A Hope of Honor

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

My family and I recently visited the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Texas. There's an Eiffel Tower in Paris, Texas. If you do not know, there actually is an Eiffel Tower in Paris, Texas. We passed through it on vacation, and we stumbled on this, on the Red River Valley Veterans Memorial Museum, if you will. It's a memorial. And we did not know it was there. It's right next to the Eiffel Tower. And it was an absolute treat. I did not, like I said, I didn't expect it to be there. I didn't know it was there at all. But it's right there next to the Eiffel Tower. And it's truly breathtaking. The layout of the entire thing, and there's another picture I wanna show you. The layout of the entire thing is made for reflection. So as you kind of walk, you can walk in the very middle where that flagpole is, and then there's all these stones all around, and then pass the stones kind of visually.

You can see these pictures of these veterans who've served, and they're like paintings and names on the ground. It's really beautiful. And there's one of those stones, so those black stones all in the middle, they're all monuments and they all say different things. And so one of them says, it says, may all who visit this memorial leave with a feeling of deep reverence and gratitude for those who served our country.

And, ah, man, it worked, man. I mean, it got me, it was so heavy. And this sign in particular, It really assumes a distance between our everyday experience and what these soldiers had to sacrifice. It's assuming the fact that I have no idea, me, I have no idea what it is to serve in war, none, zero. And this sign knows that about me. And this sign says, when you go and you look, there is a distance and you, sir, need to feel it. In fact, for me to truly appreciate a Veterans Memorial, I actually need to step into that distance. I actually need to see that I'm very far from it.

There are not many, with respect to those who serve, there's not many of us that walk around with that kind of gravity, with that kind of heaviness, that kind of sobriety on an everyday basis. We don't walk around considering the sacrifice of previous generations. We just don't do it. I'm worried about what I'm gonna eat for lunch, okay? So it's just, this sign kind of just jolts me back, right? And it should. But this sign doesn't just assume that there's a distance. It also assumes that there is a common humanity. that in a very real way that those who serve, those who sacrifice are exactly like me. They're human. They're frail. They are simply people who serve. They're just like us. And so this stone and really the whole museum, the whole memorial, again Red River Valley Veterans Memorial right in Paris, Texas. It is humbling and inspiring all at the same time.

It shows me the distance, which is humbling, but it also helps me understand, they're just like me. And so it's inspiring at the same time. Hebrews 11, the so-called Hall of Faith, is constructed in a very similar manner as the Red River Valley Veterans Memorial. It's built for us to consider, particularly those who have gone before us. And as we finish going through it today, we've made it through the first 16 verses already. But as we continue to go through it, I would like for you to see the distance between the decisions that these people made and the decisions that you and I make today. And I really do want their hope to stand tall

over your weekend plans, right? We need to feel that distance. I'm not saying your weekend plans are of the devil. I'm just saying by comparison, they just don't stack, right? Me included. You know, I'm like wondering what's on Netflix, And there's a different kind of hope that we're talking about in Hebrews 11, right? There's a distance there. But also, and this is, I think, is really helpful, we need to also see the common humanity that we have with these great saints. That these great saints aren't lofty, they're not too far for us to reach. They're not people whose lives we could never emulate. They're not people with circumstances altogether different from our circumstances. No, they're human just like us. They're people making decisions in a very real sense Sacrilegious as it might sound it's not at all Abraham was just a guy

Abraham was just a guy living his life with a wife and no kids He was just a guy, but he was arrested. He was disrupted. He was disturbed by a deep calling and hope This is the story of Abraham. And so today, we're going to finish walk through the Hall of Faith. Let's feel the gravity. Let's feel the gravity of the hope that we share with them, but also how they acted on that hope.

And really, when we look at just Hebrews, and I know we've been going through the book of Hebrews, we're kind of in the middle of verse, or chapter 11 now, but we've been going through it, all 10 chapters. The author of Hebrews is really trying to help us see this faith in pure form. This is what faith looks like. This is what a life of faith looks like, sounds like, acts like.

With each scene, and we're going to go through a few different scenes in the Hall of Faith today, we're going to see that this, each scene is going to define that faith, give us details of that faith, how that faith points to Jesus, how that faith illustrates the gospel, but also how that faith handles anxiety, handles the future, handles risk. What do we do with our lives and this faith? We can find some of these answers in Hebrews 11. And it truly teaches us, it teaches us not just to live like these saints, but it points to Jesus. It teaches us to live like Him, but in the midst of not knowing the future, in the midst of gambling, you know, for the Lord. And I don't mean at the casino, I mean, you know, with your life.

It really is showing us what that's supposed to look like. Our first stops last week were Abraham, excuse me, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Sarah. And today we're going to begin with Abraham again, but in a very different scene. We're going to start in verse 17. So we're going going to be in Hebrews 11 verse 17. We're going to start with verse 17 and 18 together.

It says, by faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises, that was Abraham, was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, through Isaac, shall your offspring be named. Let's just understand this. Abraham had every reason to doubt that this was God's calling. Okay? And verse 18 says, why? Because Abraham was being called to sacrifice the only method that God was going to use to fulfill the promise. Okay? So Abraham is up against it. I mean, you think you've got conundrums. Abraham's like, okay, I got a promise from God that's going to come through this sun on one hand. that's going to come through this son on one hand. And then I got a calling from God to sacrifice his son, kill this son. Okay. 19. Abraham, he, Abraham considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, raise his son from the dead, from which figuratively speaking,

He did receive him back. Abraham acted in the hope that God would raise the dead. As Abraham has the knife over his son, through whom all the promises were supposed to come, as he has the knife over him, he's thinking, God, I'm about to put the knife in, you're going to have to bring him back from the dead. And he imagined God coming through somehow. And there's no record actually of Abraham even hearing a story of anybody coming back from the dead. It wasn't like, oh yeah, this happened to my cousin last week. It's totally going to be okay.

He did not hear about anything like that. He did not experience anything like that. But he imagined. He thought, it's God's going to come through somehow. And we all hit these moments where the answer of that moment is somehow, right? We've all been there. How are we gonna pay for all this? Somehow? How is this situation ever going to get rectified? How are we ever going to recover from this tragedy? How are we gonna make it through this difficult season? somehow, somehow, Abraham, in his faith, he resists that anxiety through a holy imagination. He resists the anxiety of what's going to happen. How is God going to come through? How is he going to answer this? How is it somehow it's going to happen? Abraham had to sit there and say, somehow, God's going to come through somehow with a holy imagination because of the gospel. And this is, this is why we kind of have a leg up on Abraham because of the gospel.

We know that the impossible is possible because of Jesus. We have ultimate confidence that God is going to come through. Why? Because he came through when Jesus died. He did bring him back from. There's nothing for us to fear. There's nothing that we can plunge a knife into that God cannot make good. So when you are faced with a situation like Abraham where the answer is somehow, I just want to leave you with a question. Where does your imagination go? Are you running worst case scenarios? Are you thinking up really imaginative ways to worry? Okay. Where does your imagination go? Does it always do you always just hit the brick wall? You always just say why you know how we're gonna pay for this. Well, I don't know

Like but you don't engage in that holy imagination where you say God is gonna come through somehow and look I don't mean like buy a house that's like, you know Twice out of your price range and go go a guy's gonna come through somehow like that's not don't I didn't say that Don't you dare quote me on that? My pastor said, I've heard you say that, so I know you're not above it. Where does your imagination go? Where does your imagination go? It tells you a lot about what you believe. So next stop on the Hall of Faith, we look at Abraham's son, Isaac, Isaac's son, Jacob, Jacob's son, Joseph, three generations, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. In the next three verses, verse 20, 20, by faith Isaac invokes future blessings on Jacob and Esau. By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff. 22, by faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites

and gave directions concerning his bones. All three of these, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, they all banked on the future. Isaac and Jacob were invoking future blessings. So Isaac blessed the younger, not the older. Jacob also, whenever he was blessing the sons of Joseph, he was supposed to put his right hand on the older son of the two boys, Ephraim and Manasseh, but he switched his hands. What you see in these two examples in 20 and 21 is invoking a future blessing that was not intuitive. So the older is going to be blessed, the younger won't. It worked in reverse in both of those instances. And Joseph, whenever he's talking about his bones, he says, God will visit you and will bring you out of this land. And this is Joseph in Egypt talking about, you know, hundreds of years later, he said, God's going to visit you and bring you out of this land. And he's saying, God's going to bless you.

It's going to have, it's going to take a couple of generations, but it's happening. All three, all three are working out this life of faith. They're working out this calling by bestowing honor to future generations. bestowing honor to future generations. They could see that something was coming, but they didn't know what it was, and they decided they just had it in their heart. I'm gonna bless future generations with it. There is a book called Canoeing the Mountains by Todd Bolsinger. Canoeing the Mountains, I meant to bring it, I meant to bring it and put it up there, but I forgot it this morning. I'll bring it, I promise. In this book, the subtitle is Christian Leadership and Uncharted Territory, and so what he does, it's actually a really beautiful retelling, and it's historically accurate, of the Lewis and Clark expedition. So for those of you who do not know, Lewis and Clark just discovered the West.

And what they thought was that it was just going to be rivers all the way through. But what they, so they were packed, they packed for canoes and oars and all of that. And what they found were the Rocky Mountains, okay? They didn't know the Rockies were there. And so they found the Rocky Mountains and then they had to canoe the mountains. That's the thrust of the book. And although Todd Bolsinger spends most of the book on Lewis and Clark, he takes the time to talk about Thomas Jefferson. Now, many of you probably don't know that Thomas Jefferson was the sitting president when Lewis and Clark were expanding west. They were contemporaries. In fact, Mary Reather Lewis of Lewis and Clark spent about two years in the White House under Thomas Jefferson's tutelage, learning how to navigate, learning cartography, learning survival skills, learning all of those things, identifying plants, you know, just all the

things that he would need to survive. And when it's talking about this, it's saying that Jefferson, who was a bit, I mean, he was older, he was probably in his 60s, that Jefferson knew, he had faced the fact personally, that he was not going to make the Western discovery personally. He wouldn't see the Rocky Mountains. He wouldn't see the West Coast. He wouldn't see from sea to shining sea. He wouldn't see it. Jefferson knew that. But instead of just sulking, what he did was he recruited Meriwether Lewis. He told him, get a team. Thomas Jefferson financed that team. Thomas Jefferson recruited help for that team. Thomas Jefferson trained that team. Thomas Jefferson cheered that team on and welcomed them back as heroes whenever they did make it back. If you are sitting here this morning and you are over the age of 45, you need to be You need to ask yourselves, am I actively bestowing honor to future generations?

Do you pray earnestly for the blessed future of other people, or do you just pray for a comfortable present for yourself? This is the message, this is the bare bones of the gospel. The gospel is that Jesus sacrificed his today for others to have a tomorrow. And I'm not even taking a lot of liberty and explaining it that way. I mean, that's pretty much the gospel straightforward. Jesus sacrificed what he has now, the comfort he has now, the, the everything that he had at his disposal. And he suffered. He gave himself to be a future blessing to people that barely knew it. Last week, we talked about these three trustees and the pastor Jimmy Stevens,

who they signed the deed to this land, and we don't know anything about them. Are you prepared to not be known about in the future? Are you just prepared to pray, be faithful, work toward a future blessing, and never get a building named after you. Are you okay with donating a ton of money and not having any say in how it goes? You okay with that? If you're not, you might be more concerned with your own preferences than you are with the future blessing of generations to come. What is the gospel if not paying it forward? There's another stop on the hall of faith, verses 24 through 26, he's talking about Moses. It says, by faith, Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he

was looking to the reward. chooses solidarity with God and his people. He obeyed God at great personal risk. It goes on to verse 27, and it says, by faith he left Egypt. This is beautiful. Not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured, look at this, as seeing him who is invisible. Moses endured as seeing him who is invisible. In other words, Moses' actions, his ability to resist the anger of the king and to fight off anxiety on that, it was sustained by a vision, although he could not identify it as such, a vision of the risen Christ. Moses had Jesus on the brain. He sees Jesus in the waiting. Jesus is in the midst of losing everything, walking away from his heritage, being a reproach to the most powerful king in the land, and what is he, how is he sustained? He sees Jesus in the waiting, living a life of faith. It means seeing the reality of Jesus in control of what is going on around you.

Let me say that again. Living a life of faith means it is nothing less than looking around you and saying, okay, all I can see is somehow. That's all I can see. But I know that Jesus has a plan to work this out. And not only do I know that, but I'm going to act on it. Not only am I going to act on it, I'm going to resist anxiety through it. And this is part of the community's responsibility. This is part of why we have worship services. This is part of why we have life groups, why we have family meetings, why we're going to have one on November 9th. The reason we do that, the reason we come together is to be reminded that God is in control. When we sing the songs that we're singing, right? These songs help us be in the frame of mind to understand that Jesus is in control. We must discipline our minds to remember that his timing is not your timing. If you're frustrated with your timing, okay, it's okay to be frustrated.

But the Lord has a plan that's better than yours. And he has a plan that goes out further than you can see. You must trust that. That his timing is not your timing, that his ways are not your ways. The Bible describes them as higher than your ways. I think that's maybe putting it mildly. God's ways are a couple of stratospheres above our ways. I can barely see my weekend plans and the Lord sees my grave stuff. I can barely see my, you know, I can barely fathom the fact that my oldest is in college and is doing well. That blows my mind because I just remember him as a little kid. But the Lord God in heaven sees my great, great, great grandchildren has their lives on lockdown. He's not worried about that. He's not worried about future generations coming. The Lord God in heaven has so many plans laid out for us that when we worry about it, when we think we're somehow going to take control and it's going to be better, that's laughable.

Truth is seeing that Jesus is in control. He shows us that the impossible is possible. He sacrifices for the future. He's there in the waiting next in the hall of faith are God's people, Israel. Verses 29 and 30. By faith, the people crossed the Red Sea as on dry land. But the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, were drowned. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days. Now, those are two stories of God's people being obedient, okay? They cross the sea and they circle the city, okay? That's really all they did in these two scenarios. They did it by faith and that's good. That's kind of the highlight. But let's just be, let's just be real clear. The Bible makes, the Bible makes no mistake, right, in describing God's people as a complete mess, okay? God's people is real. If somebody's like, you know what, I'm

going to start a nation and I really want it to be a lot like Israel. I mean, everybody in their right mind that has read the Old Testament is going, don't do that. Those people were nuts. They were, I mean, they had just been freed from generational slavery in Egypt and they were in the desert going, man, it was so good in generational slavery, maybe we should go back to Egypt. I mean, that's God's people. The Bible makes it exceedingly clear that these people were riddled with idol worship and bickering and rebellion, and they were hard-hearted. They were stiff-necked. I mean, just read the New Testament whenever Jesus is starting to talk to religious leaders. He's just like, yeah, all your parents have ever done is kill prophets. That's it. That's what God's people are known for, not listening to God and killing the people that tried to tell them about it. It's not a super great legacy, but here they are in

the Hall of Faith. What did they do? They crossed the sea. They didn't part the waters, but they did cross the sea. They circled Jericho. They didn't pull the walls down, but they circled Jericho. They get a place, God's people get a place on this list, not because of feats of strength, but because they are ordinary people obeying a call that's right in front of them. Rahab is the exact same way. Verse 31, by faith, Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies. Now, without really getting all the way down on this, typically people in Rahab's line of work don't get commended. Okay. We're not, we're not talking, There's not many other prostitutes in the Hall of Faith. In fact, there's none. Just her.

Why is she there? She's there because in a crucial moment, she obeyed. In a crucial moment, she risked everything. It wasn't just that she obeyed. It wasn't just that God's people took one step in front of the other and crossed through on dry land. It's that they had to believe that those waters that were being held back, wouldn't rush back down. They had to believe that walking around the city would bring those walls down, just like God said. But they had to do it something super ordinary. They had to do it in faith, and they had to do it all the way before God would come through. They had to risk everything they had on purpose and trust God with it. You and I and Rahab and God's people Israel are not called to stay safe. We're not called to hedge bets. We're not called to somehow maintain all that we have. We are called, in many instances, to push our chips to the middle of the table,

to risk on purpose when we don't know the ending, to risk it for the Lord. The basic, and this, I'm not trying to pull this out of the air. This is the basic, basic foundational response to the gospel. That's it. I mean, this is so elementary that what Jesus calls you to do, what Jesus calls you to do is to put everything on the line, to put it all there, and to believe that He is going to use it, to believe that He is going to restore it, that He is going to heal it, that He is going to put it right. That is the gospel. That's how we respond. Jesus says, I've died for you. You're a sinner. I'm making all things new. I'm putting your life, I want to put your life right. I want to heal it. I want to bring it together. I want to make you whole. But what does that require of us? Risking everything. All our plans, all our hopes, all our dreams, that all goes on the altar.

And there's really no other way to do it. I mean, Jesus is really clear that we don't just put like a little bit out there. We really have to go all the way. We have to put all of our chips to the middle of the table. This Hall of Faith that we have is for us to read about, to believe, but also for us to identify with them. Not just hold them up as some statue, but really to understand. I mean, just like at the Red River Valley Memorial Museum. I'm not just supposed to see the statues of a guy who served in Vietnam and go, man, I could never be like that guy. If I do that, I'm missing the point. I need to both understand the difference between the sacrifice he made and what I'm doing with my life and understand that I owe him gratitude, but I also need to understand that that guy was probably just a guy like me. He's probably unsure of himself. He's probably just trying to make the best he could with what he had.

And if we're honest, whenever we think of Abraham and Isaac and even Rahab, all of them kind of have a tendency to exist in the abstract in our mind. We don't think of them as real people. I remember being in a museum one time, and this might sound crazy to you guys, but I happened upon a portrait of George Washington. Okay. Now, to say that I've seen George Washington face a thousand times is putting it probably mildly. We've all seen him. He's on the $1 bill, in case you're confused. I've seen a lot of $1 bills in my lifetime, right? And that portrait was real similar to the picture that's on the $1. It's not different. It's not like he's like... I mean, I think he's even turned the same way. But for some reason, in the detail of that picture, you could just see the weariness in his eyes. And for the first time, I identified with the humanity of George Washington.

I know that sounds nuts, but I saw him as a person. And I'm not making it up. He was a person. I mean, he was a guy just like me, right? I mean, he he found himself in extraordinary circumstances, but I'm sure he got weary and I'm sure what he was getting that portrait taken. He was like, hurry up. I am tired of sitting here. I don't know, but whatever the artist captured in his eyes was just mesmerizing for me. And it made me understand in that moment that I can relate to George Washington on a human level. I've never been president. I don't want to be. I've never lived through a revolution. I don't want to. But I can identify with George Washington. I think we can identify with Abraham and Isaac and Sarah and Rahab. I'm going to read verses 32 through 38 as a whole. And I just want you to let these verses wash over you as I do. I just want you to feel them.

I just want you to feel them. So let's just read. And what more shall we say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of the fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging and even changed in a prison, prison men. They were stoned. They were sawn in two. They were killed with a sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated, of whom the world was not worthy. Wandering in deserts and in mountains and in dens and

caves of the earth. When you hear this list, you either want to run as far as possible from it or you are inspired by it. If you hear this list and want to run as far as possible from it, let me just say, if you do, that is perfectly natural. I don't see many of us lining up to be sawn in to. But the degree to which we avoid this is the distance between your life and what Jesus says when he says in Mark 834, anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow him. The degree to which you want to avoid this is the distance between your life and Jesus saying, deny yourself and follow me. Following Jesus is nothing less than losing control of what you hold most dear, and then some. Following Jesus is nothing less than that. If anybody tells you different, they're lying to you, or they haven't read the New Testament. I hope, I do, I hope, and I say this with me included,

I hope there will come a day when we can read this and just be inspired, not want to run, just be inspired. We read Mark 834, but the next verse in 835, Jesus says, whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel will save it. Following Jesus is losing, make no mistake, but it is losing to win. Jesus is always losing, but it is losing to win. All that falls to the ground, all the things that you lose, all the things that fall are seeds of spiritual significance. They are seeds following the ground. Jesus himself says, truly, truly, I say to you, this is John 12, 24, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. It's only by losing that we can actually win. Let's finish the Hall of Faith the same way we began. Hebrews 11, verses 1 and 2. Remember this from last week.

Hebrews 11, 1 and 2. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen, for by it, by faith, the people of old received their commendation All the saints listed here are commended by God because of their faith. And here's how it ends, verses 39 and 40. And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised since God had provided something better for us. That apart from us, they should not be made perfect. It's very confusing that we're adding us to these verses right here, right? It doesn't really make sense. We're talking about commending the saints of old. Then why are we starting to talk about us? It's because our lifetimes are not as separate as we like to think. When we think about our lifetime, it's pretty selfish. We think about it from our own perspective, is what I mean. Pretty self-centered.

But our lifetimes are actually woven into a larger, a much larger tapestry in that our obedience in the midst of today, our obedience completes the promise made to those who have gone before us. I really want to grasp the enormity and the connection of this. I really want to help this spur you onto a life of faith. And so I want you to just kind of put it in your head. When you remember that our obedience completes their promise, it presses you to use your imagination to disbelieve anxiety and to believe that God will come through some... Because God has done it before in the lives of these saints that we just read about in Hebrews 11. When we find ourselves in the tapestry of faith, we want to, we find ourselves wanting to bestow honor to future generations because our lifetime is not just ours. It belongs to lots of other people. It's a blessing to many other people and that what is unfinished in our hands in terms of

ministry, what is unfinished in the hands of me and you are picked up, will be picked up by other people. Their completion happens in us. Their reward grows in our legacies. We're not just doing it for us. We're doing it for what we're a part of. When we do that, these things help us see Jesus in the waiting. We can look around and understand we're not a part of something small, we're part of something big. And when that happens, we can risk everything because we know that losing is gaining. As we move into our time of response, I just wanna give you some perspective.

In terms of history, in terms of this tapestry that we're talking about, this church, our church, the whole lifetime of it, we can't even see the end of it, this church is a blip on the radar and a small one at that. It's a blip. Your life group, it's a blip within a blip. Your good deed is barely anything. Your intention, even less. It's all so little. I don't say that to discourage you. I say that to say this, that we are not in it. We aren't here, we aren't together for Fama notoriety. I'm not really hoping I'm going to be a TikTok influencer. Just so you know, it's not in the plan. I really hope for that. I don't want it. We're not in it for the fame of the notoriety. What we are doing is we are investing our lives here because generations from now, things that we can't see, the invisible future as more churches are planted. As more people come to know Jesus,

that they're striving in ministry. Your great, great, great grandchildren striving in ministry will help complete God's promise to you. What an amazing thought that the Lord God in heaven is weaving all of this together. I don't say all those things to make you discouraged. I actually say those things to embolden you. Sometimes we are too worried about what we're going to lose. Sometimes we are stuck in our own imagination. We're stuck in the limits of what we can see and feel and taste and what's right in front of us. We either get paralyzed or we do something stupid. My encouragement to you, don't get paralyzed. Don't do something stupid. Pray. Look for Jesus in the waiting. You are waiting for a reason. The Lord wants to speak to you. You are suffering for a reason. The Lord wants to speak to you. My encouragement, act in faith on that. Do that today as we respond.

Let me pray for us and we'll sing. Jesus, we ask for your help. We know that you are the ancient of days, that you see past, present, future, that you are not worried, that you don't ask, you don't wonder what's gonna happen next like we do. What you do is you ask us to trust. I pray that we would trust you. Help us to do that in really small, really small radar blip kind of ways. But knowing that it is adding to the heritage of those who've gone before us, and that those who will come after us will add to the promise that you've given us. But we thank you that you have made us a community. I pray that we can enjoy that today and that we can enjoy that for eternity.

That's your name that we pray, amen. Let's stay in this city. I will sing of your goodness. I will sing of your love. Though the seasons come quickly, you'll always be enough. the night darker, the waiting seems long, you have always been faithful to remind me of You are good in the morning I say you are good in the evening I say you are good to me You have always been patient, you have always been kind You've been constant through the ages, oh what a friend of mine I remind my soul to bless you, standing firm upon your truths Knowing you cannot be shaken, to see what you can do Oh you are good In the morning I'll sing you are good In the evening I'll sing you are good You are good to me Yeah, keep on getting better Keep on getting better Come on sing it out Keep on getting better, keep on getting better Yeah, keep on getting better, keep on getting better Keep on getting better, keep on getting better

You are good, cause you are good In the morning I see you, I'm good. And I see you, I'm good. Jesus answered them, the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it. And whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me, and where I am, there my servant will be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him. Amen.