Celebrate

Celebrate

Chet Phillips

Transcript

Good morning. My name's Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in the last week of our Hammer and Hammock series where we have been talking about work and rest. And as we start today, I just want to remind us that we believe a gospel of rest. We believe a message of rest, that Christianity is a proclamation of rest.

Over and against and compared to all other religions, Christianity is fundamentally different. So that if we had another faith, if we believed in another God, if we worshipped in another religion, but primarily what they teach and what is taught and what is said and what we would understand is, come do these things, don't do those things, and then you'll be one of the good guys. Come do these things, don't do those things, and then God will love you. Come live this way, be this type of person, have this type of life, celebrate in this manner, and then you'll be welcomed. Then you'll reach nirvana.

Then you'll have inner peace. Then you'll have, and Christianity isn't that message. The fundamental message behind Christianity is not, hey, come here and do these things. The fundamental message of Christianity starts off like this. You're terrible. It gets better.

That's how it starts off. You're a sinner. You are broken. You cannot do the things it takes to be okay with God. You cannot do what is necessary. You cannot work hard enough, be moral enough, be holy enough to stand before God and have him accept you.

But Jesus is good. And he has lived perfectly on our behalf and died in our place for our sin, and that his death is a sacrifice that covers us. And so the gospel of Christianity, the message of Christianity is come to Jesus. He saves sinners. It's a gospel of rest. It's a message of rest.

It's not come labor, come work, come have something to present to God. It's a message of when Jesus says, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. That's the message, to come to Jesus and have him save you, have his good work on your behalf. And then it's out of that that we do everything else. And so in this series we've been talking about we're designed by God in creation. He set the pattern of six days of work, one day of rest.

Six days of work, one day of rest. Six days of work, one day of rest. So that's the rhythm he put into creation. And so we spent some time talking about that we're meant to have purpose, we're meant to have dominion and work, good work that we do that takes time and effort, and that we're meant to shut everything down and rest for a day. We've tried to spend some time talking about what that looks like, and that it's worth taking the time and energy to figure out how you rest well. So some of you work with your minds and you need to rest with your hands.

You need to take up a hobby. You need to learn how to paint or play the piano or build birdhouses. And some of you work with your hands all the time and you need to start reading some fiction. And maybe it is restful to watch a show or two or a movie on Netflix, but it is not restful to have all of your rest just be Netflix. And trying to figure out what it looks like for you to rest, it actually may be more difficult for you to rest well and actually feel rejuvenated because you have to get in your car and you have to drive somewhere and you have to walk around and be near trees and get bitten by a bug.

But that actually makes you want to go back to work rather than just wearing sweatpants all day. And so what we've tried to talk about is we've got to figure out a way to do that. And so in this last Sunday, we're going to talk about one specific thing. As we were talking about this, we just started looking at it, and we were looking at kind of the calendar that God put into the world. And so he says, work six days, rest one, work six days, rest one. But he also intentionally calendared other interruptions.

And so we want to talk about celebrating. That Christians are designed and humans are designed to celebrate, to have rhythms of vacation, rhythms of holidays, rhythms of days and weeks and times that are feasts and celebrations. And so here's kind of our point today. That we were designed, humanity was designed for celebratory rest, and Christians should be better at this than anyone. We were designed for celebratory rest, and Christians should be better at this than anyone. And we already kind of know that.

That's the way we understand culture. You can remember being in high school or being in college and being at a party, and it just not being that good of a party. And you thought to yourself, this party needs more Christians. And then it would be great. This isn't something we're known for, but it is something that we ought to be known for. You have never thought that.

Some of you were Christians in high school, and you still didn't think that. You showed up to parties as a Christian in high school, saw other Christians and thought, oh man, and you need to repent. But here's the thing. We're supposed to. We're designed for it, and we're supposed to be good at it. So grab your Bibles, go to John chapter 2.

We'll spend most of our time there. I'm going to read a little bit from Deuteronomy 16 to kind of set the stage, but we'll spend most of our time in John chapter 2. I'll let you flip there, and then we're going to pray. It should be on page 517 if you have one of the blue Bibles in the row. If you don't own a Bible, take that one. It's our gift to you.

We bought boxes and boxes of them. So you may have them. And go home and use a magnifying glass so that you can read it. All right, let's pray. God, we thank you for this time we get to spend in your word this morning, and we thank you for this time that we get to spend with your church this morning. And we pray that you would bless it, that we might grow closer to each other and closer to you, and be equipped and rested to fulfill all that you've given us and all the weight and purpose that you've laid on us as your people.

In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so before we get to John chapter 2, I'm going to read a few places in Deuteronomy 16. So this is where God rescues the people of Israel out of Egypt, and he gives them the law, and he begins to teach them this is what it's going to look like to follow me. This is what you'll be. So we've spent some time in the Ten Commandments because he sets up the Sabbath there, that one of the Ten Commandments is take a day off, and then he starts giving them feasts and festivals that they're going to participate in.

And so I want to read a few of these, and we'll have them above on the screen. So in Deuteronomy 16, he lists out three feasts where he wants everybody to stop and gather in Jerusalem. And he's kind of telling them before they get into the Promised Land, this is how it's going to work. And he says, Then you shall keep the feast of weeks to the Lord your God. This is verse 10 in Deuteronomy. With the tribute of a freewill offering from your hand, which you shall give as the Lord your God blesses you.

So everybody is supposed to bring something to this feast. And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your son and your daughter and your male servant, your female servant, your Levite who's within your town. So here's the command. You shall rejoice. You're going to take time to rejoice. You're going to bring something and you're going to celebrate.

Rejoice means to display or feel great joy or delight. So one of the commands in the law, and people will quote commands from the Old Testament law on a regular basis. They're trying to say, Well, the Bible says this. The Bible says that. Nobody's ever proof text this one on you. Well, the Bible says you shall rejoice.

It's like, but it's in there. One of the commands was, and they got in trouble if they didn't do this. These were aggressive commands. They weren't like, Hey, this is kind of a suggestion. I was thinking maybe I should have a feast. He says, Everyone's going to be there.

And if you're not there, you're going to be cut off. If you're not there, you're not welcome anymore. If you don't come to this party, we're done. You're not my friend anymore. This isn't how it works. It's aggressive in the commands here.

And it's a command to rejoice, to take time to celebrate. He keeps going. The Feast of Tabernacles. He says this. You shall rejoice in your feast. You and your son and your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, the widow who are within your towns.

So he says, Everybody. This isn't just for the elite. This isn't just for a certain group. This isn't just for men. This isn't just for children. Everybody's showing up and everybody's having a good time.

For seven days, you shall keep the feast to the Lord, your God, at the place that the Lord will choose because the Lord, your God will bless you and all your produce and in all the work of your hands so that you will be altogether joyful. So God sets up the rhythm of you're going to work six days. You're going to rest one. And then in that, he interrupts it with extra holidays and feasts. And he says, you're going to gather all of you together and you're going to have a good time. You're going to rejoice because I'm going to bless you.

You're going to be joyful and grateful in my presence in front of me together. That's the command. And so he writes this into the rhythm of humanity that we're designed to have holidays. We're designed to have vacations. We're designed to have joyful, delightful rest. He wants us to.

It honors him. It is not honoring to God for you to always be sad and mourning and bitter and everything's dark and everything's depressed. That's not that. No. Sometimes, yeah, sometimes there are things to mourn and sometimes there are things to be sad for. And absolutely.

But sometimes you're supposed to eat a steak and say, thank you, Jesus. Sometimes you're supposed to wrap that steak in bacon and be thankful for grace and God's good work on earth that he invented flavor. And some of you, you're like, I don't get down with steak. Well, sometimes you're supposed to eat some crispy kale right out of the oven and do the best you can to praise the Lord. So here's the thing.

We don't carry these feasts over into the Christian calendar. So when Christianity starts in among a Jewish people, starts with Jesus who's Jewish and his disciples who are Jewish and it explodes among Jewish people and they thought, here's the Messiah. He's going to save the Jews. And then all of a sudden, the Holy Spirit does something weird and he saves people who aren't Jewish. And they had to have a meeting. And this is a thing that Christians do forever is the Holy Spirit does something and then we have a meeting about it to see if we're okay with it.

So they have to have a meeting to be like, are we cool with this? Can the Holy Spirit save people who aren't Jewish? And they decide in Acts 15 to follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit and they say, yes, he can save non-Jews. And they have a discussion about, are we going to export Judaism or were they saved just by Christ? Do they need all the practices of the law? And here's the meeting they have in Acts 15.

They look at each other and they say, guys, we're not even good at the practices of the law. Why would we give those to these people who've been saved by grace in Jesus without it? I'm reading between the lines but they kind of said that would be mean and unhelpful. So they say, no, they just get Jesus. And so the Jewish people continue to practice some of the feasts and the festivals and some of the practices of the law. They continue to practice them but they practice them in grace and in understanding that this is part of their heritage and who Christ is and that they're Jewish but they hand off to all the Gentiles just Jesus and all the stuff we have in the New Testament.

So we don't carry, we don't import all of the things from the Old Testament to the New Testament but what we do understand is that God did design this rhythm and so that it makes sense for us as Christians to celebrate Easter when Christ rose from the grave and to celebrate well and to be grateful. It is okay for us as Christians to celebrate other holidays and other times and other vacations for us to have time set aside where we're going to be grateful, we're going to celebrate, we're going to honor God, we're going to gather together, we're going to make a big deal out of how big and good He is but not necessarily all the feasts and everything that we see in the Old Testament. Okay, so John chapter 2. Now this is just a story about Jesus.

It's His first public miracle, His first public sign that He displays His glory in and I love this story. So we're just going to kind of spend some time in the story and then we're going to talk out of it. I want to point out a few things. The main point of this story is that God, that Jesus shows His divinity, shows that He is God and this is His first public miracle. That's kind of the main point John's hanging on this. But there's so much beauty in that whenever we see Jesus working and acting on the earth, we get a picture of who God is.

He's the perfect image of the invisible God. So sometimes people think, well how would God act towards me? How would God treat me? We get to look at Jesus and answer a lot of those questions. And so we see God's heart carried over in celebration in this story. And then, I also think we see a beautiful picture of, a small picture in this moment of what Jesus is ultimately going to do.

And so we know that we were created for celebratory rest, for vacation, for holiday. There was times and seasons we're meant to do that. And in this, I want to spend a little time talking about this story and then I want to help try to prove the idea that Christians should be better at this than anyone else. Alright, but let's spend a little time in this story. John chapter 2, verse 1. On the third day, there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee and the mother of Jesus was there.

Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. He's just getting started. He has about five disciples at this point. He's going to keep recruiting. Okay, pause for a second. Wedding in Cana.

We've got to understand this. This was a small town near probably where Jesus grew up in Galilee. Jesus' mom's there so it's likely that they were related to some of these people. Weddings then work a little differently. So they would, parents would work out who you were going to marry.

They would go pay the bride price. The groom would go pay a bride price. It's kind of a negotiation thing. So like, you know how like now when you have to go like meet their parents or whatever? In this day, you've got to take your parents with you. Made it nicer.

So anyway, they work it out and then the groom leaves and he goes and prepares a place. So they work out. We're going to get married. It's going to be at least a year. He goes and prepares a place near his father's house. His father kind of keeps looking.

To see if he's prepared it well enough. This is where Jesus says things like, I'm going to go prepare a place for you. That's husband-wife talk. That's bridegroom talk. When Jesus says, I don't know the day or the hour but the father does, that's bridegroom talk because the father keeps getting to look at the place the son's preparing and then he signs off on, okay, this is good enough. You can go get your wife now.

So then, when the father says that, like he walks in, I'm sure he walked in sometimes and he's like, yeah, you going to bring your wife in here? See any crown mold? Y'all going, this is, uh-huh, you got some work to do, boy. And you leave, you know, and finally he says, okay, this is good enough, go get her. They go marching in. This is the story where Jesus tells later where he says that the groom shows up and everybody had to be ready.

They just kind of knew at some point he's going to show up but they didn't know exactly where he comes marching in. He gets the bride. They march back out. They have a wedding ceremony that was kind of small and then after consummating the marriage, they have a week-long, five to seven-day long celebration. It was all part of it and everybody gets pretty much invited to that. So that's kind of the zone we're in.

We're at this wedding. We're at this party, this week-long wedding celebration that Jesus and his disciples were invited to. When the wine ran out, it just got intense. Now the story's taking a turn on us. This is bad news. All right, so Jesus was invited to the wedding with his disciples, verse three.

When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, they have no wine. And Jesus said to her, woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come. His mother said to the servants, do whatever he tells you. I love this moment in human history where the God of the universe has to interact with his mother on earth. Here's what happens.

She apparently knows they don't have any wine. We don't know how related to, close to the situation, but she's heard they don't have any wine. This is a problem. Wine was the predominant drink you would be drinking. They wouldn't have had water and other drinks. They would have wine mostly.

It is alcoholic, but it's not as alcoholic as the wine we have now, most likely. It was regular drinking wine for the whole extent of this party. We don't know how far in we are, but we know that it was the groom's family's responsibility to provide wine, to provide this feast. And all of a sudden, now there's going to be this kind of shadow, this dark cloud hanging over this family that they didn't do this well. They didn't. It kind of starts the whole marriage off in a little bit of, it's a problem.

And so Jesus' mom is involved somehow. She goes to Jesus and she just says, Jesus, they've run out of wine. Now, she apparently knows something about Jesus. She thinks he can handle this. Now, there are stories that aren't in the Bible that people have kind of made up about Jesus doing miracles his whole childhood. We don't buy into all of those.

We don't know that. We aren't given much understanding of Jesus' childhood or his youth or whatever, but she feels like Jesus can handle this wine problem. So there's got to be something. She's seen enough. You know, she saw the angel show up telling him he was God. So she thinks maybe he can handle this.

I don't know. She comes to him. She says, they're out of wine. And Jesus says, woman, what does this have to do with me? Now, most of y'all would get in trouble if you called your mom woman. Jesus was not being disrespectful.

It is a sin to be disrespectful. Jesus was not being disrespectful. As best we can tell, this is a kind of a term of endearment, but also a little bit of a, you know, maybe some mix between ma'am and mama, but it was a little bit of like, like I might always say mama with a long pause. What does this have to do with me? Not the caterer. Like that's kind of what he's saying.

He says, he says, woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come. So what he's saying is I'm not here to, this isn't, this is my plan. I'm not doing, this isn't really what I'm, they're out of wine. That's, I'm sorry. And you know what his mama does?

She listens to him. And then she looks at the servants, says, y'all do whatever he tells you. And she walks. She doesn't respond to him. She just, and isn't that like a mama come tell you what to do in front of your disciples and everything. So she just says, do whatever he tells you.

And I just, I can't, I can just kind of see Jesus just, he doesn't say this. I can just see him watching her walk away like, now he's got to do something. So it says, now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding 20 or 30 gallons. Okay. Stone water jars, Jewish rites of purification. The Jewish rites of purification were stuff that the rabbis had added over time to be a little bit extra holy.

It wasn't in the law, but it was like, this is good. It's not a bad thing. It's a good thing to wash our hands before we eat, to wash our cups and our dishes in this special ceremonial way. But it was added. It wasn't stuff God had handed down. It was stuff that was added.

So God did give specific laws about how to celebrate and how to have ceremonies and how to have sacrifices. And this was just added. For example, maybe your grandmother told you when you go to church on Sunday, you better dress as nice as possible. I can't, like I don't know about my, my grandmother would go, like if I was wearing, if I was wearing this, like I think it's bothered her when she comes on Sundays. It's nice to dress up. We got some folks here who do it, who do it well.

It's not in the Bible though. Sunday best was, came up somewhere else. They didn't hear. Now it's nice to be respectful. It's nice to dress well. So it's a good thing that sometime at some point became codified.

Do this or you're wrong. That's what happened with these ceremonial jars. So Jesus sees these giant jars and I, again, doesn't say this. I think he cracks a smile. He says, fill those up. Fill the jars with water.

They filled them up to the brim. He said to them, now draw some out, take it to the master of the feast. So they took it, the head caterer. When the master of the feast tasted the water, now become wine and did not know where it came from. Though the servants who had drawn the water knew, the master of the feast called the bridegroom. So here's what he did.

He took these ceremonial jars for this practice that you were going to have to do to make yourself a little bit more holy, make yourself a little more pleasing to God, to be one of the good guys. He says, fill those up and he turns it into wine. Do you know what you can't do with the ceremonial jars anymore? Wash your hands. They're filled with wine. So Jesus just took these ceremonial jars and he continued the party.

He served this family. He says, fill them with wine. Okay. The master of the feast called the bridegroom. So, here's what we know. Master of the feast is over top of this.

So he just says, take it to the master of the feast. Somebody's heading up this. You know the master of the feast has to think, hey, we've run out of wine. At some point he just said, hey, this wine's gone. He may not know fully that there's no other wine anywhere else. This isn't like, he just says, hey, we're out of wine.

They go back and look and they're like, oh no, we're out of wine, out of wine. This is going to be embarrassing. This is going to be problematic for the family. I don't know the bride and groom, how well they know each other. I don't know how that was going. I don't know if she was like, we're getting low on wine.

He's like, oh no. She's like, if you hadn't had to invite your whole village and all your friends that drink so much and if your cousins hadn't showed up four days early. Like, I don't know how that's going. I don't know if they're arguing. I don't know if she just does the look thing. If she's just like, I don't know.

It's stressful for the groom. He's got to know, like he's over top of, the master of the feast is over top of this stuff. Other people are finding out Jesus' mom's in on it and then the master of the feast comes and he does like this to the groom. And you know, at that moment, I just can imagine his stomach just tied in a knot. He knows what's coming. Master of the feast holding a wine glass.

He's going to walk over there and he's going to say, last cup. You want to announce it? You want me to announce it? You want me to end the party early? You want me to end the party early? Calls him over there.

Yes, sir. He said to him, verse 10, everyone serves the good wine first. Groom thinks, yep, they drank that. And when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. He's like, yep, drank that. But when you have kept the good wine until now.

And the train of thought in the groom's head just crashed all into it. He's like, what? This is the first of his signs Jesus did at the Canaan in Galilee and manifested his glory and his disciples believed in him. So the master of the feast says, hey, you did this in reverse. This is the best wine you've had and you're just now bringing it out. Cool party trick.

Either that or he was just like, hey, next time you have a wedding, do it the other way, moron. I don't know if he's corrected him. Jesus not only made the wine to serve his mom and to serve this family, but he made good wine. Then it says, this is the first of his signs. This is kind of the point of the story as John tells it. Jesus did at Canaan in Galilee and manifested his glory, put on display who he was and his disciples believed in him.

After this, he went down to Capernaum with his mother and his brothers and his disciples and they stayed there for a few days. So after this wedding, he goes and spends more time, just spending time with family. Now, I love this story because it shows us the heart of God and how he serves and how he loves and how he approaches celebration. He wasn't there looking down on it. He was there enjoying it. And it's a beautiful picture of what he's done for us in the gospel.

You see, we're like the groom having to do so much to just make this good, having to do so much for this just to be okay, having to do so much for this to just work out and we're failing. We don't have enough. We can't do it. Our tank's empty. We don't have anything that we can do. And Jesus comes along and he takes all the ceremony and he brings joy.

He covers us. He takes all the ceremony, all the extra work, all the effort we would put in and he brings new wine. And you see, Jesus is ultimately able to do this because this is what he does on the cross. He took all of the law and all the weight of the commandments that we had to fulfill and all of the weight of having to stand before God and be made okay and he dies for us. It's actually he tells his disciples the night before when he shares a cup of wine with them and he says, this is the covenant in my blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins. That he's going to be the better wine.

That he's going to cover us and bring joy where there was anxiety, to bring hope where there was despair, and to absolutely bring us into a celebration. We're told in Revelation that when he comes to get his bride, he brings him to a wedding feast. That Jesus in his first miracle was at a wedding feast and he was picturing what he was ultimately going to do. And this is why I believe that not only is humanity designed for celebratory rest, holiday, vacation, but that Christians should be better at it than anybody else because we have the gospel. We've already been invited into the party. We've already been set free from our work.

We've already been given the ability to set our tools down, to rest well, to enjoy each other and enjoy God's good work on our behalf. And we don't need the party. We don't need the celebration here. We can just enjoy it. We don't have to have it to have a good life. We don't have to find a way to celebrate and to enjoy.

It's not frantic. It's just enjoyable. That we get to celebrate. We get to rest. We get to take a vacation and we get to do all that knowing that we've already ultimately had Jesus die for us, save us, redeem us, and provide for us in the cross. The story of Christmas Carol is about Scrooge McDuck and he, I have a three-year-old, so that's the version I watch.

He loves money. That's all he cares about. And then his friend Goofy, who had passed away, shows up at his house the night before Christmas and scares the living daylights out of him. And then he goes on these three. He gets to go back in time. He gets to go to the present and kind of see what's going on.

He gets to go to the future. And the story is that he sees this picture of what his life has been like, what his life is like now, and what it's going to be. That he's invited to look kind of behind the curtain and see who he is and what he's like and where he's headed. And he's kind of told at the end, it's too late. And then he wakes up and it's not too late. And the last line of the Charles Dickens novel, short story, is that it was always said of him that he kept Christmas well.

That from that day on, it was always said that like, there's a person who knows how to celebrate. And it was because he had gotten a picture of where he was headed and he had gotten set free from it. And that's kind of how we get to be as Christians. We get to be the people that said they celebrate well. They know how to do it. They know how to rest.

They know how to celebrate because we've gotten to see where we were headed and what our sin was going to do and how our work was going to fail. And we've been set free. We've gotten to see Christ die for us to rescue us and to redeem us and all of the weight and the pressure is off. That we're redeemed by Christ and so we can celebrate and enjoy and rest well. So here's how we're going to finish our time.

I'm going to give us some specific pictures of this. We're going to take a little bit of time to talk through this so that we get to, as Christians, kind of celebrate up. We get to roll our enjoyment up. It's not just terminating on the thing here. When you eat a good steak, it's not just the steak that gets praise, but it's Jesus who gets praise. When you enjoy a good vacation here, it's not just the vacation.

It's not just the place you went. It's not just how the days went. It's not just that you were off work, but that we get to roll it up in praise and glory and honor to Jesus who provides all of that for us. Okay. So how do we capture this?

How do we enjoy this? First one is that we begin to value celebration. Some of us just don't. You just don't value celebration. You don't make time for it. Valuing celebration really practically means you budget for it.

You start looking and saying, hey, we're going to have to set aside for this. That's one of the things that in the feasts in the Old Testament, he would say, I'm going to bless you. I want you to set aside a portion of this to come celebrate. That's why he says, nobody shows up empty handed, but everybody would have showed up with a kind of what fit their celebration, what fit their life, what fit their budget, but there to celebrate. So we budget for it.

We also have to schedule for it. If you're going to take a vacation, you have to be intentional about setting aside time. If you're going to enjoy a holiday, you have to be intentional about setting aside time, asking off of work, planning it. I know some people don't take vacations because of the type of work they're in. So they feel like, well, if I go on vacation, I miss out on sales.

If I go on vacation, somebody else will be able to do that listing. Somebody else will be able to show those homes. If I go on vacation, somebody else is going to, and they just have this kind of a frantic approach to there's no way I can be gone. Now, certainly, some of you maybe have seasonal work and you work around that. My family's run a pool store pretty much my whole life. We had to work around how we vacationed because during the summer is not the best time to do stuff because people want to buy swimming pools.

So we had to plan on it and work around it. We skipped school the first week of school a lot to go on vacation because my parents wanted to sell swimming pools. And I'm going to tell you I was a child I was cool with that. But Exodus 34, 24, God actually tells the people of Israel, I want all the males to gather. You have to be there. And during that time, you won't get attacked.

During that time, I'll defend your borders. And so there's something about us taking rest and taking vacation where we get to say, hey God, I'm resting and celebrating and vacating and doing this holiday because I trust that you're good, that you've provided. I want to celebrate that. And I'm going to trust that you'll take care of everything while I'm here. It's a faith thing. Some people will say, well, I can't take a vacation.

I can't do this because it costs too much money. Yes, it can be expensive, but there's ways to do this cheaply. You can stay home and just take off time from work and figure out ways to rest there. You can go camping. That's cheap. Some people like when you celebrate, you can go to, my family used to rent a room at a hotel in town just so we could use the pool.

My dad used to take us for a big day out to the dump to shoot at rats with a.22. You can find things to do. Y'all just learned a thing about me. Yes, that was what my family was like when I was growing up. This means, students, when there's time off, when there's vacation, when your family's going on a vacation, when there's a holiday that you're getting carried off somewhere to your family's house, some of y'all do that really well. Some of y'all pout your way through it.

And we're supposed to value it, to enjoy it. It also means that because your schedule's different from everybody else because you have school and then you have the summer off, it means that there's times where you actually, you're not exempt from this. You need to hold something special and you need to make some time to enjoy the time off. Also, to continue to be busy for six days and rest one. Some people say, well, it's really hard for me to rest. It's really hard for me to vacation during this time because I'm just, I'm in pain physically or I'm in pain emotionally.

And yes, there are seasons of that. And so there are times where this one's going to be really hard for you. But that can't continue forever because we also are called to rejoice, commanded to rejoice and to find ways to appreciate all the good that God has given to us and done for us. I had a pastor friend say, when we were first getting started with planning the church, he said, you've got to, he said, pastoring, and some of y'all's jobs are like this, but he said, pastoring is like being on a treadmill. It just, it never ends. You never run out of people to talk with.

Sin never stops. You don't ever reach a season where you're like, hey, we did it. We all have our act together. That's true. That's not even true for me. Like, we don't.

I have continual sin I have to confess to my group. Like, we don't ever really get off of it. And he said, you've got to find ways to get off the treadmill and pop the champagne. And that's part of what we're called to do is to value and to find a way to say, hey, I know work never stops. I know this will never cease. I know the kids are not, but I'm just going to get off and celebrate.

I'm going to find something to enjoy, something to celebrate. Okay. Celebrate with purpose. So some of you are, you do go on vacations. You do celebrate holidays, but you lose the purpose. Thanksgiving is about food rather than thankfulness.

And so we've got to find a way to be purposeful in our celebration, to actually have it be rejoicing before the Lord, not just rejoicing. That as Christians, our rejoicing does not terminate here, but that it rolls up in praise. So it is rejoicing in the thing we're rejoicing in, but it's rolling up to him. So that means we infuse things with meaning. I have to be really careful with this because I am a pastor. And so people real quick, like I want to be like, hey, let's talk about Jesus.

And my family's like, hey, let's just eat the food. And I have to be real careful with that because it's real quick. Like they don't, you know, they're waiting for me to be like, hey, let's say a thing we're thankful for. And they're like, okay, grandma. Like it just is, it's hard. So I have to try to find ways to sneak around this.

I know a pastor who's in Tacoma, Washington. He said that, you know, they were doing a party and he was helping put it on and they kind of just said, hey, you're a pastor. Will you pray right before we do this? And it was a 4th of July thing. And he said, that was just a token. We know you're a pastor.

We don't believe this stuff, but this is probably a thing you do. And so he said, in order to not just pastor it up, he just said, hey, take a second. It's 4th of July. Think about a thing that you appreciate about being free. And then in a second, I'm just going to quickly thank the Lord that we get to be a part of that. And he said, it was real quick, but it was just something to infuse it with meaning.

I try to, at Christmas, try to make things not just about gifts for my son. I know that's what he's going to get super focused in on, that at Christmas he gets things. So the night before, I put him in a room and cut the lights off. I told him everything was scary and dark and terrible. He was 2. Totally age appropriate.

And that God had sent hope into the world. And so we lit a candle, also age appropriate because he loved anything that was like fire was like a big deal to him. So it was like, boom, lit a candle. And then we just talked about how ultimately Christ came. He was the hope. He was the redemption.

We cut the lights on. Then we went outside and we followed the star, which was cloudy, so it was just the moon. I was like, there's the star. Let's go. We ran around our house. We get to the back.

He goes, Daddy, that's the moon. And I was like, well, aren't you clever? So anyway, but I tried to find something. You got to find something to make it special, to pour some meaning into it. This means making some things holy. There's some people who are entering a new stage of life in our church family that are older couples.

Maybe your kids, you're now kind of empty nesters. People have moved out and they come to you and that's kind of new. So a lot of times when you're growing up, you go to other people, but now your family comes back to you. And this means making some things holy, something set apart that's special for, we're going to eat this dish. We're going to have these plates. We're going to have this kind of a moment when we have this celebration.

But you set something aside so that this indicates that we're celebrating. This indicates that we're, they used to have in the Old Testament, they'd have a fattened calf. Maybe some of y'all need to put a calf in your backyard and when your family comes, I'm just kidding. But like some kind of, we eat turkey, we eat this. I take the time to prepare this dish that takes a week long. For my grandmother, that's cinnamon rolls and ham biscuits.

She makes in preparation for her family to come and when I taste the cinnamon roll and I smell ham biscuits, I know it's Christmas. Something that you set apart. For newly married people, this is you making your own new traditions. Carrying over some things from your parents, but learning how to have your own traditions. For single people, sometimes I know that single people will be like, well, what's the point? What's the point in celebrating well?

What's the point in partaking in this holiday? And you've acted as if the point of a holiday is just a spouse, just another person that you would enjoy it with and you're completely negating the fact that the point of holidays is Jesus and ability to worship Him and to enjoy Him. So take the time to figure out how to do that well and also go hang out with your church family. Go be around them to remind you of all the good joy and good that God's put in your life. We celebrate milestones. So this is moments.

This is birthdays, graduations, weddings. I know some of y'all find out about a graduation, you find out about a wedding, you find out about a birthday and you just feel like, I don't want to go. I have no desire to participate in that. And I understand that because I'm kind of like that and my wife's kind of like that and you need to go and you need to celebrate and you need to learn how to enjoy and celebrate well because we're supposed to be good at this. That we celebrate milestones. For birthdays, sometimes people are like, well, it's hard to celebrate birthdays.

It's so expensive now. When I was growing up, we did, on your birthday, you got the ride in the front of the vehicle. You were in charge of the TV for the whole day and my mom, you got to pick what everybody had for dinner. Not like separate things. I couldn't be like, he's going to eat sticks. It was like, you got to pick the main dish.

But that was a way to make it special. When we had no, my dad would take the little coat hanger things with the sticky part at the bottom and he would break that and he would take telephone line and put it and make us nunchucks so that we could be Ninja Turtles and that cost him very little money. And he gave me those every year for my birthday because you would hit your brother with them and they'd break. So you had to ask for them again the next year. But finding ways to make something special even when it's difficult or your budget doesn't allow it, this is something we're supposed to do.

I think this is something you're supposed to do in other things. Make a milestone. So my son, when he turned two, we were getting rid of his pacifiers. So we had a big ceremony. Again, let him light a candle because the kid was digging some fire at that point. So we lit a candle.

We talked about how he was turning into a big boy. I put all his pacifiers and he had them in his mouth all the time. Put them all in his hand and we held them over the trash can and then we celebrated and we sang and danced and we made a big deal out of it for two reasons. One is a big deal that he was growing up and two, I wanted him to remember it when he asked me for a pacifier later. I was like, no bro, you've got to light a candle. Pacifiers are done.

Don't you remember us dancing? We can't go back to that. You can't unlight the candle, kid. Come on. But infusing things with meaning.

Celebrating milestones. Celebrate with your group, with your community group. This is something we're designed to do as Christians is to celebrate well with each other. Some of us, when you get the email or the Facebook message or the group meeting and it says, hey, we're just going to be hanging out this week, you think, not me. Y'all going to be hanging out with your own selves? If it's just dinner, if it's just board games, I'm going to be at the house.

And you've missed the point of enjoying each other and of getting to be family, of getting to have ridiculous moments that you get to do difficult things with each other. You get to mourn with each other. You get to hurt with each other. You get to serve each other. You get to be on mission together to try to see people meet Jesus and you get to play that little heads up game and accomplish nothing other than being friends with each other. And we're designed for that to make time for that.

The last one, we get to celebrate as missionaries. You see, Jesus went to that party and he displayed who he was and we get to go to parties and display who he is. We get to celebrate as missionaries. There are rhythms of celebration in our city. There are rhythms of celebration in your neighborhood that you get to take part in. Maybe you don't care about Halloween at all, but your neighbors do.

So go buy some candy and go meet your neighbors. It's the one time a year they're going to come knock on your door and actually appreciate getting to see and talk to you. Only time. It's also the only time you get to go knock on their doors and they'll be okay with seeing and talking to you. Try that in the middle of June. Go knock on your neighbor's doors with your child and be like, hey, we just wanted to meet y'all.

They will act like you were psychotic. But Halloween, put a mask on that kid, you get to meet all your neighbors. You get to celebrate as a missionary. You get to take part in what the city's already doing to welcome people and get to know people. This is us doing some things with Thanksgiving at Gentle Pines where we take a holiday that means something and we take extra time out to go to a neighborhood around here and serve meals and get to know the residents there. Maybe this is Fourth of July or New Year's, but you get to find out what, you get to do what Jesus did was find out what the party's lacking and show up and serve.

Maybe that's somebody who needs to stay after and clean. Maybe that's somebody who needs to give some rides. Maybe that's somebody who needs to bring some extra food. But we do what Jesus did and we bring the better wine. And we always get to celebrate without debauchery. The point of the celebration for us is enjoying all the good gifts God gave us.

So we do eat, we do drink, but we're not gluttons and we're not drunkards. We're not overdoing it. The point isn't the party, the point is Jesus and so we enjoy the good things he gave us and in praise and honor and glory to him. A lack of ability to celebrate is a failure to believe this aspect of the gospel. That if you can't party, if you can't rest, if you can't vacation, you've missed out on some of the good joy and rejoicing that Jesus has brought into the world. And so we ought to believe the gospel fully and learn how to party well.

Because Jesus, when he rose from the grave, started the celebration for all those who would believe in him. Band's going to come back up. We're going to sing a couple of songs in celebration and then in our community groups this week, we're going to enjoy each other, celebrate, and accomplish a whole lot of nothing with each other and you need to be there. And if you're not there, we're going to ask all the group leaders and we're going to list your names next Sunday. Let's pray.

God, we thank you that you're good and that in the cross we have hope and joy and life and celebration. And we pray that we would honor you well by celebrating well. We would honor you well by celebrating with joy and hope and honor you and all the things that we partake in that are good. We thank you for flavor. We thank you for that when we are excited something about us wants to dance or to shout or to sing. We thank you for all those holy moments that you've written into the world and in our lives that we get to honor you and praise you and glorify you and we pray that we would.

We pray that we'd do all of that without sinning and displaying your glory just the way you did in your first miracle. We love you. We praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. Y'all stand. Let's sing.