have when I do make those choices, I want more of. And so the daily, the hourly exercise of doing that, I will continue to do. And so here we have five little verses tucked at the back of this beautiful letter and thank you note that Paul wrote that act for us as an action plan so we can renew our minds to live a transformed life. Sounds easy. It's going to take lots of work. That day-to-day commitment about choosing joy releasing it and then I'm being very intentional about what comes into our thoughts so I want to ask you Grace Raleigh as we close it all up today where are you stuck in your circumstances so stuck that you've lost your joy or that you're finding that you want to control or hold on to your situation so much so that you're exhausted and you don't know what to do with it. Where are you allowing the world to influence your thoughts, to allow your thoughts to become that vicious cycle of fear and worry and anxiety? So can you instead release it knowing that when you release it, you will find his peace, a peace beyond all understanding that will guard your heart and guard your mind as you walk into your next circumstance. Will you all pray with me? Lord, thank you. Thank you for today. Thank you for your peace. And for Paul knowing that a renewed mind leads to a transformed life. So Lord, thank you that we have your words and that we have you by our side to know how to choose your peace, to choose your joy, and most of all, in all situations, to choose you. We just ask that you help each and every one of us, Lord, to be able to walk this action plan with intentionality and to live in your peace. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. How are we, Jay? Everybody good? Good, good. Off to a great start. I'm really excited. Thanks, Jacob, my man. Nate, as Nate mentioned earlier, my name is Aaron. I am one of the pastors out here, and I'm excited to be talking with you today. We've been in a series called 27. We started it last summer and continuing it this summer, and essentially we're just taking a book, pulling a theme or the overall theme of the letter, and talking about it on Sunday morning. This week, we're talking about... Not that one. We're talking about Galatians. So gotcha, right? But we're talking about the book of Galatians. And if I can be honest, like a couple of weeks ago when I started writing this, I got a little bit nervous because last year in the summer, I used the book of Colossians. And as I was preparing this message, I was like, man, there's some very similar tones that Paul is using in both of these letters. Man, I really hope they don't think I just kind of pulled last year's sermon out like he's doing this one again. Like, look at the one trick pony guy, right? But then last Sunday, Doug told us he had no clue that I did Colossians. So I'm like, I'm in the clear. So this was really the easiest sermon I've ever prepared because I did take last year's and I just did a find and replace with Galatians and Colossians. And you guys won't even know it. So that's not true. I am excited to be talking with us about Galatians today. Again, not Ephesians. To kind of get our minds moving in that direction. Some of you know a little bit about my story. But in case you don't, I grew up in the church. I wasn't a Christian at all. My father was a pastor. And if you've ever heard the saying that pastors' kids are the worst, it's true. Just not on Sundays, right? So that's one of the things I learned very early on is that people are looking at my behavior. Like there was an added weight to looking the part, right? Because it seemed like there was people, um, they would assess not just how good I was, but how good of a parent my father was based on how good of a boy I was. And so I learned Monday through Saturday, I can do whatever because I don't hang out in Christian circles on Sunday, Christian circle be good. And so that's what I was. I learned how to say the right things and do the right things. There was all this extra emphasis just on the way that I behaved. But when I did give my life to Jesus, I was maybe 19 or 20 years old. I was a night auditor in a hotel. I was an assistant high school basketball coaching going to school full time. And I can remember as a night auditor, you work about one hour a week. If I ever got fired from the church, I would go be a night auditor because you work one hour a night and the rest of the time just hide from the camera and nap and you were okay. But no, I remember whenever I would open my Bible, my prayer every single time was, God, help me forget everything that I learned about you as a child growing up, and you teach me who you are from your word. I wouldn't be able to articulate to you then why, or I had no clue what the, that was my, that may have been a very bad thing to pray. I have no clue, but what I knew was there was a difference in what I was feeling in that moment and what I felt as a child growing up. There was a very big difference in the unconditional love that I was currently sitting in, the unconditional love that I felt, the total and complete forgiveness that I felt that I had received from God, and the love that I felt growing up. Like the love that I felt growing up very much had to be earned. It had to be good enough. I had to do the right thing. I had to look the right way and say the right things. Otherwise, that love, it was kind of like God was just dangling it and ready to take it away at any point in time. And it didn't take long in my adulthood, or I guess if you can call 20 adult, in my almost formed brain, like it didn't take long before I started to question. I started to question my salvation. And it was always because, man, I messed up again. Does God still love me? It didn't take long before I started chasing good enough. And it's exhausting. And it didn't take long before I just wrestled with this idea of Christianity and who I'm supposed to be and I'm not good enough, I can't measure up, and just this weight, everything that I experienced as a kid suddenly kind of came back and even still today have struggles with it. Maybe you've experienced that. Maybe you've had the thought and this feeling of not being good enough. Like you just have to be better. Like it's this over-emphasis on the rules and this idea of if you don't do this, then you're really not this. God doesn't love you. God doesn't care for you. God is mad at you. It's almost like when you mess up, you feel like Jesus is stepping back in heaven and saying, hey, God, listen, I didn't know he was going to do that, right? Like, I knew all this other stuff, but that's surprise. And every decision, every action, every mistake has eternal consequences on the other side of it. Every bit of that is as a result of being exposed to legalism as a child. We all have been impacted by legalism on some level. Now, we could sit down and probably share story after story of hurt that has came from the church. Church hurt. And even if we didn't realize, and if we started to dig a little bit, what we would probably uncover is some type of legalism being at the root of all of that. Like everyone has this idea and this overemphasis, we've been exposed to this overemphasis on the rules and the regulations of Christianity. Even if someone who hasn't been in the church, hasn't grown up in the church, someone who doesn't go to church now, if you ask them, hey, what is a Christian? The majority of them will tell you some variation of, it's got something to do with Jesus, but then there's rules that you kind of have to follow throughout your life. How many times as a kid, like don't raise your hand, but how many times as a kid, maybe you thought this same thing, right? Like, hey, church is good. Christianity is good. I want to do that. I want to be involved in that, but I'm going to do it when I'm older, right? Because right now, I just want to kind of enjoy my life. I want to have fun. I want to do the things that I want to do. When I'm older, a grandpa, like 35 years old or something, like that's when, I don't know what it was for you. Like me, when I was a kid, 35 was ancient. I was dumb, right? It's not ancient. But that's the thought. Like Christianity, when I settle down, when I get to this place and I wonder, I'll start following the rules and the regulations, this emphasis on behavior. When I get older, I'll do that. When I get older, I'll be a part of that. That's legalism. We've all been impacted by it. And it's not something that's new. It's something that has been around the church ever since the church started. At the very beginning, it's the reason that Paul wrote Galatians. I feel like this is falling off of my ear, but it's the reason that Paul wrote the book of Galatians. In the book of the Galatians, it's six short chapters. Paul attacks and disarms legalism. If you've ever been impacted by it, if you've ever been hurt by it, you will absolutely love this book. But when Paul comes in, he comes in hot. Look at chapter one, verse six. This is what he says. This is verse 6. And Paul's like long-winded. He uses a lot of run-ons. This is his third sentence into the letter. This is what he says. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all. Evidently, some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one that we preach to you, let them be under God's curse. Paul, throughout the entire book of Galatians, the only thing that he's talking about is legalism that has made its way into the churches at Galatia. And he's confronting really two false gospels that come from that. This idea of I have to be good enough, this overemphasis on the rules that I have to be good enough, or this overemphasis on the rules that, hey, I'm a Christian, I've got grace, now I can just do whatever I want and I'm all good. Paul confronts both of that. What's happening in the church in Galatia right now, these are fairly new, actually very new Christians. Christianity in itself is only about 49 to 50 years old at this point. And so Christianity came from Judaism. It came from the Jewish culture. Christianity came out of the Jews. And so the practices, the culture, the traditions have always been a part of it. Early Christians, even before Galatia, most early Christians were Jews. And then they came to know Christ. And then the Gentiles who came to Christ early, usually they became Jews first and then became Christians. And so as Christianity began to spread through the Greco-Roman world, like the leaders in the church had to answer this very difficult question. Like, what do we do with all of these non-Jews who are becoming Christians now? Do they have to first become Jews? Do they have to follow the traditions set in the Old Testament? Do they have to follow the customs? Do they have to do the things that we have been doing for years and years and years in order to first become Jews? And there were two camps that set up. The Hellenistic Jews were like, no, they don't have to do that. You can actually read about a conversation in Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, where the statement that came out of that was, we should not make it more difficult for the Gentiles to become Christians. But who is Paul is talking about in the book of Galatians is the Judaizers. And the Judaizers came in behind Paul to teach the Galatian Christians, hey, your faith has only just begun. Actually, your faith is not yet complete. Faith in Jesus is good, but now you actually have to become a Jew as well. You have to practice the Jewish customs and traditions, and you also have to become or get circumcised. Could you imagine that as an altar call, right? Like, lights come down, band comes up. Hey, if you want to give your life to Jesus, just go into this room on the right. You're going to be introduced to the 613 laws in the adjoining room in the back. That's our circumcision room. Go through there, and you are a Christian. You thought raising your hand when the pastor asked was hard? Like, no, that's a different kind of level, right? But that's what was happening. The Judaizers were coming in behind Paul and saying, hey, your faith isn't complete yet. You are not quite yet a Christian. You haven't yet attained the salvation that you're hoping for. Jesus is a start, but you also have to do this. It was Jesus plus something. It was Jesus and you have to look a certain way. Jesus and you have to live a certain way. Jesus and you have to believe additional things. Legalism is when we contribute identity as a Christian to anything other than faith in Christ alone. Jesus plus believing these things. Jesus plus living this way. Jesus plus this rule. Jesus plus this law. Jesus plus this command. This is what was happening in the church in Galatia, and it's what Paul is writing about. And if we can be honest, that doesn't sound incredibly different than the church today. Like, it's pretty mind-blowing to me that a faith that is based off of a singular event can have so many variations. It's pretty incredible to me that a faith based off the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, putting your hope and trust in this one man, can have so many different trends, so many different variations. And the thing that we have to realize is Paul wasn't writing and condemning the practices. He probably participated in a lot of the practices. What Paul was condemning was elevating the practices to the status of gospel, elevating the tradition to the status of gospel. Your faith isn't complete. Your salvation isn't complete. You need faith in Jesus and isn't that what we see today? Like you could line 10 different people up and ask them, what does it mean to be a Christian? And you're likely going to get several different answers. But not just about faith in Jesus and like what to believe, but about the way things you should do, the things you shouldn't do. This is what makes someone a Christian, or this is what makes someone a Christian. And this is what Paul was writing and correcting, was this confusion beginning to happen within the church. Like, how do you become a Christian? Well, you have to be this. And that's when you begin to see and you begin to hear statements like a Christian would never do this. A Christian could never say this. A Christian could never believe these things. A Christian could never be a part of these things. I have been in a place before, and I heard, I wasn't serving a church, but it was an area that I was at, and I heard pastors start to teach, hey, listen, if you want to be a good Christian, it has to be the King James Version. If you're reading anything other than the King James Version, you're a bad Christian. How ludicrous is that? Elevating something like that to the status of gospel. It's not that those things and those ideas and those beliefs may be wrong, but that is not what defines someone as a Christian. That's not what makes you a Christian. We have these ideas. You could never be a Christian and be baptized without full immersion. You can never be a Christian and believe or go to these places. You can never be a Christian. And you know what we're going to experience a lot of in 2024? We're going to experience a lot of promotion of Christian politics. You can't be a Christian and vote this way. You can't be a Christian and be for these things. Somehow, at some point, politics has came in and kind of hijacked what it means to be a Christian. And we've fallen for this false dichotomy that's presented. Like Christians are over here. This is the Christian vote. Christians are over here. This is the Christian vote. And you know what's crazy? Oftentimes they're using the same scripture to argue different perspectives. But this is what it means to be a Christian. You have to be this. There's this growing group of people called the nuns. Not like the little hat ladies with the black dress, right? It's a category on the censuses to go around. There's a question on there that says religious affiliation. And there's a box that says nun. That category. There's a book, I think it's called The Nuns. I would check it out. It's a good read, but there was a lot of political scientists who went in and did a lot of research. And what they found is this growing group of people, this growing group of folks who want nothing to do with the church, are standing in that place because of political affiliation. Because Christianity is not Jesus. Christianity is not faith in Jesus. It's faith in Jesus and this political alignment. It's faith in Jesus and this political belief. I don't want anything to do with that. And that's what Paul is writing. And that's what Paul is addressing. There is this Alistair Brigg, as I was kind of preparing this message, Nate actually brought him up to me. I went back and I watched the video and he does this incredible illustration. And he says, when he gets to heaven, what he wants to do is he wants to go and find the thief on the cross. And he wants to say, he just wants to experience, hey, what was it like? Like when you, when you got to the gate, what was it like? Like, what did they they say to you? Like he didn't even know where he was. He just kind of showed up and he ended up at this gate. And then the guy came up to him, Peter or whatever you want to call him. Peter came up and he said, so can you tell me about the doctrine of justification? He's like, the what? Well, tell me what you think about the scripture. Like give me your thoughts on it. He's like, man, I don't have any idea about any of this. Okay, well, I need to go get my supervisor. So let's go get this guy. And he's like, so can you tell me exactly why you're here? And he's like, I have no clue. Except this one guy right over here, the guy on the middle cross, said that I could come. This is what Paul is correcting throughout the entire book of Galatians. It's this convoluted confusion that has crept its way in to the Christian belief. Paul is writing and he's telling them, hey, you are, you became, and you remain a Christian because of your faith in Jesus. In Galatians 1, he says this. He says, Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by believing in what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Have you experienced so much in vain, if it really was in vain? So I ask you again, does God give you His Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law or by believing in what you heard. Paul reminded them. Hey, you know that justification, salvation through the law is not possible. Its sole purpose is to point you towards a savior that you are in need of. And I love his reminder. He said, do you remember your faith? Like, do you remember when you came to faith? Do you remember whenever you were saved? Before you knew all the right things? Before you did all the right things? Before you lived in the right way? Do you remember who you were? Do you now have to maintain and earn that love that was freely given? He reminded them of their faith in Jesus. He reminded them that a Christian is someone who trusts in Jesus. The way we say it at Grace is that you become a Christian by believing Jesus was who he said he was. He did the things he said he would do, and he will do the things that he promised. Like, that's the faith that Paul is defending. That's the faith that Paul is arguing for. And when I first read this, like, I read the, you foolish Galatians with the exclamation point, like, still kind of get that vibe, like Paul's really going in hard. Like he's still, you fools, how could you dare? But the more that I read it, I started to hear a different tone. It's an exclamation, just like you would shout to a child running towards the middle of a busy intersection. When a fear and pleading, like you have to correct course. You can't go down this path. And in verse five, he points out, like, are you still equating God's love for you by the rightness of your life? Are you still equating God's love for you and faithfulness by the blessings around you? Are you not having the things happen to you and suddenly God doesn't love you anymore? Because that's the result, isn't it? Like, haven't you been there? Or have you been there before? It's exhausting. This pursuit and this treadmill of trying to run towards awesome enough for God to save you. This over-emphasis on the rules and the regulations of Christianity and perfect adherence towards all of those is what's necessary for God to give you the love that he gave you when you first began. And it creates, it can create this judgmentalism that comes inside us. We can become the older brother in the story of the parable or the prodigal son. Like we can see the blessings in other people's lives and be like, I'm doing better than they are. Like what's going on, God? Like why is this not happening for me? Why am I suffering in these different ways? Why am I not having these good things happen to me? Look how awesome I behaved. And the moment things start going down here, suddenly, okay, it's where prosperity gospel kind of gets its momentum from, right? Like, I have to be good enough, and then all these awesome things will begin to happen to me. I have to be good enough, and then God's love will shower down on me. I have to be all of these things. And Paul says that is foolishness and we have to correct course. Like every bit of legalism really does get its leverage by its offering of direction. Like it tells you where to go. It tells you how to live your life. It tells you the things you should and should not be a part of, which there are things that should not be a part of the Christian's life. And I don't believe, I don't believe the Judaizers were malicious. I don't believe that when they came and they were teaching the Christians in Galatia, I don't think they were trying to lead them astray. I think they were trying to lead them. There have been thousands of years of tradition, and it is all that they knew. And what Paul says as a result of legalism is exhaustion, this feeling like a rejected child instead of an adopted heir with Christ. This feeling in the sense of judgmentalism, this feeling in the sense of not good enough and we begin chasing it. That is what naturally comes from legalism. And he says, anytime that we move Christ to the periphery, anytime we make him not the main thing, that's the fruit. This is what begins to pop up in our life. But there are things that should not be a part of your life. There are things that you should pursue and there are things that you should try to do. But what you need to do is keep Christ at the center of your faith. The beginning and end of what it means to be a Christian and that moves you towards something different. In Galatians 5, I'm going to read 16 and then jump down to verse 22. Galatians 5, 16 says this. So I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. I call it mountain biking Christianity. I don't know if you've ever been mountain biking before. I did whenever I was in Georgia. Well, I was in Georgia, so it would be more hill riding than anything. But if you ever go, what they will tell you is the very first rule, other than like knowing how to ride a bike, the very first rule is you're going to have a tendency to want to look at the things you want to avoid. As you're going down the hill, you're going to want to stare at the stone. You're going to want to stare at the tree. You're going to want to stare at these things because that's how you're going to avoid them. And I learned, actually, I learned that the guy was not lying to me when he told me after I was going down the hill and I saw a rock. And so I'm like, I've got to know where I'm supposed to avoid. I've got to know what I'm supposed to kind of veer towards and all of this. So your eyes and your body move towards the very thing that you're focused on. That's the entire role. That's where it all comes from, which is the same principle in life. Like Paul says it in Romans 12, he says that you're transformed by the renewing of your mind. It's this idea that you will always move towards the direction of your most powerful thought. The thing that you're thinking, whatever you are focused on, that will be the direction that your life moves. Mountain Viking Christianity says this, that yes, there are things that you want to avoid. There are things that you need to avoid. There are things in your life that shouldn't be there. What you need to focus on is the path. Is the journey that you're going on that the Holy Spirit is leading you towards. Keeping Christ at the center. Not moving him towards the periphery. What starts to happen is love develops. It's a fruit of the gospel. Patience starts to form. It's a fruit of the gospel. Kindness, gentleness, self-control. Like these things start to develop in your world, not in order to attain salvation, not in order to attain God's love, God's forgiveness, God's freedom, but as a result from it. It says that the spirit and the flesh are at work against one another. And any time we move what should be avoided, we move what should be in the periphery to the center, our body, our life will move towards those things. And what develops is exhaustion, fatigue, judgmentalism. But if we can stay focused in Christ, do you want a check mark? Do you want to know the marker along the way? Are you moving down the path? Are you growing in those things? Are you growing in love? Are you growing in peace? Are you growing in patience? Are you growing in kindness? Are you growing in self-control? Like if you want a marker that you're moving in the right direction, it's not by an overemphasis on the rules and regulations. Those kind of take care of themselves when you're focusing on becoming who Christ has created you to be, walking and riding in the path that he has called you to walk on. Paul's entire letter to the Galatians is simply a reminder that a Christian is from a life of faith defined itself by a life of love. Are you moving down that path? Are you moving towards greater patience? What's popping up in your life? The band is going to come here in one second and we're going to sing the song Living Hope. It's simply a reminder and a focus that we were separated and it's only through the saving work of Jesus. It's keeping Christ the path. We pray for us. God, thank you so much. Thank you for your love, your grace, and your kindness. We thank you for all that you've done in us and through us because of the grace that we've received in Jesus. And Father, we just ask you as it's going to be a natural tendency. Legalism isn't a new thing that's happening and the effects of it have been felt for thousands of years, God. And we just ask you to point us toward the path you're asking us to follow with the grace of your spirit, and even if it means reminding ourselves of the gospel we came to know daily, Lord, help us to do that. Help us to live the life you have asked us to live by trusting in Jesus. We need you. We thank you. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Good morning. Thank you all for being here, for listening online. My name is Doug Bergeson. Thank you, thank you. It was my hope that I would get that. But to kick things off, I'm going to need a little help from you. The audience, congregation, flock, whatever you want to call yourselves. I need a little help. Who in today's culture, books, movies, TV, podcasts, or even real life would be considered a great detective, a master of deductive logic, one able to take the most cryptic clues, hints, and innuendo and figure out what's going on. I'm asking you all so as not to date myself and come across as a hopelessly out of touch boomer. So a little help, please. Just shout out some names of great detectives, masters of deductive logic from any realm of your experience. Sherlock Holmes. Okay, that's kind of a boomer response, but that's okay. Who else? I would have gotten that one. Who else? Columbo. That I had down too, and I wasn't going to share because it's so out of date. Anyone else? Axel Foley. Okay. Okay. In the first one or the one in the new release? Axel Foley. Okay. Who else? Ace Ventura. Okay. Okay. That's good. That's all I need. I really needed those names, and I appreciate your contributing to make this one point. When you see me being trotted up here to speak on a Sunday morning, you do not have to be a Sherlock Holmes, a Detective Columbo, an Axel Foley, or an Ace Ventura to know that we must be deep, deep, deep into the lazy, languid days of summer. When I plot up here on stage, you have the legitimate right to ask yourself dang why am I not on vacation but be that as it may I am here and I'm excited to share when Nate first reached out to me way back in March he wrote that he we'd be in the middle of our summer series which we started last year called 27 that covers the books of the New Testament and specifically the letters of the Apostle Paul and he said I could pick whichever one I wanted and build a sermon around its overall message. Now typically when asked to preach I deliberate, I agonize, hem and haw wringing my hands over whether I really want to do it or not. But not this time. I was excited and quickly responded to Nate, saying that I would leap at the chance to do the book of Colossians, as it is magisterial and soaring and easily one of my favorite books in all of Scripture. I was pumped. However, just moments later, Nate wrote back, and I quote, Doug, thanks for taking me up on the offer, though I have bad news that I hope will not dissuade you from your acceptance. Aaron preached on Colossians last year, and I failed to mention that to you in my request email. Kyle has also preached on 1 and 2 Thessalonians, so those are off the market as well. So remembering that old saying, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, I went back to Nate, explicitly asking him to confirm in writing what books were actually able and available for me to pick. And thankfully for me, and hopefully for you, Paul's letter to the Ephesians was one of them. And that's the book we're going to look at this morning. This letter was written by the Apostle Paul, once among the fiercest and most formidable opponents of the early Christian church. But God, in his wisdom and grace, had chosen Paul, this fervent enemy of the church and most unlikely of all candidates, to be his chosen messenger in spreading the life-changing news of Jesus Christ throughout the known world. And for two to three years, they don't know exactly how long, the city of Ephesus had been base camp for Paul's ministry, for his missionary work, establishing churches throughout the region. Now, by AD 60, some 25 years after his miraculous conversion experience on the road to Damascus, Paul is thought to have written this letter from a prison in Rome. Now, for those familiar with this letter, it is chock full of beautiful and iconic passages. Nate frequently has brought to our attention the last half of chapter 3, which is his favorite prayer in all of Scripture and one he prays over grace often. Ephesians also contains the verses that would shape and fuel the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago. Ephesians 2, 8, and 9 asserting that salvation is only found through God's gracious gift of Jesus Christ and is by faith in him alone. In other words, there's nothing we can do to earn or curry God's favor. For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not fromesians, there are the frequently misunderstood, misappropriated, and sometimes even abused house codes, describing how the relationships between wives and husbands, children and parents, slaves and masters, are to work in light of the Lordship of Christ. Finally, in a very famous passage near the end of the letter, Paul exhorts all believers to put on the full armor of God. And there are more, but this morning, our focus will be on the one overarching theme of this entire letter, our identity as believers, who we truly are now that we are in Christ. According to Paul, everything in both the individual and collective Christian experience, hangs in the balance, directly dependent upon the extent to which we can wrap our minds around this one transcendent and surpassing reality. At this stage of my life, if you were to ask me why I believe what I believe, my most honest and transparent answer would go something like this. I believe because everything I've seen, everything I've learned, and everything I've experienced in my life so far has validated the truth of Scripture. Not just some things, but literally everything has reinforced what the Bible has been saying all along. And despite being such an ancient book, I've for the most part stopped being surprised when I again discover another way in which the Bible is fresh and profoundly modern, relevant, life-changing, and most importantly, true. Here's one quick example from my long-ago past. In 1966, Professors Daniel Katz and Robert Kahn at the University of Michigan published a groundbreaking work in the field of psychology and organizational behavior. By the time I started graduate business school up in Chicago in 1980, Katz and Kahn's cutting-edge theory, only about a dozen years old, had swept through academia and was now all the rage at the elite business schools. What this theory offered was a sweeping transformational alternative to classical business management that up to that point had viewed organizations as machines. Now what this new systems theory proposed was that organizations should best be viewed not as machines but as living organisms. When I first heard this I was floored, blown away. What insight, what brilliance, so outside the box. I'd never in my life heard anything like that before. Oh, wait. Yes, I had. The Apostle Paul had made that very same point when he compared the church and how its members were to operate to a human body in his first letter to the Corinthians, written around A.D. 55. Turns out the Bible had beaten Dr. Katsakan and Kotz to the punch by just over 19 centuries. Much more recently, I was again struck by Scripture's remarkable freshness and relevance, revealing truth and wisdom long before the rest of us even begin to catch up. The occasion was this past fall when I listened to the book, The Coddling of the American Mind. And it has direct relevance and application to what Paul is trying to do in his letter to the Ephesians. Written in 2018 by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff, the book makes the case that our society and culture have gradually but steadily moved towards broad acceptance of three great untruths with terrible consequences, particularly for our young people. The three great untruths the authors cite are, one, always trust your feelings. Two, avoid pain and discomfort if you can. And three, life is a battle between good people on the one side and bad people on the other. Even if well intended, as they often are, the book asserts that these beliefs represent terrible and demonstrably false ideas whose adoption and embrace by large swaths of our society have contributed to an epidemic of anxiety and depression and overall decline in our mental health, to the intolerance and turmoil roiling our public discourse, and to the tearing apart of any semblance of social cohesion in this country, to name just a few of the disastrous consequences of these ideas, these patterns of thinking. The book went on to show how these flawed beliefs not only contradicted thousands of years of wisdom literature from a variety of traditions, but also fly in the face of the latest findings of science and modern psychology. That the Bible is prominent among wisdom literature debunking those three great untruths came as no surprise. What did come as a new revelation to me was when the authors introduced something I've never heard of, something called cognitive behavior therapy, or CBT, as an especially effective remedy and tool in combating these three great untruths. Why this is pertinent to Ephesians is that the Bible in its entirety, and the Apostle Paul in particular, espoused and practiced cognitive behavior therapy almost two millennia before it was even a thing. Some of you older folks, as well as any country music freaks out there, might remember the 1981 chart-topping duet by Barbara Mandrell and George Jones, I Was Country Before When Country Wasn't Cool. Does anybody remember that? Yeah, there we go. Well, tweaking that a little bit for my purposes this morning, it turns out that the Apostle Paul was doing cognitive behavior therapy before cognitive behavior therapy was cool. First pioneered in the 1960s, CBT is premised on the idea that how we think and what we think is what determines to a large degree both our emotions and our behavior. Rather than focusing on the origins of a problem as happens in traditional psychotherapy, cognitive behavior therapy works to change our current thinking. It is our incorrect, distorted, and emotional thinking about ourselves and our world, what cognitive behavior therapy refers to as cognitive distortions that must be addressed and changed. In clinical practice over the last several decades, this has been shown to be true as CBT has been proven to be remarkably effective. But zoning in on just the first of those three great untruths, always trust your feelings. It's an important, even vital question to ask, to what extent should our feelings and emotions influence and shape what we think, what we believe to be true? If one has been paying any attention at all, we now live in a society and a culture which have elevated and anointed emotions and feelings to such prominence that they control the moral high ground. And in many instances instances assume ultimate authority, even to the extent of determining what is true and what is not. One simply doesn't question or challenge another's feelings in polite society. After all, that's what you feel. That's your truth, right? Well, no. Wrong. Wrong. Not according to cognitive behavior therapy, and certainly not according to what God has revealed in his word. It turns out that in many instances, God cares far less about our feelings and emotions than we do. It can be off-putting at first, even shocking. After all, if God's supposed to be so loving, how does that compute? But lest anyone here this morning or listening online misses this critical point, it's not that God doesn't care about our feelings and emotions, but that he cares more for those things that have the greatest chance to help us. And from God's vantage point, just as in cognitive behavior therapy, the mind is the key. The mind is the key because how we think determines how we act. Our behavior follows our thoughts and beliefs. And we intuitively know this to be true. If I care to know what you really think, what you really believe, there's no need for me to ask you or for you to tell me. I'll simply watch closely what you do. How do you spend your time and treasure? What you prioritize? What are you willing to stand up for, come what may? When are you quick to compromise and make exceptions? What sacrifices and trade-offs have you made? How do you treat people? How different are you in public than in private? Your actions are the tell. Even the old adage, follow your heart, which I love, is not so much an appeal to one's emotion as it is to what one truly believes is right and true. In actual practice, the heart doesn't do most of the leading. It is typically more of a follower. It is the convictions of your mind that set the wheels of action in motion. It's what one thinks and believes that does the leading, and our hearts then follow. That is why, whether we like it or not, it's a far greater concern to God how we think and what we think and why we think the way we do than how we might be feeling at any point in time. The priority on the mind rather than the emotion is found throughout scripture. Time and time again, the Bible asserts that our minds are the key. But you may ask, don't feelings and emotions greatly influence how we think? Absolutely they do. And therein lies the problem. God is obviously not against emotions, revealing in scripture his own deep emotions and feelings. Furthermore, he's imbued us, his treasured and loved creations, with gobs of both. Emotions can be wonderful and transcendent, an indispensable and indelible part of being human. But the downside to our feelings and emotions is that they are often fleeting and fickle. They can also easily deceive, mislead, and distort. Here's a simple case and point from real life. If we have any poker players in the house this morning, do we? Any poker players? Okay. It's probably not, I was hoping to get a little bit more, better response. Have to move to Vegas. But if you do play, well, if we have any poker players in the house, you're probably familiar with the term tilt. If you do play and are not familiar with the term, then my guess is you probably lose a lot. Always leaving the table a bit mystified as to why you have such bad luck. Tilt is when emotion knocks a player off balance, disrupting and distorting his objectivity and ability to discern what's really happening. Tilt most commonly occurs when a player suffers, is unlucky due to a bad beat, a hand he should by rights have won but didn't, as it can spiral into frustration and subsequent decision-making infected by emotion. But tilt can also happen to a player on a winning streak, where strong positive emotions lead to equally poor and distorted decision-making. In both instances, emotional reasoning, patterns of thinking unduly influenced by how we are feeling at the moment, leads to bad outcomes. But unless you're trying to make a living playing poker, that example might not strike much fear in you. But I think it should. Feelings are always compelling, but they are wholly subjective and not always reliable. For example, I might be thinking I'm absolutely killing it up here this morning, really giving Nate a run for his money. But just because I feel that way doesn't make it so, does it? We live in an age of emotional reasoning. Way, way too much importance is placed on how we feel, elevating our feelings to such a degree that they can overwhelm the facts and distort reality. It's not been good for our mental health. It's not been good for our public discourse. It's not been good for our social cohesion. And it just so happens it's not good for our faith either. The powerful and often pernicious ability of our emotions to distort reality and overwhelm our thinking, to convince us something is true that is not, or to convince us something is not true that really is, presents a clear and present danger to the vitality of our faith. Imagine being in a story in which you think you know what's going on. All your senses are in touch with that story. Yet, in fact, there is a much bigger story and a different reality at work. Guess what? We're all in that bigger story. And the challenge is that our feelings and emotions aren't going to be of much help as they often point us the wrong way. As the writer and pastor Eugene Peterson most famously known for his popular paraphrase of the Bible called the message states, my feelings are important for many things but they tell me next to nothing about God or my relation to God. My security comes from who God is, not from how I feel. Discipleship is a decision to live by what I know about God, not by what I feel about him or myself or my neighbors. In other words, it's not so much the feelings we have about God, but the facts we know about God, what we are convinced of, that need to be right. Whether we know it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, there is a raging battle going on for our minds, and the stakes couldn't be higher. The key to victory, in a nutshell, is to think right about the things that matter. Paul puts it this way in his letter to the Romans, do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will. This task of renewing our minds is made even more difficult because influenced by both our own sin as well as the fallen world in which we live, we all begin our journeys of faith with a constricted and impoverished view of what's possible, of what God wants and has in store for us. And this is Paul's overriding message in Ephesians, to convince us of the things that are actually and eternally true. Paul knows that we all need a radically new orientation in our thinking. Because only when we change the way we think do we change the way we live. And in Ephesians, Paul starts right up front. In the opening verse, offering a view of a reality that immediately confronts and calls into question my own. Addressing his readers as saints or holy ones. Those set apart by God. Paul is directly contradicting my feelings about myself. For I don't very often feel saint-like or holy or set apart. That's certainly not how I would describe myself. Yet Paul is asserting that it's true. I have been set apart by God for his purposes. That is who I am in Christ Jesus. In essence, Paul is conducting a master class in cognitive behavior therapy. Just like in modern CBT, Paul goes about combating our incorrect, distorted, and emotional thinking about ourselves, our world, and our faith by laying out the facts and the truth. And as in cognitive behavior therapy, the goal is that the process becomes a virtuous cycle of sorts, slowly but surely changing the way we understand and interpret things, which causes a change in how we respond emotionally, which in turn causes our thinking to change a little further. And so begins Paul's full frontal assault on our small and constrained views of ourselves and our world that constitute reality as we know it. Like rapid, sharp staccato bursts of machine gun fire, Paul rattles off a whole slew of facts that we are in fact part of a massively bigger and grander story, one that began long ago and will continue for all eternity, that we were chosen by God before the creation of the world, an act rooted in the eternal purposes of God, to have a people, holy and blameless, set apart for himself, something only made possible through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and that now unites all believers as one, that although once dead, we are now alive, despite rightfully deserving the judgment of a just God, someone else has borne our guilt and suffered in our stead, And by and through that extravagant act of love, we have been declared not guilty. Once consumed, controlled, enslaved by our own sinful natures, the ways of this world, we've been set free and made new through faith in Jesus Christ. And that even now, all of God's spiritual blessings in Christ are available, active, and evident in believers' lives. These are the things Paul thinks we should know. This is who we truly are. We can't intuit them. We can't feel our way towards them. Our feelings and emotions offer little help in arriving at these transcendent and transformational truths. Only by repeatedly reflecting on these things, allowing them to seep into us, to question and challenge our existing patterns of thinking and emotional reasoning, will we ever be able to renew our minds. Paul is asking, he's cajoling, commanding, encouraging us to put on a completely new lens, a lens designed to color everything that we think about and all of our thinking. We are indeed part of a bigger and grander story. And as Paul writes in chapter 1, verse 10, this story will culminate when the times will have reached their fulfillment to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. So, though the world may often seem chaotic, mystifying, and out of control, a time is coming and is advancing already when all will make sense under the lordship of Christ. In the meantime, believers in Jesus Christ have been given the gift of God's Holy Spirit as the first installment and guarantee of our salvation, a magnificent promise and blessing. However, this has led to a tendency for Christians to sometimes describe their conversion process as inviting Christ into their hearts, as if salvation entailed a mini-Jesus or a little bit of Jesus being in us. While that, in a sense, is true, it can lead to a misconception that downplays the extent to which all believers are united together in Christ and whose identities are found together in Christ. Far more common in Paul's writings and conceptually more powerful and accurate is the idea that believers are part of a larger reality of God. We are now in Christ, not the other way around. In fact, Ephesians describes two separate and completely distinct realms, that of Christ and that of the world, which are polar opposites diametrically opposed to utterly incompatible spheres of influence. To be in Christ means we are moving from one sphere of influence to another, from the realm of the world to the realm of is in them due to the former way of life to put off the old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires to be made new in the attitude of your minds and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Putting off the old self and putting on the new is the process which happens as we move from the world's sphere of influence to that of Christ, a migration to a new identity that will define us for all eternity. However, again, we're not going to move very far unless this increasingly becomes how we view and understand ourselves and our reality. Paul insists that we must engage our minds rather than our emotions. Again, it is only when we change the way we think that we change the way we live. That's when transformation happens. Now, personally, I've often observed in my own life that if I really believe what I said I believed, my life would look a lot different. The great majority of the time, I don't feel like I'm a new creation or that I put off my old self. Far from it. On the contrary, I still struggle with the things that I've struggled with all my life. This has been convicting and has made me feel like a giant hypocrite at times. However, if my mind, what I think and what I believe, is decisive in determining how I act, then all this disconnect really means is that I obviously have a long ways to go in changing my thinking and renewing my mind. I'm still very much a work in progress. Fortunately for me, and for all of us, one of the most consequential and vastly underappreciated blessings of having been given God's Holy Spirit is that the Spirit helps us to make this transition by helping us to better grasp these truths, by purging our minds of those influences which distort, deceive, and mislead. In other words, by helping us to renew our minds. God's spirit in us seeks to shape us by reminding and teaching us who we are now in Christ. Only when we more fully know and believe can we authentically move and change. But we need to do our part. We have a role to play. Again, just as in cognitive behavior therapy, we need to deliberately, intentionally expose our minds to the truths of God and ourselves. If we were to have any chance of changing our thinking. It's simply not going to happen otherwise. And this is why worship, prayer, study, community are so vital. Christians, including myself, often act like these activities are certainly good things to do, but essentially voluntary ones, more or less. That we have times and seasons in our lives when they can have less prominence, be less of a priority, perhaps because we're so busy. And other seasons when we can allocate more time to them and really get our spiritual mojo back. The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians does not share that view. Being a believer, being saved, to use a nice evangelical expression, being a follower of Christ, having our identity found in Christ, are all descriptions of the process of moving from one sphere of influence, the world, to a completely new sphere of influence in corresponding reality, Christ. that requires a radically new orientation in our thinking because only when we change the way we think do we change the way we live. And we can't depend on our feelings, emotions, and intuition to convince us of these things, for they often tell us something very different, which is why we're going to close by listening to Aaron sing a song from about a dozen years ago called Remind Me Who I Am. I personally find it so, so compelling because it captures my desperate need to be constantly reminded of the truth of who I am and who God is. I'd like to read a few of the lyrics. When I lose my way and I forget my name, remind me who I am. In the mirror all I see is who I don't want to be. Remind me who I am. In the loneliest places when I can't remember what grace is, tell me once again who I am to you, who I am to you. Tell me, lest I forget, who I am to you, that I belong to you. When my heart is like a stone and I'm running far from home, remind me who I am. When I can't receive your love, afraid I'll never be enough, remind me who I am. Tell me, once again, who I am to you, who I am to you. Tell me, lest I forget who I am to you, that I belong to you. Worship is how we are reminded. Spending time in scripture is how we are reminded. Getting down on our knees in prayer is how we are reminded. Being in community is how we are reminded. These ancient and timeless disciplines remain profoundly modern for when we worship together on Sunday mornings, when we open our Bibles, when we bow our heads, when we sit quietly alone in God's presence, when we spend time with others who share the same Savior and the same hope, we are working on and renewing our minds, implicitly acknowledging that we are part of a much grander story.

All right, well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here with us this morning, especially on a holiday weekend. I always joke around about you being a better Christian if you're here on a holiday weekend, and while I do believe that is true, I also think that it's just really nice and impressive when it is a holiday weekend and you choose to make church a part of that. So that's touching for me and I think good for you on that. And good for you if you're watching online and making it a point to be with us in spirit this Sunday as well. We did it. We made it to the end of the summer. This is the last in our series for this summer called 27. We'll pick it back up next summer when we jump into Paul's letters and finish in Revelation. So this is the last one that we're going to do. We're focused on the book of Jude this morning. And as if you guys needed more evidence that my wife, Jen, is a better Christian than me, when she asked what the sermon was on this week or which one I was going to be writing for this week, I said, Jude. And she goes, what are you going to do it on? And I'm like, I don't know. It's Jude. Like, I don't know the last time I read Jude. And she was like, well, I love this verse. You should do it on this one. And I'm like, of course she knows a random verse from Jude. So that was humbling. And you'd be better off if she were your pastor. But you have to settle for me this morning until she can be convinced otherwise. When I sat down to study Jude, I saw very quickly that it was kind of a microcosm of the entire Bible, of one of the dynamics happening all through Scripture and in the way that we understand scripture. So I'm starting us off here. Jude is a perfect depiction of both the depth and approachability of the Bible. Jude is this kind of microcosm and a picture of both the depth and the approachability of the Bible. Jude in verses 5 through 19, that's 15 verses. I know that's 15 verses because I counted on my fingers to make sure that I would not be wrong when I said 15 verses. In those 15 verses, there are 18 references to other scriptures, to Old Testament scriptures, and even apocryphal writings. Within just those 15 verses in Jude, 18 references to Old Testament scriptures and apocryphal writings. Some of the quotes are from the book of Enoch. For many of you in the room this morning, you didn't even know that was a book. You didn't even know the book of Enoch exists. It's an apocryphal literature. You'll find it, I think, in the Catholic Bible, but you don't find it in the Protestant Bible. But in Jude, there's references to the book of Enoch. There's, again, 18 references and 15 verses. And so if you're looking at Jude and you're trying to understand Jude, which by the way, Jude is probably short for Judah, which was a brother, a half-brother of Jesus. So if you're trying to understand his letter to the churches, how could you possibly understand Jude without understanding those 18 references? And scholars believe that the audience that he wrote this letter to, the churches in Asia Minor, they were people of a Jewish background and had grown up with a Jewish faith. They understood these references. It was like when I would refer to you and I would say, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. You know that, John 3.16. Most of you can fill in the rest of that. These references to them were that ubiquitous and that identifiable. And so as I'm studying Jude, again, I think to myself, how in the world could we seek to understand this book if we don't have any bearing for the 18 references found in the middle part of it that make it come to life and make it understandable. And this, I feel, is a depiction, too, of the depth of Scripture. I'm 42 years old. I've spent almost my entire life studying Scripture. I grew up in a Christian home. My dad was a deacon. He was important and fancy. I went to church every time the doors were open. And this was back in the day, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. I went to the church so often that my pastor felt totally comfortable calling me out in the middle of Sunday night service and telling me to quit talking. And then I would get in big trouble. I got spankings, is what I got. I would get struck with objects when I got home for that offense. Back when we raised kids right, you know. That's right. That's right, Jeffy. Let's let it all hang out here on Labor Day Sunday. Who cares? Beat your kids, Jeff just said. Don't do that. Don't do that. Totally off the rails. Jeff, this is your fault. Shut up, Jeff. But I grew up in church. I did Awanas. I memorized all the verses. I don't know if you guys did that when you were kids, but I memorized verses every week. I memorized them for the test, and then I promptly forgot them because I was eating candy right after that and then playing games. But some of them stick because sometimes I'll start to quote a verse, and it'll be in the King's English, and I'm like, oh, that's from Awana. That's from KJV back in the day, right? I went to Christian private school. I went to Christian high school. I've had a Bible class. I went to Bible college and studied theology. I got a master's degree in more theology. I've studied the Bible my whole life. Now, not as hard as I should have all the time, or maybe ever, I don't know. Not as consistently as I would like to all the time, but far and away, for the balance of 42 years, I've studied God's Word. And I'd be the first to tell you, there are myriad 42-year-olds who know way more about this than I do. But I can also say that I've devoted a life to studying it. And here's what I know. I'm embarrassed by how little I know. I'm humbled by how much more there is in this. I feel like God's word is an ocean and I've waded into it up to my waist and been like, yeah, okay. I think I get the gist. You can spend your whole life plumbing the depths of these pages and you will never get to the bottom. You will never stop learning from it. It will never return null and void. It will never not have more layers. You will never not see more connections, and there's so much of the Bible that's really impossible to fully understand without a grasp of the rest of the Bible. You can never understand the book of Galatians if you don't understand the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. You just can't do it. It's why, it's one of the reasons I say as often as I can, it's one of the reasons that one of the traits of grace is that we are people of devotion. It's why I say 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. Because the bottom of this is unfindable. The depths of this are unknowable. And some of you have spent your life studying it too. And you know I'm right. Your heads are nodding the most because you've done it. And it always leaves you wanting more. So there is a degree to which approaching the Bible feels a little bit like approaching Jude. You could read Jude on your own with no background and with no study, and you probably wouldn't recognize but a couple of the references, if any, in verses 5 through 19. You don't know what you don't know. You don't know that you're not getting the depths of it. And sometimes I think people get intimidated by the Bible and how deep it is and how much there is to learn because I know good and well. Not all of you grew up being exposed to scripture every day. Some of us, when I say, and you're good believers, you love Jesus, you love the word, but when I say turn to Galatians, you're like, I don't know yet where that is. I want to know, I just don't know yet. And you go to small groups and there's other in the small group, and they're not professional Christians. They don't get paid to be a Christian like I do. That's all being a pastor is, is I just went pro with my Christianity. I'm still doing the same things that you guys should all be doing. I just get paid for it. I don't know if that's right, but I do. And you're sitting there in your Bible study with the other amateur Christians, and somebody knows way more than you. Right? They just know the Bible. We have them in every small group. And maybe you think to yourself, gosh, I don't know how I will ever understand that much. It just, it can feel intimidating. But that's also why I think it's beautiful that Jude depicts the approachability of Scripture as well. Because sure, the Bible is complicated. It's challenging. It's difficult to understand. It's unmasterable. And yet, some of the messages that come from it are so simple as to make it immediately approachable. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. It's the whole gospel. That's all of Romans compacted into a sentence or two. Right? Jesus says this new commandment I give you, go and love one another as I have loved you. That's it. That's all the law and the prophets compacted into this one commandment. I don't really understand the rest of the Bible, but I believe in Jesus and I can go love people in his name. Okay. Then you get it. And so in Jude, again, we have this depiction of the depth of scripture, but also the approachability. Because even if you don't get the references from verses 5 to 19, there's a simple message in Jude that we can all understand. Sorry, I had to crunch the ice without you guys hearing. And that's what I want to look at now, is this simple message in Jude, and we're going to spend the rest of our time on it. What is this message that Judah, the half-brother of Jesus, wanted to give us, and why did he write this short little note and it get tacked into the end of the Bible as the penultimate book? Well, I think we see the beginning of this purpose in verse 3. This is the simple message of Jude. This is why he wrote the book. And even if we have no context, we can pretty much understand what this means. In verse 3, Jude says this, Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. So here's why he wrote the book of Jude. He says that he had been eager to write to them concerning their common salvation. And so a lot of scholars believe that Jude was trying to write a letter that looked more like Romans or Hebrews, something long and formal where it kind of outlined this faith that they would share. And that's what he was eager to do, and that's what he was working on. But another matter began to press, and he thought it was so important that he put that large work on hold so he could write this short note to them. And what he wants them to do is, I wanted to talk to you about our common faith. I wanted to lay out all the things that we believe to give you some clarity. I don't have time for that now, so I'm just writing to you to urge you to contend for the faith. Why? Well, because in verses 5 through 19, what we learn is that there's false teachers. The early church, they didn't have an agreed upon Bible, an agreed upon book, agreed upon doctrines. They didn't have denominations in theology. They just had their faith and understanding in Jesus, which means that the populace in the church was very easily deceived, very easily misdirected in the wrong ways. And so the churches had false teachers that were entering into them, gaining clout, proclaiming that they knew the teachings of Jesus. And yet the morality of those teachers did not line up with the words that they were teaching. They were teaching a kind of hedonism that's clearly out of step with scripture and with God's will for his people. And so Jude was writing the churches to say, hey, you can't listen to those guys. They're trying to steer you in the wrong direction. They're wrong. You need to contend for the faith. And what's really interesting is I was thinking about it, at least this is interesting to me, is when in churches, especially in the South, you use phrases like we need to contend for the faith. That usually means go out and fight a culture war against the waves of culture that are trying to bash down and beat down the truth of Scripture. But that's nowhere in here with Jude. It's contend for the faith. Where? Well, it looks like, based on what he says, within yourself. Contend for your own faith. Fight for your true and sincere faith. Because God doesn't need culture warriors going out there fighting for the faith. Contend for it in your own heart and then guess what? You're abiding in Christ and you'll produce much fruit. Contend for it here and you will be who you need to be as we operate in culture. So I believe that Jude is telling us to contend for our faith. And the simple message of Jude then is to contend for the faith with your whole life. Contend for the faith with your whole life. And we're going to read the verses that make me think this is true here in a second. And really this is kind of a launching pad into what I'm going to preach about next week when we do our big reveal Sunday. Next week, we're going to show the plans for the new building. If it's your first Sunday with us, then you have no idea what we're talking about. But we have four acres over off of Litchford Road, and we're looking to build there. And so we're going to share the plans with the church next week. And I'm very, very excited to do that. And the message that I'm going to preach is basically this. We have to contend for the gospel with our whole life. Contending for the gospel, contending for your faith, takes everything you got, and you can't let up. And that is the simple message of Jude. It's interesting to me. Sometimes, I don't know if you guys get to see this from your perspective, but from my perspective, as I just kind of, we map out series and what we're going to teach and what we're going to cover. There's so often that God has woven things together and woven themes in week in and week out to kind of prepare our hearts for things that are coming and help our hearts respond to things that have happened. And I see him weaving things together as we approach next week as well. But I believe that's the simple message of Jude. Contend for the faith with your whole life. And I believe it because of what he says at the end. So he says, contend for the faith. Here's why. Here are the threats. Verses 5 through 19. And then he says, if you're going to contend for that faith in yourself, here's how you do it. But you, beloved, verse 20, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life and have mercy on those who doubt. So Jude says, contend for the faith. Here's what's threatening your faith. Here's what you need to protect yourself against. And then he ends with, and here's how you do it. And he gives us four things that we can do to contend for our faith. Now, here's the thing. If you're here on a holiday weekend, you didn't accidentally come to church. All right. Labor day Sunday is typically not the Sunday when non-church people decide, you know what I'm going to do on a holiday weekend? I'm going to try church. That's not normally how that goes. If you're here, chances are you are probably a church person. If you're here, if you're listening, chances are your faith matters to you or you're visiting people that drug you to church. Either way. But I'd be willing to bet that your faith matters to you. I'd be willing to bet that you are a people who want to contend for your faith. That when Jude says this, if we are believers, we lean forward and we go, yes, how? So I'm going to give you four ways that we contend for our faith directly out of scripture. But here's what I would say to you. I don't think that any of us, and maybe you will, and if you do, that's wonderful. But I don't think that any of us are going to take all four of these things, keep them in our heads and work on all four of these things this week. So here's what I'm going to ask you and challenge you to do. Pick one, one of the four things that I'm about to mention that we can do to contend for our faith. My hope and my prayer is that one of them will resonate with you, that one of them will move you, that you will lock into one of these as you move into your week. And between now and the 10th, you will turn the dial on this in your life in such a way that you are responding to the simple message in Jude and beginning to contend for the faith with your whole life. So like I said, there's four things that Jude tells us to do to contend for the faith. And the first one that we see right there at the very beginning is to strengthen your faith. When I contend for your faith, you need to strengthen your faith. This is an interesting idea to me. How do we strengthen our faith? I don't think our faith is too much different than like a muscle or a muscle group. I've joked before, and I do think it's true, that I've probably had more first days in the gym than just about anybody in history. I've had a lot of first days. Some of those first days were also my last days, and I just didn't know it yet. But I've had a lot of first days in the gym. And one of the things I like to do when I go to the gym is I like to do squats. Big muscle group. I like to do squats. I think it's important. I don't know anything about anything, but I see people in better shape than me. They do squats and like that seems smart. So I do squats, right? And I don't know how much longer my knees are going to hold out and let me like do this. I don't know how many more of those I have in me because I'm aging more like a light beer than a fine wine, but that's how it goes for me. And one of the things I notice when I go back to the gym on the first day, especially if my last day was the last day after like a lot of days and I was actually kind of like in good shape, when I put the weights on the rack and I go to do what I think is going to be a warm-up set. Okay, for those of you who don't work out a lot like me, a warm-up set is when you do a little bit less weight just to get the muscles going and then you put on the actual weight and then you do the exercise. So there's been a couple of times on my first day where I've put the weight on, you know, just like 375, 400 pounds, and I'm just doing a warm-up set. And I go down and I'm like, yeah, this ain't no warm-up set, man. I only got about four of these in me. This is the real deal. This is the real set that I'm doing right here. Because my muscles have atrophied. Because I haven't done that in a couple of, they go into atrophy and they shrink and they get weaker if we don't continue to use them. I think our faith works the same way. If we're not using our faith, living a life that requires faith, then the faith that we have, I believe, can begin to atrophy so that it's not even as strong as it once was. So Jude tells us to strengthen our faith, acknowledging that this requires a regular use of our faith. And I did not come here this morning with the intent of convicting you or making anyone feel bad, but I do just want to ask the question, when is the last time that your life required faith? When is the last time you took a step of obedience, knowing that if God doesn't come through and deliver, this is not going to go well? If we're not taking those steps, if we're not living a life of faith, then our faith is going into atrophy, and it's not being strengthened. It's being weakened. I thought back to 2015, December of 2015, Jen and I were pregnant with Lily and we were, uh, we were not wealthy people. I was an associate pastor at a church. She was a part-time office manager. Uh, we did not have a ton of money, but because Lily was due in January, we had about $5,000 set aside for medical expenses and all that stuff. That's what we figured would work and cover it. And at the beginning of December, her car, her 4Runner, started to make weird noises, and so we took it to our guy who goes to the church, a guy named Kelly. And Kelly called me one day, and after I took the car in, he said, hey, man, how you doing? I said, I'm pretty good. How you doing? I said, hey, Kelly, how are you doing? And his first words were, better than you. And I went, oh, geez, what's going on, man? And he goes, we have to replace the engine. And I said, ugh, this is terrible. How much does that cost? He said, $5,000. Which apparently is super cheap for an engine now, but back then it was not. He says, $5,000. And I'm like, well, you got to do what you have to do, I guess. So make it happen. And there goes our new baby cushion. And we're just looking at each other like, great, what do we do? And that same week, a little bit prior to that revelation, we had committed to giving a certain amount of money to the Christmas offering that year. We had talked about it, prayed about it, and there was an amount that God had laid on our heart to give. And so I went back to Jen and I'm like, I don't think we can afford to give that anymore. We just lost all of our cushions. Certainly God would understand that. But the more we talked about it, and mostly Jen thought this, I was against it. The more we talked about it, the more we thought, no, God put that on both of our hearts. He did it knowing that we would have to pay for an engine. And we should be faithful to that. We should walk in obedience. Okay. So we did. We gave the amount that we had agreed to give. The very Sunday that we gave that amount, some random person walked up to me in the lobby and just said, hey, just want to say thank you. You and your family have been such a blessing to us. And they handed me a Christmas card. And then the Christmas card was a check for the amount of money that we had given to the church that morning. And it was like God was winking at us going, I'm going to take care of you. All right, don't worry about it. Now, do you not think that my faith got stronger after that? When I took this step of faith and obedience, God, I feel like this is a thing that you want me to do. I'm going to do it. And then I watch him come through for us. That strengthened my faith. My faith got stronger. We made a decision that required God to come through in an incredible way. And he did. And so for many of us, I think it's very possible, particularly in our affluence and in our abilities to live lives that do not require faith. And so maybe what you need to take this morning is this little nudge from God to make that decision that requires some faith. To step out in obedience and trust him to come through. That's the first thing Jude tells us to do. Strengthen our faith. The next thing he tells us to do is to pray in the Spirit. I love this. Pray in the Spirit. He doesn't just say to pray. He says to pray in the Spirit. Now, why does he say to pray in the Spirit? And what does it mean to pray in the Spirit? We get an insight into this in Romans chapter 8. It's so funny to me that God laid Romans 8.28 on Aaron's heart for worship. And now just this morning I added in Romans 8.26 for the sermon because there's just so much good truth there. And God often speaks in stereo. But in Romans 8.26 it says that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. Meaning the Holy Spirit hears what comes out of our mouths and then communicates to God what we really need because we are spiritual babies and we don't really know how to pray for what we actually need. I don't think it's too dissimilar from when my two and a half year old son, John, says he needs a passy. I need a passy. I want a passy. He wants a passy, but what he really means is, I'm tired. What he really means is, I want to snuggle, which, come on, I got plenty of that. He can do that whenever he wants. What it really means is, I just feel a little bit off kilter and I want to be centered and I need some peace. That's what it means. We're praying to God for passes and the Holy Spirit's like, here's what they really need. And so to me, I think if we learn to pray in the Spirit, it's praying with an awareness that the Spirit is going to translate this to God anyway. So how do I change my prayer? How do I have an awareness within my prayer to pray according to what the Spirit will ask for, to pray according to what the Spirit will translate? How do I pray according to the desires of the Spirit and the very heart of God? To begin to put that filter on our prayers. Before we just blurt out what we need and what we want and what we're hopeful for, to put on the lens of, I'm praying in the Spirit, I'm praying through the Spirit, The Spirit is going to translate this to God. What is it that he's going to translate? I think this is why Jesus teaches us to pray by starting off praying for the will of God to be done on earth as it is in heaven. We need to put on this mindset when we pray of Holy Spirit, how would you have me pray for this? Which begins, I think, with praying for things that actually concern the Father. This is appropriate at the beginning of football season. I'm not entirely sure God is very interested in the outcome of football games. I could be jaded because I prayed fervently at the beginning of the Falcons Super Bowl a few years back. And he let me down, which means that he does not care about football at all, because certainly he would have come through for my Falcons if he did. It always makes me laugh at the end of a football game when the athletes and the coach want to give glory to Jesus for this victory. Because I just think like, man, you really lucked out playing that whole team of atheists over there so that God could very clearly pick a side. He had to have been against that football team. And if God really did care about football, how does LSU ever win? Like they're Cajun rednecks. It's the worst combination. And yet they're good. So God doesn't care. It's silly, but often we pray about things and God in heaven just has grace and patience for us. I wonder what the translation is when we pray that a certain team would win. I wonder if the translation is, this one's faith is weak, God. I'm working on it. And it's funny there, but there's other ways in which it applies and it matters. One of the things I've learned over the years and the way that I pray for people who are sick and maybe dying is when I have opportunities to go and pray for families over seemingly terminally ill loved ones. If the family asks me to pray for healing, I will because I think that's an honoring thing to do. So sure, I'll pray for healing. But when I pray privately for that family, I almost never pray for healing. I always pray, Father, help this family see and accept your will. Help them to be comforted by it. And help what they're about to walk through to conspire to make their faith in you stronger, not weaker. God, please don't let this path that they're walking shake their faith to a point where they question it. Would you make everything that's about to happen, whether you heal or whether you take, would you let everything conspire to make this faith stronger in this family? I could be wrong, but I think that's a more reflective prayer of what concerns the Holy Spirit. And I think if we can teach ourselves to pray in accordance with the will of the Spirit, we better acquaint ourselves with the heart of the Father. And we see a lot more answered prayer when we do it that way. So pray in the spirit to contend for your faith. The next thing we do is we walk in God's love. We walk in God's love. Now this is what we talked about last week. How do we walk in God's love? And it's actually in the verse, it actually says, keep yourselves in the love of God. So I probably, I should have said, keep yourself in God's love. How do we do that? That was last week's sermon. That's how God's weaving things together. That was first and second and third John. How do we walk in God's love? How do we walk in love for God? We obey him. Because when we obey God, we admit his expertise and that we trust in it. When we obey God, it proves that we trust him. Right? Obedience proves trust. So how do we walk in God's love? We walk in obedience to God. And some of us may have carried in the same sin and the same weight and the same thing that's entangling us. Last week when we preached a sermon on, hey, if you love God, obey him. Where are we being disobedient? Where do we need to walk in obedience? And maybe we brought that exact same disobedience into this sermon this week, into this place this week, and God is still after us. Hey, when are you going to hand that over to me and walk in obedience there? And so maybe this week is just a reminder for you that God really does care. He really does want you to let that go. And he really does want you to walk in obedience. And that's how we need to respond this morning. The last one I love, and I love that it seems to just be tacked on there, but it's such an important concept as we contend for the faith. Have mercy on doubters. There's not too many other places in Scripture where we're given instruction on how to handle doubt and doubters, but it's really interesting to me that Jude, as he's listing these other things that we would all agree with and expect to be there, walk in God's love, strengthen your faith, pray in the Spirit. Sure, we know that. We hear that kind of stuff every week and all the time. But then after that, just as importantly, have mercy on the doubters. And I love that this is in here because can I just tell you a secret about faith? If you are a thinking person, if you are an observant and thinking Christian, then doubts in your faith are unavoidable and absolutely necessary. They are essential and unavoidable parts of faith to run into places where you are experiencing doubt. And if you have never experienced doubt, you either have the strongest faith of anyone I've met, or you, I would gently say, have not really deeply considered your faith and what it means. Doubts, wondering if all this is true anyways, are an unavoidable and completely essential part of our faith. Why do I say that? Because I know personally from experience that the faith you find on the other side of doubt is more rich and more full and more vibrant than the previous version of your faith could have ever imagined being. I walked through a profound season of doubt in my early 20s as I was finishing up Bible college and doing ministries. And then I walked through another profound season of doubt during COVID in the summer of 2020 while I was pastoring. It felt like reassembling a plane in midair. So I know that doubts in our faith are unavoidable and absolutely essential. And I know that when we do the hard work to learn and to actually answer the questions, not let the questions drive us away. I don't understand this, so I'm done with faith, but I don't understand this, so I'm gonna dig in harder. I'm gonna look from new sources. I'm gonna look new places. I'm going to ask more people. And when we find the answers that actually satisfy the doubt, what happens is we emerge with this firm foundation and this vibrant faith that's more rich and more generous than what we could have ever imagined. And what we find on the other side of doubt is that we actually love God more because he gets bigger and more mysterious and we find out we can trust him. Doubts are good, but we shouldn't stop at doubt. We should work through them and talk through them. The problem in churches with doubt is that often doubts are met with condemnation and not mercy. I shared with you guys weeks ago, and we all know that this is happening, that over the last 12 years or 20 years, 40 million people have left the church or something like that. We know the church in America is shrinking. We are now very familiar with this term deconstructing, which refers to someone who grew up evangelical Christian, who grew up with faith and as an adult walked away from it. We're familiar with that. Why is this's going on in our culture it's something that i think about a lot but one of the big reasons it's happening is because doubts in our churches tend to be met with condemnation and not mercy because our pastors and our leaders are not obedient to jude's instruction to have mercy on doubters And when people raise their hand and they go, hey, what about, or how come, or I don't understand, but how could this be true if this is also true? When people express doubts, sometimes they're met with dismissals. Sometimes they're met with condemnation. When I grew up, you felt like this person with a weak faith if you had any doubts. If you didn't understand. That the people who were in charge, the spiritual leaders, the pastors and the deacons and the elders and all those people, they were the people with the fewest doubts. They were the people with no chinks in their armor. They were the people who had all the answers and understood it the best. And so having doubts made you weak. And I think we need to have a church where having and expressing doubts actually shows some strength because you're trying to fight through those rather than bury your head in the sand. And you have a desire to enrich your faith by working through those and finding answers. So if we're going to be obedient to Jude, we need to have mercy on the doubters, understanding it's a necessary process in faith to move through those and find answers. This means, parents, we create that environment in our homes where our children are allowed to doubt, and they are allowed to ask questions, and they are allowed to wonder, and they are allowed to learn other information that causes them to question things about their faith. And they are allowed to move through that in mature ways that are helpful for them, believing that on the other side of that doubt lies a rock-solid faith. So we give them mercy when they have questions. We create environments in our homes where we can have spiritual conversations, and they don't have to agree with mom and dad about everything. And then maybe most of all, for some of us, we have mercy on ourselves. And we allow ourselves to express those doubts. We allow ourselves to express that uncertainty. We give ourselves some grace and start to seek out answers. Not being afraid of the doubt, but knowing that pushing through it and seeking answers in the doubt is going to lead to a faith that we don't have right now, but we desperately want. So we have mercy on the doubters. That's the simple message of Jude. That's how we contend for the faith. The simple message of Jude is to contend for the faith with yourself, with your whole life, with everything you got. How do we do that? We pray in the Spirit. We walk in God's love. We strengthen our faith. And we have grace and mercy on those who doubt. And we walk through this together. I don't know which one of those resonates with you. But if any of them do, I pray that you'll take it from here and you'll leave and you'll work on that this week. And contend for your faith with your whole life in accordance with the message of Jude. Let's pray. Father, you love us. We know that you do. We feel it and we see it. It's all around us all the time. God, if anybody doubts today that you love them, I pray that they would see evidence of that sometime before their head hits the pillow tonight. Lord, we thank you for the simple message of Jude and ask that we would be people who would contend for our faith, that we would contend with our whole lives and our whole heart. Lord, if we have lived lives that don't require faith, would you help us take steps of faith and watch you come through? Lord, if we need to learn to pray more in the spirit and according to your will, would you make us aware that your spirit is with us as we pray? Make us sensitive to praying according to your will. God, if there are areas of our life we know are not in accordance with your word, that we know we are walking in disobedience, would you help us to walk in obedience and therefore walk in your love? Father, if we are experiencing doubts, would you help us be brave in those? To have mercy on ourselves. And to seek out the conversations that we need to seek out. To help us arrive at a stronger, richer, more vibrant faith. Help us contend for the faith that you've given us. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here. If I haven't gotten to meet you, I'd love to do that after the service. Or you could just come to Discover Grace right after the service. We've got food for you and we've got space, so hang out with us there. Just for a little bit of clarity, Mikey, I don't know where you're sitting, but I lied to you in front of the whole church. This is not great. This is fine, I would call it. This is what I'm about to tell you is average. This is an average sermon for me. So let's adjust expectations to whatever you think my average is. If you think my average is good, then I got good news for you. You're going to like it. If you think it's not so good, then, you know, good luck in finding another church. And I mean it. I hope they serve you better than I can. This morning we are in the letters of John, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. We've been moving through the books of the New Testament. This summer and next summer we're doing a series called 27 where we go through the 27 books of the New Testament. But sometimes we are grouping them together because the letters of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John really all three have the same message. And 2nd John and 3rd John are one chapter. So it'd be tough to give you an overview of that one chapter. It's better to just group them together because the message that they preach, the message that they proclaim, is very similar all the way throughout. Now, John, the disciple, wrote these letters. He wrote them probably towards the end of his ministry. It's the same John that wrote the Gospel of John, in which he describes himself the disciple whom Jesus loved We've talked many times about John's unique relationship with Jesus. They were uniquely close They sat next to each other at dinner. Jesus told John some things that he didn't share with the other disciples There was a relational closeness there that I'm not sure Jesus or John experienced anywhere else in their life. And then John also wrote the book of Revelation that we're going to get to next summer. And then towards the end of his ministry, he wrote these three letters. And John is also super significant in church history because we believe that he probably kind of replaced Peter as the leader of the church after Peter passed away. Then John was a leader of the church. And then he discipled some guys named Ignatius and Polycarp, and they like took the church after John did. So he's kind of the link between the last of the biblical figures to lead the church. And then guys that we learn about in history books, not in the Bible. So these are significant letters that they fall at the end of his ministry and reveal to us what he thinks is most important to share with the people. And unlike some of the letters like Thessalonians that's written specifically to the church in Thessalonica, these letters are written to all the churches, to take one, to read it to the congregation, and then to get it to the next church down the road so they can read it there the next week. So these are just general advice, advisory letters to the church. And in 1, 2, and 3 John, we see this theme, this instruction, this singular idea come up multiple times. When we decided to do this series going through the books of the New Testament, I knew when we planned the series what I was going to preach when we got to the epistles of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. Because they proclaim one loud message the whole time. I knew what I was going to be preaching. To me, now maybe somebody else has preached an overview on these three, and they pulled a different theme out, and I don't want to be critical of that, but as I read it, when I look at these letters, there's one theme to talk about that if we don't talk about that, we're doing a disservice to these letters from John. And I went through, and I read the theme. I know what it is. And so I read the letters in preparation for the sermon. And I counted 12 times in seven chapters that John says basically the exact same thing. It's the most reiterative book in the Bible that I know of, besides maybe Proverbs. Just the same idea over and over and over again. He keeps bringing your attention back to this one singular principle. And it's captured in a lot of passages, but I'm going to look at 1 John 2, verses 3 through 6. It's kind of the seminal passage that captures this idea that shows up 11 and the other 11 ones that I counted off for myself is simply this idea. If you love God, your actions will prove it. If you love God, your life will bear that out. So clearly, I'm talking to the Christians in the room. If you're here this morning and you're not a a Christian then you get to kind of watch from the outside and see what you might want to get yourself into or what you might be considering but this isn't for you this is for the believers in the room and if you're a believer you've said at some point that you love God and what John says is that's great if that's true then your actions will bear it out we will it. And what's great is all of these letters, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, are like a commentary or a blow-up of this teaching that Jesus offers to the disciples that's only recorded in the Gospel of John. In John chapter 15, when Jesus says, if you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. He says, to abide in me, you keep my commandments, and my commandments are that you would love. So then at the end of his life, John is reflecting back onto that singular teaching of Jesus. If you abide in me, you'll bear much fruit. How do you abide in me? You obey me. What does it mean to obey me? You obey my commandments. What's my commandment? That you would love one another. So then 12 different times in his swan songs to the church, he reiterates this idea. If you love me, if you love God, your actions will bear that out. And when you think about that, it makes a lot of sense because that's true of every relationship, right? Like I have a wife named Jen. She's wonderful. And if I told her every morning when we woke up, sweetheart, I love you so much. You're the best. Text her in the middle of the day, just thinking about you. I love you. Before we go to bed at night, hey, you're the best. I love you. That's great. But if my actions don't bear that out during the day, if I'm an unholy, impatient jerk to her, if I'm a terrible father to her children, if I give her crud about the house being dirty when I get home, when she's had a way more hectic day than I have, if I refuse to be helpful around the house, if I nitpick her and just make these little demands, if I just take the service that she offers the family for granted and I never express how much I appreciate it, if I don't cut the grass, if I'm lazy around the house, if I just don't do any of the stuff that a halfway decent husband is supposed to do, eventually she's going to stop believing it when I tell her that I love her, isn't she? If Aaron Winston, our wonderful children's pastor, says she loves the kids and she loves their families, but she doesn't bother to learn their names when they show up, eventually y'all are going to stop believing her when she says that she loves them. It's one thing to say it, but John says, put your money where your mouth is. If you say that you love God, then act like it. Then do the things that communicate love to him. If I want Jen to know that I love her, then I need to learn her and do the things that I know communicate love for her. I need to show up randomly in the middle of the day with a Chick-fil-A Coke because she didn't sleep well last night. When I do that, she knows that I love her. Jen needs to laugh at my jokes. That's all I need from her. That's all I require. Touch me sometimes. Just give me a pat on the back. You're great. And then when I make a joke like laugh and I know as long as she laughs at my joke the world is right everything's okay that's all we need but we learn to love in the language that people receive love and God says you know what I want you to do you know the important thing if you say that you love me you know how you show me you obey me you submit to submit to me. You trust me. You keep my commandments. So really the question becomes, why is obedience the thing that God asks of us to prove our love to him? And it's not that we have to prove our love to him, but why is that the proof of our love to him? I think it's for this reason. Obedience admits that God is the expert and we trust that expertise. Obedience admits that God is the expert on life, on humanity, on love, on the human condition, on the universe, and that we trust in that expertise. I'll tell you what got me thinking about that in this way. Sometime last year, some of the kind folks in the church started gently encouraging me that, hey, you know, it'd be great if we could have a cross somewhere on the stage. And so I thought through it, and I thought maybe there's a chance we can inlay one in this center panel. And we've got a lot of talented woodworkers at the church, and none of them were available. But Greg Taylor has tools. So I called Greg, and I asked if he would be interested in this. Some of y'all are picking up on that. I asked if he could help with this. And he said, yeah. He got excited about it, and we started kind of talking about what we could possibly do. He kind of sketched some stuff out and told me what he was thinking. And as he was telling me what he was thinking, I honestly thought, like, I don't think it's going to look good. I don't think, I don't, I don't think that's the way that we should go. It's not really, I don't see it like you see it. So that doesn't sound like a good idea to me. But I also know this, that knowing just a little bit more than most folks about the Bible does not make me a good interior designer. So you know what I did? I shut up. And I was like, all right, Master Woodworker, I don't see your plan. But you do, and you seem excited about it, so go ahead. And then he did that. And I came in here and I saw it. And I thought, I sure am glad I shut up, because that looks phenomenal. looks phenomenal thank you Greg the whole church got better because of that often in my role I have to trust the advice of others who have an expertise that I don't last summer when we were going through the purchase of the land we own four acres off of Litchford Road we'll find out more about what's gonna go there on the 10th of December, two weeks from today. Oh, December, I said? We're going to delay it even more. It's going to be so fun. It's going to keep you guys waiting. Yeah, thanks. Two weeks from now, September the 10th. I'm so focused on that sermon that what I want to say in that sermon kept me up all night last night. I couldn't go to sleep because I was thinking about that. And then I woke up and I was like, I kind of came to this morning. I was like, that's not even what I'm preaching this morning. I have to focus on this. I'm thinking about that a lot. But as we were going to buy the land last year, there was a team of people that were kind of informing us, informing the elders, informing me on the decisions that we should make. And they were spearheaded by one of the great partners of our church, a guy named Scott Hurst. Scott Hurst is a lifelong corporate real estate guy. And so he would call me and he would say, hey, what do you think we should do about this? Do you think we should make this kind of offer? Do you think we should do this or that or whatever? And I would always tell him, Scott, I don't know. Your vote is my vote. Whatever you think we should do is what I think we should do. I have no right to usurp your expertise and insert myself and think I know what to do as we evaluate whether or not to purchase land. I'm just trusting in your wisdom. In the same way, we had a group of people that we put together from the finance committee, from the elders, and one of the bankers that we have at the church. And we put together, I don't know if they're the finest financial minds in the church, but they were the most available at this time. So we put them in a room and we said, how much do we need to raise so that when we build the building, we're borrowing a responsible amount? And they gave me an amount. And as soon as they gave me the amount, I said, that sounds great. That's fine. Zero pushback. No questions. Let's go. Because I trust in the expertise of those people. So I'm happy to submit to what they think. Now, how ridiculously absurd would it be of me to hear the advice of those people and slough it off? To hear Greg say, hey, this is what I think we should do with the cross. And for me to be like, listen, Greg, I know you spent a lifetime in your basement, in your shop, working on projects. And I couldn't do what you've done in a whole lifetime. But I was a trim carpenter for six months when I was 25 years old. And I know a thing or two. And I'm just going to tell you, I don't like your vision, man. You need to rethink that. What if I looked at Scott Hurst when he gave me some advice on something? And I said, you know what? I didn't take a course on corporate real estate and sales deals when I was in seminary, but that was in the class right next door. And I picked up on some stuff. And I think I know a little bit better. What if I push back on the team of people that we asked to advise us on how much we need to raise? What if I push back and I said, that's not, that's a bad idea. That's not doable. I would be dumb. I'm not saying that I'm not. I'm just saying that would be proof. That'd be what you would need. I would be incredibly prideful and incredibly obstinate and incredibly short-sighted and incredibly myopic if I just threw off the advice of the experts in my life and just chose my own way. I was like, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to do this. Because I know how to read the Bible and run my mouth for 30 minutes, I'm the smartest and we're going to do what I say. No, it's dumb. It's silly. It's short-sighted and prideful to throw off that sort of wisdom. And yet, you guys see where I'm going with this? God is the author of the universe. Jesus is the founder and perfecter of your faith. God knew your very soul before he knit you in your mother's womb. He knows the hairs on your head. He knows the number. He knew the good work that he created you to walk in before he ever created you. To say that God knows you better than you know yourself is a vast understatement. He doesn't just know you. He knows the depth of you and all the possibilities of you and all the inclinations of you and all the future pathways of you. He knows all the things that bring you joy. He knows all the things that fill you up. Not only you, but everyone around you. For all of history, he designed all of this. He is the author of life. He is omniscient, meaning he is all-knowing. He is omnipresent, meaning he is everywhere. He can see every possible outcome of every possible scenario, and he can play that out better than any computer we could ever touch. He has all the algorithms. He can figure it out. We can't see past this minute, and he can see every outcome for all eternity, and he's told us some things about how we should live our lives, things that we should do and things that we shouldn't do, things that we should pursue and things that we should cut off, things that are good for us and things that will damage our soul. The author of the universe who sees into the infinite has told you those things and yet we choose to trust in our own wisdom and not his. In different ways and in different seasons and at different times. We throw off the wisdom of the infinite for the blindness of the broken. We have access. Through his word. Through his presence. Through his spirit. Through prayer. Through others. Who call Jesus their savior. We have access to him. To the divine. To the infinitely wise. And he makes it very clear what he wants us to do with our lives. He makes it very clear how we are supposed to love and how we are supposed to serve, how we are supposed to outdo one another with humility. How we are supposed to avoid certain things and embrace certain things. And in the face of that infinite wisdom that only wants what's best for us, we continue to choose the blindness of the broken. The pleasures of today sacrificing the joy of tomorrow. And I don't know where you are in your obedience to God. When I say things like, you know, there's ways in which we're all being disobedient, I don't know what comes to your mind. For some of us, we flash right away. We know the areas where we're allowing sin and the things that so easily entangle to prohibit us from running our race. When I say, what's an area of your life where you're just not being fully obedient to God, you know right away. And that's good. Others of us, because we've been at this a while, have probably settled into this place where we've begun to settle for good enough, where we worked really hard, we've done pretty well, things in life are going pretty good, we've got our spiritual disciplines, we've got our regimens, and we don't do them all the time, but we do them most of the time. And when I compare myself to the other people around me, I seem to be doing pretty well. And I know that there's more work that I could do, but it's hard. So I'm going to stop. And we settle into this kind of middle-of-the-road faith where we're just comfortable. And God, through his word and through his prayer and through worship, beckons us to more. He calls us into deeper obedience. He calls us to walk with him in stride. He calls us to abide in him. He offers this much more full life that's waiting for us on the other side of obedience, and yet we just choose to throw off the wisdom of the infinite that God knows what's best for us in favor of the blindness of the broken. No, I know what's best for myself. Do you understand that when we sin, that's what we do? We throw off God's wisdom and we choose our own wisdom? No, no, no, I know that you are the author of the universe. I know that you kind of wrote this thing and you know all the things there are to know, but for this one, I'm right. Listen, if you think I'm dumb, if I were to ignore the advice of Scott and corporate real estate, what does that make us all when we ignore God's expertise in our own life and we choose our own? It seems really silly to be disobedient when we put it that way, doesn't it? What must it feel like to God when we regularly and habitually refuse His expertise and choose our own? Is there anything, is there anything in life more infuriating than when you're talking with someone and you know you're right about a thing and they will not give it to you? They insist that you are wrong and that they are right and you don't know what universe they're from because you're right and you know you're right. And if you're a parent, you know exactly what I'm talking about. This happened sometime last year and I don't remember the particular word. But Lily, my daughter, she was six at the time. And I think I've shared a little bit of this before. And again, I'm making up this conversation. I remember the gist of it, but I don't remember the word and the actual things that were said. But this is pretty much how the conversation went. She pointed to a word. It was mañana, the Spanish word for tomorrow. I think that's right, right? That means tomorrow. Yeah? You're Spanish adjacent. You should know. His wife speaks Spanish. And I said, she pointed to the word. She said, how do you say this, Daddy? And I said, you say that mañana. And she goes, I don't think that's right. And I'm like, based on what? Based on what expertise do you think I'm wrong? Like, I'm open. Maybe you know something I don't. And she goes, well, that's not, that's not how my, how my teacher at school says to say it. She's taking Spanish at school. She says, that's not how the Spanish teacher says to say it. And I said, how'd the Spanish teacher say that you should say it? And she says, banana. And I'm like, excuse me, banana? That's what you're going to enter the chat with? And I just kind of look at her. I said, I said, baby, that's not right. And she goes, yes, it is, dad. That's what my Spanish teacher said. I said, I do not believe that that's what your Spanish teacher taught you. Because if it is, there's going to be a really strongly worded email. Not that I'm passionate about Spanish education, but that's ridiculous. I'm going to write an email about that. And we're going back and forth. And I'm literally like, I'm even pulling out reason like, Lily, you have taken two months of Spanish. You're largely illiterate in English at this point in your life. I promise you, I know that it's mañana. Do you see that? That's an ñ. That means ñ, mañana. That's what that means. That's why it's there. And it didn't matter to her. Like, Lily, I took Spanish three times in high school. I only made it through. I took Spanish two twice. But I did take it three times, technically. I've been to Spanish-speaking countries. I've been exposed to that. If you drop me in the middle of Costa Rica, I could get home. There would be hand motions and things, but I could get back. Like, I know that's manana. And it was so infuriating because it didn't matter what I said. She was right, and I was wrong, and I literally had to finish the discussion about manana manana with agree to disagree. We have two different opinions about this. I was so mad. How infuriating is it? When you know the right thing to do, you know the right answer. And the person you're talking to is like, man, that's not right. And yet, as I was talking to our student pastor, Kyle, about this this week, he pointed it out and I thought it was a great point. Our God experiences so very little of that frustration. In those moments, when we're obstinate and we are insisting to him that it's pronounced manana, I do not believe that our God experiences frustration like we experience frustration. I do not believe he is angered by that like we are angered by that. In those moments of our profound obstinance, I believe that God is more hurt by our disobedience than he is frustrated. I believe he is more hurt by our disobedience than he is frustrated. I think of it like this. Some of you have walked this path. My children are not old enough to have walked this path, but I've watched other people walk it. And you know the pain of being a parent with adult children and watching those children choose a path that leads to pain. You've watched those children make choices and you can see the end of that road. You know how that's going to end. You know their life is going to be shattered because of it. You know their heart is going to break because of it. You know that they are going to shipwreck themselves with the choices they are making and you are impotent to stop them. And all you can do is sit back and hope that the crash isn't so bad. And hope that when they're ready to pick up the pieces, they ask you to help. Some of my older parents in the room know the pain of watching an adult child collide towards catastrophe knowing there is nothing that you can do. And I think that this is what our Father in Heaven experiences every day. Watching us just careen out of control, spiraling towards a collision or a blow-up or a shipwreck, knowing that what's there is going to end and hurt for us, hoping that when we get there, we allow him to help us pick up the pieces. I do not think our God experiences anger and frustration with us when we're disobedient the way that we understand those emotions. I think he experiences hurt because he knows he has something better for us. Do you ever think about why God asks us to do things? He tells us, he makes it very clear in scripture that we're not to lust, that we're to avoid sexual immorality. Are we to do that just because God wants us to live puritanical lives that aren't as exciting and interesting as those who don't put themselves under the standards of the Bible? Is that what God wants is just his children to be more puritanical and less indulgent than other people, and so let's just keep a lid on that. No. God knows that if you are married, that every time you look at someone who's not your spouse and you desire them in a way that you don't desire your spouse, that you cheapen your spouse and you make the relationship worse. Every time you look at someone outside your marriage and you compare them to who you are married to and you want things that they seem to have that your spouse doesn't seem to have, then you cheapen your spouse and you weaken your marriage. Every time. And God knows this. So he doesn't tell us not to lust because he wants us to be Puritans. That's a happy accident of avoiding lust. But the point is, it's only when we never do that, it only deepens our devotion to our spouse. It only deepens our attraction to our spouse. It only heightens our desire for them. And then in living within this happy, fulfilling marriage where you two are mutually desired, guess what you experience? Maximum happiness and joy in a happy marriage, which is what we all want. God says, he tells us in Psalms, David writes this. In his presence there is fullness of joy, his right hand is our pleasures forevermore. It's the idea that if we pursue him, if we obey him, then the best things are waiting for us there. Why does he tell you not to be greedy? Because he doesn't want you to have nice things? Because he wants you to live the life of a pauper? No, because he knows that if you're greedy, that those things that you want are going to own you. That you're going to live a life serving stuff and image. And it'll throw off your priorities and you won't be the spouse that you're supposed to be and you won't be the parent that you're supposed to be and you won't be the member of God's church and kingdom that you're supposed to be. Because you spend your life pursuing and hanging on to stuff. And there's no joy to be found there. If you think about anything in the Bible that God tells you to do, anything in the Bible that requires your obedience, and you ask yourself, and listen, I'll give you a hint. I always preach this. Whenever there is an instruction from God in the Bible, and I have to present it to you, hey, guys, we need to not be prideful. Hey, guys, we need to not lust. Hey, the Bible tells us that we need to pursue humility. Like, whatever it is, I'm always thinking in the back of my head, why? Why is it important for God that we would do those things? Why would he instruct his children in those things? And the conclusion, it looks a lot of different ways and a lot of different sermons, but this is the basic formula. He tells us to do something, A, because when we do it, we love other people and him better. Bottom line. When we don't lust, we're loving God and others better. When we're not prideful, we love God and others better. When we're not greedy, we love God and others better. When we show humility, we love God and others better. When we offer hospitality, we love God and others better. That's always the first answer. And then ancillary to that, the benefit of that, that should push our selfish souls directly to it, is that also it's what's best for us. Also, there is the greatest joy found in obedience. There is the greatest joy in the fullest life found in following the good shepherd. God asks us to be obedient. He puts things in front of us, not for his weird pleasure, not because he wants us to feel bad, not to browbeat us and make us puritanical, but because by walking in obedience to God, we love him and others better, and we find the greatest joy possible. So he urges his children to obey him. That's why I love this verse in John 10.10. It hangs over my desk. I think in this verse is the fundamental question for all of Christendom. Jesus in John 10 is referring to himself as the good shepherd, and he says he lays at the gate of the pen to protect us, and then he says this, the thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy, but I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly. Other translations say, have it to the full. And I love that verse. I love that thought, that point. Jesus came that we might have life and have it to the full. And so it's no mistake. It's no exaggeration to say that Jesus wants the best life possible for you. That's not health and wealth, praying that. I'm not telling you if you follow him, you're going to be rich and no one in your family is ever going to get sick. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is in Jesus the promise is, if you follow your good shepherd and go where he leads you, and don't wander into your own fields trying to find your own sustenance, but if you trust him and you follow him and his wisdom, he will lead you to the best pastures, and in those pastures, you will find fullness of life, life to the full, life abundant. Meaning, there is no greater life waiting for you outside of God's commands. Which brings us to the fundamental question of Christianity. Jesus says, he's the good shepherd. Do you believe him? Jesus says, he will take you to the best pastures. Do you believe him? Jesus says, if you just put your head down and follow him, if you just abide in him, that you will find a fullness of joy there that you can find nowhere else. Do you believe him? He beckons with that teaching the simple question, hey, hey, hey, do you trust me? Do you trust me? Do you trust Jesus? And John, at the end of his life, as he distills all the teaching of a lifetime to this singular point, hey, do you trust Jesus? Do you say that you love him? Do you say that you know him? Well then, obey him, because obedience proves trust. I don't know what areas of your life you would look at and say that they're out of sync with God. I don't know where you would find your disobedience. But whenever there's an area of our life that's not submitted to God and his wisdom, what we are saying with our actions is, I'm the expert here. I don't need you. I do not trust you to be the good shepherd. I will be my own shepherd and I will find my own pastures. Thanks very much. So that's the question that I would leave you with. When Jesus says that he's the good shepherd, when God says that he cares for us, when we're told that he's going to lead us into green pastures, when we're told that in his presence there is fullness of joy, in his right hand there are pleasures forevermore. Do you believe that? If you do, then obey him. And if you need to pray while I'm praying, if you need to pray while we're singing, and offer some areas of your life over to God where you've been walking in disobedience, declare that now before you walk out those doors that you will offer those over to him and you will walk in obedience and trust him to be the good shepherd. Prove to God with your obedience to his commands that you love him and you trust him. And what you'll find there is the best life possible. Let's pray. Father, I always say that we love you. And we do. I know that we do. And God, we believe. But sometimes we need you to help our unbelief. God, I know that this room is full of people who love you, who want to love you more, who want to know you better. But we have so many things clinging on to our souls, entangling us, keeping us from running our races. So we simply pray this morning, God, that you would help us see them. What are the things holding us back? What are the pockets of disobedience that we've clung to and allowed and fostered and nurtured over the years that we need to expose and let go? God, if there are things pressing on our hearts and our souls right now, would you not let us leave this place until we agree to submit those things to you? To walk in obedience in those areas once and for all. Lord, we love you. We pray that our actions this week would bear that out. That we would love you and others well. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here on this incredibly gross, hot Sunday. I heard somebody say it's like walking around in warm soup outside. I think that's pretty appropriate. I think we're going to take out the lounge areas next week and make more space for y'all. So we're getting the message. You're coming back to church, so this is great. These lounge areas are penalties for not coming in the summertime, so now we'll get back to normal. We've been moving through a series called 27 that we're going to do this summer and next summer where we're doing an overview of the 27 books in the New Testament to kind of give you an idea of where we're going for the rest of this summer and where we're going to pick up next summer. For the rest of the summer, I'm just going to go through the general epistles, the general letters that are largely in the back half or entirely in the back half of the New Testament. We're going to do Hebrews this morning. Aaron Winston, our children's pastor, did a phenomenal job covering James for us in July. So if you want to catch that one, you can go back and take a look at it. And then we're going to do 1 and 2 Peter together, 1, 2, 3 John together. Because I don't want to do three sermons out of 1, 2, 3 John that all say like, hey, if you love God, obey him. That's the message of 1, 2, 3 John. And then we're going to do Jude Labor Day Sunday. We decided that we would save the most overlooked book of the Bible for the most overlooked Sunday of the calendar. So that's going to be very appropriate when we do Jude and you guys watch online while Aaron and I work. But this morning we're going to focus on Hebrews. And deciding how to approach Hebrews and how to give you guys an overview of Hebrews was a little tricky because Hebrews is such an incredible book with so many good things and so many good themes. The overriding theme of Hebrews is to exalt Christ. The overriding point of Hebrews is to hold Christ up as superior to everything, the only thing worthy of our devotion and our affection, the only thing worthy of our lives. That's what the book of Hebrews does, and it focuses us on Christ, which is appropriate because we preached Acts last week. Well, I preached. You guys listened and did a great job at listening. I preached Acts last week, and we talked about how it's the Holy Spirit's job to focus us on Jesus, past, present, and future. And so once again, we're just going to enter into this theme in the text where the whole goal of it is to focus us on Christ. And so my prayer for us is that that's what this will do for us this morning. In an effort to exalt Christ, the author of Hebrews, who we're not sure who it is, the author of Hebrews starts out his book this way. Hebrews 1, 1 through 3. Long ago at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he had spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purifications for sins, he sat down at the right some of the most sweeping prose about our Savior that we'll find in the Bible. The only other place that compares is probably found in Colossians, which Aaron covered. Aaron, our worship pastor, covered last month as well. So from the very beginning, he exalts Jesus. He is the image of God. He is the exact imprint of his nature. He upholds the universe with his majesty, the sweeping picture of Christ. And then the author goes on to kind of build this case for the superiority of Christ. And the book is called Hebrews because it's written to the Jewish diaspora all throughout Asia Minor. As here, I know that you have a Jewish background. Let me help you understand your new faith by helping you understand your new savior. And he goes to great lengths to explain to them why Jesus is superior. And he does this through four major comparisons. He compares Jesus to Moses. He compares Jesus to the angels. He says Jesus is superior to the high priests. And he says that Jesus is a superior sacrifice. And he goes through and he tells them why Jesus is superior to those things. Now, to the Jewish mind in the first century A.D., all of those comparisons would carry a great deal of heft. They would matter. The Jewish mind would immediately know what that meant, would immediately be taken aback by the boldness of the author of Hebrews, and feel the weight of the comparison that they were being asked to make. But for us in the 21st century in America, those things don't resonate with us like they did with the first century Hebrew mind. We know, even if this is your first Sunday in a church in two decades, you probably already know that we're of the opinion that Jesus is a bigger deal than Moses. Like, we got that one down. You know that already. You know that we think that Jesus is superior to angels. No one's getting confused and worshiping angels. Aaron's never gotten a request for a praise song for angels. Like, we've never gotten a Gabriel praise song request. So we know that. Nobody has any misgivings about me being superior to Jesus. We know Jesus is the superior priest. We know he's the superior priest to everyone that's ever lived. And that's a really hard concept for us to hold on to, I think, when we see it in Hebrews that he's the great high priest. That's a difficult one for us because most of us in this room have never really even had a priest. Most of us in this room have had pastors. And pastors are different than priests, take on a different role than priests, have historically been viewed differently than priests. So that's a tough one for us. And then the sacrifice, none of us in this room have ever performed a sacrifice. If you have, I'd love to talk with you about what led you to do that in your life. I'd like to hear that story. I don't know if I want to commit to a full lunch because you're crazy, but maybe just out there, you just tell me about that time with the goat, okay? But these things are difficult for us to relate to. They don't hit us the same way. So a lot of my thoughts and energy this week went into helping us understand why these are such weighty comparisons, why they are so persuasive, and most importantly, why they're still important to us today in 21st century America so that the book and the message of Hebrews can be just as impactful for us as it was for first century Jews. So I think, as we think about the overview of Hebrews, the most interesting question is, why did those comparisons matter to me today? Why are they important to me today? So we're going to look at them and we're going to ask, why does it matter that Jesus is superior to these things? So the first one that we see, I'm doing kind of a combo platter and you'll see why, but Jesus is superior to Moses and the angels because his law and message is greater than theirs. In your notes, I can't remember if I put it there or not, but there should, it'd be helpful to write above these three points and be bracketed by the text. Jesus is superior because, superior to blank because. So that's, that's the question that we're answering. He's superior to Moses and the angels because his law and message are greater than theirs. Okay. Here's why I kind of combined those two. We probably all know, the Jewish mind certainly knew, that God's law came from Moses. God brought the law down off of Mount Sinai and presented it to the people. Now we often think that just the Ten Commandments were written on those tablets, but those tablets were covered front and back. So we don't know what all was on there, but most certainly more laws. And if you read through the books of Moses, the first five in the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, you'll get somewhere around 620 some odd laws depending on which rabbi or scholar you're talking to. And so those were the laws of Moses. And those were the laws around which their religion was framed. Those are the laws around which their culture was built, around which their entire life was formed by following those laws well. And Hebrews is earth shattering to them because it says, hey, Jesus's law is superior to Moses's law. You can cast Moses's law aside. It doesn't mean there's not some good ideas in there. The one about like not committing adultery, we should probably carry that principle forward. But those laws are done. It's now Jesus's new law that he gives us in John. Jesus tells us that in these two things are summed up all of the law and the prophets. Everything that Moses or the prophets ever wrote or writings that's ascribed to them can be summed up in loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind, amen, and loving your neighbor as yourself. Jesus tells us that early in his ministry. But then at the end of his ministry, he's sitting around with the disciples and he says, this new command I give you, there's this new thing I want you to do. I'm going to add to the, I'm going to sweep away those commands. I'm going to give you this new command. Follow this. I want you to love your neighbor. I want you to love others as I have loved you. It's this new command that Jesus gives. And so that command is superior to all of the commands that came from Moses in the Old Testament. It's also superior to all the commands that come after that. His message is superior. This is what it means with the angels really quickly. According to Jewish tradition, it was the angels that took the tablets from God and delivered them to Moses as God's holy and anointed messengers. So what we're seeing in these two comparisons is Jesus' message is greater than any message that's come before or will come since, and his law is the greatest law, superior to all other laws, and it's the only one worth following. This is incredibly important for us because we live in a culture and we are people who are incredibly vulnerable to the insidious slide towards legalism. We are incredibly vulnerable to reducing our faith to a list of do's and don'ts. Okay, I know I'm supposed to love my neighbor as myself. Like, I get that. But is it a sin if I do blank? I hate that question. Is it a sin if I do this? Is it a sin if I watch this? Is it a sin if I go there? Is it a sin if I have this? That's an immature question. It's almost irrelevant. Is it a sin? And we even do it in the early stages of our faith. Am I in or am I out? When I die, am I going to burn forever or dance in the streets? Which one is it? I just want to make sure I'm praying the right prayer so I don't burn forever. That seems like a bummer. So I'm going to believe in this. Am I in or am I out? Is there an unforgivable sin? Is there something that if I do it, I'm going to lose my salvation and then I'm out? And we try to make it about the rules. We enter into Christianity kind of asking the leader, like whoever's in charge here, can I just have my personnel handbook? I just need to know when my vacation days are. I need to know how many Sundays I can miss in a year and still be like, good. You know? I don't want to have to feel that out. We want our policy handbook. And when we make that our faith, we pervert it and distort it into things that it ought not be and was never intended to be. When we try to make the Bible basic instructions before leaving earth, have you heard that? If you haven't heard it, sorry, because it's stupid. And I just told you it, now you know. We try to make it God's handbook for life. There's a rule for everything, we just got to find it. And when you do that, the people who know the rules the best and appear to follow them the best are the spiritually mature ones. Meanwhile, the people over there who don't follow what we think are the rules super well are actually getting busy loving other people as Christ loved them. But we don't value them because we value the rules. So it's important to let Hebrews remind us that Jesus' law is superior to the laws that we add to his law. Because we love to say yes and. We love to turn Christianity into an improv class. Yes, that's true, and this. Yes, to be a believer, what does God ask of you? That you would love other people as Jesus loved you. Yes. And also you shouldn't watch shows that are rated MA on Netflix. You should not do that. Yes. And you should love other people as Jesus loved you. And you shouldn't say cuss words. Because we got together in a room at some point, and we decided that these words that are spelled this way are bad. And you can't say them. And they're very offensive. And they offend the very heart of God. Jesus didn't make that law. We do yes and, and we start to build other rules that are requisite for our faith. And at the end of that is legalism. And some of y'all grew up in legalism. I know my parents grew up in legalism. My mom went to a church outside of Atlanta where you couldn't, if you're a girl, you were not allowed to wear skirts above the knees. They all had to be to the knees or below. And if they weren't, you're a sinner. You couldn't go, you weren't even allowed to go to the movie theater. If you're going to see a Disney movie, you cannot, you cannot go to the theater. You were not, your family was not allowed to own a deck of cards because with those cards, you might gamble and offend the sensibilities of God. And what happens when we do that is people like my mom who grow up in that, when they grew up in that, in their adolescence, they're riddled with all this guilt of things that they're supposed to do and shame for not being able to do them. And that shame isn't coming from Jesus because you've offended his law. That shame is coming from rickety old deacons because you offended their sensibilities. And it's not right. We should always choose love over law because that's what Jesus asked us to do. And here's what can happen when we do that. At the last church I worked at, there was a policy, and some of you are familiar with policies like these. They're particularly prominent in the South. There was a policy that you could not consume alcohol in public. You had to privately foster your own alcoholism. You couldn't consume it in public. You can have it in your house. You can have it with trusted friends. But you can't consume it in public and you can't be seen purchasing it by someone from the church. It's absurd policy. Be all in or all out. Just say don't drink it. That's way less hypocritical than drive to DeKalb County to get it and then drive back. So one day, I'm cutting my grass. I'm relatively new to the neighborhood. And when I finish up, my neighbor, Luis, comes out. He says, hey man, hot day. I said, yeah, it's hot. He goes, you want to have a beer with me? Now that's against the rules. I'm not allowed to have a beer with Luis because I don't want to, I'm not going to get into it. According to the rules, this is bad. But he's my neighbor and we know what do you want to have a beer with me means. He's showing me hospitality. He wants to talk to me. He wants to get to know me and I need to love him. And it's not very loving of me to be like, I'll be right back. I'm going to go get my water. That's just not what you do. So I said, sure. I had a beer, an illicit, an illicit beer. God, I'm still sorry. And we talked and we became buddies. And Luis had a stepson and two sons that lived with him as well, him and his wife as well. Gabriel, Yoel, and Yariel. And over the course of the next six years, I got to be their pastor. And I got to baptize all four of those guys in the church. Now, if I had said no that day, could that still have happened? Sure. But, I chose love over law, and God used it. We should be people who choose love over law, understanding that Jesus' law is the superior law. And just in case you think I'm letting people off the hook to do whatever you want under Jesus' law, as long as you're loving others, it is absolutely impossible to love others as Jesus loved us without being fueled and imbued by the love of the Holy Spirit. We cannot love others as Jesus loved us if we do not know Jesus and love him well. That the two things that sum up the law and the prophets, love God with all your heart, soul, mind, amen, love your neighbor as yourself. You cannot love your neighbor as yourself. You cannot love your neighbor as Jesus did if you do not love God with all your heart, soul, mind, amen. It takes care of everything. And suddenly there's times when you shouldn't watch that, or you shouldn't do this, or you shouldn't have that, or you shouldn't shouldn't go there or you should do this or you should do that, but not because it offends some law or sensibility that we've added to over the years, but because to do that or to not do that is the most loving action to take. That's why it's important for us to still acknowledge that Jesus's law is the superior law and that Jesus is a superior messenger and the angels. Now your notes are out of order. The next one we're going to do is priest and then sacrifice. So I'm sorry about that. But it's important to us to understand that Jesus was superior to the priests because Nate is broken. It's important for us to understand that Jesus was superior to the priest because I am broken. When we were running through the slides before the service started, we got to this one, and the band and the tech team laughed at me. They're like, Nate, you think we don't know that? We haven't pieced that one together. And I said, well, my mom's coming. So this one's for her. Sorry, mom, this is news to you. I know that you don't need me to tell you that I'm broken and that I'm a human. And that I'm going to teach you the wrong stuff sometimes. The way I think about faith and the Bible and God and Scripture and all the things evolves. It changes. There's things I taught when I was 30 that I'm so embarrassed about now. And there's things I'm saying to you right now that when I'm 52, I'm going to be like, oh, what a moron. I just know that's true. I'm broken. And even though you guys know that, and you guys know not to put pastors on pedestals, and you would probably all say that you have a pretty healthy idea about that, and I consider it part of my personal ministry to you to act in such a way where it's very easy for you to not put me on a pedestal. That's my ministerial gift to you guys. You would probably all say that you know better than that. But we still get the jokes. Those still happen. I had a friend, a good buddy, still a friend of mine named Heath Hollinsworth. Heath had three brothers. He still has three brothers. Jim was the oldest and Jim was an associate pastor at the church that Heath and I both worked at. So we all worked together. And then Ryan and Hunter worked construction. So they're a little bit less important in the kingdom of God than me and Heath and Jim. Which is the, that's the point I'm making. And whenever they would be around their dad for a meal and it came time to pray for the meal, Heath was in charge of the service. He was program director. It was a big church. So he had positions like program director. Here, Aaron does that. But whenever it came time to pray for a meal, their dad really didn't like praying in public, so he would always get one of the boys to do it, and he'd kind of look them over, and he'd be like, Jim, why don't you lead us today? You're the closest to the Lord. You have the most direct line. And Heath would be like, I work at a church too, and I'm sure it flew all over Ryan and Hunter. But he would joke about it. It didn't really make him mad. He just thought it was the stupidest thing because Jim was ordained and Heath wasn't. His dad thought he had a more direct line to the Lord. And as stupid as that sounds, you guys say that to me. I know we don't really believe it, but we keep saying it. When I golf with y'all and I hit one in the woods, which is rare, but when I hit one in the woods and it comes bouncing out just miraculously, just a squirrel throws it and it just lands in the middle of the fairway, somebody is going to say, got that pastor bounce, somebody's going to say it. We make the jokes and we think the things, and I can tell you from personal experience, we exonerate pastors too much. We honor pastors too much. We think too much of them. We have too great an expectation for them. I am not to be exonerated. My job in God's kingdom is not more important than your job. My gifting is not more valuable than your gifting. And listen, your character is not less important than my character. A lot of us have more expectations for me and what my character should be than for ourselves. And that makes no sense because you're a royal priesthood too. If it's okay for you and not okay for me, then you either need to raise your standards for yourself or lower them for me. Probably raise. And I don't mean to hit that too hard, but the church has a long history of making the people who stand here way more important than they actually are. And we've got to knock that off. While I'm here, and just kind of kicking you guys in the gut, let me kick you in the teeth. The other thing I was thinking about with priests and why this is important is the historic role of the priest. Do you realize that for a vast majority of Christian history, from the first century A.D. to now, for the vast majority of that, Christendom did exist under a priesthood. And that those priests were the sole arbiters of the truth of God in the lives of their people. Do you understand that? The people, for much of history, were largely illiterate. The vast majority of people were illiterate for much of church history. And before the printing press, a Bible was so expensive that it took the whole town to raise money to get one, and then they'd put it up on the lectern in the church or in the pulpit, and they would literally chain it so that nobody could steal the Bible because it was that valuable, and it's the only one that existed in the town, and because everyone's largely illiterate, the only person who can read it is the pastor. Do you understand how easy it is to manipulate when that is true? Do you understand how vulnerable that populace was to the malice that might be in their pastor? Do you understand how limiting it is for your faith if there's only one person who can explain to you who's reading scripture on your behalf and then telling you what it says and then telling you what you should do about that? That's how we got indulgences and we paid for St. Peter's Basilica because they manipulated the masses in that way. Because I'm the only one in the room who can read this and I get to tell you what it means. That's incredibly harmful. And now, we live in a time when Bibles are ubiquitous everywhere. You all probably have multiple Bibles in your home. You probably have more Bibles than you do people. If you'd like to add to your collection, take one of ours. You can download it on your phone. You can look it up on the World Wide Web. You have universal access to the scriptures of God. And yet, I see so many of you, so many Christians, walking through life, functioning as scriptural illiterates, trusting your pastor to spoon feed you truth twice a month for 30 minutes. And that's all you know of this. People have fought and people have died and people have lived to make this available to you. And yet as Christians, many of us live our lives as functional illiterates who still rely on our pastor or spiritual leader to spoon feed us the truth twice a month? How can we be Christians and be so disinterested in what God tells us? How can we call ourselves passionate followers of Christ and yet not read about him? How can we have access to this special revelation of God and the inspired and authoritative words within it that tell us not basic instructions for life but about our wild and wonderful and mysterious father? They tell us all about that and we have access to it all the time. We can read it whenever we want. We can do all the research we want. We can even, you can download professors walking you through this as you explore it on your own. And yet we function as illiterates still acting like the only source of truth is our pastor for whatever sermon they want to give that day. Jesus is your pastor. He's your source of truth. And he made sure that this got left for you so that you could learn about him. I'm here to augment the work that you're doing. I can't do the work for your whole life. Neither can your small group leader. It's important to know that Jesus is our high priest because we have the freedom to go to him and to pray to him whenever we want. We don't need a go-between. We don't need someone else to spoon-feed us truth. He makes it available to us here. Now, let's end on a higher note than that. It's important for us to know that Jesus was the superior sacrifice because he was enough. It's important for us to know that Jesus was a superior sacrifice because he was. This is important to mention. Because the old sacrificial system, you had to perform a sacrifice, and then you were good until you messed up again, and then you had to go back and you had to sacrifice. Like I wonder about the people who like went to the temple for a certain festival and they performed all their sacrifices and they're good. They're good before God. If they die, they're fine. And then they like take a wrong turn or there's traffic getting out of Jerusalem and they say things they shouldn't say. Like, I guess we got to go back to the temple and do this again. But Jesus is a superior sacrifice because we need one for all time. That's it. We're done. We don't have to go back and keep making sacrifices. And yet, we do the yes and thing again where we go, yeah, Jesus died for me and he made me right before God, but now that I'm a Christian, I keep messing up, so I need to do more and I need to better, and I need to perform my own personal sacrifices to get myself back in good graces with God. And we make Jesus' sacrifice not enough. Yeah, that was good then, but I know better now, and I need to keep working harder and keep being hard on myself and keep making my own sacrifices to then get back into the good graces of God so that he will love me more and approve of me more. And we live our lives, I do this too, as if Jesus' sacrifice wasn't enough. And now God in his goodness and glory and perfection requires me, Nate, to make greater sacrifices to supplement the insufficient sacrifice that Jesus made for me. I think that we would do well to wake up every morning and remind ourselves, even if we have to say it out loud, what Jesus has done for me is enough. God loves me as much as he possibly can and ever will. There is nothing I can do today to make God love me less. There is nothing I can do today to make God love me more. And there's nothing I can do today to make myself more right before God. Jesus was enough. He did that for me. And then walk in the goodness and freedom of God. From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. Walk in that fullness. Walk in that grace. Walk in that gratitude by allowing the sacrifice of Jesus to be enough. That's why Hebrews can still, that's how Hebrews can still resonate with us today. By acknowledging that Jesus is superior to the law and the message of old, that he's the superior priest that gives us unfettered access to him, and we ought to passionately pursue that, and that he is the greatest sacrifice because he's enough for us once and for all. We don't have to keep supplementing that with our insufficiency. And to do all of this, as we're reminded of all of this, and we start with the sweeping prose about Christ, and then we see the comparisons, he starts to close his book by drawing this conclusion, and I think it's a great place for us to stop and put our focus on today as we prepare our hearts for communion after the sermon. But he starts to summarize his book and to wrap up by telling us to do this. I preach about this lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, my Bible says, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. In light of all that we learned, in light of who Jesus is, the image of God, the very imprint of His nature, and in light of the ways that Jesus is superior and serves us and sacrifices for us and is our high priest, in light of the law that is to love Jesus with all our heart, in light of the law that is to love other people as Jesus loved us and then so in turn love Christ and be fueled by that love, in light of all these things, what are we to do? What are the rules that we're supposed to follow? How are we supposed to live this Christian life? Hebrews 12, 1 and 2. Run your race. Go out there and run hard. Pursue Jesus with everything you've got. Go love other people with your whole heart. And to do it well, you've got to throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles. And we don't do that by white-knuckling it. We don't do that by trying to be our own sacrifice. We don't do that by supplementing the work of Christ in our life. No, we do it by focusing our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. If we'll do that, we will follow God's laws. We will pursue Jesus hard. We will love others well, and we will have run a good race. That's the point of Hebrews. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for who you are, for how you've loved us. Thank you for your son. Father, I pray that it would be critically important to us to acknowledge the superiority of Christ. That it would be critically important to us to pursue Him, to love Him, to know Him. Father, if we are not in Your Word, if we're not pursuing You on our own, would you light a fire in us to do that? If we've spent too many years not knowing your Bible well, would you let this be the year that fixes it? If we've spent too many years adding to your law, would this be the year that we let that go? If we've spent too many years supplementing your sacrifice, would this be the year that we finally accept yours? And God, as we go from here, would you help us run our race? It's in Jesus' name we ask these things. Amen.

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you've been coming in July and never before that, and I'm new to you, they gave me the month off, and they were very, very kind to do that. So again, as I iterated in the Grace Vine this week, thank you so much for being the kind of church that allows me to take a month off and be with my family and be present with my kids. When I came back to work this week and I said bye to the kids, my daughter Lily was actually disappointed, which I feel is probably a good thing. I guess that means the month went well. It would probably be bad news if she was like, praise the Lord, he's leaving again. That may be how Jen felt, but Lily was sad. And just to set the expectations for this morning, I heard comments and things as I was wrapping up the month of June to take sabbatical and then some stuff during the month and even some stuff this morning about like, oh man, this is going to be a good sermon. You had six weeks to get this one ready. Like you used to come back and light our faces on fire. No, no. I didn't think about this sermon for one single second in the month of July. Not a single one. I didn't even know that I was preaching. This is the book of Acts this morning. I didn't even know I was preaching on the book of Acts until Tuesday when I decided that it would be the book of Acts. And then some stuff happened in my week. I ended up having to go back out of town. I wrote this sermon on my parents' dinner table at 10 o'clock on Thursday night. I'm essentially winging this, and I'm rusty. So let's just tamp down expectations of good and hope for brief, and then later I'll be good. If you really want to hear the sermon that I've been thinking about all month, then you should come on September the 10th. On September the 10th, we're going to roll out the plans that we have for the church. We're almost done. We're ready to show you. We're very excited. We're going to launch the campaign in earnest. It's going to be an update, and I've been really thinking a lot about what I want to share with you guys that Sunday morning about the future of grace and what we hope for. So that's the one that I hope is really good. This is going to be fine. With that being said, you can open your Bibles not to the book of Acts, but to John chapter 16. We will get there in a second. As I think about the book of Acts and what I want you to do with Acts, so we're going to be focused on just kind of an overview of Acts. What is it? How do we use it? Why is it there? What can it teach us? One of the things to know contextually about Acts is that it's essentially the second half of the book of Luke. Luke wrote the gospel of Luke and then he wrote the Acts of the Spirit or the Acts of the Apostles, depending on which strand of the church you come from. But they're both written to a guy named Theophilus. So they're basically part one and part two of the accounts of Christ and then the accounts of the Spirit. And when I think of the book of Acts, I think of it this way as it fits into the New Testament. From a narrative perspective, the book of Acts is an atlas. I think we have that in your notes. Yes, in a narrative sense, Acts serves as an atlas. Now, here's what I mean. I don't know how many of you are old enough to remember this, to know what this is. I see you don't know. You know lots of it. You have no clue. You never touched this in your life. Then here's what you don't know. If you're too young to know what this is, I have been entrusted with a church, the leadership of a church, with children, young lives to mold, a marriage, various stations of responsibility throughout my life. I have never felt a deeper sense of responsibility than when I was in the back seat of our 1985 Maxima with automatic seat belts and my dad would tell me to open up the Atlas and tell me where I need to turn next. That is fully locked in. I've never felt a greater sense of responsibility because you can't just let any of the kids do that. You let my sister do it, we're going to be in Kansas. It's going to be a disaster. I have to do it. And the family is relying on me. So atlases hold a great place in my heart. And when you look at an atlas, when I open this to North Carolina, the way that an atlas works, I know you guys can't see it, but you can see enough for this to work. When you look at North Carolina, it's just the whole state, right? It's an overview of the whole state. And then what you get is you get these little windows where different cities are blown up. So like Charlotte is there. Charlotte's there. But then this is Charlotte for when you get in the city, you need more detail. And then Raleigh gets its own on the next page there. This is back before 540. I was actually looking at it this morning. Yeah, this is 1995. I had to email some people who are not in the millennial demographic to get my hands on one of these. But that's how atlases work, right? There's an overview of the whole state, and then where more detail is required, there's these little windows, these little blow-ups that accompany it to give you more detail for certain parts of the map. And that's how I think about the book of Acts and how it interacts with the New Testament. When you think about the story, the narrative arc of the New Testament, from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the gospel telling the story of Christ, to the end of the book, Revelation, and you think about chronologically, how does that flow? Acts is, from a narrative perspective, the atlas. It gives the overview. It's the state overview of the New Testament. And then the letters that we see subsequent to Acts, the Pauline epistles, Paul's letters, Romans and Corinthians and Galatians, Ephesians, and all down through Philemon, those serve to me as windows into the goings on in the book of Acts. When you read through Acts, you'll see Paul go to Philippi and Thessalonica and Corinth and all the places. And then you can turn to those letters and you can get a greater detail about what's going on in those churches. And the same with the general epistles. They're kind of tucked into the narrative story of Acts. So as we approach the Bible and we think about the New Testament, the composition of it, the book of Acts serves as kind of the atlas of the roadmap that gives you the narrative arc from the Gospels to Revelation. And that's helpful for me as I think about the structure of my Bible. But far more importantly than what Acts does for the Bible in a narrative sense is what the book of Acts does in an ecclesiastical sense, in a sense that pertains to the church and to the theology of the church. So in an ecclesiastical sense, Acts serves as a telling of the great work of the Holy Spirit that links the two great works of Jesus. So an ecclesiastical church, as it pertains to the church, as it pertains to church life, as it pertains to theology and how we understand God moving and acting and working in his church, the book of Acts serves to tell the story of the great work of the Spirit, of the age of the Spirit, as that work links the two great works of Christ. Now, admittedly, theologically, for those of you who think about these things, I struggled with that sentence because Christ, according to John 1, was involved in creation. That's a great work. Christ is still at work right now as our high priest interceding on our behalf. Christ will rule forever. So I don't mean to reduce the life of Christ and the works of Christ to the death and resurrection and then his return. Those are just what I'm calling the two great works of Christ. And so in the church age that we are in, in the age of the spirit in which we find ourselves, we constantly look back to Christ on the cross, that great work, and we anticipate the next great work, the return of Christ. And the book of Acts serves as a descriptor of the age of the Holy Spirit, whose work links the two great works of Christ as the Spirit grows the church. So that's how we think about the book of Acts, and that's what it sets out to describe for us, is the work of the Spirit, the age of the Spirit and of the church, the thing that Jesus came to build. So if we want to know, okay, it's the age of the Spirit. Acts details the acts of the Spirit in this church age. Then what is the Holy Spirit supposed to do? What is its job? What can we expect of it? What are we looking for as we look at the works of the Spirit? The best answer to this question actually comes in John chapter 16. I know it might feel weird that the highlighted verse on a sermon on the book of Acts is from the Gospel of John, but I think after we read it together, it will make more sense to you. This verse, this passage, is Jesus talking. John 15, 16, and 17 is this long discourse from Jesus just to the disciples. It's some good, intimate, revelatory teaching. It's capped off at the end of it by the high priestly prayer when Jesus, it's the longest recorded prayer of Christ where he prays for them and the church to come. And he prays for you and for me if we have placed our faith in Jesus. And in the midst of that discourse, Jesus tells them, I know you're sad that I'm leaving, but it's actually better that I am. And here's what he says in John chapter 16, verses 6 through 11. He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. It's a threefold purpose. Concerning sin, because they do not believe in me. Concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you will see me no longer. Concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. So Jesus outlines to his disciples and to us this threefold purpose of the Holy Spirit. And what I want you to see this morning is what that means. What does it mean to convict the world of sin, to convict the world of righteousness, to convict the world of judgment? And then how does that show up in the book of Acts? And then not only in the book of Acts, but in our lives as well. So if we look at the first one, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit convicts of sin. And then he gives detail of this down in verse 8. And when he comes, he will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. Verse 9, concerning sin, because they do not believe in me. This is the apex sin, to not believe in Christ. It's the one that can't be fixed. It's the thing that we have to do. And so when we ask what it means for the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin, I think it means this. The Holy Spirit convicts of sin by helping people believe in Jesus. And I know I already taught you ecclesiastical. Now I'm throwing in salvific. That just means something that has the power to save. And so this repentance of who Jesus is, repenting of who you thought he was and accepting who he says he is, is the fundamental repentance to enter Christendom. It is the foundational repentance for anyone who would seek to become a Christian. It's why I articulate as often as I can that to be a Christian means to believe that Jesus was who he says he was, he did what he said he did, and he's going to do what he says he's going to do. The fundamental repentance to become a Christian is to repent of who you thought Jesus was and accept who he says he is. And I believe this to be true because of how the Holy Spirit works in the book of Acts to bring this repentance about in the crowds of the people of Jerusalem. If you look in your Bible in Acts chapter 2, what you'll see is that Jesus has died, he's resurrected, he's milled about for 40 days interacting with people and freaking people out, and then he ascends into heaven. And when he ascends into heaven, he tells the disciples to wait until the appointed time and they'll know what to do. So the disciples are assembled in this upper room and they don't know what to do. They're just looking at each other going, what do we do now? I don't know. He just said, wait. Wait on what? I don't know. We'll know when it happens. Meanwhile, Jerusalem is abuzz. They're trying to figure out what's going on with this guy and what these guys are doing in this upper room. So they're all milling around outside, thousands of people just waiting to see what the disciples are going to do. And one day at Pentecost, the flaming tongues descend down from heaven and light on the disciples and they are given the gift of tongues and they go out onto the balcony, onto the portico, and they preach to the crowds that are gathered there. Peter preaches in his own language and each person hears it in their language. That's the gift of tongues that we see in Acts. And they're all convicted and they all want to be saved. Peter goes out and he preaches the gospel. He tells them who Jesus is. And their response is, we believe, what do we do? And Peter's response, my Bible scholars already know, repent and be baptized. And this is something that I've chewed on for years. But repent of what? We're tempted to say, we often say, repent of your sins. Sure. All of them? Perfectly? This is the line of delineation for salvation? I should repent of everything I've ever done and am doing and I should repent perfectly and if I can't do that then I cannot enter the kingdom of heaven? Certainly perfect repentance of all the things isn't the line because there would be no one saved but Christ. Because of that I am convinced more and more that what Peter is telling them to do is repent of who you thought he was before you killed him and when you killed him. This crowd is the same crowd that was surrounding the courts of Pilate when Pilate was going, we don't need to kill this guy. He hasn't done anything. Why don't you just let me release him and kill Barabbas? And the crowd said, no, give us Barabbas and kill Jesus. And Pilate says, well, this isn't on me. And the crowd says, well, his blood is on our hands and on the hands of our children. It's that same crowd. I don't know if it's one for one, but a majority of them are in the same place. It's that same ethic, that same group of people. And so Peter is telling them, repent of who you thought Jesus was, that guy that you killed, and confess that he is the Lord, that he is who he says he is, and then be baptized. It is salvific repentance. It is foundational repentance for all people for all time. And the work of the Holy Spirit is to convict us of the sin of not seeing Jesus and accepting him for who he says he is. And he is still doing this work today. If you have a friend that you are trying to love towards the kingdom of heaven and share the gospel with, it is we work, we say words, we pray, we do. It is the Holy Spirit's job to convict and to open up eyes to see Jesus for who he says he is. And often, in our culture, in this day and age, in a nation that is very close to post-Christian, where everyone has heard the name of Jesus, and if they're not following Jesus, they probably have a reason, and here's the thing, it's probably a good one. In our culture now, the Holy Spirit has to do a lot of the same work that he had to do back in the church age, back in the age of Christ. What did he have to do to help them see that Jesus was who he says he was? He had to knock off the scales of religiosity and tradition and poor teaching and well-meaning teachers who were slightly askew and led them to an expectation of Christ that he never set for himself. And so the Holy Spirit is doing that same work today in our hearts and in our lives. I read a stat this week that over the last 20 years or 25 years, over 40 million Americans have stopped going to church. Why is that the case? Why are we living in this deconstructed culture? Well, part of it is on them. Part of it is they had great pastors and great teachers and great people in their life, and they just weren't listening. And that's part of the deal. But a larger part is because we've done church really badly, because we've depicted Jesus as who he isn't, because we put expectations on him that he didn't ask for. And so people are growing up in the church blind to who Jesus really is because the teaching in the church has been so bad. And the Holy Spirit has to convict us in our adulthood and help us knock the scales off of the Jesus that we were taught and help us see the Jesus that presents himself in scripture and in the hearts of people who love us well. So the Holy Spirit is still doing that work. And I'm not so ignorant as to believe that he's not doing that work for some of us in here today who have our doubts. I would just posit to you that maybe your doubts about who Jesus is aren't because of who he said he was, but because of what someone else told you that he was. And maybe the Holy Spirit can help open your eyes to see past those things. Then Jesus says that the Holy Spirit convicts of righteousness. What does it mean to convict of righteousness? I think of it like this. Jesus says that he convicts of righteousness because he is going to be with the Father, and that's a little bit mysterious. And so for this one, I did, I did my research, which I know, I know it's a surprise for everyone, but I did my research and I think it's easiest to understand it like this. The Holy Spirit convicts those who believe to grow in Christ likeness. So once, once he's convicted you to believe and you see Jesus for who he is, then he convicts you to grow in Christ-likeness, to grow in your own righteousness. This is the process that the Bible and theologians call sanctification. The sanctification process is to become more like Christ in character. I grew up thinking of salvation as this moment, as this point of inflection in time where you were saved or you were not, and that is still partially true. But now as an adult, I think of salvation as a process from the moment God opens our eyes in faith to the moment he claims us in eternity and secures us in his kingdom forever. That is a process as we live the rest of our lives as Christians. And in that process, in our time of living, God sanctifies us. He convicts us of places where we're not righteous, where we're not Christ-like. And he shows us where we need to be more righteous and more like Christ. The Holy Spirit convicts. Now that we have opened our eyes and we believe in him, then the Holy Spirit says, good, that's step one. Now step two, I'm going to convict you of where you're not righteous so that you can become more righteous and more like Christ in character. We see him doing this to Peter in the book of Acts. We see the Holy Spirit acting this way in Acts. In Acts chapter 10, there's a conversation between Peter and Cornelius, and Peter receives a vision. Peter was a good Jew. He was a Jew's Jew. And in this time, there was several dietary restrictions that had religious connotations to the Jew. There was things he could and could not eat and people he could and could not eat with. And the Holy Spirit comes to him in a dream, gives him a vision, and basically says, hey, you can leave those rules behind. Knock it off with that. Eat with Cornelius. And Paul has to end up getting on to him. You eat with Gentiles when no one else is around, but when Jews are around, you won't do it because you're a hypocrite and you're scared of other people and you need to knock it off and quit being a sissy. It's this moment of conviction for Peter. And what I love about that moment of conviction, and it's so important for us in our moments of conviction, I think conviction can sometimes have a negative or judgmental connotation. That we feel that when we're convicted of a sin, that that's somehow God telling us, hey, you're not pleasing me right now. That's the spirit in your ear saying, you should stop that behavior because it's not pleasing to the Lord. It displeases God for you to do that. Over sabbatical, I got the fresh conviction of get off your phone and engage with your children, right? Well, the conviction doesn't come from the spirit because me being on my phone and reading the New York Times or my Kindle app or whatever it is, is sinful. And God wants me to stop doing that because it displeases him. And the holy watchdog is disappointed in me. He's convicted me of that because he's saying, hey, by doing that, you're not loving your kids as well as you could be. So love your kids. And this all makes sense when you consider the new commandment that Christ gave us. Christ left the disciples with one commandment. Go and love others as I have loved you. That's the new commandment I give to you. That's the commandment for all Christians and all of Christendom. Go love others as Christ has loved us. And so the conviction of the Holy Spirit towards Christ's likeness and righteousness isn't a conviction of displeasure before God. It's a conviction of, hey, when you do that, you're not loving other people well. When you engage in that behavior, you're not obeying the command to love others as I have loved you. Look at Peter. He says, stop, knock it off with the dietary restrictions. Why? Because those restrictions are prohibiting you from loving Cornelius in a way that he needs to be loved. He thinks he's unacceptable to God because you won't eat with him. So stop it, man. You can't love Cornelius well. This is what convicts me. This is an unconvincing statement. I know. I need to be healthier. I have young kids. I'm old. I did the math the other day. I'm 42. When my grandma was 42, I was two. I was John's age. My son, that's nuts. I'm going to be 70 when he has a career and meets someone. I would like to meet his kids. So I got to knock it off with the red meat. I got to knock it off with filet of fish, which is going to be a tough battle. Those are good. That's the Holy Spirit's conviction. Not because those things are displeasing before the Lord, but because if I want to love my children and the next generation well and be present for them in old age, then I need to do what I need to do now to be ready for that. Now, I don't know what the Lord's timing is, and I don't know what's going to happen between now and then, but I am convicted that I need to do my part to be healthy for my family, and I think that's a good conviction for us to have. Not because what we consume is displeasing before the Lord, but because what we consume doesn't enable us to love the people in our lives the way he's asked us to do that. So when we're convicted to righteousness, what we are convicted towards is Christ's likeness and loving people better. All sin that you have in your life, all unholiness that you have in your life. It's so abhorrent to God because it does displease him, because it does disqualify us, but more than that, it disables you from doing what he's asked you to do, which is to love other people well. So when he convicts towards righteousness, he's convicting us towards love. But the other important part of this is coming to grips with the abhorrence of our sin. And not just the abhorrence of it, but the weight of it, the volume of it. It's right and good for the Holy Spirit to hold up a mirror before us and for us to be crushed underneath the weight of our sin because of the place it brings us to. I came across this as I was doing a little bit of research this week. This is from Charles Spurgeon. Charles Spurgeon was the pastor of the Metropolitan Baptist Tabernacle in London in the late 1800s. He's called by many the prince of preachers. He may have been the greatest preacher that ever lived. He comes to remind them not only of God's loveliness, but of their own unloveliness, of their own enmity and hatred to this God of love, and consequently of their terrible sin and thus ill-using one so infinitely kind. Listen, the Holy Ghost does he want to convict us towards greater love for one another, he does want us to feel the weight of our sin and our utter inability to fight the battle against it alone. When the Holy Spirit has done his job and we have invited him into our hearts to do his work, he will so overwhelm us with the weight of our iniquity that we will cry out to the Father, I am helpless. It will be the cry of Paul in Romans 7, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? If you are here and you think you can just leave this room determined to be more righteous, then you will not be more righteous. And if by some miracle you succeed in breaking the chains of one sin in your life, you will usher in the new chain of pride at having done it on your own. Congratulations. The Holy Spirit pushes us towards love of others and helps us feel the weight of our sins that we might be reliant on him and his work rather than ourselves. That's how he convicts of righteousness. Now, how does he convict of judgment? What does it mean to convict us of judgment? Because the time of the evil one is coming. Let's sum it up like this. The Holy Spirit convicts concerning judgment by reminding us that good will triumph over evil. When Paul, we see this in Acts, when Paul goes to the Greek Areopagus, Mars Hill, he interacts with the philosophers there who like to talk about ideas. And a lot of you guys know the story. They say you have monuments to all the gods. I see here you have a monument to an unknown God. I know who that God is. That's actually Jesus. And he goes on to share the gospel with them. And then the end of that passage in Acts chapter 10, it says that they were convicted by the Spirit about who Jesus was and an assurance of the judgment to come. An assurance of where they would go when they died. We see the Holy Spirit doing that work in Acts. And the Holy Spirit does that work now. When we say that his job is to convict us of judgment, it means his job is to remind us that there is a time coming when that judgment will happen. And if you are not a believer, that judgment is terrifying and wrathful and awful, and you ought to be terrified of it. But when you are a Christian, we can look forward to that judgment with hopeful anticipation. That moment that I preach about often when Jesus comes crashing down out of the clouds in Revelation 19 and on his leg is righteous and true and he comes back to restore creation and to redeem us and to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. As Christians we cling to the hope of that moment. It's what gets us through death. It's what gets us through trials. It's what gets us through hard times is the belief in the arctic hope and the assurance that one day Jesus will do what he says he's going to do as the Holy Spirit seeks to link the great works of Christ, not just from his death and resurrection, but links the church age to the return of Christ when it's all said and done to tell us die for, when he comes back to get us. So the Holy Spirit is constantly, constantly, constantly pointing you to Christ. In sin, he points us to who Christ is to believe in him. In righteousness, he points us to the character of Christ to become more like him. And in judgment, he points us to the future of Christ in hope that we might cling to these things in life. That's the role of the Holy Spirit, to point you to Jesus, past, present, and future. To assure you, while you watch someone you know fade away, that you will see them again in glory and they will not look like this. To assure you, when you watch your children struggling through something you can't fix, that there's more to the story than this, it ends better. To assure you that the people you know that have been degenerated by illness or mental issues or whatever, that one day you will get to meet a healthy, loving version of them. The Holy Spirit points us back to the victory on the cross, to the victory of Easter, where all the crud that you deal with was broken and defeated. If only we can place our faith there. So that's the role of the book of Acts. That's the role of the Spirit in the book of Acts and now. And what's wonderful about Acts is it's the only book in the Bible that ends with an ellipsis. Acts isn't finished, and neither is the Spirit. The book of Acts isn't done being written. We're still in the book of Acts. Now, I'm not getting crazy. I'm not saying we're adding stuff to the Bible. All right, relax. But we're still into the church age that was ushered in at the ascension of Christ that awaits the return of Christ. We are still writing the story of the church and the Holy Spirit is still moving in the writing of that story. And he's still moving in you to convict you of your belief in Christ, of your Christ-like character and of your hope in what he will do one day. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for the church and the gift that it is to us. Thank you for all the expressions of the church happening all over our community and all over the world today. God, I pray that each person in this service and the service next door and the service across the country and across the globe, that each person is somehow convicted by your spirit today, is somehow warmed by the hope of your spirit, by the promises of your spirit, is somehow moved closer to love through the spirit opening their eyes. God, I pray that the people who sit in the services today who don't yet believe you because they don't see you for who you are would have their eyes opened even just a little bit more today. We thank you for the church and what it is. We thank you for the church age. We thank you for your spirit, for your helper, who points us constantly to your son. And it's in your son's name that we pray. Amen.

All right. Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I am the student pastor here at Grace, and this morning I am so excited to have the opportunity to preach to you guys out of the book of 2 Thessalonians. Now, I don't know who in here has recently read through 2 Thessalonians, or even if you ever have, but it's a pretty interesting book, and if I'm being completely honest, as I read through it a couple times, I read through it and kind of just shook my head. I was like, I don't really know what I'm going to preach out of this. I don't really know what of this is applicable for like a Sunday morning at Grace in 2023, but I guess here we go. No, but it's an interesting book because of the reason why it was written. To give a little background, those of you who, those of you might have been here for a couple of our other Sunday mornings where we have gone through some of Paul's writings. First and second Thessalonians are two letters that were written and attributed to Paul and Paul's ministry written to the church in Thessalonica, written to the city, these people who he had gone and spent some time with, and after spending time with them, had written them two separate letters. Now, the more interesting part is why and the occasion for why he's actually writing the second letter. He's got a great reason to write the first letter. I actually got to preach on 1 Thessalonians a few weeks ago, and it's a beautiful letter, and it just so well just describes exactly what Paul is trying to do and say, and you read it, and you're like, this is awesome. And then 2 Thessalonians is written basically for the opportunity for him to kind of address and to correct a misunderstanding that some of the people in Thessalonica had around the first letter. So basically the reason why he's writing it is to say, hey, look, you misinterpreted what I said here, and it's actively messing you guys up, and you're kind of not only believing the wrong things, but now you're doing the wrong things, so this needs to be addressed. And so, because of that, what that means is, before we're fully and adequately able to dive into 2 Thessalonians, we have to give a bit of a background, a bit of review over 1 Thessalonians. And now, look, I looking around and I see, everyone, I see on your faces, you're like, Kyle, we don't need a review of 1 Thessalonians. We have been listening nonstop to your sermon from July 4th weekend ever since you preached it. I can see it. You're all like, Kyle, we don't need a review of 1 Thessalonians. We've listened to that sermon like five times. It was just so meaningful and so beautifully written and especially spoken. No, but in case any of you might maybe aren't there, maybe you missed that Sunday, you missed that sermon, or just in case it's helpful to have a reminder and to have a bit of a review, let's jump into it. So the first part of the review I want to get to is not about necessarily 1 Thessalonians or even 2 Thessalonians, but more of a general, here's who Paul is. Paul, once he became a Christian, he devoted his entire life to ministry. Paul's goal, his ultimate point of his life was this. He wanted to share the gospel with all people, and he wanted to call them to repent and to live lives that were reflective of that gospel. For him, to live meant to teach people who Jesus was. And one of the reasons why I love 1 Thessalonians is because when he writes that, and as we previously discussed, as he writes this letter to the Thessalonians, we get a pretty distinctly clear picture at what Paul thinks is the best strategy in being able to do it. What Paul believes is the best way that us as believers are able to share Christ with the people that are around us. And so that's what he does. He writes it. He says, this is what I did. This is what I want you to do. And basically it was this. Paul believed the best way to minister and to share the gospel was through building relationships, through genuine relational love, and without any expectation of reciprocity. When he went into Thessalonica, he didn't go in and stay kind of on the outskirts of town. And then when he woke up, he would go to the center of town, find a stage, and just preach in front of these people who he didn't really know. But hey, I've got the good news of the gospel, and so you need to listen to me. He didn't do that. He went and fully immersed himself into the community, fully immersed himself into the culture, getting to know these people, spending time with these people, eating meals with these people, and building these loving and lasting relationships with these people, because in his view and in his mind, the best way to adequately and rightfully share the love of Christ and to share the gospel of Christ was through building those relationships. He even got a job while he was there. Not only was he just actively meeting people and building community, he actually literally was serving in the community. He was working amongst the people and building relationships with the people he was working with, the people that he was working for, and ultimately, one, to just have one more immersion into the culture, but two, so that it didn't feel like, so that these people didn't feel like he was using them for reciprocity, so that these people didn't feel like he had any other motive for why he was preaching. He didn't want them to be like, man, that guy comes in here, he's preaching us the good news, and that's just because he wants the good money and the good food that we'll give him for bringing up this great news. No. Paul wanted to get a job. He wanted them to know, hey, I'm earning my living. I'm earning my living amongst you and around all of you. I want you to see that because I want you to see that the only reason I'm bringing you the gospel, the only reason I want to get to know you better is so that I can share the love of Christ with you and no other reason than that. And so, unfortunately, he has to leave abruptly. His life's in danger because some people were upset about his teachings. He has to leave abruptly. And he finds out through the grapevine later on that man, his teaching, that his work in Thessalonica had not gone in vain. That the gospel had taken root and was expanding like wildfire. That all of these things that he had done for these people, all of the ways that he had taught and encouraged them on how to live, how to live a life for Christ, of how to live this kind of lifestyle evangelism where, hey, your life should be centered around the gospel so that you're bringing the gospel to anyone that you come in contact with. They were doing that. And so people are being more deeply rooted in Christ. The people in Thessalonica, they're adding to the numbers daily of the people who are giving their hearts and giving their lives over to the gospel, over to God and over to Christ. Not only that, but I found, we talked about this when I preached, I found out that one of the biggest attributions to Christianity becoming a world religion was the fact that it spread out so widely from Thessalonica. So many people in other cultures, in other cities, and even in other nations would come to Thessalonica for the sake of trade. They were there all the time. And because the gospel had such an impact and had such a deep-rooted movement going on in Thessalonica, it was encouraging and impacting all of the people who were coming in, and those people were going out into their places that they live, and they were spreading the gospel there. Incredible stuff. It was awesome. And so Paul finds out about this. And so out of the joy and excitement to hear such things, he writes his first letter, 1 Thessalonians. And in the letter, he writes about how much he misses them. Like we already established, he built and established some deep-rooted relationships and loving relationships. So, I miss you guys so much. I can't wait to see you soon. And he reminisces a bit on his time there, on his time where he spent time getting to know them and sharing the gospel with them and all of those things, and then just talks about how excited and how proud he is of them, that they have followed in his footsteps and they are now living out the gospel the way that he had called them to do. And then finally, he takes the rest of the book, mostly, to encourage them to continue to do the same. To encourage them to continue to do good, to continue to live their lives for Christ, and to continue to make Christ known in everything that they do. And it's a beautiful book. It's awesome. But there was one problem with that letter. And the problem in that letter is that there's one specific thing that Paul wrote about that he meant to use as encouragement, but ended up kind of being used as something a little bit different. In the end of chapter four, the beginning of chapter five of 1 Thessalonians, Paul takes some time to talk about the second coming, to talk about what he refers to it as the day of the Lord. When Christ comes back, when the Lord comes to bring all of the believers up into eternity with him, to spend eternity in perfection in heaven in his presence. He talks about it for a couple reasons. There were some worries and some fears amongst the people that needed to be addressed, and so Paul uses that to address that. But one of the main reasons that he does that is he wants, he's kind of like, hey, this will, it'll come like a thief in the night. We don't really know exactly when it comes, when God, when God will come back, when Christ will come back and bring all of us up. And when he does so, he kind of is saying that basically to say, hey, look, Paul wanted the Thessalonians to understand that their time on this earth was short, so they needed to make every second count. Time is short. We don't know the day or the hour when Jesus is coming back, but it could be soon. And if it's soon, be ready, be excited, and live your life in a way that is significant. It's basically saying, hey, spend the time you have left on earth pursuing and making Christ known in your lives and worlds the ways that I've taught you. All the ways that you've been doing already. You're living out these lives that I've taught you and that I've shown you and I'm so encouraged to hear that. Continue to do that. Continue in the reminder that, hey, we don't know how much time we have left on this earth, but as long as you're here, live it out for Christ. Well, it's not exactly how they read it. There was a group and a portion of the Thessalonians that when they read that, they didn't recognize that, hey, the point of what he's doing and that the point of what he's saying is that you should pursue Christ and know Christ and make Christ known even more because we don't know what's going to happen next. They actually kind of mistook it as the opposite. And their misunderstanding was such that they thought he was being literal with, hey, the Lord could come at any point. The Lord could come at any time to saying, hey, the Lord's getting ready to come. So get ready. And upon hearing that, some people decided, okay, well, I don't really, that my life on earth is really that worth it now because we're just going to wait for God to come. And so what happened was instead of these people being encouraged to continue to live out their lives for Christ, they kind of were discouraged to live out their lives. Basically, the Thessalonians' misunderstanding of Paul's words, well, yeah, go ahead and throw it up there. The Thessalonians' misunderstanding of Paul's words caused a group of them to quit their jobs and deem their earthly lives as seemingly unimportant. It's kind of like, it's kind of like the kid who wakes up and knows that they've got friends coming in from out of town who are driving in, don't know when they're going to get here, don't really have any conceptual concept of time, so it doesn't even matter if their mom tells them when they're going to get here. They just know they're coming. At some point, they're going to drive into that driveway, and I've got to be ready. And so to prepare for them to get there, the mom is like, hey, buddy, you got some chores. We have things that need to be done. You've got work that needs to be done before these people get here to prepare for them to be here. But the kid is just so excited. He's just so excited that these people are coming, that he is completely uninterested in doing the work that his mom's asked him to do. Chores, schmores in his eyes, you know what I'm saying? And instead, he just is like, you know what, I've got to stay right here because the window's right here. If I don't have, like, if I don't check every 30 seconds to, like, to see if they're here yet, then they might just not appear, you know? And so they spend the whole day, instead of working and doing what their mom asked them to do, they spend the whole day, instead of just kind of wasting away, not doing any of the things they've been asked to do because they're just way too excited about these people coming. Y'all probably know a little, I'm sure some of us have kind of been there before. A lot of you are parents. I'm sure your kids have done that before, but that's kind of how they behave. That's kind of how they reacted. Hey, if Jesus is coming back, if he's coming back at any point, then what's the point in me living my life now? Sure, I've got this earthly life, but I'm about to have an eternal life any hour at this point because Paul just told me so. So what's the point in going back to work? Why do I have to do all these responsibilities? I've already done my part. I've checked off my boxes. I've already given my heart to Christ. So what's the point of me having to do any of this now? They just were like, hey, I'll just sit back and I'll wait to go to heaven because it's going to happen at any point in any moment. And as you can imagine, in the same way that the mom was probably pretty unhappy with her son, who didn't do anything she'd asked him to do, Paul, when he finds out that this had been the reaction of some of the Thessalonians, was not super excited about it. So he writes 2 Thessalonians. He writes 2 Thessalonians, and predominantly, to be able to correct not only this incorrect view and this incorrect theological belief, but this incorrect behavior that he was not super thrilled about. And so he takes time to kind of outline, hey, there's a couple things that need to happen before the second coming of Christ. It is not immediately imminent to the point that like, hey, you could wake up that like at some point you might just not wake up tonight because Christ has come and brought you back home. There's things that have to happen. I'm not going to get into those. You can read some of those. It's great. It's helpful. It's useful to know and understand. But all that to say, Paul writes about those because he wants them to kind of like chill out, like, hey, whoa, buddy, Jesus is not coming back in one hour, so let's chill out there, and let's not teach other people that that's what's happening. But then he takes time to address what he calls people who were kind of falling into idleness, leaving their jobs, leaving their secular human lives, and just sitting back and waiting for Jesus to come. And he does so in 2 Thessalonians 3. But the first people he addressed are actually not the people who had fallen into becoming idle. The first people he actually addresses are the people who had not fallen for that. The people who had read his message and whether or not they understood it, they were like, hey, Paul had given us a mission. Paul says we need to be at work. We need to be working. We need to be living our lives. We need to be getting to know people and living amongst people. We need to be doing what God has called us to do. And so Paul addresses them first and is a little bit harsh. Basically, ultimately saying, hey, look, here's the deal. I know some of you are probably kind of helping and aiding some of these people who have left their jobs and don't have money to buy food and all that stuff. They're not your problem. You don't really need to be helping them out. They're people who have decided, hey, I know I can work, but I'm just not interested. They're going to help me out. He even says in verse 10, he's very specific when he says, if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. Then he takes a little bit of time to allow them to recall his time there. One thing that Paul does in his writings, he wants to make sure that it doesn't come off that he's holding people to a different standard than the standard that he is holding himself. And so he recalls his time there. Hey, don't you guys remember that when I was there, that my whole mission and my whole goal and all of my ministry was set and based around the job that I was doing and the life that I was living? Did you see me just like wasting away over to the side because like, hey, God's got me, so whatever. No, I was there. I worked a job. I brought money in because I didn't want people to feel like I was using them for their money. I wanted them to know that I just wanted them to know and love Christ. And then, finally, he addresses the people who had fallen into their idleness. And he does so in 2 Thessalonians 3.12, which is not on the screen, so I'm just going to read it. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. Hey, this isn't encouragement, but it's also a commandment. If you left your job, and if you are shirking your life's responsibilities, if you've decided that your human life is just kind of done at this point because you're waiting for Jesus to come back, it's time to stop. I'm not just encouraging it, I'm commanding it. It's time to stop, go back to work, do your work. And so, and, so I read that, and we talk about that, and I think everyone in the room is like, yeah, cool, man. That makes sense. You shouldn't do that. But like I kind of opened with, I really struggled as I read that to go, okay, so what's the value for the people at Grace? I mean, I guess I could stand up and just say, hey, look, Grace, here's the deal. If any of you guys have been doing some extra research on the second coming recently, and if in your research you've decided that Jesus could come back at any moment or any day, and so you've decided that because of that, you're going to leave, you're going to just leave your human responsibilities behind, you're going to leave your job and not worry about providing for yourself or anybody you need to provide. If you're doing that, I would encourage you and command you that instead you should not do that. Go back to work. Go back to your responsibilities. Go back to your family. They miss you. No. It's not a super effective tool to communicate to all of you guys. But after reading it a few times, I realized that this section where he addresses the idleness, he doesn't stop at just addressing the people who had fallen into their idleness separately from the people who had not fallen into idleness. He goes one verse more. He goes one verse longer, and I think that what this next verse does is to help us understand why maybe the sin that they had fallen into and fallen under is maybe a little bit similar to something that we fall under and fall into sometimes. So the next verse actually is on the screen, and this is to address all of the believers in Thessalonica. The ones who had fallen into idleness and the ones who are still doing exactly what Paul had called them to do and what the Lord calls them to do. And this verse says, and it's verse 13, as for you, brothers and sisters, do not grow weary in doing good. After the command, hey, don't help out people who don't need your help and are just trying to get it. After the command to, hey, go back to work and start doing your job and get back to your lives that you were already living. He says, and all of you, every one of you, do not grow weary in doing good. And what this verse did, finally, after reading it countless times, what it finally did is it reminded me of 1 Thessalonians. And it reminded me of why Paul wrote about the second coming in the first place. It reminded me of why, of why it's important that Paul finds everyday life and work so important in the first place. Because that, our lives, the lives that they lived and the lives that we live, because that is where the Lord has placed them and that is where the Lord has called them to live for him. Paul's point in talking about idleness, Paul's point in telling people to go back to work isn't just for the simplicity of, hey, go back to work, you goofballs. His point is don't neglect the human secular life that God has uniquely given you and called you to. Instead, use that life to do good, serve and love the people you're around, and continue to build relationships that share Christ's love and point people toward Christ. What the Thessalonians who fell into idleness had done is they had forgotten that until Christ had actually come down to get them, that the Lord was not done with them yet. Hey, if you're still on earth, even if it's for one more day or one more hour, if you're still on earth, that means Christ still has you on earth on purpose. Their lives on earth had been created for them by God to do exactly the work in him that only they could do. They'd forgotten that Paul's teaching that all of life is meant to be lived out for Christ and that there should be no distinction between different parts of life. Sunday morning is not more spiritual or more holy than Wednesday afternoon. Tuesday night small group does not become more spiritual or more holy than being in the office on Friday morning. There should be no distinction. Doesn't that remind us of what Paul already taught us of how to spread the gospel? He didn't say, hey, everyone leave your jobs so you can become preachers. He said, hey, guess what, everyone? The Lord puts you in your jobs for a reason. He's trying to use you in those jobs. And ultimately, I think the big tragedy that Paul is trying to address is this, that their misunderstanding had removed them from their quote-unquote secular lives, and Lord had given them lives where daily they interact with people who need the love of Christ. And because they had decided they were done with all those earthly responsibilities, they had effectively walked away from all of the people who needed Christ's love the most. And Paul couldn't stand it. And so Paul wrote 2 Thessalonians. And doesn't that sound more like something that we maybe need to hear and be reminded of? Isn't that a truth that maybe makes a little bit more sense on our end? Don't we sometimes, even though maybe we're not leaving our jobs, maybe we leave God at the footsteps of our jobs, forgetting or not being willing to acknowledge the fact that the Lord maybe has us there for a reason that's his and not just for the sake of you doing a job to get money. I think what the connection of 1 and 2 Thessalonians does such a beautiful job is to remind us that our time on this earth is short. And so we should live it meaningfully, reflecting the Father who not only created us, and not only saved us through the death and resurrection of Christ, but the Father who is with us every second of every day. Father who's guiding our steps and working to use us for his glory and his plan. The Father who decides to allow, to allow us in our short and ordinary lives to make an eternal and an extraordinary impact on the people that are around us. So then I turn it around and I ask a couple questions. How often, Grace, do we miss or how often do we overlook the Lord's presence and the Lord's guidance in our day-to-day lives? How often do we miss that the Lord is trying to work inside of our lives every single day? Or, how often do we find ourselves so caught up in our day-to-day lives that we are unaware or unwilling to see why the Lord might have us in those places and why the Lord might have us around those people in the first place? I think what Paul wants us to realize is this, that as a Christian, every moment is holy because we carry the presence of God into every single moment that we walk into. And maybe more directly, every time we separate our secular lives from our spiritual lives, we are missing the opportunity to expand God's kingdom and extend the heart of Christ. God is with us every moment of every single day. He's with us so we get to experience a relationship and a knowledge of him. But he's with us because he is trying to guide us into every moment of our day so that we can turn that and extend the heart of Christ to the people that are around us. And so I want to close with a quote. It's a quote that has been meaningful to me in years past as I ponder, hey, what does it look like to make my everyday life more centered around God, more centered around Christ? What does that look like? What does that mean? It's a quote from John Ortberg. And I'm going to read it. And it's a little different than some of our other blanks. And I'll tell you why. So, and it's actually, you can read it up here or it's on your sheets. If I really believe that I may meet with God, I do not just show up. My mind is awake. I am hoping and looking for something beyond myself. If I come to scripture or blank with an attitude of expectancy, that changes things. I'm going to read that one more time. This time I'm going to read it as a blank. If I really believe that I may meet with God, I do not just show up. My mind is awake. I am hoping and looking for something beyond myself. If I come to blank with an attitude of expectancy, that changes things. So the quote, that blank is meant to be scripture, but I removed it because I want us to be thoughtful about what else could maybe go in that blank. Certainly one of the best ways to be able to experience and to know God better and to know what God's plan for us is on a day-to-day basis, one of the best ways to do it is through scripture. And when we meet with God and we dive into scripture, we don't just do so willy-nilly. We do so knowing, hey, we're about to meet with God. And so we come in with an attitude of expectancy. But what if we changed it up? What if we said, if I come to work with an attitude of expectancy, that changes things. If I come home from work with an attitude of expectancy, that changes things. When I hit the golf course on a Saturday morning with an attitude of expectancy, that changes things. Fill in the blank. If I enter into blank, whatever that blank is, at each part of the day, with expectancy. Expecting the Lord to move. Expecting the Lord to already be there. Expecting the Lord to guide my path as I take each and every step. How would our lives look different? How would each phase of our lives look different? Not just when we walk into church and we get to celebrate the Lord, but when we walk out of church into lunch. Grace, I believe that if we walked each step of our lives with the attitude of expectancy that God is going to move, then that could really change things. Let's pray. Lord, I pray that we never grow tired and we never grow weary of doing good. Lord, as you have called us in everything that we do to do good for you, to live out a life that is reflective of you in the gospel and to make most of you in every step that we take. Through relationships, through building relationships, through sharing your gospel through whatever it looks like. God, I just pray that we stay and remain mindful that you're always with us, not just in small groups, not just on Sunday mornings, but every step of the day. And Lord, may we not ever try to separate our life from your life because you never do that. Lord, we love you so much. Amen.

Well, good morning, Grace. My name is Erin. I get the honor and the privilege of being one of your pastors, and I can't tell you how excited I am to actually be in Big Church today. As our kids call it down the hall, this is Big Church, and I'm thrilled to be here and to be hanging out with y'all. But I do need to start our morning in a place of confession. You see, I have struggled a whole lot in the process of putting this together to bring to you guys this morning. It first started with the idea of this sermon series forever ago, and Nate and everybody was talking about it, and they're like, let's do this, 27. We'll do the 27 books of the New Testament. It's going to be great. And I was like, oh, okay. Did you say the New Testament? Well, okay. Yeah, well, for those of you guys that know me, anytime that I've actually stood up here before you guys, I've spoken from the Old Testament. So the New Testament, while I have read it and I have studied it and all those things, and that is not my safe place, maybe is a good way to put it. I love the Old Testament stories. I love the details. I love the battles. I love all those things. I'm a book girl. That's where I am, right? Now the New Testament has a little bit of that. The New Testament tells a fabulous story, but it's just not quite the same. And then we said, okay, so now you're going to pick one of these books and you're going to take it and you're going to study it and you're going to find one thing to talk about and you're going to present it. I'm like, okay, so I have to take a whole book and I have to go through it. And then I have to come up with one thing to tell you all. For those of you guys that know me, you know, brevity is not exactly one of my strong suits. I like words. I have lots of them and they tend to come forth. So, so, so now we have New Testament, we have brevity, and then now I have to pick a book. And there's 27. Thankfully, Nate took four. Aaron has taken one. Kyle has taken one. So I'm just down to 21. So I struggled with that as well. I went back and forth. Aaron and Kyle can attest to it because they kept saying, have you landed on one yet? No, I'm not there yet. So I went back and forth. And so one day I just was kind of picking up my Bible. I moved to the back and then moved forward because Revelation is not where I'm going to be. And then I moved forward and I dropped into the book of James. And I had read James. It had been a long time. And I sat down and I read James again. And then I kind of read it again. And it just settled in my heart and said, you know, this is the place, Aaron, that you need to be for the next little while. I think you need to study this. And then we'll find one thing that you can talk about together. And so this is where I am. And I think the other part that struck me as funny is that James's book is a very to the point and practical advice to people. So he got the brevity thing. So we're hoping that somehow over the course of the last little while, I have learned the brevity as well. But you guys can be the judge and you all can tell me at the end of the day today as to whether I hit home or not. But before we jump into the actual book itself, I would love to take the opportunity to introduce you to the person of James. Because I think if you sit back and you learn who he is and you get to know James' heart, then as we talk about the book, you'll see how very much of his heart comes through in the words that he presents to his followers. So, brevity, and here we go. We're going to make this work, I think. There are three prominent Jameses that you will learn about in the New Testament. There is James, the son of Zebedee and the brother of John. Then there was James, the son of Alphaeus. And these both were part of the 12 disciples. And then you had James, the brother of Jesus. Well, it is highly believed or widely believed that this book of James was written by Jesus's brother. And so we find out that James is the oldest of what would be the half siblings of Jesus. There were three other brothers and a group of sisters. We don't know the sisters because of course it doesn't tell us names. It just says he had sisters as well. So we have this group of brothers, this group of sisters, and we have James as the oldest. How many of you in here are younger siblings? Yeah? That's me too. I have an older brother who is six years older than me. So thankfully that gap helped a little bit. I've looked at my kids with their two-year age gap, and I see it more with the older sibling, the younger sibling. There's a little bit of maybe jealousy of the older sibling, or even the younger sometimes, but there's also a comparison that starts to happen because people know the older brother or the older sister, and they think that the little is supposed to be like the big. There's a lot of that. As the younger, you also tend to live in the shadow of your older sibling. And so here we have James. It says James is the oldest of the half siblings, but guess what? That also makes James the what? The little brother of Jesus. Okay, sit on that one for just a second. He was the little brother of Jesus. So that takes the whole living in somebody else's shadow to another level. I just can't even imagine what it must have been like for him. And in scripture, it continues to go on and tell us though that, oh, by the way, his siblings didn't believe him. They didn't believe in him. They didn't believe he was who he says he was. As a matter of fact, they spent a lot of their time following him around. And when he's in these crowds of people, they're going into the crowds, and they're trying to pull him out. And in the process, they're saying, we're really sorry. He's out of his mind. And I promise you, it says that in Mark 3 21, it quotes that as saying he's out of his mind. So you have James, you have all of these brothers and sisters, and they're trying really hard to kind of like convince everybody that Jesus is not who he says he is and that he's kind of crazy. Y'all, this is Jesus' family that's doing this. So let's fast forward now. We have Jesus' death, his burial, his resurrection. We're told that when Jesus is resurrected, he appears to his disciples. Then he appears to a really large group of believers. And then he appears to James. We have no idea from scripture what that meeting was like. But when I read that and thought about it, my heart melted, y'all. Like, this is Jesus coming to his baby brother. And of course, my human brain goes to the fact that wouldn't it have been funny to have been a fly on the wall? And could you have seen Jesus go, hey, so do you think I'm out of my mind now? But we don't have any idea, again, what was said. But all I could hear and all I could think about was just how sweet this moment was between two brothers, one who didn't believe, but one who is now experiencing this moment with the risen Lord. his life is now forever going to be changed. Because what we see now is James begins to hang out with all of the believers. James begins to hang out with the disciples in Jerusalem. And then Peter, who is in Jerusalem with him at this point in time, Peter decides to take off and go spread the gospel, leaving James behind. So there stands James in Jerusalem with this brand new group of Jewish Christians. And he becomes basically the first pastor of the first Christian church ever that's now set up in Jerusalem, which is the hub of Judaism, but it's also now the birthplace of Christianity. And there he sits. I can only imagine kind of the pressure that sits on James's shoulders during this. Y'all, he's the first kind of like pastor. He doesn't have any other pastors to talk to. Like, hey, did you know this is going on inside of my congregation? You got any advice? Or I want to talk about this. Do you not? He doesn't have anybody to talk to. It's him. He's by himself with this group of new believers. But the one thing that I think that is so cool that he does have, no Bible, but he has the time that he spent with his brother. He has all of the time that he spent with Jesus to be the place that he holds on to and the words that he then can speak to the people that are following him. And so now during the middle of James's leadership of this church in Jerusalem, Saul decides to start his great persecution campaign. What we know about Saul is Saul was someone who felt that the Christians were wrong in their belief structure and felt that he was going to throw them all in jail because they didn't belong out there. We know eventually Saul has an encounter with the risen Lord as well, and he is forever changed. And he becomes Paul, who we have been talking about before today. And we'll continue in the New Testament. But for now, he's Saul. And he is out to get these Christians. So this sweet little flock that James is in charge of is sitting in their homes or walking through the market in complete fear at all times of the fact that somebody's going to snatch them up, drag them off, and throw them in prison. They don't know if that knock on the door is a friend or somebody coming to get them. They don't know if they leave their house and head to the market, if they're going to come back to see their family again. It's a place of fear that I'm not sure any of us could ever really and truly understand. But that's where they are. And then let's add a little insult to that. And there's a great famine happening at this point in time as well. And so because of this famine and the persecution, James's people start to leave the city. They start to flee into the countryside to escape all that's happening in the city of Jerusalem. And as they escape, they're running into places called Judea and called Samaria, which what we know about Jewish faith is that was places that as a Jew, they never would have gone. But as a Jewish Christian, that's where they went for refuge. So they're now depositing themselves in these areas that are filled with pagans. And they're trying their best to reestablish their life. To bring their families back together. To find new jobs, and to find new community. And so this is where we find James sitting in Jerusalem still, he and a few apostles are all that's left, and wondering how his people are. Where have they gone? Have they found a place to settle? Are they together? Is there a chance that there's some community around them? And as I was reading this and I was thinking about it, it brought me back to some of the COVID lockdowns for us. I know as a staff, we struggled really, really hard with trying to do ministry and loving on our people when I couldn't see our people, when we couldn't really, we had the luxury of being able to talk to our people. We had phones, we had all that other stuff, but you get where I'm headed with this. We just were very separated and it was hard. Well, that's where James is. He doesn't know where they are. He doesn't know what's happening to him, but he does know that they have headed into lands that are not gonna be the most friendly to someone in a new faith. And so this is where James sits down with pen and paper or quill and parchment or papyrus. I don't know what he used, but he sat down at this point in time to write this letter to his people. And the thing that I found as I read through this, and like I said before, it's very practical advice. However, the overarching place from James's heart was to tell his people to live it. This idea that if you are a Christian, if you're going to say that you're a Christian, your life must reflect your words. That the people in Judea and the people in Samaria, when they look at you, they should know that you're different. They should know by your actions and the way that you choose to live your life that you're different and that you're a follower of Christ. And so in James chapter 2 verses 14 through 19, you can check out a Bible if you'd like. I did not have them put on the screens. You can just listen to me read it, whatever y'all would like to do. But that's where I am. So James 2, 14 through 19, if not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, I have faith, I have deeds. Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. You believe that there's one God, well, good, because even the demons believe that, and they shudder. So right now, I know I have gained the attention of all of those that were trying to decide where they were headed for lunch after church was over because I made the statement about faith and deeds and everybody has it in their head that, oh, wait a second, wait a second. We all know that we are saved by grace through faith, not by works. And I'm going to tell you that's still 100% true. And I don't believe that that's what James is saying here. But what I believe he's doing is he is questioning our commitment to our faith. When we talk about our faith, we talk about this idea of trusting God fully and committing to this idea of lordship, that Jesus has lordship over our life, over all pieces and parts of our life. That's what it is to have faith. But I think, and that's 100% true, and that's what we get through our belief in Christ. But what James is saying is, I want you to take that a step further. And what I want you to do is, I want you not to just say that you believe in me, but I want that complete lordship of your life to show in what it is that you do. I want you to realize that people will see you and know you and know who you are in Christ because of what you say and what you do. So if we peace and keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? That's it right there. Somebody sits, somebody's cold, somebody's hungry, and I look at them and say, go in peace. I hope you get warm and I hope you get food. And I go this way. That's not living out our faith. Because I could say I'm a Christian, but I did nothing. There was nothing that shows. We talked about James having an encounter with the living God and then from there, everything changed. He changed. If we have this encounter with the living God, we can't live as if we have not been changed, because we have been. We have to learn to live in a place of obedience to what it is that he tells us to do. We can't just be hearers of the word. We also have to be doers. We can't come into church every Sunday and sit here and listen to what Aaron and Kyle and Nate have to say, but then not apply it to what we do. We can't sit down with our Bibles in the morning and read through them and be convicted by something and then, eh, maybe I will, maybe I won't. We have to be willing to allow that change to happen. Another simplified example, and this one's really simplified, but if I were to say to you that I have made a decision that it's time for me to shed a couple pounds, to get myself into great shape, well, I can talk about that all I want. I'm going to put together a great plan and I'm going to shop better and I'm going to eat better and I'm going to exercise. I'm going to the gym three times a week. It's going to be great. And then you come see me two months later and I still look like this. Hey, Aaron, what happened? Well, I talked about it, but I didn't do anything about it. Now, if I could talk it off, y'all, I would just be the most fit person that walked to the face of this earth. But I can't talk it off. I have to be willing to commit to, to be obedient to a plan, a course of action, whatever it is that's going to help, right? And that's what he's talking about here. We cannot serve a full-time God with a part-time faith. It doesn't work. So now if we go back and we remember James's original audience, we have this group of tired, fearful, relatively new, maybe even new to Christianity, Jewish Christians that are living amongst this group of pagans. How easy do you think it would have been for them to have kind of fallen into this idea of a part-time faith? I don't know about you, but I think it would have been pretty easy because they have no Christian community around them. They didn't have Bibles. They don't have somebody speaking into their life. It's just them trying to hold on, right? It would have been so easy to have fallen into a part-time faith. And that's where James' heart is, is he's writing these words to them and he's saying, y'all, I just want you to go back and remember what it was like when we were together. I want you to remember what it was like when you came to that moment and said, I've been changed and I now want to live this out. And so the rest of the book of James, he goes through and he reminds them of what this looks like in their words and their actions. And there's so much of this book of James that sounds like Jesus. It sounds like Jesus as he stands on the Sermon on the Mount and is teaching. And it's because we find out that James actually teaches the most from Jesus' words than any other author in the New Testament. And you gotta love that little brother who now thinks that his big brother is really cool. And he wants to make sure that everybody hears and knows what it is that he taught. And so he continues in this book to talk of a faith, of an active faith that endures in the midst of trials, that calls on God for wisdom, that bridles the tongue. That's a lesson for all of us. Bridles the tongue that sets aside wickedness, that visits orphans and widows, an active faith that guards against greed, that's patient in suffering, that's rich in prayer, that doesn't play favorites. And he stresses that this life of faith should be all-encompassing and pressing us to engage in the life of others. And so as I continued to read through this and I was thinking about like, hey, does James' teaching actually apply to us in 2023? And of course I came up with a resounding yes, it does. Because y'all, in the culture and the world that we live in today, if we as Grace Raleigh, as the people of Grace Raleigh, are this living example of people who are walking out their faith. They're not just talking about it, but they're actually walking out their faith, like the impact that we can have both as an individual and as a group. And so one of the things that really also hit me is, is that as I went through this is I was reminded of our traits of grace. For those of you guys that don't know what I'm talking about when I say the traits of grace, this was five traits that the elders and the staff came up with that describe our people, that as partners of grace, this is who we are and what we reflect. And there's a whole section that talks about our core beliefs, but then it goes on with the sentence that says, in the light of the gospel and because we love Jesus. So going back to like what James said, he had an encounter with the living God. He was forever changed. So in light of the gospel and because we love Jesus, this is what we choose to do. And it goes on to say that we are kingdom builders, that we leverage everything that we have, our time, our treasures, and our talents to build God's kingdom. We are partners. We partner with each other. We partner with our ministries. We partner with our missionaries. We partner with nonprofits because we truly believe that no one should ever do life alone. And of course, to further God's kingdom. That we're people of devotion where we spend time daily in prayer and in God's word to grow closer to him. That we're step-takers where we're committed to this next step of obedience. And then finally, that we're conduits of grace, that we acknowledge that God has lavished grace upon us and that because of that, we're actually able to lavish it on others. And so this is who the people of grace are. And I have to say that my family and I had the opportunity to be huge benefactors of watching the people of grace live out their faith. For many of you, many of you may or may not know who, I don't know. But over the course of the last year or so my mom was exceptionally sick and in poor health or declining health and starting about a year ago her health took a little bit steeper trajectory downward and we started with some hospital visits and I was running back and forth between Raleigh and Pinehurst on a weekly basis on the weekends. And then as time went on, the time increased a little bit more. I'd spend more weekend time down there, etc. And then in October of this year, mom was hospitalized. It was a sudden hospitalization. She was severely ill at that point in time. I dropped everything. I went to Pinehurst with my laptop and a bag, not knowing what I was going to find. When I got there, I had absolutely no idea what was going on. Well, come to find out that over the month of October, so 31 days, my mom spent 21 of them in the hospital. And during that time, I watched as Julie slowly made sure that everything in Grace Kids was running as smoothly as it possibly could, so I didn't have to worry about that. I had parts of our small group, Tammy Vinson and Karen Latta and some of the others that jumped in and said, we've got this. And they took over all of the responsibilities that I had there, and the small group kept moving right along. I had Nate and the elders saying to me, you do what you need to do, Aaron. Your family is the most important thing. And so I was given the freedom to be there with my mom and with my dad to do what it was that I needed to do at that time. And Jesus took my mom home at the beginning of December. And as I look back on it now, though, I was given such a gift by the people of grace who loved on us so well, who loved on my family in my absence. It's something I can never, ever repay. But y'all, that's the best example that I have of what it looks like when a people live it. They didn't just say they believed in Jesus. Everything that was extended to my family during this time just shone the light of Jesus. And again, it's something I can never, ever repay. So a life where our words and our actions come together, where in light of the gospel and because we love Jesus, we are showing the world how an encounter with the living God has changed us and changed us for the better. So this little book of, it's five chapters and a hundred verses, y'all. That's it. It's not a lot. I promise y'all can sit down and read it. And I hope that you can hear the pastor's heart behind this book. And I also hope that you will allow it to challenge you like it's challenged me. On a little bit of a side note, I found this one funny. As we talk about being challenged by this book, Martin Luther actually was severely challenged by the book of James, and he called it a right strawy epistle, and then went on to say, away with James, I feel like throwing Jimmy into the stove, which I just had to giggle a little bit at that one, because I tell you what, if Martin Luther can be that challenged by this book, so much so that he wants to pick it up and throw it in the fire, oh, can you imagine what it's going to do to the rest of us? It might step on your toes a little. I expect it to. But I hope and I pray that you accept that challenge because in that challenge, it's going to produce change. And it's that change that helps us to grow and to continue to mature in our faith. So people of grace and followers of the risen Lord, will you look in the mirror each day? Will you take the opportunity to ask God what you need to change, what you need to do in order to get a little bit closer to him? And what is it that we can do in order to learn how to live it so that we're known by what we do, not what we say. Will y'all pray with me? Lord, thank you. Thank you for these beautiful words of James. Thank you for the challenge that you give us. This challenge to take that step of obedience and learn to not just talk the talk, but to walk the walk. We want our words and we want our actions to do nothing but bring the glory to you. So will we become that people, Lord, that when the people of Raleigh look at us, they see something different. They see lives that have had encounters with the living God that have been forever changed and who want to bring that change and that love to others. And Lord, we love you. And it's in your name we pray. Amen.

Good morning. How you guys doing? Everybody good? If you are new or if you are visiting, my name is Aaron. I am so honored to get to serve as one of your pastors. And can we just take a second? Like, that was incredible, right? Can we just take a second and thank our worship team? Like, a lot of times, we see what happens on Sunday morning, but we don't see all of the prep that goes into, like, making sure that we set a good environment for worship on Sunday morning. And they knock it out of the park every time. And matter of fact, I'm really nervous about my job at this point because I'm not needed anymore, right? So I'm excited to be sharing with you today. I do want to clear the air about something. This is the first time I've really gotten to talk to you since the new setup. And if you remember a couple of weeks ago, our loving pastor blamed, if you do not like this, it was my idea, right? You remember that? And truth, it was my idea. But if you do not like it, it's because I was gone and his execution of my idea was terrible. So no, truthfully, the reason this became an idea is because I got tired of every single week leaving my coffee cup underneath my chair. And so I was like, hey, if we have something to set it on, we'll be good to go there, right? Hey guys, again, I'm really excited about today. We're continuing our series 27. It's a journey through the New Testament. It's just a broad overview of a lot of the books. And the heartbeat behind it is to honestly just create some hunger to go and check it out, go and read it. And today, we're talking about Colossians, which has easily become one of my favorite books. And to get our minds going in the right direction, I'll tell you a story of several years ago. I was serving at a church, and I had never taught. I had never preached on Sunday morning. At this point in time, I was just the pretty face on staff, and I was there to make the staff pictures better. It's similar to today, right? But no, so I was never somebody who taught, right? Except there was this one time they figured, hey, maybe he's more than a pretty face, and they let me teach. And so what happened after that, there's a part of the responsibilities, whoever teaches that Sunday, to call and follow up with anyone who responds to the gospel. At the end of the message, we would give a gospel presentation, and so my responsibility was to call people the next week. And I can remember a phone call that I had the very next day. I knew that I was unprepared for the phone call, but I had no clue how much of a bumbling idiot I really was until I got on that phone call. Because the goal was to just kind of tell her, okay, here's some next steps. Here's what your life should look like. Here's what the Christian life looks like. And I'm going to be honest, like I have no flipping clue what I said to that girl, right? Like I remember, like at some point I talked about Genesis and I may have talked about dinosaurs. I have no, I'm pretty certain that I am the only pastor to ever talk someone out of following Jesus. Like that's what happened. But really the whole goal was to just say, hey, here's what your life should look like. Here's the decision you made, and here's how it impacts and affects your life. But as you think about that, isn't that a great question? Have you ever wondered that? Like if you were sitting down having a cup of coffee with somebody, and you were trying to tell them, hey, here's what your life should look like as a Christian. How do you answer that question? Because we're told throughout all the New Testament, right? Like from this point forward, go and impact the world. Make a difference in the world around you. And yes, we do know and we've heard these things that say, read your Bible, pray about what it says, and then live it out. But can we just be honest? There's been a lot of times that I read this and I have no clue what to do with what it says. And then what KT talked about last week, right? It was just reflecting the love of Jesus. And that's great, man. That's an incredible, incredible thing that we need to remember. We need to let resonate. But there's a lot of times that I wonder, what does that look like? Like in today's world, what does it look like to love myself and simultaneously love someone else? Have you ever thought about that? Because if we can be honest, church today, Christian world today, it kind of has the same vibe as, like it's a-life version of telephone. You remember that game that you played as kids? Like, your teacher would get all the students up, and you'd stand them in a long, single-file line, and then she would whisper a phrase or a sentence to the very first kid, and then he would whisper it to the next, and they would whisper it to the next, and they would go all the way down the line until the very last person, they repeated what it is that they heard. And everybody's like, no, that's not what I said, except the teacher. It's like, wait, how in the world did you get there? It feels like that's kind of where we're at today with Christianity. Like generation after generation, person to person, these things have been kind of added to. And a lot of it is based on what the world needs at a particular moment. A lot of it is based on maybe an understanding or misunderstanding of scripture. But we put into the gospel, we put into Christianity, this is what Christianity looks like. This is what your life is supposed to look like to the point where we stand here like, well, who's right? Because that's the one thing everyone has in common. They're all right, but somehow all different. Like we're all convinced that this is the thing. And Paul's heartbeat behind his letter to the church in Colossae was, here's the life I want you to live. His heartbeat early on in chapter one, he says, hey guys, here's my prayer for you. My prayer is that you would live a life worthy of the Lord, that you would be knowledgeable of God's will, and that you would live a life that produces fruit. You would live a life that creates change in the world around you. That's his heartbeat. That's the purpose of Colossians. But what's amazing to me is that he doesn't start his letter with the do's and don'ts, which is what you may expect, right? He doesn't start his letter with, hey, all right, so now that you're a Christian, you gotta stop doing this because that's not very Christ-like. Now that you're a Christian, you definitely gotta quit doing that. Can you imagine if someone sees? He doesn't start with modifications to our behavior. Where Paul starts is with your belief. In this letter that he wrote from prison, he's writing to them to instruct them, to give them the Christian blueprint for life. And he doesn't start with what they do, but he starts with what they believe. I would recommend go and read through 1st Colossians, right? Like I'm from Kentucky, so it took me about 15 minutes., you'll do it in one, right? But read it nice and slow because it is probably the fullest expression of Jesus and his deity and supremacy. He goes through and he just talks about it. He articulates beautifully how Jesus is the son of God. He was there at the beginning. He was through him, all things are created. And for him, all things are created. I was really hoping. I was really hoping that that's where the rest of this book was gonna go. Because like that's, man, that comes from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount where he says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness because then you'll be filled. What he's saying is, hey, you're hungry. Like you're chasing all of these, and you're hoping for fulfillment. You're hoping for joy. You're hoping for a full life, but you weren't created for those things, and that's why you keep coming up. That's a great message, but that's not where Paul goes. He talks not just about Jesus and him being God, his deity, not just about Jesus being ruler over all rulers, ruler over all authorities. He's the Lord of lords and the King of kings, but he also talks about Jesus and his sufficiency. This is what he says in Colossians 1, verse 21. He says, once you were alienated and hostile in your minds, expressed in your evil actions, that's what we would call non-Christian, right? This is what he's defining right now. You were alienated and hostile in your minds, expressed in your evil actions, but now he has reconciled you by his physical body through his death to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before him. If indeed you remain grounded and steadfast in the faith and are not shifted away from the hope of the gospel that you heard. Paul, in a book where he is trying to tell them what life to live, he says, first, you have to understand the gospel. He defines a clarity and the simplicity of the gospel. What Paul just told them, he says, it's his body, it's his death, it's his resurrection, and it's his presentation of you. All you do, it is your faith. In a book that is designed to tell them how to live, he says the key to all of this, the key to the life that you're hoping for is not in the life that you live, but first in the hope and faith that you have. What Paul just said was you became a Christian. You became a Christian when you put your faith in Jesus and his actions. See, what was happening at Colossae at this point in time before Christianity came to the scene, like all of the religions and all of the ideologies and everything that existed before, Christianity came in and it started to merge and blend with. People were saying, it's not just Jesus, but it's Jesus and this. For them, it was this thing called asceticism, right? Like it would be severe depravity, right? Like you would deprive yourself of something or you would even cause physical harm to your body to make up for the evil actions. It was Jesus and that. It was Jesus and this idea of philosophies built on elements not built on Christ. It was the elements of the world. It was Jesus and Jewish tradition. Jesus and, and it was this and thing, and it began to muddy the waters. And what Paul is saying to these guys, hey, listen, if you want to live this life that you're asking about, if you want to live this life that you have been called to do, you first have to understand the clarity and simplicity of the gospel, because a convoluted gospel confuses direction. Anytime that we add to the gospel, it just confuses where to go from there. It confuses what to do from there. We cannot live the life that we've been asked and called to live. The way this plays itself out today is you have this word repentance, right? Like if you've been in and around the church very long, you've heard this term before. What tends to happen? I believe wholeheartedly that reading throughout the scriptures, you see two different types of repentance. Paul just talked about one. He said, you were alienated from Christ because of what? Your thinking. And your thinking influenced your actions. Your actions expressed what you think. You have Peter, just after Christ, burial, resurrection, and then ascension. Peter stands in front of the masses and he says, you killed Jesus. It was what you did this, so repent. He wasn't saying, you can't go back and undo that. What he was saying and what Paul is saying, a repentance that defines Christianity is what you believe to be true about Jesus. What Paul says to these guys, the life that you live, first has to be a repentance of what you believe to be true about Christ. Do you believe him to be who he said he is? Do what he said he did, and we'll do what he said he would do. The other repentance happens from that. The other repentance is a lifelong journey. It's what we call sanctification. It's the tugging and pulling and molding of the Holy Spirit working on creating you, morphing your desires, pulling you from the life that you left and towards the life that Christ is calling you to. What we tend to do, both of those are necessary. One is necessary for Christianity, belief, faith. And what we have a tendency to do is take the two repentance and we just blend them together. And so it's not just Christianity is not just a faith in Jesus. It's a faith in Jesus and this. It's a faith in Jesus and this belief. And honestly, most of the time, those beliefs are, they're proximity related. Like where you grew up, they scatter all over the states. Where you grew up, it's plausibility structuring. Like what you believe is possible is largely based off what you've been exposed to. And what happens is we elevate the non-essentials to the status of gospel. And Paul says you will never live the life you've been designed to live if we do that. Because it has you working from the wrong position. If we don't understand the gospel for what the gospel is, it has you working for a position with Christ instead of from a position with Christ. It has you working with the effort to earn Jesus instead of walking in life in Christ. Paul actually uses a word that he says, it holds you captive. Let me read for you in chapter two. I'm going to start in verse four, and then we'll pick it up on screen in verse six. I'm saying this so that no one will deceive you with arguments that sound reasonable. For I may be absent in body, but I'm with you in spirit, rejoicing to see how well ordered you are and the strength of your faith in Christ. So then, just as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live in him, being rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught and overflowing with gratitude. Here's the warning. Be careful that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit based on human tradition, based on elements of the world rather than Christ. This word captive is a strong word. It's saying there's a restriction from where you want to be. Like we have the desire to move and live and go and do this, except absorbing these beliefs, lifting things up, trying to earn what has been freely given. It holds you captive. You know this, like nothing, nothing good is gonna come from captivity. Nothing good is going to come from presenting non-essentials as gospel. Like we could all sit down, right? We could have a cup of coffee and we've all probably got our story. Maybe you yourself or you know someone who has been involved and hurt by legalism. Because what happens with these beliefs is if you don't adhere to them, if we don't fall into them, it's, you're wayward. You've lost, he's kind of lost sight of what's good. He's not quite where he needs to be. And suddenly, because of not something that Jesus defined, it's just these ideas that have blended. And you're not good enough anymore. Some of you know this. I grew up in the church. My father was a pastor. And I can remember one week in particular. I don't quite remember how old I was. Maybe 10, 11 years old, something like that. But it was after worship, we were all sitting down, and after my dad had got up to preach, maybe two minutes within his message, he looked right back at me. I remember I was sitting, it was to his left. It would have been like you, right there. That's where I was sitting. I remember it, because he said, hey, Aaron, I need you to stand up and go home. Now, I got in trouble when I was a kid. I never knew I got in that much trouble. He stopped church to say, hey, listen, you got a whooping coming. That's what was going through my mind. I got whoopings as a kid. That's how I'm such a productive member of society. But I remember I was sitting in church and he stopped the service and said, Aaron, I need you to stand up and I need you to go home. And the entire trip, I'm like, oh, no. And you start cycling through all the things. Like, what'd I do? Well, I did that. Did he know that I did that? Like all of these things start happening, right? But what I came to find out later, he sheltered and guarded me well from that. What I come to find out, what I can remember now is as I stood up, there was another guy who was standing up before me. And what he was doing is he was parroting and mocking my father. Every sentence, he would echo it like a toddler who's spoiled and not getting what they want. He was standing in church. My dad knew something was about to happen. And what he came to tell me later, it was shortly after that, there was a family, probably about four to five families, that circled around my father, almost like a schoolyard fight. And they were trying to push him out of the church, trying to remove him from any type of leadership. They're claiming just heretic, claiming non-Christian, claiming all of these different things, simply because he was going to allow someone who had been divorced and remarried to become members of the church. We've all experienced where you know somebody, maybe you yourself. Like we don't, people don't walk away from the church because of what they see in Jesus. People walk away from the church because of what they see in people who claim Jesus. And it creates confusion. It creates hostility. It creates an uphill battle of worthiness that we will never, ever reach. And Paul says, don't let somebody take you captive. Don't let someone convince you that Jesus isn't enough. You will and you should. I'm gonna say this again. Please hear me. You will and you should live a different life. After receiving Christ, you will and you should live differently than you did before, but it's in response to Jesus, not to earn Jesus. And if we do not understand that, if we live with an effort, you can't focus on what Jesus has asked us to focus on because I'm trying to be good enough. I'm trying to earn. I'm trying all of this other stuff. And listen, Grace, I got to tell you, that is not something I've seen with you. Just to be very honest and very transparent, our last year here for my wife and myself has been such a breath of fresh air, of people who love because they love. They love because of what Jesus has done in their world. There's no expectation of anything. I mean, don't be a jerk, but like still, but even like grace, I do not think, I do not think that Paul would look at you and say, hey, stop. I don't think he would do that. But I do think he would look at you and say, hey, you don't have to earn anything. You are God's child. You are holy and dearly loved. You are worthy, not because of your actions, but because of your faith in Jesus' actions. So live in the freedom and joy that Jesus offers. Live in light of the gospel you have put your faith in. Live a life that Jesus has asked you to live without the weight of earning. That's the place where you can walk into who God has asked us to be. It's fascinating to me. It's fascinating that over half of his letter, like he didn't put numbers like chapters and stuff like that, but it's sectioned out into four different chapters, two chapters. In a letter where he's trying to tell you how to live your life, he says, first, understand your belief. And then he says, now go and do this. Chapter three. Therefore, as God's chosen ones, holy and dearly loved, put on compassion. I don't know if you are reading through your Bible or like you're thumbing through or whatever, but if you are, underline that word put on, right? If you're not just writing on the person's neck in front of you, like you need to remember that. Like put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another. If anyone has a grievance against another, just as the Lord has forgiven you. And I'll read verse 14. I don't think it's up there. Above all, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity, and let the peace of Christ to which you were called in one body rule your hearts. I love that word put on. Paul talks about this often in multiple letters. He says it in Romans. He says it in Corinthians a couple of times. He says it to the church at Ephesus. He uses this phrase, put on, which put on simply means to clothe yourselves. I love that. When that happened, it changed everything. When I realized he was saying clothe yourselves, because that's something we all understand, right? The intentionality that goes into deciding what it it is you're gonna wear. Some of us clearly think about it more than others, but like the intentionality, every day we wake up and we what? We clothe ourselves. There's laws that make you do this, right? Like we clothe ourselves. You go and you decide this. This is what I want to be wearing when people see me in the world. And he says, clothe yourselves with compassion, gentleness, humility, patience, and kindness. This is what Paul says. He says, live a life that reflects the life you placed your faith in. This is what he just described. This sounds remarkably close to what Jesus said, right? He says, it's this way that people are gonna know that you're my disciples. Hey, when you live this life, people are gonna identify you with me by the way you love one another. In a world where commandments mean everything, in a world and in a season of life where they needed the step-by-step direction, Jesus said, hey, I give you one, one command, one thing to do. This is what I want you to do. This is how I want you to follow me. Love others. What Paul tells us is that in order to love others the way that Jesus has called us to love people, you first have to understand fully how loved you are and that you have nothing to earn. And living a life of that love, it changes things. It creates and produces fruit. I have seen the church. Legalism hurt people. I have seen the effects of terrible theology. My entire family split from the church. My parents got divorced when I was maybe 15, 16 years old. And of course, how can you go back to the very place that tried to get you removed from the very thing you just did? Everyone. Gone. I have also seen, you have also seen, a lot of you are here today and consistently coming back to grace because you have seen what a life in a church that reflects the love of a Savior does to a person's heart. It pulls you in. It was the love of our Savior that drew you in. And Jesus said, hey guys, here's what I need you to do. Do you want to change the world? Draw them in with love. And this, you guys are all smart people, but I know for me, this made such a difference. Just the context of which Paul is talking about right now. He says, clothe yourselves with compassion. Compassion is not just seeing someone and having a sadness about their lot in life, but it's seeing someone and you feel such a hurt, like your insides turn and you're not okay with it. So you feel this and it moves you into action. Compassion. Clothe yourselves with kindness. Kindness is simply lending someone else your strength. You see someone dealing with something, I lend them a part of me to aid them. Humility. Humility doesn't necessarily mean thinking less of yourself. I think in this context, it means thinking more of others, not in terms of value, not in terms of how awesome they are at stuff. Maybe we can say it like this, thinking of yourself less. Like we don't see helping someone and being there for someone as beneath us. We think more of them and we move to help. We move to serve. We move to love. And then gentleness. Gentleness is the difference of catching a softball and a bubble. It's like you have the grip and you have the strength and you have the capacity to catch a softball. You can grip it and it won't fall, but you understand that in some situations, the gentleness of catching a bubble is what's needed for people. Patience is the tricky one. Because patience kind of, the way we think about it, the way I think about patience is I'm sitting there, okay, come on, let's go. Just don't cuss. Just don't cuss. That's not patience. Patience means moving at someone else's pace. And not sitting and waiting. Hey, come on, let's go. Walking with. Jesus. Paul. Jesus said, do you want to change the world around you? Clothe yourselves. How different would your world look? How different would your day-to-day look if every day you got up, you went in your closet, you got dressed, and maybe you have to do what me and Jeff do, right? Like you go and check with your wife if you match, and you just go back and put on whatever they tell you to, right? Like so maybe you go through all of that. You intentionally decide what you wear. You get ready to walk out your door, and you stop at your mirror right before you walk out the front. You look at it, and you say, okay, today, when people see me, they're going to see compassion. They're going to see someone who's not okay with seeing someone hurt. When they see me, they're going to see someone who's not above stepping in and helping out. When they see me, they're going to see someone who is not angry at consistently waiting, but walking along with. Listen, please, how different would your world look if every day you picked one and you clothed yourself? When people see you, they identify you as compassionate. Jot it down, right? Like, whatever it may, put your Bible, jot it down somewhere. Put it on something you have to look at every single day. Gentleness, kindness, compassion, patience. What is it that would change? How different, let's just not, let's take it beyond us right now. How different would the world perceive Christianity if people who claim Jesus reflected him? How different would your world look? How different could our world look if we live the life that Jesus has asked us to live? And intentionally, wear compassion, kindness, gentleness, patience, and humility. Let's pray. God, thank you. Thank you so much, Lord, for your, well, compassion, gentleness, kindness, humility, and patience with us. God, I thank you for the writing of Paul that just, it frees us and allows us to step into the joy and freedom that we have in you, Jesus. And I ask, Lord, that you would just guard and protect our hearts and that you would help us to daily choose to wear something about who you are. That we would be intentional, Lord, about living a life that is a reflection of you. God, I think this is what it means when it says to trust you with our souls, but also trust you with our life. We're choosing to live a life that we are rested secure in because of who you are and asking you to do the same thing in the world around us, God. Help us to be a reflection of the life you have created us to live. Help us to be a reflection of the life that you lived because we do not just trust what you can give us. We trust who you are, Lord, to the point of we will put all of our faith in you and we will adopt your lifestyle as our own. Thank you, in Jesus' name. Amen.

All right, I see no one paid extra for the splash zone this morning, but I feel like I should like just stand down here and preach, but no, it's good morning. My name is Kyle. I'm the student pastor here at Grace. As most of you probably know by now, the month of July, our head pastor, Nate, is actually taking a sabbatical. It's something that was afforded to him as he has spent diligent, full-time service to this church, ministering to all of us so lovingly and so well for seven years. And so he is taking some time during the month of July to refresh and recharge spiritually in all other ways, spending time relaxing with family, on vacation, all of those things. And so I'm super happy for them. I'm super excited that he's getting the opportunity to do that. And honestly, I'm really excited for us and what that means for Grace, because you know he's gonna come out of that time ready to run in August, ready to run alongside of us in August as he comes back spiritually, recharged, and re-energized. But that also means is I get to preach this morning, which is really cool. Yeah, like cool. All right. I wasn't fishing, but I am thankful for it. I will say, like, I am mostly very excited about it. We're in our series 27, and in 27, we are going through a different book of the New Testament each week. Now, the reason why I'm mostly excited is because I think that there's a small part of me that thinks that Nate might have set me up for failure for this. Because as we talked about this series, we knew that he was going to be on sabbatical. And so there were a lot of voices, a lot of people talking, discussing, hey, what should this series look like? How should we do this series? All this stuff. And one of the main things that Nate made very clear is, hey, don't worry about us going in order. We're not going to go in order all the way through the New Testament. Just choose books that you're going to love and that stand out to you in your preparation. Awesome. Thanks so much. Man, Nate's the best. He doesn't want to be holding us to a certain book. He wants us to pick the book. And then Nate decides for the first four weeks, he's going to do the first four books in order of the New Testament. So while we know in his office that he has decided we don't have to go in order, now you guys are coming ready for an Acts sermon, and I'm hitting you with 1 Thessalonians. And not only did he set me up for failure, but he also knew if there's rioting in the building because I go out of the order you guys are ready for, he's gone. He's on sabbatical. He doesn't have to worry about it. So if you will, please bear with me, and please put down your, you know, whatever pickaxes that you're going to come to me because I'm breaking out of order because I am this morning going to peel off the Band-Aid and we are going to jump into the book of 1 Thessalonians. Now, one of the distinct things about the New Testament, as a lot of you guys know, 13 of the books are attributed to Paul and to Paul's ministry, the Apostle Paul. He wrote these letters to these different churches in these different areas, and they were all named after the areas in the people that he's writing to. And those are, and they're all written by Paul. And so for a lot of this series, we're going to be bringing up this guy named Paul, the Apostle Paul. Now, the thing about Paul, he was not a big fan of Christians. He persecuted them. He wanted to kill them. He thought like, hey, like get rid of this ideology of Christianity that you think exists because this is not, this is not it. You're wrong. You're completely wrong. I'm not having it. Until God kind of hit him literally in just this, he blinded him. I don't know what else to say. I don't really know what word I was searching for, but he blinded him and sent a Christian to go spend some time with Paul, teach Paul the truth, and then literally God opened Paul's eyes, both literally and figuratively, to the gospel that, hey, Paul, you're right that I am God, but you're wrong about who Christ is. This Jesus who came and lived, came and lived because I sent him as my son from heaven to earth to live a perfect life and to die a death signifying the death of all sins of the people who believe him. And he was resurrected from the dead, just as you've heard people tell. And that resurrection signifies that all those people who would believe in him and believe in Jesus as king and trust him as their Lord and Savior, that they are raised to life as well. That when God looks at them, they don't see the imperfections of their lives and of their walks in their life, but they see the perfection of Christ and the holiness of Christ because they have entrusted Jesus as their Lord and Savior. And once the Lord told Paul that, Paul's life was then about one thing and one thing only, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Everything that Paul did, when you read about his ministry and acts, when you read about his ministry and read his writings to each of these different churches as we're gonna go through, he has one goal and one goal only, and that Paul's ultimate goal was to share the gospel to all people and call them to repent and live a life reflective of that gospel. It's the only thing that he cared about. I want to make sure everyone I come in contact with knows who Jesus is, and I want to make sure everyone that I encounter not only knows who he is, but will give their hearts to that Christ and give their lives to the ministry of that Jesus, just as I have. And that's a lot of what 1 Thessalonians is. That's the goal of 1 Thessalonians is Paul writing to the people in the church of Thessalonica, some as reminding himself and just reminiscing on his time there, some to say, hey, like I'm so excited that this is taken, and some to say, hey, continue and press on. That is the goal of this. But as I was going through each one of his letters, as I was going through each book in the New Testament, man, what really jumped out to me about 1 Thessalonians is outside of clearly this being the goal, as it so often is in Paul's writing, I think that he just gives a really, really excellent description of exactly what that looks like. I think that's super valuable, because I don't, if you're like me, there's times where I hear sermons, or there's times where I'm reading through Scripture, and it is abundantly clear what Scripture would have me do. It's abundantly clear, okay, yes, I do love God. Yes, I know that I should go and tell more people about Jesus. Yes, I know I should minister to these people. I know I should make disciples. I should do all of those things. But sometimes I feel like it's a lot harder through Scripture to find, okay, so what exactly does that look like? And I think we find a pretty excellent description of what it looks like when we read the book of 1 Thessalonians. And so before we jump in, I want to give you a little background, a little history. So Paul and one of his ministry partners named Silas, you can find in the book of Acts, Acts 17, where they spent some time in Thessalonica. They go and join their community and start preaching the gospel, telling people who Jesus is, telling people, hey, this Jesus who came and walked on earth died for you so that you could have eternal life, so that you could have this eternal relationship with God the Father, all this stuff. And boy, was it effective. I mean, as they were preaching the gospel, the Lord was just taking hold of the hearts of the people in Thessalonica. And man, I mean, there was, it was like wildfire the gospel was spreading in the area. And it's incredible to read about. It's incredible to see. I mean, literally, it's like, it's like, you know, one of those church revivals where you see the Lord clearly moving. But in this case, it wasn't necessarily a revival because these people are coming alive for the first time. This entire city is hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ for the first time. And so it would be more of just a vival, I guess. They're becoming alive for the first time. I don't know. I don't know words like that, but that seems right. But it's incredible to read about how the Lord was moving, but then that brought some consequences as well because there were still Jewish people in the area who, like Paul was prior, was not happy about Jesus taking over, wasn't happy to hear that there were these two guys that were spreading these claims that they felt to be inaccurate, and so they started persecuting the people and kind of looked like seeking out Paul and Silas to the point that the Christians felt, the Christians and Paul and Silas all felt so distinctly worried that they ended up smuggling them out of the city at night one night because they were like, hey, if they find you, I think they might kill you. And so it is best for you and it's best for everybody if you can go ahead and leave, if we can get you out. And so they got out, they got out safely, and they got out knowing, hey, we know that a lot of people love Christ and give themselves to Christ, but man, Paul is really pretty downtrodden about the fact that he had to leave. As you read in 1 Thessalonians, there's a bit, especially on the early part of 1 Thessalonians, where he's really upset. It kind of takes on this flavor of, some of you guys probably know this, when you were a kid and your parents let you know that one of them got a new job in a new town or a new city and you were going to have to move, which meant, hey, all of these relationships that you've built, all of these friends that you have that you dearly love, you're not going to be able to see them much anymore, and you don't really have much say in that matter. You're just not going to get the amount of time that you hope to get with these people that you love. And that's kind of how Paul starts off this writing, just kind of really sad and really upset about the fact that he was having to be pulled out of this place with these people who he had really grown to love and adore. Not only that, but he got to see the way that Christ had begun moving in that place, and that excited him, but he just, he almost felt like he was leaving them when they needed him most to really learn, and to really learn from him and imitate him what ministering to other people looked like, and establishing roots where they had built a foundation of Christ. And so he just kind of felt like he got the short end of the stick on that and was really upset. So what he did is he sent another ministry partner named Timothy to go check in on him. Timothy, go spend some time with these people. First and foremost, let them know that I am praying for them every day. I pray that the Lord is continuing to move in their hearts, move in their lives, move in their city. But man, I also just pray that soon enough I get to come and see them again, to see my friends, the people that I love so much, once more. Let them know that, please, and spend some time with them. See how they're doing. See how the church is doing. See if the gospel is continuing to move, and report back to me. And so he does. He goes, he finds out, and he comes back. And the response is really positive. It's really good and exciting news that while obviously there's still issues going on in Thessalonica, but the gospel has just absolutely taken off. Where a foundation was set and where Paul had ministered to these people and showed them Christ, they were building upon that foundation and continuing daily to bring more and more people into the faith under Christ. And not only that, but it was moving outside of the city walls as well. I learned actually in researching that Thessalonica, how it is set up, it's actually kind of a, it's a trade town. So a lot of people in the rest of Macedonia and all over those nations, and also in the Roman Empire, all congregate to Thessalonica to do trading. And so while there is this there's this vival happening amongst the Thessalonians, as the gospel is traveling and hitting and encouraging so many people in this city, it is also moving outside of those city walls because as people are coming in for trade consistently, those people that are there are spreading the gospel to them as well. I actually read in a William Barclay commentary. This is really cool and really interesting. He basically said that you cannot understate, you cannot downplay how important the Christianity expanding outside of Thessalonica was for Christianity becoming a world religion. That's how important Christ taking over the hearts of the people in Thessalonica was. One of the main reasons why Christianity spread worldwide. And so you can imagine how Paul wrote to these people in response to this. First Thessalonians is in response to Timothy coming and telling him this unbelievable news. And as you can imagine, he writes just completely joyful and absolutely elated, which we've been there too, right? You've got, I mean, a lot of you guys are parents. You've raised kids that are still alive, which is like unbelievable to me, but good job for y'all. But you have kids and you have people in your life that you love and that you invest so much time and energy in. And so when you see them do well, when you see them do the thing that you helped them be able to do, get to that next step, get to that next point in life, when you see them come to know Jesus Christ for the first time, there's nothing better, right? There's nothing better, one, because somebody that you love is doing well. But two, there's just a pride in knowing that, hey, I had some small part to play in people doing well. But two, there's just a pride in knowing that, hey, I had some small part to play in people doing well, people getting to know Christ, Christ being shed and spread, Christ being spread through the nation and into other nations. And so that's how he writes. He reminisces on his time there spent with these people, building relationships, growing to love them, being a part of the culture, being a part of the community, and sharing the gospel through them, saying, hey, like, I'm so happy that I was able to minister to you in this way, and I'm even happier that the Lord is moving now, and that you guys are imitating the way that I ministered to you guys, and now you're ministering to other people in the same way, and it's effective, and I am so happy to hear it, and I think what that does is it opens up the door to asking a question. The question is, how did Paul minister to the people in Thessalonica? Okay, this is awesome. Paul ministered to these people. So many of them started giving their hearts and giving their lives to Jesus, and now they're doing the same thing that he did, and it's continuing to work incredibly well. And I think that 1 Thessalonians does an excellent job of telling us exactly what. And so as you go through, I think the whole book does a good job of sharing that, of sharing that directive, of giving, of saying, hey, this is exactly how it was done. I think in particular, chapter 2, verses 5 through 8, does a really excellent job as to making something that seems a little bit inaccessible very accessible, not only for the people in Thessalonica, but I think for the people in this room. It's a very doable strategy of ministering to people that we can emulate. And so we're actually going to start, we're going to start in verse 7, and then we're going to go backwards, because as we've established, I'm not going in order. So if you will, please just read with me verses 7 and 8. Let me read that one more time. So being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves because you have become very dear to us. We came and we brought you the gospel, but we brought you so much more than that. We brought you our whole selves. We gave you ourselves. I think it's a pretty excellent summation to say that Paul ministered gently and sacrificially through genuine relational love. He didn't share the gospel from a distance. It's not some guy who rolls up into this community during the day, sets up a pulpit, and preaches throughout the day, sharing the gospel, and then goes back to his place away from everybody afterwards. He immersed himself into this community. He built relationships with these people. He chose to serve them and love them well and intently. He goes after them, becomes a part of them, and builds through relational love these relationships and these friendships with these people so that they know without a shadow of a doubt that this person cares about me, that I am loved by this person. What's he doing? He's showing the love of Christ to these people so that he can share with them the gospel of who Jesus is, and they're going to be willing to hear it. I think what he realized is that we should strive to present the truth of Christ through imitating the love of Christ. We hear a lot about what it looks like to share the gospel, and I get a ton of questions about how am I supposed to do that. Like, I don't really think I'm meant to be Paul and go with a couple guys to different nations and different cities and preach to them until I'm thrown in prison and then write letters to them. But clearly what Paul is saying here, because Paul echoes a lot in his time and in his writing, I am ministering to you in this way and I am calling you to imitate and minister to other people in this way. How am I calling you to share the gospel? The same way that I'm sharing the gospel with you. I'm coming, and I'm going to be a part of your lives. I'm going to build friendships, and I'm going to love you well. I'm going to love you out of the love of Christ that I have received from Christ, and through that, through me loving you like Christ, I am going to share the truth of Christ with you in a way that is impactful, in a way that is meaningful, and in a way that you are going to be willing to hear from me because you know that I only genuinely care about you. He actually goes a little bit deeper in verses five and six. And so, hey, like, we're disciples of God. We could have come in and told you, hey, these are the things that you need to know. These are the things that you need to do. These are the things that you need to figure out so that you can be saved. But instead, he said, hey, that's not, that wasn't our goal. Our goal wasn't to share the gospel in this impersonal, in this formal, impersonal way. It was to share the gospel as personally as possible. Now, the wording of the greed part, I want to go dive into that a little bit, because as I kind of told you, he's a little bit repetitive with the things that he says throughout, and I think that is probably because they're important. Paul thought it was very, very meaningful and a very useful tool of ministry to, when he went into Thessalonica, not to establish a church and be the head of that church, not to be a guy who, what he did is, hey, I'm bringing you the gospel. I'm kind of going to be the minister here, and so please pay me, bring me food, give me shelter, so that I can bring this good news to you. Instead, Paul talks pretty distinctly about that he got a job in Thessalonica as soon as he got there, because he wanted to work amongst the people. He wanted the people in Thessalonica to know, hey, I care only's awesome that you're doing ministry and that that's your full-time job, but he's kind of saying all of you guys, y'all are doing it the way that he would do it. Y'all are doing it the way that he's calling here. That's how, I think that's ultimately maybe the thing that stuck out most to me in this is this is a message for the people of the church that aren't working in the church. I have to work hard to make sure I don't do that. I have to go out of my way to make sure that my students know that, hey, I'm going to minister to you and I'm going to love you while you're in this building, but I'm also going to go outside of these walls to make sure I'm a part of your lives, ministering to you, getting to know you so that you know without a shadow of a doubt that, yes, sure, this is Kyle's job to do this, but the only reason he's actually doing it is because he loves me, and he wants me to know the gospel. But you guys aren't beholden to those things, and I think that what Paul is saying is, y'all are doing it right. That's the way that he would call us to minister. And what I think he realized is that there is a purity of intention when you have nothing to gain from the people you are specifically loving and pouring into. How pure is your motivation when as you're building relationships and as you're building upon foundations of relationships, when you're loving people well, going out of your way to serve people, that you're asking of nothing in return, to where they know that you're only doing that because you care about them, just in the same way that you know that the only reason you're doing that is because, hey, the Lord loves this person, and so do I, regardless of who they are. And I think what I love about this is that this is a message that I, like, this is something that I see people in this church do really well. I think this is certainly something to be like, yes, I need to do this, whatever, but like, I see this all over, all over the place in this church. I got a buddy, Preston, that comes to the church that he's maybe one of the best possible, like, friend makers that I've ever met. Like, when I watch him in conversation, I'm just like, gosh, man, like, that dude genuinely cares about everything that everyone says to him. I don't know if that's true or not. I don't know if he's just trying to be like Jesus or whatever, or if he's just, well, you know, like, I don't know what it is, but I'm just so taken aback at how good he is at making people know, hey, you are my friend and I care about you. And recently we had a conversation. He said there was a guy in his office who obviously was his friend because he's been around Preston and that's what Preston does. He makes friends. And he was like, hey man, like, I just seem to notice you really care about people a lot. And you honestly seem to be a lot more content than I am with life. You don't seem to get quite as upset about stuff. You love people well. And I just kind of want to know what's your secret. I want to be more like that. I want to understand how to do that better. That opened up the door for Preston to be able to tell him about Jesus. That door doesn't get opened if Preston is just trying to give him the gospel but not give him any part of himself. But Preston gave of himself, built this relational foundation that that guy wanted to ask Preston that question. I think about my buddy Logan, another guy who comes to the church. He, two of his best friends are two people he served in the Navy with. Neither one are believers, actually. But Logan has loved them well and has built that friendship to a point that he's able to share the gospel with them, and they're not going to be turned off. They're willing to listen. Not only that, but they love him so much that they want to support him in whatever the way they can. So he's actually, he hosts every other Monday night, he hosts this film watching group where the point of it is to watch this film and then talk about how it relates to the gospel. And guess who's on Zoom every single week from all over the nation? Those two guys. They want to be a part. They want to talk about film, and they listen. They get to hear about the gospel every other week on Monday night where outside of that, they don't hear it at all because they have a friend that they love and want to support a cool thing that he's doing. They hear the gospel because Logan has loved them and has loved them well and has built that relationship to that point. My wife, Ashlyn, she rules. I don't know if I've seen more tears than watching her go from two offices, one in Garner and one in Cary, to just being in Cary. The people in that Garner office, there were just so many tears because Ashlyn is the friend on staff, on staff with those people who's going to always consistently love them well and encourage them, point them back to Jesus and be a light in their life. You don't know how effective you are at that until you leave and you find out that the response is everyone being so upset. She had a mom say, hey, I know we live in Garner, but we're going to be there in Cary. I can't stop crying. My daughter genuinely says that Miss Ashlyn is her best friend. We're going to stick with you. That happens because Ashlyn loves very well. She's got a person in the office who just, in the carry office, who just experienced a tragedy and reached out to everybody, said, hey, this happened. Please don't ask me about it. I'm not ready to talk. A week later, guess who's, guess who walked in, whose door she walked in because she wanted to talk? Ashlyn. Because Ashlyn, she knows that Ashlyn loves her well and is going to point her to Jesus and point her towards the light. And finally, I look at, I look at Karen and Chris. I know Chris isn't used to being praised on a Sunday morning, but since Nate's gone, we're just gonna, we're gonna break all the, we're gonna break all the molds here. But I mean, their, their youngest daughter is my age, graduated in 2011, and they right now have decided, you know what, we're tired of having all this stuff, we want to have somebody come and live with us. They have somebody from, a soccer player from South Africa currently living with them, a college student, which like, I don't know, can't be like insanely fun, and't be insanely easy. I mean like super nice dude, but like, you know, they've been living with a lot of freedom for a long time by themselves. And so they're just hosting kids over at their house all the time, college students, just college dudes, just rolling up, soccer players, probably acting a fool. I don't know. I'm just kidding. Definitely not acting a fool. I know you're not, bro. But I mean, how easy is it? How easy would it have been for Karen and Chris to love them well by supplying them with Chick-fil-A coupons so they feel like they have some other food? To bring them some candy, bring them some extra clothes, whatever, and just check in on them every once in a while. But what they recognize and what they realize, in the same way that Paul knew was incredibly important, is if I want to truly impact the people that are around me, then I need to truly be a part of their lives. I need to truly build relationships with these people built on a foundation of the love of Christ, loving them well, encouraging them well, and that is a true and ultimate way to make a gospel impact. And that is where then the door is open to truly not only share the love of Christ through your actions, but share the truth of Christ in your words, and to truly share the gospel to the people around you. And in Paul's writing, Paul kind of says the same thing. He's like, guys, I want to encourage you in this, but you're doing it really well. Actually, I want to read it because I think it's beautiful, and I think that the simple way that I want to encourage you, Grace, who does this so well, is the same way that Paul encourages the people of Thessalonica. So if you will, please, let's read verses, or 1 Thessalonians 4, 9 through 10. Now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you. For you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, be able to show and share the gospel to so many other people. So my simple question for you that I want to close on is this. Who and where can you do this more and more and continue to do it more and more? So I want to close this morning in a prayer, but I want to, it's kind of a specific prayer. Ashlyn, my wife, she wants to be as helpful as possible in my sermons, and sometimes she feels like, I gotta like, you know, she feels like she's unhelpful. I'm like, Ashlyn, you're great. Just you loving me is very helpful. But she knew kind of what I was talking about this morning, and she was reminded of a song, it's actually by Casting Crowns, throwback, called The Bridge. And this song, I think, just does an absolutely beautiful job of just giving the same encouragement and the same prayer that we pray as we try to share the love of Christ so that we can share the truth of Christ. So if you will, we're just going to pray, and I'm going to pray over us these lyrics from this song. Bow with me. With love, we earn the right to speak your truth. It's not just what we say, it's what we do. I want to be a bridge, God, that leads to you. So reach through me and let them see, Lord, let them see. Lord, let us love like this. Let us share the gospel like this. Not formal, not impersonal, but as personal and as loving as we possibly can. We love you so much. Amen.

This is the fourth part in our series called 27, where this summer and next summer we're going to do an overview of all 27 books in the New Testament. We've been spending June in the Gospels, and this week we arrive at John. John is my favorite Gospel, and in the mode of the other Gospels, if you've listened to all four sermons, you kind of know that each Gospel is written to a certain audience and depicts Jesus in a certain way. By way of review, Matthew was written to the Jews, and Jesus is depicted as the king. Mark was written to the Romans, and Jesus is depicted as a servant. Luke was written to the Greeks, and Jesus is depicted as a man. And the book of John was written to everyone, and Jesus is depicted as God. The book of John is different than the other books. It's written to all people for all time, not a specific audience, and it begins right off the bat talking about Jesus as God. John's gospel is different. In fact, it starts off different. It starts off with a resounding claim that feels far different than the other gospels. I love the way that John starts his gospel. It's one of the reasons it's my favorite gospel. Look with me in John chapter 1, verses 1 through 3. And I'm going to keep reading verses 4 and 5 because I read them again this morning and I'm like those are cool verses too. They need to hear them. So here, John chapter 1, this is how his gospel begins. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him not anything made that was made. Listen, in Him was life by John. Who at the very beginning, from the very beginning, places Jesus in the Godhead at creation. He says, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God. Through Him all things were made. Without Him nothing was made. If you think back, this is why it's a big deal to call Him the Word of God, because if you think back to Genesis 1, and you think back to the creation account, how did God create things? He spoke them into being. God said, let there be light. And there was light. He said, let there be fish and birds and animals. And there was fish and birds and animals. He spoke them into being. It was God's very word that was the agent of creation. And here at the beginning of John, right off the bat, just boom, right in your face, John says Jesus is the word, the logos of God. He is the agent of creation. Through him all things were made. Without him nothing was made. He places Jesus in the moment of creation along with creator God the Father and God the Spirit that Genesis says is hovering over the surface of the deep. So right there we get the idea of the Trinity. B.B. Warfield, a theologian from either Yale or Princeton, I should have double checked, from the early 1900s, wrote a lot of things about the Gospels and a lot of different things about Jesus. But one of the things that he said is that the synoptics were written from below upward, and John was written from above downward. The synoptic Gospels are the first three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They follow the same chronology. They have a lot of the same stories. They have a lot of the same parables. Those are called the synoptic gospels. And they present Jesus from the bottom upward. Matthew and Luke begin with genealogies. Here is Jesus' genealogical tree. Here are the men and women from whom he descends, right? It starts at the bottom. And then they introduce him as a baby, helpless, lying in a manger. And if you know nothing else outside of these gospels, this is your first encounter with Christ. And you see him gradually. We learn that he is God and that he is divine and that he is the son of God and that he is the Messiah. We build Jesus from the bottom upward. But in John's gospel, in John's gospel, we see Jesus from the top downward. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and then we see him show up at baptism. Then we see him human. Then we see him as fully God and fully man. But John's gospel is unique and differentiates itself from the rest of the gospels. If I were going to stay in the mode of the series that we've done so far, every week I kind of look at how Jesus is depicted and why he's depicted that way, and then we kind of pick it apart and see why that's important to us. Why is it important to us that Jesus needed to be displayed as king, or that Jesus is a servant, or that Jesus is man, and we kind of look at that. And so if I were going to follow that mode, I would take this week and I would say, why is it important that we understand that Jesus is God? How do we pull that theme out and how does that apply to us? But to me, and it doesn't mean I don't respect the other gospels, but to me, I love the gospel of John so much and there's's so much good stuff in there, that I found that to be overly reductive and dismissive of the message of John. So I didn't want to do that. And I thought about all the things about John that I love that make it unique, and eventually what we'll do is we'll land on this single unifying principle that comes out of the gospel of John that I think is one of the most profound, powerful, freeing principles in all the Bible. We might spend our entire spring on this one principle. But as we get there, I wanted to share with you what I love about the book of John, what I think makes it unique, because I'll tell you right now, the whole goal of this sermon, the only thing I want you to do is leave here and read the book of John. That's my goal. It's for you to walk out those doors or those doors thinking tomorrow or this afternoon, I'm going to crack open the book of John and I'm going to read it. And I'll tell you, I started reading it again too. And I read chapter one this morning. And if you can read chapter one and not want to read the rest of it, then I can't help you. Chapter one is a great chapter of the Bible when you're locked in and you're paying attention to what's going on. So my whole goal is to have you leave wanting to know Jesus through the book of John and wanting to read the book of John. What I think is unique about John, and it's not just me, I mean, you can find lists online. But the things that matter to me are, first of all, John is written from the perspective of a loving friend. Now Matthew and Luke, they knew Jesus. John Mark knew Jesus through Peter and Paul, but John knew Jesus. John was a loving friend. He was a close friend. And in your life, if someone was going to write the story of your life, who better to write it than a close and intimate lifelong friend, than someone who's known you and walk with you for years? Someone who's seen you, who's seen your vices and your values, who's watched you lose it, who knows what frustrates you, who knows what brings you joy, who knows how to complete your sentences, who knows what makes you happy, who's been with you in the down times and laughed with you and cried with you and mourned with you and wept with you? What about, who else can have a perspective on you like that of a good friend? And we say that John was Jesus' good friend because it kind of drips off the pages. First of all, in John's gospel, he refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. Now that, that is a bold claim. To write your gospel knowing the other gospel writers like they're around, they're going to see this and he still puts it out there that he is the disciple whom Jesus loved. So it would almost be like writing a letter, writing a book about your parents and calling yourself the child whom my parents loved. Like it's a bold claim. And in my case, everybody would just be like, yeah, that's true. It's legit. But he calls himself the disciple whom Jesus loved. And you can see that their relationship was unique amongst him and the disciples. At the last supper, they're reclining together and the way that they would eat dinner, you would lean on your side and you would reach to the table that way and so they were kind of front to back and John's head was in Jesus' chest at one point because he was asking, who is it, Jesus, that's going to betray you? And Jesus whispers into John's ear, it's the one who's going to dip the bread next. He whispers into John's ear who it was going to be, that it was going to be Judas. It's this intimate moment that only John records. And John records a lot of intimate moments like this. As a matter of fact, at the cross, we see that John may have been the only disciple that even bothered to show up. And Jesus musters up the energy and the oxygen to push himself up on the nails and tell John, when I die, please take care of my mother. He entrusted Mary to John. That was how close and intimate they were. So John's gospel is written from the perspective of a loving friend three decades later as he reminisces on the sweetest years of his life when he walked with his Savior. And so John just writes down different things than the other gospel writers did. John almost writes down a personal memoir of Christ where we get insights into these amazing conversations. We get insights into miracles that we don't see in other places like the miracle of the wedding at Cana. We get the longest recorded prayer of Jesus. We get long teachings of Jesus that we don't see in the other books. Matthew and Luke have the Sermon on the Mount or the Sermon by the Lake, whichever setting you want to take. But John has teachings and conversations that we see nowhere else. I actually have some there in your notes for you so you can use this as reference later when you're going through John. But in John chapter 3, we see him have this amazing conversation with Nicodemus that the other gospel writers don't record. Nicodemus was a Pharisee. And the Pharisees rejected Jesus and who he was. But I've always respected Nicodemus because Nicodemus had a way to see past the fake news and the tide and the current and the way that everything else was running in culture and say, wait, but what do I think and who is this man? And so he seems to have requested a conversation with Jesus. And they meet under cover of night and Jesus lays out everything for Nicodemus, who he is, what he came to do, and how we can be, in our words, saved. And in this discourse with Nicodemus, we see the most famous verse in the world, John 3.16, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. It's the salvation message, it's the gospel, it's the whole point of the Bible wrapped into this one succinct verse. It's in the conversation with Nicodemus that that verse appears. One chapter over in John chapter 4, Jesus has this incredible conversation with the woman at the well, this Samaritan woman where he breaks cultural norms, he goes past hated divides, and he talks with a woman who comes to the well in the middle of the day because she's so ashamed of her life that she doesn't want to be seen by the other women. And Jesus calls her out, says, you've had five husbands. The guy you're living with now is not your husband. That's not good for you. I don't want you to keep doing that, but I love you. I'm the living water. Drink of me and you will never perish. And she goes back to her village or her town and she tells everybody, there's a dude at the well that just told me everything I ever did and you guys need to come check him out. And the whole town goes out there, they meet Jesus and they have faith in him. We don't see that story in the other gospels. And then I referenced it earlier in John chapter 17 we have the lengthiest prayer recorded of Jesus. Now the most famous prayer of Jesus is the Lord's prayer. When he teaches the disciples how to pray, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. That prayer. And then we have accounts of the prayer in Gethsemane, right before he's arrested to be crucified, where he says, Father, please take this cup from me. Please don't make me do this. But in John chapter 17, we have Jesus's most lengthy recorded prayer. It's an insight into his heart and his desires into his conversations with his father. And scholars refer to it as the high priestly prayer. And in that prayer, it's so remarkable because he starts off by praying for the disciples. And then after he prays for the disciples, he prays for all of those who would follow the disciples. He prays for the church down through the generations. Do you realize that in John chapter 17, if you're a Christian, if you're a part of God's church, if you call God your father and Jesus your savior, and to be a Christian means that you believe that Jesus is who he says he is. You believe that he did what he said he did. And you believe he's going to do what he says he's going to do. If you are a Christian, then in John chapter 17, Jesus prays for you. It's right there in the red letters. And I can't get over the fact that tucked away in this corner of the Bible, in the 17th chapter of John, that my Savior prayed for me and he prayed for you. And it's recorded and we get to read it. We don't see that in the other gospels. That kind of intimacy is not there. We see it in the gospel of John. And just as an aside, do you know what Jesus prays for? For his disciples and for the generations of the church to come? What would you pray for in that moment? Faithfulness? Power and efficacy of mission? The growth of the church? The fidelity of the saints. Jesus, in that moment, the most important thing on his mind was to pray for unity. Unity within the church. Unity within his children. Unity within the descendants of God. So when I read that passage, I feel equal parts inspired and encouraged that my Jesus prayed for me. But there's also a tinge of sadness there for me. Because I think we can admit and confess we're doing a pretty bad job of making our Savior proud of our unity. We, the church, we've let our Jesus down with all of our denominations and all of our differing beliefs. And it's not that we can't have variant beliefs, it's just that we insist on ours to the exclusion of others. And you fire up Twitter and it's just Christians calling other Christians bad Christians and you fire up Facebook and now it's Christians who know each other calling Christians bad Christians. And it's all just gross. And it's not the point of the sermon, but grace, let us not be a part of that evil. Let us not be a part of God's children that further the divide amongst His church and amongst His children. Let us honor the prayer of Christ and seek unity with one another, understanding we're not going to agree on everything and that never really seems to be a priority of Jesus'. But we see those lengthy discourses in the Gospel of John. Another thing that makes John unique amongst the Gospels, as I mentioned earlier, Matthew, Mark, and Luke include the teachings of, and Jesus always very intentionally taught through parables. We know these parables, the parable of the prodigal son, of the lost coin, the shrewd manager, the persistent widow. We could go on and on. We know the parables of Jesus. Even if you're not very familiar with the Bible, even if this is your first Sunday in a church in over a decade, you could probably name and loosely describe a parable because they're just kind of ubiquitous in our Christian culture. In the book of John, you won't find any parables. I don't know why, but for some reason, John didn't feel like he needed to record those. Maybe he had access to the gospels written prior to his and was like, they got those squared away. I don't have anything to add to the parables. Or maybe he thought it was more captivating to describe Jesus in the terms and to follow the teachings of Jesus in the way that Jesus described himself. Because in the book of John, Jesus teaches using I am statements rather than parables. If you read through the book of John, you'll find seven huge I am statements where Jesus tells us who he is. He's not reliant on the descriptions of gospel writers. He's not reliant on the descriptions of historians or other people or word of mouth. He tells us straight up who he is and what he is and how we ought to think of him. And the seven I am's are there in your notes if you have them. They're not going to be on the screen, but Jesus says, I'm the bread of life, I'm the light of the world, I'm the gate for the sheep, I'm the good shepherd, I'm the resurrection and the life, the way, the truth, and the life, and I am the true vine. And if you look at those for a second and you study them, what you'll see is that all of those things are referring to salvation and they're referring to life in him. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but through me. I am the light of the world. I am the bread of life. Come to me. Believe in me. I am the Savior. I am the Messiah. And then once you get to me, I am the shepherd at the gate. I am the good shepherd. I am the true vine. I am the bread. I will sustain you. Jesus beckons you. Come to me, believe in me, know me, and then be sustained by me. All through the gospel of John, these are the I am statements where Jesus invites us to come and to know who he is and then to find life in him. And then in the book of John, we get these verses that I love so much. I tell you guys every week, this is my new favorite verse, and whatever, but I love these verses in John. I love the way that John opens, that we read at the beginning. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God. Through him all things were made. Without him nothing was made. That is profound. Elevates Jesus to exactly who he is. Later on in that same chapter we get John 1 16 which is one of the verses I like to repeat around here that humbles me every time, fills me with joy every time. It's a simple verse. From his fullness we have all received grace grace. At grace, we say that we are conduits of grace because we are connected to God. And from his fullness, we have received grace upon grace. We can give grace upon grace to other people. From his fullness, from God's goodness, we, all of us, have received grace upon grace. I pointed out John 3, 16, the most famous verse in the Bible. I also think of John 10, 10, one of my favorite verses for a long time. The thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy, but I have come that you might have life and have it to the full. Where Jesus says, I'm going to give you the best, most exciting, richest, fullest life possible. Well, he promises you, I know, I know the world tempts you with things that you think you want to run after. With wealth or power or success or men or women or attraction or friendship or whatever it is. I know that the world tempts you with things that you want to run after. But I promise that I will give you life to the full. When we pursue Jesus, when we trust our life to him, when we spend our life pursuing him, his promise on that pursuit is not that we will have given up some sort of richness of life to pursue him in this life and experience eternity later. No. It's that if you pursue him now, he will give you that richness now. You cannot imagine a better life for yourself than Jesus would give you if you would only follow him. That's his promise. I come to give you life to the full. I could do a sermon on every one of the things I've said so far. Because there's so many good, so much good stuff in the gospel of John. But my favorite one, the verse that I love so much, the verse that I want to land on that feels to me like a unifying principle for all of Christendom, is found in John chapter 15. After he said that he is the true vine, he tells them this. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. I am the vine, you are the branches. If you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Now here's why I love that verse. And here's why I think it is so profound. Because Jesus says, you don't need to worry about anything but abiding in me. You can sweep all the other concerns of life aside and focus on me. Pursue me. Follow me. Make me the apple of your eye. Stay attached to me and you will bear much fruit. And here's what I really love about that promise. One of my biggest fears in life, I think we all carry this fear to different degrees. One of my biggest fears in life is to get to the end of my life and to learn that I've wasted it. Is to have to settle into the harsh reality that my years didn't matter very much. That I could have done more or I could have done better. I first heard this quote from D.L. Moody. I've researched it out. I don't know to whom to attribute it because it wasn't his, but I heard it from him. He said that one of the most tragic things in life is to watch a man spend his entire life climbing the ladder of success only to get to the top and realized it was propped against the wrong building. It is profoundly sad for people to spend their life in pursuit of things that don't matter. And I carry a fear of that with me. And this verse, this principle safeguards you from that fruit. Over in first, I think it's first Peter or 1 Peter, it says that if we can learn to love one another, that it will keep us from being ineffective and unproductive in our knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. There are these promises through Scripture that if we'll pursue God and do what he has for us to do, that we will not waste our life, that we will bear much fruit. The question becomes, I think naturally, what that fruit is and what it looks like. What does it mean to bear fruit? And I think we probably think about that in ministerial terms. We think about that at Grace. We say that we want to be kingdom builders. We actually say we want to be kingdom builders so much that my goal for you, if this is your first Sunday here and you're here for 10 years, I hope that moves you through this process in life where you realize that everything that you have been given, every talent, all your time, all your treasure has been given so that you can leverage it for the growth of the kingdom of God. That's what we want for you, to leverage everything in your life to bear fruit and grow God's kingdom. So what does it mean to bear fruit? Well, I think we think about that ministerially, making disciples and converting people to Christianity, evangelism, discipleship and evangelism. We think about those things. We call it strengthening or adding to God's kingdom. And I think that's absolutely true. That is the way that we bear much fruit. And if we abide in Christ, we can't help but bear that fruit. That's another part that I love. If a branch is attached to an apple tree, then when it's time, that branch is going to grow apples. All it has to do is stay attached to the tree. It doesn't have to worry about what kind of fruit to bear or when to bear it or what to do or how to get the nutrients. All it has to do, stay attached to the tree and you're going to bear fruit. All we have to do if we stay attached to Jesus is we're going to bear fruit. That's it. That's all we have to worry about. But I got to thinking about what kind of fruit we bear. And if you just look at the natural world, there's all different kinds of fruit. Apples, oranges, pears, tangerines, lemons. That's about all I know. I don't eat a lot of fruit. I can tell you a lot of fast food menus. But throughout the natural world, trees grow fruit. They grow all different kinds of fruit. An apple tree doesn't decide, you know what we're feeling this year, boys? Oranges. Let's do it. That doesn't happen. Apple trees grow apples. That's it. For the rest of their days, apples. I don't think that God's kingdom and that this natural world is that much different. I tell you all the time, Ephesians 2.10, you are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that you might walk in them. I think that's the same ethos that we find in Proverbs when it says that we should train up a child in the way that they must go and they will not depart from it. We're going to train up that child to be quiet in church. That's great. We love you, Faith and Phil. But in that, in that is this tip of the cap to the idea that we're all different. In Corinthians, we see that there are a myriad spiritual gifts, and not everybody has all of them. We all have our different parts to play. We all have our different giftedness. God knew before you were that age when you were going to live, what you were going to do, and what gifts he was going to imbue you with so that you might be used in his kingdom. He already knew that. And I've told you before that because you're a God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that you might walk in them, that your job is to figure out what your good works are and then walk in them. All of that ties in with abide in Christ and you will bear much fruit. I don't think the ministerial fruit looks the same for everybody. I think it is as wild and variant as the natural world and that what abiding in Christ and bearing fruit means is you will bear the fruit that God designed you and intended you to bear. If it comes out of your creativity, your hospitality, your gift of care, your gift of discernment, your gift of boldness, your gift of timidity, your gift of confidence, your gift of charisma, whatever it is, God has gifted you in different ways and he has gifted you to bear your fruit in his kingdom, in his way, in his ministry. So it doesn't look the same for everybody. And so what Jesus is promising is if you abide in me, listen, if you abide in me, then you will become the exact person I created you to be. You will experience the exact full life I want you to experience, and you will produce the exact fruit I designed and created you in your mother's womb to produce. You will be the absolute best version of yourself on this side of eternity, and all you have to do is abide in Christ. All you have to do is pursue him, is walk with him, yearn for him, know him, love him. And we could talk a long time about what it means to abide in Christ. Right now I'm leaning towards making the spring series that leads into Easter. Just call it Abide. And every week talk about what it means to abide in Christ. If you're a note taker, I should have brought it up here with me, but write this down. There's a book called Abide in Christ by a guy named Andrew Murray. I would highly recommend it. I tell a story about the facilities manager at the summer camp I worked at, a guy named Harry Stevenson. And now he's one of the godliest men I've ever met in my life. He has those eyes that when you look at him, you know immediately he loves Jesus and he loves me. Just an incredibly godly man. Harry, when I asked him, I said, what book do I need to read, Harry? And he told me, Abide in Christ, Andrew Murray. And I've read it and reread it. If you're a reader, go read it. If you're not a reader, grow up and go get it. The book of John beckons us to know Jesus that we might find life in him. The whole book of John through the I am statements, through the claims of Christ, through the conversations, through the prayer, through the examples beckons us to come to know Jesus. Look again at the I Am statements. Jesus himself beckons us, come to know me, come to trust me that you might find life in me, that you might find the best life possible in me. The book of John beckons us to know Christ, that we would find life in him. It beckons us to abide in Christ. And I would just close by saying this as I push you back into reading the book of John on your own. We can only abide in Christ if we can know Him. And we can best know Him through John. And that's said with a caveat. There's other ways to know Christ. We experience Him. We pray with Him. We walk with Him. We see Him in the Gospels for sure. But I think if you want what is the best written account to know the person of Jesus, to see His heart and to see Him exposed and to understand Him, then the Gospel of John is absolutely essential reading for knowing our Christ and abiding in Him and bearing much fruit in your life and in your ministry. So I'm going to pray. We're going to sing a song. And I hope you'll walk out those doors and open up the book of John soon and begin a fresh pursuit of Christ. Let's pray. God, we love you so much. We thank you for your son. We thank you for John's account of him. That we can know him intimately through John's gospel. We thank you for all the powerful teachings that we find in there, for the way that your son loves, for the simple admonition to abide in him and let you handle the rest. God, we want to be who you created us to be. We want to do what you intended us to do. Would you give us the clarity of sight, the strength of faith, and the boldness of courage to walk with you? Would you let us shake off the demons and walk past our past and leave the shadows behind and pursue you with vigor and fullness of heart and openness of mind and eyes that we might know you and experience what it is to walk with you. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

Good morning, good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you are here with your dad today, good for you. You're a good kid. And if you're a dad and your kids are here, man, that's so great, especially if your adult kids still want to hang out with you. That's the dream, right? That's all we're trying to do with John and Lily. Just when we release them to the wild, we want to make sure they come back. I do want to offer a prayer here at the beginning of the sermon for fathers and for Father's Day because it's a day of mixed emotions. In our house, we've lost Jen's dad. And so she wants to celebrate me, but it's also a sad day. And sometimes days like this are wonderful because they allow us to celebrate wonderful people, but we also know that for different reasons, Father's Day can be difficult. And so I just wanted to offer a prayer here as we begin, and then I'm going to go into a message that has nothing to do with fathers or even manhood at all. So let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for being our good father. For those of us who have been blessed and lucky to have good dads, we're so grateful for that blessing. We're so grateful for dads who point the way to you, who are fallible and who mess up, but who love us and love you, and they show us how to do that. So thank you for them. And if we have those, God, help us to be like them. God, for those for whom today is painful, maybe it conjures up loss or hurt or any other things that days like this can stir. I just pray that you would be with them, that they would be reminded that you are the good father and that your love today would fill in the spots that are left behind by hurts or hardships or blind spots. So God, be a good father for us today. Let your children feel your presence. Thank you for the good dads. Give us grace for the not as good dads and help us be good dads too. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, we are in the third part of our series called 27. We'll be doing it this summer and next summer, going through the 27 books in the New Testament. In the month of June, we've been going through the Gospels. So in the first week, we looked at Matthew, and we said that Matthew was written to the Jews and depicts Jesus as the king. Last week, we looked at Mark. We said Mark was written to the Romans and depicts Jesus as the king. Last week we looked at Mark. We said Mark was written to the Romans and depicts Jesus as a servant. And this week we're looking at the book of Luke. And Luke, the gospel of Luke, was written to the Greeks and it depicts Jesus as a human or as a man. So Luke was written to a Greek audience. There's a guy named Theophilus. It's addressed to, oh, blessed Theophilus. And Luke and the book of Acts are really two parts of the same book, the same letter that was written to Theophilus so that he might understand everything that happened in the life of Christ and then the things that happened immediately following the life of Christ. And so Luke was written to a Greek audience to depict Jesus as a human, as a man, because to the Greek mind and in Greek culture and thinking and philosophy, man is the apex of creation. We are the culmination of all the things. And so to depict Jesus as the greatest man to have ever lived, as the greatest philosopher to have ever lived, would be appealing and capturing and captivating to the Greek mind. But as I thought about us and how to preach that and how to apply that to us and how that should stir us, I was really focusing on the humanity of Christ and kind of asking myself all week long. I started thinking about it last week and just kind of chipping away at what does it mean to be human? What does it mean that Jesus was a human? Why is this important? And I was trying to figure this out. Whenever I write my sermons, I don't know how you guys write your sermons, but when I write my sermons, I try to just like, I think of it as the attack angle. Like, how am I going to approach this? What am I going to talk about? What's interesting about this? What's helpful about this? And I was having a really hard time with it. And so when I have a hard time, I talk to people. And our worship pastor, Aaron Gibson, happened to be around. He's the only person around. I would have loved to talk to someone else. It was just him. So we ended up talking about it. And he actually made this point. I thought it was a great point. So I included in my sermon. Aaron has done at least one useful thing today. But he reminded me that Jesus' favorite title for himself was Son of Man. Jesus' favorite title for himself was Son of Man. And in all honesty, we have such a good staff. I can go talk to any of them and be like, I've got writer's block. I don't know what to do. I can just throw out the sermon. And every time they get me unstuck and they are wonderful. And when he said this, I kind of do a thing when I'm trying to figure a sermon out or something out. And I ask you about it and you say something. Once you say the one useful thing, I'm like, that's it. I got it. You keep talking. I'm not there anymore. I'm thinking about son of man. And he said this, and I was like, that's it. So I dove into some research on that. Why did Jesus call himself that? What did it mean? And what I learned is it very much is Jesus's favorite term for himself. It shows up 32 times in the gospel of Matthew, 15 times in the gospel of Mark, and 26 times in the Gospel of Luke. And every single one of those times, it's Jesus himself using that term to refer to himself. The only time it's used 12 times in John, and two of those times it's someone else calling him that mockingly. But all the other times, this is how Jesus refers to himself as son of man. So why did he like that term? Why did he refer to himself as son of man? Well, first, the phrase son of man would have meant in the ancient world what human being means to us. It's just a way to say that I'm mortal. It's a way to say I'm a human. I'm part of the human race. So Jesus, every time he says it, is declaring his humanity. He's dropping a little hint. I'm a human. I'm a son of man. And we know that Jesus is both man and divine. The fancy theological word for Jesus being 100% human and 100% divine is called the hypostatic union. So Jesus is highlighting the hypostatic union every time he says son of man, because he's declaring his humanity, but he's also referring back to this famous prophecy in Daniel chapter seven, this famous messianic prophecy. And I'm going to read it to you this morning and it'll be up on the screen because it just sounds cool. As I went back and I read it, I was like, this sounds like one of those good ancient prophecies and I want you guys to hear it because sometimes they say cool things in the Bible and this is one of them. Daniel has a vision in chapter 7. I saw in the night visions and behold with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man comes like the Son of Man, and he is presented to the Ancient of Days. The Son of Man is Jesus. Ancient of Days is God the Father. And so this is a messianic prediction about Jesus ascending to the throne and being the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. So when he says in the New Testament, Thy am the Son of Man, the Son of man has no place to lay his head. When he refers to himself like that, he is referring to Daniel seven. He is declaring his divinity while at the same time he's declaring his humanity. And I think that's a really interesting name and choice for Jesus to make to constantly declare his humanity. And I think it's even more interesting that Luke decided that this needed to be a theme of his gospel. There's other themes within the gospel. We spent the spring in the book of Luke, and we talked about it being the hospitality gospel, that throughout the book of Luke, Jesus is either going to, attending, or coming from a meal. It's the hospitality gospel. There's around the table. But another theme of Luke, another thing that he weaves throughout the gospel is the humanity of Christ. Which brings us back to our question for the week. Why did Luke craft an entire gospel with the intent of displaying Jesus' humanity? Why did Luke craft an entire gospel with the intent of displaying Jesus' humanity? What is so important about that? Why should it matter so much that Jesus is a human? Why did he himself choose a name that would highlight his humanity the entire time? Why did Luke, one of the gospel writers, decide to craft an entire gospel to display that aspect of our Christ? Why is this so important? This is an important question that I've been wrestling with all week. And the more I wrestled with it, the more aspects of it that I thought about, even kind of diving into what does it mean for us to be human? What makes us human? And going down that rabbit trail and all the things, what I realized is that there's a story in Luke, in Luke chapter 4, the temptation of Christ, that probably more dramatically and openly and honestly and overtly displays the humanity of Christ more than any other story in the Bible, save maybe the stories around his crucifixion. Jesus is utterly human in this story. And as I went through the story, I realized that the temptations that Jesus has are that Satan offers Jesus and the responses that Jesus offers Satan. I realized that those things actually highlight all of the reasons why it's so important for us to understand that Jesus is a human, that Jesus is man, that he's 100% man and 100% God. And it helps us understand why that's so important. And hopefully, as we move through this, if I do it right, what we'll find is ultimately Jesus' humanity is comforting and inspiring and even an opportunity to experience a little bit of heaven on earth. So let's look at the temptation of Jesus in Luke chapter four and look at the aspects of Jesus's humanity that are on full display for us to see that kind of answer some of our questions. Now, for those of you who are not familiar with the temptation of Christ or need a refresher, at the beginning of Jesus's ministry, he was 30 years old and then he was about to start calling disciples and declaring the gospel and start that process of public ministry. Before he started his public ministry, it took 40 days and he went out in the desert to pray and to fast and to prepare his body and his mind and his spirit for what he needed to do. And this isn't the point of the sermon at all, but it's so interesting to me that Jesus, the Savior of the world, the most capable minister that's ever existed, which is so gross an understatement it is stupid to say out loud. Jesus was good at ministry. Yeah. Okay, let's pray. Go home. That's the best point I got today. Before, he's perfectly capable of the ministry. Before he began it, he went and he prayed and he fasted for 40 days. My volunteers in the room, folks who had stepped into kids ministry, into committees, to being on an elder board, who volunteer with students, who volunteer with the ministry downtown. Those of you who have brought children into the world and started that ministry. Me, as I took over the church. What period of preparation and prayer and fasting do we give ourselves for the task at hand before we just launch right into it thinking ourselves capable? And if Jesus doesn't do that, if Jesus doesn't launch into things without stopping and pausing and praying, then why do we think we can? So maybe there's a season for us where that's what we need to do as we enter into ministry. But he goes to fast and pray, And at the end of the 40 days, Satan comes to him to tempt him. And we see these three temptations that he has. The first one is found in chapter 4, verses 3 and 4. The devil said to him, if you are the son of God, command this stone to become bread. And Jesus answered him, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone. So Satan comes to him, he's maximum hungry. I don't think it's humanly possible to be more hungry than you would be after 40 days. And Satan says when he's maximum hungry, maximum weak, if you are the son of God, this whole time Satan's trying to get him to prove that he is who he says he is. If you're the son of God, then turn this stone into bread and eat it and everybody will believe you. And Jesus says, quotes back scripture, man shall not live by bread alone., how is the humanity displayed in this verse? What we see in Jesus' response is that he's hungry. He's tempted, but he says, I don't need that right now. So what we see is that Jesus feels what we feel. Jesus feels and experiences what we feel and experience. And that's such a short and cheap sentence that if we don't stop, we're going to miss what that means and how profound that actually is. Originally, as I started writing the sermon, I was going to spend the whole morning here because I think it's unbelievable. First of all, Jesus condescended. He was in heavenly form. I don't know what heavenly form is, but it's better than this. And he took on this when he didn't have to and limited himself when he didn't have to. He became a human. It's the ultimate act of humility. I've known a lot of people over the years who want to help the impoverished in other countries. I've not known very many of them to move into that neighborhood. Jesus moved into the neighborhood. He took on human form and he began to feel what we feel. He experienced hunger like we experience hunger. You think God gets hungry? You think God the Father is looking forward to a steak on Father's Day? He doesn't care. He doesn't need food to sustain him. He took on hunger. Jesus was maximum hungry. He lived in a country and in a society that was not wealthy. He said the son of man has no place to lay his head. He wandered around as a vagabond for most of his adult ministry. If you've ever been hungry, people who have ever known hunger, they have a Jesus who can empathize with that hunger because he was hungry. He feels what we feel. I bet Jesus, because he's human, growing up, had insecurities. There was probably some cool kids that didn't like him, and it was hard. I'd be willing to bet that Jesus liked a girl that didn't like him back. I'd be willing to bet that Jesus saw his parents fight. I'd be willing to bet that he was embarrassed, that he was proud. Can you imagine the pride that you would have to fight back if you found out you were the savior of the world? Jesus has experienced all the human emotions that we have experienced. He experienced temptation. He experienced loss. We don't know where or how, but somewhere in between Luke chapter 3, or 2 rather, and Luke 3, Joseph disappears from the narrative. Joseph, his earthly father, who I'm just going to refer to as his father for ease of language, but I know that God's the father. He lost his dad at some point. We're not really given much indication if it was by death or by divorce, but we know that he fades away from the narrative and he's lost in the fog of history. So what we can be sure of is that Jesus understood either what it was to be in a broken home or what it was to lose a father early. Jesus, and I don't say this lightly to make a cheap joke. Jesus had father issues. I've always, I would be very interested to see how Jesus treated older men as he was growing up in his ministry. Because people with father issues tend to revere older men in ways that are different than folks without father issues. And I don't think that we stop to think enough about what it means for Jesus to be a human and to have experienced humanity. Because I started thinking about that too and what is it to be human? And I was reminded of back in the summer of 2020, I started to see a therapist or a counselor. I never know the right word. The one to help me identify and unpack all of my childhood issues. And there was no compelling event that took me there. There was no pressing thing. I just heard from enough people that it was a good practice to see a therapist. And so I thought if it's worked for other people, if it's been a good practice for them, I need to go try it too. And I found it to be an amazing experience. He told me all the things and I fixed it all within about nine months. I'm good now. Never need it again. It's probably time for a checkup, really. But in therapy, as he walked me through things, and I was just telling him about what's going on in my life and different things, and he'd ask me about my past, and it's not all just like childhood and parents, but you do talk about all that stuff in there. He showed this to me about myself. There's things about me that I don't like. There's things about me that if I could wave a wand, I would fix them. If I could wave a wand and give myself more patience, I would. If I could wave a wand and give myself more discernment in conversation, to not be such a dummy all the time, and for the joke that you don't need to go for, I would waive it. There's rough edges of my character that if you gave me the option to get rid of them, I would. I just don't know how. And you start to talk to your therapist about things like that. And what he helped me see is, yeah, those things are a part of you, but they're a part of you because of how you were brought up, the environment you were raised in, the things that happened around you. Those things are a part of you because of so much that was so outside of your control that you really can't even be blamed for those things being in your life. Now, it doesn't mean that as adults we shouldn't deal with those things and cope with those things and try to work them out of our life, but their very existence in our life is not our fault. And I started to learn, because I always thought that when somebody messes up, when somebody does something that they shouldn't do, that that's their fault. And if someone's living a life of bad choices and they're throwing their life away, that's their fault. They need to get their head out of their rear end, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and do the right thing. And I thought that about myself, too, that anything that existed within me that was bad and wrong and displeasing to God and displeasing to myself, I needed to figure it out and white-knuckle it and just walk my way to health. And what I learned in therapy is that that's not how that goes. The things that are a part of me that I didn't want, I didn't put there. Life did. It's just humanity. And learning that about myself gave me a deep empathy for the people around me. I know that it's difficult to tell at times, but it's deeper now than it used to be. It helped me understand if I didn't choose my brokenness, then they didn't either. And the bad habits and the bad behaviors and the bad attitudes and all of those things that exist in their life were not chosen by them because they want them. They are products of the environment that they were brought up in. Those are things that happened to them, not things that they chose. And then those things cause behaviors that are unattractive, but they don't like those behaviors either. It gave me a deep empathy for others. It helped me understand that when I meet a grown man who wants to tell me his 40 time or is proud of how loud his car is or something, that he's not just a jerk. He is a jerk because nobody cares about that stuff. But he's also just saying in an undeveloped way, will you please like me? Will you just tell me that I'm enough? Will someone give me some approval? It helped me realize we're all just bags of insecurities and coping mechanisms. And some of us just learn to do it better than others. But it gave me a deep empathy for humans. And I say all that to say that Jesus was a human too. Jesus carried those things. Jesus had to work through his brokenness and his loss and his disappointment. Jesus watched that happen in the people around him. He saw that too. This is why I honestly believe that when we sin and we mess up and we make life choices and involve ourselves in patterns and habits that Jesus wouldn't choose for us, that when he sees us do those things, I truly don't think that his primary response to us is frustration or anger. I think it's pity and hurt and love and empathy. I think he sees our hurt driving us into places of deeper hurt, and he's just waiting and begging for the day that we come back to him and allow him to heal us. I think it's that song we sing, Reckless Love. There's no mountain that he won't climb up. There's no wall he won't kick down. Like he's coming after us. He sees you hurting and hurting yourself and he's relentlessly pursuing you. And listen, I don't think he's mad at you for your sins. I think he watches your sins and it hurts him that you continue to hurt yourself in that way because he's a human and he knows why you're doing it and he has deep empathy for it and he wants you to stop. It matters so much that Jesus feels what we feel. The other aspect of his humanity that we see in the temptation of Christ is that the second temptation. Your notes say verse 7. I'm going to start and their glory he's offering in the kingdoms of the world. For it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you then will worship me, it will all be yours. And Jesus answered him, it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. So Satan takes him to where he can see the kingdoms of the world and he says, they've been given to me. If you want them, I'll give them to you. All you have to do is worship me. And Jesus' response is, I am only allowed to worship God the Father. And so what this reveals is Jesus serves who we serve. Jesus serves who we serve. He's subject to the same laws and edicts that we are. He doesn't say, I only can worship myself. He says, no, I can only worship God the Father, no one else, which means that Jesus was subject to the same laws that we were. He followed the Ten Commandments perfectly. He followed the law of the Old Testament perfectly. He was a human who was tempted to break the law, but he didn't. He still followed God's laws like we do. He didn't think that he was too good for them. Last night I was watching Bluey with Lily, my daughter. And if you are a parent of, I don't know what the age range would be, of a kid under 10 and you don't know what Bluey is, you're not a good parent. It's amazing. We're watching it, and in this particular episode, there's two little kids. Their little dog's Bluey, and Bingo is the little sister, and Bluey is the older sister, and then they've got a cousin named Muffin. All this is important, okay? Don't forget these details. And Muffin's coming. She's riding with Uncle Scout or whoever over to Bluey and Bingo's house. And Muffin asks her dad if she's special. And dad says, yes, you're very special. And then dad says, you're the most special kid on the planet. And I'm watching it thinking, that is not smart. That's not smart. Your kid is not the most special kid on the planet. No kid is. And they get to Bluey's house, and they start to play. The three kids start to play, and they're playing a game, I think, called Library. And you've got to check out the book, and you can only check out three. And Muffin is doing whatever Muffin wants to do. Muffin doesn't want to check out three. Muffin doesn't want to be quiet. Muffin's not following any of the rules of the game. And so Bluey and Bingo go complain to Uncle and Mom, hey, Muffin's not playing right. And they're like, just let Muffin play however Muffin wants. Like, okay. So they go back, and Muffin's behavior is ruining the game because Muffin believes that she is the most special child to ever exist and doesn't have to follow any of the rules. And so finally it comes to this point where Dad's got to get involved. So he goes and grabs Muffin and says, why aren't you playing right? And Muffin says, well, because I'm the most special child, I don't have to follow the rules that anybody else follows. And he says what a good dad would say. I'm sorry, I was wrong. You were not the most special child. You're the most special child to me and your mom. You're not more special than them. Okay. I say all that to say that Jesus did not go through life as God's special little boy, okay? He didn't just declare, I'm Jesus, I can do whatever I want, none of the rules apply to me. He lived with the same humanity, the same restraints, the same limitations that you do. He did not go through life thinking that he was special and some sort of exception. So the challenges that you face with being Christ-like, being godly, trying to follow the rules and do what the Bible says, trying to learn the Bible and apply it to your own life, Jesus faced those too. Jesus serves who we serve. He follows the laws that we're told we're following when we love God and love others. He was challenged just like you were. The last one is of particular interest to me. We see it down at the end of the story, verses 12 and 13. Satan has just told Jesus, he's taken him up to the top of the temple and he says, if you're really God, if you're really who you say you are, then fling yourself off the temple and God will send his angels to capture you. And this is Jesus' response. And Jesus answered him, it is said, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time. Before we unpack what's there in the temptation in Jesus' response, I included that last verse. Satan departed from him to return to him at a more opportune time. It's not as if Jesus had this one encounter with Satan and then was not tempted for the rest of his life. I have a note in my Bible that I wrote years ago that Jesus had moments of weakness too. Satan would prey on him at opportune times. So this resisting of temptation, this humanity that he experienced wasn't just a one and done deal here at the beginning of his ministry and now you're good. This is a persistent, pervasive thing. But in this response, it's fling yourself off and surely God will catch you. Jesus says, it is not right to put the Lord your God to the test. Now this is interesting because Jesus is God. And Jesus later says to Pilate, when Pilate's trying to ask if he was the king, he says, dude, if I wanted to get out of here, I could call the angels and they would get me. So we know that Jesus can call on the angels if he wants to. He doesn't need God the father to do it. He could have done this, called on the angels himself, not been in violation of any laws or any rules, I'm in perfectly fine. But he says, no, I can't do that. It's not right to put the Lord your God to the test. Because if angels are going to come rescue him, it's not going to be because he insisted on it. It's going to be because God acted for him. And so what we see is that Jesus relies how we rely. Jesus relies how we rely. Jesus relies on God the same way that we rely on God. And the phrasing there is a little funny because I wanted it to fit in with the other notes because that's what good pastors do. But I'll explain it a little bit. I think of it this way. When Jesus went through life and was performing miracles and was preaching and teaching and was directing people and doing what he does, he didn't do all that with his Jesus powers. He did that with his Holy Spirit powers. He didn't perform miracles because he was Jesus from his Jesus powers. I don't know how to talk about it as if he's not in the Marvel universe, but that's how I think about it. He didn't use his Jesus powers. He prayed, and through the Holy Spirit, he healed. He prayed, and through the empowering of the Holy Spirit, he cast out demons. He prayed, and through the Holy Spirit, he was guided in wisdom. He prayed, and through the Holy Spirit, he was strengthened for obedience. He relied on the Holy Spirit the same way you rely on the Holy Spirit. He did not skate through life being Jesus, finding it within himself to do Jesus' things. He relies on the same God that you rely on. When he hurt, he ran to God for strength and for comfort. We see him do this. We see his humanity on full display in the Garden of Gethsemane where he falls on his face praying the night of his arrest and eventual crucifixion, God, please don't make me do this. Yet not my will, but your will be done. He did it God's way. He relied on God during his ministry when he would perform miracles. Not only is he praying to the Spirit to bring about this miracle, but then when he's done, he says, don't tell anybody I did this. It is not yet the proper time. He's sensitive to God's timing. He's reliant upon God for direction on the timing of when he should be crucified. Jesus relies on who we rely on. He prays like we pray. He needs the Spirit to move and to comfort and to cajole and to convict in the same way that we do. And so in all these different ways, we see on full display in the temptation of Christ, the humanity of Christ. And we see that he feels what we feel, that he serves who he serves, that he relies how we rely. And this makes him different than any other God in the pantheon of gods that we've invented or created or thought about on this earth. There's no other God that condescends to take on human form and offers his very presence to us, to understand us, to walk with us, to feel what we feel. And there's no other God that can offer this. And this is, my wife pointed this out to me. This is why she's my number one sermon counselor. But she pointed out this, and this is what the humanity of Jesus is driving to, that Jesus offers empathy over sympathy. Jesus offers empathy over sympathy. When we see somebody hurt, before we had a miscarriage, Jen and I, and somebody would miscarriage, I could offer them my sympathy. I'm so sorry that happened to you. That must be difficult. But when it happened to us, he gave us the gift of empathy. And the gift of empathy, there's a couple at the church who miscarried recently. And it had recently happened and I had not called them and I saw them in church during worship. And I was able to just walk up to them and give them both a big tear-filled hug. And none of us said a word. And we all knew exactly what I meant. That's what empathy does. You know when you're going through something and you want to talk to somebody about it. You want to talk to somebody who's gone through it too. When Jen lost her dad, she wasn't super interested in people comforting her that had not walked through that. There's just something to knowing that the person you're talking to has that shared experience. Jesus has shared our experience. When we pray, we pray towards empathy, not sympathy, not a condescending God who doesn't understand the human experience and the human existence. We pray to a God who literally whispers into the ear of the Father as we pray. It says Jesus, Romans 8 tells us Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father interceding on our behalf. Going, I know what they're going through. I've been there. I get that. I understand it. Father, here's what they need. Do you realize that when you pray, you pray to empathy and how powerful that is? in this way, praying to a God that empathizes, understanding that Jesus is human, that Jesus offers us his presence. We can run to him with anything, and he is there with us, and he is present with us. This is why he leaves his spirit and says, it's better than me. I will be with you through my spirit. This is why I think Luke chose to highlight this in his gospel. This is why I think Jesus declared his humanity over and over and over again, and why it's on full display in all the gospels, particularly Luke. Because he wants you to know that you serve a God who feels what you feel, who serves the way you serve, who has to rely on God the way that you rely on God, and ultimately, who offers you his empathy and his comfort, not just his sympathy. And I think that's a pretty powerful thing that draws us to him. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We need you. And we are grateful that you are here for us. Thank you for the way that you love us, for the way that you care about us. Thank you for a Savior who condescended and took on human form, who became one of us so that he might know us and experience us and love us well. Thank you that you empathize with our hurts and our hangups and our habits. We thank you that you are a God who's experienced loss, hurt, frustration, disillusionment, and disappointment. And God, I pray that you would be with us in those things and in those ways. In Jesus' name, amen. Normally, I step off the stage right now, and I let Aaron do his thing. But I was thinking, as we were singing the first first three songs and I was listening to them sing, I'm always moved when people who are gifted with their voice declare it and let their heavenly father who made them that way hear it. I'm always moved when God made musicians on purpose use it to turn people to praise to him because God made them this way on purpose so that they would do this. But it also occurs to me that your heavenly father gave you a voice too. If you're like me, it's average at best. But what better Father's Day gift could we give to our heavenly father than to let him hear the voice that he gave you and declare praise back to him? So as we sing this last song, let's let it go. Let's let God hear us. Let's offer a Father's Day present to him as we allow him to hear the voices of his children declaring his praises.

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten the chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that after the service. We are in the second part of our series called 27, where we're going to be this summer and next summer going through the 27 books of the New Testament and kind of giving you an overview of each book with the goal of kind of raising the biblical literacy of the church, making us more aware of and comfortable with the Bible, and kind of knowing what each of the books are about. And hopefully this series serves to drive you into God's Word. This week we arrive at the Gospel of Mark. Last week we looked at the Gospel of Matthew. And in the next two weeks we'll look at Luke and John. So we're kind of doing a sub-series here in June of the Gospels. As I was thinking about the Gospel of Mark and the message of Mark, I was reminded of a story that I heard a while back. I think I actually heard Andy Stanley talking about this. Andy Stanley is a pastor out of Atlanta. A lot of you know who he is. If you don't know who he is, you're probably not a very good Christian, but we're happy you're here. But he's a pastor out of Atlanta, really great. I really love a lot of the stuff that he does. And I think I heard him tell this story, but I also went online and it's been written about a couple different times in a couple different ways. But in January of 2013, then President Obama, he had just been reelected, and he invited Andy Stanley to come give a sermon the morning of his inauguration at St. John's Episcopal Church. And in this room was going to be, of course, Barack and Michelle and their family, but cabinet members, his staff members, very high-level people, easily. This is the most powerful room in the world. And Andy Stanley is invited to give a sermon to the most powerful person in the world. And it makes me wonder, when I first heard this story, my immediate thought is, oh my gosh, what are you talking about? What do you preach to that room? What do you preach to someone who's about to take the oath of office for the President of the United States. And I wonder what you would say if you had 20 minutes before the next president takes office, regardless of your political affiliations. I couldn't care less what they are. Just stick with me on this. Don't be the guy that's listening to this part of the sermon being like, I'd tell you what I'd tell him. No, you wouldn't. No, you wouldn't, all right? Shut up. What would you actually want to say to try to be maximum helpful and inspirational to the leader of the free world? It makes me so nervous to think about that and what I would say. But here's what Andy Stanley said, and it's stuck with me ever since. He asked this of President Obama. What do you do when you realize you're the most powerful person in the room? He's saying this to the man who is and will continue to be the most powerful person on the planet. And to a very powerful room, Andy Stanley says, what do you do when you realize you're the most powerful person in the room? He speaks right to where they are, and he answers it with this. You leverage your power for the benefit of the other people in the room. What do you do when you realize you're the most powerful person in this space? You leverage that power and that authority and that influence for the benefit of the people around you, not for yourself. That is a great message to the President of the United States. I don't know what the passage was. I looked hard to try to figure it, to try to find it, to try to find the actual sermon, because all that is, all that you can find if you Google it is a bunch of really conservative Christian online magazines who are upset that he called President Obama the pastor-in-chief during the sermon. Everybody got all worked up about that. So there's tons of articles that he had the audacity to say that, which who cares? And you can't find the actual sermon text. I wish I could find the sermon text because I'm certain, I'm certain that Andy preached this out of the Gospel of Mark. I'm certain that he did. Because I bring up that story. What do you do when you're the most powerful person in the room? You use your power and your influence for the benefit of the people around you. And he looked at President Obama and he said, you are in a very big room. My hope and prayer for you is that you will leverage everything that you have to make it better for the people around you. I wish every government official could listen to this sermon the day they took office. And I'm certain that the sermon came from the Gospel of Mark because that distilled down is the message of the Gospel of Mark, is to be a humble servant. Last week, I told you that Matthew was written to the Jewish community and depicts Jesus as a king. This week in Mark, Mark was written to the Romans to depict Jesus as a servant. Mark was written to a Roman audience and depicts Jesus as a servant. Mark was written by a guy named John Mark. You may recognize him if you're familiar with the book of Acts. After the first missionary journey, Paul parted ways with him and Barnabas, and then eventually John Mark got back in Paul's good graces and was with the disciples during this time. He was also very close with Peter, and his gospel is really a collection of the stories that Peter told John Mark. So this is almost the gospel according to Peter, but John Mark happened to be the one that wrote it down. It's a very urgent gospel. It's a very quick gospel. If you've never read a gospel before, I would tell you to start with Mark. It's very action-packed. It just goes from one thing to the next, and it's a very succinct gospel, and it was the first gospel written. And again, it was written to the Romans because the Romans were very prevalent in that day and age. And it was written to portray Jesus as a servant. And it's interesting that each of the Gospels is written to a different audience. Matthew is written to the Jews, Mark to the Romans, Luke to the Greeks, and John to the whole world. And in each case, Jesus is depicted in such a way that it's very clear that the author's intent is to kind of arrest your attention and make you look at this Jesus figure. So when you're a Jewish person and Jesus is depicted as the king, that's what you expect him to be. So you're listening, you're all in. When you're a Greek person and Jesus is depicted as a man, as a human, you're all wrapped up in humanity and humanity being the apex of creation. And so you're paying attention. When you're reading the Gospel of John and it presents this man as a god, you're leaning in. That's interesting to me. And so to a Roman person, getting a message about this all-powerful creator god who takes on human form and is the most powerful person, literally, who has ever lived, it would arrest your attention to note that he was a servant. Now, why is it so powerful to depict Jesus as a servant to the Roman audience? Well, to a Roman, the whole point of having power was not to have to serve anyone else. To the Roman mind, the whole point of accumulating wealth and influence and power and authority was to put yourself in a situation where you didn't have to serve anyone else. You had someone serving you. To grow were very comfortable with servanthood. They did not have the sensibilities that we had. If you were a rich person, you had some servants. How you treated them was up to you. And to be a servant was to be the lowest of the low. It was better to be poor and have your own hut to live in, but no one telling you what to do every day than it was to be the servant in the home of a rich person where you just lived at their beck and call. Or beck and call, I don't know. So to the Roman mind, they would never ever have expected Jesus to be depicted as a servant because that was the lowest of the low. And to them, as you accumulated power and authority, you accumulated servants. The whole reason for having more power was so that you had to do less things for yourself. And you know, even though in the United States, we certainly don't have a servant or slavery culture, but we do think of authority and power in a lot of the same ways. We do think that to grow in authority and to grow in power and influence means that you have more people around you to do more things for you. We start to develop this idea that certain tasks are beneath us. I don't have to do that anymore. Remember, I saw one of the guys on Shark Tank, one of the sharks in the NBC hit show, Shark Tank. If you haven't heard of it, I'm not going to explain it to you. But they're billionaires, and one of them makes a comment that he doesn't wear a watch. And they were like, why don't you wear a watch? He goes, I don't need to. Whenever I get somewhere, I'm on time. And you're like, oh, oh, you're a jerk. As people accrue power and authority and influence in certain circles, we just assume that there's going to start to be some tasks that are beneath them, and there's going to be rights and privileges that come with their influence and power. One of my favorite stories that came out of the Donald Trump presidency, don't worry, I'm not going to say anything. Just know that whenever, if you're a pastor and you say any president's name at all, the whole room goes. This is going to be fine. I've read biographies, different accounts. This is, this is, this is, this is actually, this is a verifiable fact that in the Oval Office, I believe underneath the Resolute Desk, the Resolute Desk is the name of the President's Desk. If you didn't know that, I will not belittle you for not knowing things about the Bible here, but come on, that's just basic U.S. stuff. You got to know what the Resolute Desk is. There's a button under the Resolute Desk, and President Trump would delight in having guests into the Oval Office, and he'd say, hey, watch this, and he would press the button, and a few minutes later, a waiter would come in with ice-cold Diet Cokes, and he would love that this button would usher in Diet Cokes, right? And I think that's delightful. And I've heard, I've read somewhere, I don't know if this is true, I just want to believe it to be true, that Joe Biden kept that, President Biden kept that button in place, and for him, they bring in ice cream sundaes. Isn't that fun? I love it. Grandpa Joe bringing in ice cream sundaes for the kids. This is great. Now, what we would expect and what the Romans would expect is for Jesus to be the one hitting the button. And what Mark says is, no, he's the one bringing the Cokes. He's the one in the kitchen waiting for the call, cracking it open and pouring it over ice and bringing as many as is needed, and he's doing it with a smile on his face. That's who Jesus was, and that's how he's depicted. And to a Roman mind that would expect someone in authority to just continue to be in authority the way that everyone around them is in authority. It's pretty groundbreaking to think that Jesus is the one bringing the cokes, not hitting the button. And to the American mind, I think it does the same thing. Because if we're being honest, we don't think of people in authority as typically as the people bringing the Coke. We think of them as the ones that are hitting the button. And so I think if I had to summarize the book of Mark, if there was a summary verse, what is Mark about? What does Mark want us to know? What is he trying to communicate, not just to the Roman audience, but to us and to all people for all time? In Mark's words, what's he trying to communicate? Well, we actually have that in Mark chapter 10, and it's Jesus's words. On the screen, we're going to start in verse 43, but I'm going to start reading from verse 42. Verse 42 says, That is the summary verse, the summary passage of Mark. That whoever wants to be greatest among you must be least. Whoever wants to be first must be last. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve. That's the message of Mark. And I love how Jesus begins this discourse. Do not be like the Gentiles who lord their authority over one another. Have you ever had an experience with someone who got a scintilla of authority and it just went straight to their head and they were the most annoying humans on the planet? I have. His name was Philip, and I'm going to tell you his story. Normally, I do not use names to disparage people. I just say a guy that I know, but this time, Philip has it coming. This is years ago, 24, 25, I'm working for my dad, and my dad's an accountant. In the 70s, he got into this weird niche of accounting where he audits housing authorities. He travels around the country, and that's what he does. And so I'm working for my my dad and I'm on a trip, I think Dallas-Fort Worth, I'm working with Phillip. Phillip is my age. This is his first time on a business trip being the auditor in charge. It's on the work papers. It says auditor in charge, Phillip. I won't say his last name. That's not fair. Then you'll Google him or something. But he's listed as the auditor in charge. It's a big deal. And it's just me and him traveling. He's the boss. And I was very clear. I knew that I had that job because of who my dad was. He had a CPA. As Philip did. He passed the test. I had theology classes. I had nothing. Dude, you're the boss. Whatever you need me to do, I'll do. And so there's this one test that I would run in the test and control series, and I had to schedule out an account. This particular account was about $12 million. And I had to just basically retrace it through the year and make it zero out. And I don't even know what that means now. I don't know how to explain to you. I could get Greg as an accountant, he could come up here and he could kind of translate for you guys. I don't know what that means. I just know that I needed to zero it out. I needed to make sure that everything they were inputting into it had a reliable source and that it all matched up and that they weren't cooking the books, which I'm the guy to make sure no one's getting away with anything financially. I sure do know. Gosh. So anyways, I've got to schedule this thing out. And I'm scheduling it out, and I get the difference down to less than $100. And I'm going back through. It's one of those, I've got to stack. I've got this book, that thing that was printed out on the dot matrix with the green and white paper, and I'm flipping through, and I'm highlighting, and I'm looking, and I got it down to $100, about $100. And once you got the difference down to a small enough amount, you could just put on the cover page to make it all zero out, you could just put that amount there and you could write next to it, immaterial difference, which is accounting speak for, we didn't figure this out, but we're pretty sure it's fine. That's what that means. Like it's,, this doesn't matter. It's a, it's a hundred dollars and a 12 million dollar account. No fraud here, all right? So, I've been working on this thing for six or seven hours. I get it down to a hundred bucks. I can't get it down any lower than that, and I go to Phillip. I say, hey, Phillip, I've got this thing down to about a hundred bucks. Can I just, you cool if I write this off as an immaterial difference? And Philip goes, I just really want to do this one right, Nate. So I need you to go find me that $100. And I'm like, okay. All right. So I go back to the office. I'm like, I got to find this. I got to find the new sheriff in town. It's $100. Okay, here we go. So I'm flipping back to the thing again. I'm looking for it again. I find some stuff. I'm looking and I've got it down. I've got it down to four cents. Got it down to four cents. I know. And I'm just, I've got to find this four cents. I don't even care about Philip anymore. I've got to find this four cents, right? We go to dinner. We're done. I come back the next morning. I spend all morning looking, thumbing through this thing for the four cents. I had it memorized, right? I can't find it. I have to admit defeat. And I'm like, gosh, I don't want to go into Philip's office, but I got to go into Philip's office. I'm like, hey dude, I got it down to four cents. I'm going to write that off as immaterial difference if that's all right. And Philip looks me in the eye and he says, I'm going to need you to find me that four cents. I have never been closer to jumping across a desk and strangling someone out than I was in that moment. I was livid. So I go back to the office and I'm like, I can't find the four cents. Let me see what I can do here. So I grabbed the previous year's work papers. So because every job you go on, you bring the work papers from the previous year in case you need to reference something, see what we did last year, or in this case, discover that your boss is a jerk. So I found the folder. I opened it up. I go to the test that I'm working on. And guess who did that test last year? Philip did. And do you know what he wrote off as an immaterial difference? $208. I'll never forget that number. It was $208 to my four cents, and I was so mad. And I went back to him, and I told him, you know, last year you wrote off $208 as an immaterial difference. I think four cents in a $12 million account seems pretty reasonable. And he said, I need you to find me the four cents. So I went back to the office, and I wrote it off as immaterial difference, and I never looked back. I tried to play nice to you, Phillip, but guess what? My dad's the boss, and I know that he's going to take my side on this, so I'm not even that worried about it. I didn't want to do this to you, but I had to. Don't be like Philip. Gentiles, when they get an ounce of authority lorded over you, and they want to make sure that they're afforded the respect and the rights and privileges that come with leadership, you're going to address me as this, as doctor or pastor or whatever, Mr. or Mrs., if they're C-suite. You're going to address me as this. You're going to talk to me like this. You're going to defer to me. And sometimes when people get in power, they're nice until you start acting like you're equals. Then they got to make sure that you know how things balance out. That's what Gentiles do. They lord their authority over people. And worse than being annoying, when Christians do this, we push people away from God. If you're a leader in any capacity, small to large, and you allow that authority and that position of power and that influence to go to your head, and part of what you try to do with that influence is maintain your influence, and you lord it over people, you're actually pushing people away from Jesus. You're actually harming, you're not just harming yourself and harming your relationship with that person, you are harming the very kingdom of Jesus if you hold your leadership and authority in ways that the Gentiles do. If you hold it for yourself rather than for others. And what's actually interesting among many things that Andy Stanley said to Barack Obama that day is he came back at the end and he said, what do you do when you realize you're the most powerful person in the room? Will you leverage that for the benefit of the people around you? And then he says, and actually, to do anything less than this is to think that you're greater than Christ himself. To do anything less than serve is to act as though you're greater than Christ. Because the greatest one of all time came to serve and to be last. So when we don't do that, we are declaring to ourselves in our tiny little universes that we are better than Jesus. And in church, and this is the converse of this, when we do serve, when we do carry leadership, when we do carry authority like Jesus did, when we do that, we can actually pull people into Jesus by being Christ-like. We talk a lot in church about being Christ-like, about being more like Jesus. When the word sanctification comes up, sanctification is this time period and process from the point in which we become saved. Our salvation process starts to when it is sealed and done when we go to heaven. That intermittent time when we are in God's hand but we are not yet perfected in heaven is sanctification. And I always describe sanctification as becoming the process through which we become more like Christ in character. That's what sanctification is. So in the Christian journey, in the Christian life, we are all of us who would call ourselves Christians, seeking to be more like Christ. And so what Mark says is, if you want to be more like Jesus, serve others more. If you want to be more like Jesus, then anytime you have any influence anywhere at all, use it for the benefit of the people around you rather than yourself. And when you do that, it will draw people into Christ. That's the message of Mark. That when we don't carry our authority and our influence like Jesus does, we push people away. And when we do carry it like Jesus did, we draw people into him with Christ-like character. Now, I know that there are some of you who may be thinking to yourself, like, dude, I'm not in charge of anything, okay? I don't lead anybody. I don't have circles of influence. I don't do that. I'm not in charge of anyone anywhere. I get that. We move into seasons where we have greater and less influence. But I would submit to you that we all do at some point in our life and at some point in our week. Maybe you're a stay-at-home mom. You're in charge of those kids. Might not feel that way all the time. Might feel like they're in charge of you, but you're in charge of those kids. How are you going to exert your authority over them? Are we going to be the kind of parent that makes sure that our kids know who the boss is at every moment of every day? Are we going to be the kind of parent that sits lazily on the couch and the purpose of our kids is to go get us something from the fridge and bring it to us rather than engaging with them? How are we going to use the influence and the authority that we have in our homes? If we go to school and we volunteer, we're in charge of those kids for at least for a small amount of time. If you're over there, you're in charge for a small amount of time. If you're working at Summer Extreme this week, you're in charge for a small amount of time. We all move into places where we are the one who is in authority, where we are the one who has the most influence, where our voice is the heaviest one in the room. And when we are, how are we going to treat it? How are we going to usher a little bit of Jesus into their day, into that moment? Even when we go sit down at a restaurant, we are in authority over our server. What can we do in that meal to serve them, to show them a little bit of Jesus, to make their day a little bit better, to leave a good imprint on them for that day? How can we carry the authority that we have, even in that small situation, to bring them closer to Jesus and not push them further away? We can do this in the drive-through, in a position of authority. We are in authority. The people helping us are the people who are working for us. We can show them a little bit of Jesus just in that moment to draw them closer into our Savior. And if you don't think I'm right, go through a drive-through with my wife, Jen. Because when we go through a drive-through together, this is, I'm not making this up. When we go through a drive-ru together, if we get the food and the drinks and it's done, like we've reached the end of this exchange, and I've not been adequately kind to the people that we've been talking to, she will lean across me and say very loudly, thank you so much, you're doing great, have a nice day. And then look at me. Now, I didn't know there was such a thing as vindictive kindness, but she has figured it out. And she'll sprinkle a little Jesus on both of us on the way. A little bit on them, make their day better. A little bit on me, make my day worse, but I need to get better. I think we need to realize when we have opportunities to act in unexpected ways, to show people the kindness that exudes from our Savior, be those conduits of grace that we talk about being around here. But to more of you, not maybe more of you, but to a big portion of you, you do have some authority. You do have people who work for you. Maybe you're a team lead. Maybe you just got a new job and there's new people that are listening to you now and you've got to figure this out. Maybe you've got two employees. Maybe you've got 200 or 2,000. I know that we do have a lot of leaders in this church. And to those of you who do have people working for you, those of you that do have the opportunity to influence. Now here's what I would say about you, the ones that I know who do carry influence here. I know that you know this already. And I know that it means a lot to you to try to be the type of leader that Jesus was. And I know that serving your staff and serving the people around you matters a lot. But let this morning be an encouragement and a reminder for you to dive back into that. If you're here this morning and you do lead somewhere, you're on a board, you run a classroom, you have employees. You run a business. You oversee whatever. And you have been using that authority to serve yourself and to help yourself climb? I get it. That's how the world handles authority. But in your efforts to do that, I just want you to know as a Christian, you're actually pushing people away from you and from your Savior. But Jesus shows us that there is a way to lead and to have influence and authority that will be so radical that it would draw people into him. And for those of you who do lead, I wonder what could be better one day at your retirement party or after you're gone and there's a group of your employees and coworkers sitting around and they're talking about what it was like to work for you, what it was like to be led for you. What if the ones who believe in Jesus said about you, because that person was in my life, I'm closer to Jesus than I would have ever been? What if what they said about you after you retired, and no one's around, and they're not saying this to blow smoke up your dress, they're saying this because they mean it, because God put that person in my life, I'm closer to him than I think I ever would be because I got to watch them serve God faithfully for years. What a privilege it was to work under them because of what it showed me about who their Jesus was. What if the people who don't know Jesus but work for you would say about you, after seeing you at your best and your worst, after watching how you leverage your influence and authority, what if they were to say about you, you know what, I don't share the faith that they do, but they're one of the ones that I believe when they say it. I don't know that I believe like they do, but I know that they believed. I know that they love their Jesus. They were the real deal. We all, in different times and different ways, move into and out of positions of influence. The message of Mark is that when you find yourself there, remember, you can leverage your authority to get people to serve you and do what you want. But that's not what Jesus did. And that's not what he told you to do. And I am convinced that the best thing possible that anybody could say about you after working with you or for you or being under your leadership for any amount of time is, I am closer to Jesus because God put that person in my life. And we get them there by serving them. That's why Jesus says, whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me. So whether we lead in small ways at the drive-through or in big ways, leading in life. We should carry that leadership and that influence and that authority like Jesus did and try to use it to serve others. Now a couple practical things on how we do that and I'll wrap up. Two things. How can we begin to be people who serve like Jesus served? Well I think one of the things we can do is that we can begin to equate serving with being Christ-like, not being belittled. We can begin to equate serving with being like Christ, not being belittled. This week, I reached out to an old friend of mine who is a pastor about an hour and a half away from here. And he and I worked at summer camp together years ago and have loosely kept in touch. And I emailed him and I just said, hey, man, I'm so sorry that it's taken me six years of living this close to you to try to get together, but I'd love to get together and just talk as pastors and buy you lunch sometime. Let me know if that's going to be possible. And he emailed me back, and he said, is Ruth's Chris or nothing for me, which is pretty typical of this guy. It's funny. And then he says, I'll have to get back with you on when. If you don't hear from me, feel free to email me again. And I thought, nope. If you don't email me, we will never speak in our whole lives. Because what did he do? He belittled me. Made me a secretary. I'm not your secretary. But as I was preparing the sermon, and I wrote that point, well, looks like I'll be emailing John. Because it's an opportunity to be Christ-like, not to be belittled. When we get asked to do something that we feel is beneath us, jump at it. Do it. It's an opportunity to be Christ-like, not be belittled. The second thing we can do is we can pray this prayer of confession and repentance. And as we consider the message of the gospel of Mark, and we consider this idea that to be first we must be last, to be great we must be least. I would encourage us all to pray this prayer together as I pray here in a second, but the prayer is simply this. Father, show me where I'm leveraging my power to be served rather than to serve. Whatever power and influence you've given me, however loud my voice is in a particular room, would you please show me where I'm using that influence and that authority for myself and not for the people that are around me? And in praying that prayer, hopefully he will open our eyes to greater opportunities of service and servanthood so that we can be like Christ and serve people towards the kingdom of God. Let's pray. Father, we just thank you for who you are and for how you love us. We know that your son could have showed up and just lorded it over us, and he would have had every right to do it, to just ascend to the throne, to be the most important and most powerful person in the room. He could have done that, but he came meek and mild, and he came as a servant. God, as you move us into positions of authority and influence, would you remind us of the way that your son came and that your son led and that your son served so that we might do the same? Would you, Father, in your goodness, keep us humble, make us eager to serve, give us a heart that sees the needs of others and meets them where they are, and deflate our egos where they're too big and where they're making it hard for us to serve like we need to. Thank you for your son. Thank you for the cross. Thank you for how you've loved us. 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.