Hebrews 11:35-40 | WBF - Unsung Heroes of Hebrews 11

Sunday Morning | July 26, 2026 | Jeff Prosser | Louisville, KY

Guest speaker Jeff Prosser continues the Walk by Faith Series with "Unsung Heroes of Hebrews 11." The chapter begins with exciting stories of great victories, healing, even people being raised from the dead. But at the end of the chapter, many unnamed individuals suffered mockery, torture, imprisonment and even death, but remained faithful because they had faith in God's character no matter their circumstances. As Hebrews 11 tells us, they too were walking by faith.

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Thank you Isaac. Good morning, Valley View. It's great to have you here today. I want to welcome back our kids. They've been at camp and they just filtered in. They're just coming back. Thank you all. Also, our young adults went whitewater rafting this week wherever... Oh, they're not here. They're at home asleep. Probably trying to recover now. Some of them are here, but it's been a busy week, so thank you for being here today. We have a guest speaker today. Before I mention his name, this week we were having breakfast together because he grew up here at Valley View and we were having breakfast with another couple of friends who grew up here as well, and our serving in ministry in other parts of the state. And as we were talking, much of our conversation was about how much Valley View had meant to each of us, how much God had used Valley View to shape so much of us. I'm deeply grateful for Valley View and what it has meant for me, and I know he is as well, and he's coming out of a deep sense of gratitude to be able to serve you today and speak to you. If so, if you would welcome up Jeff Prosser. Jeff, if you’d come on up. All right. Great. This thing on. Here we go. Good morning. So good to be here with you guys. I can't echo enough with what John said about just gratitude for this place and this church. And thank you, sir. And just for what Valley View has meant to me in my life and the life of my family. We were singing that song a minute ago about all my life you've been faithful. And man, I get, I get kind of choked up when I sing that song because I - My mind was flashing back to this place because all my life, I mean, God was faithful here to us, and and this place has meant so much to me. And so I could go around the room and just start looking at folks and just thanking you for the investment that you made in my life, because so many of you in this room have. And so if you ever thought, man, is there any, you know, any chance for Jeff? Well, thank you for pouring into me. Okay. So thank you for that and with much gratitude. And so and you know, my mom's here today. I don't know if she was quite the celebrity. She's like scooting around on her walker. She just had some hip surgery and first time out in a while. So mom, so good to have you here. Yeah. My mom has reached true grandma's status. She has a little, little. What's that called? A walker. And I told you I got to get some tennis balls for you. Some cool tennis balls. But a little update if you don't ...one, if I never met you before. Jeff Prosser, grew up here. So an update for those maybe, who do know me and my family. My wife Holly is right here. We got married right here almost 33 years ago. Isn't that crazy? And. Yeah. Yeah. And but we have been in Etown, Kentucky, since April of last year. I'm serving on staff at Severns Valley Baptist Church, a wonderful church there. We have our son, Brian. He's 30 years old. Do I look like a parent of a 30 year old? Yes. I feel like the parent of a 30 year old. But man, he lives here in Louisville. And our daughter, Ellie, she's, gosh, she's 19, going on 20. She just wrapped up her first year at University of Kentucky. So pray for us because we're big Cardinal fans. Louisville Cardinals have our heart, but UK has our money, right? And that's okay. And because Ellie can care less, she can care less about any of that stuff. But man, this. The Lord's been faithful. He's been so faithful. And again, I just can't say thank you enough for the people here. You have just impacted my life. You poured into me. And so thank you for that. I love this series that you guys are walking through, literally the Walking by Faith. And and if I were to ask 100 people, what does it mean? Like what does it mean to walk by faith or what faith is? We probably hear a hundred different answers. We might hear things like, you know, believing everything's going to be okay. That's faith or that positive thinking, whatever that is, you know, or or maybe faith is taking a blind leap that that's a sense of faith. Different definitions. And this morning I want us to unpack a passage here in the book of Hebrews. So if you've got a Bible, turn to your word, you open it up or turn it on. However you have God's Word, the book of Hebrews. And we're going to look at the latter part of this chapter in chapter 11, because we're going to see some things here this morning that might be a little bit like, don't understand that about faith. And because we're going to see people because the very first part of this whole letter, you see what we would call the heroes of the faith, you know, being listed. And it says over and over, by faith, by faith, here's what they did. But have you ever wondered why God miraculously sometimes rescues some people, but not others? Have you ever wondered? You know, one family prays and the cancer disappears and another family prays just as fervently. And they and they plan a funeral, right? Or maybe it's, you know, one missionary is protected and yet another missionary is killed. One one Christian, one follower of Jesus, you know, has this miraculous healing in their life. And yet another faithfully follows Christ with years of suffering. And so sometimes we ask this question, well, where's God in that? Where is God in all of this? And why doesn't he always rescue his people? And so this morning we're going to unpack Hebrews 11 a little bit because this is one this is not new questions for us, man. Hebrews answers these questions for us. And he kind of confronts them head on. And I know a lot of us know Hebrews 11 is what what's it called? The the Hall of Faith, the Hall of Fame for those who are faithful. And we love reading about the victories, right? We love reading about, you know, the lion's mouth being shut and kingdoms being conquered and armies being defeated, miracles being performed. But as we're going to see here in beginning in verse 35, the tone changes dramatically here. It changes real dramatically. And so what happens here is the writer, and we don't know really who the writer of Hebrews is. We got some speculation out there, but the writer intentionally places two groups of people side by side, and one group experiences victories. And another group they experience unimaginable suffering. But the one thing they had in common is this they walked by faith, but they had different outcomes. And so what does it mean to walk by faith? And I know you guys have been talking through that. What, the entire year, John? The whole year. Walking by faith. Walking by faith. What is it? We sang about it up here this morning. And what does it mean to walk by faith? And I think sometimes one of the biggest mistakes in reading Hebrews 11 as a, as a chapter about spiritual superheroes. And we love reading about them. But listen, the point is to be like Abraham, the points not being, you know, go, go be like like Isaac. But no, it is instead, trust the same God that Abraham and Isaac trusted. That's the idea. It's not the one to be like these people, but the the. Put the trust of your trust and faith in those who they put their trust and faith in. Because when you look at these heroes, they're pretty flawed. You think about it. Think about Noah. What Noah? Man this miraculous things. But we read where Noah got drunk. We read where Abraham. He lied. Sarah laughed when being told you're going to have a baby and you're well beyond the baby making days. Jacob. He deceived Moses. He was a murderer. Samson was morally compromised. David the man after God's own heart. He committed adultery. And so it's easy sometimes to think about these heroes. But, you know, they're just like you and I because we sometimes will elevate people, and we should never, ever elevate. The only person we should ever elevate is Jesus. And that's not a Sunday school answer. That is the answer. Right? I mean, that is and the focus as we read Hebrews 11 is not the perfection of the people, but the faithfulness, the faithfulness of God and walking by faith. It's not wishful thinking. It's not positive thinking. It's not believing hard enough until God answers what you want. I think one of the greatest disservice when people say they're praying through something, and maybe it didn't come into to fruition and someone says, well, you didn't have enough faith. And I think it's bogus. I don't think that's right. I don't think that's it at all. It's not believing hard enough to have enough faith, but walking by faith. This is the big idea here. Walking by faith means trusting God's character more than we trust our circumstances, because the circumstances are what they're going to. They're going to change, right? Our circumstances change. And if walking by faith means believing in God, even when life is not really all that great, and maybe you're walking through a season of life today and you're thinking, where are you, God? And we continue to walk by faith. Walking by faith means obeying him even when we don't understand him. Ever experienced that before. And God calls you to do something and you're like, God, don't understand that. That's walking by faith. It means it means believing his promises are greater than our present reality. And sometimes our present reality may look dim and dire, but when when God makes a promise to us, he sees that promise through and faith will tell us, you know, I don't know what God is doing, but but I sure do know who God is. And so let's jump into this passage here and start in verse 32. And so the writer has, you know, he's walked through all these different names of people by faith, by faith, by faith. And then verse 32, it's this, it says this, and what more can I say? Time is too short for me to tell about Gideon, Barack, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets who by faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the raging of fire, escape the edge of the sword, gained strength and weakness, became mighty in battle, and put foreign armies to flight. Women received their dead raised to life again. And while you read that and the writer quickly goes to Israel's history and we see all these names. Think about it. Think about all the sermons that could come from these names Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, all of them, all of them. He described these incredible victories, you know, some conquered kingdoms, some ministered justice, some shut the mouths of lions. Someone battles. And it just reminds me that God still does miracles. Do you believe that today? Do you believe that God still does? I do, I think he does. I think he still heals. I believe he still provides. I believe he still walks with us. And I think we should always pray boldly because God is able. And Ephesians tells us he is able to do beyond what we could ever imagine or think. And that's pretty remarkable because I can imagine and think some really crazy things. But that's what God is able to do. But then right here in this passage, everything changes because faith sometimes endures really extraordinary suffering. And so many times when we walk through suffering and maybe you're going through some suffering today, sometimes our first response is, well, this can't be from God. I'm suffering because this, this can't be from God. Where are you, God? And that's what happens right here. You get all these stories, all these stories. But then starting in verse 36, but others, but others look at verse 36 through 38, but others experience mockings and scourge and scourges, as well as bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned. They were sawed in two. They died by the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goat skins, destitute, afflicted and mistreated. The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts, in the mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground. And we see this. And yet these, these believers had the exact same faith as all the ones that we just read about. All all the names that we're familiar with, and these are the ones who aren't even named. I wonder what their names are. And one day to know. One day to know that we'll get to meet them. We'll get to hear that story. But we don't know their names, but they had the exact same faith. Yet instead of miracles, they experienced suffering. And I think here in the Western world, as followers of Jesus. And listen, I use that term followers of Jesus over saying, I'm a Christian now I know what a Christian is. But sometimes in this day and age, you can say the word Christian and there's a thousand different reasons or a different definitions of it. Right? But if I tell you, I am a follower with Jesus, who am I following? Jesus. Right. Again, that's not the Sunday school answer. That is the answer. But that's what it is. And yet sometimes when we walk through suffering, we're like, Lord, where are you in this? Where are you? Because these folks here have the exact same faith and listen to it again. What happened to them? They were tortured, mocked, whipped, imprisoned, stoned, killed by the sword. Some were homeless. Others wandered in deserts and caves, and the world would have looked at them and had assumed man God abandoned them. They didn't have enough faith. My guess is that might be what they would say. But God says something completely different. He says something completely different. He says the world is not worthy of them. And I want to unpack that for just a second, because their suffering was never, never evidence of God's like absence. But it was evidence of his faithfulness that these folks walk through that. And, you know, I think one of the greatest pictures of walking by faith has to be it's found in the book of Daniel, and no one illustrates it better than Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Now I learned that story. Guess what? Right here at Valley View. Right back over here somewhere. One of those classes, we had a thing called flannel graph. Remember flannel graph Phil, remember flannel graph? Okay, yeah. Flannel graph. We got to bring that back. If you don't know what that is young people, it's like it's a it's a flannel piece of board. And they would put these little characters up. And it was kind of some of y'all look at me like strangers, like, what is that, Jeff? And some of you are like, yes, but flannel graph. That's how I learned the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And if you know it, or if you're a Veggie Tales fan, Rack Shack and Benny, right, you've heard of that. Okay. But King Nebuchadnezzar says to to he builds this, this idol out of gold and says, when you hear the music play, you were to bow right where you are. You bow, you bow to it, you bow to it. And these three Hebrew teenagers, they were, I think they were teenagers. They were young man. They lived differently. They walked by faith. And so when the music played, they didn't bow. They got in trouble. They get presented to King Nebuchadnezzar, and the king says, if you don't bow, it's going to cost you your life. You're going to be thrown into a furnace. You're going to die for your faith. You're going to die for your faith. And so and I love the response. Matter of fact, if you want to turn back to the book of Daniel Daniel chapter three. Listen, man, I love their response. This is walking by faith. After all of that, starting in verse 16. Daniel chapter three, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied to the king Nebuchadnezzar, we don't need to give you an answer to this question. The question was, hey, who's this God, who's going to rescue you? And they say this right here. If the God we serve exist, then he can rescue us from the furnace of blazing fire, and he can rescue us from the power of you, the King. But even if he doesn't rescue us, we want you to know, King, that we will not serve your gods or worship the gold statue you set up. That is biblical faith right there. It wasn't because if it cost them their lives, man, they're like, I don't care if it does. We're not bowing down because we believe in the one true God. And to me, again, that's that's biblical faith. Faith is not saying that God's going to rescue me because God doesn't always rescue us, does he? At least in our eyes, we think he hasn't rescued us. But if we believe in the sovereignty of God, that means no matter what you're walking through today, if you're a follower of Jesus, there's a reason for it. God's using that for some way. And, you know, faith is saying whether he rescues me or not, he is worthy of my worship. And so Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they settled their obedience even before they knew the outcome. They did that. And that's what it means to walk by faith. Let's make this really practical here this morning. What? What does walking by faith look like? We can say it over and over. Hey, have more faith. Pray for faith. But what does it look like? A couple of things. One, trusting God's character over my circumstances. And we said that earlier. Trusting God's character over my circumstances. Circumstances are going to constantly change. They're going to that. God's God never does. And the Bible declares he is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And I love that. I love that about the Word of God. This is our final authority, our only authority as followers of Jesus, because it's not going to change. The culture may try to change it, but this is not going to change until trust in God's character over your circumstances. That's walking by faith. Another practicality of this is obeying God. Even when I don't understand. Faith is not having all the answers or even the next answer. Faith is taking the next step because God has spoken. Church God rarely gives us the entire roadmap, right? I mean, he he very rarely does that. And a lot of times, and I love what what Psalms 119 says, it tells us that that he guides our path. Right. Your word is a light, your lamp unto my path. And think about a lamp. And a lamp just gives enough light for just the next step. But sometimes we want before we even move. We're like God, I want it all laid out from A to Z. And that's not how God always operates. Sometimes he might. If you would have told me, you know, a year and a half ago that we would be in E-Town, Kentucky, I would thought, you're crazy. I'm like, we were happy in Bowling Green, Kentucky, serving at a church. They're working with college students and man. And then God, out of the blue, I'm telling you. And it's another story. It's another sermon. Next year maybe. Okay, but, man, God just made it clear. And I began to ask God. Lord, I asked God three questions. And I think it's okay to question God. I do, and I ask God three questions. And you know what? God answered every single one of them. And it resulted us moving to E-Town, Kentucky. And, you know, again, I didn't understand it at first. Holly didn't understand it. At first. We were pretty content, had a good place, love what was going on. But it's obeying God. That's that's what walking by faith is. It's obeying God even when it doesn't make sense. Even when you don't have all the answers. Remember, His word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path. Another idea of what walking by faith looks like one. It's living for eternity instead of comfort. I think about this for a second. The hero, the heroes. In Hebrews 11, they understood something that a lot of us don't as followers of Christ, that this life is not all that there is, you know. And then think about that. We don't belong here. We don't mean the Bible even calls us. If you're a follower of Jesus, you're like, you're like, you're an alien. You're you're a you're a pilgrim. You're an exile. We don't belong here. Have you? Ever since that, as a follower of Jesus and you're just walking around with life and you're like, man, it just doesn't feel right here. Well, good, because this life is not all that there is as a follower of Jesus, this is not it. Our citizenship is actually in heaven. And so, you know, when the world tells us to build your kingdom and the world's really good about that culture, build your being. Jesus says to seek his kingdom, right? And when the world says, pursue comfort, Jesus says, pick up your cross and follow me every day. And picking up that cross means what it means dying to yourself every single day. When the world and the culture says to protect your life, Jesus says, lose your life for my sake. That's what it means. Sometimes we have this mindset that that eternity we're going to we're living for eternity instead of comfort. That's what it means to walk by faith. But sometimes we put we put the now this is where it's all at, you know? And listen. There are some hindrances to walking by faith. And one of those is comfort. It's comfort. And I think perhaps the greatest enemy of faith. It isn't persecution, it's comfort. It's comfort. Comfort whispers hey, don't risk anything for the Lord. And think about this. When's the last time you did something risky for the Lord? Something maybe that this didn't make a whole lot of sense. That sometimes we like this life of of comfort. And I think if we get into a life of comfort and thinking this is all that there is, and I'm just going to, you know, one of these days I'll, you know, they were missing out because I think as long as you have breath, you have purpose. You do. If you're a follower of Jesus, as long as you have breath, you've got a purpose, comfort as a hindrance. Another hindrance is fear and fear. It constantly says, what if? What if it's always if God calls you to do? And then fear says, well, what if this or that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. That doesn't sound like really, you know, a real financial sound decision. But if God's called listen, when we remove him, we were moving. We had to buy new house. Okay? We had a sweet deal of percentage. What's it called? Holly. Thank you. Man. Interest rate had a sweet interest rate. And God's like. Good move. I'm like, God, you don't understand. The interest rates are this high and the houses are a whole lot more in Hardin County. I'm like, are you kidding me? And I do. I remember God, I just not out loud, but I think even louder. Just just saying I don't care about interest rates, Jeff. Okay. You know, fear constantly says what if? And that's a hindrance to walking by faith. Another hindrance is just living by sight, because we naturally evaluate life by what we see, right. And faith chooses to believe God's promises ever when the circumstances seem dire. So sometimes the things that we see were like, God, that doesn't make sense to me. Or why would you put me in this situation? Or why would you be putting this on me? And listen, I think one of the greatest non scripture verses in the Bible is that God won't allow you to, you know, give you more than you can handle. First of all, it's nowhere in the Bible, right? It's nowhere in the Bible. No matter of fact, God will put more on you than you can handle. So you're more dependent on him. You know, we get that confused with the verse that God's going to always provide a way out of temptation. Yes, but when we live, we're living by this, by by the by sight, by what we see, man, that could be a hindrance. And then again, another, another hindrance is this. And I've already said it once. It's forgetting eternity again. We're thinking that this life is all that it is. And I think the book of Hebrews reminds us that this life is temporary. It's temporary. And so when we read verses 36 and 38, let's just read it again. Others. But others. Maybe your translation says others experience mocking and scourging as well as bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned. They were sawed in two. They died by the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goat skins, destitute, afflicted and mistreated. And sometimes we might naturally ask, you know, where was God? Where was God? Where? Where was he when his people are being tortured? Where was he when his people are being mocked? Where was he when his people are being killed? And the answer is he's in the same place he was when he watched his son die on the cross. That's where he is. God has never promised us as his people. He's never promised us freedom from suffering, but he has promised us his presence while we walk through that suffering. That's what he does. Sometimes God delivers us from the fire and sometimes he doesn't. And a lot of times people will say, well, man, this, this following Jesus thing didn't work. You know, I'm just going to try something else because we think it's about comfort and it's not about comfort. Matter of fact, Jesus said, if you're going to follow me, you are going to be persecuted. Life's going to be more difficult if your life's not even more. I don't know if you feel some pressure more difficult than are you really following Jesus? Because that's what Jesus said to expect. That's what he said to expect. Then you look at verses 39 through 40. I love this right here because faith lives for what cannot yet see. Look at what it says. It may. It kind of sounds like. All right, don't understand that. But let's unpack it here. Verse 39, all these were approved through their faith. All of these, all those things we just mentioned, all those were approved of their faith, but they did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us so that they would not be made perfect without us. And we read that in this chapter ends with this, this surprise, because none of these believers received the fullness of what had been promised and would have been promised. The promise is the Messiah. That's it. And it's not because God failed, but but because his promises were bigger than the earthly lives. And the people here, you know, the people here, here are walking by faith. You know why they're walking by faith? Because of what they have heard. They've heard that the Messiah is coming. Messiah is coming. And that's all they've heard. You look. And the scriptures in the first five books of the Bible, the the Torah, it's pointing to to a messiah. It's pointing to, to Jesus. And that's what, you know, they they didn't get the promise, but they live by faith for that promise to come. And here's the thing. Today we live on on the other side of that, we get to enjoy what they anticipated because what they faithfully endure with only a promise. We have a greater reason. Because the promise one has come. You know, the people of the Old Testament, they're putting their faith into who? Jesus, the one that's coming. They put their faith in the one, and we put our faith into Jesus and what he has done. Right. And so all the more that we've seen this promise me back here, man. They're like, man, we we're reading about this promise. We read about this Messiah, but we're on the other side of that. And if you're a follower of Jesus, you know, we know the promise. And again, his name is Jesus. We know that. And, you know, Hebrews kind of wraps I want to wrap it up because one chapter breaks in the Bible. Some are really terrible, right? Because we know when the Bible is written, chapters and verses weren't weren't added. That was added later on to help us find things. But sometimes chapter breaks are really bad, right? And to me, this is one of them. And Colby preached a few weeks ago on this, but I want you to see how how this kind of flows, because this chapter break kind of messes up the flow of this passage, if you ask me. So the writer goes through all these things that these folks are walking through. He says the world's not worthy of them. And then he says, therefore, and whenever you see are therefore, what do you say, there you go. You know, what's it there for? Of all that we just looked at and read? Therefore, since we all since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses as chapter 11, all those witnesses, right? Since we have a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lasts before us. And here's the key. Keeping our eyes on Jesus. That's it. Keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith. And so the culmination of Hebrews 11 is not look at these people, and what they've done know it's it's look to Jesus. This entire chapter prepares us to look at who Jesus is, who this Christ is. Now listen, if, if, if we believe that this world is not our home, why do we spend so much energy living as though it is? Why do we do that? Do you realize that every person that we come in contact with is headed towards eternity? They are. They're headed towards eternity. That means your coworkers, your neighbors, your classmates, family members, they're all headed for some sort of eternity. And the last time I checked 100% of the people on this planet die. They do. Eternity. Everybody is headed towards eternity. So what are we doing with the Gospel of Jesus? If you're a follower of Jesus and you're walking by faith, you're walking him each and every day. I think walking by faith means you rearrange your life. You rearrange it to help others know him. Because if we truly believe that there is a heaven or a hell, and those are the only two eternities that we see in Scripture, there's heaven and there's hell. If we truly believe that. Why don't we share it? Or do we kind of think, hey, it's up to Pastor John and the other pastors here. That's what they do. Or come to church. What are we doing with the gospel? Let me close with this. Maybe you've seen this video. I came across this YouTube video. Have you heard of the the magician duo Penn and Teller? You've heard of them before? Okay, there's a video and you can look. Don't look it up now, but look it up later on, and it's Penn Gillette. All right. And he's he's doing a video of himself, and he's just he talks about it. And it's really it's really captivating when you see it. So check it out later on. But but basically he was sharing an experience. He said we were at a doing. Wrapped up a show, and he was out there shaking hands with people and doing autographs and things like that. Which they always do. And he said, this man walked up to me and, and he gave me a Bible, one of those little New Testaments, those Gideon Bibles. So thank you, Gideons. All right. You give me one of these Bibles and Penn Gillette said, you know, this man and by the way, Penn Gillette is an atheist. He'll tell you he does not believe that he doesn't believe, doesn't believe in any sort of eternity of heaven or hell. But he gets his Bible and he says in the video, and he was so it was so compelling. I mean, he was like, man, this man. I looked at him. He looked at me. He didn't like, preach at me. He didn't thump me on the on the head with the Bible. He just said, hey, I want you to have this. I want you to read this. And he said, something about this man just captured my eyes and it made me think. It made him think so much that he stopped the next day and he made a video of himself talking about his experience. And then he said, one of the most haunting, daunting statements I've ever heard. And it's a lesson that we can learn from an atheist. And here's what he said. He said, you know, if you really believe this whole Jesus thing and who this Jesus was, and you believe that there's a heaven or a hell, how much do you have to hate somebody not to tell him? That's coming from an atheist! An atheist said, how much you have to hate somebody not to tell them the good news of who Jesus is, which is the gospel. And so this morning, as we're walking by faith and part of walking by faith, it is trusting and believing. Lord, okay, you have me here for a reason. I said it earlier, as long as you have breath, you have purpose. You got a purpose in life. And you know our purpose in life, if you're a follower of Jesus, is to is to have fellowship with him vertically. Man, we're having this relationship with the Lord through His Son Jesus. And then it is to live differently horizontally and share the gospel. And when people approach Jesus and said, what are the two greatest commandments? And he said, he took all those commandments, right? Took all those commandments, and put them down to two commandments, and we still can't follow them, right? But two he says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind, your soul, your strength. That's vertical. And then he said, love your neighbor as yourself. That's horizontal. And loving your neighbor as yourself is. Why in the world would you keep the good news and keep that from somebody else? Knowing that? And I get it. Sometimes we don't share the gospel because out of fear or we don't know what to say. Well, learn what to say. There's resources out there today, that and people you can watch and learn from. And just just do it. And trust, trust what God will do. Trust the Holy Spirit that resides in you. That's walking by faith. It's trusting. All right. Lord, you've you know, we are in a new neighborhood. And, man, Holly and I look at that. Okay, we have a new we have a new mission field. And so we're trying to get in the contact with our neighbors and, and hanging out with them a little bit and learning about them. And the other night, one of our neighbors up the street and, and we started talking. And I've been praying for him. He's what I call in our church. We call we have a thing called Hoosier One. Who's that one person in your life that far? It's near to you, but far from God. Well, this neighbor is near to me, literally. But I don't know if he knew the new the Lord or not. So I started talking to him and he started saying some things. And man, we wound up in a gospel conversation. Come to find out, he's a believer, but he's got some church hurt. I said, dude, there was no perfect church and if you find one, you better run from it because you'll screw it up, right? It's not. And so God has given us, he's equipped us to be the walk by faith and take the gospel to the ends of the earth. And that's what he's called us to do. And a lot of you in this room, I told you earlier, man, you, you you've been faithful. You've been faithful. You're thinking, man, it's this teaching, this Sunday school lesson really impacting these young people is doing, you know, Kiddo Camp and Children's Church or whatever it might be, you know, is that really impacting people? Answer yes. Yes. You got a couple us right here, man. You impacted our lives. So keep on, keep on. And if you're not serving somewhere in this church then why? Don't be a consumer. Don't be a consumer. First of all, is there a room for one more one more person in this place? There is. And we ask it every Sunday morning in our church. Man, do we have room for one more? Yes. So what are we doing with the gospel? Let's walk by faith. Walk by faith and listen. It may not always turn out peachy keen. And. And you're going to suffer because Jesus said so, but I think it's worth it. I think it's so worth it. And so this morning, I don't know where you are in your walk with the Lord. I don't know if you have that, and if you have never surrendered your life to him. That's that's what it is. You surrender and you give it all up to him. And this morning you can do that. I think in a little while we'll have an invitation, and you can come talk to one of the pastors. You can come talk with me or whoever you know and just say, man, I, I need Jesus. There's no need to clean yourself up to come. It's just, I, I need Jesus, I want to walk by faith. And maybe you're here this morning and you are walking by faith, and you're a follower of Jesus and you're just trying to you. Maybe God put somebody on your heart that you that doesn't know the Lord. And so I pray, Lord, give me the ability, give me the boldness this week. Or maybe you're walking through some suffering. You're walking through some difficulty and you're wondering, man, God. Where are you? Well, gather a few people together and come down to this altar here and just pray together, Lord, and watch your faith be be strengthened because of that. I don't know where you might be this morning, but the invitation is just to be obedient. Be obedient to the father. You'll be into the father. We're going to pray together and then Pastor John’s going to come back up and and lead us. But let's pray together. Lord, I thank you, God. I can't say enough how much I just love this church and these people in this church, and so blessed by their faithfulness. And Lord, I know you have. You have so many more years left here at Valley View Church. And Lord, you have called these people here for this time and this season. For a reason. And so, Lord, I pray that as they continue to walk through this series, Lord, that you would just strengthen your faith. Your word tells us that our faith is strengthened by the hearing of your word. And so may we be people of your Word each and every day. And God, we would trust you more and more every day, and even even through the things that just don't make sense. God, that we would just trust you because you are God and you are good. And father, I pray this morning for someone here who doesn't know you, they have never surrendered their life. I pray that they know that you demonstrated how much you loved them by the giving of your son, Jesus Christ. And when Jesus says, I'm the way, the truth, and the life and nobody comes to me, comes to my father except through me, what an exclusive statement that is. And and either Jesus was a mad man or he was a liar, or he is Lord. So, God, I pray this morning that people would put their faith and trust in you and call you Lord God, thank you for how you love us. I pray this in Jesus name. Amen.