Christ Crucified

SERMON: 2017-11-26--cr0217--christ-crucified SOURCE DURATION: 00:46:59.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.98 APPROVED: false REASON: The entire provided transcript constitutes a continuous sermon, moving from an introduction to scripture reading (1 Corinthians 2), theological exposition, personal testimony, and concluding application/call to action. 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 --- I want to share with you a very simple gospel message in my closing message with you as your pastor, because when all has been said and done, it is about Jesus who leads us to the circle on the other side. Want to read with you then a scripture from 1 Corinthians chapter 2, we'll read the first 10 verses and then we'll talk about that a little bit together this morning if you please. The Apostle Paul says, "When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear and with much trembling; my message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power. We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing. Now we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden, and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written, no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him, but God has revealed it to us by His Spirit." And then he goes on in the rest of the chapter to talk about the illuminating effect of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian community. Most of you don't know this, but when my family and I first arrived here in July of 1985, I was pretty disillusioned with the state of the church. And by church, I mean the institutional church. And the reason for that was that prior to coming here to Maranatha in Belleville, I had pastored, as most of you know, two previous congregations, one in Alberta and one in Nova Scotia. And in both of those congregations, as I proclaimed the good news of Jesus Christ, God saw fit to do some powerful work in people's hearts and lives. People were changed, unbelievers were converted, the churches grew. What didn't happen was that the institution of the church was able to change in ways of renewal that I believe reflected the scriptures. And the reason for that was that in both of those congregations, there were power brokers who had a vested interest in the church remaining what it was. Some of you have heard me tell the story, the first congregation, there were two elderly ladies. They were sisters. Nobody liked them very much. They didn't like each other. But five years in, and it took me that long to discover it, five years in, I discovered that they pulled all the strings behind the scenes and they had the congregation in their hands. And they were not about to let it change into a biblically functioning community. It all came to a head one New Year's Eve when a returning son of the congregation stood up in one of our sharing services and he stood up and he said how glad he was to see a church that had been so dead come alive. And I went, oh, no. Because I knew what that would do and indeed that proved to be in that congregation the beginning of the end. Because change was not an operative word in the life of that community. In the next congregation, again, the Lord did a lot of amazing things. We have some people present here this morning from that congregation who have come and joined us last night as well as today, a number of people from there watching the services online. Things in that congregation really came to a head one day when we had a profession of faith service and I've told you this story before, we had 17 people joining the church. Five adult baptisms. And I make mention of that because those five were not raised in Christian families but had come through faith, to faith through the ministry. It was a glorious, it was a glorious moment until one of the men in the congregation, and you'd know him if I mentioned his name because he's fairly familiar in some C or C circles, stood up in the balcony and I can see it like the day of yesterday. He stood up to protest and to proclaim that he could not agree with council's decision to allow these people to become members of the church. I have never been so angry in my life with what I consider to this day to have been a very holy anger, thank you very much. But it also proved to be the beginning of the end in the life of that congregation. This man previously had come to council, now listen to this, with an eight and a half by 14, that's a legal sheet of paper, with objections to myself and to the church filled both sides. That's a lot of objections. Council went through every last one of those in great detail, decided that none of them had merit, and then some council members suggested that we should nominate him as elder in the church. And I said, my dear brother, where is your head? Because you know, there's a mindset among some people that if you can't beat them, let them join you as if that's going to change them. And so by the time we came here in 1985, July 16, I remember the day so well, because it was Jonathan's birthday and we all got sick as get all when we got here, as you know. I didn't have much hope for institutional change, because by then I had discovered how resistant even Christian communities are to becoming everything that we are to be in Christ Jesus our Lord. And so by then I had laid aside every agenda that I had ever had about what I thought the church needed to be and how it needed to get there. And I determined like the apostle Paul does in this passage, to have no message but the message of Jesus Christ and him crucified. And some of you have been around long enough to remember those days. And as I preach Jesus, who he was, how he lived, how he died, how he rose from the dead, guess what happened? God showed up. Saints were edified, sinners were built up, and the church began to blossom with a life that only God could give. I give the credit to that not only to the Lord, but also to the ministry of your previous pastor, Hanget Kate, and the shoulders that he stood upon in turn as the ground had been prepared for God to do his work. And as I look back on those days, I realize all too well that what the Lord did in those early days in the life of this congregation was not just simply the fruit of me or my ministry or the kind of giftedness or the leadership that the Lord had raised up in this congregation, but it was really the message of the cross doing its amazing work in releasing the power of God to transform not only lives, but also institutions. And that's what Paul talks about in this particular passage when he says, let's read it again, the verses 2 to 5 of 1 Corinthians chapter 2, "I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ in him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power." Paul says, "I came to you in weakness and fear and with much trembling." Now, we don't usually think of the Apostle Paul being a man who trembles in fear because of his weakness, do we? We think of Paul as the brave apostle of the gospel, the one who just plowed ahead regardless of whatever. We don't think of him as being a man, afraid to speak, trembling in fear, and it helps to remember that Corinth, to which this letter is addressed, was a major port city. It was rife with sexual immorality, we know historically, and it was filled with very intelligent and powerful people who had all kinds of ideas about how to do life. Not only that, but by the time he gets to Corinth, and we've talked about this previously in terms of his missionary journeys, he'd already had the snot beat out of him and Philippi. He had been chased out of Thessalonica. In Athens, he had engaged the philosophers with limited success in terms of conversion. So now he comes to Corinth with all their money and all their power. How in the world do you take on that culture in the hope of winning people to faith? How do you compete with the intellectual mindset of the Corinthians? And he decided that he wouldn't compete. I mean, some people have argued that the reason that he talks this way is because he had discovered in Athens that trying to argue with the philosophers wasn't bringing them to faith. We don't know if that is true or not. Some people think that, other people disagree. But at any rate, he came to Corinth and he decided to do one thing only, and that is to preach Jesus and him crucified. And as he did, God worked. Many of the Corinthians who heard him believed and were baptized, and not only that, as they were baptized in water, they were also baptized in the Holy Spirit. God poured out his grace upon them, and the net result was that they were enriched in every way in all your speaking and in all your knowledge, because their testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. And here's the point, here's the point of this passage, and here's the point that I'm trying to make this morning, when push comes to shove, people's lives are not changed simply by clever arguments, persuasive words, or all the logic of the world as to why they should come to God, have faith in Christ, and yield their lives to Jesus. Isn't that true? I mean, a lot of us have tried to persuade people, and they keep on keeping on going in their ways of unbelief like ever before. What changes people is an encounter with Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, because that is what releases the transforming power of God. And that's why Paul says, "I resolved to know nothing while I was with you, except Jesus Christ and him crucified." And in the time that remains, thinking back to Nathan last night, wasn't that choice? I mean, he just nailed it so nicely. Oh, that was good. I'm going to give you three ways – I'm going to give you three ways in which the preaching of Christ crucified releases God's saving grace. And I warn you, one of my points has three sub-points, so keep that in mind, too. Christ crucified releases God's power, first of all, because the message of the cross reveals our true human condition. Now the Bible says, "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." The Bible makes no bones about the fact that we're sinners alienated from God, but you know as well as I do that most people do not, in fact, have a very keen awareness of their sin. Did you know that? Most people, in fact, think they're pretty – I haven't ever met anybody who thinks he's perfect, but I've met lots of people who think they're not so bad after all because what we do is we compare ourselves to ourselves and to other people, and we can always find people who are a lot worse than we are. And so the net result is that most people have no idea what it is to be a sinner. But then along comes Jesus, who really spoils the party. Because Jesus, you see, is the fulfillment of the law, he is the fulfillment of the prophets, he is the full embodiment of God's will. If you want to know what it looks like to love God above all and your neighbor as yourself, and look at Jesus, and any biblical portrayal of the true Jesus shows up our sin and our dirt, doesn't that? Compared to him, we don't love God above all. We don't love our neighbor. As the catechism says, we're in fact prone to hate God and we're prone to hate our neighbor. When push comes to shove, it's all about me. And that is not a very pleasant message that very many people are very eager to proclaim. It's a little bit like, you know how sometimes you're in a darkened room and then you get a ray of sunlight coming through, some crack in the curtains or in the window, and all of a sudden in that ray of light, what do you see? Nothing but dust. And you say to yourself, "My goodness, I'm breathing this in all the time. Let me just get rid of the light then I won't see the dust." That's what a lot of people do with Jesus. Jesus shows up, our true condition not only, but the cross of Jesus gives us God's opinion of our true condition, and God's opinion of our true condition isn't very favorable. We read in Romans 1 verse 18, the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness. And in Ephesians 2, 3, Paul says, speaking of himself and Jew and Gentile all together, we were by nature objects of wrath. If you want to understand what God thinks of the natural human condition, then look at Jesus on the cross because the Bible says, quoting from the Old Testament, "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree." And the wrath that was unleashed on Jesus on the cross is an indication of how God feels about all of the human race, including the best of the best of the best of us because we're alienated from him. That's the message of the cross. That's where the gospel begins. That's what it means to proclaim Christ and Him crucified. It is to say, "He died on the cross in my place. I am a sinner." People don't like that very much in case you haven't discovered that yet. Even Christians don't like that very much. I remember one time in one of the churches that I pastored, we had a family who had, I believe, five sons, and those sons were, well, let's just say they were not following in the ways of the Lord and they were causing quite a bit of trouble, some of them, for their parents. And I was doing a series of messages on raising children. Pretty good series of messages, I thought, but I could tell it was getting under the skin of the father, who was also one of the elders, and he was getting more and more irritated about what I was saying about raising children. One Sunday morning, and I'll never forget this, he walks into the council room, he picks up the bulletin, he picks up the bulletin, he sees the title, and the title of my message that particular Sunday morning was "Rebellious Adolescents." Pretty fitting description of his kids, just for the record. He snorted in anger, threw his bulletin down, as I recall, and he said, "I'm out of here. I don't know that he ever came back." Because you see, the message of the cross is offensive. There's no nice way to tell somebody you're a sinner. Did you know that? There's no nice way to tell somebody you're not good enough from God's point of view. There's no nice way to tell somebody that if they don't believe and if their family doesn't believe, as we saw a number of weeks ago, you're going to go to hell because God's wrath abides on you. But from the gospel's point of view, that's where salvation begins. Because what happens when we own our sin and our misery? We pave the way for faith in Jesus, and we experience God's saving power. Listen to what Paul says earlier in chapter 1. The message of the cross, he says, is foolishness, foolishness, to those who are perishing. But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. And that power is released—here come my three sub-points, I'll try to be quick—that power is released and experienced in three ways, number one, we are, by the sacrifice of Jesus, made right with God. Oh, praise God. He has reconciled you, says Paul, Colossians 1.22, by Christ's physical body through his death to present you wholly in his sight without blemish and free from accusation. To be reconciled to God means that God's wrath has been satisfied, he is no longer angry, I have become his friend, and for me to become a friend of God—and I trust you know there's two things that have to happen, the issue of my sin has to be dealt with, and number two, I have to be declared righteous before God. Both of those are made available through the death and the resurrection of Jesus. Because when Jesus dies on the cross, he pays the penalty for my sin, and now I no longer have to pay the price for my sin, I am forgiven, but I'm not only forgiven, he doesn't only die on the cross, he rises from the dead, and in rising from the dead, he presents his righteousness to God as my righteousness, and that's what Paul means in Romans chapter 5, or 425, when he says concerning Jesus, he was delivered over to death for our sins, and he was raised to life for our justification. What happens when we own our sin? What happens when we quit making excuses? What happens when we say to God, "Yes, I've fallen short of your glory, I deserve your wrath and I deserve your judgment, but I believe that Jesus died for me and that he arose for my justification"? The curse is turned to a blessing. Paul talks about that, quoting from Psalm 32, when he says in Romans 4-7, "Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man," we can add, "woman, whose sin the Lord will never count against him." Sometimes you and I as God's people, we fail to recognize the amazing thing that God has done in declaring us righteous before him. Do you know that if you're in Christ today, you can stand before God without any wrinkle, blemish, or any such thing because in Christ, and I've often said this, you're as good and as righteous as you're ever going to be. That's justification by faith. And it means God is on your side and all the power of the universe, all the power of God is now available to you because he's become your Father in Christ Jesus, our Lord. If only we understood it, if only we could live it, our lives would never ever be the same, but it gets even better because the next thing that happens is that we receive a new ability to love for God. Here's a scripture you've heard many times, 2 Corinthians 5-17, "If anyone's in Christ, he's a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come." Why is it so hard for us to love God above all and our neighbor as ourselves? It's because we are the offspring of Adam and Eve. We have inherited a fallen nature, and that fallen nature is so corrupt, so incapable of being everything that God wants it to be, that it can't just be patched up with new wisdom and better ideas and more training and more cultivation. From God's perspective, it has to be removed and replaced by new life, the life of Jesus. And that's what happens when in faith we're joined to Jesus, not only are our sins forgiven, but we receive a new nature. We're joined to Christ in his death on the cross, deactivating potentially our old selves that we have inherited from Adam. We are raised with Christ into newness of life. We receive the life of Jesus living in us, and by the power of Jesus living in us, as we walk after the Spirit, life begins to change. We bear fruit of righteousness, and being a Christian is never a matter of trying harder to be better. It's very much a matter of recognizing I have new life in me, I have the life of Jesus, and even as my old life gravitates towards sin, the new life that I have in Christ gravitates towards God so that I have an increased longing and an intensity to know him and to love him with all of my heart and soul. That's why Paul continues to say, as he does in Ephesians 4.22-24, "Put off your old nature, which belongs to your former manner of life. It's corrupt through deceitful lusts. Be renewed in the spirit of your minds. Put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." We not only get our sins forgiven, but we get new ability, we get new grace so that our hearts move towards God as opposed to away from him. Paul's own life is a good example of that. Before he met Jesus, what was he like? He was a persecutor of the church. He was one nasty dude, and he did a lot of damage. But then on the way to Damascus, he got struck by an encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ, and he was transformed from an enemy of God into a devoted disciple and a devoted apostle. And I look over this congregation and, you know, I know so many of you and I know so many of your stories, and there is nothing that makes my heart glatter. Then when I see that in having come to Christ, you not only have had your sins forgiven, but he's been changing our hearts. He's been changing our lives, and through this process of sanctification, we begin to increasingly reflect the reality of Jesus. Isn't that what the church is supposed to be like? Isn't that how God's presence becomes manifest among the nations of the earth by a transformed and a discipled people? Oh, doesn't mean we're perfect. It doesn't mean that our anger doesn't flare up sometimes. It doesn't mean that we fail or don't fail. But where Christ is really real, our lives begin to bear the fruit of the Spirit as opposed to the works of the flesh. Isn't that true? One more way just very quickly before we move on. This power of Christ is made manifest in the fact that we receive biblical wisdom. For notice the passage goes on, he says, "We speak a message of wisdom among the mature but not the wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing. We speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began." He says, "God's secret wisdom." What's God's secret wisdom? Hidden for previous generations. It's God's intention through faith in Jesus to transform the world and restore it to what he wants it to be. And it stands in sharp contrast to the wisdom of the world. I won't take a lot of time to explain it, but I have to show you this. I have to show you this. The world knows that it's broken, and the world thinks it can fix its brokenness by drawing upon its own resources using its own wisdom and its own philosophies to try to make the world better. Isn't that true? All you ever have to do is listen to political campaigns, people who are running for office, and you will hear every time and again how they picture themselves and their particular parties as the messiahs who are going to save the country, isn't that true? And we don't minimize the fact that God uses people, but the biblical message is that the wisdom of man is foolishness in the sight of God. Why? Because it doesn't deal with our core issues. It doesn't reconcile us to God. The message of scripture, the secret wisdom that had been hinted at in the Old Testament that had been seen from a distance by the prophets, the wisdom of God in Christ, is that in the person of Jesus, God would deal with the issue of sin. He would restore us to relationship with God. He would give us the power of the Holy Spirit, and through the power of the Holy Spirit, he would usher in new life, new relationships, a new creation that eventually would replace the old creation. That's the wisdom of God. That wisdom of God is foolishness to Greeks. It's a stumbling block to Jews, because the Jews couldn't handle a messiah that would suffer and die instead of coming like a reigning king, and the Greeks were so cultured and so in love with human skills and human wisdom that they wanted nothing to do with a Jewish messiah who proved to be the wisdom of God. And here's what happens when you and I humble ourselves before God, acknowledge our sin, put our faith in Jesus, and receive his Holy Spirit. He gives us the Holy Spirit. He gives us a spirit of wisdom and revelation and knowledge in him, and suddenly the world begins to make sense from God's perspective. You know what amazes me about these circles is that for however many times I've used them in this community, there are still some people who will come to me and say, "I don't get at it." And I'm not saying that critically, but here's the thing about spiritual wisdom. If sermons don't make sense to you, if reading the Bible doesn't make sense to you, if spiritual things leave you cold and you can't figure out why anybody would want to raise their hands in church or sing from their heart for the praise of God, the problem isn't that you're not smart enough, the problem isn't that you're not trying hard enough, the problem isn't that you haven't got it in you to be what you need to be, the problem is you've got to come to Jesus. In true repentance and faith, you've got to cry out for a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him because no matter how smart you are, you'll never figure it out unless God shows it to you. That is incredibly offensive to smart people. Jesus said, "I thank you, Father. You've hidden these things from the wise and the understanding and you have revealed them to babes." You know what's the significance of that? That it doesn't matter who you are, you don't have to be smart, you don't have to be educated, you don't have to be rich, you don't have to be somebody in the world. In fact, that could stand against you if you read the earlier chapter, you just have to know that you don't know. You know what I've always been grateful for in my life looking back over the years? I've always known I wasn't smart enough to figure it out. That's the truth. And I've always known that unless God gave me understanding and gave me revelation, I would not know what biblical truth was, let alone present it to anybody else. And Jesus said, "If you ask, you will receive. If you knock, it will be opened. And if you seek, you will find." You know what else this means? Sometimes people say to me, "Oh, this is way over the kids' heads." You've heard that. I'm glad the kids are here this morning. You know why? We underestimate the spiritual capacity of children, because it's not simply a function of intellectual understanding, it's a function of a relationship with Jesus, and even a child with a relationship with Jesus sometimes is a lot smarter than an adult who doesn't know Jesus. Do you know that? I remember as a child sitting in church, and in those days, services were so long that we had to sing a song during the sermon just to make the time pass. I want you to know, you don't know how lucky you are. I remember powerfully being impacted by words that were spoken. Don't ever underestimate the capacity of your children to receive from God. The Bible says a little child will lead them. All right, the message of the cross shows our true human condition, shows us what the problem is. Message of the cross shows us the solution to the problem, which is faith in Jesus crucified and risen from the dead. One more point before we're done. The cross of Jesus, the message of the cross, also gives us hope. We speak God's secret wisdom, verse six and seven again, or verse seven, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God has destined, now notice those next three words, for our glory before time began. For our glory. What does that mean? Our destiny is to share the glory of God. Paul repeats it in Romans five, one and two, we're justified by faith. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. What does it mean to share the glory of God? It means that everything God has in terms of ultimate authority, ultimate power, ultimate, whatever you want to make it, that he has already given to Jesus at his right hand, he has given to you and to me through faith in Jesus Christ. We are destined for glory and because Jesus has conquered, has overcome death, sits at the right hand of God the Father, there is nothing in all the universe that can stop us from receiving the glory of God. That means death has been overcome and it means that no matter what difficulties we face in the course of this life, nothing but nothing can ever separate us from the love of God, it's going to end well individually and for the whole universe because Jesus Christ faced death, overcame death, sits at the right hand of God the Father in glory, is coming again in majesty and in power and one day the dead in Christ will hear his voice, they will awake and they will hear the words, "Well done good and faithful servant, you've been faithful over little, I will put you over much." I remember some years ago standing at the bedside of a woman in this congregation who was dying of brain cancer and you know how we talk a lot about the power of God and God's desire to heal and to restore and how we receive the first fruits of the Holy Spirit already in this life and when you stand at the bedside of a woman who's got terminal brain cancer and God has not heard the prayers for healing, it's easy to be discouraged and it's easy to say, "Well, God what use is it?" And I remember it as the day of yesterday, I had this moment of revelation, this clarity that said to me, "Look, even if she were to be healed today, she would die again." Just like Lazarus, when he was raised from the dead he would die again but the promise of the gospel is that God will raise her on the last day and give her an inheritance, we talked about this the other week, that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you. Doesn't matter how tough it gets, God has promised to either sustain us in the middle of all of this and bring us through or else he will raise us up on the last day and nothing that we have ever suffered for Jesus will have ever been in vain because the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ Jesus our Lord. That is the message of the cross. Control of concluding remarks, this has implications. It means the most important thing in all of the universe is for people to be in union with Christ. If it is true that people without Christ go to hell, we talked about this in recent weeks, then the most important thing in all of the universe is that people hear the message of the gospel of Jesus, you and I have a sober responsibility. More than that, in Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge and everything that you and I need for time and eternity to love God and to love our neighbor individually and corporately already has been granted to us in the person of Jesus and if we will make it our business to abide in him, to walk with him, to own our failings, our shortcomings and our sins and draw upon his grace, he can take us by the hand and lead us through our journey with enough oil in our lamps to keep us burning until the final day that we stand before him. May I share with you in these closing moments a little bit of my own journey in that regard. You know the Apostle Paul later on in the book of Acts, he's talking to Agrippa. Acts chapter 26, he says, "I've had God's help to this very day, so I stand here and testify to swollen great alike, I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen, that Christ would suffer and as the first to rise from the dead will proclaim light to his own people and to the Gentiles." Bear with me a moment as I bear witness at this juncture of my life and journey about the faithfulness of God. I was I think about 14 years old when I felt called to the ministry. I remember it like the day of yesterday because I was in the stable milking cows with my father and he asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and before I knew what I was saying I said I think I want to be a preacher. I have no idea where that came from because I don't ever recall previously contemplating that but I do remember thinking looking forward that preachers get to preach and then if you have to preach twice a Sunday for Lord knows how many years, how are you ever going to find enough to talk about? I know you think that's funny but that was a huge obstacle to me and now it's 45 years, I mean it's many more years than that, 45 years later since I was ordained and here's my testimony to you this morning, never ever has the Lord lacked in giving me what I needed to give to his people, never ever has there been a question of having oil in my lamp. In fact the opposite has been true, my biggest trouble over the years and Dave will tell you because he and I have talked about this, occasionally two or three messages would come to me and which one am I supposed to preach and that's not because I'm so smart, it's because if the Lord has called me to this then he has also equipped me to this and I hate to give you secrets but he gives me my sermon outlines in the bathtub on Tuesday morning, you know put that image out of your mind but that's the reality and it's never failed. You're welcome but here's the point, if you're in Christ and he has called you to your particular phase of life and anointed you with his gifts, whatever it is that he has called you to, he will give it to you when you need it to build up God's people, that's my point and that's not only true for each of us individually, it's also true for us as a congregation. We don't know what the future holds and you know the Calling Committee has been doing its job and they're looking at a number of different options and next week Dave will probably share some of those with you going forward but I can tell you this, God loves this church and he loves Mernathah and he's got a plan and purpose for Mernathah and he has already and he will raise up the gifts and the people that are needed to do whatever it is that he wants you to do to fulfill the mission that he has for you as a church. And I hope that in the course of that mission you will never lose sight of the fact that we are surrounded by a world of people who are lost and going to hell and who need to [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:46:56.040; remove through 00:46:59.000] be invited to share in the life of Jesus Christ. [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:46:59.000; resume after this marked segment]