[0:00] his sweat became like drops of blood falling down to the ground. And he was in agony.
[0:15] You know, when we started Watermark, several of us were praying, and we felt like, you know, what kind of church did we want, what kind of church did we feel like God wanted us to have in this midst of this part of Hong Kong Island?
[0:30] We wanted to be a church where people were known. We felt like there were a lot of clubs that people just kind of bop in and bop out, and there's actually a lot of churches where people just kind of bop in and bop out, and no one really knows anybody because we're so busy.
[0:46] But we wanted our church to be different. We felt like God was calling us to have his church be different. We wanted the church to be raw and authentic and real.
[0:58] I get in trouble sometimes when I say raw because people say, you can't, don't say raw, say organic. And so organic, and we wanted it to be organic. And one of our greatest fears was that you would look at the staff or the elders or the pastors and that you would think of them as plastic people.
[1:17] I don't know if you've ever thought about that, but I've thought about that. I've gone to churches where I look up and I wonder what's going on inside of that person. Are they real? Are they, could I get to know them?
[1:27] Is that something that they would allow? Are they just kind of plastic? You know, you grew up in churches all the time where people ask how you're doing and everybody's answer is always, oh, great, I'm doing really good. Thank you very much.
[1:37] And I just grew up in church where everybody was doing really good and great. And except for me, I had a hard time sometimes, but I was never always doing great. And we wanted Watermark to be different than that.
[1:52] We wanted you to know the staff and the people and we wanted to be a family. So I want to share some things with you about myself so you're going to get bored as you get to hear more if you've been here for a while.
[2:03] But one of the things you have to know is that I can't hear out of one of my ears. So I'm actually deaf in one of my ears. And sometimes people will say, well, he was really rude because I started talking to him and he just walked away and I kept talking.
[2:18] And if that happens, it's usually because I just didn't hear you and because you're speaking into my bad ear. Now as a husband, it's really helpful because sometimes your wife is talking to you.
[2:29] And most husbands use the excuse already, I can't hear you. But for me, that's really true. And so when I go to bed at night, I just lay down on my good ear and I can't hear all the talking going on.
[2:42] But I learned if you just go, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, then everything's okay, right? I'm kind of sentimental. I have this weirdness about me that I attach meaning and experiences to things in my life and I carry them around.
[2:59] And so when we got married, Christina was always trying to get rid of my sweatshirts and my shoes that had duct tape on them. And I had always found out I didn't go to the trash can in our house because she would put my trash can outside.
[3:10] So when I'd come home, I'd go to the trash can outside and I'd grab my favorite pair of shoes out there because they had meaning even though they looked like junk.
[3:22] Before we got married, I bought this watch. I love watches. But as a pastor, that's kind of a bad thing to love because you can't afford those things. But selfishly, I felt like, okay, I got three months before I got married, I have some money left over and who knows if I'll ever be able to get another watch.
[3:40] Who knows if my wife will ever let me buy another watch. By the way, this is not an advertisement for my wife letting me buy another watch. But selfishly, I thought that. So I bought the watch selfishly.
[3:53] And when I look at the watch, occasionally I'm reminded of my selfishness. I remember when we were getting married, I was sitting in the church and the bell rang and the doors opened and I looked at my watch.
[4:12] And I looked back and I saw Christina there all in white with her dad. I was like, wow. God is so good and amazing.
[4:24] And I remember that when I look at this watch sometimes. I've timed all of our kids' birth on this watch. One time Rachel, our first child, was 16 hours and Christina was in labor with her for 16 hours.
[4:37] It was getting really, really hard. And we were just the two of us and the doctor and the nurse. And the doctor came up and he said, okay, this is the last push. If you don't get out this time, we're gonna have to do something difficult.
[4:48] And he picked up this phone and all of a sudden there's like eight people in the room and forceps are coming out and all these things are happening. And I was just praying and praying, okay, God, please let Rachel come out, let Rachel come out.
[4:59] And the last put, Rachel came out. And I was like, wow, God is so good. And as I'm timing, I'm timing on my hand. Labor starts here, this given here, this, and so I'm keeping track and all these things.
[5:10] And at the end, I just put God is good. I remember when I shared two weeks ago, Christina had the ectopic pregnancy and she's bleeding out.
[5:20] And I was in the hospital in Patia and I was sitting there and the doctor said, well, it might be five hours. And I put my watch down, I looked at it and I pushed the button and I wondered, would I have a wife in five hours? And four and a half hours later, the doctor came out and said, everything's gonna be okay.
[5:35] And I thought, God is good. I remember two years later, I had a heart attack. It was the middle of the night, like two o'clock in the morning, Sunday in the morning.
[5:47] Christina took me to the hospital. And I gave her my ring and my watch as I went in. And I said to her, I'll see you in heaven. And I came out.
[6:00] And I look at this watch. I said, man, God is good. I remember the birth of our second child and the adoption of our third. And then in the fourth, we were up at Matilda and I was timing everything there.
[6:15] And Christina, because she has a blood condition, she couldn't take anything for painkillers. And we're trying to work it out and didn't work out. And she got in there and she was in delivery and she was, it was so funny.
[6:25] Well, it wasn't funny. But when I think about it now, the doctor, so Christina's, and Kate K's coming, and Christina's going, oh Jesus, oh Jesus, oh Jesus.
[6:38] And the doctor who's Indian goes, there's no Jesus here. No Jesus here. No Jesus. Christina goes, oh Jesus, oh Jesus, no Jesus here. And when Caitlin came out, I wrote on the back of my hand, Jesus was here.
[6:57] God is so faithful in our lives. Sometimes we attach his faithfulness to things like watches and songs and people. Sometimes we just forget.
[7:11] But it seems to me on this journey that God's principal purpose for us is that he's trying to do everything he can to keep our eyes off of ourself and to put them on him. God's main goal in our life is to put our eyes off of ourself and to put them on him.
[7:30] Okay, we've been looking at the gospel of Luke for a while. We've come to this last week in Jesus' life. We basically said it's his last day and we're thinking about what it means for the rest of our lives.
[7:44] Remember, Luke is written by Dr. Luke. He was a physician. He had a friend who was probably a high-ranking government official, very wealthy. But persecution had started happening within the Roman Empire and his friend wrote a letter to Luke and said, is it worth it?
[7:59] Is Jesus real? Is everything you told me true? Is it worth the suffering and the persecution? Should I hold on? And so Luke does all this compilation and interviews and he brings all the research together and he writes the gospel according to Luke as God's Holy Spirit indwells him and teaches him and shows him and helps him write and he writes the book of Acts.
[8:22] In the passage so far in his last day, we've seen this. We've seen that in God's kingdom, success is serving people. Remember that? We said in God's kingdom, success is serving people.
[8:36] Now our pride and our ambition in the world is gonna tell us that success is serving ourselves. But the passage said that if we ultimately do that, we're going to fail. That the only way that we can succeed in God's kingdom is we realize that God served us ultimately and because he did, we can let go and serve other people.
[9:00] We don't need to worry about our fear and ambition because God served us. He's going to take care of us. We ask the question as we raise our children and educate them, are we educating our children so that they will have a lot of people serve them?
[9:14] Are we educating our children so that they will serve other people and be a success in God's kingdom? And over and over, we see that God does everything he can do to take our eyes off of ourself and our eyes on him.
[9:29] We've learned in this book last week that the Bible is a book of failures. We learned that there's a lot of failures in the Bible and what we learned was that God knows that we're gonna fail.
[9:39] He expects us to fail. We talked about Peter and Peter failing and what we learned is that God does amazing things in our failures. We're a culture that's afraid to talk about failures. We don't wanna be a failure.
[9:51] We don't wanna mention it but what the Bible says is that when we fail, God does amazing things. Some of us don't wanna serve because we don't wanna fail.
[10:02] Some of us wanna do something but we need to take 50 classes before we do that because we don't wanna fail. But the passage says that when we fail and God knows that we're gonna fail, that God does something amazing.
[10:14] What he does is he wraps our failure in his grace and he changes us. He says for Peter, now that you've failed, now I can use you. Now that you've failed, now you can reach out to the other disciples and you can be a part of their lives.
[10:28] If you hadn't failed, Peter, I couldn't use you. We learned in the passage that even though we're gonna let God down, God never ever lets us down.
[10:40] Even though we're gonna fail God today and tomorrow at our work and in our home and in our marriage, God never fails us. God's primary work again and again is to get our eyes off of ourself and put our eyes on him and to realize how good and wonderful and beautiful he is.
[11:00] And so today we come to this passage, it's a communion passage. And what I wanna do is I just wanna look at it really briefly. We're gonna try something we've never tried before which is always a danger. But we're gonna look at the passage on communion and I wanted to look at a couple things because I believe that as we as a church look at communion and allow God's spirit to change us, we should change our thinking in a couple things.
[11:20] We're gonna think differently about ourselves. We're gonna think differently about other people. And we're gonna think differently about our focus. We're gonna think differently about our future. We're gonna think differently about where we're heading.
[11:34] The passage is written out for you in Luke 22, but before we get to Luke 22, you have to realize that Passover and communion started a long time before that. I mean, in the Bible in Genesis chapter 12, about 2,000 years before what we're reading here, we're told that our father Abraham, the father of our faith, who waited 100 years to have a son, finally has a son and God says, hey, I wanna see if you love me or if you wanna love this son more.
[12:01] And so he sends him to this faraway mountain, Mount Moriah, the mount where God will provide. And he goes, what I want you to do is I want you to make a mulloch there, which means I want you to sacrifice your son. I want you to sacrifice your son to me.
[12:16] I want you to take your eyes off yourself and I want you to put your eyes on me. And so we're told that Abraham goes there and he does that and right as he's about to sacrifice his son, remember his son asked him, well, where's the lamb?
[12:29] What does Abraham say? He said, well, God will provide the lamb. Take your eyes off of yourself and realize that God wants to do something amazing in your life.
[12:42] And so God provides this ram and it's caught in the bushes and it's perfect and he sacrificed it. A little later on in Genesis, we're told that there's this great famine that happens in the land and no one has food, no one has water, and God does something amazing and he takes these brothers who are in conflict and he sells one brother as a slave and Joseph goes to Egypt and through this terrible, terrible failure in brotherhood and familyhood, he does something amazing and he saves his people.
[13:13] The passage says that 430 years pass and there's a Pharaoh who no longer knows the God of Joseph and the people of God have become to multiply and multiply and multiply and they become a pain and the Pharaoh has put them into slavery and the bondage and life is terrible, terrible, terrible.
[13:33] And the passage says that at the right time, God sends a deliverer. He sends Moses in Genesis, in Exodus 15.
[13:44] And Moses goes to Pharaoh but Pharaoh's heart is hardened and God brings judgment upon judgment upon judgment and still Pharaoh says, no, no, no, no, no. I want to be God. There is no other God.
[13:55] Often a lot like us in our lives, right? I want to be God. I don't want another God. And finally God says, okay, one more judgment.
[14:09] I'm going to send the angel of death. I'm going to send the angel of judgment. And God warns Moses in the Exodus passage. He says, judgment is coming but by the way, there is a way that you can escape from this.
[14:20] it's called a Passover meal. I mean, it's the only way that you're going to be able to escape this judgment.
[14:31] The only way that you're going to be free from death and from condemnation is that you're going to have to partake of this meal. You're going to kill a lamb and then you're going to take a hyssop branch and you're going to smear its blood all over the door.
[14:44] And whoever does this, when the angel comes, whoever does this, they're going to be saved. But whoever doesn't do this, whoever doesn't do this, they will face judgment and they will perish.
[14:58] And I wonder as I read that passage, were the Jewish people like us today? Were there some people in there going, did God really say that? I mean, do I really need to make my doorway dirty with blood?
[15:14] And I'm a good person. I'm pretty good. I mean, I serve in a temple. I'm nice. I'm not as bad as that person. I wonder if there were people like us during that day who doubted God's word and doubted his goodness.
[15:32] But we're told in the Exodus passage that by the end of the day, in every house in Egypt, in every house, there was either a dead lamb or a dead person.
[15:42] there was either a dead lamb or a dead person. No one was going to be saved unless they had eaten the lamb and been covered by the blood.
[15:54] Everyone at the end of the day, think about this, everyone at the end of the day knew that the only reason they were alive because it was a little, furry, white, innocent animal had its throat slit and it died in their place.
[16:16] The Bible says that generation after generation after generation passed and year after year the father of the household would lead his family in a very specific ceremony.
[16:28] The ceremony would always start like this. The youngest person in the family would ask a question. They would say, why is this night different?
[16:39] than all the other nights? Why do we do this? Why do we do that? And the ceremony would include things like unleavened bread which was a symbol of haste and hardship in the wilderness.
[16:54] The ceremony would include bitter herbs which symbolized their bondage and their slavery and their captivity. It would have a red stew that the composture and the mixture would look just like the bricks that they made and in the ceremony there would be four cups and they would do these toasts and they would basically toast God and thank him for his goodness in their life.
[17:17] They would thank him for their freedom for their redemption for their peace for their new relationship with him and then a lamb would be killed and his blood would be stained everywhere and everybody would remember that the only reason they're alive is because God is good and somebody else had to die in their place.
[17:45] We get to Luke 22 and we fast forward about 1500 years. Jesus has gone to Jerusalem and we've been talking about this for like a year, right? He's gone to Jerusalem and he's basically gone to Jerusalem to accomplish his exodus for God's people.
[18:02] I mean, he's going to do the exact same thing that Moses did in Egypt. He's going to do the exact same thing in Jerusalem for us. The people were in slavery.
[18:12] The people were in bondage. Now remember, Jerusalem was going to explode. I mean, there was some, Josephus and some scholars say there were 200,000, 200,000, 2 million people in Jerusalem during the festival.
[18:29] I mean, this was a special Passover because there was this rabbi and he was changing things around and everybody wanted to be at Jerusalem. So 2 million people, some of the estimates are there were about 200,000 families.
[18:41] So 200,000 families at 3 o'clock in the afternoon would take their sheep and the priests would blow the horn like a shofar and at the same time they would take their knives and they would cut the throat of the sheep.
[19:02] Can you imagine what that was like? 100,000 sheep dying at the same time? I mean, the sheep don't die well. They're bad, bad, bad.
[19:13] At the same time, 3 o'clock, and you heard this loud noise and the blood was gushing everywhere. I mean, it's told that there's thousands of priests that had these silver and these gold bowls and they went and they got the blood and they ran up to the temple and to the altar and they would pour the blood at the foot of the altar as a sacrifice, as an atonement for the sin and we're told that in Jerusalem there was this blood river that flowed out of the temple down into the Kidron and sometimes it got two or three feet high because 100,000 sheep were killed so that the people's sin might be passed over and hidden for a little while.
[19:58] Remember, it's Jesus' last day and the officials are out to kill him. We don't have it in your bulletin but please go back because in Luke 22, 1 through 6, you see this passage where the synagogue officials have conspired and Satan enters Judas and Judas says, I'll get him alone.
[20:15] I know you're worried about the crowds. I know that you're worried about you grabbing the temple. There's going to be this huge revolt. I'll get him alone. I'm the money changer. I have all the money so if he has to do something, I'm going to know where he's going to be and the minute I know where he's going to be, I'm going to tell you and so you can go and you can capture him in this room because no one of us will be there and it's going to be good.
[20:37] Jesus, we're told, knows that. The officials are out to kill him. Judas has betrayed him but he really desires to have this last Passover feast with his disciples.
[20:54] In Luke 22, it says Jesus sent Peter and John. He throws a monkey wrench in there. So now Jesus doesn't know where it's going to be. Only Peter and John know where it's going to be and we're told in the passage that Peter and John go to prepare a meal now.
[21:12] I'd like to ask the communion stewards and the worship leaders to come forward. When you're ready, you'll come up and you're going to receive a red band.
[21:26] Don't do anything with it yet. You're going to receive both elements. Don't do anything with it yet. But as you think and as you come forward, wonder, what was it like on Passover?
[21:44] What was it like when you went to get your sheep? What was it like when the trumpet blowed and you slaughtered it?
[21:58] What was it like knowing that the only reason that you're there is because somebody had to die in your place? After you've received all the elements, go back to your seat and I'll come back up and we'll take them together as a family.
[22:26] The first thing before we take the elements that I see in this passage about communion and I think it's a challenge to us is that when we come to God's word, the question is why?
[22:37] Why are we taking communion today? Have we examined our lives? Have we asked the question that the little kids ask before communion?
[22:49] Why do we do this? Why is this any more special than today? The passage in verse 21, which you don't have here but you have to go home and look at it, says immediately immediately after Jesus did that, he told his disciples that one of them was going to betray him.
[23:12] Immediately the questions round out the same in each time in Greek, surely not I, surely not I, surely not I, surely not I and then Judas looked him in the face and he said, Master, surely not I and there was a big question and we're told that they examined their hearts and they examined their lives and they wondered were they the one who was going to betray him?
[23:37] Were they the one who was going to run away? Were they the ones who were going to fail him? The meal represents a covenant. It's a relationship between God and us.
[23:50] The Old Testament says that the sacrifice of sheep do not forgive sins. It just covers them up and points to the future where someone else will have to come and forgive their sins and when we come to the communion elements and we take them, what we are saying is, what we are acknowledging is that we need Jesus.
[24:16] What we're saying is that Jesus is the only way. What we're saying is I can work hard, I can do all these things but in the end I'm still broken and sinful and I need Christ.
[24:27] I mean, every other religion, every other philosophy, every other thought of mankind is going to say that you get saved because you work hard and you do the right things and you're a good person but when we come to the communion table, what Christianity is saying is that none of that is true.
[24:51] That we're here as a gift and the question is are we going to make that gift ours or are we going to eat of it and to realize what it means?
[25:06] The passage says that when we come to the table we're called to continually examine our lives and to see if the grace that God has poured out upon us has it changed us. Do we think differently now in light of the cross?
[25:20] Do we act differently in our homes? Do we act differently in our work? Do we act differently among our friends? Do we understand the massive cost it costs to forgive us? I mean do our actions change?
[25:34] Are our hearts different? Do we ask the question maybe in light of what God has done for me is this a good thing for me to be doing right now?
[25:47] In light of the sacrifice that Christ has made for me is this the right choice for me? Do I understand grace? Have I allowed God to change me?
[25:59] Do I live today as if it cost Jesus his only son but it cost God his only son? Do I live that way? When we come to the communion it challenges us to think about ourselves but also challenges to think about our relationships.
[26:15] The passage says here and we all know that communion was a family thing and you did it among your family but here for the first time Jesus is separating these men from their family he's bringing them together and basically what he's saying is that there is a new family it's not a DNA family but it's a it's a spiritual family and he's going to tell us throughout the scripture that this spiritual family brought together by his blood and his sacrifice is stronger than our biological families.
[26:52] I mean we looked at it last week last week the disciples got together and they were arguing over who's going to be the greatest and who's going to serve whom and Jesus said to them that's not how we act in God's family.
[27:06] That's not how we treat each other and the only way that we can treat each other the way that God wants us to is if we trust him. I mean at the Passover meal we're called to examine our relationships.
[27:20] I mean are our relationships strong? Are we a part of God's family? Are we a part of God's family and people here? Or do we just drop by because we want to feel good about ourselves?
[27:33] Are we plastic people? communion calls us to examine our relationships with others and to ask us how are we doing with the person next door to us because they are our family.
[27:54] They're who we're going to be in heaven with forever. Father, I just come before you and just confess my sin and selfishness.
[28:10] So often the focus and thought is of myself and it's not on you. Father, we come to you as your people and we confess our brokenness and our sin.
[28:24] we ask you to change us, to redeem us, to fix us, to bring us back the way we are supposed to be.
[28:38] Help us to think of ourselves in the right way in light of communion. Help us to realize what it means to have this person die for us and the only reason that we are here, the only reason that we have hope, the only reason that we have a future is because someone else died for us.
[28:54] Father, I confess the way I treat my brothers and sisters sometimes. I have to admit that often I'm like the disciples. I'm looking for people to serve me instead of me serving them.
[29:13] Father, I pray for us as a church. I know that there are a lot of people here who struggle with these things and I pray, Lord, for your forgiveness. I pray for your mercy I pray that your grace would change us and would make us a different people and people would look at this congregation, your family, and say, something's different here and they would ask questions just as they did the early church.
[29:39] Father, in the midst of all this, we need you desperately and we know that you know that we're going to fail. So we thank you for your son whose blood brings us life and erases our sin.
[29:55] We love you. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took a loaf of bread and he broke it. And what he said next would have freaked everybody out because for 1,500 years he said this bread represents the bread of haste and the bread of pain and the bread of suffering and the bread of wandering in the wilderness.
[30:15] But this time what he says is this bread represents me. The pain and the suffering the brokenness that I will face for you.
[30:29] The body of Christ broken for you. We're told a little while later he took a cup and no one knows which cup it was out of the four.
[30:40] Maybe it was the third one. The cup of redemption. The cup of payback. A buyback. And this time he said instead of this blood this cup represents the blood of lambs that were shed for you to cover you so that you'll have to do it again and again and again focusing towards when it's going to be finished.
[31:01] This time he says this is my blood. This is what all the lambs for 2,000 years have pointed to. And in my life your sin is forgiven. You have a new relationship now.
[31:15] You're brought back to the Father. You're my children. The blood of Christ shed for you.
[31:31] One final thought. As we come to communion and we think about the wine we think about the bread we think about the sacrifice we think about the lamb we think about Jesus.
[31:43] In verse 19 we're told something very special. He said he had come and taken some bread and he had given thanks and he broke it and he gave it to them saying this is my body which is given which is paid out. It's actually it's a banker's term he just he is paid in full my body's spent on you do this in remembrance of me and that word remembrance means to continually continually continually put it before your face.
[32:09] The Greeks would say that time is like an eraser and it gets into our mind and it erases us and we forget things. Jesus is saying that basically in our lives we're going to become so busy that Hong Kong is going to get out of control and he's saying that sometimes we're going to we're going to forget him.
[32:31] And we're called to come to the communion table and to remember and to remember his goodness. Verse 15 says that we'll remember his desire to be with us.
[32:44] The word actually means I desire to desire. It actually means lust. The passage says that God lusts after you. He wants to be with you so much.
[32:58] He wants to be with you and have a relationship with you. And sometimes in the busyness we forget that. But Jesus says remember.
[33:12] Remember. Verse 15 and 19 says we were to remember because of the suffering. We were to remember that Christ is humiliated. We remember that he hangs on a tree. We were to remember the pain. We were to remember as we walk through life and we feel broken and lost and forsaken and useless that we have a Savior who died for us and through his death were given ultimate value.
[33:42] Jesus said remember this because you're going to get busy and you're going to forget this. He says remember throughout the whole passage that I am in control of all things.
[33:55] I know they're looking for me at the house and so I go to a different place. I know they want to grab me before the Passover and get it done and kill me but I have a different plan. I know what's going on in your life.
[34:07] You're living life and it's terrible and it's hard or it's great and you're wondering if he's there and you're wondering if he's in control and you're wondering if he's in our life and he's working through our lives and when we look at the cup and when we look at the cross and we look at God's word we're called to remember that he's with us that he'll never forsake us he never gives up on us he's the God of second chances the question is are we going to take him up on that are we going to try to be and live life the way we want to I'm going to ask the worship team to come back up they're going to finish this up with one or two songs when you came up you got a band a red band as Jeremy leads us in worship what I would like you to do is I'd like you to turn to the person next to you your family member and I would like you to have them tie that band around your wrist nicely not too tight no blue fingers my hope and my prayer is that this piece of thread around our wrist is a reminder it calls us to memory of all that God has done and all his goodness
[35:49] I'll come up and close this in a minute we are the people of God purchased by his life his blood shed for us the passage says he just gave it all in the blood he gave it all in his body he gave it all because he knew that we we needed it all my prayer is as you walk away from this communion time that you'd realize that as God's people we need to start thinking differently about ourselves maybe some of us need to start acting like God's people as God's people we need to start thinking differently about the people around us maybe to realize that they're our family and somehow God supernaturally brought us together by his design he knew that we needed each other maybe we need to start acting like a family my prayer is as we leave here that our focus our thoughts would always be about remembrance would always be about remembering
[37:11] God Christ on a tree what he's done for us how he's purchased our life how he cares for us there's nothing we need to fear there's nothing we need to doubt because he's in control of everything even his own death will we start living like that will we trust him because he's good my hope is that you would carry this band with you for a day or two or however long and every time you look down on it you remember a savior broken for you you remember that your only reason that we're here is because somebody died for us who didn't deserve it we'd ask God to use those thoughts in his spirit to change us and to make us his people more Christ's body broken for you
[38:14] God in control of everything in your life God passionately pursuing you and wanting to have a relationship with you a God who says he's going to do it to the end that I'm going to be with you until the end until the kingdom comes we eat it together in the kingdom I'm going to bring you all the way if you trust me Father we thank you for this day we thank you for your words that are so powerful but Lord we pray that we would eat them we would eat you we would eat your word we would allow your spirit to change us help us to be in awe of your grace help us to be in awe of your mercy help us to be in awe of goodness and Lord we just confess when we're not because the passage says that we're going to forget we're going to become busy help us to remember help us to help each other remember help us to come alongside each other when we're in the midst of the junk and we bring to memory for our brother and sister the Savior who died for us because he did everything else is going to be okay everything else is going to be okay
[39:29] Lord I pray for those who didn't receive a band in here today we have a band ready for them my prayer is that they would ask a lot of questions and try to understand what does it mean that Christ had to die for them what does it mean to have a sacrifice pay for their their rebellion their bondage their idols I pray they would ask people they would come up and ask the elders ask myself so we could talk to them about the most wonderful thing in our life it's a Savior who loves us so much and he pursues us so much and he never gives up on us and he's in control of our lives and we could trust him we can trust him Father help us to be a church that acts like your people loves like your people is a community like your people and we know that the only way this is going to happen is you change us so Lord we're thankful that you continually do things in our life to take our eyes off of ourself and to put them on you sometimes you use a song sometimes you use a piece of metal junk watch but more often than not you use the body and the bread broken for us
[40:53] Lord we love you we need you desperately we pray all these things in your son Jesus name amen God bless you we'll see you back here next Sunday you do we you you