Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] God bless. You May be seated. Megan team, thank you so much. What beautiful worship hearts and open space.
[00:00:10] That's where we need to start and we're just so grateful.
[00:00:15] What a weekend to celebrate. The freedom to gather together and hear God's word, to know God's word, to be with each other whenever we want to be with each other. It's been a great weekend for reflection. Milestone moments in our lives, in our country, our lives or others are always wonderful times to reflect. And this has been a good time to reflect. Welcome to those of you up there and online. We have a met on Pastor Jerry it's just always a privilege and pleasure to, to. To be with you. As I reflected on this particular story and the freedom we have to come and be with each other, recognize that the ability to do that puts us in touch with a story that is far greater, far grander, spanning thousands of years more than the story of our country.
[00:01:11] And we're called to come together every single week and reflect on that story.
[00:01:15] We're called to listen to God's story so that it gives us wisdom and it helps us navigate the world that we find ourselves in, wherever we may find ourselves in that world, at whatever point in mankind's history.
[00:01:31] And as I've pondered the story and thought about the questions and thought about what it brings to mind as you look at these stories, I can't help but be mindful of. Of a question that people have had for me across the years. And it's. It's more common than you would think. And it's not one often that people will sometimes even say out loud, but privately to me, to others, in a privacy of people they trust.
[00:01:57] People will ask me constantly, given the total victory of Jesus that's described in the Word, why is it that we live in so much darkness.
[00:02:22] With so much around us that seems to say, where is that victory?
[00:02:32] All around us.
[00:02:34] It feels like the darkness is prevailing and we actually find ourselves in good company because that's exactly how Jeremiah felt felt. And in chapter 12, he said this. You're always righteous, Yahweh, when I bring a case before you. And yet I would speak with you about your justice.
[00:02:52] Why does the way of the wicked prosper?
[00:02:58] Why do all the faithless live at ease?
[00:03:04] It's a common Christian cry throughout Scripture, in the prophets and in the Psalms.
[00:03:13] The answer to why is this?
[00:03:16] Because we live in the in between.
[00:03:22] We live in the overlapping of two ages, one that is dying.
[00:03:33] It says so in the Old Testament. Paul makes it clear in 1st Corinthians 7. There's an age that is passing away, but it's not yet dead. And there's an age that has taken birth, but it's not yet fully realized.
[00:03:50] And it won't be until Jesus returns. It's the difference as we think about our own history, it's the difference between D Day and VE Day.
[00:04:01] When we landed in Normandy and we we fought and took and established the beachhead in Normandy, Germany's fate was sealed.
[00:04:14] The war was going to end and it wasn't going to end in well for Germany. Their fate was sealed. But they fought on for 11 months more months, until v e day came and the defeat was total final, bringing a peace to Europe they hadn't known in years.
[00:04:40] The heart of the Bible story is about God's promise to restore what was lost in the garden described in Genesis 3.
[00:04:49] And that restoration that he promised the begins with his Son, Jesus.
[00:04:58] Jesus death and resurrection is our D day.
[00:05:02] It's our D day.
[00:05:03] Our sins have been atoned for, they've been forgiven, they've been covered over. Death has lost its authority over us. We have nothing to fear. The dark powers that used to roam the world at will have been stripped of their authority. They've been humiliated in the heavenlies, they've been thrown out of God's throne room. But they've been cast down to this age in this world where they are livid, angry and thrashing about, doing all the damage they can, knowing that when Jesus comes back, their day is done and over.
[00:05:39] And the good news we declare is just that D day has come.
[00:05:45] It's the beginning of the end, and it's taken place in his death and resurrection. There's a new day coming, there's new life coming, there's new restoration coming. And it's already begun to take place on the planet. That's the good news we carry to our world. And every time someone hears and receives and is drawn to the light and enters into the Father's house, the Father's house gets fuller and fuller and fuller until a moment in which Jesus says, the Father's house will be filled and I will return.
[00:06:18] That's why John will say in First John 2, this world is passing away.
[00:06:23] In Ephesians 1, Paul says, Jesus has been given power and authority not only in this age, but in the age to come.
[00:06:32] In Acts 3, after Pentecost, Peter stands up and says, for Jesus is in heaven until the final restoration of all things.
[00:06:42] Titus tells us in Chapter two, we're to live Godly lives in this present age, waiting for the ultimate hope, which is the return of our Savior and Messiah, Jesus. And finally, in Romans 8, we're told that even the creation itself, groans, yearns, labors, waiting for the restoration, waiting for the freedom of the children of God at a point in time when all things will be made completely new and the darkness will be dispelled. That's why the Moses story from Exodus to Deuteronomy is a microcosm. It's a theme that literally spans the length and breadth of the Scriptures, the biblical story, it's foundational. That's why it was foundational for them and it's foundational for us as well, because it's teaching us how to navigate the disaster that took place in Genesis 3. And God, our first parents, thrust out, out back into the wilderness. And it's where we've had to live ever since.
[00:07:48] It's teaching us about what it means to trust God in a journey through an age that is dying but not yet dead, and one that has been given birth but is not yet fully realized. It's how we gain wisdom as we live in this in between place. The Bible calls it the wilderness. And it's how we gain wisdom because in this place, it's hard.
[00:08:16] It's hard.
[00:08:19] It's why Jesus will say just hours before he goes to the cross, that in this world you will have tribulation.
[00:08:27] He picks a word that means intense pressure will come to you.
[00:08:32] It can be anguish, persecution, tribulation, trouble. It can be heartache, sorrows, and the trials. But he said, don't let that crush you. It's the very same word that John uses in the Revelation to describe the great Tribulation.
[00:08:46] It will be your lot in life until I return to put all things right. But he said, do not despair because I have overcome the this age.
[00:09:04] I have overcome the powers, I have overcome death, I have overcome sin. And you need not be afraid because I have overcome. And that's why Pastor Tim and Pastor Diane both took us back to First Corinthians 10, because the modern, the New Testament prophets were so aware of the story and they're linking back to this story because they're going, this matters. This is a story we need to understand because it's there for us to learn from. He said, I don't want you to forget about our ancestors in the wilderness long ago. Think of them, all of them. All of them experienced the cloud by day and the fire, pillar of fire by night. All of them walked through the water on dry ground, all of them received the manna from the skies, and they received the water from the rock. All of them. But God says, I was not pleased and their bodies were scattered.
[00:10:06] And Paul says, it's happened to them because it's a warning to us.
[00:10:13] They missed out on what God intended. And what had God intended? What they missed out on was God's rest.
[00:10:21] The writer of Hebrews, chapter three, he's going to pull now from Psalm 95, as the new Testament writers are always going to do. They're pulling from the story to bring fuller understanding. Now that Jesus has come, the resurrection has occurred, and the Holy Spirit is here to help us understand, he's going to pull from the story. So this is why the Holy Spirit says today, when you hear his voice, don't hold harden your hearts as Israel did when they rebelled. When they tested me in the wilderness. He said, there your ancestors tested and tried my patience, even though they saw my miracles for 40 years. Why?
[00:11:05] Because they wanted to call the shots.
[00:11:07] Their prayer life was about telling God how they wanted him to deal with their needs.
[00:11:13] Here's what I need. You answer it the way I want it answered. They weren't willing to live and learn by God's wisdom. They were determined to do it their way. They saw God as some kind of cosmic bellhop. And so he said, I was angry with them. And I said, their hearts always turn away from me. They refuse to do what I tell them. So in my anger, I took an oath. What? They will never enter into my rest.
[00:11:43] Sabbath rest.
[00:11:45] It's the goal of our walk and relationship with Jesus to enter into his rest. Not in the future. That is not the rest the Bible is talking about. It's talking about arrest. That's possible right now, in the midst of the darkness.
[00:12:02] It's the summit of the creation story.
[00:12:06] It's a seventh day that never ends.
[00:12:11] It's God at rest in his creation. It's God at rest with the people that he's formed and fashioned in the wilderness and then placed. Placed into a garden. And those people are at rest with their Creator. They're at rest with each other. They're at rest with his purposes and design for their lives. That is the rest that God intends for his people, designed for his people.
[00:12:38] And that humanity first experienced it, defines it.
[00:12:46] But when that rest is shattered, where are they driven?
[00:12:52] They're driven back into the wilderness east of the garden. And it's where you and I have been consigned all humanity ever since.
[00:13:02] It's where we've been consigned to live, living in the in between of what was intended and what someday will be restored to us again. That's the story.
[00:13:21] And so, father, help us. Because all around us is chaos.
[00:13:27] Father, help us.
[00:13:30] Help us to find peace in your presence. And help us, Father, to know and enter into your son's rest.
[00:13:42] So where do we find ourselves? Well, like the Hebrew children, our story basically, those of us that know Jesus, our story basically is comprised of. It's like a play with three big scenes.
[00:13:55] There's scene one is the going out. Scene two is the going through. And scene three is the going in. And the going out scene begins with my real, my realization I need to be rescued.
[00:14:08] I have a problem. I live in darkness. I'm a sinful person. And when I begin to realize I need to be rescued, it begins my going out story and it becomes my Exodus story. How did God take me out of where I was? How did God get me out of my own Egypt? How did that happen? How did he begin to rescue me from the oppression of slavery to sin, from failed human wisdom that we constantly applied to decisions we made affecting our lives, and even to the spiritual powers, the dark spiritual powers that we allowed to exercise influence over us. When I need.
[00:14:51] I realize I need to be rescued from all of that. I begin my Exodus story.
[00:14:58] And all of us that know Jesus, all of us that truly know Jesus, have one. We have an Exodus story.
[00:15:04] We hear them at baptisms. I've heard your stories. I've heard your story. I know some of your stories. And we celebrate your stories because it's our Exodus. It's our leaving Egypt. It's our going out from oppression, being set in the presence of God, being freed by his spirit to begin something new and fresh. And however that happens, by one of the Bible's favorite term, by my out mighty hand and an outstretched arm, however that Exodus story happens for you, it leads us to the next scene, which is my going through, the going through part of my story.
[00:15:50] And it's a journey through the world that I once called home.
[00:15:56] Now, a lot of you here are young enough. You never sang the song this world is not my my home, but some of you remember it.
[00:16:05] We sang it a lot because it's true we've left the world we know, but it seems very familiar. And actually, if we want to admit it, a lot of it was very comfortable. It's why the. It's why the Israeli. It's why the Hebrew children constantly, when things got tough, they wanted to go back to Egypt. They yearned for either. They remembered a world that they didn't remember correctly, but they earned to go back.
[00:16:34] But as journey through a world I once called home. But now, through the help of the Holy Spirit alive in me, I recognize as a wilderness for its godless values and its total addiction to self.
[00:16:54] And I can't change the reality of where I am.
[00:16:58] I'm in the going through, I'm in the middle, I'm in the in between. I can't change that. But the beauty is this is where I learn to become in greater and greater ways, an image of God, the image he created me to be.
[00:17:16] Because this is where we're being prepared for an age and a reality that far exceeds our imagination, but is at the end of the going through, going into that place that Jesus makes perfect and whole in the restoration when he returns. And right now we're preparing to move into that age. And this is where God will prepare me for that part of my journey. So we're in school again.
[00:17:45] This journey is about being in school again is what Ray Van Der Land made popular when he said, we follow in the footsteps of the rabbi or the dust of the rabbi. We're learning to become more and more like Jesus. It's preparation is what's going on right now in my going through part of life, because it test my willingness. This is where we're just like the children of Israel in the desert. It tests my willingness to be shaped God's way, not my way to be shaped by what happens in my life by God, not by me.
[00:18:20] It tests my willingness to be learned and to be led by his wisdom, not my wisdom.
[00:18:26] And that willingness to let him shape me and fill me with his wisdom instead of natural human wisdom.
[00:18:35] It's what ultimately determines how I come to in this present age. It's how it determines how I come to view God, how close I can get to God, how much I learn from my Creator, and how much my life can become a vessel that he can use to make a difference in the lives of others that are around me.
[00:19:09] It's what Paul is referring to when he talks about the judgment that all of us as believers will go through. He describes in First Corinthians 3, he says, look, no one can lay a foundation other than the one we already have. Jesus Christ. That's our foundation.
[00:19:25] If you're saved, if you've been transformed, you've been born again, you've laid a foundation on Jesus.
[00:19:31] If you only know about Jesus, if you've heard about Jesus, if you think he's a good guy, but you don't have that foundation because you've not surrendered and born. You've. You have no foundation. You have no life. You're still in Egypt. But if you've gone down that road and laid that foundation, Paul says anyone who builds in on that foundation may use a variety of materials. You can use gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, straw.
[00:19:59] What do you have that I gave you?
[00:20:02] What are the resources that I gave you? What did you do? How many parables of Jesus talks about what we did with what God gave us? What did you do with what I gave you? But on that day, on that judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done.
[00:20:23] The fire will show if a person's work has any value.
[00:20:28] In other words, was it really for God or was it mostly about me?
[00:20:35] The fire will show if a person's work has any value. And if the work survives, that builder will receive a reward. That's the rewards we received in the new creation.
[00:20:44] But if that work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss.
[00:20:52] But this is not about sin.
[00:20:54] This is about what we do with what God has given us.
[00:20:59] So the builder will be saved because our sin is forgiven and atoned for.
[00:21:05] The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames.
[00:21:15] So this is our moment.
[00:21:17] This is our wilderness.
[00:21:20] We're being prepared for an age to be fully restored. And so all of the challenges and all of the heartaches and all of the disappointments and the tragedies, the sadness that are common to this age, all of them are where and how I'm learning to trust God through any and every circumstance he allows into my life. Which was exactly the point Paul said in Romans 8. We know that God causes all things to work together for good in this age, according to his purposes, if we trust him. Because through those circumstances, he's shaping us to become more and more like Jesus.
[00:21:59] And so we have the three stories.
[00:22:01] Manna from the sky, water from the rock, and now we're going to. We're going to get into our very first battle story. But they're all reflective of physical and spiritual realities that shape how we trust and depend on God.
[00:22:18] Sort of three to six weeks in the journey. It's hard to know on the way to Mount Sinai.
[00:22:26] And they're going to do their best. They'll be at Sinai about a year. When they leave, the scripture makes clear they'll do their best to avoid conflict. Just like this is why this is why they didn't go up to Gaza to face the Philistines. They want someone else. You didn't want them to face battle in the first service?
[00:22:42] I said. I said because God took them this way because he didn't want them to face the Philippines.
[00:22:55] I just don't think the Philippines show up in the story. I just.
[00:22:59] I had to rethink it.
[00:23:01] But they're trying to avoid conflict. So here, let's just read through the story.
[00:23:06] The Amalekites. This is. This is Exodus 17:8. And following the Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. Moses said to Joshua, choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites, because tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands. So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered. And Moses, Aaron, and her went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning. But whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. So when Moses, his hands grew tired, they took a stone and they put it under him, and he sat on it. And Aaron or her held up his hand, held his hands up, one on one side, one on the other, so that his hands remained steady until sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword. And then the Lord said to Moses, write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it, because I will completely blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven. So Moses built an altar, and he called it Yahweh in the sea. The Lord is my banner, he said, because hands were lifted up against the throne of the.
[00:24:20] Of Yahweh. Yahweh will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation. Okay, a couple of background notes on that story that we don't get in Exodus Deuteronomy 25 kind of fleshes out the situation. We're told there. This was her very first battle, and it was not only unprovoked, but it was an unprovoked surprise on the stragglers at the end of the column of Israel.
[00:24:48] It was on the weakest and most vulnerable people.
[00:24:54] This.
[00:24:55] It's also the very first time in the narrative that Joshua is going to be mentioned.
[00:25:03] The staff, of course, ultimately comes to represent God's authority and power as it had been since the time Moses was told to thrust it to the ground. It became a serpent, and then he carried it with him. Throughout all of their time in Egypt, as well as the journey out.
[00:25:21] Aaron and her support his hands. And this is interesting, keeping his hands. I looked all of the standard. Maybe it's elsewhere. But any of the translations you're likely to have, you use the word steady. If you look up the Hebrew word, that word is used once in the translation. Every other time it's used to. To be the word faithful.
[00:25:48] They held his hands faithful. And that's a huge distinction as we'll come to see.
[00:25:58] So Moses records the scroll for Joshua. Why? Because God knows that Joshua is going to be one of the two to make it across the Jordan and he'll lead Israel into battle. And he wants Joshua to know, I will destroy the dark powers. No matter where they live, who they are, or what they look like, I will destroy them. When you move into the land to do battle in my name. And then he builds an altar. The Lord is my banner. The. The staff became the banner. It's. If you've seen. It's like militaries that are used to. Sometimes they may. They have a banner they carry and hold up on poles. They carry in to battle to show who they are, who they represent, the power of the empire that they're all about. So there's four things from this story, from this piece. There's four observations I would make that apply to our journey through this going forward, through in between phase of our lives. Number one is this human weakness in our vulnerability.
[00:27:03] It's just who we are this side of new creation. Now, in this service, there's a. There's, you know, there's a lot of you here who don't know yet what it means to be old, okay? But give it time and you will be.
[00:27:17] It's just who we are.
[00:27:19] It's just where we live.
[00:27:21] It's what makes First Corinthians 15, where the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised and we shall be changed. We are yearning for the moment for Jesus to return so that we can shed these bodies that are fading away in exchange for the body that Jesus had when he walked out of that grave. And the writer Paul pulls again from the Old Testament, from Isaiah, from Isaiah 25, where he says, death is swallowed up in victory. In Hosea 13, where he says, death, where are your plagues? Oh, grave? Where is your destruction? That is a day we yearn for to put away the frailty of these bodies, to become all that God wants us to be, not just spiritually, but physically.
[00:28:11] So when Moses arms grew tired and they Dropped.
[00:28:15] That was a moment that Israel began to lose. But it had nothing to do with how strong Moses was.
[00:28:22] It was simply the reality of what all of us have to deal with in this in between going through phase of our lives.
[00:28:30] God's chosen mediator was fully human, just like you and I. He was subject to fatigue and stress and limits.
[00:28:43] And so were we.
[00:28:46] Which is why the second takeaway is so important.
[00:28:51] It's the power of community.
[00:28:54] That reality is why we need each other.
[00:28:57] It's why we need each other.
[00:28:59] I don't have it all and I can't do it all.
[00:29:04] I don't have the. I don't have all the gifts. I don't have all the understanding. I don't have all the graces necessary for this community of people to become what God wants it to become. That is spread out across this church family. I can't do what Megan does. I can't make that music.
[00:29:24] I can't study like I know Jason studies. I can't be what you are out in your world. Every one of you has been given a gift and abilities and graces that are absolutely unique. And when you come to the church, it brings it together that the body can become what God wants it to be. It's the power of community. So it was symbolic when they held up his arms of the need for a supportive community. We're called to bear each other's burdens. We're called to pray and support our leaders and others in the church family. When that spiritual wilderness becomes overwhelming, which it does for people all the time. And biblical faithfulness is never measured by words. I can't tell you how many times God said to the Israelites, I listen. I disdain your feasts and your festivals because you say all this stuff about me. But your lives don't reflect it. You don't live it out.
[00:30:20] Faith is always measured not by words, but by how I live my life, to show them what I say I really mean about God.
[00:30:34] People around us, we need each other to what?
[00:30:40] To help keep our hands faithful.
[00:30:43] To help keep what I can do. Faithful.
[00:30:47] Faithful to serve God. Faithful to serve and encourage each other.
[00:30:52] I need you. We need each other to hold our hands faithful.
[00:31:01] Ephesians 4. When Paul's talking about the beauty of the church and how all of it comes together to create what God intends in a local community. He says this in Ephesians 4, speaking the truth in love. We're to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, that is Messiah, from whom the whole Body being fitted and held together. But why every joint supplies.
[00:31:27] And he has a joint and he supplies something nobody else can supply by what every joint supplies according to the proper working of each individual part which God's sovereignty. It's his business how he made you, how he gifts you, but according to that it causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
[00:31:55] We need each other because we live in community. There's the power of community. And the thirdly is his own posture of prayer. So raising one's hands in the ancient near east, just as it is in many cultures today, was a bodily posture of total dependence and surrender to God.
[00:32:17] And so keeping Moses his hands up or not, because his hands or even the staff was magic. Keeping his hands up symbolized that the victory always belonged to God. It didn't depend on Moses. It didn't depend on his staff. It didn't depend on the people in the valley. It depended totally on God.
[00:32:43] That's why Jesus in the middle of the most succinct telling of the values of the kingdom in Matthew 5, 6 and 7, in the very middle of that with a tiny little poem song we call the Lord's Prayer, Jesus will say this. When you talk to your father, here's what I want you to say to him.
[00:33:06] You tell him, father, please bring your kingdom here now and bring it through me.
[00:33:20] Bring it through me.
[00:33:22] Let me carry that message of hope into the darkness and show the world now what it means to live out God's kingdom values.
[00:33:36] Megan the fourth thing I would point out is this. And that's the nature of, of our warfare and this banner of God.
[00:33:50] The Amalekites are not a random army.
[00:33:54] The Amalekites were symbolic representation of spiritual opposition.
[00:34:02] They were descended from Esau and they represent a long standing struggle strife against the family of God's promise which he began with Abraham.
[00:34:18] And they targeted the vulnerable and the weary and the stragglers. Isn't that the way the enemy works? Doesn't he still target the vulnerable around us? Doesn't he always looking for a place to target those that are most vulnerable.
[00:34:33] They targeted the strugglers. A cowardly attack.
[00:34:37] And God brings justice. Justice because the promise from God and why he wanted Joshua to know the story and to remember the words, knowing what he would face is because no weapon formed against the people of God fashioned in the darkness by the powers of darkness. No weapon formed against you or I will prosper. That's the promise. Because why? Because me. My arms, a staff? No. Because greater is the one who is in me, the spirit of Jesus.
[00:35:14] Greater is he than any person or any spiritual power in this age of darkness that is dying but not yet dead.
[00:35:30] So the Promised One, the stories, the imagery they always lead to, they always point to Jesus, don't they?
[00:35:40] Here's Jesus very much a human being, weak, vulnerable, battered, broken.
[00:35:50] His wooden staff, well, that's a wooden cross.
[00:35:56] His banner.
[00:35:58] He becomes the living banner.
[00:36:01] If I be lifted up, he said, I will draw all people to me up on a cross with two men, one on each side.
[00:36:15] Men not holding up his hands, but men desperately in need, reflecting the need of all humanity for someone who. Who will do for them what they can't do for themselves. And what is holding up his hands? What's holding up his hands is a nail that he allows the Romans to drive into his wrist.
[00:36:43] To keep his hands faithful, using the darkness and. And the violence of the age to overcome and achieve a victory for those of us that follow and trust him.
[00:37:02] He becomes the ultimate picture of God's authority, God's power, God's faithfulness and God's victory. And that's why Jesus says to us, listen, come to me.
[00:37:21] Come to me.
[00:37:24] Come to me. You need rescued. Come to me. All of you who are weary, who are weak, who are burdened, who are heavy, come to me. Those of you living in that reality, come to me.
[00:37:41] Take my yoke.
[00:37:43] Learn from me.
[00:37:45] Because in me you will find rest.
[00:37:53] I don't know what you need this morning, but I can tell you whatever it is that's going to end with Jesus.
[00:38:03] He is the one who can give you rest no matter what your need is, is this morning. He could become your foundation for life, where he can meet you at your need in the darkness of this in between. And he can become your rest, your peace, as you make your way from that which is dying to that which is giving birth through our Savior.
[00:38:34] Where's the victory?
[00:38:38] Every time I'm willing to become a victim of the darkness, every time I allow myself, like Jesus did, to seemingly be overcome. But I bring a message of life and light into the. Every time I allow that to happen, no matter how difficult the journey. And someone comes to faith, the Father's door is open and somebody new.
[00:39:04] Somebody new goes through the door, that's the victory. Every time somebody finds peace in the midst of a world that's dark and troubled, every time they come and Jesus, they find rest and peace in the midst of difficulty, that's a victory.
[00:39:23] And someday Jesus said the parable, said it clearly people will come through that door one after a time, for however long. God chooses to leave his house open to fill one at a time. But he said the moment will come when the door is going to be shut one last time and no one else will go through. And at that moment, Jesus will bring the restoration we all yearn for, because the Father's house will be filled and that it will be a victory of life and light that will never end.
[00:39:59] I think Rhonda.
[00:40:01] I'm trying to think if it's. Rhonda and Jason actually are going to join me down front after I pray.
[00:40:08] And we invite you to come.
[00:40:10] Come find Jesus. Come find rest, whatever your need is. Find Jesus, Find rest. Find victory in Jesus.
[00:40:21] And every day he gives us, as challenging as it may be, is one more day to swing the door open and usher one more person into the Father's house and into the rest of his son.
[00:40:41] Father, how precious is that?
[00:40:43] How precious is that?
[00:40:46] We have no word to describe our gratefulness for what your son has done for us. So thank you, Father, and thank you, Lord, for his spirit.
[00:41:01] Father, dwell amongst your people. Move in our midst. Make us a community that can continue to take light into our world and be a harbinger of peace and hope until the restoration comes.
[00:41:18] We love you.
[00:41:19] We praise you.
[00:41:21] We lift up our hands. Hold our hands, Faithful Father, in your son's holy name, Amen. God bless you, family.
