Worship - Sunday, February 13

Jesus, your name is power, breath and living water, such a marvelous mystery. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who is the Lord Almighty. The walls and ears and ears to come. With all creation I sing praise to the King of Kings. You are my everything, and I will adore you. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and ears and ears to come. With all creation I sing praise to the King of Kings. You are my everything, and I will adore you. Worthy is the Lamb who was slain. Holy, holy is He. O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the works thy hand hath made. I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder. The path throughout the universe displayed. Then sings my soul, a Savior God to thee. How great thou art. How great thou art.

How great thou art. How great thou art. When through the woods and forest glades I wander. And hear the birds sing sweetly in the earth. When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur. And hear the brook. And feel the gentle breeze. Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee. How great thou art. How great thou art. Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee. How great thou art. How great thou art. That God his Son not sparing. Send him to die. I scarce can take it in. That on the cross my burden gladly bear. He bled and died to take away my sin. Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee. How great thou art. How great thou art. Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee. How great thou art. How great thou art.

Sometimes we live life in the middle of a storm, left out in the open, exposed to the elements. No matter where we look, protection seems miles away. Shelter feels out of reach. Lately, these storms have grown stronger, more intense, more difficult to bear. Where do we look when we can't see the way forward? How do we find safe harbor? In the midst of the ebb and flow, God promises to be our refuge and our strength. Our ever-present help in times of trouble. In our most desperate moments, we can rest safely behind the rock of our salvation, protected by the shadow of His wing. Yes, life has its troubles, but our God is a mighty fortress, our stronghold, our refuge. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Good morning. A little bit of a different service this morning as the church is empty, which is a very strange feeling to be sitting here all by myself. Also have kind of a lot of screens happening, one to control the slides, one to play a little bit of music, one to make sure the camera's pointing in the right direction. So we will try to make it all work this morning. So I'm thankful for you, whether you are watching live with us right now at 10:15 or you're watching this a little later today or this week, it's my prayer that God will encourage you with His Word. So I want to read from the 61st Psalm as we think about how God helps and how He cares and takes care of His people. It says this:

"Hear my cry, O God. Listen to my prayer. From the end of the earth I call to you. When my heart is faint, lead me to the rock that is higher than I. For you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy. Let me dwell in your tent forever. Let me take refuge under the shelter of your wings. For you, O God, have heard my vows, and you have given me the heritage of those who fear your name." Let's have a word of prayer. Father in heaven, I know things are different this morning for a lot of us. I know I'm missing being with my brothers and sisters in Christ. I just ask that you would use this time to encourage us, to strengthen us. That you would lead us to the rock that is higher than I, that's bigger than we are, that's stronger, that's safer.

That you would help us in a world that sometimes feels like it gets turned upside down so frequently, that you would remind us that strength, hope, and comfort is in you. Be with us as we spend some time together, even though we're far apart this morning. May you encourage our hearts and souls. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So our service will be a little bit different. We'll just do sort of one song. It's always hard when you're at home and I'm here by myself. So maybe you don't feel like singing to your phone or your TV, but maybe just spend some time letting the music sort of prepare your heart as we get ready to open God's Word. So we're going to start by just reminding ourselves about the goodness and the greatness of God and all the reasons we have to bless Him. Bless the Lord, O my soul, O my soul. Worship His hope.

Holy Name. Sin like never before, O my soul. I worship Your Holy Name. The sun comes up. It's a new day dawning. It's time to sing. Sing Your song again. Whatever may pass, and whatever lies before me. Let me be singing when the evening comes. Bless the Lord, O my soul. O my soul. Worship His holy name. Send like never before. O my soul. I'll worship Your holy name. You're rich in love, and You're slow to anger. Your name is great, and Your heart is kind. For all Your goodness, I will keep on singing. Ten thousand reasons for my heart to apply. Bless the Lord, O my soul, O my soul. Worship His holy name. I sinned like never before. O my soul, I'll worship Your holy name. And on that day when my strength is failing, the end draws me. And my time has come. Still my soul will sing Your praise unending. Ten thousand years and then forever more.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, O my soul. Worship His holy name. Sing like never before, O my soul, I'll worship Your holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, O my soul. Worship His holy name. Sing like never before, O my soul, I'll worship Your holy name. Yes, I will worship Your holy name. Lord, I'll worship Your holy name.

All right. We'll be in the book of Acts in just a minute. Teaching, sitting down this morning, still recovering a little bit. I want to have a word of prayer, just sort of an announcement about what's going to happen next. We'll spend a little time in God's Word. We'll sort of end gathering together around the table, and then have a word of prayer and wrap it up. I'm going to go ahead and pray for our time together. Father in heaven, help us. Sometimes we feel weak. We feel tired. We feel worn out. We feel sick. We just ask that you would take care of us. That this morning as we gather, although different from what we're used to, different from maybe what we're comfortable with, we just ask that your Word would be a blessing to us.

That you would help us to see that in the midst of our struggles and difficulties, you are at work and you are doing wonderful things. We ask that you would nourish us with the gospel. That you would help us to see the good news about Jesus, who has come to save us from our sins. That you would help us to see how your Spirit has equipped us for the work of ministry. I thank you so much for Jesus. It's in His name we pray. Amen. We're going to be in Acts 18 in just a minute, and before we get there, we're going to spend some time moving through some other parts of the Bible to sort of help us get there. And I want to begin this morning with Exodus. And Exodus, if you've been in church for any period of time,

is a pretty familiar story, right? God's people, having come to Egypt as a family, have grown into a nation. They have come to escape famine. At the time when they arrived, the family of Joseph was second in command of all of Egypt. They're important. They're powerful. Things are good. But over time, and as the years pass, they lose their importance and they go from being politically powerful to the slaves of the Egyptian Empire. And so as the book of Exodus opens, God's people are suffering, and they're struggling, and they're slaves far away from home. And God immediately goes to work to save them. And one of the things that God does is He raises up His man Moses to deliver them. And what you find in the beginning chapters of Exodus is a picture of God preparing Moses in Pharaoh's house and in the wilderness for the ministry that would follow, and then it turns to conflict.

As there is a conflict between Pharaoh and God, as God through His messenger Moses says, "Let my people go," and Pharaoh says, "I don't think so." You see, Pharaoh doesn't have room in the budget to hire workers to replace all of these slaves. And so what God does is He begins to bring about a series of sort of miraculous disasters. We call them plagues on Egypt. You have water and the blood. You have frogs. You have lice. You have darkness. You have all of these terrifying things if you're Egyptian happening to you. And so nine of these miraculous disasters have rained down on Egypt. And after each of them, Pharaoh has hardened his heart and refused to let the people go. And before the last disaster comes, something remarkable happens. God will tell Moses to give a message to the people. This is what He'll say in Exodus 11.

"Speak now to the hearing of the people that they ask every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor for silver and gold jewelry." Basically, God says to the Hebrews, "Go to your Egyptian neighbors and say, 'Hey, I want your silver and gold jewelry.'" And what's funny is that the people give it to them. And so as they're preparing to leave Egypt, they are taking with them much of the silver and the gold of Egypt. The final calamity, the death of the firstborn son, is brought upon Egypt by the hand of God, and the people leave. And they're not just leaving Egypt. They're leaving with their possessions. They're leaving, it says, with their livestock and their cattle. They're leaving with much of the silver and gold of Egypt. And then what happens? As they travel out into the wilderness,

as they come down this valley between two mountains, and in front of them is the sea, Pharaoh changes his mind. And he pursues with his armies and with his chariots. And what does God do? God saves his people. He blocks the army. He parts the Red Sea. They walk across on dry ground. And then, as Pharaoh tries to follow, God collapses the sea, destroying their enemies. And you have to wonder about the Hebrew people, because now they've seen God's power in these ten plagues that have shown God's power over rivers and over animals and over bugs and over amphibians and over light and over darkness and over life and over death. They've seen his power over the sea, and here they are. God has done amazing things. And in Exodus 15, for the first half of the chapter, they praise God and then immediately began to complain.

"You brought us out here, and there's nothing to drink." And so what does God do? He provides water for them to drink. So if you're keeping track, God has now delivered them. He has provided for them. The sea has parted. Water has been given to them. God is so very great. And so what immediately happens next? Chapter 16, "Well, you haven't given us anything to eat." And so God gives them food. And he doesn't just give them food in sort of a normal way, but God causes manna to rain down from heaven. This bread, delicious bread, rains down from heaven six days out of the week. You gather up enough. On the sixth day, you gather up enough for two days, and the next week you start all over again. For the next 40 years, God miraculously does all of your grocery shopping. 40 years of heavenly bread.

So if you're keeping track, God has delivered them from Egypt. He's provided a way across the seas, defeated the armies of Pharaoh. He's given them water in the desert, bread from heaven, and then what happens, right? You think they would have learned to trust God, but they don't. After seeing all of these things, in chapter 17, what happens? They're grumbling again about water. And so what does God do? He provides water for them. And so it seems like after chapter 17, the next chapter seems to go pretty well. They arrive at Mount Sinai. God makes his covenant with them, and it seems like things are going well. God's providing his rules and instructions, his guidance for his people. And then you get to chapter 32. And Moses has been talking to God for a long time. He's up on the mountain. People are down by themselves.

And so what do they decide to do? Rather than patiently waiting, what they do is they say, "Hey, remember all that gold and silver we got from Egypt? Let's get it together. Let's make our own God." And this is ridiculous. This is the equivalent of when I was a kid. And mom would, for example, pick me up from school and say, "Oh, I got to run into the grocery store real quick." And so I'm sitting there in the car, and she's gone, and she's gone, and it seems like forever, and I say, "All right, well, she's just not coming back." And so I get into my school backpack and make my own mom out of construction paper and markers, right? You say, "Well, that's ridiculous. Your mom is obviously in the grocery store, and she's obviously coming back."

Well, same for the Israelite people. It's ridiculous, right? God has brought them this far, provided them protection, split the sea, given them water, food, more water. Moses is on the mountain. Moses is coming back, and here they are worshiping a false God. It's still not enough. It gets even worse. In Numbers 11, right there, "We're tired of all the bread. We want something different." It's a constant complaint, a constant problem brought before God. For the next 40 years, grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble, continually forgetting how God parts the sea, how God gives them water in the wilderness, how God gives manna from heaven, how God speaks to them from the mountain. Why were none of these things enough? Why were none of these things good enough for the Israelites? And I think the answer is this:

In their moment of struggle, their eyes were focused not on the greatness and the goodness of God, but on the problem that was in front of them, right? So instead of seeing how God has provided, they just see their thirst. Instead of seeing how God has fed them, they just see their hunger. Instead they see how God has been incredibly trustworthy. They look at their fear that Moses isn't back that, right? They focus on the problem, they worry it, and they're consumed by it, and they lose sight of the goodness of God. We've experienced this. We've all experienced that overwhelming problem. Maybe we focus on it and we're thinking about it. We're consumed by it. It's occupying. It just seems overwhelming. And then what happens? We sleep on it. And we wake up the next morning and we realize that problem wasn't nearly as big as we thought it was, right?

We've gotten some distance. It's not occupying all of our vision. That's the problem with the Israelites. Their problems are occupying all of their vision at the sea. That's all they can see is destruction. In the desert, all they can see is that they're thirsty. All they can feel is the hunger of their stomachs. All of these things occupy their vision and they don't see the goodness of God. Because their problems and their struggles take center stage. They shift their focus from God to their struggles. And it makes their struggles seem bigger, which they aren't. And it makes God seem farther away, which He is not. And it's a struggle that you and I face. You see, this problem of elevating our problems and diminishing our view of God is not unique to Israel in the wilderness. It's one of the reasons that the psalmist will say this:

"I lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth." And what the psalmist is saying to his soul is that I can focus on my problems and the struggles and the hurts and pile them up in front of me and be overwhelmed. Or I can look to the God who is bigger than all of them. Notice things in perspective. It's not unique to Israel in the wilderness. It's not unique to the psalmist. In Matthew 14, Jesus has just fed the 5,000, and he stays behind to pray, sends the disciples across the lake in the boat. In the middle of the night, the wind is picking up. The boat is struggling. The waves are getting bigger. And so Jesus goes out to the disciples, and he doesn't row. He doesn't swim.

He just strikes out walking across the water. The disciples are a little unnerved by that because people don't generally walk on water. And when they finally realize that it might be Jesus, Peter says this, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water." And he said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to the Lord Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and began to sink, and he cried out, "Lord, save me." So you see what happens to Peter? Jesus walking on the water. Peter says, "Jesus, if it's really you, let me come out." Jesus says, "Come on out." Peter hurtles over the side of the boat, starts walking on water, and then what happens? Reality begins to set in. He looks around and realizes that people can't walk on water, and the waves are big, and the wind is fierce.

And he takes his vision, and he turns it from Jesus to all of the problems, all of the struggles, all of the fears, and what happens? He begins to sink. The moment he takes his eyes off of Jesus. That's why in Hebrews 12, the writer tells the struggling Christians in Hebrews 12 that we are to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, with the ultimate purpose that we would not grow weary and lose heart. What I want us to do as we look at our text in Acts this morning, as we wrap up what is the third missionary journey, I want us to see how God is at work in the midst of our struggles, in the midst of our hurts, in the midst of our difficulties. Because from our perspective, it can seem like things just aren't going very well.

But when you see what God is doing, you realize that something wonderful is happening. Just like the Israelites in the wilderness, focused so much on their struggles, they don't see the goodness and greatness of God, and they grumble and complain. Just like Peter, who sees the size of the waves and gets fearful. Just like the struggling Hebrew Christians who are seeking to turn away from Christianity because of their struggles. The encouragement that I want to give to you this morning is that we want to fix our eyes on Jesus. Read our text, not very many verses this morning. Acts chapter 18, verses 18 through 23, if you would like to follow along. It says this, "After this, Paul stayed many days longer, and then took leave of the brothers and set sail for Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila.

At Centuray he had cut his hair, for he was under a vow, and they came to Ephesus, and he left them there. He himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews, and when he had stayed for them for a longer period, they asked him to stay for a longer period, and he declined. But on taking leave of them, he said, "I will return to you if God wills," and he set sail from Ephesus. And when he had landed at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church and went down to Antioch. After spending some time there, he departed, and he went from one place to the next throughout the region of Galatia and Perga, strengthening all of the disciples." So this seems like, on the surface, sort of a typical travel journal, right?

I keep a record of where I've been so I can get my Roman Revenue Service mileage deduction when I file my taxes. This isn't just simply a record. It's not simply just a sort of a transitional paragraph so that your literature teacher who's grading your writing will be happy. This is ultimately the testimony of a successful conclusion to a missionary journey. It's ultimately the testimony to how God has been at work in the wilderness of broken plans and deep opposition. We find Paul coming back to where he started the church that he maybe would have liked to have gone to in the beginning. Ephesus, he's back, teaches for a short time. He'll return again in chapter 19. Ultimately, he's finally on the way home, and God has been good in the midst of the desert of broken plans and the desert of strong opposition.

Let's go back and just remember a little bit of what's happened during this missionary journey. In Acts chapter 15, Paul wants to take Barnabas and go back to all the churches. Barnabas says, "Yeah, I'm ready to go. Let's take Mark." They don't want to take Mark because Mark has been incredibly unreliable, and they disagree so strongly, they simply, there's no reconciling. They go their separate ways. Kind of like a "This mission trip isn't big enough for the both of us" kind of scenario. And so before Paul's trip even begins, it's in disarray. He chooses Silas and he sets out. Along the way, he'll stop and he'll pick up a young believer named Timothy, and so Paul begins this missionary trip already with his plans in disarray, not going the way that he had planned. In Acts chapter 16, they try to pick a destination. Everywhere he goes, he's blocked. He goes this way. He's blocked. He goes this way.

God says, "No." He goes this way. God says, "I don't think so." They finally go to the only place they can go, the city of Troas, and God gives them a vision and sends them to Macedonia. They travel to Philippi, where they make some remarkable converts sharing the gospel. They have Lydia. They have a slave girl possessed by demons. They have a Philippian jailer, but they end up being beaten, thrown in prison. They go to Thessalonica, where they're driven out of town by a mob after three weeks, then to Berea, where things seem to be going well until the mob from Thessalonica shows up, chases them out of town. Paul gets to Athens by himself, sneaking out of Berea in the middle of the night, preaches for a while, goes to Corinth, and in Corinth he is out of money, he's out of companions, and he's discouraged.

And we know he's discouraged because God makes it a specific point to encourage him. God comes to him in a dream and is like, "Don't be discouraged." Why does he have to say that to Paul? Because Paul is discouraged. Paul will end up staying in Corinth for more than a year and a half. And now we saw this morning in our text, he's on his way back home, and it's safe to say that this journey looks nothing like what Paul planned out in his head when he left. We've all had that, right? Where we have something that we're planning out and it's going to work out a very specific way, and when we look back on it, it's like that nothing, nothing worked like I wanted it to. That's what's happened with Paul. Nothing's gone according to Paul's plan.

And it's important to understand it hasn't gone according to Paul's plan, but it has gone according to God's plan. Think about how we deal with these kind of disappointments, right? When things don't work out how we want to. Are we like the children of Israel where we're in the wilderness grumbling? Maybe we just get tired. Maybe we don't grumble. We just sort of give up. I was thinking a couple weeks we had that whole lot of snow and then a whole lot of ice on top of the snow. I let our dog Kaiser out first thing that morning, and he walks outside into the snow and promptly, because it's so icy, just tips over, which was hilarious. He was not amused. I was. He turns, walks back into the house, and is like, "You know what? I'm just going to hold it until spring."

This is unacceptable. I give up on winter. Sometimes we feel like that. It's snow again. It's going to give up on winter. How do we deal when things don't work out according to our plans? Do we grumble? Do we complain? Do we give up? Maybe we try, through the force of our will and our strength, to try to make something happen. What happens to Paul is he trusts God. He allows God to lead him and guide him through the wilderness of opposition and broken plans. And I want you to see what God has accomplished. As we come to these verses in Acts 18, and Paul's getting back and sharing with the churches what has happened. Do you want to know what he can share with the churches? He's able to share with the churches that the gospel has come to Europe

for the very first time, right? It's not just an Eastern religion anymore, but it's moved out into Europe. He can share the encouraging gospel testimonies, how God brings them to this town of Philippi, and we don't know where to go, so we end up at the river, and there's some ladies in a prayer meeting, and we share the gospel, and God opens their hearts to understand, and they become Christians. And then there's a servant girl filled with demons, and we cast out the demons, and that causes a riot, and we're thrown into jail, but in the middle of the night, we're able to share the gospel with the jailer, and he becomes a Christian. Think about the training of the ministry of Timothy, who will go on to encourage these churches. Sometimes in place of Paul, because Paul can't be there, he'll send Timothy to help. Timothy has gotten hands-on training

and practice in sharing the gospel. So the gospel has come to Europe, into Greece. We've seen powerful and wonderful conversions. We've seen the testimony of Christians, like those in Berea, who studied the Scripture to make sure that what they're getting is the truth. But there's more than that. Because of Paul's broken plans and all of these things, you know what he does? He'll end up writing a letter to the Philippian church. In your Bible, it's Philippians. He'll write a letter to the Thessalonian church, not just once but twice, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. He'll write a couple letters to the Corinthian church, 1st and 2nd Corinthians. Because Timothy begins in ministry, Paul will, on this trip, eventually write Timothy some letters, 1st and 2nd Timothy. You're looking at seven books of the New Testament that have their root in this journey that didn't go according to plan. The journey that seems like a

chaotic mess of broken plans, sneaking out of town in the middle of the night, incredible confrontation. But there's more than that, right? As Paul gets dragged before the courts in Corinth, what happens? The ruler of the region makes the declaration that Christianity is legal. It's a legal religion. It's not illegal to preach Christianity. It's not illegal to proclaim Christianity. So not only do you have this foundation of ministry in Paul's life where he meets all these people, shares the gospel with all these people, trains Timothy, you have books of the Bible coming out of the churches that are founded here, and you have the future for these churches prepared by the legal judgment. God has been at work in the midst of Paul's chaos and broken plans. And I want you to see this. And I want you to be encouraged

this morning, because in a world where it seems like everything falls apart, this is not my plan for how I wanted this Sunday to go, right? I didn't want to have COVID. I didn't want to be distant. I didn't want to be separated. But what you find from seeing Paul is that God is at work even when our plans just sort of fall apart. And the lesson that we see in all of these things is that we focus on what truly matters. We lift our eyes to the hills, because it's easy for us to look at how much we struggle and how thirsty, like the Israelites, or how hungry, or how big our problems are, but rather look to the goodness of God. That's what Paul does. Even though at times he's discouraged and struggles, he looks the goodness. That's why he

takes this vow in Acts 17 that we read about where he has to cut his hair, a Nazarite vow. In part, he's rededicating himself deeply to the service of God. Because Paul looks back at all the detours and all the different things that happen, and he says, "Look, God was at work." Not just in the Greek church, not just for Paul, but you and I. If you read Philippians, Corinthians, Thessalonians, 1-2 Timothy, all of these have their root in what happens in Paul's broken plans. So this morning I want to encourage you, when things don't go according to plan, to not be discouraged. Don't grumble like the Israelites did. Don't give up like it's so easy to do when things seem difficult, but rather lift your eyes to the hills to see where your help comes from. As we get ready

to break the bread and drink the cup together, I want us to consider for a minute what we're focused on, because we tend to focus so many times on the things that are small, that don't matter, the things that distract us. So one of the things our big dog, Dodger, does from time to time is he will make a break for it out the front door. He likes to tour through the neighborhood, sniff all the sniffs on the different trees and mailboxes. I say hello to his dog friends along the way, and he likes to ignore me as I follow him in the car, going, "Dodger, it's time to get back in the car." So the one day this week when I was not feeling well at all, Dodger makes a break for it. So I'm in pajama pants, no shoes, in the car,

chasing him down the street, going, "Dodger, please get back in the car," right? And he's distracted by this smell and that dog, and he's just having the time of his life. And thankfully, I met some new neighbors, and they were getting out of their car, and Dodger comes up and says, "Hello, friends, new people." And they try to grab him, and he won't grab him. So the lady who's getting back from grocery shopping does something wonderful. She reaches in the back of her minivan, got a baby in one arm, and then pulls out this giant brisket. I was just like, "Hey, hey, Dodger, you like brisket?" And it's just dangling this brisket. And she leads Dodger over, and he's like, "Oh, who doesn't like brisket?" Right? This is far more interesting than all those little smells here, a little dog yipping at me over

here. They're in real nourishment to be found in this brisket. And because of her luring him with something substantial, I was able to bring him home. You and I are a little bit like Dodger sometimes, right? We're running after all those things that are inconsequential, chasing this and chasing that. And here is God holding out the one thing that truly nourishes us, right? The good news of the gospel. It's the brisket. It's the meat that keeps us going. That Jesus, the Son of God, died in your place for your sins. He rose again, giving you the victory over sin and Satan, death and hell, and over your fears. And you and I don't have to run. We don't have to hide. We don't have to be afraid. Because God has saved us. He saved us through his Son, but then he's given us the gift of the Spirit who equips us and

strengthens us for the ministry of the church. And you and I, so many times, we're running, chasing this and chasing that. Running here and running there, and we're missing the meat of the gospel that nourishes us. It's one of the reasons that coming together to remember the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus is so important. It's why we break the bread and drink the cup. It's because this is the gospel that nourishes us, that fixes our eyes on what's important. We've talked about how the Israelites elevated their problems to the center of their vision and minimized God, and how Peter elevated the wind and the waves and minimize God, and how it would have been easy for Paul to have elevated his broken plans and the problems and to minimize the goodness of God. And so this morning, what communion does for us is it

resets us. It takes our eyes off all of these other things, and it puts them on our Savior. So I'm going to pray and partake, and I would encourage you, if you have communion elements, you're welcome to partake with me at home. If not, this is a good time for quiet and meditation, to remember the good news of the gospel, to see how God has worked, and to refocus and repent of all those areas we have chased after the inconsequential. Let's pray. Father, thank you for Jesus. Thanks for grace. Thanks for saving us. Thank you for the cross. Thank you for the suffering that Jesus endured on our behalf, that we could be saved. Thank you for this bread and cup. I ask that you bless it. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Paul says this, "What I received from the Lord, that I also delivered to you, the Lord Jesus, on the night

when he was betrayed, took bread. When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.'" In the same way also, he took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." I want to do one more song, "Be Thou My Vision," an old hymn, but a good one. One that I think should express the prayer of our heart, that our vision should be fixed on God. So we're going to go ahead. I'm going to play that, and then I'll, I'll be back with you just for a minute more after, after that.

Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart. Lord be all else to me, save that thou art, thou mightest thought, by day or by night, waking or sleeping, thy bright light. Riches I heed, nor man's empty praise. Thou my inheritance, now and always. Thou and Thou are only first in my heart. High King of Heaven, my treasure now all. High King of Heaven, my victory won. May I reach Heaven's joys, O Bright and Sun. Hearts of my own heart, whatever before. Still be my vision, O Ruler I'm thankful for all of you who have been here today. I'm thankful for all of you who have been here today. I'm thankful for all of you who have joined us this morning, whether you are on Facebook or on YouTube. I think we'll be back next Sunday. Looking forward to being back with you next Sunday.

It is a kind of a strange experience to sit here and not see any of you. Just a little red light over here in front of me, so I am thankful for you being here, and I'm thankful for that. If you have any prayer requests or things that we can pray for you, you can shoot a message or an email or text to us via any of these streams. Just wanted to let you know that I'm thankful for you. I'm looking forward to seeing you again. We're going to kind of play Wednesday night by ear. I think I should be good to go. I'm feeling a lot better than what I have been feeling, but I got a couple more days before we're through everything. Just keep the rest of our family and the rest of those who are struggling with this in your prayers. I'm going to go ahead

and have a word of prayer, and we'll wrap it up this morning. Father in heaven, I thank you for your goodness. I thank you for how you provide. I thank you for the technology that things like this possible. I know it's different for a lot of us to meet this way, not something that I'm used to, and I know that we miss being with one another, but we're thankful that you have given us this through your common grace of technology that we can gather together into fellowship from afar. So encourage our hearts, help us take you as the focus. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.