- Well, good morning. Good to be with you. I love athletes and FCA and coach is kinda cool. So I enjoy that as well. So thanks to all that they're doing and the coaches and teachers and others that are heavily involved in that arena as a witness. Let's just say you walked away from your kids baseball game or hockey game, I guess this time of year, and you get in the car and on your way home, you get a phone call and it's the phone call you never wanted to get. It's that moment that you would probably say, that's the worst moment of my life. I got news I didn't wanna get, I was informed of something that just happened in my family. I lost this, that, whatever that circumstance is. I mean, it was one of those moments where you say, God, why is this happening to me? Have you wondered that personally? But have you thought about out that in light of our culture today, God, why are you doing what you're doing? What are you accomplishing behind what we're facing in our world today? And we could list a number of those things over the past year and probably week in the midst of the conflict globally and what's taking place nationally and all the issues that divide us, I'm not even gonna go into it, but the turmoil and the heartache, we just had one this week where my niece's boyfriend was actually looking out the window at the college where the security officer was just killed. You remember that. He was interviewed on CNN. You walk away from a moment like that and say, God, what are you doing? Because I will guarantee you that will be a memory in his mind for the rest of his life, 'cause of what he's just gone through. And what you do in that moment becomes very powerful because it will say everything about your faith, it'll say everything about who you believe in, it'll say everything about what you are doing to live out this faith that you say you might have, it says everything about what's going on inside of you and the hope that you have. And if you know Jesus, I think there's even a bigger question to take it a step further. It's you know, now that I'm in this culture, now that I'm having that moment personally, or now that I live within the society, in which I live with the plethora of issues that are going on, how am I living out my faith at this time in this season in which I have been scattered? Today, we're gonna take a look at the church scattered, and we're gonna talk about how when it was scattered, the gospel actually ignites resistance. Wow, isn't that a new truth? That there's gonna be opposition when I take a stand for what I believe, but then there's also a reward which we're gonna see today. So take your Bibles out, grab your phone, your iPad, take the Bible that's in the rack in front of you, open up the Bible you brought in here. And I want you to go to Acts chapter eight verse four. I want everybody to go there because we're gonna read the story Acts chapter eight verse four. And it's a pretty powerful moment in the life of the church because there's been a lot going on. Now, in the first chapter of the Book of Acts, Jesus gave a promise to his disciples, his followers, we refer to it almost weekly. So you really should have this kind of in the back of your mind that Jesus said, look, you guys go to Jerusalem and when you go Jerusalem the Holy Spirit's gonna come upon you and you will receive power to be my witnesses. And he lays it out Jerusalem, in Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth. And now what we're encountering is, the church is actually scattered. As we looked just at four verses last week, we read of the death of Stephen and we read of how Paul, was Saul back then, but we'll know him to be Paul once we get into chapter nine of the Book of Acts, approved of all of this. And it actually says that the church was scattered throughout and it names it up in verse two or verse one, I should say, from Jerusalem now into Judea and then into Samaria. Now, as we work our way through this, I want you to just put yourself in their shoes because they just witnessed and saw the death of one of their beloved church members, I'll put it that way, Stephen. We read about it in chapter seven. And this guy was not just a, you know, somebody who was a fly on the wall. This guy was a leader. This guy was heavily engaged in the church. He had so much promise. He was an incredible communicator. He was bright. He was brilliant. I mean, he was leading a group and the apostles had selected him to help widows within the church. He had so much potential. As a matter of fact, he was winning all the debates and before they knew it, he was whisked off to be in front of the Jewish council. And they got so irate with him, they hauled him out and they started throwing stones at him and he died. There was a public execution. And I'm sure they were wondering at that point, this is the worst day of our life. We decided to follow Jesus and this is the result. And by the way, it was one among many. It wasn't just gonna end there. I mean, there's more to come and I'm sure they were thinking in their minds, God, what on earth are you doing here? Why is this happening? Well, we pick up the story in verse four. Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. That's it, they just said, we're not gonna hide. We're not gonna run, we're gonna go. And then we start talking about somebody new, his name's Philip. He says, "Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them, the Christ." Down because Jerusalem's in altitude. So it would say down to Samaria. And Philip, by the way, was a friend of Stephen, he's mentioned in the first part of chapter six, he's one of those individuals where the apostle said, we can't handle three to four, five, 10,000 people. There's just too many needs. So we got people that aren't being fed and taken care of. So would you guys take care of that? And Philip was part of that group. Now it says in verse six, "And the crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip, when they heard him and saw the signs that he did for unclean spirits crying out with a loud voice came out of many who had them and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. So there was much joy in that city. Now, just stop there for a second, 'cause there's some stuff I want you to understand here. When Philip, who was what we would call a Hellenistic Jew. Okay. Couple weeks ago, I talked about the difference between Jews that were just natives of Jerusalem and Judea. They spoke Hebrew and they followed the Old Testament customs to the T and they weren't very cosmopolitan. And then there was this other group that now became part of the church that were raised outside of Judea and out here, they were Jewish, but they were exposed to the Greek culture and they primarily spoke to the Greek language. Well, that was Stephen, that was Philip and they're now all part of the church. And as they were part of the church though, the persecution happened and then it says they were scattered and they started to go up into this area of Samaria. Samaria is the part of this region that was made up of individuals who weren't just Jewish, but they were of a mixed race, they were Jewish and Gentile, okay? And because of that, they weren't liked by those that would say, wait a minute, we didn't intermarry with all these other countries out here. We followed the Old Testament law. We did everything God told us to do. The Samaritans though were a mixed race with Gentiles and they were part Jewish and like many of us in the United States, we're just muts okay? We got like five or different groups we come from and they were a mix, but the here's the issue. They also had a syncretistic religion. So they believed a little bit of the Old Testament, but then they added a whole bunch of other stuff in. So they didn't for instance, believe in a Messiah, but a restorer and, the bottom line is, they didn't like the Jewish people down here and the Jewish people didn't like them, okay? There was a race division going on that was really significant, so much so that the religious officials actually said of Jesus, they called them two names. You know what they were? You're a Samaritan and you're possessed by a demon. That's about as low as you can go. So they hated each other. This is the region that the church is scattered in. And all of a sudden they hear about Jesus and there's much joy in the city. So let's keep going 'cause now it gets a little more specific, but there was a man verse nine named Simon who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the people of Samaria saying that he himself was somebody great. They all paid attention to him from the least to the greatest saying, this man is the power of God that has called great. And they paid attention to him because for a long time he had amazed them with his magic. Now the magic he's talking about wasn't illusions or slight of hand, this was real sorcery going on. We just found that earlier, okay? There was a lot of evil that was a part of their culture. And so yeah, we do believe in Satan. We do believe in demons and there was a lot of that stuff going on. And there was real resistance yet at the same time, the gospel has power because verse 12 says, "But when they believed Philip, as he preached good news about two things, the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus." You wanna be part of God's family, you wanna be part of the kingdom of God, then you gotta believe in Jesus. That was the focus. "They were baptized both men and women, even Simon himself believed. And after being baptized, he continued with Philip and seeing signs and great miracles performed. He was amazed. Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them, Peter and John who came him down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit for he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord, Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit. Now, when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles hands, he offered them money saying, give me this power also so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit. But Peter said to him, may your silver perish with you because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money." He was really direct here. He said, you know, may you basically go to HE-double-toothpicks with your money. That's literally what he said. "You have neither part nor lot in this matter for your heart is not right before God. Repent therefore of this wickedness of yours and pray to the Lord that if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you for I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity. And Simon answered, pray for me to the Lord that nothing of what you've said may come upon me. Now, when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem preaching the gospel so many villages of the Samaritans." As they walked through these villages, people came to Christ and it's amazing 'cause they just kept preaching the gospel to all these villages. So, these believers were pushed into a season that they weren't anticipating or didn't want. They were finding themselves asking the question, you know, God, what are you doing in the midst of these moments? It was probably classified as the worst moment of their life and yet now they're gonna experience the power of the good news of Jesus Christ. You know, when you think about it, we're already scattered into the farthest regions of the world. We're not, if you haven't figured it out, we're not in Jerusalem anymore. We're way out there. And as we live in this culture where we say, God, what are you doing right now? And whether that's on a personal level, as we've mentioned, or it's on a cultural level, as we personally carry our faith into this world, we begin to demonstrate the power of the gospel is superior to Satan. That's where we begin here in our passage. Satan is real. We have an enemy that is real, that stuff is there. And it's functioning here in our world. We may not see it at this level of physical manifestation that you see here, but it's there, it's operating. It's deceiving. And this is why it's just good to think about this for a moment. You know, oftentimes we move into this world in which we live, and this is really important. We do not war, the enemy is not the people we're interacting with. It's Satan, it's the demons, it's the evil behind it. You gotta keep that in mind. Here's what Paul says. In Ephesians 6:12, he says, "We don't wrestle against flesh and blood." So when you move into this culture, in which you live in, you start conversations with people that are naturally gonna disagree with you if they don't know Jesus and you start getting into topics that often times make you uncomfortable. Just keep in mind the enemy's not that person. It's so helpful, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. It's a great chapter to go to Ephesians six and talk about how we are to live in a world whereby we understand what we see on earth has a greater spiritual battle that's going on around us. Satan will do everything to silence you, discourage you. But when we carry our faith, we're already scattered, and so when we carry our faith into that culture, into those moments where we say, God, what are you doing? He does demonstrate his power of the good news. Over Satan he also demonstrates the power of the good news or the gospel and that it converts souls. This is why you're scattered by the way. We're not here to simply experience heaven on earth. That day's coming. Oh, it's gonna be great. We'll sing about some of that in just a little bit. But we're scattered amongst people who aren't necessarily like us to hang out with them. They don't share your values. They don't share your words. I like to hang out with people like me, do you? I mean, you get, some of you are Vikings fans. Some of you are Green Bay fans. You know, my encouragement to you is, come together and watch the Super Bowl next week. I mean, neither one of your teams are in it, okay? But I think you get the idea, right? So, you get in these conversations at work and somebody drops an F bomb and you're thinking, I don't like that. You're at school, you're in the locker room with the lacrosse team or the hockey team. And you know, you walk away as a student thinking, man, that kid has nothing in his dictionary in his brain except one word. And you know exactly what I'm thinking. 'Cause my kid played lacrosse and I know what happen there, okay? So you get uncomfortable. We don't like hanging out with people that aren't like us, but the key is this, we are placed there for a reason. We're scattered there, not to experience simply heaven on earth, but to communicate and to make sure that they understand that we love them. And so if you buy into this concept that wow, I'm placed there to convert souls, then obviously we're placed there for a reason. We're scattered like Philip, and by the way, he wasn't an apostle. He was like you and me. And so as we go into that world to communicate, we must make sure that people understand that we care for them. That's one of the handles you gotta have. You've heard that phrase, right? People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. So that's where we live and we move into those times, those season. Now you may move into a realm whereby you are 100% accurate based on the facts. You might win the day, but should that be your lead foot? Not necessarily. See, this is that moment where you look down at a passage like this and you know, Philip didn't go in and start an argument. Philip didn't go in and start poking his finger. You guys don't follow the Old Testament. You're messed up on this. He did what? He said, you wanna be part of God's family in the kingdom, look to Jesus. And he went right after that message. Now, once that happened, I'm sure that doesn't mean you don't talk about the truth. It doesn't mean you don't talk about those issues at some point, but we go in with a sense of love and care for that person by empathizing and listening. Now we live in a culture where that message has to be stated over and over and over again. 'Cause many of us are right. We are. You could list all the facts, but you can either go at it from cramming that down people's throat or finding some way to communicate so that God begins to open up their heart and listen to what you know is true and right. Now that's gonna require prayer for open doors. And then it's gonna require that you begin to know how to guide them to find hope in Jesus Christ. Know how to help someone get saved. I'm gonna come back to that one in just a minute. We've got tons of resources for you there. We got one on one discipleship stuff that's going on, where you learn how to share your faith and have those conversations so that you can begin to present the gospel in a way that demonstrates that you're living it you're doing it with love. The truth is communicated with love, it's not ignored. And then here's another helpful handle. If you're committed to really being with people who don't know Christ, look for points of cultural connection. You know, this is really simple. I think you get this, right? You've got a family that you know, and your kids play hockey together. And you're sitting with them on the stands and they're playing hockey. Well, you got a cultural connection, right? You got somebody at work. I know that every Viking fan is not a Christian despite what some of you think. You get the point, right? So you have conversations. It might be your professional world. It might be your neighborhood, but you're looking for ways to make a connection. And then we'll come back to this one too. Think about the joy someone will have when they finally meet Jesus. When they finally commit their life to Christ. And there really is transformation from the inside out. Now, when we live in this culture in which we're scattered and we do begin to move in the direction of loving people and we have an opportunity to present Jesus Christ, we gotta remember this one that as we carry the gospel with us and we cross into that culture, we cross into the culture and then we carry the cross with us, we have to understand, the power of the gospel can't be bought. And what I mean by this is because it's a significant part of this is this story with Simon. It's helping us understand what is the gospel. Now, let me just quickly say this. There's so much here that we could really get into, but it does say that Simon believed, in verse 13, look there, it said Simon believed. The thing you gotta keep in mind though, is that when I read in another New Testament book, in the Book of James chapter two verse 19, it actually says the demons believe. So, wait a minute. So this word does not necessarily mean that Simon committed his life to Christ, 'cause demons do that. I mean, they don't commit their life to Christ, but they believe. So by the time you look at the description that's given farther down here, it's pretty clear that he didn't have a saving faith like we would describe it. I mean, there's differences of opinion, but that's the way I lean. Verse 22 Peter calls him to repentance. You see what was going on is this, that he misunderstood the gospel. You know what the gospel is? Paul talks about it First Corinthians 15, Jesus Christ was the Son of God. He came to this earth, he lived a perfect life. He went to a cross and he gave his life as payment to God, the Father for your guilt and your sin. And he said, it's finished. And he was buried and he rose again. And he offers you his death as a gracious gift to be received so that you can find forgiveness. That's the gospel. That's the good news. And that's what Peter preached. So a person comes along and truly repents. Yes, I'm a sinner. Their mind changes, which leads to the action of turning to Jesus, believing he died for their sin and roses from the grave. And then they actually make this heart decision and mind decision together that says, Jesus, I trust in you alone as a person who died for my sin, made payment for my sin and the only one that can take me to heaven. And when that happens, there is a willful desire to follow him. That's the, save me, you are my Lord, you are my savior and I want you to lead my life. Simon didn't have that, it was Jesus plus something else. He was trying to buy grace or buy a gift. You can't do that. You see, it was Jesus plus. Christianity is not addition. It's subtraction. It's not about adding Jesus to your life. It's not about adding church to your life. It's not about adding good works to your life. It's about realizing that you can't do anything to have forgiveness. It's not about church. It's not about religion. It's not about any of those things. It's about finally submitting and turning to Jesus as the only one that can save you and take you to heaven. And when that nature of repentance happens, then man, there is power in the gospel that brings reconciliation. Now you need to understand the animosity between Samaritans and those that were, you know what they would classify as pure Jewish and vice versa. I mean, in one episode, Luke, now you go look up the story, great story. Jesus is passing through Samaria on his way to Jerusalem, 'cause he's going to the cross and the Samaritans find out that he's going to Jerusalem, knowing that he's really Jewish and he doesn't wanna spend any time there, and they're highly offended at him and they won't let him stay, they don't want him to stay. And guess what? James and John, John, the guy with Peter right now in Samaria, you know what they do? They say, hey Jesus, you know, we're part of your band now, we must have some supernatural powers. So do you want us to call a fire down from heaven and incinerate these guys? That's what they felt. And here he is right here in the land, communicating Jesus. Now some of you come to this passage too and you say, well wait a minute, man, you have taught us here that the moment we trust Jesus as savior, we get the Holy Spirit and he's living in us. So if you've been here at Rockpoint long enough, you know we teach this and we sprinkle it periodically, 'cause we want you to know the truth. So we come to passages like this Romans 8:9 where it says "You however are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you" notice what he says, Paul says, "Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ dwelling in them does not belong to him." So the moment you trust Christ the Savior, the Spirit, all of the Spirit, all of him comes to you. It says first Corinthians 12:13, "For in one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body." The moment you trusted Christ as Savior, the Holy Spirit of God, feel it or sense it took you and placed you into God's family. He changed you. Your sins were washed away. You're forgiven by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Whether you are a Jew or a Greek, slave, free, it doesn't matter who you are, Sumerian, whatever, all were made to drink of one Spirit. So what happened here? Why didn't the Spirit come the moment they committed their life to Christ with Philip? Well put it this way, if you had animosity with this group and there was a real racial division and you thought you were higher than them and you got the Spirit at Pentecost in Acts chapter two. And now you're saying to yourself, what about these people? Who are they? How can they become a church member here with us? What would prove to you that they were now church members regardless of their skin color and regardless of their beliefs, they are now part of the church because they have come to that point of repentance and faith in Jesus. And what would prove to you if you were the one you didn't like them and you had mixed race and you had all these different stuff going on in your head with some thing that people told you that now you're realizing wasn't true. What would communicate to you that you've been reconciled with this group you didn't like, and now you're a part of God's family and you gotta figure out how to live together and love one another. Well, the answer was, take the church leaders who got the Spirit plug them over here to Samaria, have them put their hands on these people. And then they get the Holy Spirit as well. And then everybody realizes, wait a minute, we're part of one big happy family and we gotta figure out how to love and get along. That's reconciliation. Now my point in all of this is that the gospel goes right to the core cracks of our society. It goes right into our culture. It goes right into those moments. When you say God, what are you doing? And then when I live the gospel and I take the cross over with me, when I cross over and I begin to talk about the power of the gospel and I embrace the scattering, I embrace the moment in which I live. I embrace the fact that I just got a phone call and I don't like that news because now I'm wondering, God, why did you bring this into my life? And I may never find the answer to this side of heaven, but when I embrace those moments of being scattered, it points to Jesus and that's the point. It points to Jesus. God placed you in that's situation in this culture for a specific reason. And so the question is, do you embrace the God-ordained circumstance you're in? And then do you keep the gospel central? Now, because I'm winding down to the end of my time, which I never say because people are like, I don't have to pay attention anymore. No, you gotta really pay attention now. I am going to give you a question that you need to wrestle with. The implications are enormous. For those of you and I'm talking of people who have committed their life to Jesus. Maybe you're investigating, you haven't made that choice yet, but for those that have, here's the question. As you live in this culture in which you've been scattered, do you spend more time resisting the culture or advancing the gospel? Whoa, some of us need to really wrestle with that one. Do you spend more time resisting or looking for opportunities to advance the gospel? That's right here. I didn't make it up. And when we embrace it and we're not afraid, it points to Jesus. You know, they had persecution, they were running from their lives. I mean, I could just go on and on historically, this was the first death among many. You know, this guy Saul was ravaging the church as we saw last week. There's gonna come a day in the history of the church when these believer are thrown into stadiums with wild animals. And I'll put it this way because I wanna be sensitive this morning. But Nero came to a point where he was lighting up his evening dinner parties with Christians. That is what happened historically. So they were afraid. But here's what I find. I find that my fears subside when I begin to trust in the very character of God, when I trust in his plan and his purposes. And I like to put it this way, it's not original with me, but it really works. When you replace one fear with a greater fear, the fear you had subsides. So when I look at my circumstances and you get fear, when you begin to acknowledge the fact that there's something greater than you, that you don't have control over, there's fear there, you wonder, there's questions, right? And so at that point, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, replace that fear with your fear of God. What do we mean by that? You put your gaze upon him and you begin to remember his character that he's all powerful, that he's sovereign, that he's in control. That his plan will be accomplished. And because you are fearing him and you know who he is and you know he loves you in that moment, you commit your life to him, so the fear of God is God you're all powerful. I wanna submit to you, I want to trust you. And the fear of God in the Bible is, God you're awesome and so now I wanna trust you, I wanna follow you. I wanna fear you. And when that happens, you know your eternal life is secure, you know you have the most powerful God in the universe to walk with you as you're scattered, carrying out the gospel. And now that you're ready to die, you're really ready to live. That's the point. And then when we embrace it and are faithful in that moment, it points to Jesus. They were faithful. They were living, they were scattered, but they were loving people where they were, they were walking as Jesus would, they were communicating the message of Christ. And in the midst of those moments, you have that choice. And what you do is so critically important. Like I said, at the beginning, you can either abandon your faith or you can turn and you can trust him. You can get up every morning and say, God, I don't understand why I'm going through this, but I'm gonna walk with you every day faithfully. Give me your endurance to do this in this moment, the worst day of my life or whatever that circumstance is. And as you do, and as you remain faithful, yes, the gospel is resisted, but then there is this reward that comes through. And we see that in this passage. Because ultimately, when I am faithful and I live the way Jesus would, and I love the way Jesus would, and I present the gospel with my actions and with my words in the midst of this culture and people are watching me and they're watching the fact that I didn't abandon him, I actually got closer to him. Somebody's watching. Then we begin to find the joy and that points to Jesus. If you go back to chapter eight, verse four, it actually uses the word, there's like bookends here, in verse four it says, and those who were scattered, scattered, wondering God, what are you doing in this moment? But then there's this journey that Philip goes on. These other believers were proclaiming Jesus Christ. And then you get to verse eight, here's the bookend. And there was what? Much joy. Because in the midst of that journey of living out the gospel, people were seeing the hope that they had, the trust, the faithfulness, and as they did, they committed their lives to Christ. Now, verse five is just so powerful. In the midst of all of this, Philip proclaimed Jesus. So again, I go back and I say, he just buried his friend. He was one of the individuals up in verse three that was lament, or verse two, I'm sorry, of chapter eight, lamenting over him. He served with him. He saw how gifted he was and he was killed. And he'll never have that memory removed from his life. And yet, what did he do? He got up and he went into Samaria and he focused on Jesus. And guess what? You know, the other thing this tells us, you may not see the reward this side of heaven. That's the truth. Hard to accept. Oh my goodness. I mean, I get the why. I know the God who does, but you know, I gotta tell you as a pastor, I wrestle with that one. 'Cause I got friends that are going through stuff and they're not getting the why. And yet we know because of this passage, the truth of God's word, there's a reward. People are coming to Christ. It reminds me of what Jesus did. I mean, Hebrews 12, verse two actually says this, that for the joy that was set before him, Jesus endured the cross and the suffering. Do you know what gave him joy? He thought of you. He thought of you. He thought of me. He thought of every single person in this room, downstairs, watching online. He thought of you. And that's why he suffered, and that's why he embraced the moment. And that's why he said, I am going to do this. I'm gonna suffer. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna do it all. And Philip knew that as he shared Christ with these Samaritans, that they were gonna have the same hope that his buddy, Stephen who just died had, and they were gonna be delivered from sin and darkness from all this junk that they're dealing with. And when we embrace the moment that we have been given, and we take the gospel into that moment and we talk about Jesus in that moment, there are people watching and that joy should drive us of knowing that people are gonna be with us forgiven and set free. It's the joy that is set before us now so that we can live out the gospel in our world. Now we come to a time at Rockpoint once a month, where we go to the source and we remember this source of our joy. It's a time of what we call communion. Communion means that we together, as individuals who have made, and this is very important to understand, have made a decision to trust Christ as our Savior and Lord. And if you have made that choice and you picked up the bread and the cup on your way in, if you've come to that moment in your life where you realize, I can't buy this relationship with either my works, my money, my attitudes, my actions, it's not about going to church, it's not about performing good things, it's just finally, it really comes down to surrender of saying, I am a sinner and I'm not perfect and Jesus, I believe you died on that cross for my sin and I desperately want your forgiveness. And so I'm turning to you as my Lord and my Savior, please forgive me and lead my life. And in that moment you become part of a communion, a group of people who have made that choice so that we now come to this moment and we remember what Jesus did because that gave us forgiveness and that gave us joy, did it not? And so we remember that in this moment. We're gonna sing about heaven, we're gonna sing about this place called New Jerusalem and in a few moments, I'm gonna come back up and lead us. If you've not made that choice, just set the cup aside even if you picked it up. Just set it aside. The decision for you is, are you willing to commit your life to Jesus Christ and ask him to save you and be your Lord and your Savior? Let's pray together. Father, thank you for the gift of Jesus. Thank you that we can reflect on who he is, so that as we move into our world, we will communicate our faith and our love for you and we will proclaim that truth until you come again. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.