Kingdom Pace - Week 1 | July 25, 2021 | Drew Moore | Message

hey everyone welcome to week one of kingdom pace we all live at a certain pace and there's always something driving us around here we want jesus to be the one setting the pace for our life so we experience all the good that he has in mind for us all the joy he has in mind and live at a sustainable pace alongside some really great people thanks for jumping in uh there is a season that we've been going through here around our church kenyan region and we've been trying to respond to what we believe is a real invitation from god over the last number of months that as we started to step out of covet in the last challenging 18 months god was saying i have joy in mind for you i know this last season has been challenging it's been tiring i know that we all kind of survived our way through it but one of the fruits of god's work in our life the fruit of the holy spirit is joy and god i just want you guys to experience that and so we've been trying to step into that many of you have experienced some of this but you may have come lately we started in a series called rally your people because the best way to experience joy is with great people running after jesus together if you missed it check it out then we spent some time resting and learning how to rest and refuel to really get replenished well in a series called rest and we've just finished a series called enjoy where god has good in mind and we want to find god in the good stuff yeah god will meet us in the challenge and walk us through and carry us through yeah when we're at rock bottom or the end of our rope he finds us there and carries us forward but he also has good things in mind like really great food and great adventure is soaking in beauty and enjoying joy in our lives like kevin taught us last week we we know this though even if we step into all of those things if we follow god's invitation to rally people to rest well and to enjoy him and the good stuff of life there's a way that he can refill us but there's also a way we can run ourselves right back to empty and it has everything to do with how fast we run in the next season pace matters and so we want to set a pace that's in line with the kingdom jesus has in mind where jesus is king rather than any other tyrants who run us to our own exhaustion and so this is the step we're going to take for the next several weeks i learned pace mattered about 10 years ago about 11 years ago a buddy invited me to run a half marathon and apparently i was just young enough that was fine and it went fairly well i even had a little in the tank at the end i'm like it's time to run a full because it's just twice as much how bad can it be it's like four times as much that's what it is it's terrible it's like the worst thing ever i've only ever done one but 10 years ago i ran a marathon we were in it was november morning in the midwest it was cold and all that stuff which is fine once you get running but while you're in this herd of people waiting you're just freezing you've got layers of clothes on that eventually you'll kind of throw off to the side of the course along the way and you're just amped ready to go can i please just start running let's go let's go let's go the anticipation is building you got a record or a pr or a time in mind that you're trying to hit you got all these kind of things just ready to go and finally they release everybody and we start running now the adrenaline has been building for about an hour and so most people have this habit of firing out of the gate very fast and that's exactly what happened to me i think i ran like 7-15 miles for the first mile and a half and realized this is not sustainable this is not going to work and so about a mile and a half or two miles in i decided i actually want to finish this race and live to tell about it i'm going to have to slow down and so i slowed down to my pace which is way closer to eight and ran for the next 18 miles and became intimately acquainted with this thing they called the wall which happens at about 20 miles you become depleted in your mind you start thinking crazy things but for me by mile 23 i was saying crazy things out loud it was very exciting for everyone around me but had everything to do with pace if a pace isn't sustainable there is no finish if a pace is not sustainable you drive yourself and other people crazy if your pace is not sustainable and wise and doable it's really hard to enjoy and it just becomes about survival instead of soaking up the moment now there's a way to guarantee you'll never have this experience you know what it is don't run a marathon it's so easy many people do it i stopped distance running but it wasn't the last time i had to deal with pace over and over in life i've allowed motivation priority fear insecurity and other things to make me run in my life both my internal motor and my external pace at an unsustainable rate i wonder if there isn't the opportunity right now for us to reevaluate the kind of pace we come out of this last season and into the next season with that maybe one of the gifts of this last season is a total revisiting and a recalibration a rethinking of how we prioritize how we say yes to things and know to others how many things find their way back into their lives how many sports and activities for the kid how many trips and things along the way how many hours in work are we going to spend has our pace really served us well to become the kind of people that we always dream to be and the kind of people that god invites us to be we get a chance to really rethink this and so that's what we're going to do for the next five or six weeks we're going to invite jesus to say listen i have a pace in mind for you and i have so many good things in mind for you i don't want you to miss it in fact as we pray and think about this fall i am so stoked for what god is up to in in the life of people in our church in the life of our community the opportunity right now to invite people in jesus direction to come alive in him to share the good news of jesus we're going to go after it this fall god has good in mind but we will miss it if we prioritize the wrong thing if our pace is not sustainable or if someone who is leading if we're allowing ourselves to be led by things other than jesus so that's what we're going to step into this idea of kingdom pace it's a weird title because nobody's like huh i wonder if i could ever live at a kingdom pace but jesus talked constantly about the kingdom if you look across his life he talked constantly about a kingdom so we're just going to listen to him and say what does it look like to live where you're in charge if you were the leader of my life what might that look like what is the kingdom like where you get what you want and what we're going to find along the way is that the pace is not only sustainable but it's enjoyable the impact and things that god has in mind for us if we'll live at his pace so good i want to invite you to grab your bible real quick luke chapter 14 is where we're going to land today if you have a phone if you don't have a bible no worries grab your phone this app with this little icon is like the easiest thing ever to use you could probably download it just in the next few minutes you can always track along with us around here we lit read out of the new living translation there's lots of really good translation find one that kind of speaks to you along the way but we're going to read out of luke chapter 14. it's a story that jesus told and there's so many things that could be brought out of this story but i just want to think about this idea of pace there's an invitation to really good things in this story and some people miss it and i think jesus is saying listen listen listen don't miss it don't miss it let me show you luke chapter 14. it starts in verse 15. uh to set the stage jesus is sitting on a on the on their off day their sabbath there's been a saturday he's sitting around with a bunch of religious leaders who all kind of presume to know everything they think they need to know they've kind of arrived and even though they sit they're just kind of bantering with jesus and with some other some other guys and they're just kind of reminiscing about things jesus corrects him on a few things he says listen listen listen don't don't take the seat of prominence take take the lowest seat and let people lift you up he's kind of teaching them along the way and then one of these guys pipes in with a little bit of a presumptive statement verse 15 it says this hearing this a man sitting at the table with jesus exclaimed what a blessing it will be to attend the banquet in the kingdom of god in the first century followers of god had this image in mind because of all the things that god had said in the history of his people that we know from the old testament of the bible that a kingdom where god always and only gets his way there's no brokenness or anything would eventually come and one of the images that they used for that was a banquet which is why we encourage you all to have a feast how many of y'all had a feast in the last several months you get some feasts eat some good food hopefully you're doing what jesus said eating well he says how great will it be presuming of course that he would be there and jesus tells this story jesus replied with this story a man prepared a great feast he sent out many invitations when the banquet was ready he sent his servant to tell the guests come for the banquet is ready now that sounds weird but here's how it would have worked in the first century he would have sent out invitations people would have said yes a guest list was developed then the banquet was prepared but because no one had watches or cell phones a servant would be then sent out to say it's time let's have our banquet okay so he sends them out but they all began to make excuses one said i've just bought a field and i have to inspect it please excuse me another said i've just bought five pair of oxen and i want to try them out please excuse me another said i now have a wife so i can't come all right there's a there's a scripture we're dwelling on that's all i'm saying verse 21 the servant returning told his master what they said his master was furious wait they said yes and now they're saying no i've prepared all this good they're going to miss it really a pair of oxen did you not inspect them before you paid for them a field really you need to go check out your new field like it's going to be there tomorrow the wedding must have just snuck up on you didn't take months to prepare his master was furious go quickly into the streets and the alleys in the town and invite the poor the crippled the blind the lame and so and after that after the servant had done this he reported there's still room for more so his master said go out into the country lanes behind the hedges and urge anyone you find to come so the house will be full for none of those i first invited who got even the smallest taste of my banquet now there's a lot that you can discover in this story jesus stories were always so rich and many layered and as you put yourself in the position of any character in this story you'll see from some different facets all that that he might have had in mind certainly as jesus told this story to the man who presumed he would be at the banquet he had some correction for him hey man don't be so presumptuous people get distracted people miss out certainly in the story while all of the um like the religious elite all the people who would have known the answers and lived things for a long time might have been surprised that the guest list that the man would have developed in this story and what that might have meant for the kingdom of god you realize really quickly that there's room for way more people than you thought in way different people than you thought with jesus that jesus had room for everyone there was nowhere he wouldn't go to find those to experience the good he had in mind these are the kind of things if you sit down with a friend you'll realize and learn about jesus but there's this other thing that my middle school daughter taught me this week because on wednesday night the middle schoolers have been together and they looked into this story and discovered and she just said hey sometimes there's invitations that you don't always like you don't always have a big motivation for right when the invitation comes but you realize later that you totally missed out and what i realized from her statement was yeah you can miss it the good that god has in mind can be missed when we get caught up in the things that we've purchased when we caught up in managing the things that we've acquired when our relationships become more focused on that than the the relationship we have in jesus things can get distracting we kind of get squirrel and we run off in a different direction than we set out along the way and so what we want to do for the next several weeks is just step back all of us who are followers of jesus we just want to step back and not be presumptuous like the guy in this story but instead say jesus is there a way in which my pace has gotten out of control is there a way in which i've started accident even with your name on it started following something else or my fears driving me are my insecurities driving me is my desire to look good or be prideful driving me am i trying to control things that i could never control god and i just need to trust you with we're gonna ask these kind of questions along the way right and for those of you who may not be followers of jesus you wouldn't say i'm a christian i want to follow jesus what you're going to find over the next several weeks is what might it look like if jesus were leading your life if jesus were pointing you in a direction what would life with him what does his kingdom where he is king really look like and so here's a couple questions we're going to dwell on the whole way through here they are you may want to snap a picture i would encourage you to reflect on these questions how's your pace how's your pace right now maybe even take a snapshot from some different seasons of life about how fast and hard you were running before covid you know bc way back when before covid how was your pace treating you are you sure you want that pace back what did that reveal about your life was it was there fear around what if my kids don't develop enough what if they don't get this opportunity or that what if this doesn't become a possibility and that what if i don't work this many hours what if i what if i never get the promotion what if i income doesn't hit this level what if i this and that all these kind of things how was your pace before covet what did we learn over the last 18 months to two years what have we discovered about our pace that we want to hold on to and most importantly jesus what do you want to invite us into as we step out of this because even if we rallied really great people even if we've rested really well this summer and enjoyed some really meaningful moments and have great stories of enjoying god alongside some really great people all that god has filled us with and the joy that we have experienced and can experience if we'll just do what he says can be lost in a furious frantic scurry pace if life once again becomes a blur we miss the good that god has in mind how's your pace that's one question there's a layer deeper that if you're brave you gotta go because behind all of our pace is a motivation for that pace so here's the second question who or what is setting your priorities there are so many things that try to take charge of our lives and it happens so subtly we wake up one day and we've been operating out of fear we can wake up one day and discover that we've been trying to control things we could never control if we learned anything in covid maybe that's what we learned so many things try to take charge but here's the good news is that god has good in mind for you and for the people around you for all of your people for your neighbors for your friends for your family for your co-workers all these people that around here we call our faces and places all the faces we see and all the places that we go god has put you within reach of them and within influence and impact on them and god has good in mind not just for each of us but as we experience the joy god has for us to invite others into that to not only experience god's blessing in our lives but to be a blessing on in his name to people around us now if luke 14 taught us anything i just want you to know if you've been wondering in any way shape or form if there's a place for you to experience the good god has in mind the answer is yes there is no length that this thrower of a banquet has not gone to reach anyone and everyone there is a place for you no matter where you've been no matter what you've done no matter people have said to you or about you the things that you say to yourself along the way jesus has space for you and he has good in mind for you god is so much good in mind for us but we have to be careful not to rush past it because you can't receive blessing in a hurry you just can't the blessing and the good that god has in mind for you you can miss it you can get caught up in the field you bought or the oxen you want to try out or the wife you just married or any other any other excuses that we make along the way the distractions we find you can miss it certainly in the story in luke 14 the the throw over the banquet is angry but i wonder if god's posture might not be more grief of a loving father who looks at each of us and says i had so much in mind for you why were you so distracted why were you going so fast you're missing it there's a grief in that not only can we not receive blessing in a hurry but we can't be a blessing to others in a hurry we can't bring good into the lives of others if we're always going fast if there's just enough time to pull in the driveway and close the garage door how will your neighbors find the good that god has in mind for them if we're always rushing into the office at the last second or moving through the coffee shop at a frenetic pace if it's always a mobile order instead of an interaction maybe this good that god has in mind for us to bring along the way that our pace doesn't sustain jesus over and over in the course of his ministry used this word that sometimes i think has been misused and gotten a bit of a bad rap but it's actually a really powerful word from the moment he really started inviting people in god's direction he began with this word repent his message was really boiled down in a simple sentence repent for the kingdom of god is near now we're going to look over and over at kingdom because jesus talked about it constantly told tons of stories to try to help people understand what it might look like if he were in charge where he is king where he gets what he wants where we like wesley to buttercup and the princess bride only say as you wish over and over where he gets what he wants this is what he invites us to because he's such a good king he's so much good in mind for us he wishes so much good for us but he says if you're going to find your way into this you have to do this first thing which is repent now some of you may have seen this plastered on a cardboard sign in a college campus just in front of a guy with a bull horn it feels really condemning and judgmental but in jesus language i think it's far more invitational repent simply means change your mind have you ever been trying to do something and someone shows up and says why don't you try it like this and it just goes like that my wife is usually that person for me but it's usually after five or six attempts because i'm prideful and i don't listen this is what jesus says you know if you stop banging your head against the wall and you go through the door it'll be easier change your mind one author i couldn't find it to quote him but he was talking about it really actually has this sense of let him blow your mind like let gonna mess with your mind just a little bit things that you never anticipated i know you think you know what's right and people around you think they know what's right and they write articles about five steps and three things and all the kinds of things to show you the best kind of way because let me just let me just help you totally rethink this in fact uh mark buchanan i read a book um called uh the rest of god a couple of friends had recommended it they're great friends and i trust him deeply so he said i got to read this book and this quote jumped out this definition of repentance he says repentance is actually this a ruthless dismantling of old ways of seeing and thinking and then a diligent vigilant building of new ones look back on your life look five ten years ago things you thought were the right way or the best way or a good idea many of those have changed haven't they jesus invites us to change in all of the best ways to ruthlessly take out our ideas especially in this season around our pace our attitudes and our priorities because all the good that god has brought us and all the good he has in mind for us this can be spent up and we can run ourselves to exhaustion like that and miss out on all the good that he has if we won't just rethink just a little bit think again about how we live our lives how we pace our lives and let jesus be the one who sets the pace in fact this dismantling of old ways of seeing and thinking in a diligent building of new ones is exactly what we're going after for five or six weeks piece by piece by peace with the help of a passage in the bible called the beatitudes with several of these stories around the kingdom that god has in mind we're going to look at what jesus has said and let him invite us to something better something different but what that's going to mean is that maybe just maybe i encourage you to consider this maybe we need to change our mind about our pace that maybe getting back to before isn't actually the best idea in every way maybe some ways maybe not in others maybe some shifts and some changes of things that we've learned along the way maybe we need to change our mind let jesus change our mind about our pace if our pace has been unsustainable or on the flip side if your pace has been totally boring maybe there's a king in charge that isn't that great of a king and doesn't really know how to pace our lives maybe fear or or control has driven us to exhaustion maybe addiction to comfort and retreat has driven us to boredom those are bad kings they're lousy kings in fact anytime we trade out any king for jesus we trade down maybe we need to listen again to what jesus says about our pace and our priorities and so maybe what we need to change our mind about is not only our pace but first about our king and when we get our king right we follow him in terms of pace we we always say as you wish to something whether it's our hurts and we try to run away from them whether it's enough success or acquisition along the way that the carrot on the stick seems almost reachable so we just keep running or like dogs out of the gate with the rabbit scurrying along the fence we think if we just run hard enough we'll catch it this happens all the time in our jobs it can happen even so nobly in our families as we raise our children fear or desire for them can take over and become the leader of our lives right or or all the perennial carrots on a stick money success accomplishment or comfort these are lousy kings and if we follow them long enough our pace will reveal it but from the beginning god has said just let me be your king would you just let me be the king from the very beginning when he spoke people into existence god had blessing in mind in genesis chapter 1 verse 28 it's right after he speaks man and woman in his image both in his image into existence and the immediate next statement is this god blessed them from the very beginning god has good in mind some of you have encountered some christians who wonder make you wonder if god has good in mind for you or maybe you lived a season of your life in god's presence but you've spent time running in other directions and you're wondering if god still has good in mind like if you look closely you're i don't know he may have good in mind for some people but i'm not one of those people let me be clear from the very beginning god has good in mind from you from the very beginning he intended to be a blessing to us and for us to worship and respond in gratitude to him from the very beginning there was never another moment never another desire he put them in the garden he gave him everything they need delicious food all kinds of variety interaction adventure companionship intimacy his presence everything we needed all good all the time exactly the way that he wanted from the very beginning god had blessing in mind blessing in case you're wondering i love dallas willard's definition blessing is this it's the projection of good into the life of another you know people in your life who have blessed you because your life's better for their showing up right you also know the opposite of blessing which is curse which doesn't mean like harry potter hex what it means is to tear them down to bring harm and hurt and distance into their life but god it's not what he's interested in this blessing and cursed theme runs all the way through the scripture from the very beginning god's intention was to project good into our lives and for us to respond to him in gratitude and worship but from almost the very beginning people mankind have always questioned and doubted god's motives and have been tempted and responded to look elsewhere for blessing you only need to read into genesis chapter 3 and you find this uh terrible little voice in eve's ears saying are you sure god has told you the whole truth are you sure god has good in mind for you because this looks really good over here you should come over here and try this why don't you try your own way why don't you look somewhere else for good every single time christians i bet i can get a head nod an amen uh-huh or something on this every time we take that bait things go worse every time we trade a king in for jesus things go worse read the story of god's people every single time it goes worse we trade down we take a place where surrender to a good king who has good in mind for us is swapped out for control anybody live a life trying to control everything that's like running seven minute miles for 26 miles or yeah seven minute miles for 26.2 miles when you are not an olympic athlete it's not going to work you'll crash in a pile control is a terrible king or when we trade out humility not a not a self deprecation not like a diminishing of self but a right sizing of self acknowledging that we are temperable temporal we don't control everything we are not always we're just right here we have some gifts sometime we're just right here when we trade that humility and acknowledgement of who we are and then we start chasing pride puffing ourselves up making ourselves look good posturing and competing against others we exhaust ourselves to try to put that face on every single time you walk into work every single time you see those neighbors or those friends pride is a terrible exhausting king when people trade out compassion for other human beings in mercy for their failures when we acknowledge our own we trade those out for competition to try to win and compete or judgment and condemnation for others it's exhausting you ever try to be the police of what's right and wrong for everyone on the internet that'll wipe you out there's some people trying real hard they got to be tired or when we trade passion for complacency we just try to settle for comfort just try to get by complacency is a terrible king and so is comparison when god invites us to a calling an individual unique invitation to be a part of what he is doing kevin mentioned a book last week that i actually just started happening to start reading a couple weeks ago it's called the pair or the return of the prodigal son by henry nauen if you've never read a book by henry nowin you need to read henry the depth that he invites us to in inviting jesus is so good he says this in that book he says here the mystery of my life is unveiled i am loved so much that i am left free to leave home think of this garden that i described that jesus that god put adam and eve into this is home he loved him so much he gave them the ability to leave if they want to the blessing was there from the beginning he says but i have left it and i keep on leaving it over and over we look elsewhere for blessing when god has so much good in mind and especially in our culture one of the greatest threats is our pace the problem with other kingdoms is the pace will exhaust you and you'll miss all the good that god has in mind because god has blessing in mind for all of us for each and every one of us in fact even as jesus began his ministry yeah he said change your mind and step into this kingdom that i have repent for the kingdom of god is near this was an announcement of good news a place where surrender can happen because the king is good we're humility we don't need to try to be anything else where mercy and compassion not only characterize our king but are shared among the people who live in this kind of kingdom this picture that he paints and it will paint over the next couple of weeks is so much better than these other kingdoms that we settle for right on the heels of that matthew captures this manifesto like this description that jesus made of let me just tell you the things that i'll say over and over about what this kingdom is like we call it the beatitudes it's at the beginning of this manifesto called the sermon on the mount matthew chapters five through seven it begins this way and i love it in the message just imagine sitting with jesus he says you know what here are the people who will find their way into my kingdom and he doesn't list the rich the famous the powerful the prideful this is who he lists he says you know what you're blessed when you're at the end of your rope with less of you there's more of god in his rule he says you're blessed when you feel lost like you've lost what is most dear to you because only then can you be embraced by the one most dear to you you're blessed when you're content with just who you are you hear humility no more no less that's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought you're blessed god has blessing in mind for you are blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for god he's food and drink and the best meal you will ever eat you're blessed when you care at the moment of being care full you'll find yourselves cared for you're blessed when you get your inside world i know everybody else is about the outside everybody sees the outside we try to project outside jesus says no no you're blessed when you get your inside world your mind and your heart put right because then you can see god everywhere in the outside world you're blessed when you can show people not how to bicker who's right how to win but instead how to cooperate instead of compete or fight that's when you discover who you really are in your place in god's family peacemakers you're blessed when your commitment to god provokes persecution even the persecution drives you even deeper into god's kingdom this is an upside down way to see things humility instead of pride surrender instead of control compassion and mercy instead of judgment and competition we're going to look at these shifts and changes and set up different kind of pace in the weeks and months ahead because all of us who are stuck with control and pride are driving right past the good god has in mind for us missing it over and over competition and judgment are only divert us away from the good god has in mind comparison and complacency are terrible kings and they distract us from the good that our good king has in mind for us these kind of kings keep us blind and busy at an unsustainable and exhausting pace but god and king jesus have good in mind for us and for people around us if we'll find our way into his pace so as i finish let me invite you to take three quick pictures you ready take pictures of the screen crop me out you don't need that noise the beatitudes in matthew chapter five i want to encourage you to read them over and over read them in different versions i read them from the message version earlier you'll find them in lots of different versions this picture that jesus paints if you want to find your way into jesus kingdom these are the postures the heart posture the life pace that he's going to invite us into and we can ask him to help us like find these within ourselves you'll find it so contrary to everything you see around you matthew 5 verses 1 through 12. check it out this week check it out again the parable of jesus that we looked at in luke chapter 14. simmer and soak and ask a couple of powerful questions like my middle school kids did on wednesday night you'll find those questions at canyoners.org discovery bible center dbs just simple question what does this say about god jesus or his plan what does this say about people is there a sin i should confess a promise i should hold on to an example to follow or a command to obey just simple ways to point our lives in the direction of jesus to dwell on this passage and one more i always love to recommend books i've really enjoyed this book by john tyson called the burden is light read it a couple times our staff has been reading it lately you'll find that some of the chapter titles resonate with many of the words i've used today it's it's not the same content but it's very complementary i think you'll find it helpful the subtitle alone drew me in liberating your life from tyranny of performance and success pointing our lives in the direction of jesus such a good book if you're a reader check it out listen there's good news in all of this i don't know what your pace has been i don't know how much joy you've experienced from the summer i hope so much i hope you're anticipating an awesome fall because god has good in mind and i hope that you're willing to set a pace to ruthlessly re-evaluate our old ways of thinking and let jesus invite us to something fresh and new the good news is as deeply as we resonate with the first part of henry now in statement here the mystery of life is unveiled i love so much i'm loved so much it says that i'm free to leave home the blessing is there from the beginning but i have left it and i keep on leaving it the good news is is there's a turn but the father is always looking for me like the man's servant in the parable searching not only the city but into the countryside the father is always looking for me with outstretched arms to receive me back there's a place for you god has good in mind for you to receive me back and whisper again in my ear you not just them not just others not just some people but you are my beloved and on you my favor his desire to bring good and blessing into our lives on you my favor rests all right everybody so off we go setting a different kind of pace inviting jesus to be the one who does it for the next several weeks we're gonna be leaning in together listening to him so i don't want you to miss a beat one of the best ways to do that is to text dive into nine four zero zero zero in fact if there are people who come to mind to invite into this i want to encourage you click share send it to a friend invite people along for the journey and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss a message we'll see you soon

Channel: Canyon Ridge Christian Church

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Keywords: Christianity (religion), God, Jesus, Grace, Praise, Gospel, Ministry, Christian, Church, Canyon Ridge, God First, Lord, Holy, Ministries, Fellowship, Ridge Live, Church Online, Drew Moore, Kristi Templeton, Canyon Ridge Christian Church, Las Vegas Church, Las Vegas

Id: j7peGxxjDoQ

Length: 36min 12sec (2172 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 25 2021