How to Trust God With What Comes Next // 1 Samuel 7

Happy anniversary to City Church. Amen, guys, wow. By the grace of God, we did it, okay? One out of every three churches that is ever planted, never gets to make it to 10 years yet alone, be thriving, not just surviving, guys. We've seen over the last decade, over a thousand people baptized in our church. Isn't that incredible? I really mean this, by the grace of God, we've been able to give millions of dollars away, okay? And more than that, we've been able to see lives transformed by the gospel. We've seen marriages restored. We've seen addictions broken. We've seen families reconciled. And I mean this, I feel like we are just getting started. I mean, you saw what I look like in that video, okay? A couple of those things. Look, I used to have a lot more hair and a lot less gray, and it's mostly your fault, okay? No, I love you guys, no, no. Guys, I see the grace of God, and here's the thing. We want, please hear me say this, we, here's the posture of my heart here. I hope this is the posture of your heart. We always want our dreams to be way bigger than our memories. And we are looking to the past, and we are learning from the past, so we are not living in the past.

Today is, yes, it's about looking back the last 10 years and celebrating our first decade, but more than that, it's about starting our next decade together. So with that said, let's pray. And then if you need time to find this passage, we're gonna be in, we're not gonna be in Romans. We'll be back in Romans next week. We're gonna be in first Samuel seven. Let's pray. Lord, we are unbelievably grateful. We are grateful for the grace of God in our lives. We are grateful for the story that you have written, and the part of the story, that the small part of the story that our church gets to play, and I thank you for the part of the story that every family, every individual, every couple gets to play. Lord, as we just have had an incredibly special last few days with the heights, I thank you for Pastor Kevin, Pastor Joby, Pastor Vance, and the unique word they brought. Or I thank you for Donovan and his team leading us. I thank you for all of the things that have gone behind the scenes to put together a 10 year video in 14 minutes. Lord, and may we not forget the grace of God in the past, and may that encourage us to look forward to the grace of God in the future.

We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, there is a power. Marketers know this in just the right phrase, okay? It could be, I'm loving it, right, by McDonald's, right? It could be just do it. It could be, do you remember back in the 90s and early 2000s, remember they got a phrase down to two words, God milk. Remember that, with just a question mark. In the milk mustache, they built all that and all the commercials, right? Or here we are in Winston-Salem, the home of Krispy Kreme Donuts. Have you ever been, it's been late at night, and you've been driving, and you saw those two words lit up. Hot now. And you thought, I think I have time to make one more bad decision today. You know what I'm saying, okay? I wanna talk to you about two words, okay? When we came in today, we gave you this. Until now, okay? So I want you to write down your until now moments, okay? You don't need to do that right now, you certainly can, and share them with your community group. But let me explain this. I'm gonna explain this and then come back to it in verse 12 when Samuel today says these words. But until now does three things.

It looks back at what God has done. And we just did that for 14 minutes. It looks to the present and say, what is the potential new thing God might be doing in my marriage, in my kid's heart, in my life? Some of you are finding yourself in a brand new season and stage of life. What a great time to say, you know what? Until now, but not anymore. Sometimes the until now moment in the present, by the way, is there's something I have not dealt with. And let me just say, why not deal with it today? We're always looking for a day to deal with something, right? You're trying to make your birthday that, you're trying to make your anniversary that, you know? We're trying to make new years that we're gonna have, we're gonna have a, I'm just telling you ahead of time at the end of the service, we're just gonna have it until now moment where you can walk down and go, not anymore. Your until now might become a right now or from now on. And then an until now looks forward into the future and says even now, even now God could do something incredible as I look to the last decades of my life. So guys, this has been a special weekend and I am the grace of God. Up until about last night. I forgot it was preaching this morning. Okay Because we've had this here, so I mean don't worry my sermon was done Okay, but but I was like oh, yeah, I'm a part of this too and so guys

Let's look at first Samuel 7. I'm doing something. I don't normally like to do if I can be honest I'm parachuting into a book and talking about one passage without having read all the other passages up to it But let me just read what we're gonna and then I'll kind of explain to you first Samuel 7 says this In the men of kirioth jereum, okay, you don't have to try to pronounce it this week Just when you're reading it and you're just say k. J. Okay, the men of k. J They came and they took up the ark of the Lord and brought it to the house of a benedab on the hill and they consecrated his son Eleas are to have charge of the ark of the Lord guys. Here's what happened you might if you read this story I'm just gonna explain to you briefly you go. Why is the ark of God? It is not supposed to be in some dude's house up on a hill What has happened like let me just tell you this okay guys because this is where some of you are Israel messed up You ever mess up I mean they messed up bad Okay, which is kind of a weird thing to talk about because here we are is like this is the anniversary We're gonna talk about all the celebration But like you're just gonna have moments or you're gonna know someone and it's like they're gonna mess up I know we have theological language for it They sinned but it's like here's what it feels like I just messed up and The way they messed up is the exact same way that we always messed up. We take God for granted and It sounds silly to us now but they put their faith in a piece of furnace or the ark and they were that life wasn't going well and so they take the ark into battle and They basically think maybe we can use God for our advantage Which we all are tempted to believe at some point. Maybe God exists. Maybe I don't exist to serve God. Maybe God exists to serve me Maybe I'm not supposed to be a part of God's agenda. Maybe I could get God to be a part of my agenda It doesn't go well guys So in the first five chapters like they just get beat up by the Philistines the Ark gets captured the Philistines get the Ark Okay, but basically it says in first Samuel 5 that when the Philistines stole the Ark God gave them tumors now if you actually look at what it's saying in the Hebrew, it's hemorrhoids So God has a sense of humor even his judgments. Okay, and some of you men north of 50 are getting nervous So don't worry about this. Okay

Um, and they bring the Ark back to Israel But then they don't know what to do with it because they don't they've forgotten God So they put it in some guy's house and I'm sure that guys were really really nervous Okay, so it's sitting in his house and look how long it's sitting in his house for look at verse two It says this From that from the day that the Ark was large large at KJ a long time past some 20 years So twice as long as our church has existed And all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord. Let me tell you this. This may sound strange But the first good thing that is said about Israel in the book of Samuel is that they were sad See what's interesting is sometimes long seasons create deep longings And I know this is also kind of something strange to talk about on our anniversary But it's in the text here like you know What would your if we could show a 14 minute video of your life over the last 10 years? What will we show? Because something I get it like this is we that was the highlight reel. Okay, we just showed you we didn't tell you We showed you code it briefly, but there's been a lot of hard things to but you know The hard thing is if you're like, you know what if we showed a 10 minute video or a 15 minute video that recap the last 10 years of my life It's pretty sad Because over the last 10 years my dad died you think or over the last 10 years. I got divorced or I got diagnosed or sometimes This is the worst over the last 10 years It'd be like we're not be much to show because it's the same thing again and again and again because my life isn't much different What says that they're sad now listen they lament lament is godward. It's okay They think about it this way the opposite of lamenting is wallowing Okay wallowing is when you Feel bad in a sense of self-pity. Okay, I struggle with this sometimes yourself a self-pity is How could life be going so bad for someone as awesome as me? And we all tend to think we're the hero. We're the most important person. So they are lamenting now This is what everything changes in verse 3 Samuel shows up. We haven't seen Samuel since he was 12. So He in chapter 3 he has this miraculous birth and his mom commits him to the Lord and he and he's Disciples by Eli and he hears the voice of the Lord and then we don't see him from age 12

So we estimate he's in his 30s or 40s when we're gonna see him in a minute. Okay, and I just want to encourage you He is gonna be such a I want to encourage particularly the young men and women maybe who are in our student ministry like this guy He made them when he was 12 13 14 years old and it turned him into the person yesterday Everyone small people go, you know, our leaders born are they made? Well, I don't know how else they come into the world except for being born obviously But they're ultimately made by godly parents and godly decisions, right? So Samuel shows up and and let me say this. I think this is important for us to understand God brings new people into our life so we can have a new experience of the grace of God God brings new people into our life So that we can have a new experience of the grace of God the people are really struggling. They don't know what to do They don't know God's word and and Samuel is going to come and he's going to be a new person in their life And he's going to bring them a new grace. Can I take something? So I've been a part of this church. Obviously. I was on the launch team, you know I've been here since the beginning and so and so at the very beginning this church had community groups before we had Sunday services So I've always been in a community group now. Can I just tell you something that may surprise you? I have not always liked my community group Now if you're in my community group right now, I like you it's going well Great, I really do love my community group. I love my community I have not and I've always liked the people in it But like I haven't always liked going to my own community group which was sometimes I was leading it sometimes I was hosting it sometimes I was doing both and And you know what I realized what we've realized as a staff is that's how people can begin to feel about their community group after about five years if if this one thing hasn't happened if new people haven't entered it I Mean I'm telling you your community group if it's not going well is one new person away from everything changing You just get one young lady in there. She's a brand new believer and she's asking a bunch of questions She's super interested in the Bible changes the whole way your group feels you get one young couple in there They're newly married. They're asking questions about marriage. You get one older couple in there that looks like they still like each other And it gives some other people hope in that group. I mean, it's unbelievable like a new person, but by the way, so Hear this humbly from from us. We're very humbled by this the outreach magazine

So you Joe Pastor Joby was here, you know this weekend, you know outreach list top 100 fastest growing churches every year So 1122 Pastor Joby was here. They were number one by the grace of God this last year. We were number 12 So yeah, yeah, that's I didn't mean to you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, we're very good God the glory on that But here's all I'll tell you that that's what was so encouraging about that is that means that there's a lot of new people here And I want to let you know wait a second if you are a new person God has brought you to our church because our church needs a new grace And so I just want to encourage you like like what you're gonna see in a second I need to read it is that same who's gonna step up and speak and Him stepping up and speaking and bringing God's word to people Is what's gonna catapult them into the future and look I just taught on the sovereignty of God for a few weeks But I'm also gonna tell you this there are things that will not happen in The people's lives that you love if you don't step up and speak And so this is what Samuel does let me read it now that's all background because Samuel shows up in Samuel Okay, the young boy of chapter three said to all the house of the Lord if you are returning to the Lord So I see you're sad. That looks good. He goes. Let me let me give you a word Let me give you a specific word. He says if you are returning to the Lord with all your heart Then put away the foreign gods in the ashtrith from among you and direct your heart to the Lord and serve him only And he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines So the people of Israel put away the bales and the ashtrith and they serve the Lord only so This is the kind of a crazy time in the history of Israel. They live kind of if you know your Bible It's okay if you don't but they live in between judges the judges in the land and the monarchy being established So it's a crazy time and Samuel shows up as a prophet and guys people either love or hate prophets They only get one star and five-star reviews on Yelp. Okay, there's no three two Okay, because what a prophet does is a prophet comes into a situation of compromise and preaches conviction and courage and A prophet comes into a world of tolerance. Hey everybody's okay and whatever and says actually everybody's not okay And instead of tolerance preaches repentance. Now. Here's what Samuel does he takes a familiar word and he makes it fresh Which is you know not to talk about me for a second, but just you know, okay to talk about me for just a second, right? That's my father. Well, I would say that's enough of me talking about me. How about you talk about me? You know I'm sorry But

This is what well, let me say this way. This is what a pastor's trying to do all the time He's trying to you know, it's like here's a text and you've read it You've heard it. You've probably heard it preached on before or whatever Now, here's what's interesting. A word becomes fresh often when you hear that same word through a new person. So last night, I had an opportunity after Pastor Vance Pittman was here to spend some time with him, and we were talking about his discipleship philosophy. And he goes, oh yeah, it's very simple at our church. It was about abiding in Christ, connecting to Christian community and sharing your faith. He goes, we built everything around that thought. Well, that's exactly what we're doing, but you just taught me how to say it in a whole new way, and it hit me. By the way, this is why, there's no quota we're trying to hit in kids ministry, just so you know. There's no quota we're trying to hit in student ministry. We're literally like, guys, we want you to get your kids in our incredible student and kids environments, because probably what they need to do is hear the same things you're saying to them from somebody else. I don't think Pastor J.D. Greer would mind me saying this, okay? He has talked publicly before about how amazing his parents were. He says, and his dad's still alive.

And he says, I had the most amazing parents. He said, but as I looked over my life, I realized none of the most significant spiritual experiences in my life happened with my parents. They always happened somewhere else when somebody else said exactly what they were saying to me. But I was in college, or I was at a camp, or I was at a retreat. And so part of what we want to see, like basically, from what we can tell, students who walk with God in college versus students who don't, what we can measure is they had somebody in their life who wasn't their mom and dad who was a positive Christian influence in their life as well. So what is the word he brings? Well, I already read it, it's the word repentance, okay? It's very easy, by the way, a kind of easy to preach repentance. It's a lot harder, if we can be honest, to practice repentance. And the way that you practice repentance is put your idols away. Now, to put our idols away, we would first have to know what our idols are. And that's really hard for us. I won't give a whole sermon on idolatry. But if you go to the bales and the ash are off, I mean, that sounds silly to us, okay? Because we, you can't, but it was normal to them. 'Cause those gods represented money, sex, power.

It's so easy to see idols when you go somewhere else. So when I went to India, you go to India, okay? Which was far, okay, to begin with. And I'm glad to be there. And I just love to do ministry there for the eight or 10 days I was there. But they worship cows there. I like to eat cows, okay? I'm like, how can you not have like a ribeye steak, medium rare, but I'm there. And I'm like, this is the silliest thing ever, but then I come home and I can't see entertainment as an idol. And I can't see all the restaurants as the idol of the stomach. And I can't see all the sports stadiums as the idol of sports. It's like, it's harder to see your idols. And he says, put them away, which we wanna do everything but put up. So once you've realized your idol, here's what you wanna do. Let me process that with my therapist. Hey, I think it's funny, right? (laughing) What did it, no, and I always have, can I just say this and not have to say it every time? We're not against therapy. We're not against counseling. Okay, all of that. But I think we have very sophisticated ways to basically say that we're dealing with something

when we're not dealing with it. So he says, okay, you need to put your idols away and then he said, I want you to direct your heart. You know what your heart is, right? Your heart is, it's the center of who you are. Now the heart thing with us is we've been told a lot of lies. We've been told that we're supposed to follow our heart. Remember that famous song? Listen to your heart, right? And I wanna go, it is so deceitful. I mean, that's what the next line should, because our hearts are deceitful. Here, you can't fix your heart. So here's what you have to do. And this is, I think, helpful. Because you can't fix your heart. Like, you know, you're like, I don't even love that I love things I shouldn't love. So that's a hard problem. And the problem of the heart of the problem always is the problem of the heart. So if you can't fix your heart and you can't change your heart, what do you do? You're supposed to direct your heart to the Lord. You're supposed to give God attention, your attention. You know, I don't know who first said this. Someone said, attention is the purest and the most simple form of generosity. Attention is valuable. Netflix knows that.

I read an article the other day. Oh, it was a while ago now, and it said, you know, Netflix is competing with, sleep. Isn't that interesting? They said that. They're not worried about Hulu. They're worried about sleep. They would like to keep you up for as long as possible having you watch something. He says, direct your heart. He says, direct your heart only to the Lord. Now, if I got up here and preached a little sermon about like, you know, it'd be pretty easy to do and you'd probably like it if I just said, guys, Christians are supposed to serve the Lord and we'd all write them down and we'd try to do them. Here's the thing, he says, serve the Lord only. Which I don't even know how to talk. It's like God is the, not just your top priority. He's in a category all by himself. Here's what I think this means, be all in. I'm trying to be all in, it's hard. And I do this for a living. You know, it's like, it's, I was wondering though, think about this with me. If you're exhausted in your Christian life, you might think I'm exhausted because I'm all in. Just think with me for a second. Are you exhausted because you're not all in? Because think about it, if you straddle the fence,

first of all, that's very uncomfortable. If you find yourself on one side of the fence, think about this physically. I'm on one side of the fence, then I'm on the other side. That's really tiring. And I think, would you be less exhausted if you said I'm all in, so I'm the same person in every place. And I'm all in, so my conscience, I can sleep. My conscience is not condemning me at two o'clock in the morning. Well, where's one of the places that you can look to see if you're all in? Well, there's only one place where Jesus said, you cannot serve God and money. And what's interesting is he didn't say you shouldn't. And so we could look at that and go, that's a command 'cause Jesus is Lord. But he doesn't say you shouldn't. He said, you literally can't. He's like, I'm not so much giving you a command as much as I'm describing a reality because here's what happens in everybody's life, okay? And this happens in really, really small ways. And this can happen in really, really big ways. Everybody is gonna have a moment in their life where it's going to cost them financially to walk with God. It could be as simple as it's gonna, well, I can't just keep increasing my standard of living. I need to increase my standard of giving.

You've heard on that video, they wanted me to share a little bit of my story about my dad's business. And it's interesting 'cause all my sabbatical this summer, I took Elon, my youngest. I did an individual trip with each one of my kids. And so I took Elon to Pittsburgh and we stayed at my brother. He's got this big house in Pittsburgh. And then we stayed at my parents' house in Pittsburgh for a little bit and we played at my brother's golf. We did all these different things. And my dad, my brother works for my dad and all that kind of stuff. And we get in the car after five days. And Elon, my 10-year-old says, "Dad, I'm mad at you." And I'm like, dude, I paid for everything this week. I took you up here. Like we had, this is a father's son trip. Why are you mad at me? He said, "Cause you could've been rich." He said, "Which means we could've been rich." (audience laughing) You know, it's interesting. There's another situation in which I saw about three years ago. Obviously, this is always dangerous to share with, you know, 4,000 of my closest friends here, okay? And then everything I say is on the internet forever, okay? Which is not helpful.

But about two or three years ago, an opportunity came across my desk here. Not to leave this church, okay? No, not to do anything illegal. Okay, I promise. But it was one of those opportunities. It wasn't a change I was gonna preach for. I was gonna do everything I do here. But it was like, and it was nothing connected to our church. It was like, hey, if you will do X, Y, and Z, you will be able to make, and basically the way it was described is, hey, lots of pastors struggle to send their kids to college. If you do this, you'll be able to send all of your kids to Wake Forest University or wherever you want, it won't be a problem. And so then I go home and I have to have a conversation, should I do, I mean, that's a lot of money. I don't know if it's a lot of money to use, a lot of money to me. But then I sort of think, I can't really, it wouldn't be a program. I can't get into all the details of why, if I did that, it really wasn't gonna be good for our church. And so I just had this moment, and I remember I took it to some of our elders afterwards, and I said, guys, I think I just passed the test.

Not the test, 'cause there's many tests, you know? But I think I just passed A test. I'm just telling you guys, some of you are in a test right now, pass it. It might be a financial test, I don't know. There's different tests, okay? There's different temptations. So he says, okay, well, here's what I want you to do. I want you to devote your heart to the Lord. I want you to give him your attention. I want you to put away the idols. Then look what happens. When they do that, okay, this is what happens. He says, this is in verse five. Then Samuel said, "Gather all at Misfa." So this is the first Heights Conference ever in the Old Testament right here, okay? And I will pray to the Lord for you. So they gathered at Misfa, and then they do all this emotional, visible stuff. Okay, they couldn't show videos like we can. So they did it otherwise. So they drew water and they poured it out before the Lord in the desert, which is kind of dramatic. And they fasted, and that's kind of dramatic on that day. And they said this, "We have sinned against the Lord "and Samuel judged the people of Israel at Misfa." So here's what I want you to know. They have an emotional experience with the Lord that calls them into action.

So I want you to know, we don't apologize. I would like, might as well just tell you, I want our services to be as emotional as possible. I'm always talking to the Lord and going, I wish I was better at preaching because I just, 'cause what I'd like people to do is I'd like them to feel the full spectrum of human emotion. Like, you know, I wish I was as funny as Joby, so we all laugh till our stomachs hurt, you know, every time. And I wish I could call people to respond like Vance did and people, you know, and I wish that there was a, I wish that we would get sad together over the things we need to get sad about. And I wish that we would be so filled with hope that we couldn't wait to leave. And you know, it's hard in 90 minutes for us to feel all of these. But here's what I want you to understand, 'cause we don't just want emotion. It's just like, we don't, I don't want to, I mean, if I just want to be moved, I'll watch a movie. Okay. This is maybe really important to understand. Theologically, the point of emotion is to get you in motion. So what's interesting to do is if you do a word study in the Bible of key emotions, you'll notice that they almost always are there to get you in motion. So godly grief, in this case,

is meant to get, no one wants to feel that emotion. But that emotion is to get you in motion to repent and confess. Or you could think like the emotion of anger, righteous anger, is there to help you confront somebody you need to confront, or protect somebody that you love. The emotion of fear is not just, you know, it's kind of interesting. We like wanna be, some of you watch scary movies and ride roller coasters and jump out of airplanes with backpacks, you know what I'm saying? Why would anyone do that? 'Cause we're meant to feel fear. Fear is meant, it has multiple purposes, but for us to flee things, we shouldn't be around. Joy is there so that we would be generous. Hope is there so that we would endure. And so basically, they're having a holy and sacred moment. And I think that's part of what we've been trying to do at the heights, is we don't wanna manufacture or manipulate, but we're trying to create the most, I mean, I know that video is emotional for me. I don't know that I've watched yet with that tear note, but it's to get us in motion. In fact, here's what they do, look at verse seven. Now, when the Philistines heard that the people of Israel had gathered at Mitzvah, the lords of the Philistines went up against Israel, and when the people of Israel heard of it, they were afraid of the Philistines.

So the Philistines represent the world or the enemies of God, kind of both. And so you kind of go, the world doesn't really know what's going on in the church. The world cannot understand what's happening at the heights, for example. But what's interesting is the Philistines do not attack Israel for 20 years while they're living in idolatry. They only attack them when they get serious about the Lord. If Christianity is your hobby, do pick a ball instead, okay? Christianity is a terrible hobby. And here's the thing, if you decide to be all in, and if you get serious about the Lord, you will be attacked, but God will protect you. Like, I'm just telling you, if you get serious, like when I call you down here in a few minutes, if you go, man, I'm gonna get serious about fighting sin, well, welcome, 'cause you're gonna have about three new temptations tonight. And if you get serious, you know what I, you, Kyle, talk to us about you, you can't serve God and money, I'm gonna be generous. Good, your air conditioning's gonna break. This is just what happens. And you get serious about sharing Christ at work, and it's gonna get, you know, HR is gonna call you in, and then you're gonna tell, you're excited about what God's doing, you tell your community group,

you know, and they're telling you to calm down, you're too radical. And you try that, you know, you're like, I need to be a spiritual leader in my home, and your wife and kids are like, what are you doing? It's like, I'm trying, but as soon as I get serious about something, I'm gonna get attacked, but look what it says, it says God protected them, and look what they did in verse eight. And the people of Israel said the same, "from the hand of the Philistines." By the way, that would be one way to know that you're serious about the Lord is when you start asking people to pray for you. Like I think that that is one of, they're not just like, you know, something shallow. It's like, would you please pray for me as I need to have a really hard conversation with my 15-year-old boy that I've been avoiding for a while. And I think there's some things going on in his life and I don't know what they are. And if it's what I think it is, I don't know whether to bring down discipline or to give him a lot of grace. And I just need you to pray. You start doing that, people are gonna go, I, someone's here is a real Christian and I'm not sure if it's me. And so they say, "Hey, would you, "he says, would you pray for us?"

Verse nine, "Then Samuel took a nursing lamb "and he offered it as a whole burn offering to the Lord "and Samuel cried out to the Lord for Israel "and the Lord answered him." So here's what Samuel understands that the real, I didn't know Pastor Job is gonna talk about this, that the real warfare is always about worship. It sounds insane. I mean, we know it because Christ is our substitutionary lamb and all of that. But I'm just saying the idea that in the middle of being attacked, he's going to offer a sacrifice. Okay, here's what I think what's really important. The biggest sin struggles in your life. Okay, if you're like, "How did I get here?" Okay, the answer is you worshiped your way in. Every sin issue is that like if we got to the bottom, every sin issue is a worship issue. And so if you worship your way in, there's only one way out. You have to worship your way out. A, A gets this. I mean, it's not explicitly Christian, but like if you're not willing to do step one, if there's a higher power, then we can't help you. Because think about, we'll just use alcohol for an example, for the alcoholic, listen. Why do people who drink too much drink too much? There's lots of reasons, but here's why, 'cause they really like it.

Because there's nothing better to an alcoholic than alcohol, nothing. It's like, well, why would they stop doing that? That's a lot of fun. It's like the only way they're gonna be able to stop doing that is they need something better than alcohol. Well, good luck to the alcoholic. There's not, they don't know anything better than it, or they would be doing it. It's like, okay, well, then they need a vision of Jesus Christ that's bigger and better than their alcohol addiction. Samuel understands that we worship our way into problems. That was idolatry, and now we need to worship our way out. And that's where we get to verse 10. As Samuel was offering the burn offering, the Philistines drew near to attack Israel, but the Lord fundered, and that's interesting, because the bales and the asheroth were the gods of the sky. Where the mighty sound that day against the Philistines and threw them into confusion, and they were defeated before Israel, and the men of Israel went out from mishpah and pursued the Philistines and struck them as far as below Beth Carr. Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between mishpah and shen, and called its name Ebenezer. Okay, I know you read that, you go, what does a guy who hates Christmas have to do with this, okay?

This is a different, Ebenezer means a stone in the middle to remember. He called its name Ebenezer for he said till, or as we're translating it, until now, the Lord has helped us. So I love this, he puts it in the middle. Okay, this is not a monument. What we're not trying to do here, we're not trying to build a monument to any one event or any one person, or a museum where we look back at, you know, and just talk about all the things that God used to do here, okay? But it's more like if you're running in a marathon and you've made significant traction, and at mile 13.1 or whatever, you decide I'm gonna put down a marker. Now, here's the stone, the stone communicates, and we're back with the until now phrase that I wanna close us with. Until now looks three ways, okay? Until now looks back in gratitude. So I love when, you know, whatever it is, psychology, sociology, science, when it catches up with the Bible, because whoever they are, the psychologist, whatever, they say generic gratitude, vague gratitude, does nothing to the brain. But specific gratitude rewires the brain. So for example, you can't just go God, like thank you for everything over the last 10 years.

It's like, that's the participation trophy. Here's what you want to say. You know what? When I look over this last year, my 17-year-old son was in a really dark place. And there was another young man who came and spent time with him again and again and again. And he took him out to lunch. And God, I am thankful for the man who invested in my son and my son's darkest hour. And you need a bunch of things to be grateful for. It's interesting. Have you ever thought about how important your memory is? It's one thing-- so for example, the diseases we fear the most have to do with losing our memories. And it's the hardest thing for us to watch other. It's one thing for you to go, my 78-year-old grandmother or father got cancer and died, and it's very sad. But there is something even sadder than she had dementia for eight years. She had Alzheimer's for seven years. We're so afraid of losing our memory that we'll make entire movie series about it. Jason Bourne-- it's like, well, how scary would it be if I had amnesia and I couldn't remember anything in the past? So we can't forget the past. But then with our 10th anniversary, we had this long conversation with Claude, AI. And I threw everything in. And I threw every sermon I've ever preached into it.

I told her everything I knew about our church. I dropped our website into it. I did everything. And I said, what is the unique temptations at 10 years old? And it gave me a couple. One of them was nostalgia as the main competitor to future vision. Have you noticed that we are obsessed with nostalgia as a culture right now? Raising 90s kids. For so many parents. Or, I mean, how many Disney remake movies do we need? It's like, did you like Moana? Because it's the same thing with real people, right? If you love the little mermaid, we'll do it again. So here's the second one. So we need to look back with specific gratitude. And I think, really, genuinely, in a few minutes here, I think there's some of you that just need to come forward and go, you know what, the big sin in my heart is I'm not very grateful. And I have not just taken God for granted. I've taken my spouse for granted. I've taken my kids for granted. I've taken my job for granted. I've taken my health for granted. It's like, oh man. The second one is an until now. And it's like, hey, listen, things are gonna be different. I'm gonna make some really big decisions.

You know, I saw this quote this last week, okay? And I wish I came up with this. And after I say this, I'm gonna say, as I've always said from now on with this quote, okay? 'Cause it's just so good. Here's what he said. The curse of being disciplined is every day looks the same. He said, the curse of not being disciplined is every year looks the same. And there's some of you that you're just in the same place. You're in the same place you were last year. You're in the same place and we moved in this building. Some of you are with us in 2023 and you're in the same place. And there's just two things to get you out of that place. They're very simple. There are certain things that you need to stop doing and there's other things that you need to start doing. Do you ever wonder why the 10 commandments are given in all negatives, except for the fourth commandment about keep the Sabbath holy? It's because before you can do, before you know, before you need to know what to do, you need to know what to not to do. And there's some of you that just go, you know, there are things that some of you are doing, okay? And I mean this respectfully, they're stupid and they're sinful and they're making things worse. There's some of you, you know, you're like,

you know, every night, this is how it ends with our family. Every night at dinner, this is it. I'm making it worse. And every time my husband comes home, I'm making it worse. Some of you, you're making things, it's like stop making things worse. They're bad enough already. Life is hard enough already. You just gotta go, I'm gonna stop doing things that I know I shouldn't be doing, that I know are making my life worse and the people around me worse. But there's things I need to start doing. And those are all the things that you already know. If you've been in our church more than six or eight weeks, you know where they are. I need to be in community, I need to pray, I need to serve, I need to share my faith, need to read my Bible. Here's the thing, it says until now, did you see how it ended? Looking forward, it says until now, he has helped us. Guys, it doesn't say he helped me, he helped us. Couple times a year, I get a group of pastors. We spend three nights together, and every night I end at the bonfire. And the bonfire for me with these 10 guys, 12 guys, has become so important that I have like a new, mini theme verse for my life, which is, not a verse, a phrase that I say,

which is the fire pit is almost as important as the pulpit. And I'm somebody who I stand in the pulpit for a living. But here's what happened to me, and this is why I began to think this. I had these guys around me, and these were all lead pastors, some of them been lead pastors for years. And what I do the final night at the fire pit is I always speak into each guy's life. Like I just, I know them well enough, I watch what happened this week, I watch them interact, and I have like a word for each guy to encourage him, challenge him at the end. And I've been doing this for years, but I never asked this question. I said, guys, can I ask you a question, and I don't wanna embarrass anyone. I said, there's 10 guys around here, plus me, so 11 of us. I said, I'm about to speak into your life, encouragement and challenge directly. Can I ask you, would you just raise your hand if you never had anyone, another man do that your whole life? Five of the 10 pastors raised their hand. And I'm like, I was not expecting that. And I thought, how can we build this culture of helping one another? Like if you've never experienced it and you've never had it explained, you can't do it. Guys, I want us to have an until now moment, okay?

Because by the way, our ultimate Ebenezer stone is not what Samuel put down, you know, it's interesting. The stone is not, our ultimate Ebenezer is not a stone that we put down, think about this. It's a stone that God rolled away. The only reason that we have hope that our life could be different, that we could experience the grace of God is because Jesus Christ lived, died and rose for us. So I just wanna encourage you, you are, I think just moments away from having an until now moment, just a moment I'm gonna pray for us. And I wanna encourage you to get down here if you wanna cultivate a spirit of gratitude in your life and get down here and start telling God specifically the things you're thankful for. For others of you, I want you to come down because this is a moment where you can say, you know what, there are some things that I just know. Maybe no one else does. I know I need to stop doing them and there's a couple of things I need to start doing. But I wanna invite you down because guys, this right now, we're gonna end the service. This is the beginning of a new decade in our church. And we wanna continue to be led by the spirit of God and God has brought you here, you know, whether you're a new person or whatever, God has brought you here to help bring the grace of God

to people here and people outside of here. So let's pray. Lord, in just a moment, I'm gonna invite everyone down here. And there's obviously people in here who, right now, just wherever they are, they need to grow in gratitude because it is impossible for sin to actively dwell in a heart that's constantly grateful. And for some people, gratitude is the key. It's the key that's going to unlock the grace of God in their life. It's the key for their relationship with their spouse or their friends, or there's some people in here that they've been complaining about something that they're grateful for, that they need to begin to be grateful for. Or what an incredible time for us to draw a line in the sand and say, what I'm coming down here because until now, I've done this or that, but right now and from now on, I'm gonna stop doing and start doing. And also, Lord, I pray for people to come down as we begin to dream. And we begin to ask this question, God, what is the next big decision you want us to make? We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Please stand, please sing, please come forward. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

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