The People of God | Other Sheep

Do you ever wonder if you really belong with God?
 Do you feel like an outsider looking in?
 Have you struggled to understand God's plans or questioned whether there is a place for you in His family?

Jesus is the good news for people who feel uncertain, unworthy, or far from God. In Romans 9, we are reminded that salvation rests on God's mercy and grace, not on our performance or ability to figure everything out. The gospel gives us a foundation that holds when our questions feel bigger than our answers. Jesus was rejected so that we could be welcomed, accepted, and brought home as beloved children of God.

God's plan of salvation is greater than we can imagine. His heart has always been to gather people from every background into one family through Christ. If you have ever wondered whether God could love you, know you, or claim you as His own, this message points to the hope of the gospel. Through faith in Jesus, you are not a guest trying to earn a place. You are invited into the family of God, and there are still other sheep waiting to hear the good news of His grace.

Scripture: Romans 9:14 to 26
 "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy." Romans 9:15
 "There they will be called children of the living God." Romans 9:26

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the first print of the sermon of the podcast, where each week we dive into scripture, wrestle with truth, and discover how faith intersects our lives. God's word meets us where we are, challenging, shaping, and calling us into something greater. No matter where you are on your journey, you belong here. And we're praying that this sermon might help you take a next step in faith towards Jesus. Hey, let's dive into today's message together.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Well, good morning, church. And thanks, Tim. We do love you. You're such a good guy. I just love it. I invite you to open the scripture today. We're going to be reading out of Romans chapter 9, starting in verse 14. What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. It does not therefore depend on human desire or effort, but on God's mercy. For Scripture says to Pharaoh, I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. One of you will say to me, Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will? But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, Why did you make me like this? Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use? What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath, prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory? Even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews, but also from the Gentiles. As he says in Hosea, I will call them my people who are not my people, and I'll call her my loved one, who is not my loved one. And in the very place where it was said to them, You are not my people, there they will be called children of the living God. Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved. For the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth with speed and finality. It is just as Isaiah said previously, unless the Lord Almighty had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah. This is the word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Amen. Thank you, Jeff. Thanks be to God for his word. We're having elders read our passage this uh series. Sometimes in a church this size, we lose track. Who are my elders? Who are helping to you know to lead us on the way? And so you're gonna get to see elders up in front reading. And thank you for taking a little time to recognize 10 years. I can't believe that uh Abigail and I and my family, we've been with you for 10 years, and uh it has flown by, and it's uh it's a joy to celebrate, give thanks to God for it. And um that whole video and stuff was a surprise to me, which is really hard to do because I'm pretty much in charge of what happens in worship. And uh so good job, staff, surprising me with uh, hey, guess what? Here's this video, and it was really touching. So um it's the it's the privilege, it's the honor of my life that God called me to be a shepherd among you and to be part of this team, this church, and what God's doing here. So uh so thank you for that. Appreciate it. We're in Romans. You've heard the passage read, it is cause for prayer. Let us pray. So, Lord, thank you for this passage. Thank you for the ways you teach us and the ways that you speak to us, and uh the ways that you challenge us and stretch us, and and we, Lord, we can't understand everything, but we love you and we trust you, and we know that you're speaking to us. And so open our hearts and our minds, help us to think, help us to understand, and help us to leave here saying, I heard the voice of the Lord and I love him. In Jesus' name we pray. The church said, Amen. Romans 9. Romans 9, 10, and 11. We're in we're in this passage, we're in this part where we're talking about the people of God, but Romans 9, 10, and 11 are kind of famously difficult chapters to understand. And they're also famously some of the chapters in the scriptures that are the most relied upon to help us to understand a doctrine called predestination. Predestination. So, how many get excited when someone says, hey, we're gonna talk about predestination today? You get super excited about it. Woo-hoo! It's great, it's fantastic. But it's it's a wonderful doctrine. It's a wonderful gift when we understand what we can't understand and we hold on to it rightly. I'm gonna tell you a terrible joke. This is a terrible joke, really bad joke. And I tell it all the time, and it goes like this. What did the Presbyterian say after he fell down the stairs? Thank God that's over with. You say, oh, okay, I'm laughing. You're laughing to be nice. Because you have to think, you have to think, like, what does that even mean? What are we talking about? It's the whoa, the Presbyterian thinks that everything is all mapped out, and so if I fell down the stairs and I just had to fall down the stairs, and now I'm just glad that it's over with, so I can get up and say, praise God that it's over with. But but actually, that that very joke uh illustrates kind of the trouble that we're in when we start to think about this doctrine of salvation. Because someone says predestination, someone says we're gonna talk about election. And actually, what we start to think in our mind, we start to think of something else. It's a philosophy that is called predeterminism. Predeterminism. It's a philosophy that says that everything in my life has been pre-planned, pre-mapped out, and my only job is to sort of experience it. It's as if I'm a wind-up toy, and God just wound me up and let me go, and my only job is to suffer all these things that God has planned for me. That's actually not the reformed and Presbyterian doctrine of predestination. That's something else. It does exist. It exists in worldviews, it exists in other world religions. It is not actually what we are lifting up when we say predestination. So we're gonna throw this thing on the floor here, on the table. We're gonna try to get a few things from Romans 9. We're gonna do our best with this. But let me tell you what's gonna happen. We are not gonna solve this. Not in 20 minutes of preaching. It's not gonna happen. But here's what we know salvation belongs to the Lord. Salvation belongs to the Lord. And because salvation belongs to the Lord, you know what that means? There's only so much we can understand. But what He has given us to understand, what He has revealed to us to understand and to proclaim, it is sufficient, and it is glorious, and it is reason for great joy. So we're gonna we're gonna dump into this. As I said, this is the part of Romans where what we're seeing is the people of God. And so we've told this series the people of God. And people of God, they are determined and they're characterized. Who are the people of God? What are they like? What are they doing in the world? And we recognize that God has chosen people unto himself. He has drawn people toward him. This goes all the way back to Abraham when he came into Abraham's life and he said, Guess what, Abraham? Abraham said, What? And God said, You're mine. What? You're mine. Why? Because I said so. And Abraham and all of his, God creates a covenant with Abraham. He says, You're my people. And then what does God do? He takes this people and he says, Because you're my people, I'm gonna deal with you as your God. You're my people, I'm your God. And when I deal with my people in the world, here's what's gonna happen: the way that I treat my people is gonna be a demonstration for the rest of the world of who I am. People in the world, nations in the world that don't know me, they're gonna know a little bit about me by the way I treat my people. The chosen people of God. God said, Look, my chosen people, you've been brought into this blessing so that you can be a blessing. So that you can be a light to the Gentiles, to other nations, a way for God to reach and include other sheep. That's the title of our message today. Other sheep. Jesus said in his teaching, he said, For there are other sheep in John chapter 10. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. Other sheep. How is God bringing other sheep into the fold? Surprising, unexpected brothers and sisters. And here's the thing other sheep? That's us. We're among them. Let's dig in. Verse 14. What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. It does not therefore depend on human desire or effort, but on God's mercy. Salvation depends. Salvation hangs not on our sort of desires or our performance. Salvation hangs on what? According to this, on God's mercy. And that's a praise God. Because if it depended on me or on you, where would we be? Paul has thrown on the table, just up for the, he's jumping in here. He's saying, so then is God just or unjust? He's jumping in at this passage, and what he's just put on the table is the story of Jacob and Esau. Jacob's sacrifice to God was accepted. Esau's sacrifice was rejected. And so Paul put that on the table. He said, What about this? Is this not fair? Is this unfair of God? And then as soon as he has put that on the table, what he says is, you know what? Who's to judge? The real question is, who's to judge? The big question, church, hanging in the air as we go through 9, 10, 11 of Romans, and it's going to take some energy. We've got to put our thinking caps on. You got to get your Bibles open. We've got to be studying Romans 9, 10, 11. The big question hanging like a cloud behind these three chapters of scripture is this question. Why did Israel not receive Jesus as Messiah? Why did that happen? Paul's trying to dig into that. He's going to dig all around in there. He's going to turn that up. What happened here? Why? Some of them did. Many of them did. Were these not the people who were marinated in God's grace, chosen in his covenants, given the prophets and the scriptures, and given prophecy about the Messiah and to watch for him? How is it that this all faltered? Many of them did believe, but many turned away. Why? He's going to struggle with that. We're going to struggle with that. And what we're learning is being part of the people of God, being part of God's people, it's more complicated than simply being a part of the genetic line of Abraham. It's more complicated than it's bigger. In fact, it's bigger, maybe, than we can fully comprehend. If you're like me, whenever we bump up against pastors about predestination, election, because you get in that kind of wrong thinking about it, I think we're talking about something else, maybe. But you know what? It puts me back, it puts me back in like elementary school, gym class, when you're lined up and picked for teams. Do you remember that? Like they line us up. We're gonna play dodgeball. First of all, did they even do dodgeball in school anymore? How brutal. Like you just you're chucking that thing. And and you just so you pick one person and says, okay, you pick your team. And so then a kid, a student, is gonna pick, and you're just standing there in line, you know, like shifting your weight back and forth. Like, am I gonna get picked? Am I gonna get left behind? How come Matt's getting picked? Matt's terrible at dodgeball. Um am I gonna be the last one standing here? What's gonna happen, right? Am I picked or am I unpicked? Listen, predestination, what we're talking about, God's plan of salvation, his side, it's so much more complex than that. It's so much more complex. So let's lay it out on the table, okay? Let's give ourselves a range of understanding. There are some who say, listen, you just gotta accept it, you gotta learn to take it in mind and just and just accept it. God has created and determined a certain class of people for salvation, and God has created and determined a certain class of people for eternal damnation. We call this double predestination. Next on the sort of the range would be predestination. It says, you know what? We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. None of us knows our way home, but God, in his sovereign mercy, has chosen to save some. Glory to God. Predestination. Next on that line would be something that's called, maybe you've heard this term, Arminianism. That there is a choice to be made by you as an individual, and that choice is gonna be made with the help of God's grace. God's going to send grace to help you make your decision. That would be Arminianisms. And then next on the on the range would be uh look, here's the deal. You present the gospel, it's information. Jesus did what he did, it's published, it's made known, it's proclaimed, it's your responsibility to decide. Yes, I'm for it, no, I'm against it, and you either receive or reject Jesus, and the responsibility is entirely yours. Okay? That's the range. You see that? Now, where are you on the range? Where are you? Where do you belong? Let's all get up and move to different parts of the room. Um, where do you belong? But you see the problem, don't you? It's this range of God's fully in charge and human beings are fully in charge. There's this sort of this range of how do I understand this? How can I map this out? Where do I fit on this range? And here's what I want you to know. This is worthy of study. This is worthy of picking up the scriptures and wrestling and memorizing certain scriptures and gnawing on them before the Lord and saying, How do I understand this? How do I take this to heart? This is worthy of that, because as you do that, you will grow in your knowledge and love of Jesus. But here's the other thing: this is a place where we as Christians very commonly break into teams. And out of pride and self-righteousness, we we proclaim ourselves much more confident in our school of thought than we ought to be. So there's two things that we need to do. One thing is we need to be careful not to be certain about something about which we cannot be certain. Did you follow me? You gotta be cute, you gotta do it again. We have to be careful not to be certain about something we cannot be certain about. Just as much as we need to resist being uncertain about things that God has given us to be certain about. You gotta work that out. And as you work that out, you'll grow. And as you work that out, you'll grow in the likeness of Jesus. It's worthy of your time. But here's the thing you're not gonna solve it. Salvation belongs to the Lord. There's things that we're never gonna understand. Where are you on that scale? So you want to ask, uh you might want to ask, well, where are you, Tim? You know? Where you don't you want to know? Where's Pastor Tim? Where are you on this in this game, right? Well, so I'll tell you. I am a neo-Calvinist, evangelical, Protestant, Augustinian, Reformed Christian, existentialist. And I think you should be too. You know? I mean, if you're not, I don't know if we can be friends. But that's actually true. You can look all that up and be like, oh, that's retem things. Yeah. So see, it isn't that I haven't thought about it. But you know what? It's more than we can understand, it's more than we can comprehend. It's God's mysterious act of salvation. And what he's given us to know, we hold on for sure. But we're but we are unwise to systematize God's work of salvation to the point where there are no questions left. Salvation belongs to the Lord. And we sit in awe and reverence of his mighty acts. So, when God says, get back to the text, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion, church, this is good news. Why? Because of what it says. It does not depend on us. It doesn't depend on human desire. It doesn't depend on me making the right decision, it doesn't depend on me performing well, it doesn't depend on me being able to sort through my heart's longings. It doesn't depend on it depends on what? What does it depend on? It depends on the mercy and grace of God. I am saved not on my merits, but on the basis of God's grace. Praise God. Otherwise, I'd be lost. Amen. And then we get to Pharaoh. What's all this about Pharaoh? He says, look at Pharaoh. What happened with Pharaoh? Listen, God did not create Pharaoh in order to destroy him. But God also did not allow Pharaoh's disobedience to frustrate his sovereign purposes. Let me explain this. Pharaoh hardened his own heart long before the Lord started pressing it harder and firmer. God loved Pharaoh. Remember that. Jesus said, Love your enemies. It's the same God. God loved Pharaoh. And yet he could not let Pharaoh's disobedience thwart his purposes. And so God hardened Pharaoh's heart. He pressed Pharaoh's heart. He pushed on Pharaoh's heart to what? To create this moment where the people of God were freed from slavery. Therefore, God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. The Puritans used to have a saying they said, the same sun that melts the wax hardens the clay. What do you mean? What they mean is the same grace, the same gospel, the same saving work of Jesus, the same thing that melts the heart that's repentant will harden an unrepentant heart. It's God's same act. It's the same grace. One of you then will say to me, verse 19, then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will? See, if this is just about getting lined up and picked for dodgeball, then God's doing the picking. Why am I responsible for not getting picked? Doesn't that make sense? It's a good question. And here's the thing it's more complex than that analogy. We are always responsible for our disobedience. Always. But more importantly, we are in no position to judge. And that's where Paul is really pivoting now. He's saying, wait a minute, just to ask that question, you're putting yourself in a position of judging God. You're putting yourself in a position of saying, did God do it right or wrong? I'm gonna put myself in a position where I'm gonna watch God's actions and I'm gonna render some sort of a decree or judgment about whether he was a good God or not a good God for doing it that way. And Paul says, no, wait a minute, just stop, pause. You've forgotten who you are. God is God, and you are not. Look at verse 20. But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, why did you make me like this? That's an image from Isaiah 29. God is the potter, we are the clay, we're in his hands. We can't stand up and say, God, you're right or God, you're wrong. Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay, some pottery for special purposes and some for common use? Can't the potter do whatever he wants with his own clay? Absolutely. Now, just to be clear, this is the passage where you would come to this camp all the way over here. That God created some for damnation, created some for salvation. That God created and determined the picked, and he created and determined the unpicked. And he sent the unpicked into eternal damnation simply to demonstrate to the picked how good it is to be picked. I know, yeah. Is that that's that's I can understand the logic of that. I understand the logic. But to get there, you know what you have to do? You have to rip out a whole bunch of other verses and throw them away about God's character, that God loves all that he has made, that God made us in his image, that God does not desire that any should be condemned. You'd have to tear those away. So there's something more mysterious happening, you see? And what Paul is really trying to tell us is you're not in a position to judge. Who are you to judge what God decides? Who are you to judge God's decrees? Who are you to measure God's decisions? Who do you think you are? And this is the truth, folks. We put ourselves in that place all the time. Not just about salvation. About all kinds of things that God has declared. All kinds of teachings of the Lord God, all kinds of parts of His word, where you say, Well, I like that. I don't care for that. Lord, Lord, I think you did great here, but this looks really bad. This is terrible, you know. Lord, you know, you're doing it wrong. And if you keep this up, it's gonna go on the performance review. Right? Paul says, Hold on. You've forgotten where we are, who you are. You're standing before the Lord God Almighty. You don't understand his ways, his purposes, you don't know. And so Paul uses what I believe is an illustration where he says, look, hold on. What if? What if he did that? What if God created a whole group of people just to damn them? What if God created the clay and took half of it and threw it away and the other half and kept it for purp for good purposes? What if God did that? What do you have to say about it? He says, What if, what if? What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath prepared for destruction? What if? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory? What if? What if? What if? He's telling the Romans, you know, you take proclamations all the time from emperors and generals and governors, and and you just say, well, they've got the authority to say it, so we've got to do it, such is the way it goes to be a Roman citizen. Are you not going to give the same honor and glory and reverence and deference to the Lord God Almighty? Are you suddenly going to be the judge? What if, Paul says? Well, if God did it that way, what if? We should be ready to accept it. Whatever God does. Why? Because God is worthy of trust. God is good to the end. God is loving and true beyond all measure. God will never fail to do what is right, and God is not ours to judge. We got to be on our knees before the wonder and the awe and the mystery of God's mighty act of salvation. Amen. Oh, it's a lot. We're running through Romans. We're skimming across the tops of the waves. You could go a hundred feet deep on any of these verses, you know that, right? And it's good for you to do it. Go wrestle. Go struggle. Lord, what are you doing? What does this mean? Give a presentation for your senior project on predestination. That'd be a good thing to do. Yeah, I'm looking at you. Yeah. There's only so much we'll understand, but we trust Him. So now, the point of the sermon. Are you ready? What if this whole moment, this whole kind of understanding of God's plan of salvation? What if the key to it is to understand that we don't understand? What if the key to it is to understand that God's in charge? What if the key to it then is to understand that God's plan of salvation is much bigger than we ever thought? That God has a plan of salvation that's going to include others, surprising others, other sheep, people that are not of the fold, people that we never expected to be in the house of the Lord, people that we never thought would be close to Jesus? What if God has plans and purposes to bring people into his love and his grace that are way beyond our own thinking? What if God has other sheep, other sheep? We thought we had it all figured out. We're lined up for dodgeball. There's the children of Abraham who are in, there's those who are not who are out, and maybe there's some who got like a special pass and they can sit in the back and be quiet. No, no, no, no, no. God's plan of salvation is much bigger. It's much broader. It's much far beyond. What if God planned for other sheep to be in the fold of salvation? Even us. Even us, verse 24, whom he also called, not only from the Jews, but also from the Gentiles. Well, how could he do that? Well, he's already done it. As in Hosea, as he says in Hosea, I will call them my people who are not my people. I will call her my loved one who is not my loved one. And in the very place where it was said of them, you are not my people, there they will be called. What church? That's right here. There you will be called children of the living God. How far are we from Israel? How far are we from Jerusalem? People that have been called not God's children? Guess what? They are because God's plan of salvation is bigger than he thought. And he has other sheep yet to bring in. I thought the in were in and the out were out. God's plans are bigger. Romans, Paul says, he's writing the Romans. Says, Romans, I want you to understand something. As you believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, you are not guests in someone else's house. You belong. Church, I want you to hear that this morning. I want you to understand. Whether you're here, this is the first time you've ever sat down with this group of people, whether you've been here for 40 years, 50 years, you're not a guest in somebody else's house. You belong. You belong here. It has always been God's heart to include you, to bring you, to adopt you, to pull you, to love you, to know you, to name you. It has always been God's heart that you would be adopted and belonging to the family of God. It has been his heart that he would look on you and say, You think you're not my person? You're my person, you're my daughter, you're my son, and you are mine. You belong. Amen. Back when the Citadel Mall was new. Do you remember the glory days? Oh, what a great. I was a kid. I could uh ride my skateboard to the bus station. I could get on the bus for 35 cents. I could get myself all the way out to the Citadel Mall. I'd spent all day there just basking in the glory of the atriums and the gardens and the waterfalls and Orange Julius and Sabaro Pizza. And oh, I was it was like the hanging gardens of Babylon. It was paradise. And there was a movie theater there. And we go and grab a ticket, go watch a movie and enjoy the air conditioning. One time some friends of mine and I, yeah, we went over, got in a movie, and we sat down, and you know, five, ten minutes into the movie, we said, you know, uh I don't like this movie. So what did we do? We got up, we snuck out, we walked down the hall of the movie theater, we went into another movie that we thought we would like more. I understand if you have to go find another pastor. I'm just telling you, I'm telling you this the truth is what happened, is what I did. And the whole time I'm sitting there, and it was a much better movie, by the way. But I couldn't enjoy it. I was sitting there that whole time thinking I'm gonna get found out. You know, I'm gonna get kicked out of here. This ticket in my pocket is not for the movie that I'm watching, and I couldn't enjoy it at all. I just thought at any moment that usher is gonna turn with his flashlight, boom, right on my face. You don't belong here. Get out. Listen, that's how people feel in church. That's how some of you feel in church right now, sitting here, thinking, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know if I belong. I don't know if this is a place for me. Uh if if they knew what ticket I have in my pocket, what's written on it, if they knew what I've done, where I've been, I don't know that I would belong. These other people, they seem to understand all the stuff he's talking about up there. Listen. Jesus Christ was rejected. Who is more chosen than Jesus? Who is more anointed than Jesus? Who is more uh the chosen one than the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ? Listen to me. Jesus Christ was rejected. He went out to the cross, was pushed out of the city, he was jeered out of the city, he was people chucked rocks at him, spit on him, whipped him, beat him, pushed him, celebrated when he stumbled. Jesus was rejected so that you could be accepted. You're not here by accident. You're not here because you slept in the back door, and now you're just you're gonna sit quietly and hope no one notices. It has always been God's heart that you would be known and loved and treasured by him. As your faith is in Jesus Christ, as you claim Jesus Christ as Lord, so walk in him. You belong to him. You're not a guest. You belong in the family of God as much as Abraham himself. His plan of salvation. As we turn to this table, Matt, come on up and join me. We're just gonna pivot to the table of the Lord. Because this is exactly what I'm talking about. This table is a table established by the sacrifice that Jesus made. He made it very clear to his disciples. What I'm telling you in this table, what I'm showing you in this table, is that I'm gonna go and be rejected. I'm gonna be rejected. It's my table. I belong at this table. I'm the Son of the living God. God is my father, my father and I are one. I belong at this table. And you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna be rejected. So that you can have a place. You can have a seat here, you can have a seat here. And when you come to this table, you're not coming as a stranger. You're coming as a child of the living God, you'll be a child of the living God, you'll be children of the living God in a far country where people said, No one follows the Lord there, you'll be a child of the living God. When you come to this table, you come to a place that has been purchased for you and given to you, and it's got your name on it, because Christ has written your name in the wounds of his paws to claim you as his own. And one last measure. Listen, there are other sheep. God's plan of salvation is bigger than you thought. You think you look around the room, you think, oh, this is us, this is right, this is the church, this is the circle. We're we're in the ship of salvation. Pull up the ladders and let's go. There are other sheep. And right now they're saying, I don't belong to the Lord. And right now you're saying, You don't you don't fit. I want you to look at these chairs. Literally, turn and look at any empty chairs in the room, any empty chair in the room. Turn your eyes toward an empty chair in the room. There are other sheep. They're waiting to hear what Christ has done. He has done for them. Will you go and find them? Invite them along. This table is established for you who believe by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. It is a family table. We don't, in this room, we don't, we don't want you to do or say anything you don't believe. And so we say, as we come to this table, if you know yourself to be a child of the living God, that's all I need to know. This table's for you. If you don't know where you are with Jesus, listen, this is a moment not to sort of say just jump in and go through a rhythm. That could be a moment just to sit and pray and let it happen around you and say, Lord, what is it that's keeping me from believing this? Work it out with him, struggle, wrestle with him. Kids, your parents are the best ones to know whether you should take from the elements of the table or not. They know where you are. They know where you are. They know if you know that this is more than a snack. If you know this is more than a snack, if you know you're meeting Jesus here, this table's for you. But parents, if you think, I don't think my kids are there. Uh, we're gonna have maybe Matt over here to pray for kids, lay a blessing on them as they continue to grow in the Lord. All the elements are gluten-free. You don't have to worry about that. Uh, officers, would you come forward and take your places? And uh, I'm gonna close sort of the sermon and prayer. And but as you guys are walking forward, uh, we're gonna pivot to the table of the Lord. Jesus, thank you so much for your your salvation. Lord, we don't understand everything about it. We don't know. But save us from becoming judges who think that we are in a place to determine whether you are doing it right or wrong. Lord, you are awesome and mighty in power, you are worthy of all glory and praise, you are beyond all things, all measure, and we love you and we worship you and we trust you, for you are good.

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In Jesus' name. Amen. Hearing God's word is just the beginning. What connected with you? What challenged you today? Maybe it's surrendering something, stepping into community, or simply trusting Him more deeply. Whatever it is, don't leave it for later. Act on it today. We're praying that this message moves you closer to Jesus. And we'd love to walk with you in that journey and answer any questions you've got. Connect with us by visiting firstprints.org. If today's message encouraged you, take a moment and subscribe so you never miss an episode and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Check in next week and we'll continue to grow in our faith together. See you next time.