[Morning Sermon] Sent to Proclaim (Luke 9:1-10)

Jesus has empowered His church to extend His mission into the world. By His Spirit, He evokes a response from everyone who hears—whether it's joyful acceptance in those whose hearts have been prepared to receive the Word or the perplexity and rejection of those who continue to walk in darkness. This ought to encourage us to be about His mission to proclaim the Gospel to the ends of the earth. He is sovereign, and He is with us even to the end of the age.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Would you please open your Bibles to Luke chapter 9? We're going to be looking at Luke 9, verses 1 through 10. And while you turn there, I will ask you if you have ever watched Mission Impossible. Yeah, I see some enthusiastic hands. The TV show or the movies? Some of you are like, TV show? What? Yeah, so it was a TV show in the 60s. There's also a bunch of Tom Cruise movies. I think they're done, but every time they put one out, they say it's the last one. They realize, hey, we like money, let's make another one. So whatever. But the show, you know, the movies, they invariably start with the what is his name? Ethan, whatever, whoever, the main guy. He's receiving his message, and there's some kind of recording that says, this is your mission, should you choose to accept it. I don't know what government agency he's working for, where he gets to choose whether or not he accepts his mission, but that's what it says. And then it goes on to outline some absolutely crazy, impossible mission that would only be, you know, that can only be pulled off on TV, right? Today, in this story that we're that we're looking at, we're gonna read about the mission that Jesus has for his church. And unlike Mission Impossible, sorry, we don't get a choice whether we accept it or not, it is our mission. And on our own strength, it is an impossible mission. Because it requires us to be the heralds of a coming kingdom and the heralds of good news to a people who want nothing to do with that kingdom or its king. Jesus essentially calls us to put down a rebellion, but he calls us to do it not with swords or guns, but with words. Like I said, an impossible mission on our own strength. But what we're gonna see in our passage today is that Jesus gives us what we need in order to prosecute this mission, in order to succeed, because ultimately the mission is his. And the power for the mission flows from him through us and to the people that we're called to reach. That's what we're gonna see this morning. So I invite you to rise as I read the sermon text. Again, it's Luke 9, verses 1 through 9. And Jesus called the twelve together, and he gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. And he said to them, Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money, and do not have two tunics. And whatever house you enter, stay there, and from there depart. And wherever they do not receive you, when you leave that town, shake off the dust from your feet as a testimony against them. And they departed and went through the villages, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere. Now Herod, the Tetrarch, heard about all that was happening, and he was perplexed, because it was said by some that John had been raised from the dead, by some that Elijah had appeared, and by others that one of the prophets of old has risen. Herod said, John I beheaded, but who is this about whom I hear such things? And he sought to see him. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the power that is in your word and through your word. And we pray that you would send your spirit now to help us hear your powerful word rightly. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. So last weekend, my family, we uh returned from a week in the Blue Ridge Mountains. If you didn't know, the PCA has a camp, retreat, and conference center out there. Uh it's an excellent place to go for a family camp like we did. It's also a great place to send your kids for a week or two in the summer. Uh but anyway, on our way back, we decided to go a different way than we went. We wanted to swing through Chattanooga for a little while to come back. And what that did for us, or what that did to us, is it led us to spend what felt like an eternity on the twistiest and curviest roads you've ever experienced going through the Blue Ridge Mountains. And we were just sick. Thankfully, the Lord kept us from getting as sick as we could have. But but we spent what felt like an eternity twisting and turning our way through the mountains, wondering if we would ever get back onto the straight road to our destination. I share that because as we come into Luke chapter 9, this chapter can feel very much like that. There is a lot going on. We'll see in the coming weeks. There's just a lot of different stuff coming on. It twists and turns in different directions before we finally get back onto the straight path to Jerusalem. But as we work through, the main through line is this. Luke 9 is the chapter where Jesus prepares his disciples to embark on his mission for them. In these opening verses, he is focused, really in this whole chapter, he is focused specifically on the twelve. Not to the exclusion of the broader disciple group of disciples, not to the exclusion of us, but he's focused specifically on the twelve because he's pouring the human foundation of the church. And it's on that foundation that the Spirit will build. Through the rest of Luke, but especially in the book of Acts. So far, we've seen the 12, they've kind of watched Jesus as he's preached and he's taught and he's healed. They've been like his apprentices sitting on the sidelines watching him. But now it's their time to get into the game and to start emulating their master. These first nine verses that we look at today, they give us a taste of what that looks like. They give us a taste of what they're being called to do and how they're being called to do it. And what I hope we're gonna see as we dive into this is that Jesus invested his very own power and authority in them. He invested his very own power and authority in us, the church, so that when we go into the world to share the good news, he goes with us to accomplish his mission through us. We'll flesh that out under three headings. First, Jesus extends his mission through the church. Second, he empowers the church for that mission. And third, he evokes a response. So Jesus extends, Jesus empowers, Jesus evokes. We'll begin, of course, with his extension. In verses one through two, Luke tells us that Jesus called the twelve together and he gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. That's pretty incredible, right? Let me just stop for a second. You probably read that a hundred times before, but he gave them power and authority to proclaim the kingdom and to heal. I mean, it's one thing to pat the disciples on the backside and tell them to go out there and give it their all. It's quite another to give them the power to cast out demons and cure diseases. I mean, you can argue with a sermon, but you can't argue, at least you can't argue if you're in your right mind with the blind receiving their sight and the lame getting up to walk, and the guy who's spent years naked among the tombs being delivered of his demons and put back in a right mind and ready to sit at the feet of Jesus. You can't argue with that. Now, that is incredible, right? That Jesus would give them this kind of power and authority. But the truly incredible thing is that Jesus doesn't just give them power and authority to work wonders, he actually invites them into something that he himself has been doing since even before he was born. Think of the angel Gabriel and how he came to Mary and described Jesus' miraculous conception in her virgin womb. He said in Luke 1:35 that the power of the Most High would overshadow her. In other words, the the child would be produced by the power of God Himself. And then in Luke 4, 14, after the Spirit descends on Jesus in his baptism and then drives him out in the wilderness, it says that Jesus returns in the power of the Spirit to Galilee to begin his earthly ministry, his preaching, his teaching, his working wonders, healing, casting out demons, all that sort of thing. Later on in chapter 4, when Jesus is preaching in the teaching, teaching in the synagogue, he casts a demon out of a man. And that rightly causes a stir. In verse 36, they say, What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits and they come out. Chapter 5, Jesus forgives the paralytic of his sins and heals his body. And he does it in order to show not just the people, but the Jewish leaders that the Son of Man possesses the power to heal and the authority to forgive. Right? That's the point of that story. To put it in a nutshell, Jesus is the real deal. He is the Messiah. He is the deliverer that the prophets have been talking about. He is God in the flesh, come to rescue his people from every last one of their enemies, foreign and domestic. Power and authority. That's been the name of the game for Jesus up to this point in Luke. And now what do we see Jesus do with that power and authority? He shares it. He shares it with his apostles so that they can go forth and proclaim the kingdom of God. And as they do that, as they bring the message out to that region and eventually to the ends of the earth, God will bear witness to their words through the works of their hands. God will put his stamp of divine approval on their message by healing the sick, by giving sight to the blind, by giving legs to the crippled, by even casting out demons. Paul says in Romans 1, 16 through 17 that he is not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. How can Paul say that? Paul can say it because Jesus has imbued his church with his very own power and authority so that the message we proclaim carries with it the divine power to destroy strongholds. Now it's important that we note here that when Jesus shares his power and authority with the twelve, he gives it, but he does not give it away. Right? Jesus is the vine, they are the branches. Cut off from him, they're worse than death. And so the power that they possess, the power and authority that Jesus is sharing is not a limitless power and authority. It's constrained. It's constrained by the mission that the Son has from the Father and for the church. Jesus isn't out here making magicians and miracle workers of the twelve. He's making messengers who are sent to proclaim the kingdom. And this period in the church, it's a radical period when the gospel is breaking out into the world and God is choosing to bear witness to the gospel through miraculous healing, through exorcisms, which through all of these incredible things that our modern imaginations struggle to comprehend. But here's the $64,000 question. Do we possess this power today? You don't know whether to nod or shake your head. The answer is yes. It's yes, but with an important qualification. In the Great Commission at the end of Matthew's gospel, Jesus said to the twelve, really the eleven, because Judas quit pretty spectacularly. Jesus said, All authority in heaven and on art on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. This was a word to the church meant to endure until the final day when Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead. He possesses all authority in heaven and on earth, and he is with us. He is with us always. Exercising that authority through us to the end of the age. There was a time in history when the gospel broke forth through powerful signs of exorcism and healing, the things we read about in the gospels, the things we read about in Acts. And even today, there are dark spiritual enclaves in the world that usern, modern folk struggle to understand. And the breaking forth of the gospel often happens in those places in powerful and miraculous ways and mess with our imagination. It's not the kind of stuff that we're used to, it's not the kind of stuff we hear. We don't typically see those flashy displays of power. But does that mean that Jesus' power and authority has left his church? Does that mean that Jesus' power and authority has left our church? Well, we may not see the big flashy displays, the miraculous power at works. But what do we see? We see healings. We pray and God responds. We see healings of body, we see healings of mind, we see healings of soul. We see God rescuing people out of decades of abuse and dysfunction. We see God grabbing hold of drug addicts and turning their lives completely around. We see God convincing workaholics to quit building up their kingdom and start building God's kingdom instead. And I'm talking about things that we've seen, I've seen here in this church with people who belong to Hickory Grove. Miracles of deliverance from bondage that only the power of God could accomplish. Anytime anyone turns from their sin to Christ, we see a resurrection miracle. And it happens by the power of the Holy Spirit who works both within and without. We see the going forth of the gospel in power, even without the testimony of great signs and wonders from heaven. So I ask the question again: does the power and authority of Jesus still reside in his church today? Yeah, it does. Has Jesus given us the power and authority to go forth and proclaim the kingdom of God? Yes, he has. And when we do, does he show up and work signs and wonders?

unknown 16:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

You better believe he does. They may not be flashy, they may not be the kind of things that you can record and post on Facebook or whatever, but yeah, he shows up and he works wonders because Jesus' mission to seek and to save the lost did not stop with his ascension. It continues. Luke is the story of what Jesus began to do on earth. Acts is the unfinished account of what he is continuing to do in and through his church by the power of his Holy Spirit. Jesus is on mission, and his mission is our mission. And he will give us everything we need in order to accomplish that mission. That brings us to our second heading. Jesus empowers his disciples for mission. Now that seems like a really simple observation, right? Just kind of reading the text there. But it's really a profound thing if you can get your hands around it. Because if you look at Scripture, there are lots of things that Jesus calls us to do that just are hard, right? Maybe even impossible to us in certain circumstances. Like in Luke 6, when he calls us to love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, bless those who curse us, and pray for those who abuse us. Or Ephesians 4, where he commands us to forgive one another as God in Christ has forgiven us. 1 John 2, he urges us to resist the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life. Support your ambitions, or subordinate your ambitions to the welfare of your brothers and sisters. Reckon others more highly than yourselves. Share the gospel with people who don't want to hear it. Deny yourself. Take up your cross and follow him. This is just a little smattering of all the things that God calls us to do as we reflect the new life we have in Christ. And it's all real hard. And from a certain viewpoint, it's pretty impossible. But this passage reminds us that God does not call us to do these things without first giving us the resources to do them. He does not send us on a spiritual suicide mission. He does not send us on a spiritual exercise and futility. He gives us everything we need in order to get the job done. And when Jesus says that, when he teaches that, he's not just talking about spiritual things. He's not just talking in terms of like motivation. He's actually talking about everyday material provision, that kind of stuff. In verse 3, Jesus says to the twelve, take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money, and do not have two tunics. So no changes of clothes. Just go. Go as you are. And trust. Go as you are and trust that I will provide you everything you need. I will take care of you. Now it's important we don't take this as a specific and detailed prescription for Christian life and mission today. It's not as though Jesus is saying that every missionary or church planter who turns up with money in his wallet and a change of clothes is sinning. That's not the point here. The point is to work it into the disciples' bones that when Jesus empowers you for mission and when Jesus sends you out on that mission, your provision is already covered. It's taken care of. So you don't, there might be prudential sense in right, having your fundraising campaigns, making your plans and all that sort of stuff, right? There's prudential sense there. But at the end of the day, you don't have to waste a bunch of time trying to dot all the I's and cross all the T's before you get to work. You can move forward in trust, knowing that God's got you. And you don't have to scheme your way into the world in order to accomplish his mission for you. That's what verse 4 is all about. Jesus says, in whatever house you enter, stay there, and from there depart. No, here's what it means. Here's what Jesus is saying. Traveling philosophers and teachers in that day, they'd go from house to house and they'd set up with whoever would take them. But they wouldn't stop looking for an upgrade. Their goal was to climb from house to house until they could get themselves into the postiest setup that they could find and camp out there. And they would do that because their mission wasn't to share the truth so much as it was to use the truth or what they could sell as the truth for their own gain. Now that was not at all the case with the twelve. They shared the truth of God Himself. And it wasn't at all about their gain, it was about his glory. And so, in order to keep from giving the wrong impression, Jesus told them trust in my provision, don't go from house to house. If someone receives you, there's your camp, there's your headquarters, go there, be satisfied with it until it's time to move on to the next town. Now, what does that look like for us today? What does it look like for us to trust in God's provision? As a church and as individuals, I'll tell you, when it comes to this church, when it comes to Hickory Grove, that's a question that we have been wrestling with for months. Because we've been seeing a lot of new faces, right? The sanctuary fits a little or feels a little tighter than it did a year ago this time. Most Sundays, the nursery is packed to the gills. These are good things, these are wonderful things. Jesus is blessing our mission to be a loving family that glorifies God by building people up in Christ. He's blessing that. But now we've got to figure out how we use the facilities he's already provided in order to serve that mission. Or whether we need to grow the facilities, or whether we need to find new facilities. What does it look like if we continue to grow the way we're growing? And how do we best follow Jesus and the mission that he's leading us into in Wilson County? Nothing about that is simple. It's complicated, it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of energy, and we are prayerfully working our way through it. But stories like this will remind us that we can trust God to give us what we need and to lead us where we need to go. And whenever that might be, or wherever that might be, we don't have to wait. We don't have to wait around to be about our mission. We've got everything we need right now to do what he's called us to do right here, in this moment, in this place. We can move forward in faith and not in fear because we know that Jesus will never fail to provide. It's true for the church, the church. It's true for our church, and it's true for you as an individual. It's true for me. God has called you to the same things, right? That He's called all of us. He's called you to glorify and enjoy Him, He's called you to know Him and make Him known. He's called you to participate in the church's mission to make disciples. Those are things that we are all called to do beyond the shadow of a doubt. And yet, at the same time, God has fit each one of us to do those kinds of things in unique ways. And so I don't know. I don't know where exactly God might be leading you. I have some pretty good guesses for a lot of you. But I'm willing to bet that you know. I'm willing to bet that if you set aside your fears, if you set aside the excuses, you know exactly where God wants you to go. And exactly what he wants you to do. So let this passage be an encouragement to you wherever you are and whatever you are looking at. He's gone before you. So quit convincing yourself that he hasn't and get out there. Then watch and see what Jesus will do. He will surprise you. He always does. He never fails. So we've seen Jesus extend his mission through the 12. We've seen him empower them to carry out that mission. And now we're ready to see that because the mission, the power, and the authority all come from Jesus, one way or another, the world's gonna notice. Brings us to our third heading. Jesus evokes a response. As the 12 go into the world, they can expect a number of reactions to the gospel, from reception to rejection and everything in between. There's no neutral when it comes to the kingdom of heaven. Either you're with God or you're against God. Either you want the kingdom to come or you want it and its messengers to go away because it messes with your kingdom. There's no in between. So Jesus prepares the twelve, and he prepares them specifically for rejection in verse 5. When he says, wherever they do not receive you, when you leave that town, shake off the dust from your feet as a testimony against them. This shaking of the feet. It was a ceremonial gesture. Jews often did it when they would leave Gentile lands as a kind of symbolic way to ditch all of the pagan cooties that they picked up while they were over there. But what does Jesus do? He actually flips that up upside down by telling the twelve to shake their feet as a sign against the Jews in particular, who act like pagans in rejecting the gospel. So don't miss what Jesus is doing here. Jesus is actually anticipating the rejection of the gospel. He's expecting people to reject it. And he started preparing his disciples for that back in chapter 8, when he told them the parable of the sower or of the soils. And here he's preparing for them again. And in preparing them for that rejection, he is reminding them that the only thing they can control is their preaching. They cannot control the people's hearing. It's a good reminder for me. The only thing I can control is what I'm saying right now. I can't control whether you receive it or not. I'll have a good gauge of that by how many emails turn up in my inbox tomorrow. We'll just wait and see. The only thing any of us can control is what we share in faithfulness to God and by the power of his spirit working through us. We can't control whether they receive and how they receive. And so the thing to do when the disciples are rejected isn't to kick themselves over their failure or to try to beat their audience into submission, but to shake it off and move on. Insert Taylor Swift reference here. That same thing is true for us. We all have people in our lives who are just utterly resistant to the gospel. People we witness to, people we pray for, people who are just so utterly and obviously lost, and we want nothing more than for them to be found by Christ. They're just not having it. They don't want to hear about it. They're not interested in Jesus. In this passage, I don't think it teaches us to give up on people, but it does give us the freedom to be strategic about who we witness to and when. You don't have to keep beating your head against a wall and feeling like you're failing Jesus. You don't have to make every single conversation about the gospel, especially when the person has said they're not interested. You can shake the dust off your feet, continue to pray for that person, and wait for the Lord to show you if and when you have another opportunity. You can do that. And Jesus is reminding us that we have the freedom to. Herod, he was appointed by the Romans to be something of a regional governor over Galilee and Perea. And he would have had a particular interest in this new movement that had begun with Jesus and was now spreading like wildfire through his twelve apostles. And in verse 7 it says he's perplexed. He's perplexed not so much by the movement, but by the people's interpretation of the movement. Some say that John the Presbyterian has come back from the dead. Or maybe it's the prophet Elijah. Or maybe it's some other prophet from the Old Testament. Maybe that's what's going on. And that's actually not a crazy idea. In Malachi 3:1, God prophesied through the prophet, behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. Malachi 4 5, he names that messenger, Elijah the prophet. And that actually became a popular idea in Second Temple Judaism that God would send a prophet before he came back to deliver his people. If not Elijah, then maybe Moses, maybe Jeremiah, maybe Isaiah. The people expressed that expectation back in Luke 7, verse 16, when Jesus had raised a widow's son from death to life, and as soon as he sat up, they all glorified God and they said, A great prophet has arisen among us, and God has visited his people. Herod knew enough about Judaism to get that, to understand that, even if he did not personally believe it. What he was especially perplexed by, though, was the idea that the leader of all of this was John. Why? Because Herod was the one to arrest John back in Luke chapter 3 and later on behead him in prison. If you want to know more about that and why it happened, just go read Matthew 14. And so Herod's pretty confident that John isn't responsible for all this, and that makes him all the more curious. In verse 9, who is this about whom I hear such things? I think I need to go and see him. So do you see what's happening here? The mission is advancing. The gospel is going forward. People are noticing something is happening. Something that the people, even the upper echelons of society, even the people in power, something that they have to acknowledge even if they don't know how to explain it. Jesus is evoking every kind of response as the good news of the kingdom breaks out into the world. And even if they're all not following to their knees in joyful acceptance of the gospel, they're asking questions. They're wanting to know more. They're wanting to learn more about this Jesus. Now, eventually we'll see when we get to Luke 23 that Herod was not an honest seeker. He didn't want the kingdom so much as he wanted its power. And when Jesus refused to play that game, Herod teamed up with Pilate to put Jesus down, just like Herod's successor would put down James and persecute all the other disciples. But we can't control that. Again, we can't control the reception. Some people will see the kingdom come in power, and they'll rejoice to hear the news of their deliverance, and others will reject it. Because in order for them to rejoice that the Lord is king, they have to admit they're not. In our sin and rebellion, that's something that none of us want to do. But it's not on us. It's not on us to conquer and subdue other people's hearts. It's not on us to change other people from the inside. It's on us to proclaim the kingdom with all the power and authority of its king. He's the heart changer. He's the one who sends forth his mighty word, and that word will never return to him void. Isaiah 55 says it will always return to him, accomplishing exactly what he intends. And so I want to encourage you. I want to encourage myself. I want to encourage us as a church. Jesus came on a mission to seek and to save the lost. That was his mission. That's the mission that he accomplished on the cross when he gave his life up for sinners. Jesus is continuing that mission, though. He is extending that mission through the church, not in the sense that we redeem people or that we need another sacrifice on the cross, but that through the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus Himself through us is seeking and saving the lost, applying the benefits of his cross to them, bringing them into his family, ushering them into eternal life. So if you're in Christ, if you've put your trust in him, then he has given you his spirit. He has granted you all the power and all the authority that you need to go forth and proclaim the kingdom in word and deed. He's invited you into that mission and he's given you everything you need to succeed in it. And when you do, when you walk in it faithfully, when we as a church walk in it faithfully, Jesus will evoke a response. Sometimes it'll be a negative response. People will reject it. But you might just be surprised at how many people don't. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. That's our mission. We should really choose to accept it. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, what an astounding thing that you would send your only son into the world to seek and to save rebels and sinners like us. And Father, what an incredible thing that you would not simply save us, but you would conscript us into that effort. You would take us from sinners to saints. And you would send us out into the world to proclaim the salvation that you have given so freely in Christ. We were once beggars. And you fed us and clothed us. And now you send us out not to brag and not to boast about our wonderful meal and our wonderful clothes, but to show others where they can come be fed and clothed as well. I pray, Lord, that you would remind us that you've given us everything you need for everything we need for that work. That we would stop buying the lies. That we would not accept the excuses. Lord, that we would not succumb to our fear, to our anxiety. But that, Lord, you would give us boldness, the kind of boldness that comes only from your spirit, to go, to speak, to share, and to watch as you work wonders. Thank you, Lord, that you are building your church. And that you have always and only built your church through the word. We don't need gimmicks, we don't need programs, we don't need schemes, we just need you. So help us. Help us to be faithful. Help us to be bold. Help us to be about your mission so that you might build your kingdom and not ours. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. I'm going to invite up our ruling elders now to prepare the Lord's table for us. You know, I mentioned in the prayer this idea of beggars looking for bread. You know, that's our reality. God saved us not because we were special, not because we had anything lovely within us to commend us to God. He saved us because of his grace. We were beggars, and he gave us some bread. And now he calls us to go and find others and tell them where they can come and sit at the meal as well. That's what's being pictured for us in the table. When we come to this table, we partake not just of bread and wine or bread and juice, but we partake of Jesus Himself. These elements, they don't become the actual body and blood of Christ. That's an error made by other branches of the church over time. But we believe that by the power of the Holy Spirit and according to Jesus' appointment, he takes this bread and wine and he turns them into vehicles for union and communion with Him. So if your faith is in Christ, if you've been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, if you've joined yourself to a Bible-believing, Bible-preaching church where you can know and be known, then when you come to this table, you will receive Jesus Himself. And he will remind you of the great gift that you have, and he will strengthen you, he will give you another taste of that power and authority that you need to go out and proclaim the kingdom. That's what will happen when you come to this table in faith. Now, if you don't have that faith, if you have not come to Jesus for salvation, if you've not joined yourself to the body of Christ, then Scripture says, hang on a minute. Because what you come to and get to this table, and what you come and find at this table isn't just the word picture, but the word himself. And if you try to partake of the word without being in a right relationship to him, that's not gonna go well for you. We don't want that for you. We want you to come to this table on Jesus' terms. And if you want to talk more about that, please, let's talk more about that. You can talk to me or any one of these guys. But right now I'm gonna pray. I'm gonna ask the Lord to bless our meal, and then I'll invite you up to receive the elements. Once everybody's been served, we can partake together. Father, thank you for this meal and thank you for this time together. Thank you for the ways in which you use it to strengthen and to encourage us. And I pray that you would do that here today. Give us what we need. Remind us of what we have in you and nourish us so that we can go forth and be about your mission in our world. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.