Nate Rector

Good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. One of the things I... Welcome and all the things. Thanks for coming online, whatever. One of the things I really like about getting to be the pastor at Grace, one of the pastors at Grace, is just how familial we are. We just feel like a family to me. I don't know how we feel to you, but that's how I feel. And one of the things that reinforced that this morning is we moved, some of y'all will notice that we moved the offering around. So we did the offering a little bit different and we tried to pass it. As we're doing it, two of my friends who I don't want to impugn, so I'll just call them Carter and Liz, looked at me. I turned around. They looked at me, and they're like, this is weird. Why are we doing this? And I had to go around and talk to them. Jen goes, where are you going? I said, just give me a minute. And I go around, and I'm like, listen, one of the things that Gibby and I have noticed about the service is that at the end of the service, once I'm done saying what I'm going to say, and then we sing, when someone comes back up here and goes, y'all sit down for just a minute, the whole room goes, oh, Jesus. Nobody wants to sit down for just a minute. We're done. We're ready to go. So we're trying to figure it out. And so I said, just give us a couple of weeks. Like I'm explaining to them in real time why we're doing this. And once I explained it, they were like, okay, that makes sense. We'll give it a couple of weeks and we'll, we'll let you know. So I look forward to the review, you two anonymous women over there. But that is what, one of the things I love about Grace. Last week, we launched into our series called A Letter to Rome, Painting a Picture. And I told you guys last week, and I mean this, and this has come up in very fun conversation too. There's different people that have different feelings about West Wing, some positive, some negative. But I told you guys last week that this was going to kind of be a West Wing series, meaning episode two is really not going to make as much sense to you as episode one if you haven't seen episode one. So my encouragement remains, and I never do this because I'm certainly not going to tout the values of my own sermons. I'm not going to do that. I'm never going to say, hey, you need to listen to last week. That was great. Like I won't, I've never done that. I won't do that. That feels gross. But what I will say is you do need to listen to last week just so you can keep up with this week if it matters to you. So I hope that you'll carry along. Last week in Romans 1, we kind of established those two things. First, this is going to be a different series where it's going to build week to week. Second, more importantly, the theme of Romans 1, what Paul was driving at, we capture at the end of the chapter. And I'm actually just, I'm just going to read it to you by way of reminder. This is how he ends the chapter because he, he greets them. And then he says, and this is where he spent a lot of time last week. God has revealed himself in nature. So no man is without excuse. God's God's revealed himself in such a way that we can all respond to him. Everybody who's ever lived, even someone who's born in a country where they never hear the name of Jesus before living and dying, even they have been revealed. God has revealed himself to them and they are held responsible for their response to that revelation. In the conclusion of Romans 1, he says this, and this is a tough passage, but this is where he lands the plane, and this is where we ended last week, so it's where I pick up this week. He says in verse 28, furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, this is the people to whom God has revealed himself. So God gave them over to a depraved mind so that they do what ought not be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent ways of doing evil. They disobey their parents, Davis. They have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy, although they know God's righteous decrees that those who do such things deserve death. They not only continue to do these very things, but they also approve of those who practice them. So this is a condemnation of society, essentially saying, and those are harsh words, but essentially saying, we are depraved. We are our own lords. We do what we think we should do. And what I said last week is this was true in 65 AD, around which this letter was written. And it is true now. This remains true of us 2,000 years later. That when left to our own devices, we will rebel from God and reject Him. Now, here's what's important. The Jewish mind responds to this with their heritage. So here's what to know about the letters in the New Testament. To whom are they written? We were talking about this in my Bible study on Tuesday morning, which if you're a girl, you can't come. If you're a dude, you can come. If you're a girl, you could come. It would just be weird. Okay. But 6.30 Tuesday morning, we meet right here. And it's my favorite hour of the week. Besides every minute that I get to spend with Jim. Besides that, that's my favorite hour of the week. And we were talking about Thessalonians, and someone said, to whom is this written? Is this written to Jews or Gentiles? It seems it's written to Gentiles. And something that the New Testament letters have in common, so there's the Pauline epistles, Paul's letters, and the general epistles, the general letters that are not written by Paul, but they're still written to people, they're still written to churches. All of them have in common this fact that was true in the ancient world. Most of the churches, Rome, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Colossae, all of them were founded by Jewish people who, because of the diaspora, they found common community. But then they began to add Gentiles to their church. And so when a letter is written, almost always, and I can't think of any exceptions, it's written first to the Jew and then to the Gentile. It's written first to the Jew, and this is really important to understand. It's written first to the Jew and then to the Gentile, but this brings up one of the fundamental tensions in the New Testament. You cannot understand your Bible without understanding this tension. The fundamental tension of the New Testament is for the Jewish believer to say, okay, we accept Jesus as the fulfillment of the promise to our father Abraham. We don't know all the ramifications of that, but we're open to learning them. I mean, place yourself in 40 AD when there's not 2,000 years of liturgy and history and theology, and you're trying to figure this faith out. What we don't think of enough, I think, as Christians is this is not a new religion. This is a continuation. Where you and I sit is a continuation and a confluence and a completion of what began as the Jewish faith. Now, I would not refer to the faith that Abraham had as Jewish. I would refer to it as faith. So do we have faith. It's the same. And if we read Hebrews, we find that to be absolutely true. And as we read Romans, we will find that to be true as well. But here's what we need to understand. We think of, I believe, as Christians, and Americans probably, we think of the Jews as another religion. They're another faith. The Jews are Mormon, They're Buddhist. They're Hindu. They're Muslim. We're closely tied, but they're different. No, I don't want to get into delineating the details of that, but here's what I want us to understand. What we would call the Christian faith is simply a continuation and completion of that faith that began. And in that faith, here's what we need to understand. In that faith, they had laws. They had traditions. They had things that they did all the time. They had ways that they grew up. They had gender roles. They had responsibilities. They tithed. They had festivals every year. One of the worst series I've ever done at Grace was when I made us go meticulously, you remember, through the festivals of the Jewish calendar. I made us do that one September. If you weren't here then, count your blessings, okay? Because I made us do that every Sunday. What a mistake that was. And at the time I was like, oh, this is so great. Anyways, I'm not going to get into it, but I regret it. But I made us do it. Kristen, what's the score? Overtime? Okay, overtime. Hey, no one else needs to say anything. Y'all shouldn't be checking your phone. It's her responsibility. We delegated this to her. Everybody else, you pay attention. Liz, that's twice. Gosh, I've totally, what was I talking about, Aaron? Juice? Yeah, okay. I got it. Thanks. Would y'all be quiet? I'm trying to start back. Gratia, we're too familial now, okay? Everyone needs to calm down. We need to take this more seriously. No, but here's my point, is they had all of their traditions, and those traditions weren't based on their preferences. They were based on what they believed to be law, what they believed God was preaching to them, what they believed God told them to do. So they're living out their traditions wasn't a matter of this is just how we do it in our family or how we do it in our country or how we do it in our culture. This is what God demands of us. So when they would have these festivals, they did it out of a sense of duty and ought and righteousness. When they had house rules, when they had gender roles, they didn't do it out of a sense of preference. They did it out of a sense of duty and ought and righteousness. And it's really difficult for us to think about this tension because what they were tasked with, and I don't think we can respect this enough, what they were tasked with as Jews was, hey, this whole new influx of people is going to become a part of your faith and you need to figure out how to integrate them. That's a huge tension in the New Testament. But that was what they were facing. There's going to be a whole influx of people into your heritage and your faith and you need to figure out how to integrate them. And what we find a lot in Paul's letters is him addressing this tension where the Jewish people, the Jewish congregation, rightly so, not to their fault, just it makes sense, are going, what do they need to do? What should we require of the Gentiles? They need to be circumcised. That at the the very least, needs to happen. That, which is, if we made that the measure of conversion now, we'd have a lot fewer converts, I think. But that's what they said then. They need to be circumcised. They need to follow our rules. They need to do what we do. And I bring up circumcision because that's what the Jews clung to as proof that they were reconciled to God, which is a fundamental idea in Romans chapter 2. Because the Jewish mind says, yes, everything that you said about humankind in Romans chapter 1 is true. All of that stuff, that hard group of verses that I read, that they have no love, they have no mercy, they slander and all the things that's accusatory of humankind. The Jewish mind goes, yeah, but I'm saved. That would be our words. Yeah, but I'm circumcised. Yeah, but I'm Jewish. Yeah, but I have my heritage. And so what we need to understand is the Jews believed they were reconciled by their heritage. And I'm intentionally using that word reconciled because in Christendom and in Christianity, we tend to use the word saved. I'm saved. Saved to what, from what? I don't think that's the most helpful word. I think the most helpful word is reconciled. Because of my sin, because of my rebellion, I have created a chasm between God and I. And now, if I want to spend eternity in his presence, I have to find out how to reconcile myself to him, how to fix that gap, how to close it, how to make things okay. And God in his goodness, and this is what we'll find in the rest of Romans, said, you can't reconcile yourself. So I'm going to send my son to reconcile you for you. But the Jewish mind says, well, because I'm circumcised, which is to them a sign that you are committed to following the law of God. Which basically says, well, because I'm born Jewish and because I follow the rules, I'm in. That's what's reconciling me to God. And the point of Romans chapter 2 is to tell the Jewish people, no, you're not. It is not circumcision that reconciles you. It's actually this in Romans 2 verse 12. This, I think, in my opinion, although it seems obscure, would be what I would look at as the summary verse of the idea that Paul is trying to communicate in Romans chapter 2, which is this. All who sin apart from the law will perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. Now, I know that feels obscure, but here's the point. The Jewish mind says, because I follow the law, I'm good. I'm reconciled. Everything that God said, everything that Paul said about the condition of humanity doesn't apply to me because I'm reconciled to God because I follow the law. And Paul says, no, you're not. The Gentiles can be held accountable for the law, too. They respond to it in their heart. They follow it just like you do. You just have the blessing of greater knowledge of it, but it's not what saves you. It's not what reconciles you. It's not what brings you back to God. And the point of chapter 2 is to help that Jewish mind reconcile itself with the fact that their heritage does not redeem them. It is their faith. And that's what we have to learn from it too. So let's backtrack a little bit and apply that to our thinking. So the first thing I would do as I'm preaching through, and this is one of the things I'm trying to do in this series, is just do justice to the chapter. One of my favorite verses in this book is this here, and I'll get to it. So he's just, we've just read, remember with me, if you will, the finishing verses of chapter one that I read at the beginning that accuse us greatly of being, theologians would say, totally depraved. Here's what he follows with as he begins chapter two, and we land on a verse that I'm about to use, okay? Thanks. Shut up, you're a hypocrite too. That's what he's saying. Hey, pipe down. You're a hypocrite too. You do these things too. So maybe take it easy. That's what he's saying in these first three verses. And then he follows it with this, and this is the one I love. Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance, and patience, not realizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? Here's why I like that verse. We have this, I think, sometimes picture of God that he sits in heaven and he judges us. And we disappoint him. And he's angry with us. And if we were, sometimes I think about, if I were to see God face to face right now, what would his countenance towards me be? And most often I answer that question with disappointment. Because if you were my God and you watched how I served you, wouldn't you be disappointed in me too? So I just assume that he's disappointed. I don't know what you think God's countenance is towards you. But I think most of us think it's probably negative. He's angry. He's disappointed. He's wrathful. But what's true is that that's not true. He loves us. He loves you. He loves you in this moment as much as is possible for anyone to ever be loved. No matter what you've done, no matter what the state of your repentance is, no matter what you brought in here, God loves you fiercely and absolutely. And so this verse reminds us of that because despite that love, all of us have some repenting to do. Don't we? All of us have something in our lives we need to fix. We need to apologize for. We need to own. We need to be better. We need to turn. Remember, repentance isn't just agreeing. Confession is agreeing with God about our sin. Repentance is to turn and walk away from it, to turn the other direction. All of us have some repenting to do, especially Charlie Healy. I can see you right now. All of us have, which is, you're a Panthers fan. All of us have some repenting to do. But I think that sometimes when we think about repentance, we believe that we need to respond to this God that's angry with us and coalesce to him. And that's really not the way that God has postured himself. We are told it's your kindness that leads us to repentance. And this verse, I told Jen right before I got on stage, I said, hey, I'm going to talk about you a little bit. And she goes, oh gosh, what? And I told her and she was like, okay. Arguing with Jen is like kicking a puppy. You can, don't grow too, I don't kick puppies, Elaine. I'm stubborn. I don't know if that's easy for you to believe, but I am. I'm hard-headed. I like to, I actually, I'm one of these weird people. I was talking with my friend Emil about this this week. I'm one of these odd people that I like conflict. One of the reasons I watch, I love West Wing is because they yell at each other the whole time. And I think to myself, I wish I could work in an environment like that where I didn't have to try to be so nice all the time. I wish I could just give it full throttle. I like conflict. When I come at you, I want you to come back at me. And here's why God blessed me with my wife, because she will never do that. If I go at her, she's like, you're right. I'm sorry. And I'm like, no, no, no, that's not how this is supposed to go. So then what ends up happening when we have disagreements, which are scant, they never happen. And they're very surfacy and they don't matter a lot when they do. But when we have disagreements, also I'm kidding. When we have disagreements, it's her kindness that brings me to repentance. It's the fact that if I just say my piece, she goes, yeah, that makes sense. Okay. And then I'm the one talking more going, no, no, no, that doesn't make sense. I'm actually sorry for this and this and this and this. And then I start to own all of the things that I should own. Then I start to take responsibility for my actions. And it's not because she told me to. It's not because she convinced me to. It's not because she got mad at me and argued with me. It's because she was kind and gracious and good. And in the face of that kindness and that goodness and that grace, my instinct is to go, okay, I'm sorry. Here's what I should do. This is how God's kindness leads us to repentance. I've said before, you will win every argument you ever get into with God. If you want to argue with God, you'll win. He will not insist upon you. You just don't want to win those arguments. You're wrong. He'll be gracious with you, and His kindness will lead you to your own repentance. Does that make sense? It's not God being hard on us that leads us to repent and follow him. It's his kindness and his disposition towards us and his love for us that makes us go, okay, okay, okay, I'm actually sorry. I'll do this different. I'll do this better. So I love that verse because we are reminded that it's God's kindness that leads us to repentance. Now I told you the Romans 2.12, that is, I think, the clarifying verse where it talks about the Jewish mind and what they have to do. But here's why I bring that up and I think it's important for us, is I think it's important for the American church to think about what do we believe reconciles us to God? What are we clinging to? This is actually the big question from Romans chapter two is what are you clinging to? What are you clinging for your reconciliation? As we think about this confrontation that Paul has with the Jewish people, and he says, hey, we're totally depraved. Everyone's sinful. And the Jewish mind goes, well, not me, because I'm a Jew. I follow the law. They cling to their heritage to reconcile them and solve this problem. I wonder about you, American church, when you hear that group of verses at the end of chapter one that talks about the state of humanity, what happens in your mind to excuse yourself from that? What happens in your mind to go, yeah, that's Paul talking about other people, not me. What are you clinging to? Because I heard a pastor named Alistair Begg, who has a Scottish accent, so everything he says sounds smarter and it's not fair, Say one time, if you were to show up at heaven and they were to ask you, why should we let you in? If your answer begins with me or I, then you don't understand. Because let me tell you what you should be leaning on for your reconciliation to God. This. Nothing you've done. It's not a prayer that you prayed when you were six. It's not getting sprinkled or dumped. It's not singing the songs. It's not coming to church. It's not reading your Bible and praying every day. All those things are good. But do you know what puts you in right standing before God? What happened here? And that's it. The conclusion of the story with Alistair Begg, and I'll do it in greater justice later, is he pretends that he's a person going to heaven. And they said, why should we let you in? And he says, I don't know. He just said that I could come. I didn't do anything. He just said I could be here. So I think it's important to stop and understand that the Jewish people looked at their heritage. The American church, we look at our rule following. We look at a prayer that we prayed. We look at things that we say or actions that we do or we lean on ourselves in different ways. But it's important to remember that, no, no, no, just like the Jews, the Jewish people in Rome, sometimes we can lean on things that are not actually reconciling us. And what reconciles us to God is the cross. Here's my last thought today. And then I'll wrap up because it's in chapter two, and I think it's important. At the end of chapter two, there's this statement, and I think it's a profound statement. I'm going to start reading in verse 21 because he's talking to the Jewish people. He says this, you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law as it is written? This is the point. God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. This is a hard truth. And here's where it hits home for us. I'm going to do a sermon about this either the week after Easter or I'm going to do a four-part series in September about this point because I think it's important for us. And before I do it, Kristen, we just won. USA. Great. Perfect timing. Thank you, Kristen. Please put away your phone. That statement there, and this is just something for us to think about as church members, as church people. God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you, Paul says. Now, here's where that touches me. The American church, the public opinion of the American church is at an all-time low. People are leaving the church in droves. Kids are growing up in the church and not coming back. We, as a whole scale institution, are failing. And the church is seen as an agent of judgment, of wrath, of harm, not healing and not love. Now, I'm not going to tell you how I think the American church should position itself within our current culture because I think that's tricky. I might tell you later, but not today. But what I will point out is this statement, God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you, speaks to us. Jesus's name is resented amongst the unchurched because of us. Our tendency is to look at people who don't go to church, to look at people who don't have faith, and to blame them and to say, it's your fault. You don't want a Lord. You're not humble enough. You won't follow the rules. You can't get in line. And we kind of blame them for their lack of faith. And what this verse says and what it says to us is, no, no, no. It's our fault. It's the church's fault. And here's why I'm going to linger here for an entire Sunday or a series. Because I think, church, we need to own that. I think we need to own that fault. It is because of the church that Jesus' name is resented amongst the unchurched. It's not their fault, it's ours. So what do we do about it? Here's what I think we can do. I believe this with all my heart. It is what I would admit to you is the primary reason I continue to pastor at Grace. And don't go make more money and have better vacations and a nice mini van. Because I believe that the American church has gotten it wrong. But I also believe that with the people we have here, with the staff we have, excluding me, with the leadership we have, excluding me. We can get it right. And I think that we have an opportunity in this little corner of the kingdom to which God has entrusted us to restore people's faith in Jesus and restore people's faith in church. And I want to do that together. And we do that together by loving people well. And there's so much more to say about that. But I'll leave it there. I think we have a chance at grace to restore people's hope in what church can be and to do things the right way and for it to not be true of us that the Gentiles blaspheme God's name because of us. I think we can lead ourselves in that way. And I hope that we'll be on board with that moving forward. I'm going to talk more about this in the future. So as I finish, let me land the plane on Romans 2, what Paul is getting at, which is we're evil and we're sinful. We need to be reconciled with God. On what are you trusting for your reconciliation? Let me pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for your word. Thank you for Romans and what it is. God, we pray that we would be led to repentance by your kindness, that we would trust in that and that we would see that. God, we pray that the Gentiles, that the people who don't know you, that the unchurched would not blaspheme you because of us, that they would not resent the name of your son because of us, but rather they would be drawn to you because of how we love and how we obey and how we repent that your kindness leads us to. Let us be a reflection of your love onto this world and let grace be a church that restores people's belief in what this can be. We pray these things in your son's name. Amen.

Good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate and I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks so much for making grace a part of your Sunday. If you're watching online, wherever you are, whatever you may be doing, thanks for doing that. If you're hearing this as you're catching up through the week, thanks for making it a point to catch up. I am, this is not a new phrase to you, very excited about this series. This might be my favorite verse that I've ever talked about. We had some good friends over last night who've been at the church longer than us. They were here when we got here, so they're part of the problem. But they were making fun of me because they were talking about this new series, and they were poking at me a little bit. Nate, every series is your new favorite, and every series you're excited about. And here, I will say that that's not true. I didn't care at all for the last series. So not every one of them is my favorite. But I will also say that I really mean it this time. I've really been looking forward to this series. But this series is going to be a little different. It's called A Letter to Rome, Painting a Picture. So we're going to go chapter by chapter through the book of Romans. And what I want you to know about Romans and where we need to start is that Romans is the most technical book in the Bible. It is the most exhaustive, clear, exceptional description of the gospel in all of scripture. Not even just in all of scripture, but in the history of the world. If someone said, I know nothing about the gospel of Christ, to where should I look? Romans. Just read the first eight chapters of Romans. It is a systematic approach and building of the gospel and its necessity and why Jesus died on the cross and what that means. It's an incredibly important book. We have some people here who are attorneys, and you know this better than I. I don't exactly know what it is to cobble together a legal argument to win a case, but the book of Romans is probably the closest thing we have in Scripture to what a legal argument would look like. It's a systematic approach to understanding the gospel. And so here's what we're going to do together. This series is called Painting a Picture, A Letter to Rome. Fine. We're going to go through chapter by chapter until it culminates in Romans chapter 8 on Easter. That's our Easter message. And this is already intimidating and disappointing to me because I did a series a few years ago called The Greatest Chapter and we spent eight weeks in Romans chapter eight, and I didn't think that was long enough. And now in a truncated 15 to 20 minute sermon on Easter, I have to capture Romans eight? No thanks, but that's what I've signed myself up for. We're going to culminate there because Romans eight is the most triumphant, declaratory, wonderful chapter in the Bible. If you want to debate with me about there being a better chapter in the Bible, I don't want to be your friend. It's the best chapter in the Bible. Now, I don't really mean that. I'm sure there's some other great arguments, Colossians 1 and Hebrews 1 and Ephesians 3, but Romans is really good. It is my favorite. Shut up, Zach. We're going to culminate there because it's just this triumphant celebration of what the gospel is. And I'll tell you the Easter message. It's going to be Romans chapter 8 verses, I think, 38 through 42, but don't quote me on that, where he finally declares, after eight laborious chapters of explaining the gospel. Jacob, you don't have to check it right now in real time, dude. You can just let it lie. Although, nod your head if I'm right. After eight chapters of walking us through what the gospel is, Paul concludes, for I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor demons, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, It's the greatest climax of a discourse in Scripture. So what we're doing is building to that on Easter. To do that, this series is going to look a little bit different. Most of the time when I preach, I try to preach to a point. I try to give you one thing to go home and think about, one thing to talk about with your small group, one thing to discuss on the car ride home. And there's going to be other things that I say, but I'm trying to drive to a point. For this series, I feel like it's a little bit different. I feel like my job is to do my best to articulate the point of each chapter. To make sure that we understand why did Paul write this and what is he attempting to drive home. So I'm not necessarily driving, excuse me, to a particular point as much as I'm just trying to bring clarity around what Paul is saying in the chapter. Because of that, I want you to know this too. The two greatest TV shows in human history, and this is inarguable, are Seinfeld and West Wing. Those are the two best. Everything else, third, fourth place. We can talk about it after. Those are favorites. But here's the difference between those two. Seinfeld, you can just turn on any season you want. Season four, episode 13. And you can fully appreciate the content of the show and enjoy it. It's fine. West Wing, if you were to turn it on, if you were to just go home, turn on Netflix, and season one, episode eight, you have no context for what's happening. You cannot appreciate the episode. You've got to go back to the first episode and watch all seven before you get to eight to adequately appreciate episode eight. You have to. So sometimes when I preach series, I think about them as Seinfeld series and West Wing series. And I don't do a lot of West Wing series because as much as I love you guys, most of you are what I affectionately think of as every other weekers. All right? It's difficult to do. I know. It's difficult. I'm here every week because I get paid. So I don't blame you. And you'll never hear me preach a sermon trying to guilt you to be here every week. That's just how I process the congregation. So I get hesitant to do West Wing series because I don't know if you're going to listen every week. And I don't want to disengage you by week three because you haven't caught up. But I'm going to do that now. Every sermon is being preached to lead to the next one. And then once we get to Romans 8, do you know what the series afterwards is going to be? We're going to change the name on you so you don't notice it as much. It's going to be called In Light Of. Francis Schaeffer, a great philosopher and thinker, wrote a book called How Should We Then Live? In light of the gospel, how should we then live? That's what Romans 9 through 16 are. So after Easter, you know what we're doing? After going chapter by chapter through Romans 1 through 8? 9 through 16, baby. We're just hanging out in Romans. I hope you don't get tired of it, because I'm not gonna. But every week, I want you to understand, if you miss, I'm gonna ask you, please listen. Because we're painting a picture. We're building an argument. We're following Paul's arguments so that we understand the structure of the gospel. And it's really important to me to try to honor that. But if I'm going to try to honor that, what I would ask of you is to try to honor it by following every week. Unless you're Carl and Suzanne and you don't even live here, you don't have to listen to Carl. You can do whatever you want. But that's what this is going to be. It's going to be a little bit different, but I want to ask you to follow along. Okay, that being said, that preamble over, let's look at Romans 1 and wonder what is the point of it. What point is Paul making? I would start it here in verse 8. There's a little preamble. He introduces himself. But then he says this in Romans 8. I'm also going to tell you, you have a bulletin. There's two points there. When I ran through the sermon this morning, it was like 52 minutes. So I'm not going to do those points. I'm going to try to get you out of here sooner than that. But when I don't fill them in, don't get upset. We're just going to look at verses today. Romans 1.8 says this, first, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. We don't have the same opportunity that the church in Rome did. We're very aware that we sit in a small church in a small corner of God's kingdom. Rome was able to make a global impact with their faith. But I just wanted to pause there because he's writing this letter to them and he says, first, I thank my God when I remember you because your faith is known all over the world. And I can't help but wonder if Paul were to write a letter to grace about what he's known and what he's heard and what grace has done well with. What would he write and be grateful for? If Jesus were to show up and see our church, for what would we be known? And this is actually what I want you to think about in your small groups this week. Aaron Winston, please put this in the notes. For what do you want your church to be known? We say that our mission is connecting people to Jesus and connecting people to people, and I think that we have some fidelity to that and that we do that well. But if Paul were to observe us and write a letter and say, I'm grateful to you, here's why, would he even say that he was grateful or would he just get on to us? This is what keeps me up at night. Have I been leading a church for darn near 10 years now and we're getting a ton of things wrong? And if Paul had to write us, he would not congratulate us, he would chide us. We should be sensitive to that. But my question here in the beginning of the letter is, for what do you want your church to be known? I hope you talk about that in your small groups this week. And then the follow-up is, what is my role in bringing that about? For what do I want my church to be known, and what is my responsibility in making that a reality? So that's where he starts, and he spends some, the first half of Romans 1 is basically introductory. I'm grateful to you. I'm writing you because I love you. Now let's get into the meat of it. And the meat of Romans 1, I believe, starts in verse 18. We're going to put verse 20 on the screen, but I'm going to read from 18 through 20. Here's what Paul writes. This is the NIV. In the ESV, the English Standard Translation, it says that God has revealed himself in nature so that no man is without excuse. So the point that Paul is making here, and he's building towards one that we will conclude on, the point that he's making is people are wicked. People have sinned. People deserve the wrath of God because we have a divine creator who shared himself with us and we fundamentally rejected him. And whatever you think sin is, whatever you would look at, not yourself, but someone else and go, yeah, they are sinful, however you would define that, whatever you think of when you think of sin, fundamentally, this is sin. The very first sentence in the Bible, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. I am convinced that the Bible doesn't start with that sentence because that's the beginning of the story. I am convinced that the Bible starts with that sentence because it sets up the fundamental relationship for all of time, which is this. God is the creator. We are the created. We are not on his level. The fundamental sin in the Garden of Eden, if you eat this apple, you will be like God. And Eve went, oh, I can do this? Whenever we sin in our life, however you define that, however you think the Bible defines that, here's the root of that sin. God is Lord. I am the creation. But I want to be my own authority. So now I'm here. That's the nature of all sin. And so that's what Paul is saying that people are doing. They no longer accept the authority of God. They are their own authority and they have thrown off the rule of the universe. And to that end, he says, but they are not excused for this because God has revealed himself in nature so that no man is without excuse. And this brings up, I think, a really important point. And this passage in Romans, whether you know it or not, is the epicenter for the answer to one of the greatest questions in human history. It's a question that every thoughtful Christian has ever asked. And if you've never asked this question, I'm not calling you unthoughtful. I would just like to suggest that maybe you haven't thought of this yet. Which is, if someone is born in Kazakhstan into a Muslim culture and goes their entire life without ever hearing the name of Jesus, what happens to their immortal soul? Because we know our Bible, and we know that the Bible says, when you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord, you will be saved. Nevertheless, what happens to the tribal person born in the heart of the Amazon or Africa or one of the stands in the middle of the world who goes their entire life without hearing the name of Jesus? How does God assess them? Do they just get born and then spend eternity separated from God because they lost the lottery on where they were born? And can we not acknowledge this morning that we have hit, as Americans, we have hit the all-time global historical lottery for where we were born. We are history's spoiled trust fund billionaire babies. We are. We are, we are, Roman senators would look at your $350,000 home and be like, how do you exist in such opulence? You have warm water just on command? There's ice here. I put my food in this box and it stays cold. Like, I'm not going to elaborate on it, but we've hit the jackpot on wealth. And then on top of that, this is quite literally the most Christian nation that's ever existed. Our nation was founded by faithful men who founded us on Christian principles. Now that's debatable about Thomas Jefferson because he did some stuff to the Bible that's messed up. But for the most part, Christian principles. We were born into comfort and we were born into faith. You're not going to see anyone this week in Raleigh who's never heard the name of Jesus. We have every opportunity to respond to the gospel. But there are nations of people, the vast majority of people who have existed in human history have lived and died without hearing the name of Jesus. So then we ask, what does God do for them? How does God assess them? And we get some insight on this. I should have done the research and been able to name chapter and verse, but because of David, King David's sin with Bathsheba, God claimed the life of the son that was a result of that sin. And in his lament of the loss of that son, David expresses in scripture that he will see his son one day in paradise. And so for many theologians and scholars throughout history, this is indicative of what's become known as the age of accountability. Meaning, my son John is four and a half, he's never confessed with his mouth and believed in his heart that Jesus is Lord any more than he's confessed with his mouth and believed in his heart that Santa brings him presents. So how do we delineate that faith, right? So scholars have introduced us to this idea called the age of accountability. Meaning if something terrible were to happen to John this week, which I don't even like postulating, we believe that God in his goodness would have grace on his ability to understand and call him to eternity with him. So this is kind of a known thing, the age of accountability. Now here's where it gets really interesting to me, is you kind of extrapolate that out. When I was growing up, across the street from us, we had a neighbor named Kelly. And Kelly had a lot of pretty severe special needs. And when she was 19 years old, her daily playmate was my seven-year-old sister because that was her mental capacity. So then the question becomes, to what does God hold Kelly accountable? To what does God hold Lily accountable? To what does God hold John accountable? To what does God hold Nate accountable? And to what does God hold the Uzbekistan native who's never heard his name accountable? It's a good question. But here's what I know. I'm about to say something I'm not sure of and invite you guys to disagree with me, but here's what I am sure of. That Romans tells us that God has revealed himself in nature so that no man is without excuse. Meaning, when we get to heaven and we, if we have the capacity, even in our glorified bodies with our glorified minds, to understand the logic and the reasoning and the thinking of God, if he blesses us with that, and we can go to heaven and we can go, God, how did you assess all the souls that existed for so many years who never even heard your son's name? Whatever he then communicates to us based on this passage, I've revealed myself in nature so that no man is without excuse. Whatever God says to that answer when we get to heaven and we have the mental capacity to understand it, we will go, oh yeah, that makes total sense. You are a good and loving and gracious God. That was fair and righteous and good. We will not get to heaven and hear God's logic on salvation and go, buddy, I got to tell you, I think you did that wrong. That will not be the response. It will be that is righteous and good and true and just. So here's the idea that I want to introduce. I've done this in the past. When I stand here, I feel a sense of fidelity to do my best to tell you the truth and to not misrepresent anything. But also I know that one of the strengths of grace, one of the things that makes us good, is that you have a willingness to disagree with me. You don't need to believe everything I say any more than I need you to believe everything I say. Our friends last night were commenting on the fact that like, yeah, sometimes some stuff comes out of your mouth and I think, I don't think I would have said that, which I totally get. I've heard about that before. I find myself in the position of apologizing for clumsy words. This is, I don't have any notes, guys. Like I don't, nothing's telling me what to say. So sometimes stuff comes out that shouldn't. But even in that, you are grown adults with the Holy Spirit. You don't need to agree with me. Nor do I feel any responsibility to drag the church along with my ebbs and flows of theological understanding. You have yours and I have mine. I'm not trying to convince you that I'm right all the time. And a good strength is for you to be able to disagree with your pastor and still not find fault. I mean, obviously, if I said something crazy, but still not find fault in the fact that we simply understand that differently. I think that's a strength of the church, not a weakness. With that being said, I'd like to step over to my reckless speculation box and not be held accountable for anything I'm about to say. All right? There, I think I'm probably right, but I'm going to be wrong about some stuff here. I don't know. Maybe. But I've shared this with small groups over the years. And as I encountered this passage, and I don't think you can preach Romans 1 without talking about what's in verses 18 through 20. This idea that God's revealed himself in nature so that no man is without excuse because it beckons one of the greatest questions to ever exist in Christendom. So we have to talk about it. And as I've read it, I've developed in my own theology and thinking, you assess this for yourself. I'm not insisting I'm right. This is just how I think about it. What I refer to as a sliding scale of salvation. Where I personally believe that God in his goodness, based on Romans 1.20, holds people accountable for what they can know. He holds them accountable for what is possible for them to know. Meaning, if someone is born in Madagascar and lives and dies without ever hearing the name of Christ, I think God's standards for them and what he holds them accountable for are different than what he holds Harris accountable for. Because Harris has known the name of Christ. So that's how I interpret that. In my reckless speculation box that you cannot hold me accountable for, I think that there may be a sliding scale of standards for salvation based on what we can know and how God holds us accountable. So that's how I answer that question. Now. Now you can begin to hold me accountable for my words again. Andrea, I am actually going to make these points. I said I was going to skip these. I'm not. Here's what I think happens in the Christian brain when I say something like that. I say that God holds us accountable for what we can know. So because we're born in America and we live and die hearing the name of Christ, we can know him. And I think some of us, not all of us, but some of the more depraved in our audience, like Greg, think this. Well, then why do I have to be born in America and follow all the Christian rules? Why can't I be born somewhere else and do whatever I want and then not be held accountable for it because I never heard the name of Jesus as I lived? I think we can all relate to that question. And when we ask that question, it belies a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be saved. Salvation is not fire insurance. Getting saved is not just, I'm going to white knuckle it and grit my teeth and follow the rules the best I can to keep my God happy until I get into heaven. Salvation is not, am I in or am I out? Bless you. Salvation is being beckoned into the very presence of God. Heaven is not the place where we go to meet our family members, although we do. It is the place we go to see the face of our Savior. It is the place we go to be in the very presence of our Creator. And by having the privilege to know Jesus and to grow up in a place where we're introduced to Him very early and we're welcomed into His presence as far as our memory goes back, is to have, listen to me, is to have the very opportunity to begin to experience heaven on earth because we walk in the presence of Christ. So being saved is not about not burning. It's about yearning for the presence of Jesus. So when we hear, oh, you mean somebody can be born in another country and perhaps not be held accountable to the same level that I am? That seems not fair. They get to do whatever they want and I have to follow the rules? Listen, I love you. You're missing the point of what it means to be a Christian. What it means to be a Christian is to exist in the presence of God, to know that you're loved fully and deeply, and that he can never love you more than he does right now. And the Christian experience is progressively accepting that more and more. It is not a prayer we pray to avoid punishment. It is a revelation that we have that invites us into heaven on earth. So the advantage you have being born where you have been is that you don't have to wait as long as they do to begin to experience heaven and Jesus now. He invites you into it today. I said this, the miracle of the gospel is the invitation to exist in God's presence. That's how we should understand what salvation is. And just candidly, I would tell you, I'm not trying to run anybody down because I certainly understand the thought process that brings us to this place, but I would invite you to think more deeply. If salvation to you is this in or out thing, do I get to go to heaven or do I have to go to hell? You don't understand it yet. It's about being ushered into the presence of God. So now, we don't get saved to avoid punishment. And I think that's a big misnomer about how we think about salvation. Now that is not the ultimate point that Paul is driving to. Paul is driving to this point in verse 28 through 32. And buckle up because these are some doozies. Paul is talking about how people have kind of fallen from grace and begun to just do whatever it is they want to do and how our society or how their society has become depraved and has led what Paul would in Philippians, is led by their bellies. Here's what he says. Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, because God has revealed himself, right? So now they've said, no, we reject that. We're going to do whatever we want. So God gave them over to a depraved mind that they do what ought not be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent ways of doing evil. They disobey their parents. Davis, obey Janice. All right. They have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God's righteous decree and those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things, but also approve of those who practice them. Paul just lit everyone's face on fire with that. But his point is to say, hey, this is the condition of humanity. They not only ignore the God that is revealed to them, but they act in rebellion to him and his decrees, knowing that they are acting in rebellion. And then on top of that, they celebrate it when other people join them in their rebellion. They not only go on sinning, not caring, but then they celebrate it when other people do too. And here's what's remarkable to me about this passage. It was written circa 65 AD and was true of the Roman culture when he wrote it. It's true of the American culture in 2026. It hasn't been not true of our culture any year of my life. I was born in 1997. It has not been not true of my culture in any year of my life or yours. Those words were true then, they're true now. Our society sets its own rules, does what it wants, decides what it thinks truth is, rejects the authority of God, then they celebrate the fact that they're doing it, and when I say they, I mean we, because we do it too, and then we even celebrate those that join us in our rebellion. It was true then, it is true now. Here's the tricky part about our culture. There are some sins I could mention by way of example to prove my point. Where half of the room would go, yeah, get them. And the other half would be like, you should not be saying this right now. And then I could flip it and pick sins that the half that just agreed with me is now disagreeing with me, and the half that was just disappointed with me is going, yes, those are sins too. It's not easy to be a pastor all the time. But here's what I know is true. That where Paul lands the plane here in chapter one was true in Rome when he wrote it. And it's true of us today. And here's what he's driving at. I love you. I care deeply about you. People are sinning and running wild, and this doesn't make any sense because God has revealed himself in nature so that no one is without excuse. Everyone can be held accountable to their revelation of who God is. And the end of it is they are so rebellious, your culture and your society are so rebellious that not only do they reject God and his decrees, but they celebrate people who join them in it. That's where Paul finishes. So that's where we will. And we'll pick it up in chapter two next week. Let's pray. God, thank you for this morning. Thank you for the book of Romans and your servant Paul. God, I honestly, earnestly pray that I would simply do it justice as we go through it. It's such a soaring, wonderful book. I pray that you would develop within us a deep appreciation for it and its truths. And where it is encouraging, that we would be encouraging. And where it is confrontational, that we would confront. But God, I just pray for grace as we move through this season and into the spring and ready ourselves for the wonderful celebration of Easter, that you would walk with us through this series, and that you would use the book of Romans to speak to us and to teach us. In Jesus' name, amen.

Hey. Thanks for being here on this Friday night. Normally, I say things like, my name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. I usually do that for the benefit of people who are visiting or maybe unfamiliar with Grace, but I highly doubt that there's a large population of those people on a Friday night service. So, hey, Grace, this is fun. I got a text. I went to Gibby, Aaron Gibson, at the beginning of the week, and I said, listen, man, weather doesn't look good for this weekend either, but come heck or high water, me and you are going to get there on Sunday morning, and we're going to at least live stream a sermon. We have to do that. We can't miss two weeks in a row. And he said, yeah, I agree. Even if we have to spend the night at the church, that's what we're going to do. So we said, okay. Then I got a text from Betty Rock back there next to the thermostat. She likes to sit next to the thermostat so she can complain about it, but she never actually touches it and does anything about it. She just is like me. You'd rather complain than actually do something. But she texted me, and she said, how about we do a Friday night service to get ahead of the weather? And I texted her back all the reasons why that was a terrible idea, and that would never work. And then I went to work, and I told the staff about the idea, and they all went, that sounds like a pretty good idea. I'm going to wrap up our series called You'll Be Glad You Did. And as Aaron mentioned in the announcements, the whole idea of it has been Solomon, the wisest man to ever live, and we're going to see more about that this week and why that's the case, wrote the book of Proverbs. Also, I've been getting over a cough this week, so you might have to bear with me. But he wrote the book of Proverbs, and it's proverbial wisdom. It's wisdom passed down to us from the wisest man to ever live, from a very righteous man, from one of the best kings to ever serve the nation of Israel, and from someone that God blessed directly. And so the idea has been if we'll simply listen to the advice that we find in Proverbs and employ that in our lives, that this year if we listen to it and we abide by it, we will be glad that we did. And so I wanted to cap the series off with really a synopsis of Proverbs chapters 2 and 3. Because in Proverbs chapters 2 and 3, Solomon really digs in on wisdom. And I would highly encourage you, if you haven't read them or if you haven't read them in a while, to open up your Bible. You might do it during this sermon if you get bored. I don't care. It'd be better than listening to me. Read Proverbs chapters 2 and 3, where wisdom is almost personified. In chapter 3, it's referred to as feminine, she. And I'm not trying to make the Holy Spirit a woman, but when I read it, it almost reads like the Holy Spirit is embodied or personified by wisdom. And the thrust of those two chapters is essentially whatever you do, whatever you do, whatever you pursue, whatever's important to you, get wisdom. No matter what else is important to you, get wisdom, is really the synopsis of chapters two and three. And so I thought that would be the best place to land the plane as we finished up our series, essentially from Proverbs. Now to get there, I want to share with you something that happens in my marriage and in my family that may happen in yours, may not. And I think I've told you guys this before, but by way of reminder, every time we're driving down the road and the lottery, the Powerball lottery, gets like exorbitantly high to where it starts making like national news. It's at like $356 million. It's at $420 million. It's at $786 million, whatever it is. It starts getting real high, and you see it on the billboard, and we're driving down the road, and we see that number. What do you guys do? You look at your spouse. What would you do if you had that money? How would you spend that? You get $400 million. Uncle Sam gets 50%. What are you going to do with the other 50? And you start talking about what you'd do if you were the lottery winner. Now listen, I've never bought a lottery ticket in my life. Not from some moral high horse, but just from an economic one. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. But I do actually want to just take a minute and encourage you guys to buy lottery tickets and tithe on your winnings. This is how we're going to get into that building. All right, so go to the gas stations all around after the service. Take that from the sermon. Especially you kids, go play the lottery. What a mess. It's Friday night, no one's here. This is great. But we start playing that game. What would you do if you had $400 million? And it always, I don't know about y'all, if y'all play this game, but it always starts out for us pretty conservative. I wouldn't do anything crazy. I'd probably just drive the car that I have. You know, I don't need anything extravagant. Well, it does have 120,000 miles on it, so I need to be practical. Maybe a Range Rover. Maybe a, I should probably just sit in a Maybach, right? Like I should just sit in one if I've got $400 million. Like maybe a BMW 740. Maybe that's what I need. You know, and so then it just starts to progress. And it's like, we wouldn't sell the house. We don't need anything extravagant. But maybe a condo in New York City. Maybe we get a little beach house on 30A. Now, you North Carolina folks don't know about 30A. You do, FSU. I see you. 30A is on the Florida Panhandle. It's the road that connects Destin to Panama City. It's the best beaches in the country, all right? They're amazing, and we grew up going there, and now they're too far away, and so we have to take Lily to Emerald Isle, and it's really tragic. So let's get a house there, but then it's like, well, if we're going to get a house there, we've got to be able to get there. So should we start thinking about a private jet? And then I'm going to need a cook. Probably need a personal trainer. This house is not good enough. We need a bigger Raleigh house. And then it just starts escalating. But certainly we've all had that thought process. If I were to win a million dollars, if I were a hundred million dollars, what would I do with it? If I hit the lottery, what would I do? And then when we were little kids, remember we used to play that game, if you rubbed the bottle and the genie came out, what would you wish for? You get three wishes, you can't wish for more wishes. What would you wish for, right? And we've all done that exercise. And we all have, in some ways, different answers and in a lot of ways, very similar answers. And I bring that up because this is a situation that Solomon actually faced himself. If you look in 1 Kings 3, if you look in 1 Kings 3, what you see is that God appeared to Solomon in a dream. And he said to Solomon, ask of me whatever you will and I will grant it to you. Now that's pretty big deal. If God came to you in a dream, if God showed himself to you and said, ask of me whatever you want and I will give it to you, what would you ask for? God, I'd like to be financially secure in such a way that I don't have to think about money for the rest of my life. I don't need to be wealthy. I just don't want to have to ever worry about it. Would it be, God, repair my marriage? Repair my relationship with my children? Would it be make me the best at my job so that I can prosper? Make me rich. Make me powerful. Give me health. Let me live a long life. What would you ask for? Well, here's what Solomon asked for. And this is what qualifies him to write the book of Proverbs and warrants us looking at his wisdom in that book. This is what he requests. In 1 Kings 3, I'm going to read verses 9-12. Hang on just a second. He says this. So God said to him, since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies, which that's a fun one. I don't think that occurred to any of us that we could wish for someone else to die, but maybe that's on your agenda. I will do what you have asked. I will give a wise, I will give you a wise and discerning heart so that there will never be anyone like you, nor will there ever be. So God goes to Solomon in a dream and he says, ask me anything you want and I'll give it to you. And Solomon's in this predicament because he's a relatively young man and he's just taken over as king and he's got a big plate in front of him. And so he is in this situation in life where he realizes his need for wisdom. He realizes his need for wisdom. And so that's what he asked for. I have this job to do. Make me fit to do it. Make me wise so that I can lead your people. And it says that God was pleased, and we're going to come back to this. It says that God was pleased with this. And the next point is Solomon wished for wisdom. He could have wished for anything, and he chose wisdom. And it says that God was pleased with this. And then he said, because you didn't ask for these other things that would have been more selfish and self-serving, I'm going to grant this to you. And then, oh, by the way, Solomon was the richest king to ever rule Israel. He built more infrastructure, more monuments, more palaces. He built the temple. He built more of Israel than any king ever did. Israel never experienced greater prosperity than it did under the rule of King Solomon. And you can trace it back to the beginning of his rule when he was granted this opportunity from God, ask me whatever you want and I'll give it to you, and he chose to ask for wisdom. And that foundation of wisdom led to the prosperity of Israel throughout his reign. It's like it's a Rosetta Stone for life, or a foundation of life. He could have asked, make me invincible to my enemies. Make us prosper. Give me wealth. But instead he asked for wisdom and then that was the spring from which everything else grew. From this wish for wisdom, we get the book of Proverbs. And like I said, chapters 2 and 3 really serve as kind of a synopsis or a rallying cry for the entire book. In chapter 2, Solomon writes to his listeners, and when I start to read, you're going to see that it starts off with the word, my son. So this is like a letter to his son. And I don't know about you, but whenever I have the opportunity to see those things, there's a book I read recently that I brought up in a sermon before called Notes on Being a Man. And it's a guy that I like, writes a book on manhood. And really, as you begin to read it, you can tell it's really written to his two boys. If you get something out of this, great, but this is written to my two boys. And I love a mom writing to a daughter, a father writing to a son. I love getting to get a glimpse into what a dad thinks is important. As a matter of fact, when I started this job, when I took this job, now nine years ago, my dad wrote me about a six-page letter, notes on being a pastor. And he said, because, I said, why'd you write this down? And he said, because if I told you, you wouldn't listen. He was right. But now I have it, and I've had it for nine years. And I go back to it periodically and reread it. And the wisdom continues. The wisdom persists. It continues to be valuable. So I love when a father will write a letter to his child about here's what you need to understand and here's what's important. And this is what Solomon is doing in Proverbs. And we get to be, we get the benefits of being his offspring when we see this. This is what he says. Listen, please. and cry aloud for understanding. And if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. This is Solomon's... He wasn't dying as he wrote this, but you could consider it his dying words to his son. If you get nothing else, pursue wisdom. Look for it as for silver. Search for it as for hidden treasure. Get wisdom. And he says, if you do this, two things that are remarkable to me. The first thing is you will understand the fear of the Lord. There's another proverb that Solomon wrote that says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Which means until you properly fear God, until you have a proper awe and respect for God, until you put him in his place and by necessity you in your place, you cannot begin to pursue wisdom. People who have themselves on an equal playing field with God or who think God doesn't exist, and so then they are the Lord of their own life. People who put themselves on par with God, whether they believe in him or not, Solomon says, cannot achieve true wisdom. And I agree with that. If we want to pursue wisdom, if we want to be people who are wise, we have to acknowledge that there is a God who exists. We have to acknowledge that the Bible starts out, the first sentence of the Bible, in the beginning God created, which establishes the fundamental relationship for life. God is the creator. We are the creation. He is higher than us. And we cannot pursue wisdom until we acknowledge that hierarchy. And listen, and I've said this before, anytime we have a sin issue, anytime we have a heart issue, anytime our life gets disjointed, anytime things start to go bad for us spiritually, the fundamental reason, no matter what else has happened, the fundamental reason for that is we forgot our place and we put ourselves on par with God. We are not in a place to pursue wisdom. So the first thing he says is if you pursue this, you will begin to know the fear of the Lord, which puts us in a position to pursue wisdom. The second thing he says, and I loved this one, it says, and you will find the knowledge of God. Now you guys, most of you have been here for a while. And you might remember two Januaries ago I did a whole series and a prayer in Ephesians. That's my favorite prayer in the Bible. I have it stenciled, written out and framed on my office wall at home. I'm not trying to brag, but I do have a home office. And in that prayer, Paul says, for this reason, I bow my knees before the Father for whom every family on heaven and on earth is named. And then he goes on to pray for the church in Ephesus. And he doesn't pray for circumstances and he doesn't pray for prosperity and he doesn't pray for health. And the conclusion of the prayer is so that you may be filled with all the fullness of the knowledge of God. And I never pieced it together before. I always thought that was an original thought from Paul, that that's what he was praying, that you would be filled with the fullness of the knowledge of God. And when I pray for you, and when I pray for your children, and when I pray for our church, that's what I pray. Not that things would go well, not that we would prosper, not that we would be healthy, not that we would avoid tragedy, but that whatever happens would conspire to bring us to a deeper knowledge of God. And I always thought that was Paul's thought, but it's not. He's echoing Solomon from Proverbs who says, if you pursue wisdom, then you will be filled with the knowledge of God, which then rebounds and resounds in Ephesians thousands of years later when Paul writes that letter. So that's what happens when we pursue wisdom. As we begin to know the fear of the Lord and we are filled with the knowledge of God. So we are left with chapter 3, kind of the synopsis, the crescendo of his encouragement to pursue wisdom. In chapter 3, he says this, verse 13. Those who find wisdom, those who gain understanding. I love that verse. Her ways are pleasant ways and all her paths are peace. Because those were written about Jen. But the rest is about wisdom. And he makes the point, whatever you do, get wisdom. Prize it. Consider it the most important thing to pursue. And that becomes really clear as you look at the life of Solomon, you look at the writings of Solomon. But even as we reflect on wisdom and we agree with Solomon that we should pursue it, we're left with some questions. First one would just be how do we define wisdom? And this is not going to be groundbreaking for any of you. This is the definition that many of you would probably give as well. But just so we have a working definition and we're on the same page, we're going to define it this way tonight. Wisdom is knowledge applied. Wisdom is knowledge applied. We've all known people who have grown older and not grown up, yeah? People who just because they participate in the relentless march of time does not mean they get smarter. As a matter of fact, I see you smiling. You know somebody who's got dumber. As a matter of fact, sometimes we atrophy because we quit learning and we quit pursuing wisdom. We put our head in the sand or we put our head in an echo chamber and we don't learn anything. And we grow old, but we don't grow up. So wisdom is knowledge applied. It's growing up. It's getting mature. That's what wisdom is. So then we ask, okay, if I need to pursue wisdom, and wisdom is knowledge applied, and biblically speaking, it's biblical knowledge applied. It's growing deeper in the scriptures, learning them well, and then learning how to apply that to our life and how to season our speech with it. Then we ask, okay, if that's what wisdom is, then how do I get it? If I'm supposed to pursue it, how do I pursue wisdom? The first answer is one that I just mentioned. Read the Bible. If we want to be people who are wise, how do we be wise? How do we grow in wisdom? Steep yourself in this. Know this book. Read it. If there's pockets that you've not read before, pursue them. Years ago, I realized I had read through the Minor Prophets, which is the last 12 books of the Old Testament, and they are incredibly boring. But I realized there was a gap of knowledge. I did not know them as well as I knew the rest of Scripture. And so I bought a commentary, and I set myself about going through the commentary and reading through the minor prophets so that I could have a better working understanding of them. That working understanding of the minor prophets has availed me zero so far, but I'm looking forward to when God uses that latent knowledge. But it's there. If you want to grow in wisdom, pursue this book. Read it. Study it. We ought to be Christians. We ought to be reading the Gospels at least once a year. We ought to be reading Scripture every day. If there are areas of this book with which you are unfamiliar, read them. Do it yourself. I had a couple sit with me for some premarital counseling this week, and they articulated the desire to grow spiritually. And I said, okay, if that's what you want to do, how do you want to do that? And they said, small group, serve in church, be consistent in church. And I said, that's great. That's two hours a week. What are you going to do the rest of the week? And I helped them see that what they need to do is learn to feed themselves from God's Word. If you're reliant upon me for 30 minutes a week to teach you scripture, that is a terrible plan. I'm not that good. And I don't have enough time to cover it. You can never miss a week. If that's what you want to do, if that's what we all want to do as a church, we don't want to read the Bible, we just want Nate to teach it to us. All right, listen. Next January, we're going to give it a year. Next January, I'll start in Genesis 1. And I'll go verse by verse. We'll go through the whole Bible together, but here's the deal. You can't miss any weeks, and you can't bail out on a three-year series. You got to come the whole time. All right? You can't get bored. No one's allowed to leave. There's zero attrition during that series. And if you miss a week, you got to listen. See? That's untenable. So if you want wisdom, you got to learn to feed yourself. If there are pockets of this book that you're unfamiliar with, it is on you and you alone to begin to explore them. This is the first way and the most important way we get wisdom. Another way we get wisdom, and this is advice for only some of us. This is advice for Harris. It is not advice for Aaron. Shut up. Shut up. Just listen. This is advice for me. This is not advice for Jen. Just shut your mouth. In conversation, so often, if you're wired like me, I'm in, I'm paying attention, I'm enjoying the conversation, but what you just said triggered a story that I want to tell you now. What you just said made me think of something that I want to mention to you now. So now, rather than listening attentively, I'm just looking at you nodding my head because I get it. I know what you're saying and I'm disinterested now. I'm waiting for you to go like this so that I can open my mouth. If we want to be people who are wise, then we should shut up and listen. Listen in small group. Listen at dinner parties. Listen to your spouse. Listen to your children. Listen and learn. Even if the person you're talking to is not someone you're particularly impressed with for whatever reason. You're probably then talking to me. But even if the person you're talking to is someone that you're not impressed with, you still have something you can learn from them. So be quiet and listen. Be slow to speak. And as James says, slow to become angry. And listen. Shut your mouth and open your ears. This is how we gain wisdom. Another way we gain wisdom is to simply be around wise people. And it's extra important around wise people that we listen to them and that we ask good questions and we listen to their responses and we watch. I can't tell you, I can't tell you one of my great privileges is to get to serve on the elder board. Because when I serve on the elder board, I'm surrounded by spiritually mature, thoughtful, godly men and women. And I interact with them on a very regular basis. And I get to watch how these men and women enter into conflict. How they exchange ideas. I get to listen to how they pray every time we meet. I get to see how they host when we go to homes for dinners on the third Tuesday of the month for our fellowship meeting. I get to watch them do life. And it's a huge privilege for me to get to watch these people who oftentimes have more years under their belt than I do, to watch how they host, to watch how they contradict, to watch how they intervene and how they interject, and then to hear how they pray. There's so much to learn from wise people if we will surround ourselves with them. The last thing I wanted to mention about how to pursue wisdom is a few weeks ago I talked about guarding our heart. And I gave us the image of the cup, which Lily printed off for me, a sticker of her own face to put on my cup. And this is, now I have John on the other side. So feel free to take a look at the end of the service. But I talked about the cup and that when you're jostled, what comes out of you is what you were filled up with. And the thing that I failed to mention in that sermon and that I wish I would have said is sometimes it's about not putting the wrong things in our cup and in our lives. But more than that, it's about putting the right things in our lives. That Philippians verse, Philippians 4, 8, Finally, brothers, whatsoever things are true, good, noble, are of good report, are praiseworthy, think about these things. So if we want to ask how do we get wisdom, we have to ask what are we filling our cup with? What content are we consuming? When you have a drive, are you listening to music? Are you listening to vapid things? Are you listening like me sometimes to just sports radio, which really doesn't matter, or political radio, which also doesn't matter? I actually think those two are the same. I do pay attention a lot to politics, but I equivocate it to just being a sports fan. It's not as bad as being a Browns fan but I equivocate it to being a sports fan where we have our teams and we root for them and we listen to the talking heads talk about what they think our teams are going to do and then our teams do what they do and it has zero to do with me. It's the same. But it's easy to fill our space with that. Just vapid content that doesn't help us or prosper us in any way. What if we just supplemented that with one sermon? What if we supplemented that with just for one car ride, I'm going to listen to some praise music and just focus on God right now? Wouldn't that help us grow in wisdom? And the last one is this. I'm just going to do this one quickly about how to pursue wisdom because I really like to preach from Scripture. I don't like to just give life advice from. Because I don't think any of you guys signed up for that, nor do you need it. But as I thought about pursuing wisdom, something that did occur to me was this. Foster your curious mind. Foster your curious mind. I have an Audible account. I get to download a book a month, which is great. And the books that I download are whatever I'm curious about. This goes down rabbit holes. I got curious about World War I, so I listened to a book called The World Undone by G.J. Meyer on World War I, and it was great. Then I realized that the Ottomans kind of had some influence there, and I didn't know anything about them. Then I listened to a book about the Ottomans. Then I realized I didn't know how Germany was formed. Then I listened to a book that was a military history of the Prussian-speaking people. It was terrible. But that made me curious about the next thing. And I realized, yeah, I go back to the Ottomans. I don't know anything. I don't know anything about medieval knights going in and trying to conquer Jerusalem against Solomon. So let me listen to that. And I just followed it. And every next book was because something spurred some curiosity in me. And I'm not setting myself up as moral exemplar here. I'm just saying that if we want to grow in wisdom and in understanding, then take care of your curious mind. Instead of listening and consuming things that don't help you and that don't matter, maybe supplement that with something you're curious about and begin to learn. But if we want to grow in wisdom like Solomon says we should, then we should employ our curious minds. Now, as I finish, the last question is, why is wisdom so valuable? Why does Solomon prize it like this? Why does he say it's the most important thing? Well, the first reason we see in Kings, in chapter 3, in that passage that I read, wisdom pleases the Lord. Wisdom pleases the Lord. Now, I don't know about you, but Gibby used to pray this prayer when he first started here. He would say, God, let our praise bring a smile across your face. And that's a really wonderful thought. And I don't know how often you think God smiles at you. It is more often than you think it is. But if you're like me, I think it's rare. And I don't really know how to make God smile. I don't really know all the time how to make God proud. But this is a very simple fix for that. You want to please God? You want to make Him proud of you? Pursue wisdom. The pursuit of wisdom in and of itself, of good, godly, biblical wisdom, pleases God. So set yourselves about pursuing it. The other thing that wisdom does is that wisdom brings peace. We see this in the Proverbs 2 passage. Wisdom brings peace. I remember early in my career, in a previous life, I was a teacher. And I would get an email from my boss, a guy named Anthony Knight. And he'd say, hey, I need to see you in my office this afternoon at 3 o'clock. It's like 10 o'clock in the morning. And as soon as I read that email, what's going on in my head? Oh, crud, oh, crud, oh, crud, oh, crud, oh oh crud. I don't want to do this. It's like Nancy Lasavita was the HR person at IBM for a little while. Nobody wanted to get a call. Nobody wanted an email from Nancy. Hey, I need to talk to you this afternoon at 3 o'clock. Oh, geez, oh Pete. I'm more scared of her than anyone in this church. I used to get those emails. I need to see you at 3 o'clock. And then I'd spend the rest of my day fretting about what it could be. Right? Oh gosh, what did I do? Did I say something to a student? Did I not turn in this? What could I have done wrong? And I just would think of all the different ways I was in trouble. And then I'd go see Mr. Knight at three o'clock, go, hey man, you want to see me? And he'd go, yeah, we need someone to run the scoreboard for the basketball game this afternoon, want to see if you're available. Yeah, you got it. What's it pay? 50 bucks? I'm in. Fast forward that now, I still get those emails pretty regularly. Or I'll have people on Sunday morning. Hey, it's time for me and you to get some lunch. Let's email this week. Okay. Jeffy did that to me this week. He didn't want to talk about nothing. But they'll ask me, let's go to lunch. And old Nate would have fretted all week. I'd have gone to gin. Gosh, Amo wants to get lunch with me. What do you think it's about? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe he wants to play the keyboard again. I don't know. Maybe he thinks we need to buy new lights. Maybe he'd like one of the chairs with the armrests on it. I don't know. He's getting up there. It might be about time. I don't know. We talk about it, talk about it, talk about it. What do you think it is? What do you think it is? What do you think it is? Over the years, this little bit of wisdom has taught me not to worry about it. The meeting's never as bad as you think it is. And now, when people ask to go to lunch with me and they don't give me a reason why, I just say, yeah. And we put it on the calendar. And do you know the next time I think about that meeting is when my alert goes off 30 minutes prior to the meeting. And I go, oh, crud, I have to meet with Phil today for lunch. Better get going. Because wisdom has taught me and experience has taught me that whatever they want to talk about is not going to be as bad as I think it is. And even if it is worse, there's nothing I can do about it beforehand. It's going to be okay. Wisdom, experience brings peace. Whatever the unknown is ahead of us, it's going to be okay. It might not be as bad as we think it is. And even if it is, there's nothing I can do right now to handle it. But when we pursue wisdom, we grow in our ability to be peaceful. Last one. Wisdom is so valuable because wisdom engenders trust. Wisdom engenders trust. There are people in your life that when something big happens, when something's going on, and you just need an ear to tell. There are people in your life where you've got this big thing going on in your life. You've got this big thing happening. This thing happened with your spouse, with your wife, or your husband, or this is going on with your kids, or you're facing this, or you're just walking through a time where it's just dark and you're depressed and you're anxious and you don't know what to do. Life feels heavy and it just so happens that you're going to lunch with your friend. Some of our friends are the kinds of friends that we don't share that with because we don't trust them because they'll go tell other people. We don't trust them to carry that well. Some of your friends are the kinds of people that you're so relieved that you're going to see them that day because they're the exact kind of person that you need to talk to because you know that you can trust them. Those people are wise. The people that you can trust are wise. And the question there is, which one of those two friends do you want to be? Do you want to be the kind of person that people don't share things with you because they don't feel like they can trust you? Because that's a sign of immaturity and a lack of wisdom. Or do you want to be the kind of person that can carry your friend's burdens with them because they trust you? So, this whole series, every week, has been different glimpses of different kinds of wisdom. But this week, as we finish, we land on the admonition from Solomon. Whatever you do, get wisdom. And that's what I want to encourage you to pursue as you go.

Good to see everybody. Thank you for coming this morning. I assume that the inflated attendance for a very cold rainy day in which we're planning on snow is because of your deep interest in me preaching on guarding your heart and not the building update. So with that being said, I'm happy to take up the next 30 minutes of your time while you wait for the information that you actually want. Before I do that, some of you will get this joke and some of you will not, but if there's a little context here, I just want to say that the Steelers lost in the playoffs and they lost their head coach. Good. Go Bears! you some context. Mikey introduced himself as a longtime visitor. Here's why that's funny. First of all, Mikey and the ReSARS, they predate me. They've been here longer than me. They've given more blood, sweat, and tears to this place than I have. And we were talking about Discover Grace, and he said, I've never gone to the class. Am I a partner? And I have some people ask me that sometimes. And I told him, I don't care how much you've given, how much you've served, what you've done, or how involved your family is. If you don't listen to me talk about grace for an hour, you are not a partner. You're a visitor. So he introduced himself as a longtime visitor. And I've always said what partner, partner is what partner does. We kind of Forrest Gump it. If you partner with us, because at Grace we say that we have partners, we don't have members. And the real simple reason is because members tend to consume and partners tend to contribute. So we want us to think of ourselves as partners in the same entity. We're not looking for rights and privileges as members. So that's why we use that terminology. And I've always said partner is what partner does. If you're actually partnering with us, you're coming to small group, you're attending, you're giving, you're serving, you're partnering with us to move grace forward towards wherever we think God wants it to go, then you're a partner. So if you're out there and like the Rezars, you've been coming to the church for longer than me, and you're wondering, am I a partner now? My response to you is, I don't know, do you think you are? And if you say yes, then I agree with you. But if you want to come to Discover Grace, that's just a way for you to familiarize yourself with the church and our background and our systems and what we do. So we'd love to have you, but we're not real uptight about how to become a partner. You do what you like is our philosophy because I do what I like, so it's only fair. This morning we do continue in our series, You'll Be Glad You Did. And the idea is that if we'll listen to the wisdom of Proverbs, who was written by who the Bible says is the wisest man to ever live, King Solomon. If we'll listen to Proverbs and implement them in our lives, we'll be glad that we did. And we've talked about friends. We've talked about being generous. And this morning, I want to talk about this simple concept of guarding our hearts. This comes out of Proverbs chapter 4, verse 23. It's a verse that I would bet that most of the room has heard, but it's this. Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. And so I wanted to take some time this morning to talk about this concept because here's what I think is probably true. Here's what I think is probably true. I think it's probably true that a vast majority of you have heard this concept before. I kind of doubt that there's anyone in the room going, that is new information that I should guard my heart, and out of it everything flows. Maybe there's some, and that's fine, but most of you probably already know this. And so the impetus for me is to go, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know it, right, sure, but let's take some time and focus on it. Because many of us probably learned this when we were children. We probably learned it when we were young, and we've always kind of carried this ethic in our head. We know about it, but maybe we haven't considered it in a while. So I thought it would be worthwhile, as I this series on Proverbs and kind of planned it out, which by the way, I'm now, I'm almost done planning out our next series, which is going to be in Romans. And we're going to move through Romans chapter by chapter. And I'm so excited to do that because I don't know if I've said this from stage or not, but I really, really love preaching through Scripture and talking about it, and I really, really don't love talking about topics like guard your heart. I like the next one better than this one, but I think that the church needs both, and I think that we need to do both, and I think that we need to rest ourselves in this topic today because it's an important one. And here's why it's so important. Whatever flows into our heart flows out of us. Whatever flows into our heart flows out of us. So as we consider this as adults, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it. And we try to just put fresh eyes on it and take 25, 30 minutes to consider it. I want us to focus on the important parts. I want us to think about it as grown-ups. And the reality to me that comes out of this verse is that the reason we guard our heart is because everything else we do flows out of that. Everything we do flows from it. The way that I was taught this principle was when I was a kid, I was taught that you're a cup. And when you get jostled, which jostled is a great word. When you get jostled, whatever has been poured into that cup will spill out. That's the idea. Every morning, I drive Lily to school at NRCA. Lily's my daughter, not just some girl that I drive to school. I drive Lily to school at NRCA. And when you pull in, you have to go all the way around, and there's all these speed bumps. And it's really annoying, but I guess I understand. If I were running an institution where teenagers daily drove, I would have myriad speed bumps as well. So I get it, but I don't love it. And you go over the speed bumps, and the ones that are head-on, just direct, are pretty manageable. But there's some that are on an angle, and those are maniacal because they rock your car in a bunch of different ways. And every morning before we leave, I make a water bottle for Lily, and I fill my cup with ice and water. I have this all the time. So I fill it with ice and water, and it's close to the brim. And we go over the speed bumps, and I now have to, as we go over the speed bumps, I pick up my cup and I hold it like this to allow my arm to adjust for the bumping so that nothing jostles out of the cup, right? But what's going to come out of that cup, if I forget, and sometimes I do, is just water. It's harmless. It just gets on my center console there, and it's fine. It's not that big of a deal. And it helps me think about the way that we get jostled in life when we hit speed bumps, when we get bad news, sometimes when we get good news, when someone frustrates us, when our partner lets us down, when our children annoy us, or even worse, they disappoint us, when we don't get the deal, when we lose the client, when our team loses in overtime, what comes out of the cup when we are jostled? What spills out onto the people around us when something happens to us? Here's what I think. Sometimes, and I'll be honest with you, it's not very often, and you can ask the other people that work with me at Grace. You can ask Gibby. They've worked with me a while. Kyle, our family pastor, has worked with me for about a decade. Aaron's worked with me since I got here. I don't think I've ever snapped at you guys. I don't think I have. I snapped at Gibby one time. He deserved it, though. He had it coming. I don't think I have. Someone's clearing their throat over there as if I've snapped at them. I don't think I did. But we snap at people, right? And it's usually our family. It's usually our kids. The other day, the other day we were getting ready for school and Lily is 10 now and we told her at 7.27, go get your things and put on your shoes. And at 7.37, she was untying her shoes to put them on. And I snapped. And I looked at her at the kitchen counter and I said, put on your shoes. Put them on. And she started doing other stuff. I said, stop that. Put on your shoes. And she, of course, because she's a little me, mouthed back at me. And I said, put on your shoes. Stop what you're doing. Put on your shoes. Put them on. Go. Go. Put on your shoes. Go. And I snapped at her until she was really upset. And she goes and she puts on her shoes. I shouldn't have to ask you three times in ten minutes to put on your shoes, and I think every parent can relate to that. But here's the thing. Me snapping at that and borderline losing my temper says a lot more about me than it does about Lily. Lily's 10. I'm 33. I'm surprised that was as funny as it was. Lily's 10. I'm a grown adult. Whatever was in my cup spilled out on her. That wasn't her fault. And that wasn't the way to handle that. And what I think is, and why I tell that story about myself, is first of all, you're all in glass houses right now. So throw stones if you want to. But second, thank you, Kay. Second, for all of us, when we get jostled and we lose our temper with someone and we lose our patience with someone, I believe it says a lot more about us than it does about them. And what it says about us is it forces us, if we really want to think about it, to look at what have we been filling our cup with. Because I just got rocked. I just got annoyed. What spilled out? And when it's vitriol, when it's anger, when it's frustration, when it's put on your shoes, that tells us a lot more about what we've been consuming than about what's happening in that moment right there. And I'll be honest. I don't know how much space there is for us as followers of Jesus to snap at other people. There's one time in the Gospels when Jesus snaps and it was to turn over the temple table. So there's a place for godly anger and frustration. But I'd be willing to bet that that place is a lot more rare than what our experience is. So with that in mind, when we talk about guard your heart for out of it, everything flows. That's what I'm talking about. When your cup is jostled, what will come out? When you're frustrated, when you're aggravated, when you're in a difficult situation, what comes out of your heart? Is it kindness? Is it frustration? Is it tenderness? Is it anger? Is it empathy? Or is it condescension? What comes out? I think that's important. And so I wanted to talk this morning about three ways really quickly that we can guard our hearts so that when things happen in our life, the right things come out, that we exude the love of God. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. So when things happen in our life, can we be the kind of people that when our cup is jostled, we pour out grace, we pour out love, we pour out patience, we pour out empathy, we pour out honor, we pour out praise. Can we be those kinds of people? I think that we can. So if we're going to do that, we need to guard our hearts. So there's three ways I want to look at, and there's plenty more than this, but there's three ways I want to look at to guard our hearts so that when things happen in life, the right things come out of us. The first one is the easiest and the most obvious one. We guard content. We guard content. I have never stood up here and told you guys what you should and shouldn't watch. You're grown-ups. If you're saved, you have the Holy Spirit. You watch whatever you want. I just know that there are some shows that I've tried to watch that made me feel, and this is a highly technical term that I learned in seminary, icky. They just made me feel icky. And I just kind of knew, this is not good for my soul. I'm not going to watch this. There are some shows that I've watched that made me feel icky, but they were really good, so I watched them anyways, and I shouldn't have, because they weren't good for my soul. So we should consider what we consume. And I'm not going to give you my standards from a 33-year-old man on what you should do and what you should consume. But what I will say is the content that you do consume matters a lot. And let's be honest about this. There has never been a more consumptive generation of people on the planet than us. Right? Think about it. In the span of human history, who has been able to consume more information than you in a given day? Because we have that stupid germ brick that lives in our pocket that we pull out at stoplights and whenever we get bored and whenever the kids talk too long and we start to scroll. And we can consume. And when the germ brick's not going, the TV's going. And when the TV's not going, we're on the computer. And maybe, maybe, if you're erudite and sophisticated, you pull out a book, something in print from like 1985. Wow. But we are the most consumptive generation that has ever existed on the planet. And most of us consume constantly. And for most of us, our life is filled with noise. And so I would just stop and ask you this morning, not to direct you in one way or another. About what you should or shouldn't do. But I would ask you to consider. What are you consuming? When you pause at the red light. And you grab your phone. What are you looking at? When you have a free moment. And you turn a podcast or a book or songs, what are you listening to? When you have a free moment in the office and you allow yourself to search the internet, what are you looking at? What are you consuming? What are you interested in? And I'm not here to suggest that anything you're consuming is directly nefarious, although some of it is. But what I'm saying is it may be perfectly innocuous content, but is that what you should be consuming? Is that helping you? Is that guarding your heart? Are we looking at the right things? And I remember it was, I don't set myself, I've told a couple stories today about how terrible I am so let me tell you about a good decision that I made. I guess it was about two and a half or three years ago now. It was still called Twitter. Now it's called X. But I just realized that I spent a lot of time just scrolling Twitter, just killing time, scrolling Twitter, seeing what the people were saying about the things. And I realized that everything I saw made me angry. It was inflammatory. Someone's outraged about this. Someone has commentary about this. And as I scrolled, half of the content was designed to just make me angry about a thing. And after doing that enough, I said, you know what? I'm not doing this anymore. And I took it off my phone. And that was two and a half years ago. And it was actually three years ago, because I remember it was February. It was a real tough day. And I haven't missed it at all. So some of the counsel or encouragement to you is just, if it's true that everything we do flows out of our hearts, and if it's true that to prevent things flowing out of our heart that we need to guard it, then it has to also be true that the content that we consume is really actually very important. And so I'm not trying to give you pastoral advice and strictures about how you should organize your life. I'm just encouraging you as adults, what you consume matters a lot. So what are you consuming? What are you watching? Because a lot of us, particularly now, and you're going to think, when I say this, my suspicion is that you're going to think that I'm criticizing whatever side of the political aisle that you're on. You're going to assume that I'm on the other one and I'm telling you that yours is bad. I'm not. But can we acknowledge that a lot of news, not all of it, there's some good stuff, is designed to inflame us, is designed to anger us. And we as Christians, if that comes out of us when our cup is jostled, should consider how engaged we are with those things as well. So we guard our content. Here's another thing we guard. And this one you probably didn't see coming. But we guard empathy. We guard empathy. Years ago, I had a good friend. She's still a good friend. And she was telling me about her son, Bergen, who was 8 to 10 at the time. And she said that Bergen had developed an interest in ornithology, which makes me really disappointed that the farmers are not here today. Jacob would love this because he's a huge bird nerd. And that's what ornithology is. It's bird watchers, for those that don't know. And even my comment there is a tell to the point that I'm intending to make. She said that Bergen loved bird watching. He was really into it, wanted to get the binoculars. He was like reading books and doing all this stuff. And I remember just saying to her, they were homeschooled. And I remember saying to her at the time, I'm so glad that Bergen is homeschooled so that he can invest himself in that hobby. Because if he went to school, he would get made fun of until he quit watching birds. And we might giggle, but that's actually a really sad thing. I think that stinks. The world has a way, the vet is nodding her head, she likes birds too. The world has a way. The vet is nodding her head. She likes birds too. The world has a way of kind of crushing our sincerity out of us, of kind of crushing our optimism out of us. The world has a way of molding you as you grow up and telling you that what you like is not okay. What you like is not cool. What you do is not good. What your hobbies are are nerdy or they're wasteful or they're whatever they are. And the world cruelly has a way of crushing our sincerity out of us. And so as I thought about how do we guard our hearts, I thought it's worth mentioning that the world has a way of crushing our empathy out of us as well. And that as we encounter tragedy, as we encounter hardship, as we encounter trouble, and we see it in other people, because we see it so often, we can begin to become, we can allow our hearts to become calcified against the needs of the world around us. Right? We can let our heart grow hardened so that we no longer care about the people that we interact with day to day. So that we're no longer moved towards the things that should move us. And what we can do is we can allow the world and its pressures exerted on us and on our souls and on our hearts to calcify our hearts in such a way that we no longer have the capacity to care. And I would say that our capacity to care about others is one of the most important things a Christian can do. Jesus himself said, whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me. So when we stop caring, and when we are not moved, and when we, listen, this is tough, but I think it's true. When we are not people who are actively involved, actively involved, and I mean that, actively involved in helping the least of these, it may be because our hearts are calcified. And we have not adequately guarded them against the onslaught of apathy that comes from our culture. So one of the ways we guard our hearts is to keep them tender and to make sure that we maintain empathy. The last way that I want to mention this morning, there are more ways again, but the last way I want to mention this morning is that we guard our relationships. If we want to guard our hearts, we guard our relationships. It's funny, I made, I wrote up these notes this week and was already thinking about this topic because I think it's true. And then just yesterday, had lunch with somebody. And the story was, essentially, I've always looked up to my dad. He's let me down lately. And it's really messed me up spiritually. And I've talked to my therapist about it. And I might have to cut him out of my life. I don't know what to do. And because of my multiple degrees in psychology, I knew exactly what to tell him. But I was only able to tell him what you guys would tell him. You need to decide what the appropriate boundaries in your life are for him. You need to decide to what level you're going to give him access to you. You need to decide how much, in plain terms, he's able to hurt you. We need boundaries. Because this is a person that he looked up to spiritually. And that person had let him down. So now, that relationship that he had in his life that really didn't correlate with his spiritual life is all of a sudden impacting his spiritual life in such a way that it's detrimental. So if we're going to guard our hearts, we have to guard our relationships. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time here because, as I joked, I'm not a therapist. But I do know and I have seen that we can have toxic relationships in our life that cause us to spiral in such a way that we lose our sense of spirituality and we begin to lose spiritual health and our hearts are not being guarded because we're making them subject to a person that's not treating them well. And so in some ways, as grown-ups, if we want to guard our hearts, we have to guard our relationships. My larger point, and I'll finish with this, is I would just like to implore you to consider what it means as a grown-up to guard your heart. What are you consuming? Not just content, but what's your environment? How much are you protecting your own empathy? Just consider as grown-ups what's going into your heart, what's going into your soul, And when your cup is jostled, what's coming out? And what do you want to come out? And if what's coming out right now isn't what you want, then how do you fix that? If you'll think about that, I believe you'll be glad you did. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for a church that loves you. Thank you, God, for a church that can laugh. But God, I pray that this morning we would consider what we're consuming. We would consider what we're letting in. We would consider what's helping us and what's not. God, I ask these things in the name of Jesus. Amen. Hang on just a second, band. I got tripped up in my prayer because I forgot this verse that I wanted to share with you, and I'll finish with this. Because to me, it's the most impactful verse I've ever read about what we should consume. Paul finishes his letter to the Philippians after all the encouragement that he gives him with this final exhortation. And I think it's a good way to end this sermon today. Finally, brothers and sisters, this is Philippians 4.8. 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. May that be our standard.