Our Responsibility

SERMON: 2017-10-22--ac17184--our-responsibility-part-1 SOURCE DURATION: 00:43:36.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 2 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The entire sequence transitions from pastoral application (candidates 0-4) into a formal benediction/prayer (candidates 5-16). Since the prayer and benediction are retained as part of the sermon's closing material, and there is no subsequent non-sermon content shown, the final candidate [candidate 16] is selected. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:00:00.000; remove through 00:00:04.000] [CUT] # [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:00:04.000; resume after this marked segment] We're continuing this morning in our series of studies in the Book of Acts. We're still in Acts chapter 20, Paul's third missionary journey. He's on his way home to Jerusalem, where he is going to be imprisoned and eventually led to appear before the emperor in Rome. He has called down the elders of the church at Ephesus to the seaport of Miletus. And in Acts chapter 20, he gives them his farewell speech, and that's what we've been looking at, and that's what we're going to continue looking at as we read the verses 25 to 31 of Acts chapter 20. Here's what Paul says, "Now I know that none of you, among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom, will ever see me again. Therefore, I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of all men, for I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God. Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. I know that after I leave, wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock, even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard, and remember that for three years, I never stopped warding each of you night and day with tears." Join me as we pray. Again, Lord, we're just so glad for your word, and so glad for the book of Acts that tells us the ongoing mission of Christ in the church through the Holy Spirit, and how you've used men like the Apostle Paul not only to establish churches but to nurture them and to equip them to remain faithful to you despite all the foul weather that they might experience in the journey of life. And thank you that you have promised to be with us, too, in all the ups and downs and in all the experiences of life, and thank you that you invite us to share the good news of the gospel with people around us and help us to do that with courage and with boldness and help us to indeed proclaim the full counsel of God and to take our responsibilities seriously to that end. Help us with your spirit. Help me this morning as I share this message with your people. And Lord, may we both be sober-minded and yet profoundly courageous as we walk out this journey with you. Thank you for hearing us, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. Well, of the verses that we have read this morning from Acts chapter 20, we want to focus on just the first three verses. Let's read them together. Acts chapter 20, the verses 25 to 27, where Paul says to the Ephesian elders, "I know that none of you among you, among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom, will ever see me again. Therefore, I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of all men, for I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God." As we take a little bit of time this morning to look at those three verses, there are two themes that have really stood out to me that I want to try to share with you this morning. And the first is this, Paul declares himself innocent of the blood of all people. Listen again to verse 26. "I declare to you today I am innocent of the blood of all men." I am innocent of the blood of all men. What does that phrase remind you of? Does it ring a bell? It comes from the Old Testament. In fact, it comes from the Old Testament book of Ezekiel, the third chapter, where the Lord God says to the people of-- to the prophet Ezekiel these words. It's an extended passage, but let me read it to you. "At the end of seven days, the word of the Lord came to me," that is Ezekiel, "Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. So hear the word I speak, and give them warning from me. When I say to a wicked man, 'You will surely die,' and you do not warn him, or speak out to dissuade him from his evil ways in order to save his life, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn the wicked man, and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his evil ways, he will die for his sin, but you will have saved yourself." The passage goes on, "Again, when a righteous man turns from his righteousness and does evil, and I put a stumbling block before him, he will die. Since you did not warn him, he will die for his sin. The righteous things he did will not be remembered, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn the righteous man not to sin, and he does not sin, he will surely live, because he took warning, and you will have saved yourself." Notice in both of these passages, the connection between you did not warn him, and I will hold you accountable for his sin. And so the Lord is saying here to Ezekiel is very, very clear. He is saying that when the Lord entrusts you with the warning that all unrepentant sinners are going to experience God's everlasting judgment, then it is your responsibility, he says to the prophet, to warn them in no uncertain terms. If you warn them and they do not listen to you, then their blood is on their own heads. In other words, they deserve what they're going to get. If you do not warn them, and they will still experience the judgment of God in their own hands, then God says to the prophet, "I'm going to hold you responsible." That's what Paul is referring to when he says to these Ephesian elders, "For three years I have been with you, I have not hesitated in declaring to you the whole counsel of God." We'll talk more about that in a few moments. And he says, "I want you to know that I am innocent of the blood of all of you." Now, as you can appreciate, that's got practical implications for you and me because we live in a world where we are all surrounded by people who have no faith at all or who if they do profess faith, often don't manage to translate it into their lives. I did a little study this past week on church attendance in Canada. Would you like to know the figure, the percentage of people in this country who on a given Sunday attend religious services? I was shocked, 13%. 13%, and that includes all religions, not just Christians. You might sort of get the feeling that God is being excluded from people's lives, would you not? That's incredible. And sometimes those people who do not have faith or who aren't following the Lord Jesus, they're part of our family. Sometimes they're our own kids. They've been brought up in the way of faith. They've gone to university. They have fallen in with the wrong crowd perhaps, and they have effectively abandoned their roots, and they are living for all practical intents and purposes as if there's no God. True? Sometimes it's friends and co-workers who are busy living in the world and busy pursuing worldly treasures and worldly goals, and they never darken the door of a church except maybe for a funeral and the occasional wedding. But apart from that, faith is not a part of their lives. Sometimes, sometimes, it can even be people that you sit next to in the pew who have the outward form of godliness, but whose heart is far away from God and far away from the truth. Now, it's easy for us to say, well, that's not my responsibility, right? I mean, I'm not a prophet like Ezekiel, and I'm not an apostle like the apostle Paul, but I want to remind you that when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the day of Pentecost and God gave the Spirit to his people, what did Peter say quoting from the book of Joel? He said God's people are called to prophesy. Listen to these words, Acts chapter 2 verse 17 and 18, a quotation from the book of Joel. In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit in all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions. Your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. To prophesy is to speak the word of God. It's to declare the whole counsel of God. And so, yes, we may not be preachers. We may not be like the prophet Ezekiel. We may not be like the apostle Paul, but all of us are commissioned by God to declare the word of the Lord. And that often puts us in a pickle, does it not? Because on the one hand, we all have bad pictures of people being blown out of the water. We don't really want to turn people off, do we? We are, after all, polite Canadians. We don't really want to be rude. On the other hand, we don't want to see people perish either. And so we have this tug of war. What do I do? What do I say? What don't I say? The net result is that most of the time we talk ourselves out of saying anything to anybody and hoping that somehow or another it'll all work out in the end and everybody will be saved. This is not the average belief in North America, regardless of who you are, how you live. Well, if there is a God in heaven, well, he'll be kind and gracious. Paul says, "I declare to you, I am innocent of the blood of all of you, for I have not hesitated to declare to you the full counsel of God." So what does it mean then not to be guilty of people's blood? How do we apply this in our own lives today? Three very practical quick steps that I think will help us to capture the biblical balance. Step number one, and this is the tough one, it is our solemn duty to warn the people around us about the truths of the gospel. And the truth of the gospel, we'll talk more about that in a moment, includes telling people that apart from saving faith in Jesus, people will be lost eternally. It is our duty to warn people. You can't avoid that conclusion when you listen to the words that God speaks to Ezekiel. "When I say to a wicked man, you will surely die, and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his evil ways in order to save his life. That wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood." The book of Proverbs is a very similar verse that has often been used in the pro-life movement to encourage Christians to become active in stopping abortion on demand. Here's how that reads in Proverbs 24, 11, and 12. "Rescue those being led away to death. Hold back those staggering towards slaughter. If you say, 'But we knew nothing about this,' does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?" If you say, "We knew nothing about this," does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? We are duty-bound, if we know what the truth is, to warn people. Picture it this way. You are driving along the road, and you come to a place where the road is washed out, and there is danger ahead. Are you just going to sit there in your car and watch other people whiz on by into destruction, or are you going to get out of your car, do everything that you can to flag down approaching traffic, and say, "Whoa, stop, don't go off the cliff, it'll kill you." If we do that in the natural, ought we also not to do that in the spiritual? That's why Paul says to remember that for three years, I never stopped warning each of you night and day. There is an element of warning to the gospel. You and I have that responsibility. We need to take that seriously. That means when our kids wander, when our coworkers are not men and women of faith, when the world is steaming ahead to its destruction, as we listen to the Holy Spirit, and as we're moved with compassion by the heart of God, we need to sound the warning signs. It doesn't mean we have to be arrogant, doesn't mean we have to be rude, doesn't mean we have to be unkind, but neither can we remain silent. The church has been too silent, too long, in the face of too many issues, because we love comfort more than we love truth. Paul says, "I'm innocent of the blood of all of you." Day and night, day and night, I've warned you. Second principle that flows out of this, and might make you feel a little better, is that we do not have to keep repeating the warning. We don't have to keep repeating the warning. That's the temptation, is it not? Particularly when we love people, and we take seriously the truth of the gospel, that people without saving faith in Jesus are going to be lost, when that really dawns on us, and we see the danger that our unbelieving spouse is in, or the danger that our unbelieving kids are in, or the danger that our closest friends are in, then we want them to come to salvation, at least we ought to want them to come to salvation, and then the tendency is to bug the daylights out of them. Kids go to university, isn't going to church, every time he comes home, I lay it on him. My husband or my wife doesn't want to come to church with me, and every other week I try to drag them there, and on and on it goes, and my co-workers, I make a nuisance of myself. Very counterproductive. And it's counterproductive for two reasons. Number one, all it does is it stirs up their anger, and doesn't help them move forward into the kingdom of God. Jesus talks about that in the Sermon on the Mount, when he says in Matthew chapter 7 verse 6, "Do not give dogs what is sacred, do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces." The Word of God is very precious, the message of God is very precious, and if you keep giving it to somebody who doesn't appreciate its value, they'll not only not appreciate its value, they'll turn around and they will take you out. So don't do it. Another reason this is very counterproductive is because it gives people excuses to hide behind what you're trying to tell them what to do. And so now, the reason they don't want to believe is because you're bugging them and they're not going to let you boss them around. And so you are justifying or giving them fuel to say, "I don't want to hear what you have to say to me, go away." And so therefore, and get this, the biblical balance is that it is our responsibility to warn people once or twice, and after that, it's our responsibility to leave them alone. One verse that I've used a lot in the course of the old ministry is Titus 3 verse 10, where Paul says, "Warn a divisive person once, then warn him a second time, and after that, have nothing to do with him." That is to say, "Don't keep rubbing his nose in the truth. You're thrown pearl before swine. You are wasting your time and you're just stirring up trouble." The reason for that is that having heard the truth, as we'll talk about in a moment, people are responsible for their own decisions. See, if people perish because they don't know the truth and we've had the truth and we've withheld it from them, the responsibility is ours. My blood's on my own head. But if I have told you the truth, not only once but maybe twice or maybe three times, whatever, and you're not yielding to it, it's no longer my responsibility. It is your responsibility. And for that reason, if you look at the ministry of Jesus or you look at the ministry of Paul, they're very eager to present the truth of the gospel once or twice. After that, they walk away and they go to find people who are willing to hear it. And it's very interesting, for example, that when Jesus sends out his disciples, he tells them this in Matthew 10, 14, and 15. "If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town. I tell you the truth, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town." Sodom and Gomorrah, of course, are biblical examples of the terrible judgment of God upon sin and upon unbelief. And Jesus says, "If you have preached the gospel in the towns of Israel and they do not respond to the gospel, the good news that you're bringing, then he says, 'Wipe the dust off your feet and you go on to the next town.'" I had a colleague tell me this story once. He was preaching away and as he was preaching away, a man came forward down the center aisle and he stood in front of the pole pad and he went like this. And the preacher says, "What are you doing?" And he says, "I'm wiping the dust off my feet." Imagine that in the context of a worship service. A colleague of mine, another one, told me a story once. He was preaching in church. He'd been asked to include the youth in his presentation and so he talked a little bit about modern music and all of this sort of stuff and the serving elder. The serving elder took issue and after he had done preaching, the serving elder climbed into the pole and took the microphone and he said to the congregation as they were leaving, "Counsel does not endorse this pastor's servant this morning." Can you imagine that? That would sort of... See, let me tell you something. You know that when a pastor comes in here, the serving elder always shakes his hand, right? And a lot of people think that's just, you know, to wish you strength and blessing and all of that sort of stuff and that's part of the picture but liturgically it serves a bigger function than that. The function of handshake before the service is counsel saying to whoever is officiating at the service, "We are giving you the authority to lead the service in this congregation because the elders are responsible for supervising the body. We'll look at that more closely when we get further into Paul's farewell speech." And it used to be... It used to be that after a preacher was done preaching, the serving elder had the responsibility to shake the hand which was an indication of the fact that he, on behalf of counsel, approved the preaching and supported the preacher. That practice has been discontinued in churches because it gave too much opportunity for the serving elder to decide that he didn't like what the preacher was saying. And so he just let that rest. If you look at the ministry of Jesus, you look at the ministry of Paul, "I'll warn you once, I'll warn you twice. If after that you refuse to accept the gospel, your blood is on your own head. It is not my responsibility. I will go find other people who will listen when you reject the gospel." And that's why Paul, on his missionary journey, always started off in the synagogues, you will recall. Always went to the Jews first. And when the Jewish community rejected the gospel, he would wipe the dust off his feet and he would say, "I'm going to leave you alone." And he would take the disciples and he would start Christian communities elsewhere. So, we're responsible, forwarding people. We're not responsible to continue to badger them. If your son and your daughter knows the truth that people without Jesus are going to be lost, if your co-worker knows the truth that God is going to come and judge the living and the dead and that they need to repent and turn to Jesus in order to be saved and they refuse to believe, the responsibility is no longer yours. Doesn't mean you can't love them. Doesn't mean you can't periodically invite them to church or periodically speak to them, but the responsibility is now no longer your responsibility. It is their responsibility. And the reason for that is that there's still a third principle that flows out of that and that principle is this. We need to honor people's choices. We need to honor people's choices. It was Joshua in Joshua 24 who said to the people of Israel, "Choose this day whom you will serve." Whether the gods of the nations or the gods beyond the river where you came from or the Amorites who live in this land, choose whether you're going to serve these gods or if you're going to serve the Lord God of Israel. And part of having been created in the image of God is that God gives us the power and the ability and the responsibility to make choices. And once we have made those choices, we have to live with the consequences of those choices, those consequences we cannot avoid. Our tendency, of course, is to continue to plead and to... No, people are responsible for their own choices. Come the day of judgment when we all stand before God and he's going to hold us accountable for what we have done in the flesh, the judgment will be based on what we have done with what we know. And we need to let people know, yes, you're free to turn your back on God, you're free never to go to church, you're free never to pray, you're free to live the way that you want to live, but you're not free to avoid the consequences. And whether you believe it or not, there's coming a day you're going to be held accountable for your actions. The only way to avoid the wrath of judgment of a coming final day is to turn to Jesus and find your faith in him. That's the biblical balance. Paul says, "I'm innocent of the blood of all of you." For three years, for three years, I've not hesitated to warn you day and night. The issues are serious because God is dead serious about the reality of sin, salvation, and service. All right, that's one aspect that I want us to look at this morning. The second aspect that I want us to look at, then, is the rest of the passage, and that is that Paul prided himself in declaring the full council or the whole council of God. Verse 27, "I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole wheel," other translations have, "the whole council of God." And there's two things in that verse that are significant for us to contemplate. The first is the whole will or the whole council of God, what that is and what that stands for, and the other is Paul's observation that he hasn't hesitated to proclaim the whole council of God. So let's begin with the whole council of God for a moment. The whole council of God is the total saving plan and purpose of God revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. That saving plan, which is the message of the Bible, from one end to the other, can, I think, best be summarized in the four words that you've heard me talk about before-- creation, fall, redemption, restoration. That sums up the whole council, the whole plan, and the whole purpose of God. Let me take a few moments, walk you through that. Some of this we've covered before, but the more deeply this can be settled in our souls, the more we know what we need to tell people and how it is that we need to tell it to them. Let's begin with creation. The Bible begins, of course, with the phrase, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." The Bible makes it very clear that everything that exists in the universe, from the greatest galaxies to the most minute subatomic portable, was created by our God when He spoke it into existence. Hebrews 11.3, "By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command so that what is seen was not made of what was visible." And Psalm 33, 8-9, "Let all the earth fear the Lord, let all the people of the world revere Him, for He spoke and it came to be, and He commanded, and it stood firm." God said, "Let it be," and it sprang into existence. By the way, if you were not here for the Thanksgiving Day service, and some of you were not, hint, hint, look the service up online on the Replay. If you go to marinatha-church.com, in the center of the page, there's a number of buttons. One is labeled Service Replay. Go to Service Replay, scroll down on the windows along the side until you find the Thanksgiving Day service, and look at it. I spoke extensively on the power of God in creation. I showed some incredible videos of how big the universe is and how complicated cell life is and how DNA gets replicated. Not everybody's interested in science, but if you're interested in knowing the greatness of our God and how He engineered it, it's worth your while to look at. God is the creator of everything that is, and I think it annoys Him to know Him when people keep ignoring Him as the maker. I mean, wouldn't you be terribly insulted if you put all this time, effort, and energy into making this, and everybody's going around saying, "Oh, well, you know, don't know where this came from, but it's here and it just must have appeared." Well, I'd be a little annoyed, and I dare say that God might just be annoyed enough that one day, He's going to hold people accountable for how they have refused to honor Him as creator God. Well, we know the story of creation. We know that God's whole counsel continues into the area of the fall. Adam and Eve were created in the image of God, shared the blessings of God. Life was paradise for them. The serpent came along. They thought they could have their cake and eat it too. They rebelled against God. They fell into deception, and through their lying, through their deception, and to their turning their back on God, sin entered into the world, and all of us live with the consequences of that. "Sin entered the world through one man," said Paul in Romans 5:12, "and death through sin, and in this way, death came to all men because all sinned." And as you know, this particular circle represents our alienation from God, our self-centeredness, our bondage to Satan, and all the conflict and turmoil that you experience in your personal life, that you experience in the world. Watch the news, and you discover what this looks like for real. And throughout history, the big question is, how do we make things better? The human heart says, "We can make things better by working at it ourselves." The Bible says, "No, you can't. You need the saving grace of Jesus." And so, there is redemption. God could have left us where we were, chose not to, entered into the world through the person of Jesus, lived our life, died our death, defeated death, so that by faith in him, we could be restored to God, have our sins forgiven, and experience his saving power and his saving grace. 2 Corinthians 5.19, "In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting men's sins against them. For just as through the disobedience of the one man," Romans 5.19, "the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man, the many will be made righteous." The whole Council of God includes creation, it includes the story of the fall, our terrible human condition, and how God, in his amazing grace, stepped into our world to bring us back to himself. And then, of course, it includes the thing that we call restoration. And restoration means that when history has run its course, when all the nations of the world will have heard the gospel, so that nobody can say, "Oh, I didn't know what was required of me," everybody will have had an opportunity to hear the gospel, decide to accept it or reject it, then comes the end. When the end comes, Jesus returns. Guess what happens when Jesus returns? The world, as we know it, is going to be purified by fire. Peter says, "The very elements will be dissolved with fervent heat." And on that day, God is going to make a new heavens and a new earth. Peter puts it this way, 2 Peter 3.13, "In keeping with his promise, we're looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness." The prophet Isaiah, one of the most visionary prophets in the Old Testament, by faith, looked forward to that day, and he said in 65, 17, and 18, "Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth," God speaking. "The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind, but be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem," that is the city of God, the people of God, "to be a delight, and its people a joy." That is the full counsel of God. And Paul says, "That's the full counsel that I have preached to you day and night for three years, and that's why I am innocent of the blood of all of you." But notice he doesn't stop there, and maybe I will just introduce this and leave the rest for next week. He goes on to say in that particular passage, "I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will or the whole counsel of God." Other translation says, "I have not shrunk from declaring to you the whole counsel of God." It's a very interesting usage of the word. I like "shrink back" better than "not hesitated," because "hesitated" gives you the picture, at least in my mind, of "I'm hesitating about going forward," right? To be shrinking back gives you the implication of, "Oh, oh, there is trouble ahead, and I'm going to hold off for fear of not getting into trouble." And I think that's where we're going to stop this morning, because I want you to give some thought to that. Why would Paul say, "I did not hesitate to proclaim to you the full counsel of God"? What is it about preaching what we consider the good news to be of such a nature that we are afraid to tell our neighbors about it because we are afraid of what? So as you think about that, there's a couple of questions I want to leave you with, and I'll probably come back to this the next time, but ask yourself this question. Who is there in my sphere of influence that isn't fully aware of what happens if they do not give their lives in surrender to Jesus? Now, remember I said we live in a culture where everybody thinks they're going to go to heaven. They may not believe there is heaven, but if there is heaven, they're sure that they're going to go there, and they're not. Who is there in your world who needs to be warned about the truth of the gospel? And when you think about that, ask yourself the question, "What makes you hesitate to tell that person the truth of the gospel that we were just talking about? What makes you hesitate to declare the full counsel of God?" And then, Lord willing, next week when we can go back to that, let's look at that a little bit more closely and see why Paul would say, "I didn't hesitate. It didn't shrink back." Because you see, while the gospel is incredibly good news, before it's good news, it's terrible news. And when people hear terrible news, what do you think happens? They might just get mad at you, throw stones at you, put you in jail, try to kill you. And then the temptation is to say, "Whoa, can't afford this because I might get hurt." And the result is that not speaking out puts their blood on our heads. And that is a terrible thing to contemplate. God gives us His Holy Spirit so that we can speak courageously the whole counsel of God. Deal? Leave it at that. Stand together. Father in heaven, we thank you that you have not left us without witness. First of all, you've given us your word. And your word tells us that you made everything, that we brought sin upon ourselves, and because we brought sin upon ourselves, we're under the wrath of God, cannot save ourselves. It tells us you sent Jesus so that by faith in Him, we might be restored to you, have our sins forgiven, experience your presence in the here and now, and live with you eternally in the new age that is to come. And Lord, that's incredibly good news. And if there be some of us here this morning who have never embraced that news and experienced that grace for him or herself, then I pray that by the power of your spirit and through your word, you write this deeply upon our hearts. Thank you that you've not only given us the written word, but you've also raised up prophets to speak it and to bear witness to the saving power of God. And then, Lord, as we have experienced that in our own lives, help us to contemplate who is there in my life who is living as if there is no God, driving a car full speed down the road into certain destruction unless they repent and come to faith in you. Then help us, Lord, to know what our place is, what warning people once or twice looks like, what it means to allow people to make their own choices and to live with the consequences and to make sure that their blood is not on our heads, but on their heads. Thank you for Jesus. Thank you for his amazing saving grace. And thank you, Father, that we look forward to the day when you make all things new and we will be with you in a new creation, a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness reigns and which everything will be the way that you have designed it and our pleasure and our joy will be beyond limit because you will have the people that you set out to get for yourself. Thank you for your love and for your grace. [PROPOSED CUT 2 START at 00:43:32.060; remove through 00:43:36.000] We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 2 END at 00:43:36.000; resume after this marked segment]