Jarek Berga - God's Warm Welcome

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Almighty God, you welcome you. [00:00:06] Speaker B: Hey there. If you're new to Restored Church, we want to welcome you and thank you for tuning in. You're listening to a portion of our Sunday worship gathering. We believe the church is not an event, but a family you belong to. So we would love the opportunity to connect with you. If you want to learn more about our church or if we can help you in any way, please Visit our website, www.restoredtemecula.church and click on Contact. With all that said, we, we hope you enjoy the message. [00:00:35] Speaker A: Welcome, welcome, welcome. It is the last Sunday morning of the 2025 year. It really is remarkable that this year is basically over and it's kind of hard to believe, but this is it. Welcome. You guys made it. This historically is the, the lightest attended Sunday of the church calendar and you are here. So you did it. Let's go. Let's go. Hopefully I have something prepared for you that interests you. We'll find out in the next 30 to 60 minutes. But my name is Eric. If I had a chance to meet you, I'm one of the elders here along with Mike and Tom. And I am, I've been chewing on something that I'm excited to share with you guys and we, if you're new, we've been in the Book of Matthew, the Gospel of Matthew for quite a while and I'm going to take a pause on that gospel so that I can share, I think a word that's just been kind of stirring in my heart for the last couple weeks that I think is on maybe God's heart for us and our community at this time. So before I do, will you pray with me? Will you pray for me that God would show up because we need him. Father, thank you. Thank you for this morning. God, thank you for your kindness, for your goodness, for your faithfulness. God, we thank you that you are the all powerful, all knowing God who's also full of mercy and compassion. You know everything about us and yet you choose to lavish us with a gift in your son that we could never earn. And I just want to, I pray that that would penetrate our hearts this morning wherever there might be maybe hearts that are just kind of maybe cool or even cold that this would be a message and a morning that warms hearts up to you, up to the reality of who you are. Truly. I think in our world we struggle to see you as you really are. But I think you want to be known and we want to know you. So I pray that we would take a step in that Direction this morning. Father, would you fill me with your spirit? Would you help me? Thank you. If you hear me, pray. Amen. Okay, so as I was thinking about this message this morning, I was taken back to time about 20 years ago. This was, I think, the fall of 2003. Somewhere around there. Fall, winter, 2003. And I am a freshman at the University of San Diego. And Etrero's in the house. Olay. Olay. I think Erica, if she was here, she would also. Olay. So I'm a torero. That's our mascot. Mascot. Could you call it that? Yeah. Our mascot was a bullfighter. If you've ever been to a bull fight, you know why we picked that one. It's tough. Bullfighters are tough. This has nothing to do with the message. I'm off to a. My clock is counting. Okay, so I'm a freshman at the University of San Diego, and one night I find myself at a bonfire in Mission Beach. Anybody ever been to a bonfire at Mission beach before? A few of us have. Yeah. Okay, the numbers, the hands are going up. Cool. So here's what happened. I actually don't know what happened. I just wound up there. I have no recollection of who invited me or how I wound up there, but I was there. And it was a time in life that was characterized by beach and burritos and bonfires. Like, that's college in a lot of ways. Santanas, if you lived in San Diego for any period of time, I think they call it Freshmex right now, or they went through a change of ownership. This is counting against my time. So I'm there at this bonfire, and I just remember standing there. And when you're a freshman in college, it's like this fascinating, interesting time in life where you're trying to figure out, where do I fit? Where do I fit? And I was watching these people, most of whom I did not know, gather around this bonfire. And it was a bonfire that when I showed up, it was already lit. I didn't light it. I wasn't sustaining it, But I was definitely drawn to it because it was cold. And so as I've been chewing on this picture, this image, some things have stood out to me. Number one, again, I didn't start this fire. Number two, I didn't keep this fire going. I didn't sustain it. But number three, I definitely benefited from it. What I had to do, what was within my power, was to decide one thing, which was, how close am I going to stand to that fire? That was my job. And so I can picture being around this bonfire and there's people all around it, people from my school. And you could see that there were some people that were kind of staying back, kind of hanging back. Some people kind of hovered at the edges, sort of of half in, half out. And there were some people that actually moved in close. They settled in and they stayed a while. And over the course of time, one thing became clear. What happens when you get close to a fire? Not too close to where you'll. What happens? You burn if you get too close to it. So let's assume there's no burns. What happens when you get close enough where you're not burnt? You warm up. What do you start to see? What do you start to see? If someone moves from the darkness close to the fire, what becomes clear? Faces. That's right. The closer you got, the more visible you become. Faces start to become easier to see. And the conversations as you get closer to that fire start to change. And so that space is kind of quietly transformed depending on how close you get to, it really starts to matter. And so that night, it sort of planted an image in my mind to kind of imprinted in my soul. And it's something that I've returned to and I'm returning to with you guys this morning. And so what we're going to talk about this morning is out of a passage of scripture that if you've been in the church for a while, you will be familiar with, might be new to you. But Paul, the apostle Paul, what he's going to do this morning, he's going to reach back to these two people in the Bible, Abraham and David, and he's going to talk to us about how people find their place with God. Just as I was searching for my place as a freshman, where do I belong, who are my people, and so on and so forth. I think that Paul was writing to a group of people in the church in Rome, or the churches in Rome, little house churches, and helping them find their place with God. This is super important because you might be here today and you may actually not know what your place is. You might be here and you're like, I don't actually know. I'm just kind of. Just kind of hanging out. This is a warm place. These are nice people. I've been here a few times kind of hanging out, but I don't actually know where I'm at. And the fire, by the way, in the picture, is the warmth of God's love in his presence. You're not Necessarily sure where you're at, but you're interested, you're curious. Some of you have been here for a long time. Some of you know all about the fire, and you've gotten close to God and you've experienced his love. I want to make sure that even though this morning we're going to talk about what it looks like to find your place, and you might be like, well, I already have a place here. Stick with me. Stick with me. Why? You may not realize this, but you are a part of God's plan to help people find their place in his story. So if you tune out to what I'm saying, you're going to miss something important. So I'm going to encourage you not to tune out. That's what I'm saying. Others of you are like, I don't know, somebody just brought me here, bro. That was me for the bonfire. Like, a friend just grabbed me. Oftentimes in a really cool way. When you're in college, there's this communal thing that's going on, like, the entire floor. Especially when you're new, you don't really know anyone. You're like, we're going to the bonfire. All of us, 20 of us, get in the car or get into six cars or whatever it was. And you just went to places, and there's nothing wrong with that. Maybe somebody brought you here. Maybe there's people that you know and care about that just invited you. And you took a flyer on this church thing. This is for you, too. Because you may not realize it, but God may have desires for you that he wants to reveal to you this morning. So I think there's something in here for everyone. So I'm going to encourage you to take out your Bible or your phone if you have a Bible app. If you don't, that's okay. We're going to have the slides on the screen, the scripture on the screen behind me, and turn over to Romans, chapter four. And we're going to start in verse one, and we're going to see how the Apostle Paul helps this church in Rome, which was a mixed church. It was a really interesting and diverse group of people. There were Jewish believers and there were Gentile believers. What is a Gentile? Someone who's not Jewish, which would be for most of us in this room. This would describe us Gentiles. Gentiles were, if you don't know this, not people who by nature worshiped God. Gentiles were people who by nature actually had other gods. They were pagan, and in fact, they may have had a whole bunch of gods that they relied on for a variety of different things. So they may have had gods that they relied on for rain, for their crops. They may have had God that they relied on for fertility. They may have had gods they rely on for all sorts of things. But ultimately, what you need to know about the Gentiles that Paul was writing to, a mixed group of Jews and Gentiles is that Gentiles had to find their place in the story because by nature, they didn't belong to it. They were new. They were the new kids on the block, if you like. And so turn over with me to Romans, chapter four, verse one. And Paul's going to look at two dudes from scripture, two fathers of the faith, if you like. And we're going to learn through them something very important about how to find your place in God's story. Here we go. Verse 1. The apostle Paul writes this. He says, what then will we say? That Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh, has found Abraham. If you don't know, he's one of the most important names in the entire Bible story. We'll unpack who he is in a little bit. And he's considered the father of faith. What has Abraham found? According to the flesh? If Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was credited to him for righteousness. Okay, so Paul is helping to explain and unpack a really fascinating reality, which was that Abraham, this man that everybody in the Jewish faith really looked up to, how did he find his place in God's story? Was it by what he did? No, it was by what God did to make him right with himself. Let's keep going. Now, to the one who works, pay is not credited as a gift, but as something owed. But to the one who does not work, but believes on him, who declares the ungodly to be righteous, his faith is credited for righteousness. Hold on a minute. Did you guys just catch what Paul is saying? What do you think of when you think of the word ungodly? Does that sound like the kind of person you want in your church, in your gospel community, your household? Ungodly people, I don't know about you, they're a little sus. Right? What does that mean? What does that word mean? Somebody explain it. Suspicious. Thank you. Ungodly people are a little suss. But what does it say that God does with ungodly people? He declares them to be what anybody else Look a little bit. Does that seem sus to you? No. If it doesn't, you might not understand the gravity of what's being said here. Imagine if you are a faithful Jewish follower of Yahweh and you have obeyed God's instruction and commands to the letter, and you've been doing that since you were a child. Anybody not weirded out by this? This is weird. God justifies the ungodly. In some translations, it says the wicked again. What do you do with wickedness? Separate from it. Sus people and God's like, welcome the sus into your midst. I know, I know. Are you feeling this? This is weird stuff, guys. But here's the crazy part. Paul grounds this in Scripture. Let's keep going. Verse six. Just as David. David was this famous king in the Old Testament, very famous man who is known to be a man after God's own heart. This is what David said. David speaks of the blessing of the person to whom God credits righteousness apart from works. This is what David said. This is a quote from Psalm 32. Blessed are those whose lawless acts are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the person the Lord will never charge with sin. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. Now we're cooking with gas. All right, so I want to acknowledge something. I want to acknowledge something. There's a lot of dense language in this justification crediting righteousness. They're not exactly words that we use all the time. Unless you're really, really, really into theology. Unless you're like a theology nerd, most likely you're not going around using these words. And if you are a theology nerd, welcome. Glad that you are here. But the rest of us don't just throw this stuff around. It's a little dense. Can be very difficult to read these words and even understand what Paul is saying. But if we go back to that bonfire on the beach, I think the heart of what Paul is saying is actually pretty simple. I think he's showing us the way that this fire of God's love and mercy works. And again, what is the fire? So this is going to have to be clear in order for this to make sense. The fire is the presence and the love of God. Okay? It's the warmth of being completely accepted, completely seen, and completely safe in his presence. It's being in Christ. If you theology nerds want to get a category, it's being united to him for a long time, if you like, humanity has felt more like shivering in the dark, separated from that warmth through a number of different factors. It could be our own moral failures, could be our own choices, could be pride. It could even be self reliance. Do you know that self reliance could keep you from God? But the gospel isn't the announcement. It is an announcement. It's good news that God didn't stay far away. If you like, he built a fire. And Jesus is sort of like the heat of God brought near to us. Paul wants us to see three things. And if you're a note taker, here's where you can grab your pen and write this down. Here's my outline for today. Paul wants us to see three things about how we live in the warmth of God's love. First thing, we gotta understand God's desire because it shines through this passage. The second thing is we gotta understand his design. The desire is like, who does he actually want sitting in this fire? His design is how do we move from the shadows into the warmth? Okay, and the father's delight. The Father's delight is revealed in Romans in a beautiful way because something amazing happens when the crowd around the fire starts to grow. Let's start unpacking these. Let's start with God's desire number one. Who does God actually want sitting by this fire? Okay, and it starts with that shocker in verse number five. God justifies the ungodly, the wicked, the sus man in our world. Is that how this works? Is that. Who gets rewarded in our world? Who gets promoted typically? Let's set nepotism and other weird things aside. Just think, in normal circumstances, who gets promoted? Low performers or high performers? High performers. Okay, again, setting aside nepotism and weirdness, who typically gets the bonus? The person who fails to meet the objectives or the person who meets the sales objectives? Person who meets objectives. Okay, who gets the A? Do they still do letter grades in school? Cool. Okay, if you go to a charter school that doesn't, who completes? Who gets 100% completion? Is that how it works? No, no. Who finishes the level? Is it the person that never opens their computer and does anything, or is it the person that finishes their work? Yeah, I didn't think this one out. Clearly ahead of time. You're getting this on the fly. Okay, so there's a match. Do you guys see the match? Like, you perform, you get rewarded. Is that fairly clearly established? Again, let's set aside nepotism, corruption, bribery, and all the things that make this world what it is. Under normal circumstances. You perform, you get rewarded. Here's the thing. That's not what this passage is teaching, is it scholar John Barclay wrote what's been considered probably the most important New Testament work of the last 40 years, Paul and the Gift of God. And he points out that grace is actually a mismatch. A mismatch. There's a quote. You can throw the short one up. Grace is a gift given without regard for worth, Usually. Right? You give a trophy to a winner, you get the bonus or the promotion to the high performer. Now, trophy's a tough one because now everyone gets trophies. Do we need to step into that? Yes, we do. Normally, back in the 80s and 90s, you only got a trophy if you won. Thank you. Now you get a trophy for showing up. It's really confusing and it makes preaching nearly impossible. A point like this. So let's set that aside too. Let's put that with nepotism and bribery and corruption. Let's put participation trophies away for a minute and let's just pretend that you get a trophy because you win, okay? Or you finish in second, you get a smaller trophy. If you finish in third, you get a medal. So typically the trophy goes to the person who wins. Is that fairly well established? We work with that. Okay, cool. God gives the ultimate prize to those who lose the morality race, those who come in last. God justifies the godly. Okay, is anybody just feeling weirded out right now? Is anybody like, what? What is happening? Is this guy preaching heresy? Was Paul wrong? Is. Does this pastor know what he's talking about? Why did we come to this church? There's a hundred churches in a 10 mile radius and we picked this one. I don't know. You and your family have to work that one out. But this is what the text, I believe, is saying. Barclay's telling us that grace and I don't think this is Barclay. Who cares what some guy wrote 50 years ago or how long? You know, 20 years ago, however long it was. The Apostle Paul, under the inspiration of the Spirit, wrote that God justifies the sus. Okay? God justifies the ungodly. Not those that are almost there, not those that are improving, not those that are respectable people. The ungodly. This, if you really get it, should offend some of you. We're highly respectable people who are morally upright and who've got your life together. If this doesn't offend you yet, you've probably not understood what's happening here. God doesn't stop to measure your life first. He doesn't weigh your past, your behavior, your resume, or your potential. He doesn't ask if you're impressive, consistent, or Cleaned up. He gives the gift without checking any of that. The gift is Christ. What Paul means when he says God justifies the ungodly mattered a lot to the people in Rome. Why? Well, that church was made up of Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. Some had deeply religious backgrounds, like some of you in this room. Maybe you're not Jewish, maybe you haven't devoted your life to keeping Torah, but there's a good chance that the majority of us in this room have a deep experience in the church. And you are respectable and upright even. But did you know that that's not the point when it comes to who's welcome and the fire? That is not the point. Now, this could be twisted and distorted in so many ways. Some of you may even walk in here and say, like that pastor means. It doesn't say, it doesn't matter how you live your life. Not saying that. I'm leaning into Romans 4. You want to get the whole story, you got to read Romans 1:16. There is such a thing as Romans 6, where Paul says, should we then go on sinning so that grace may abound? And he says, not a chance. So I'm not saying that how we live our life doesn't matter. What I am saying is that when it comes to the welcome of God, it is not dependent on how you live your life, because God justifies the sus. We're going to get that. It's the new updated translation for 2025. This mattered a lot to people in Rome because some of them had deeply religious backgrounds. And guess what? Others didn't. Others are pagan. It means that they smell like bacon, They eat hog knuckle, And they are offensive. Okay, I'm going to make a little joke about this, but it's a truth. They're sus. There's people who are suspect, sketchy people. And God is saying, open. Hey, respectable people, open up those arms real wide. Make room for them who really belongs in God's family. Belonging. It doesn't come from worth background or performance. It comes from one thing. You ready? Trusting the gift that God has given in Christ. And here's the cool part. Here's the cool part. This isn't going to resonate with a lot of you, but it might resonate with one or two. And so it's worth it. It's worth it. God's after you today. This resonates with you, okay? And if it doesn't, you're here anyway, so you might as well listen. So I really needed this to be true. Because after that bonfire in college, it was a bunch of Christians that invited me to this bonfire. There was somebody, like Scott Deal was playing the guitar here a few minutes ago. There was somebody. May have been Scott Deal himself, I don't know. He was in San Diego around that time. Somebody was playing guitar. And there were songs of praise and worship, and there were people. The reason I was there is because I was invited in to this story, into a community to get to know who God is. And I ran from that for years. And I tried to build the life on my own terms. And there came a point at which I couldn't stand it anymore. And I finally came back to God. Because life without God is empty. It's empty. Like the younger brother in the parable that's typically known as the prodigal son, I ran from God. I found myself in eating piggy food. Very gentile thing to do, right? I tasted the best things that life had to offer. Can't get into it right now. Probably wouldn't be helpful. But I did everything. I did everything while I was away from God. And guess how I felt after? Worse. Worse. And so when I came back, if we keep that bonfire imagery going, I had left behind a lot of things. And I came like this, with open hands to warm up. There was nothing in those hands. There was nothing there. And do you know what I found? It wasn't disappointment. It wasn't, arms crossed, where have you been? It was welcome. Because that's the heart of God. Like the Father in the story of the prodigal son, the Father ran to me, clothed me, put a signet ring on me to say, he's one of mine. And it wasn't because I was worthy, far from it. Because God doesn't make worthiness the requirement in the first place for his welcome grace. This is what I learned. It's a fire that's already burning, and it's built and it's sustained by someone else. That person is God. So what is God's desire? First point, he wants you and his family. He wants to welcome you. And you might be like, well, I'm already part of his family. Amazing. I got stuff for you in a minute. But don't forget that at one point you weren't. Forget that at one point you weren't. This is not something that you're born into by natural birth. Just because you're born into a Christian family, it means nothing. If anything, it means you gotta be careful. Seriously, if you're born into a Christian family and you grow up, be Careful, because the easiest thing you can do is assume something. You might be excellent at explaining something you've never experienced. Be careful. It is a great gift to be born in a Christian family and household. My kids, I want, we pray for them every day. They would experience these things. But the greatest fear I have is that they can explain things that they have not experienced and have a false sense of security because they're trusting in their own rightness, their own goodness, their own performance, all the things that Paul is blowing up here. So just because you've been around for a long time, check yourself because you might wreck yourself. Don't ever forget what assuming does to you and me. Ever. And this is some of your stories. Some of you in this room grew up in the church, and it's only recently you're like, I think I started following Jesus. That's not a bad story. That's a beautiful story. Because God wants you and his family. Whether you're a respectable person with a pretty rad resume or whether you're sus. A little sketchy, a little questionable, God wants you and his family. And his welcome is not tied to your worthiness. So if you're here or you're hearing my voice, where might you still be? Assuming God is weighing your worth before welcoming you, think about the fire. Are you standing 10ft back because you think you haven't earned it, that seat by the fire, yet the fire is burning for the ungodly. And on the flip side, you believe that you deserve that seat because if you do, you could get burned by it, by your assumption. Point number two, God's design. Okay, if God's desire is for you to be a part of his family, he has a design for this. If grace is that fire, then faith is the step toward it, toward that fire. How do we draw near? Okay, Paul starts with Abraham, which, if you've been around the church for a while, you might be like, why Abraham? That dude was great. Well, read the story. Read the story. You may not know this because this is something that would have been obvious to those that read the Bible, the original audience. There are things about this book that people understood then that we don't understand now, which makes sense because this book, it's a collection, the Bible's a library of books that was written over the course of a long period of time, thousands of years ago. So if somebody picks up, I don't know, my emails in 2000, 3000 years, there's some stuff that they're not going to get right, or your Emails, especially if they only have one half of the conversation, that's the Bible. So there's stuff that we just don't see right off the bat that they did. One of them was that Abraham. Abraham was a pagan. Do you know what that means? It means that he was a Gentile when God called him. He didn't know God. In fact, he didn't even know God's name. So this is a world where there's gods for everything. And all of a sudden this new God comes along and he's like, I want to bless you. I want to give you children. And it's this. He's a pagan. He trusts in other gods for other things. For everything, in fact. But you know what was interesting about Abraham? His wife never bore him children, and they were getting old. Now, I don't want to make light of this, because I know that even in this room there could be. The pain of infertility is real for a variety of different reasons. But I just want to. Maybe again, this is stuff that we don't necessarily see when we read the text, because we don't. We just live in a different world. We have Social Security, we have Medicare, we have these different. We have 401ks, we have retirement plans and so on and so forth. We have these different ways, things that we trust in, right when we're done working or when we can't work anymore, we look to those things to take care of us in this world. Who took care of you? Your children. So if you don't have children, you got a problem. And that's why there was this adoption stuff that took place in the ancient world. And a lot of it was, I want to make sure I have an heir, somebody who's going to inherit my things and also somebody that's going to actually take care of me when I get old. And so what happened to Abraham and Sarah? Their gods failed them. The God of fertility that they may have been leaning into didn't provide. So they were a failure, if you like. Their marriage was actually seen as a failure in that ancient world, which is really sad. Now imagine if that's your story. I have no children, I have no heir. I have no offspring. I have no future, I have no hope. That's Abraham and Sarah. And it was an honor. Shame. Painting with a broad brush. Honor, shame is what motivated people. The thing that. That's how the culture operated. So they would have carried that shame. Like, there's something wrong with you. You have no children. Abraham was old, Sarah was barren. There Was everything working against them? And then God says, I'm going to give you that child. I'm going to give you offspring. I'm going to bless you, and I'm going to actually bless every family in the world through your offspring again. Sarah at this point is too old to conceive. She can't have children. What do you do if you get a promise like that? That's a future you can't see, right? How do you put your trust in something you can't see? Here's what Abraham did. Genesis 15. Paul references this. So this was before the law. This was before Abraham really did anything. Abraham trusted God. He took God at his word. And Paul says that trust was counted as righteousness. And so faith for Abraham, it wasn't a feeling. You know what it was? It was open hands. And he got close to that fire and he got warmed up. It was a posture, a willingness to rely on God other than himself. He couldn't start the fire. He couldn't sustain that fire. What he could do, though, is he could move towards it. Hands. Abraham placed his future entirely in God's hands and a relationship was formed. I think that's pretty remarkable. I don't know if you know this, but spiritually speaking, every single human being, We really can't see our future. We can't. If you had told me at that bonfire that I would be here on December 28, 2025, in Temecula doing this, it would have been like, where's Temecula? Is that in Arizona? What do you mean? It's a wine country. Napa. No, no, no. South. Wait, El Valle in Baja? No, no, no. North. I wouldn't even have a category for this. You can't see the future, but you can entrust yourself to the one who holds the future in his hands. That's trust. That's trust. And what was beautiful was that God considered Abraham justified. Then he credited him as righteous then. Now, if you know the story of Abraham, you know that a few chapters later, from Genesis 15 and Genesis 22, it was an extraordinary moment where God was like, give your son back to me. That's another sermon for another day. And that's where Abraham demonstrated his trust. But this wasn't about demonstrating. This was a declaration from God over people. And it came as Abraham trusted him. Now, that's Abraham. And was he justified when he was Jewish, as it were? When he was seen as the father of the Jewish faith, he was justified when he was a pagan, as it were, as he was coming out of that. And he just trusted God. It's incredible. Some of you, you got to know this like you're entrusting a future you can't see to a God who holds the future in his hands. That's faith. That means you entrust your today, your yesterday and your tomorrow to him and your future. It's like Abraham believed that God could bring life out of death because his wife's womb was as good as dead. And Abraham was as good as dead himself because he was 90 years old. And all this stuff at that time, like he was already on borrowed time. So with that said, I gotta move. I gotta speed this up a little bit. David, Psalm 32, Paul looks not just at Abraham, but he also looks at David. Now this one's wild because David is reflecting on a moral failure. So this is the sus. Now we're getting into the sus stuff. Now if you know the story of David, there's a lot of sus in the story. A lot. David, the man after God's own heart, schemes and conspires to take another man's wife and does it because he's the king. And he had that kind of pull. So he did it. Okay, that's a problem. Why is that a problem? Everything about it is a problem. Everything. How about this? You shall not covet your neighbor's wife. Right. Oops, broke that one. How about another commandment, do not murder. David killed a guy. He had the husband killed. Are you feeling the suss ness yet? This is the. This is the king. And so Psalm 32. I don't know for sure if David was reflecting on a season where he took another man's wife, had him whacked like a gangster, like he was Don Corleone. Like a mafia, like a mob boss, had this guy killed and then he covered it up. Okay, that's David's story. I don't know for sure if he was reflecting on this, but there's a decent chance he was. But that at least gives you an idea of like, David's history and background. Pretty sus. Pretty sketchy, frankly. Weird. But it wasn't as weird as you might think, because the kings of that time, like, this is just the stuff they did. They could get away with it. So he was just doing what was normal for kings of that time. But that didn't mean that it was. Just because it was normal doesn't mean that it was something that God approved of. And so Psalm 32, David talks about what happened to him. Thank you, guys. This is his reflection, it says in verse three. When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long. So during the COVID up, it started to eat him up inside. For day and night, your hand was heavy on me. My strength was drained, as in the summer's heat. Selah, stop and think about this. Then I acknowledged my sin to you. So something changed. The COVID up became a confession. Verse 5. I acknowledged my sin to you, to God. And I did not conceal my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, which is pretty great. Is there another verse in that or is that it? It's okay. And you forgave. There it is. You forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah. So confession led to forgiveness. Therefore, let everyone who is faithful pray to you immediately. When great floodwaters come, they will not reach him. Wow. Okay. So what brought David back to the warmth of God's love? A self improvement plan? It was honesty. And David, in Psalm 32, uses three Hebrew words to describe his sin. Pesha, rebellion. He crossed a line that he knew was there. Avon was this twistedness inside, this crookedness that bent, that attitude that takes us off course. And then chata. That's a fun one. Hata. Missing the mark, falling short of who God made us to be. So notice that David doesn't minimize anything. He doesn't engage in PR or spin or cover. He doesn't deny reality. He doesn't just say, like, I made a mistake, like he tells the truth. And then he said, blessed is the one. This is in Psalm 32. I don't think you have this in the back, so don't worry about it. Blessed is the one in whose spirit there is no deceit. There's a word there in the Hebrew for deceit. It means to cover up. Self protection, hiding, managing appearances, faith. For David was trusting God enough to stop hiding. He realized that because God covers sin, he could stop covering up. And he brought it to God. Think about how much time and energy we spend managing our image. You ever considered that? How much it takes out of you when we make mistakes or when we feel shame? We cover, don't we? In different ways. We can cover our shame even with distraction. Sometimes we cover ungodliness with religious activity. And we do this because we're afraid that if the COVID is blown, will be pushed out into the cold. But David discovered something better and different. And you all need to hear this because you've either been there or you will be there someday. Coming clean is an act of faith. It's trusting that God has already covered. The second that you confess it, he covers it. And then when you realize that God has credited you with Christ's record, a righteousness not of your own, but that he gives as a gift, you no longer have to protect your own. You can be free to be honest because you're standing before God is secure. Faith really is stepping into the light and saying, I don't gotta hide anymore. But others will see you. Just like when you step closer to a bonfire, they'll see your face, but you can be in the background and you're just a silhouette, a shadow. And it might feel safer there, but stepping into that light is actually an act of faith. And then he puts it plainly in verse 7, Blessed are those whose sins are covered. That is good news. When I finally stopped running all those years after college, I didn't come back with the list of like, I promised to do better. I promise to do better. Because I had hopefully enough of a sense of knowing my track record speaks for itself. I will not be doing better in and of my own strength. I just kept running and hiding. And I personally did it away from the church. But it's possible to do this while being around people in the church. You can still be hiding in plain sight. I came back honest. I told the truth. And I found that God's grace was already there. The fire was already lit. I didn't sustain it. I just moved towards it now. Wow, my stomach is growling so loud. You can hear it probably here in the front row. It's time to speed this up. Scripture is really clear and I need to just mention this because this can be. There's a lot of nuance here. I don't know if you've read the story of David, but what is wild about David's story is that even though his sin is covered, the consequences remain. That is a whole other sermon that I can't preach right now. But his family was still fractured because of David's sin. Trust had to be rebuilt. And so it's important to remember that grace doesn't bypass reality, but it does restore relationship with God. And it makes honesty possible so that real change can finally begin. There are guys and gals that come to faith in Jesus in prison. Did you know that? You probably know it if you've been around. And so does that mean that all of a sudden their sentence is immediately impacted by that? Not necessarily. Maybe their behavior may very well change and the people around them can see that. And maybe it factors in some way. But the point is they're still guilty of whatever it was that they did. So the guilt in and of itself is just covered from a divine perspective, but the consequences of it remain. That's why it's still possible to come to faith in Jesus and have really bad things happen still. Sorry, but from the eternal perspective, your guilt is covered. Blessed is the one whose guilt is covered. You can still live free even if you're behind bars. You can still praise God even if you're under punishment, as it were, from a human perspective, because you know that that's not going to be your eternal reality. And that actually frees people up to do some incredible things for God. So it's not just God fix everything, it's God forgive me, inform me in the midst of whatever it is that I'm facing. Here's the thing. I speak to a room this size, and I know that some of this is just not going to land with you because you haven't blown it like David necessarily. Maybe. Maybe you have, but a lot of you probably haven't. I think the danger for us is just to see ourselves as good, respectable people who are reliable and moral. And I would say that that could be another kind of COVID another way of trusting in ourselves rather than turning to God. Faith is not hoping to hear this. Faith is not hoping that one day when I stand before God, my good deeds will be enough. That's not faith. That's flimsy. That would put you in the category of sus. And I'm sorry, because when you stand in the presence of a holy God, perfect, you're going to feel every last bit of your imperfection. So that's not a plan. If that's your plan, I just want to encourage you, reevaluate it. Because you won't be covered. You just won't. Faith is not hoping that being a good person is enough. Faith is laying down every other confidence and trusting in Jesus alone. Abraham trusted the promise. David told the truth. I came home and I confessed all different stories, the same design. We draw near to God by faith, trusting that his grace is enough to stop earning, stop hiding, and step into the light. So I just got to ask, do you have a cover? Do you have something that you use to cover you? Your performance, your achievement? Maybe you have a. Maybe you're a double. You have a double life where it's like, here's my present, my public face, and then here's my private reality. And there is a gulf between the 2 that is irreconcilable I got good news for you. You can become one person. You step into that light, you get real close to the fire, and Jesus will warm you. By faith, you can become honest. For others of you again, this will not resonate at all because you're a respectable, upstanding person. To you, I would ask, what are you standing on right now? Your own footing or God's promises? God's promise is to raise the debt. Did you know that? Which means that all of us. I think about this more and more now. Maybe it's because I'm 40, 41, technically. I'm like making my way quickly into like the middle phase of being 40. It goes really fast. And I think about dying kind of a lot. Hopefully this isn't some weird premonition that I'm having. Sorry, love. If it is, I'm going to a better place. I'm not trusting in my own. Okay, clocks are ticking. I think a lot about dying because one day I'm going to have to stand before God and give him an account of my life. Do you ever think about that? And I'm covered. How I live matters, but I know that it won't determine my fate. Do you have that kind of security? There's a sobriety about dying. It's coming. One of the things I think about a lot is just the fact that I deserve to die. You ever come to that conclusion of like, yeah, I deserve to die? Like, I'm a sinful? Death isn't just the natural outcome of being human. Scripturally speaking, if we're talking Bible here, it's not that my organs have failed and it's a punishment for sin. Have you ever come to the conclusion like, that's actually just. If you haven't, I want to suggest to you that you neither understand God's holiness nor his grace. You cannot follow Jesus if you're just agnostic about this stuff. And you can't be covered if you're not covered. So I know this is heavy, but you have to understand this is God's design so that he gets all the glory and the credit. None of us can stand on our own. We need a cover. If you're using one, may I implore you drop it and come clean Now. I have to fly through this last point. The Father's delight. There is delight here at the end of Romans chapter 15. So we're going to fly fast forward to the end of Romans. Paul presses all of the things that we've talked about into one clear sentence. Romans, chapter 15, verse 7. I think you guys have this one on the back. It says this. Accept one another, just as Christ also accepted you to the glory of God. Wait. Accepting one another? But you just been talking about God accepting us. Yes. These things are so important. You don't separate them out. God's acceptance of us and our acceptance of each other, it's inextricably tied together. That word welcome really matters. That's the heart of God. We've been talking about welcome all along. God doesn't cautiously tolerate us. He's not like a politely distant kind of guy. He's a. He embodies welcome in the person of Christ who ate with sinners and who made space at the table. And the only way that we can be fully human is if we do the same. But Paul knows this isn't going to be easy. Go back to Rome. You have respectable people and Sus people at the same table. Do you think that's easy? It's weird. If you've never felt weird in community, I want to suggest to you that you've never really experienced community. Real community, deep community. This stuff gets weird, folks. I've been a part of going on 15 gospel communities at this point. 12 to 15, I forget. I've lost count over the years. Can I just tell you? Things go sideways sometimes things come out. It's normal. It's normal. It's not inevitable, though, that we have to fracture. Can you guys throw Romans 15:7 up again? It's okay, because we're called to a very specific way of life. Welcoming one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God. Which means that the table of Jesus doesn't have to become fractured. It doesn't have to become divided. It doesn't have to become contentious. It could actually be a place where we work things out. It can become a place where we become real. And it can become a place where forgiveness is embodied in people. Radical acceptance, radical forgiveness. But Paul knows this isn't going to be easy. And Paul knows that whenever God brings new people into his family, like the Gentiles in Rome, it's going to change the household. Things are going to shift around. Expectations need to be adjusted. The stories around the table are going to get more complicated. Things can stir up. What do you think some of the Jews, Jewish disciples of Jesus, were thinking in Rome? I was here first. I've worked really hard to be faithful. And now this Sus person or God, do you even know where they've been? They smell like they've been Rolling around in pig food. They spawn pigs. Do you know their past? God, he doesn't dismiss these things. Paul doesn't dismiss these things, but he reframes them. He reminds us that none of us can come into God's family on seniority, effort or moral resume. We all get in the same way, by grace. We were all once ungodly people and we've been given a seat we didn't earn. That is why Paul insists that Christ did not come to serve one group at the expense of another, but to create one new family, Jews and Gentiles together. And I just want you to know this has massive implications for how we do this thing called church. God's going to bring people that aren't here yet into this community, and it's going to make those of us that have been here for a while uncomfortable, natural. It's understandable. It happens. But here's the thing. The father's delight. If you're taking notes, this is my final point. The father's delight is that siblings make room for each other, welcome one another. In other words, you're at the bonfire, you're up front, you're in the light, you're experiencing that warmth. It may mean that you scoot over to make some room for someone else. It's practical. What's it going to cost you, though? Comfort? Control? Sometimes the sense of, like, this is how things always have been. This is the way things should be, actually. Who said that? Who said that? Paul's really clear. Welcome. And as we do that, God is glorified, the household grows, hope spreads. And Paul ends this section with something I didn't give you guys in the back. I'm just going to read it. He says, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Spirit. God's delight is a family where grace keeps the fire, the table feel like open. We don't have to compete for space. We make room for one another. I'm going to invite you to stand. I'm going to call the band up to the front. If you're on the prayer team, I'm going to invite you to come to the front as well. There's one person I think I just mentioned briefly at that bonfire that for a lot of you, is going to be, I think, the most important for you to consider. And that was the person whose name I don't remember, the person that invited me. Because for a lot of you in this picture, that's who you're going to become for someone else. God doesn't forget though. You're going to be in a place in your life here fairly soon, if you haven't already, where God's going to be putting people in your life. And he's like, I want them at the fire. I want them basking in the warmth of my love and my presence that he's going to put you in their life to invite them. And they may have a past, past, that's the word. They may have a story and it may be sus or they may be respectable people. I don't know. God knows. But either way, I just want you to know that it's going to require courage to develop a welcoming heart like God's to ask them and invite them come. It's going to require even more courage and self giving love to scoot over so that they can sit at the table. But what I want you to know is that that is God's delight to see siblings making room for new siblings. That is his delight. He loves it. Just like I love it when my kids, my kids for the first time gave presents to each other this Christmas. It was amazing. It really was. And this is a gift that you can give to a sibling, just to consider them, to welcome them, to invite them, and to remember, even if you have your place to keep by the fire, that that is exactly what God wants to give them. So I want to invite you to close your eyes for a moment if you could do it without falling over. But I want you to imagine yourself at that fire. Where are you in that fire? Are you a silhouette in the background? A shadow? Nobody can see you. You're around, but you're not really benefiting from the warmth at all. You're in the dark. Is that you? If that's you, clearly, I think God is encouraging you and inviting you and even asking you to step into the light where you can be seen and known and trust him that he knows how to cover that which you might be covering up yourself. And that you can trust him with your future like Abraham did. Now others of you, you might be kind of standing on the edge. Maybe you're not completely in the dark, but you're kind of around. And God's inviting you to take that step closer too, to trust his heart, not your record. And for you, confession might be like, I've trusted in my own goodness, but I know that's not going to be enough. God, I need your grace. I need the gift of your son. Some of you are sitting by the fire and you're enjoying it, and that's a beautiful thing. And I want you to know that you have the privilege of telling others how good you have have it. And it may be scary and it may make you a little uncomfortable. It's almost certain that it will. But I just want you to know that what you're doing doesn't require deep abstract knowledge of theology that you don't yet know. You don't have to explain how the fire works. You don't have to explain the chemical reactions that are taking place. You just testify to the experience of being close and the warmth of God's love in your life. That's enough. And others of you, God's inviting you to call people up on fire. And maybe there's people he's putting on your mind right now that he's saying, I want you to invite them. Maybe it's inviting them to a Sunday, maybe it's inviting them to Alpha, which is going to be kicking off in the next couple months. Mike will have more info on that. If, you know, there's people that are interested in Jesus, but they don't yet follow him, it might be Alpha for them. Whatever it is, you have a role to play in the story that fire is lit. How will you respond? Well, pray for us, Father. Thank you. Thank you for grace, thank you for mercy, thank you for sending the gift of your son. Thank you that you welcome respectable people and the ungodly and that you bring us together not around anything other than our shared need and your share and your provision for everyone, which is Jesus, God, that you would help each of us take our next step this morning, whatever that is, that you would bring clarity where I have not. God, we love you and we thank you, so you may pray. Amen. Okay, we have prayer counselors up here in the front who would love to pray for you. If anything stirred up this morning, I'm going to invite you to praise him and thank him. And then Mike will be up to close us in a few minutes.