Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Welcome to Grace. Thanks for making us a part of your Sunday. If you're joining us online, thank you for doing that as well. Just a little disclaimer. Panthers fans, it's a total accident that on the day that my Falcons play your weak-willed Panthers that I brought this cup and then face the Falcon towards you. I didn't mean to do that. Here, I'll do this so it doesn't distract you. But you know. We are in the third part of our series called Gentle and Lowly where we're looking at the character of our Savior. And we're seeking to learn more about him. By going through, this is a book, Gentleman Lily is a book by an author and pastor named Dane Ortlund. We had 60 copies. You guys took all of those, which is wonderful. And when I say took, I don't mean steal. I mean, you took them, and I presume you paid for them. I have not looked into the numbers because I don't know how. But if you would like to get a book and read along with us, there's a reading plan for the book and it's available. And if you don't know how to find it, let me know or let us know and we'll help you find it. But before I just jump into what we learned about Christ this week, I wanted to approach it this way. Sorry, now every time I do that, you're going to remember my dumb joke at the beginning of the sermon. I wanted to approach it this way. I think one of the things in life that's really fun to think about is the things that you find to be underrated. I think car rides and silence when you're by yourself, not like with other people, because that's weird, although that is also underrated, because you don't have to talk the whole time, you know. But car rides and silence are underrated. I drove from Atlanta to Raleigh one time without listening to a single thing, and it was actually pretty nice. I think not owning a pet is underrated. I think we overvalue that. But here's one of the things I realized, Jen and I realized was vastly underrated a few weeks ago. Chili's. Chili's, as a restaurant, is crazy underrated. So when Jen and I were in college, any time we would want to go on a date, and this was like 2001, 2002, when we met, when we wanted to go on a date, Jen, where do you want to go? Chili's. And she'd get the same thing every time. And I'm trying to bounce around the menu, and we went enough times that A, I knew her answer. B, please don't make me go to Chili's. I hated it. Just like now, as a grown-up, I hate sushi. I didn't used to hate sushi, but it's what Jen chooses every time, and it may as well just be a tasteless nutrition brick for me. I don't care for it anymore. But I think it was during the summer. Jen had the kids, and we were texting back and forth. We're like, let's meet for lunch. And so I said, where do you want to go? We were kind of bouncing ideas. And you know that exercise when you're trying to decide where to go with your spouse. I don't care. Yes, you do. What you'd like for me to do is play the game of guess the places you don't want to go. And I don't want to play that game. So eventually, one of us said, how about Chili's? And we said, fine. So we go to Chili's, and we get our normal order there, which is chips and queso, a triple dipper with Southwestern egg rolls, sliders, and boneless buffalo rings, hot sauce, sometimes honey chipotle if we're feeling crazy. The kids get their thing. Then all four of us share a molten chocolate lava cake. We get out of there for like $40, $ bucks. Everybody ate everything. And then here's one of my favorite parts about Chili's is they have the kiosk on the table now because my least favorite part of any meal when I'm out to eat is waiting for the check and then waiting for the check to be brought back to me. Because when I, when I ask for the check, when I swipe the card, I am, I'm. I'm a fast leaver. People sometimes offer me rides places. Hey, we're going to the same place. Do you want to ride? No, thanks. Because I don't want to leave when you want to leave. I want to leave before you do. So I'm a fast leaver. So when the check comes, I'm ready to go. And if it's slow service during the apps, when you bring the mains, I will ask for the check right then. Because I don't want to wait on you at the end of the meal when I'm full. Anyways, they've got a kiosk. You swipe your card whenever you want. You get to decide when you leave. You don't have to wait on anyone else's permission to go get in your car. It's great. So then after this Chili's experience, Jen and I looked at each other in the car as we were leaving and she was like, you know what? Chili's is always good. And I was like, it is. It always satisfies. Then, like a month later, we went on a date. Or a couple weeks, I don't know. And when you go on dates, you do the thing where you look around, you find the locally owned, you do the Yelp, Raleigh's Top Restaurant. You find somewhere fancy and nice and worthy of the occasion, and you go. And so we went to some restaurant, I don't remember where. And it cost twice what Chili's did for two people, not four. And we get in the car and we're driving home and I was like, how was that? And she's like, it was good. It's fine. And I was like, yeah, mine was fine too. It was good. It wasn't twice as good as Chili's. And so now, when we go out to eat, should we go someplace fancy? Maybe try Chili's. I would encourage you. There's one right across the street, Triangle Mall. Go there for lunch. Tell me I'm wrong. You're going to have a great experience, okay? I just think it's underrated and that we're too fancy for it, and I think that's funny. And I wanted to introduce this idea of things that we underrate because as we sit here in this series and we focus on the character of Christ, we focus on the theology of Christ, and we try to get to know our Jesus a little bit better. I think that there is a thing about the theology of Christ, about the character of Christ, about the miraculous experience and life of Christ that we as believers deeply undervalue. And I think it's this. We do not properly value the condescension of Christ. I do not believe that we properly value the condescension of Christ. I do not believe that we properly value the condescension of Christ from heaven to earth. And when we hear that word condescension, I think we tend to think of it in negative terms. I try to never ever preach in a way where you're condescended to, where I've put myself on some level that you're not yet at, although that's a little bit difficult to say since I'm literally on a level that you are not right now. But figuratively, I work really hard to never condescend to you, which is super easy because I really don't think I'm better than anyone in this room. As a matter of fact, I think there's plenty of ways in which I'm worse than a lot of you. And we as a church do not condescend to each other. We're all humans. We're all equal. We all have our strengths and our weaknesses. We all have our triumphs and our failures. We do not value person to person condescension. And when someone condescends to you, it ticks you off. And when you see someone else being condescending, you think they're a jerk, and you're right. But this word is good when we apply it to Christ, because he literally did condescend. He went from heaven to earth. He went from deity to human. He gave up his divine being to take on human nature. And I intentionally didn't say he gave up his divine nature to take on human being, human nature, because he did not give up his divine nature. Because we believe in our theology, whether you know this or not, we, Grace, would embrace a theology that says Jesus was 100% man and 100% God and the same being while he was here. This, if you like fancy words, is referred to as the hypostatic union. So he never gave up his divine nature, but he did give up his divine being to come and be with us. And I think it's important to choose the word condescend because it kind of arrests our attention because of the negative connotation we give it. But it forces us to deal with the reality, no, no, no, he really did. He really did give up a great deal to be placed on par and live as equals, as an equal with us. And I think that there's two big reasons, maybe even three, why we don't properly value the condescension of Christ. And the first I want to point out this morning is I think we fail to think about what it cost him to come down here. I think we fail to think about what did Jesus give up to become human? And he gave up his divine being, at least for a time. He gave up being in heaven forever. He's the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. He holds the keys to death and Hades. He lived in heaven in a perfect union with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, surrounded by angels. In Isaiah chapter 6, we have a description of the throne room of God in which seraphim are flying around the throne, and there is no roof, and the robes of God fill the temple with glory, and we are told that Jesus sits at his right hand, and the angels are singing, holy, holy, holy, glory to God in the highest. He left that for Nazareth. And I was trying to think, what did Jesus give up to come be with us and live in our squalor? And there was no apt comparison. And the reality of it is, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what heaven is like. But here's what I'm certain of. That if one day, if we believe in Jesus and we go to heaven, when we get there, we will marvel at the fact that our Savior gave up this to come to this. And I don't think that we often enough reflect upon, as believers, what it meant for Jesus to give up divine being to take on ours. And I'll tell you, I tried to think of an example or an illustration of this, and they all fell so woefully short and fell apart so easily that I thought, I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to say we don't know, but it's a lot. I think we fail to consider what Jesus gave up to condescend to us. I also think we fail to consider what we gain by his condescension. Because I think, we think, we immediately go to the cross. We immediately go to, well, yeah, Jesus was supposed to do this because that's the story of the Bible. As Christians, we encounter scripture and we're told the story of the Bible and it's very quickly within this story that we realize God had sent his son Jesus and so we just kind of accept it as reality. I think it's the same way that we think about being born in the United States versus being born in Afghanistan. Do you realize how much better your life is because you were born in the United States than if you were born in Afghanistan and how random that lottery has to be? Like, I don't think any of us, maybe July 4th. What a good country. But other than that, we don't walk around in gratitude for it. I'm not saying that we should. I'm not being an advocate for that right now. I'm just saying, comparatively speaking, our lives are easier than people who were born in less fortunate countries. And we were born in the fortunate country of Christianity, and we just accept the facts and truths of Christianity without ever considering how fortunate we are to exist in them. And the place that we miss that the most is what do we gain from the remarkable condescension of Jesus Christ to take on humanity? And I think that the answer to this question is best summed up in Hebrews chapter 4 verse 15, where the author of Hebrews writes, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet he did not sin. And I'm going to read 16 too, because we're going to come back to it later. Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. So in this verse, two things I see that we gain. The first thing we gain is that statement, he's able to empathize for our weakness, for he has been tempted in every way, just as we are. Do you understand that his temptation is just the same as ours? There's this famous story in the Gospels where Jesus is tempted by Satan. He's fasted in the desert for 40 days, and Satan comes to him, and he says, you're pretty hungry. This is paraphrase. He says, you're pretty hungry. Why don't you see that rock? Why don't you just turn it into bread and eat it? Satiate your hunger. And Jesus refuses to do that because he's going to honor God and he's going to keep his commitment. And this temptation is probably more ubiquitous to us because none of us, I don't think, have fasted for 40 days. We fasted for a day or two and we understand the pangs of hunger. But we might look at that and we go, I can't relate. But here's how you can. What Jesus did in that moment is choose holiness over his appetite, is choose discipline over what he wanted. He refused to be led by his appetite. Instead, he chose to continue in his service to the Father. And in Philippians, Paul is condemning people. And the way that he condemns them is he says their God is their appetite. Their God is their belly. And what he means is whatever their little heart wants, it gets. They're like, we're like spoiled children with rich parents who give us whatever we want so we'll be quiet. And what that verse means is they gave way to their desires, whatever they were. They wanted more drink, they had more drink. They wanted more food, they had more food. They want to experience that pleasure, they will experience it. They want to be tempted by this person or by that person, they will give in to that temptation. They want to be lazy, they will do that. And as humans, we know. We constantly give in to our appetites. We constantly give in to whatever our little heart desires. And in Jesus, we have an example of someone who fought that temptation, representative of myriad things. Then, Satan says, bow down to me, and I'll give you the kingdoms of the earth. He tempts Jesus with power. Compromise yourself in this way and I'll grease the skids of success over here. Compromise yourself in this way and life will go a little easier. Compromise yourself in this way and you'll save a little bit of money. Do I need more examples? Where we're tempted to compromise ourselves in such a way, compromise our morals and our standards and what we believe God wants us to do and even things that we told God we would do so that we might have things easier on the other side, right? Then in the last one, he says, you're God. Throw yourself off this cliff and let the angels come and rescue you. He tempts him with ego. Oh, you think you're God? Prove it. Right? Someone condescends to you. What do you want to do? You want to get them right back. Someone sends you an email, a customer, a client, a co-worker, a family member, sends you an email that condescends that you don't really appreciate, what do you want to do? Right? And I'll confess, sometimes I type those out. I just get it out. And then I look at it, and I send it. No, I'm just kidding. I press delete. I press delete, and then I give it 24 hours and I type it again. We are familiar with this temptation. In word and action indeed. Jesus faced all the temptations we do. To put a finer point on it. I know this is weird to think about Jesus in this way. But Jesus was a single man. Jesus was a powerful man. Jesus was a man that a lot of people liked. You don't think he ever thought about talking to a woman? You don't think that never occurred to him? He was around wine. He likely consumed wine. You don't think he thought about one night just giving in? Having more than he should? Or maybe he abstained totally, but he was around it. You don't think he ever considered it? You don't think he ever considered when the crowds thronged around him and he was exhausted? You don't think he ever considered going, get away from me. Do you understand I'm the savior of the world? Do you understand I don't have time for this? I'm exhausted. Can you just talk to my assistant? Talk to Andrew and he'll set up an appointment for you. Will you leave me alone? You don't think he ever considered being rude or impatient? Here's one that just occurred to me. If I were Jesus, I'd be tempted when everybody around me was hungry to just be like steaks, you know? You don't think he was ever tempted to do stuff like that? Of course, of course he was tempted. Of course he was. And here's why that's such a powerful truth. Have you ever been in a room, a group of friends, a small group, and watched someone confess something that was hard, that was embarrassing, that was private and in the shadows, and they brought it into the light? Have you ever watched someone do that? And then every time I've seen that happen, which has always been people confessing things to me. I'd never have anything to confess to others. But every time I've seen that happen, I've never, I've never, ever seen it not met with comfort and grace. And what's the most powerful thing that can happen in that situation? Even if there's someone who doesn't struggle with that, but they meet you with comfort and grace, how much more comforting is it when they go, I know I struggle with that too. I've watched in groups of men and in circles, small and relatively large, where someone will say, can you just pray for me and my wife right now? We're in a really difficult season. This and this are happening and we're two ships passing right now. And it's not good. And then watch someone else in that circle go, brother, us too. We are too. Or somebody goes, we did that two years ago. We did that five years ago. I've walked that path, man. I understand. And, and the whole space is washed with grace and comfort. You've seen that happen. I think with women, it's, it's more typical that typical that one of them would finally let their mom guilt break through and say, kids suck. And I don't know if I even like mine or want them. I heard John yell one time, I hate having a sister. And I was like, I don't understand that. Sometimes the family is hard. And then there's this sense when a mom will say that, I feel like a terrible mom. I feel like I'm not doing a good job. I feel like I don't enjoy my kids enough. That someone else will heap their mom guilt out too. And then there's this message of grace and comfort that washes over the room. And the reality is marriage is hard and parenting is hard. It's just true. But there's a special thing that happens when we can share with someone else that's had our experience. One of the things I say, and I'm sure it's true of your industries as well, but when I get to talk with another senior pastor, it's just a different conversation. Because they understand things in a way that if you haven't done this, you just don't know. That's not condescending, that's just true. When you talk to someone who has shared your temptations, that's just comforting in a way that can't be expressed. Hebrews tells us that we have a Savior that has. And even though he hasn't given in to them, he understands what they are. And so in his temptation, he offers us grace and compassion. Because of his temptations and because he's faced them and because he's born with us in our weaknesses, we can go to the throne of God. Now here's what else is implied in this about the wonderful condescension of Christ as far as what do we gain from it. It's implied in this verse, I think. It's implicit. And it's explicit throughout many scriptures. Namely, Isaiah 53, calling him Emmanuel, God with us. What we gain from his condescension is his humanity. The fact that he became human at all. Because in his humanity, he offers empathy, condolence, and comfort. In his humanity, he offers us empathy, condolence, and comfort. I pointed out to you the verse John 11, 35 to highlight his compassion. He weeps with us. He's present with us. He's human with us. I've watched people experience great loss. And in that great loss, maybe a wife loses a husband. And it's far too soon. And so she's experiencing this depth of grief. And I've seen people, I've heard people offer her comfort. And it's well-meaning and it's wonderful and it's good and she receives it and she's gracious. But then I've watched somebody come up to her and say, I've walked that path too. I've been a widow for a decade. That's a different level of connection and comfort. Jesus has experienced our grief. Jesus experienced loss. I don't know if you've thought about this. Jesus had a stepdad. So either his dad Joseph, his earthly father Joseph, passed away, or he had an earthly stepdad. Which, by the way, it occurs to me that maybe there was a time when Jesus' stepdad said, look, I know I'm not your dad. And Jesus thought to himself, you have no idea how layered that is. There you go. But if you've lost a dad, or you've had parents divorced, or if you grew up with a stepdad, maybe it was wonderful, maybe it was painful, I don't know. But what I do know is that Jesus has experienced that. Jesus had half-brothers. One of them wrote a book of the Bible, which may be the greatest proof there is of all time that Jesus was who he says he was. Because what would you have to do to get your half-brother to write a book about your deity? He's experienced our pain and our grief and our sorrow and our loss. He's experienced joy. He's experienced triumph. He's walked through all those things. He lived as a human just as we did. And in those things he shares with us. That's what we gain from his condescension, is we gain the fact that he's faced temptation similar to us. We gain the fact that he was a human just like us. And so all the things and all the emotions that go along with humanity and all the ailments that we could experience that go along with humanity, he has too. That's the miracle of his condescension. That's what we gain. Here's another thing that we gain. He chose to experience death so that we don't have to fear ours. He chose to experience death on the cross so that we don't have to fear ours. No passage, in your notes it says Romans 8.39, but after I sent in the notes, I was considering it, and this passage is so much better. It's 1 Corinthians 15, 55 through 57. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. We're told in response to the death and resurrection of Christ, death, where is your sting? Sin, where is your victory? There's an old song that says, hell has been defeated. The grave could not hold the king. In his death, he defeated our fear of our death. In his death, he unshackled us from sin. He said, we don't have to be fearful of death. Last week, last week on Tuesday, one of our wonderful partners, Mike Schenck, passed away from cancer. And before he did, when he was in hospice and incredibly lucid, I was able to go visit with him and his family. It was a wonderful visit. And one of the things that was remarkable to me was the fearlessness, courage, and faith with which Mike was marching to his grave. He knew what was going to happen. And there was no sense of fear in him. He joked. He was confident. He knows his Savior. Looking forward to meeting him. And then Susie's faith was remarkable too. Because if we're being really honest, and I don't mean to be too crass about it, but she's the one left holding the bag. It's worse for her than him. Because now she has to figure out how to do this life post-Mike. But they both had such faith and peace about the horizon they were approaching because Jesus chose to die so that we didn't have to. And now that in and of itself is a remarkable thought. Because death is a ubiquitous experience of all creation. Everything on this earth that was there and that has existed and that did exist faces a death of some sort. Whether it's the slow erosion of a mountain, the eventual fall of a tree, an animal, a bird falling to the ground, or us. Everything dies. It's an experience of creation. It is not an experience of heaven. And what we know about death is it's all awful. There's ways that we die suddenly and we never knew it, and so maybe that experience wasn't bad, but the people around us mourn. But most ways to die are terrible. Some of us have watched people wither away and so much pain that they wish for death. Jesus chose. This is an experience he never had to have. He didn't have to do it. But he knew that by condescending to become one of us, that he would die. And he knew exactly how he would die, which is one of the worst ways humanity has ever cooked up. And he chose that death when he didn't have to. And I don't know how much we think about the fact that he never had to do it in the first place. He came here not only to experience our temptation and our humanity and live in our squalor when he was in heaven. He chose that life, but then he also chose to take upon himself death. It was a choice that he didn't have to make. It's like if I said, hey, after church today, you've got option A, option B. Option A, you go to lunch with people you like. You do Chili's. Thank you. We go to Chili's. We get triple dippers. Let's flood the place. Option A, you go to a meal with people you like. You go home. you watch football, it's peaceful, or you take a nap, or you read, you do whatever your thing is. And then have dinner with the family, have dinner with people you like, go to bed when you want to. Nice, peaceful day. Or, we're going to put you on a plane, and we're going to go let the Taliban interrogate you for information. Which would you choose? Option A or option B? Jesus chose torture. He chose torture. He could have stayed in heaven and had a meal with people he liked, sat at the banquet table. He chose torture, and he didn't have to. And I don't think that we all the time adequately appreciate what it means for Jesus to have condescended to humanity. Because we don't realize what he gave up, and we don't think about what we gained. And what we gained, what he gave up is his divine being. What he gave up is his peace. And what he chose instead is what we would gain. Which is comfort and empathy and temptation. Condolence and compassion in our humanity, and then the possibility to walk towards death without fear, to walk towards death with courage, to walk towards death with peace, and to no longer be shackled to sin. So the condescension, humanity, and death of Christ are a forever reminder of God's provision. The condescension, humanity, and death of Christ are a forever reminder of God's provision, of the way that God provides for us by sending his only son to become those things for us that we could not be, by sending his only son to redeem creation back to himself so that he might create a pathway back to him. And this is the greatest miracle of his condescension because everything that I've just told you gives us peace and comfort and hope in the 40, 60, 80, 100 years that he gives us on this earth. All of that's temporal provision for a time when Paul describes as but a mist or a vapor. He says that we experience discomfort for a short time. Compared to eternity, it's nothing. So Christ's condescension doesn't just provide for us in the short term and in the temporal. It provides for us for all of eternity. It provides for us because he hung on the cross, because he redeemed creation and made a path back to our Father. That is ultimately what Christ's condescension means, but I don't want us to miss what it means for our life on this earth. And so what this all means, and where I want us to go and what I want us to consider is because of the miraculous condescension of Christ, we can in all things look to him. We can look to him in sin. We can look to him in triumph. We can look to him in grief and sorrow and joy and anguish. We can look to him in all things. When we fail, we can look to Christ. No matter how far down we go, we can look to Jesus. No matter how far high we are, we should know we need to look to Jesus. No matter how stressful things are, we should look to Jesus. No matter how broken our marriage or our children are, we should look to Jesus. No matter how much of a failure we feel like, we should look to Jesus. No matter how successful we might feel like we are, we should remind ourselves to look to Jesus in all things. His condescension reminds us that we can look to him for his provision and for God's provision at all times. That's what that miracle means. Now I'm going to pray for us and we're going to have communion together to celebrate that miracle and understand the bread is what was broken, is what was given in the desert to signify God's provision, and we will celebrate God's provision in that way now. Let's pray. Father, thank you for sharing your son with us. Jesus, thank you for condescending to us, for choosing to become one of us, for being tempted like we are, for being a human like we are, for doing that just so we can run to you. Thank you for breaking the shackles of sin and muting the sting of death. Thank you for everything that you do for us here in this life, but most of all, Jesus, thank you for what you will do for us in the next and already have done. May we reflect on that and properly appreciate your coming down to earth and taking on human form. May we walk in gratitude to you with an appreciation of this important part of your character. In Jesus' name, amen.