The Faith of the Gospel

Transcript

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

Amen. What if, what if I were to tell you that the gospel banned a certain kind of music? What if I were to tell you that the gospel was only...it only allowed for certain colors of shirts, or it only allowed for certain kinds of hairstyles? Or what if I told you, what if I told you that the gospel was only accessible to certain classes of people? Well, I hope that you would be astonished. I hope that you would stand up and find a tomato and throw it at me. I don't know where you'd get a tomato. Hope you'd find one and throw it at me. Distorting the gospel, that is making it say something it does not say or making it imply something it does not imply, distorting the gospel is lethal. It is dangerous because you are misleading people on how to follow Jesus. For example, if we're talking about following Jesus and we say, okay, the only way to follow Jesus is to listen to a

certain kind of music. Well, then now we have elevated a musical style to high spirituality. We should not do that. The Bible does not do that with music and lots of other things. Now again, if anybody, not just me, if anybody attempts this in our church, I hope that they would be run out quickly. I hope that you would interrupt them in the middle of the sermon

and not spare their feelings and kindly escort them out. Because what they are doing is lethal. It's, they are distorting the gospel. However, the only way that happens, the only way you are astonished, the only way we run them out is if you are so familiar with the gospel that you can spot a fake. The only way you're going to pick up the tomato and throw it at whoever's distorting the gospel is if you know it's being distorted. is more dangerous than distorting the gospel is not being able to tell when it is happening. More dangerous, more dangerous than actually distorting the gospel, which is super dangerous. It's not being able to tell when it's being distorted, when it's happening on your watch. When we began our series on the gospel, we talked about the gospel in, we illustrated it with a multifaceted diamonds, just this huge diamond, it's beautiful. And we talk about beholding the beauty

of the diamond. You turn it just one way and you can see way more. And in looking at that diamond and beholding the beauty, part of beholding the beauty of the diamond is understanding what you're looking at, is learning about the diamond. Particularly, whenever we are beholding the gospel, Whenever we are looking at it, we are turning it over in our mind, it should teach us how to discern true gospel from fake gospel, how to discern between the actual gospel and imposter gospels or distortions of the gospel. What we have done in our series on the gospel, we have worked to do just that in the gospel of Mark. So this is the gospel according to Mark. And we learned that primarily the gospel is a person. The gospel is Jesus Christ. And we see that in Mark 1:1. That is a, this is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Okay. Now, in order to discern more about the

gospel, in order to continue to turn the diamond in our mind, we kept doing what the gospel of Mark does in that we looked at Jesus's life, his words, his ministry, how he's dealing with the disciples. And what we have been able to do is we've been able to identify certain hallmarks of the gospel as we've done this, right? So we know the person of the gospel is Jesus, but we also know that the message of the gospel is a constant message. Repent and believe for the kingdom of God is near. We talked all about that. We learned about the method that it is a consistent method. It is Jesus making disciples who make disciples. Jesus does deal with crowds. He does heal people. He does teach in parables. But what his primary way that the gospel is going to go out is by investing in a few who will then invest in a few who will then invest in a few. We talked about the life of the gospel,

How it was unwavering. Jesus was constantly serving and suffering and dying on behalf of other people. He was losing his life in order to gain it. Just like he's telling us to do, right? He's giving his life away. And last week we looked at the veil, the veil of the gospel, that Jesus holds a veil over the gospel, steadily so. And it's because he's looking for seekers, right? He's hiding the gospel in plain sight so that people who are looking for the gospel will find the gospel. Today, we are looking at one last hallmark to help us get the gospel in our bones, to help us understand what it is. And we find it again in Mark, chapters 1 through 8. And we're going to be jumping around a bit today. You can open to Mark, chapter 2. So we're going to be kind of bouncing around all through Mark chapters, really two through eight. And we're going to be identifying more hallmarks, but we have to kind of look around because

as you read Mark two through eight, you're going to see just different aspects of Jesus' ministry kind of come up and rise and fall. And you'll kind of see different accents as we go. So we've been talking about these different hallmarks of the gospel. So we've been needing to kind of pick and choose. But what I'm telling you is as you read Mark 2 through 8, you will see all those hallmarks woven together. Okay, so I want you to notice a few things. Mark chapter 2, we see this pattern. We see this pattern of Jesus rewarding faith. And you see the examples up here in Mark 2:5. This is in response to the friends who lowered the paralytic through the ceiling, right? So four people, they found their paralytic friend. they're thinking, hey, Jesus needs to heal this guy. So they take a part of the roof and they lower him down. And it says that when Jesus saw their faith,

he healed the paralytic and said, son, your sins are forgiven. But Jesus saw their faith. And from the way it's written, you get the impression that their faith is what Jesus was rewarding or acknowledging. And it doesn't stop there. Mark five with the woman, with the issue of blood healed, he touched her robe and then he said, who touched my robe? He calls her forward and he says, was it you? And she said, yes, I touched your robe. And he said, daughter, your faith has made you well, go in peace and be healed of your disease. Now, Jesus could have just as easily said, daughter, I have made you well, go in peace and be healed of your disease. But he specifically points out her faith, her faith to go through the crowd when people were pressing on all sides and it touches robe and fades. Mark 7, Jesus actually chides a Gentile woman for asking him to heal her

daughter. Okay, it's a really interesting read. You can read Mark 7 to find out. When Jesus chides her a little bit, she responds and said, well, even hey, even Gentiles, even non-Jews share in the the covenant a little bit. And so Jesus's response in Mark 7:29, for this statement, you may go your way. The demon has left your daughter. Jesus actively throughout Mark 1 through 8 and many other places is rewarding faith. He sees faith in action and he said that, yes, yes, I'm going to do that. Your statement, for this statement, your daughter's going to be healed. What a powerful thing. He continually finds these moments of bold faith and he rewards it. Now, although we need to be careful here and we need to note that salvation is by grace, it is not earned. However, we still need to understand that in Mark 1 through 8 and in plenty of other places in Scripture, Jesus is looking for and rewarding bold faith.

He seeks to inspire us with it. He seeks to call us toward it, right? Bold faith is something that Jesus is pointing to and saying, yes, that's exactly what I wanna see. You see it all over. Ephesians 3:20 kind of nails this down for it says, "'Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly "'than all that we ask or think "'according to the power at work in us.'" So Jesus is saying to us in scripture, I'm working in you, I'm able to do something through you that is greater than what you can imagine. All that you ask, all that you think, it's greater than that. And I'm seeking to do that in you and through you. And what you see in the first chapters, first eight chapters of Mark is Jesus rewarding that. People that will believe. However, in Mark, as Jesus is doing this, not everybody is getting gold stars. Not everybody is exemplifying this great faith. And it's really the disciples who kind of demonstrate this, right?

So in Mark 4:40, and in Mark 8:4, you see it. So in Mark 4:40, Jesus has just calmed the storm. In a whole sea, he calmed the storm with a word. And the disciples are freaking out and he said to his fearful disciples in Mark 40, why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith? This is a consistent thing that Jesus asks his disciples. The disciples in Mark 1 through 8, they're not the teacher's pet, okay? They're not really getting it. They're kind of dense, okay? You see that we'll actually explore that way more next week. But then another, this is probably more indicative here. This is after Jesus at Mark 8-4. This is after Jesus has already fed 5,000 plus people with the same disciples that he's talking with now. And there is a second instance in Mark 8 where they're going to feed 4,000 people. exact same situation where the disciples still ask thickheadedly, how can one feed these people

with bread here in this desolate place? And as you're reading this, you're like, that was two chapters ago. Mark six, you have 5,000, this you have a thousand fewer people. And you're wondering just, oh, I don't know, how could it be done? Now, what could possibly happen in this situation? Well, I'm not sure, but man, two chapters ago, which could have been that long ago, the disciples saw what could happen. It was an amazing thing. Of all people, of all people, the disciples should get it and they don't. Consistently, consistently in the gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the disciples are displayed as dense, as thick-headed, as slow on the uptake. They're not stepping in what you're laying down. They don't get it. They don't get it. But who does? Who does? We've already talked about them. It's the lame, it's the sick, it's the outcast, it's the outsider.

In Mark's gospel and several other places in all four gospels, you see these people that shouldn't get it that do. You see a Syrophoenician woman. Because she's Syrophoenician, that just means she's not a Jew. She didn't grow up hearing about God. She didn't know the covenant. She didn't know any of that stuff. She just sees Jesus, he's a miracle worker. I'm gonna ask him, I believe he can do it. And Jesus rewards that faith. But she's an outsider. She has so much less to work with than these Jews, than these disciples. Yet the outsiders are the ones who get it. The disciples are the ones who are missing it. And just take heart today, if you are here and you feel like an outsider, if you feel like you're kind of coming late to the party, like you don't know as much Bible as other people, or this is like your second time ever being in a church, whatever. Maybe you just don't know a lot of religious people. You don't feel very religious.

Listen, in Mark 1-8, you're in really good company. Really. Because in Mark 1-8, it's the outsiders who get it. It's the disciples who wif. In fact, it seems like the closer that people were supposed to be to God in Mark 1-8, the harder it is for them to have faith. It's a weird corollary, but it's what you see. And this is true for the disciples, because the disciples should have got it, but kind of didn't. Well, the people that really should have got it, totally didn't. And I'm talking about the religious leaders, and they're kind of the third group you want to look at. Throughout Mark 1 through 8, Jesus despises the antagonism of the religious leaders. All throughout. It is a regular, normative thing. There's one or two outliers like Nicodemus and John 3, but really, every religious leader, Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, lawyers, whatever, however it describes them, they're all antagonistic. They're all trying to corner Jesus. So

back in Mark 2, right, after that paralytic is lowered through the ceiling and Jesus sees the faith of the outsiders and says, yeah, hey, he saw their faith, son, your sins are forgiven. Look at the reaction of the religious leaders in Mark 2, 6 and 7. He says, now some of the scribes were sitting there, religious leaders, questioning in their hearts, why does this man speak like that? He's blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone? The religious leaders are consistently fault finding. They're badgering him. Jesus here in Mark 3, 5 at the beginning of it, Jesus is in a synagogue. He's ready to heal a man on the Sabbath and he stops and he looks around to all these religious leaders that are there in the synagogue. And he says, Hey, just Q&A, is it lawful for me to heal on the Sabbath? Is it lawful to kill or to heal on the Sabbath? And there was no answer. The religious leaders did not answer him because they were, they didn't

want to look dumb. And what does it say? It says that 3-5-A, Jesus looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart. After the religious leaders accuse him of being possessed by a demon, which by definition is blasphemy, Jesus responds to their accusation at the end of Mark 3, in verse 29 through 30, and it says, whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin for, in other words, this This is the reason they were saying, they being the religious leaders, were saying that Jesus has an unclean spirit. And Jesus says to them, listen, you can say a lot of things, but you want to start attributing my work to the devil. That's something that is not forgivable. That's something that is blasphemous. That is something that is terrible. Jesus in summary, Mark 7, 8 is a good summary. It says, Jesus is talking to the religious leaders and he said,

you leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. You leave the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men. And so what you have here then is you have three groups of people in Mark 1 through 8. You have outsiders, you have disciples, and you have religious leaders. The outsiders, Jesus is rewarding their faith. He's seeing them act boldly, it's rewarding that. You have the disciples who seem to miss a lot. They're kind of dense, they're sort of there, but then the religious leaders who are receiving Jesus's full ridicule. So Jesus is responding to other people's faith or lack thereof. He's responding to both. In fact, you see this even with the crowds in his hometown at the beginning of Mark 6, Mark 6, 5 and 6 says, and he, Jesus, could do no mighty work there. Why? Well, he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people

and healed them, and he marveled because of their unbelief. You get the impression that if they believed, if there were throngs of people that were saying, Jesus is the Messiah, let's worship, then more miracles would have happened. But their disbelief tied that off. It limited. So what is the difference then between the faith of the outsiders and the disciples and the religious leaders? What's the difference? What did the disciples miss that the outsiders see? What kind of faith do the religious leaders reject out of hand? What do they see and are suspicious of? Because it seems to be a faith that the gospel requires. The kind of faith that you see in the outsiders in Mark 1 through 8 seems to be the kind of faith that the gospel not only rewards, but that it requires. It's the kind of faith that Jesus sees repeatedly and rewards. And for today, I will pose the question this way. What is the faith

of the gospel. That is the title of today's sermon, what is the faith of the gospel? Because whatever the answer is, we must have it. Whatever the answer is, we must have it. To have any other kind of faith is to have no faith. It's to miss the gospel completely or to be antagonistic to it. That there is a faith that belongs to the gospel, that is fundamental to the gospel. It is the basic requirement of the gospel. It is the faith that Jesus sees and rewards and works in. It is a faith that sustains us. How can we define this faith? We don't have this formula laid out in Mark 1 through 8. Jesus doesn't really break it down for us, he just sees and rewards it. Or you see the disciples miss it. Or you see the religious leaders being antagonistic toward it. So Hebrews 11, Hebrews 11, 1, 2, and 6, it holds good treasure for us asking this question. What is faith?

What is the faith of the gospel? It says, faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen for by it. The people of old received their commendation. They received their commendation. It is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen, they received their commendation, and without faith, verse 6, skipping ahead, without faith, it is impossible to please Him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him. The faith of the gospel, the faith that pleases God, which is really the only other kind of faith, or the only kind of faith there is, it possesses, I'll just say, three qualities. And we can see it here in Hebrews 11, one, two, and six. It must, the qualities of this faith, we must have belief. It says in verse six, we must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

It's not just enough to believe God exists. There's plenty of people that think there is a God somewhere, right? Plenty. However, there's a difference when you believe that He rewards those who seek Him. There's a lot packed in there. So belief, they must believe that God exists and then He rewards those who seek Him. Another part of faith, it's courage. When you are hoping for unseen things to become reality, when you are waiting on the assurance of the good thing that is hoped for, right? That takes courage. It's not for the faint of heart. Lastly, it takes urgency.

Urgency. Now you don't necessarily see this in the verses that we read, however, it's all through the other verses in Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11 is often lovingly referred to as the Hall of Faith. See that, it's a pun. It's not the Hall of Fame. So it just lists all these believers, right? It lists all these believers. And in each and every single one of their instances, there was urgency. It was Rahab whenever she was hiding the spies. There was some urgency there, right? Daniel in the lion's den, right? That's a good example of urgency. And it goes through Abraham, Moses, Gideon, Daniel, David, all of these people, they all had urgency in the situation that they were in. So, believe courage, urgency. And what I want to do is I want to go back into Mark 1-8, and I'm going to look at the faith of each. I'm going to look at the belief, the courage, and the urgency of each, asking

them along the way, and I want you to think about this as we look at the outsiders and the disciples and the religious leaders. I want you to ask yourself, who are you most like? Who are you most like? We're going to take a look at the religious leaders first. And I've named, kind of named each faith as it were, it's just going to help us kind of attach it. Religious leaders had a redirected faith, a redirected faith. In other words, they had courage. courage, they didn't lack courage. They also had urgency. They, in Mark 1-8, they worked to confront Jesus as often as possible and with as tough a question as they could think of. There was urgency on their part. They wanted to disprove him, right? They boldly approached him. They had all the courage and all the urgency. However, they did not believe. They didn't believe in Jesus. They redirected that back to themselves or to their

religious moral system. They redirected it to their own abilities, their own power to follow religious or moral rules. They had faith in themselves, not in Jesus. Some people are raised in church their whole life, and they have all the courage and all the urgency in the world. They are not afraid of anybody, and they are very passionate, and they're excited, but they're excited and passionate for their own agenda. The faith is in their own ability. Now it's moral. They're not morally bad people, right? They follow rules. They stop at stop science, full stop, you know, they open the door open for, you know, hold the door open for people, but they do not actively believe that Jesus has a plan for them and that he rewards those who seek him. They don't believe it. They might even say they do, but they don't, not with the way they live. They're not in tune with the spirit. Their mentality

is to do the next right thing in their own power. They're like, hey, I'm just going to do the next right thing. I'm just, you know, the next right thing is whatever's right in front of me and whatever has, well that's different than following a plan that Jesus has for your life and following it in faith, trusting Jesus for that plan. It is insidious in American Christian theology, right, and what we all generally believe man on the street, to acknowledge God, to acknowledge that God is good, to acknowledge that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, but to actively not follow Jesus with any faith at all. Your life lacks faith.

Doing the next right thing in your own power is not faith. It's just white knuckling it and trying to be moral. Well, congratulations, you're trying to be moral, but that doesn't matter. It doesn't count for anything. It won't save you from eternal damnation. It doesn't work. The only thing that can save you is faith in Jesus. If this is you, I imagine that you are tired and frustrated and angry. I imagine you don't like what I'm saying right now. Also imagine that you don't have the peace that passes anything.

I imagine that you have soldiered on for a long time. And let me just, with all the compassion in my heart say, you have soldiered on long enough. Stop, repent and believe the gospel. Stop being a soldier in your own moral army. Follow Jesus. Yes, that will make you moral. Yes, that will make you a good, yes, all those things are true. But when you don't have Jesus at the center, you need to repent and believe the gospel. put your faith in Jesus and his ability and his plan for you. He will lead you beside still waters. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. He calls to you. Faith redirected at yourself will not save. And so maybe you are like the religious leaders. If you are, we're going to have a time of invitation at the end. But let me talk about the other two first, because maybe you're more like the disciples, right? The disciples had an armchair faith.

They have an armchair faith. I'll tell you why I call armchair in a second, but when it comes to belief and courage and urgency, they believed a little bit. I mean, they had some courage. It took some courage to drop their nets and to follow Jesus. I mean, they're following Jesus for crying out loud. They've shown some belief that God exists and then he rewards those of seeking. And they've shown courage in doing it yet. They've had no urgency. They don't understand where the game clock is. They have an armchair faith. And so I borrow that phrase, armchair faith, from another phrase, armchair quarterback. So if you are an armchair quarterback,

you're armchair, you're a lazy boy at the house, You're sitting on your Lage Boy, you're watching the TV, you're watching the football game, and you are picking apart all the decisions that the quarterback is making. So you're like, oh, I can't believe he threw into the flat. He had the guy open in the post 15 yards down field. However, whatever football aficionado level you are, you don't have to be an armchair quarterback. You can be an armchair anything. Or you can be a backseat driver. This is akin to being an armchair quarterback. When you are an armchair quarterback, you are criticizing somebody who's actually in the game. You're not in the game. They are. And you're in the peanut gallery hurling insults. You're, oh, should have done it different. I wouldn't have thrown that way. I'd have thrown this way. I wouldn't have said that. I'd have said it this way.

Look, it's easy. It's easy to pick on religious leaders, but at least they had the conviction to act. I mean, they're an easy target. And they should be, they're antagonistic to Jesus. But at least they had conviction, at least they believed what they believed and were convinced to act on it. There was some urgency. If you have an armchair faith, you criticize the bold faith of other people. You watch people attempt great things for God, and you cross your arms, turn your nose up, and you say, no, no, that won't work, it won't be good. And in an honest moment with yourself, you're smug when they fail. Your armchair faith, you love saying, I told you so. You love saying you dreamed too big. The reality is you're fearful. The reality is it's much, much safer to be on the sideline and actually not in the game. Your faith is small and it is weak. Theodore Roosevelt addressed this in a speech that he gave,

given to diplomats all over the world. It was in Paris, France. His speech was called, Citizenship in a Republic, and it's exactly what it sounds like. It was about citizenship in a republic. He was talking about America being a republic and what it takes to be a citizen in that republic. And at one point, he begins to discuss critics. And I wanna quote this at length, I want to put it up here, but I want you to listen to it. He says, it is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great

enthusiasm, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best in the end knows the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who never know victory nor defeat. Today, I wanna tell you with everything that I have, look dumb for God. Look dumb for God. What have you to lose? Looking dumb? Being wrong? Stand and attempt. This isn't just for pastors and missionaries. This is not just for people that have been Christians for 10 years and one day you'll graduate to that plane of Christianity. No, this is for anybody who calls on the Lord. Stand and attempt, and if you fail, you fail while you have tried to live out your faith. If others criticize, remember, you don't answer to them. At the great judgment seat, they ain't going to be there.

They're going to be waiting their turn. It's going to be you and the Lord. What's the Lord going to say about what you did? You answered to him who rewards those who seek him. Stand and attempt. Look dumb for God. go for a faith that is bold. All of our encouragement in Mark 1 through 8, all over the Gospels, all over the Bible, is to live according to a bold, active faith. And this is what the outsiders display.

An active faith, a bold faith. They believed that Jesus said he could do what he was going to do. They had the courage, even if it was only for that instant, even if that woman who had the issue of blood only had the courage to fight to the crowd and touch his robe, that was all the courage that she needed. And there, of course, in all of those instances with the outsiders, there was urgency. The Friends of the Paralytic had urgency. The woman with the issue of blood had urgency. The Syrophoenician woman had urgency. If you're living this Christian life right now and you do not feel that urgency, it's not because it's missing. You need to open your eyes to that urgency because there's plenty to go around. Here's a couple of urgent situations. There are people in and around you that are living in sin slavery, and they are dying and going to hell. They need someone, maybe you, to demonstrate the gospel to them.

There are people limping along and weak and broken down faith, and they need someone to come alongside them and invest in them and help them grow strong. There are people that are confused and that are hopeless, and they need someone to show them what is good and true. There are people that are drowning in debt that don't understand how they got there, but they definitely know they're in trouble. There is urgency to go around. You want urgency, cross the street. It's there. It's in our homes. It's in our families. It's everywhere. There is urgency all around, whether you see it or not, that probably is determined by how much Netflix you watch.

Whether you're aware of it or not, it probably depends on how much you're actually in the lives of people who don't know the Lord. Because I'll tell you, it's not long. Sit and talk with somebody. Have coffee with somebody for 45 minutes. Ask them how their life is going. And if they don't know the Lord, you're going to hear some amount of urgency with them. If they're honest with you, if you're friends with them and they trust you, you're going to hear some urgency. You're going to hear a problem. It might be big, it might be small, but it's definitely going to be urgent. The religious leaders were blind to this urgency. The disciples, maybe they saw it, but they were hesitant to step in. Let me encourage you now. I tell this, so on the side I teach a graphic design class. I teach it a couple of times a week, it's just an hour or two, and it's really fun.

They're just students and we're just learning graphic design, so there's really not a lot of pressure. But something I tell them at the very beginning, and I believe it's incredibly instructive for us today. I tell them, well, on one of the first days of class, I tell them, everything you make will be ugly. I do. It's the first thing I tell them. Everything you make will be ugly. Some of yours will be less ugly than others, but it will all be ugly. You will think it's ugly. Other people will think it's ugly. It'll be ugly. It will. And I know that can sound like I'm trying to deflate all these kids and I'm not. What I'm telling them that I'm saying to them, look, your first try out of the gate is not going to be perfect, Junior. You're going to have to, and here's my phrase, you're going to have to fail forward. I tell my kids to fail forward every week, just about.

Fail forward, because if you're waiting for it to be perfect, before you take the first step, you're going to be waiting forever. You're going to have analysis paralysis. You're not going to be able to know what to do next. My encouragement to you, embrace the faith of the gospel even if you don't have the the rest figured out. Embrace it now. Embrace it today. Where are you? Are you like the religious leaders? Are you like the disciples? Are you, you feel like you're somewhere in between those? That's fine. You don't have to fit in a category, but I'm trying to help you understand. You've got to think about how you use your faith. And when you do, when you embrace the faith of the gospel, here's a couple of promises. Your life will not get easier. Your problems will not go away, but you will have hope. Yes, your boss will still get on your nerves, your kids will still scream, life will still be hard, but you will

be living for something worth living for. Maybe for the first time ever, and that changes everything. Today, as Dan comes up and we sing, I need the, I can't think of a better song to sing to just to understand kind of what's going on. And I think Larry, you're going to have to go back for that for that song. I want to encourage you just as we are getting ready to sing I Need Thee. I want you to think about where you are. Are you like religious leaders? Are you like the disciples? Are you like the outsiders? Where's your next step? Am I encouragement? Fill forward. Stand and attempt. Look dumb for God or at least be willing to. Who knows, God might have mercy on you and you don't look that dumb. Maybe. Chances are we're all gonna look dumb. So let's do it for something that's worth looking dumb for instead of attempting nothing and looking great. Let me pray for us and after I'm done praying I'll be down here as we sing.

If you want to take that next step, whatever that is, you can come pray with me. I'm gonna have my mask on and all of that and you just need to come and receive prayer and go sit. That's great. You want to make a decision. Can we be baptized? You want to join the church? You can come up and talk and we'll proceed on from there. Let me pray. Jesus, thank you so much. You give us so much to look forward to. You help us to see beyond our fears. You help us to attempt great things for you, even without the assurance that everything's going to work out like we want. You bless that. You bless bold, active faith. Help us to do that, help us to act on that bold faith now. And it's in your name that we pray. Amen.

Every hour I leave you there I say you're my counterpart