The Extent of the Passion

Transcript

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

They call it a moment of truth. Moment of truth is the point where decision must turn into action. So if you are on a keto diet, and you really want sugar, your moment of truth is when the coke is sitting right in front of you, waiting to be consumed, calling your name. If you maybe told your child not to do something, and then you see out of the corner of your eye, not that any children do this, But you see them out of the corner of their eye, you see them trying to sneak past you with something that you have expressly forbidden. I know that doesn't happen in your family, but it doesn't some, especially in mine. Your moment of truth is, are you going to address it? Are you going to point it out? Are you going to call them on the carpet? Moments of truth can come at a much harder rate, a much more serious rate. When you see your boss, for example, being disrespectful to a co-worker that you have,

your moment of truth is, are you going to stick up for them? If you have a friend and you suspect that there's some abuse going on, some spousal abuse going on, are you going to ask that question? Most of truth are hard. They call us to walk voluntarily into something painful. In our series on the Passion, we have come to Jesus' moment of truth. It's been carrying him closer and closer and closer to death. And at this point, just before his death, just before he is crucified, we see the last bits of his life being torn away. The last remnants of everything that he built becoming unraveled. And as we read through Mark chapters 14 and 15, and that's where we're going to be today, in Mark 14, we're actually going to start in verse 61, if you want to turn there right now.

Mark 14, 61 is where we're going to begin, although I'm not going to get there just yet. As we read through Mark 14 and 15, you begin to see that Jesus' ministry looks to be unraveling and that it begins with the disciples. And we're not going to be reading about that yet. I'm just going to paraphrase because this is all throughout Mark chapter 14. And I'll just hit it real quick like Mark 14 verse 10, you see Judas set to betray Jesus. Judas, this guy that Jesus has spent two and a half years with, I know that we're very used to vilifying Judas, but this was a guy that everybody else trusted. Judas is betraying Jesus.

In verse 27, Jesus tells his disciples, you will all fall away from me. Verse 30, specifically Peter, he tells him, you're going to deny me three times. Verse 50, upon his arrest, whenever Jesus is arrested, all the disciples flee. Verse 72, Peter fulfills Jesus's words. It completely falls apart whenever he denies Jesus publicly three times. Every single disciple caves whenever the pressure comes. But that is just the beginning of what is being unraveled. Because now that Jesus has arrested, his public influence begins to unravel. At his trial, several false witnesses come forward and accuse him of various things. And then we pick it up in verse 61 where you have already turned 61 and 62.

It says, but he remained silent that he is Jesus. Jesus remained silent and made no answer. Again, the high priest asked him, are you the Christ, the son of the blessed? And Jesus said, I am, and you will see the son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. What an answer. And this answer right here in verse 62 ends up being the death knell for him. It ends up being the last thing because the next two verses that we read 63 and 64, and the high priest tore his garments, which is a way to mourn. He tore his garments and said, what further witnesses do we need? You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision? And they all, the Jewish council, determined, sorry, condemned him as deserving death. Jesus is then beaten. He's been mocked, in a very humiliating fashion. They beat him senseless, they put him over his head, they beat him again.

And they'd say, prophesy, who gets you? Jesus has made a mockery. He's stripped of his legal status. Eventually he said to the Roman authorities where he is villainized publicly. So he's being brought before community leaders and being testified against falsely, being convicted of that testimony, beaten, mocked, scorned, shamed. Now he's going to the Roman authorities where it's all going to happen again, but it's gonna happen more publicly with more political weight behind it. And after the Roman governor Pilate asks the public for his release, which we know this story, but it is worth repeating to say that Pilate, Pontius Pilate, a Roman governor who does not believe that Jesus is the Christ from what we understand, okay? He's not secretly following Jesus. This isn't Nicodemus. This isn't Joseph of Arimathea. This is a guy. Roman governor who should care nothing about Jesus, he's begging for him to be released.

And so we skip ahead Mark 15 verses 11 through 15 and I want to read them in long form so that we can see it. This is Pilate just having asked for Jesus's release says in 11, but the chief priest stirred up the crowd to have him released for them Barabbas instead. And Pilate again said to them, that what shall I do with the man you call the king of the Jews? And they cried out again, crucifying. And Pilate said to them, why? What evil has he done? But they shouted all the more, crucifying. So Pilate wishing to satisfy of the crowd released for them Barabbas and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. I realize that's just kind of a clause right there and having scourged Jesus, he was whipped with a whip that had 10 different ends on it. Each of those ends was a ball. The leather was tied into a ball and in that ball were pieces of glass, pieces

of metal and anything that would tear the skin away from the bone. He was whipped with that thing. It's called The Cat of Nine Tails. I think it had nine, maybe not ten. He's whipped with that thing 40 times. If you want a graphic recreation of that scene, you can watch The Passion of the Christ. It was a movie by Mel Gibson. It came out roughly 15 years ago. It was the only time I've ever been watching the crucifixion. Maybe I've seen maybe five or six of them, right? Jesus' life, I'm a pastor, so I have to take those in, right? I have to watch them all, check them. So I watched that, and I couldn't watch. I physically turned away when they began scourging, because it's so upsetting. It's so vile, it's so terrible. And that's a cause for having scourged him, having whipped him within an inch of his life, having scourged him.

It's upsetting. It's upsetting to even read, but it is, if you're handling that in a first person sense, we'll get to that in a second. His public influence is totally gone by this time in verses 29 through 32, excuse me. And it says, this is what they say to him. This is what people, this is what people who pass by say to him. It says, aha, you who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross. Lockerry. Next two verses. He saved others. He cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel come down now from the cross that we may see and believe, which is so ironic, because they did come down on the cross and they still didn't believe.

But we're not there yet, we're here. The disciples have caved. They've all run, nobody's supporting him, nobody's sticking up for him. So his public ministry, or his personal ministry with these 12 guys, no one's there, everything's unraveled. public ministry teaching, you know, doing everything he was going to do to, you know, resist arrest and then not be, you know, not be tried, all of that. That's all gone. And finally, at the end, whenever Jesus is on the cross, it looks as if not just his public influence or the disciples unraveling, it looks like Jesus himself is unraveling. Because on the cross, He makes that painful plea in verse 34 of Mark 15. It says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? So painful, painful to read about, painful to think about. We derive the word excruciating, right? That word means from the cross, X from cruche, crux,

it's cross, from the cross. It's so painful that it could only come from the cross. We describe that in a word, excruciating. This is what Jesus is going through. And it's not just physical pain. It's everything that he's worked for, being unraveled. In any situation, in any situation, any of us, any human being alive, would have abandoned all hope. Because in the end, he's alone, he has nothing. And yet, and here's the, it's probably most unsettling and most freeing. This unraveling, this being on the edge, the bleeding edge of despair, this wondering how God is going to fix all that has been undone, unraveled. All of this is indicative of our lives as Christians, excruciating. All these things I've just described, all of it. We can recall Jesus' words in John 1520. He says, remember the word that I said to you, a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

If they kept my word, they will keep yours also. Jesus is saying, look, you're not above what happened to me. I didn't do it so you didn't have to. I did it to show what your life was going to be. John 1633, in this world, you will have tribulation. You will have trouble. You have pain. How did the apostle Paul describe the Christian life? Second Corinthians 4, 8 through 10, it's up on the screen. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed. We're perplexed, we're not driven to despair. persecuted, not forsaken, we're struck down, but we are not destroyed, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body. What he's saying here is that, look, you wanna talk about joy in Christ? You wanna talk about living for Jesus? You wanna talk about being able to climb the mountain and just saying, I love the Lord. I'm going to go make disciples. Sure. Yeah. It involves dragging with you the

death, the body of Jesus. No matter how wonderful it is or appears to live a Christian life, It involves death. We are carrying in our body the death of Jesus. And this unraveling that we see here in Jesus's life as he moves closer and closer and closer to his passion. We're not there yet, but it should inform us that any attempt, any attempt at all to follow Jesus is going to be at the very released, it will be more difficult than you can imagine. That's the threshold. That's where it starts.

It's not going to be sort of hard. It's going to ask you to do things that you don't want to do. It's going to, it's going to call out to you in a way that, that makes you not just uncomfortable, but makes you question a lot of other decisions that you've made. And if you've been following... Listen, I hope I get an amen for this. If you've been following Jesus for a long time, I'm talking like 15, 20, 50 years, you know exactly what I'm talking about. That's right. Okay. Not everybody can say amen, which is fine. I'm not trying to single you up. I am saying though, this is... I'm not dreaming this up. I'm not just trying to make it hard so that you'll like think it's really hard. I'm just being absolutely as clear as possible that this is what Jesus made as clear as possible. It's going to be tremendously difficult to follow Jesus. And there's two kinds of difficulties

that really get us, right? There's internal difficulties, right? So the Christian life is described as a slow changeover from sin slave to being free in Christ. Okay. That is going to be difficult all on its own. Okay. You know, why do I do things I don't want to do? Why do, you know, why do I get in my own head? All that. So that's all internal. I don't want to talk about that today. I want to talk about the other kind of difficulty in following Jesus. And that is external. That's what we've read about in Mark 14 and 15, the external factors, The ways that our world, our culture, a lot of times not even trying, makes it difficult to follow Jesus. And what we see Jesus facing here as his life unravels, disciples gone, influence gone, legal status gone, most of the skin on his back gone in our own lives as we follow Jesus, we will experience these difficulties in varying degrees, right? It's not like being scourged or not facing any

difficulties, okay? So we don't need to think about it in those polar terms. We need to understand the difficulties range for everybody, but we experience these difficulties as an uphill battle With our people in power, there is a culture around us that neither care for the gospel, nor want it to go out. So there are many of us who know what that feels like. You know, we can bring out Daniel Souter, who's about to get on a plane and go to a place where he will have to lie. Straight out. Well, he will at least, he may not lie. and intentionally leave out the part that he's going to make disciples, okay? Definitely leaving that part out. I remember there was a lady, bless her, she was really zealous for the Lord, but not very, you know, aware of the world around her, and she was going on a mission trip to India, like Delhi, and she goes, oh, I'm here as the missionary.

And they said, oh, cool. Your return flight is a day, so I don't know where you're going to stay, but it's not going to be here. When you go to London, England, I don't know if you know this, when you go to England, if you say, I'm coming against a missionary, they'll say, well, that's adorable, but you can't do that here, and they will turn you right around. I've taken seven mission trips to England, and it is very, you can't, it's England, and you still can't say, I'm a missionary, I'm going to totally come here and win souls for Jesus, they're like, okay, well, you thanks, but no thanks. We don't want that trouble here.

Period. There is, I mean, I hope that's surprising, but I hope it's not either. That there is a whole system of the way our world works that makes it difficult for us to follow Jesus, and this did not start in our lifetime. This didn't start in the 1960s or 70s. This didn't start, you know, at, you know, I don't know, 100 years ago, this has been happening all the time. The death of God has been claimed all too often, especially recently, I mean, late 1800s recently, so broad swath of history recently. Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher, German philosopher, late 1800s, what does he say? God is dead. Just full stop, God is dead. In the 1960s, the Soviet president discussing the first man in space, because the first man in space is Russian, his name was Yuri Gagarin, and he said, quote, Gagarin flew into space, but didn't see any God there. It's in the 1960s. 1966, the cover of Time Magazine

ask the question, is God dead? That's 1966. Today, it is easy, easy, easy to find anti-Christian propaganda. I will tell you about one that's funny, even though it's not funny. It is funny to say that Christians believe in unicorns. Okay, maybe you've heard this, maybe you haven't. Christians believe in unicorns. This is why it's funny because in the King James version that came out in 1608, there are nine verses that contain a reference to a unicorn. Okay? Nine. Nine. Okay? They refer to a unicorn as a, and most of those references are to a powerful beast that is not easily taken down. Okay? Unicorns. Well, the Greek word for that, just to explain it a little bit, the Greek word for that is monocaros. Monocaros simply means one horn. Mono one caros horn. When they wrote that in Greek it was monocaros, so they were talking about a one horned animal, which there are a few of those still today. In the Latin, monocaros translates to unicornus.

One cornice, okay, one cornice horn, one horn. And in the KJV, in 1604, when they were translating that into English, they just transliterated it as unicorn. They weren't looking around for a one horned animal, they were looking for a unicorn. The reality is that it's probably more like a rhinoceros, or the way that many Bibles translated and started in about 1952, they will re-translate that as wild ox. It's a certain kind of ox that they believe that it probably was. Essentially, by any stretch of the imagination, it was not a winged horse with one unicorn coming out of there. That is not the beast that it is talking about in the Bible. It's not a mythical beast. However, the point, although that is fun to talk about, the point is that saying Christians believe in unicorns is to make Christians sound crazy and out of touch. And like they shouldn't have political opinions, and they shouldn't be taken seriously.

This is part of our uphill battle. There are much less funny parts of that battle, where you see Christian's idea, the ideal of marriage is too restrictive and it's bigoted. You don't have to go far to see that, it's there. Both in monogamy and in heterosexuality, both of those, if you are saying, oh, you're only married to one person and man and woman only, then you're restricted and bigoted and you hate people. You're a homophobe. Christianity as attempting, people see Christianity as attempting to set up some kind of American theocracy, right? We see our culture sees Christians as people that will only exclude or hurt other people. They're only looking for a certain kind of person. If you're not that kind of person, they're going to exclude and hurt you. All of these things that I'm saying, I'm not making up. I didn't just think of what would be really bad to think about.

These are conversations that I've had with real people and what they believe about Christians. A hundred and fifty percent. When I'm talking to one such person, a good friend of mine, and I was telling him about, and this good friend of mine has been burned by the church in a real difficult time in his life, he was burned by the church, And so he had walked into a church in 30 years. And when I said, our church is going to be in partnership with First Baptist Burleson, his first response was, well, that sounds like genuine Christian charity. That's really surprising. He was honestly surprised. He wasn't playing it for me. He wasn't playing it out. He wasn't trying to kind of make a point. He was genuinely surprised. And then I want you to hear me say this because typically at this point, after we've talked about kind of the uphill battle and how our culture is kind of

not in agreement with the gospel or the gospel going out, right? We typically, so I just wanted to begin it this way. This uphill battle, hope I've made this clear, is 100% normal. It's 100% expected. If you walk around like a victim because you want to have your American right to do whatever, if you walk around like a victim because you couldn't get into England by saying that I want to make missionaries, that they wouldn't let you in, well, please don't go home, get on a cross, crucify yourself and let's say, poor me. Please don't do that. That's not what we're going for. If you are longing for an American society that adopts Christian values, that is fine. That's fine. That's good. But please know, that's not the kingdom of God. It's not. That's not what we're going for. We're not. We're going for a spiritual kingdom, not an earthly one. Specifically, Jesus kind of made that point super clear.

The disciples, they wanted an earthly kingdom. And Jesus said, no, it's not happening that way. This is not the kingdom of God. That's not the gospel going out. That's not disciples making disciples. That's not what we're going for. We're not trying to change legislation. We're trying to change hearts. Change hearts change legislation eventually. But if you want to change legislation without changing hearts, that's going to be a frustrating process for everyone. We should not, to be even more clear, we should not strive to make it easier to be a Christian. If we are just clamoring for our own rights, that won't help, it won't. We should, however, strive to follow Jesus in this uphill battle. In the midst of this uphill battle, right, what Jesus has called us to do, if we go back to the story, there is this really amazing thing that happens in the midst of all of

this unraveling, right? So Jesus is losing disciples, he's losing influence, he's losing legal status, he's losing skin, he's losing his life. It is extremely tragic. But this seemingly tragic end is miraculously bookended by two abrupt, unexpected moments of worship. And it is glorious. And it's actually more glorious when you know what happens in between. 14.3. So go back to Mark 14 verse 3. What happens? What do you see in Mark 14:3? Remember this is before he's saying his disciples is going to be betrayed. This is before all that stuff happens at the very beginning. It says, And while he, Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining a table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. What a beautiful display of worship. The disciples, of course, missing it.

Bless them. They scorned her and Jesus responds in verses six and then in eight and nine, chapter 13, verse six says, mini, nope, sorry, 14, six, I said 13, six. Okay. But Jesus said, leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She's done a beautiful thing for me. And skip down verses eight and nine, it's a good summary. It says, she has done what she could. She has anointed my body before burial. And truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her. What a beautiful, what a beautiful picture. The Lord wants this memorialized, this act of worship, the show of devotion in the midst of everything. He knows it's gonna happen. It's all unraveling, this act of worship, just unattained, unplanned. It is beautiful. It's breathtaking. The second moment of unexpected worship happens right after Jesus is dead.

So go all the way to the end of 15, verse 37. 1537 through 39 says, Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last and the curtain of the temple was torn into from top to bottom and when the centurion who stood facing him saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said truly this man was the Son of God. The only person in the gospel of Mark to call Jesus the Son of God besides Jesus is a Roman Centurion, a grisly war veteran, who probably not a God-pearer, probably not a man that you wanna leave alone with your children. This guy has seen battle, war. This guy probably has all the graces of a mercenary. And he's not a softy, right? He wasn't just caught up in the moment, wiped the tear away and said, No, this guy's a hardened dude. He has seen hard life. So these two moments, two people who have no business worshiping Jesus the way that they're doing, none. We don't even know the lady's name

who worshiped him in Mark 14:3. However, these two moments should give us great comfort because whatever uphill battle we face, whatever we suffer, whatever we lose, whatever fate we meet, we can know that the trials and the victories that we have are not wasted on religion. They're not wasted on looking good for Jesus. They're not wasted on how many people we got in our worship service for Eastern.

It's not wasted on that. All of our trials and our victories, our whole lives, if we have lived them for the sake of the gospel, not perfectly, but if we have worked to please Jesus says, Lord, then our lives are scattered seeds, which Jesus will use to usher in a kingdom. We are the red carpet that is being rolled out for Jesus to walk upon. Our lives, Jesus is going to come back. Jesus is going to usher in that kingdom. He's ushering in that kingdom now, but he will come back one day when it's all said and done. And all that we've done, all of our lives, all of it will just add up to something that helps usher Jesus into this world, His glory. And maybe another way to say it and the way the Bible says it is that you cannot, you cannot stop the gospel from going out. You can't stop Jesus' ministry. Jesus was being unraveled, taken down systematically, every capacity that you could possibly imagine. And a Roman centurion who has no business praising

the Lord praises the Lord. A thief on a cross who has no business becoming a follower of Jesus becomes a follower of Jesus. Jesus says, today you'll be with me in person. Everything's unraveling. And yet, yet the gospel is still going out. You can't stop it. By hook or by crook, you can't stop it. Colossians 1:6 says, the gospel has come to you as indeed in the whole world, the whole world. It is bearing fruit and increasing as it also does among you since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth. The gospel is going out. Doesn't need your permission. Doesn't need you to just really want it bad enough. Doesn't need you to have a good, you know, a good week so that you can make it to church and not feel like some traitor. It's not waiting on you. It's going out. The kingdom is going out. Philippians 1 18. What then? What then? They had all these guys preaching in Philippians 1 18.

These guys preaching and the report that Paul got back was that these guys are preaching, but they're trying to get a little money on the side for it, or they're trying to build up their influence, or they're trying to... There's all these other motivations going on, and Paul's response is beautiful. Philippians 1, 18, what then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed. And in that, I rejoice. So I don't care if some guy is getting more influence. Is Christ being proclaimed? Okay. I'm cool. I'm cool with that. Is the gospel going out? There's a great story and I'm glad you're here, Suter. For those of you who don't know, Daniel Sutor is a missionary that we are sending out and I'm very excited about that. Suter told me a story. He just goes by Suter, which is why I call him that. He told me a story about a guy that is in the region that he is going into and this

This guy became a believer 22 years ago and has been on his own, essentially. He's been reading the Bible and he's been walking with Jesus for 22 years in the midst of an extremely oppressive situation. It's not easy to be a Christian, especially publicly, but this guy is doing that. Well, Suitor is planning to go into this place and he's not expecting anybody to be a Christian, much less a Christian for 22 years. much less a Christian who knows the native languages, much less a Christian who has influence in the villages that he's going into, much less all that. Suter's just been chilling. I mean, dude, what have you been doing the last 22 years? Nothing compared to what this guy's been doing, right? As far as that region, I'm sure you've been doing word of while things. That's great. But compared to this guy, like, I mean, so what does that tell you?

That tells you that, look, I mean, it's a great thing that the Lord has called you to a region and to go and that you're going, all that's great. But it never depended on you, right? And that is at the same time that it's defeating and it is so encouraging, right? Like oh really, anybody could go, you know, yeah, anybody could go, right? The Lord's going to call whoever's going to call. But by the same, that the Lord has called you to this. The only difference between everybody in here and suitor is that suitor is being intentional with the people that he's been called to. Suitor actually has him. That's not to indict everybody for not being intentional, but I'm saying he's got him mapped out. He knows exactly who these people are. He knows what the culture is. He's going for it. He's saying, how can I preach the gospel in this culture? Look, we are in a culture right here.

And if you think like all of Burleson love Jesus, no, man. No, no, not even close. And many of you with grandchildren and great nieces and great nephews, you know that generation is very different than you and how you were brought up. You know that the influence is that they're coming through, they're having to manage their own social media account. You could not have imagined managing that when you were 15, but there they are managing it. They're doing it on their own. They're doing it without the gospel They're doing it because we in some ways lack are lacking the intentionality to reach them But let me happen you let me just the same situation is sooner the Lord will make the gospel go forth in Burleson with or without us and Instead of that inspiring us to just kick back and relax like it's gonna happen anyway Let's go and get that blessing and be a part of what is happening in Burleson in the Kingdom of God.

Let's go jump in. Let's do that. Let's do everything we can to leverage everything we have so that we can minister in Burleson. My family and I, we are going to physically move to Burleson. Soon? We're trying. Okay? We're trying. Now, we're moving roughly 12 minutes, maybe? Something like that? We're selling a house and we're buying another house. Why? Why physically be in Burleson? Because it is where God has called us to be. God has called us to physically be here and that's not an indictment if you don't live in Bertilis and proper That's not what I'm saying I'm saying though use Everything you have leverage everything you have so that you can physically be present for people so that you can physically Plant gospel seeds in the lives of the people that you are in relationship with and if you're in a relationship with people that Look 45 minutes away and you're just you love them, but they're always 45 minutes away

and it's really hard, and my encouragement would either go move closer so that you can plant gospel seeds or start investing where you are. But don't keep doing that. Have an investment in where you are right now, where you are personally. I mean, there's a reason that suitor's not trying to make disciples in this region remotely. He's not doing Zoom meetings to make disciples. He's physically going there. And if he would say, well, I'm going to be a missionary sent out to this people group or whatever, you know, but I'm going to do it only through Zoom meetings. Well, tutored. I love you, but we would not send you, if that were the case. We want you to physically go. And the Lord wants us to physically go, to physically be here in Beryllacin. Even in the midst of unraveling, even in the midst of frustration in your life, in the midst of things not going

well, in the midst of changing everything around, You are still on a mission to make disciples. We collectively as a church are still on a mission. We wanna see God's kingdom come and as well be done on earth as it is in heaven. I wanna leave you with this. And I say it all the time and I don't care. It bears repeating, how about that? Right now, right now, you are not sharing the gospel with somebody verbally, right now. Okay, so however, God's spirit is moving in somebody's life right now that you know, right now. You're not doing anything. You're not even thinking about that person. I mean, nothing. You're not, it's not through your effort. It's not anything. The Holy Spirit is working in somebody's life right now to make the gospel real, to help them understand that Jesus is true, that he is the risen Lord. Okay, that's happening right now. You're not doing a darn thing about it.

And so you have the choice. You either just let it happen without you, or you get on board. My hope for our church is that we get on board. I wanna be super clear. I don't want to just sit back and, you know, let the heavy lifting just happen without me. That's cool, but our church won't live. We will grow slack. We will grow lazy. We will eventually, we're going to just become something that is not even a church, if we ignore that. So this is literally do or die. It's just a slow death. Either we're on the boat with making disciples. We're working with the Holy Spirit, as the Holy Spirit is working with people, or it's a slow down. We'll just dwindle to nothing. The choice is really ours. You can either live a scattered seed, even when you don't feel like it, or you can just complain about all your right things taken from you. I don't wanna indict you. I do want to invite you. Let's go there together. Let's be a church there together.

That will take coordination. That will take a lot of praying. That will take a lot of communication. The next sermon series that we are going into after Easter is a series called The Body. It's about the church. The Bible calls the church the body very often. And so we're going to spend seven weeks on what it is to be a church, how a church should look, what the Bible tells us about being a church. Okay. Some of them like nitty-gritty details, some are broad principles. Either way, we're going to be spending seven weeks on that. And part of the reason that we're doing that is so that we can focus our lives together on making the vision happen. We want to bring God glory by starting four churches in the next 20 years. That means something. That's going to get down to details, actual work, actual conversations. Right now I'm going to ask Dan to come on back up and say, and I'm going to ask them,

We're going to just repeat just as I am. And as we do, we're not going to call anybody out. I'm going to ask you guys to stand. I'm going to be standing right there. And if there's some decision that you want to make, if there's a way that you want to take your next step with the Lord, let's do that. And let's encourage each other as we do it. If you're thinking, I don't have any decision to make, I'm all for it. Well, then spend this time in prayer that others that do need to make decisions would. So let's stand and let's sing.

I am evading the to rid my soul among the dark. Do thee whose blood can cleanse each spot of land of God I call? I just want to read Romans 8, 35 through 37 to you. It says, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword as it is written. For your sake we are being killed all day long and we are regarded as she should be slaughtered. And know in all these things we are more than conquered through Amen and Amen.