1 Corinthians [Season 1]- Ian Graham- 1 Cor. 1:4-9: Past, Present, Future

Pastor Ian Graham begins our study on 1 Corinthians.

Transcript

Welcome And Service Schedule

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Morning, friends. How are you doing? It's good to be together today. Thanks, friends, that are uh visiting from elsewhere. Such a joy to have you here. Congrats to our seminary graduates. You guys have done a great job. And most of the university students are gone, but uh friends, thanks for being here. It's lovely to have you here. Yes, yes, this is good. Uh so good to have you all here. Um and you know, just as we start going down to one service, at one point there were like four people in the first service. You know, we're a late arriving crowd, so it got better. But I was like, yeah, yeah, there's no reason we should go down to one service. Uh not immediately evident. So we are gonna be all together, which is a beautiful rhythm in the life of our church. So next week, Sunday at 10:30, my biggest fear in life, and I'm sorry to any of you that this has happened too, is when we do this, then somebody shows up at nine, and I'm like, I have to break this news to you very gently, but also tell you that we are not gathering right now. You can stay for an hour and a half, you can help, or you can probably do what you're gonna do and not come back until maybe next week, maybe never. So, spread the word. We, as has been our habit as a church, have uh been for the last several years, we open up one book of the Bible through the course of the summer. And this summer we are going to take the first half of 1 Corinthians and probably get through the end of chapter 8, maybe kind of chapter 7, it's 15, 16 chapters in total. So uh that is our direction right now, and it will be a joy to walk slowly through this book. And one of the challenges that we have anytime we open the Bible is we have to make the texture of what we are reading actually come alive. It's very easy for us to read these words, especially as we grow familiar with them and forget that these came from the textures of real people, real conflicts, real struggles. And so there are there are things that we can listen to within the text itself and see that our experience is not so unique. It has always been hard to be the church. Always. And as we're gonna see in Corinth, as we know from our own experience, the Corinthian church was made up of a bunch of people from a bunch of different backgrounds that are all coming together under the name of Jesus. And Jesus has healed them, has saved them, but their culture, their expectations still live very much alive. And so we are going to hopefully see that these people lived real lives and I think be able to map our experience in our lives onto what they lived through and experienced. So, a couple things about Corinth. Anybody been to Corinth? Anybody? Yes, we got some people, yes, world travelers. Very cool, very cool. Corinth in Paul's day was a port city that sat on a narrow isthmus between the Aegean Sea and the Gulf leading to the Ionian Sea. And one of the ways that the Corinthians, they were like one of the early uh channel canals, but they had to devise a way to transport large ships across land. And so they developed this kind of rolling concrete system where they would actually roll ships across the dry land from one port to another. The city's status as a port city afforded it easy economic opportunities, but its history of political involvement had seen many peaks and valleys for Corinth. So there were great glory days for Corinth, there were also some real desolant days for the city. The city was destroyed in 146 BC by the Romans, but was then revived by Julius Caesar in 44 BC and established as a Roman colony, which was a specific designation applied to certain cities. It was a designation of high honor within the imperial hierarchy. As it was a port city, it was cosmopolitan in makeup. It's a lot like port cities in our own world. People had come from all over. And for many people, they had traveled from far, and it was kind of the first place that they came to that was a part of the imperial structure, and so they stayed. And this meant there was a collision of cultures, a lot of artisans, a lot of people trying to ply some of the economic opportunity that was there. One of the interesting things about Corinth was that there was not a landed gentry because the city had been destroyed and re-established. And so, in a way that was sort of unique to the Roman Empire, there was an opportunity for economic advancement. So there was ample economic opportunity. Gordon Fee, a New Testament scholar, suggests that Corinth of Paul's day was a combination of New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. That's what we're working with. All right. We see the beginnings of the Corinthian church. It's always cool when we can look at a letter and see a little bit of the world behind the letter. And in the Corinthian correspondence, we actually have the founding of the church at Corinth in Acts chapter 18. So we see Paul arrive in Corinth. He connects with Priscilla and Aquila, two Jewish Christians, and they start working together. They were all tent makers. And Paul, as was his custom, would often go to the synagogue and preach the gospel to the Jewish people and the population there. There was a relatively small population of Jewish people in Corinth itself. But Paul goes to the synagogue and eventually gets kicked out of the synagogue and links up with other Jewish Christian believers. And one of the things that Paul would do in many different places, he would ply his own trade of making tents. Now, it will become a point of tension and conflict for Paul and the Corinthian church itself. Because Paul is insistent upon paying his own way. And the Corinthian church wants to support him. They want to patronize him and give him money to do his ministry, but Paul rejects their economic invitation. And this will become a source of conflict for Paul and the church itself. But Paul begins his work of preaching the gospel in the synagogue, is eventually kicked out. But after he's kicked out, the leader of the synagogue gets saved, finds Jesus. So it's in this context that we have the seedbed of a church that we will look into today. The Corinthian church was mostly pagan, mostly people of Gentile background. So there was a lot of unlearning to do for them. It was mostly people from the lower ends of the socioeconomic ladder, although we can see there were a few wealthy patrons in the church itself. And they're all coming together with all of their culture, all of their history, all of their story to be a church. Paul's salutations and thanksgiving, which will be our focus for today, is the beginning of the letter, often give us a preview of where he's going. One of the difficult things about reading Paul is that he's a very layered thinker. And Paul will put forth a layer and then he'll do three other things, and then he'll go back to the layer that he set in the beginning. And so we're kind of always doing this circular line of reasoning. It's one of the things we have to keep track of in a setting like this. But Paul's opening remarks will often be a glimpse of the things that he is going to say to a group of people. And so today we're going to look at what Paul says as a way of opening the correspondence. Many scholars suppose that there was a letter that was written from the Corinthian church to Paul that Paul is then reacting and responding to. If you like sarcasm and irony, 1 Corinthians is for you. Because there are many times Paul is being lovingly, gently, but also very explicitly sarcastic. He's like, You think this? Well, here's why you're wrong. There's a real like per my last email energy to Paul. Not that any of you have ever sent that. Now, this supposed letter from the Corinthian church back to Paul is all conjecture, but it makes good sense of the data and the shorthand way which Paul interacts with the church itself. This largely formerly pagan congregation, again, did not grow up with Jewish norms. They have a lot of unlearning to do, especially regarding sexual immorality. We'll also see that they're heavily influenced by cultural norms of rhetoric and power, and their expectations will form a sharp contrast to Paul's way of communicating. So today, to take all of that, we want to look at the background because it actually gives us a real texture of the people and the lives that they were living. So we want to see that, but I want to communicate just very simply to you that Paul is trying to get us to see that the grace of Jesus reorients our past, reorients our present, reorients our future. So Gordon Fee says this the sum total of all God's activity towards us human creatures is found in the word grace. God has given himself to them mercifully and bountifully. Let's read in 1 Corinthians, beginning in verse 1. Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, the church of God that is in Corinth, or to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you, because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus. For in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind, just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you, so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful. By him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. So we see in just this opening salvo, we see some themes emerging. Jesus Christ our Lord. Like just very over the top, right? Paul is making it very clear that there is one Lord. It is not Caesar, it is Jesus, the risen, reigning, ascended King. And we see this repetition of this phrase, grace. And I want to look again, just how Jesus radically reorients our past, our present, our future. For some of us, we can easily remember what life looked like before we ever knew Jesus. And for some of us, it elicits a deal and a measure of shame. Like we think back to the way that we were walking, we think back to the way that we were living before we knew Christ. And then Christ comes, the story about God's nearness and his love about what Jesus has done completely upends and transforms our lives. And this is the story of our testimony and the life with Jesus that we now live. That's for some of us. Those tend to be the stories that we tell, the radical transformation stories. Now, I think for others of us, we can't ever remember a time where we didn't know the story of God, weren't kind of immersed in it. Our culture was defined by it, our parents told us about it. We have always grown up with this sense of what God is up to and what God has done for us. I know that defines many of the stories that are present in here today. I hope that's the story that is told of my kids' life with Jesus. That they don't have to blow it up and burn it down in order to find Jesus, that they live a life that when they look at it from a different vantage point, it's just like God was always there. I always knew God loved me. Paul is talking about this angle in our lives as we look back. For all of us, we see that the giving of Jesus in real time and space, his life, his death, his resurrection, and ascension enfolds our past into the great cascade of the true story of the world. Of God stopping at nothing to be God with us. God has saved us. He has continued the promised story given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the promises given to David. He has engrafted us who are Gentiles into the Jewish story as part of the covenant people. But God has not only saved us, God has not only changed the cycle and spiral of death and decay, God has drawn near to us. It's not just that God wants us to be rescued from death and decay. God wants to be God with us. All of this is an expression of the grace that has been poured out in the Son, Jesus. In Ephesians chapter 2, if we were to jump to another correspondence to another church, we see that Paul just so eloquently defines this grace that has saved us and transformed us. And what I want to do is read an extended section of Scripture. So I'm now preparing you for an extended section of Scripture because it's so beautiful in the way it encapsulates what God has done in our lives. The transformation that has begun in Jesus. Let's read in Ephesians chapter 2. Deep breath. Here we go. You were dead. Through the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. This is Paul talking to the Gentiles and pagans that were at Ephesus. And then he includes his Jewish brothers and sisters in the next verse. All of us, Jew and Gentile, once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, doing the will of the flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. And he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that we may walk in them. This is the ground upon which all of us who welcome Jesus' saving love stand. He singularly, for all of time, gave of himself in life and death unto life again, to draw all things unto himself. He has taken the worst of human history generally, and he has taken the worst of our own histories specifically and drawn them into his life-giving death. He has exhausted shame. When we look at our past, when we look at the way that we used to live, even if it was wayward and backwards and broken, we don't have to see our brokenness or our failure. We look back and we see a cross and an empty grave. He has robbed the accuser of accusation. That gnawing voice that tells us that we are not actually a child of God, that God would not want anything to do with us that will never measure up, is all a lie and is broken by the word of the cross. Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. He has lit up every corner of darkness in our lives presently. There is nothing in our lives that he is not aware of, that he has not paid for, that he does not welcome with his transforming power. And there are so many ways that we try to keep ourselves concealed with figs and leaves. And the question that God has for us, where are you? beckons to us anew. Come closer. Don't draw away. I will not step away. I will not draw back. And he has done so joyfully. He likes you. He doesn't just tolerate you. He's done so abundantly, crossing every distance. He's a father who gives good gifts to his children. Every good and perfect gift flows from the Father of heavenly lights. How great is the love that God has lavished upon us that we should be called the children of God. This is just a glimpse of the grace that God has inscribed on our lives. That Paul evokes here. It deserves our utmost attentiveness, reverence, and gratitude. And Paul says, This grace is yours in abundance. You don't have to do anything to earn it. It is all yours. Paul then introduces glimpses into the present life of the Corinthians. And interestingly, these are areas that he will have pretty stark criticism for them as the letter progresses. But he can do two things at the same time. He can acknowledge, hey, there's some real gifting here, but there's also some real danger here if you keep going your own way. So Paul says to the Corinthians, For in every way you have been enriched in him, in Jesus, in speech and knowledge of every kind. One thing that'll become evident as we read throughout this Corinthian letter is that the Corinthian Christians themselves prize the conventions of Greek rhetoric. Rhetoric is a somewhat fancy way of just saying the way you talk, the way you say things, especially in a public setting. Greek rhetoric, which is foundational in our own teaching on communication. If you took a communication course in college, they probably taught you to engage the listener's ethos. What else? Pathos? Excellent. You guys could do my job. This is perfect. Now these were often what different ways of approaching the same subject matter in order to engage the whole heart, mind, strength of a listener. Aristotle is considered the father of Greek rhetoric. It's a good thing we don't have any Aristotle scholars here today. The faculty he says that rhetoric is the faculty of discovering the possible means of persuasion and reference to any subject whatsoever. So this we see this expressed in our own day. Have any of you ever participated in one of those PowerPoint presentations where you just talk about something that you care a lot about that is actually absolutely inane and nobody really knows about, but you put on a very robust presentation to tell them about why all these things are awesome to you. Has anybody done this? Yes? I think it's hilarious. My favorite thing in the world is people getting really idiosyncratic about something they love and trying to tell that to other people. Not that I do that every week. By Paul's Day, rhetoric as an art form was not only a means of serious communication, but as it goes with every human innovation and technology, these things that have potential for great communication, great mass appeal, we also take them and we turn them into the most trivial and insane things. So rhetoric in Paul's day had become both this means of intense persuasion and high fine art communication, and also the first century equivalent of a TikTok or an Instagram reel. People engaged with rhetoricians for entertainment, and it was a lucrative field. Throughout the Corinthian correspondence, Paul's simplicity in speech will become shorthand, the message of the cross, and his suffering life will become an affront to the Corinthian expectations. You see, the Corinthians wanted dazzling speeches, funny, wise, articulate, witty. They wanted it given by a strong, handsome, upright individual. And Paul comes to them with this weak message about a suffering savior. Paul with all the marks of the suffering that he has endured from all his imprisonments and beatings. And you'll see there's this constant contrast in expectation. The Corinthians want this strong leader with a great personal brand. And Paul comes to them as one weak and knowing nothing but Christ crucified. And Paul praises them that they have been enriched in every way in their speech, in the words that they use. For us, I was so struck by the call here to pay attention both to my own speech. First in speech, the Greek word logos, Jesus is the Lagos, the word made flesh. He is the word that brought the world to life, and that word now dwells in us richly. This is Jesus' words in John 15. Abide in me, and I will abide in you. My word will abide in you. Throughout the scriptures, we see that God's words are words of blessing, generative words of storytelling and invitation. And what Paul is saying to the Corinthians here is you have been invited to speak the words of God, to be ambassadors and stewards of his generative, world-creating words. And then I go and drive on Route 1. And I'm like, you moron, what are you doing? And it would be one thing if I was alone and only an audience of Jesus, the Holy Spirit and God were just like, oh, okay, not great. But my kids are in the car. These ones that I bless. Can cursing and blessing coexist? Absolutely, they can. Jesus says it this way but I say to you, if you are angry with a brother or a sister, you'll be liable to judgment. If you insult a brother or a sister, you'll be liable to the counsel. And if you say you fool, Raqqa, you will be liable to the hell of fire. What a great treasury we have been entrusted with, Ecclesia, the very words of our mouths which express something deeper within us. And yet how flippantly and how harshly we treat each other, often our nearest neighbors, but often too those things that we can easily be ejectify, those others that we have established. And what Paul is saying to the Corinthian church is we have everything we need. We've been enriched in every way in our speech, so that we can inhabit the words of God and steward the gift of words on behalf of our neighbors. The other, as we look, is that the Corinthians have been enriched in every way when it comes to their knowledge or their wisdom. The Greek word here is gnosis, which means knowledge. Throughout Corinthians, we'll see that the Corinthians themselves had this perspective that knowledge is power, and that is completely irrelevant in Princeton, New Jersey. No, the school that is a bastion of knowledge and learning forms the central gravity of this place in every way. I mean, it even washes out to, I mean, how many private schools are in this area? Just school is our industry here in this town. This whole town is a testament to the power, status, and wealth that comes through knowledge. And Paul's call to the Corinthian church is not to abandon knowledge, reason, or education, but for them to reframe it under the greater fountainhead of all knowledge, the wisdom of the cross. The only problem is we'll see is that the wisdom of the cross is in fact foolishness to our world. In 1 Corinthians 12 through 14, we'll see that the expression of gnosis in the Corinthian church is upside down. They prize and place a high priority on gifts of speaking that demonstrate a possession of knowledge and insight. But Paul is beckoning them towards a more excellent way. He's saying, Oh, great, you can preach great sermons or you have words of prophecy, but there's something missing unless you have this one thing which is the most central and important thing. And since I'm doing a wedding later, let's read it. 1 Corinthians 13. Paul said, you can say all these things in articulate ways. You can say all them in ways that are appealing. You can say things in a funny way or in a witty way, but unless you have love, you are lacking. Paul writes, Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable. It keeps no record of wrongs. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. This is irony on Paul's part, too. He's like, guess who the children are? Not you all. I'm not, you know, I'm with you all. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part, then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love remain. These three, and the greatest of these is love. The ultimate knowledge for Paul here in 1 Corinthians, for Paul everywhere, is the knowledge of the face of God. All other knowledge, whether it be science or finance, theology or philosophy, all other knowledge is penultimate and secondary compared to the light of his face. In our own day, it's easy for us to siphon knowledge about God from the world around us. There are endless podcasts and sermons and books, and all of it can be really good and invitational, part of the deep calling to deepen us. But there also can be a temptation to stay in the shallows, to substitute noise, even supposedly holy noise, when silence is called for, an appearance of godliness that lacks its power. I think the other pull that we feel as people is that Christ's way of living is not in and of itself effective, or not seasoned enough in the actual ways of the world. We have to go and find other sources about what it means to be a godly man or a manly man or a woman, what wisdom looks like, what it means to have purpose or intentionality, what counts for success and a good life. Paul says that we have been enriched in knowledge in every single way. This is comprehensive. It is sufficient, but it's also much harder. Let me tell you what I mean. The Bible has a sufficient word for everything that we face, but not a prescriptive word for everything that we face. Does that make sense? The Bible has a sufficient word to encounter everything that we will encounter, but not a prescriptive word. Should you smoke weed? Well, is it in the Bible? It's actually not. So the overly prescriptive, if we're looking for the letter of the law, we're going to find things that are missing from our experience of life. But does the scripture have words to say about sobriety, about living wisely? It does. And so a sufficient word, but not a prescriptive word. And this is a challenge for us because how many of us want a prescriptive word about everything? We want rules and regulations, we want God to spell out what is the least common denominator, what is the standard that I have to try to live up to, and I'll do my best. And to that aching desire, what does God give us? He's like, here's a story. Thanks. This means that we'll be called to wrestle, to seek God's face, to find the still small voice, when if we're honest, we would often rather there just be a rule that we follow or a prescription that we fill. The fact that we're enriched in every way in knowledge means that we have access to a well that is boundless, infinite, and pure. But we have to keep going back to the well. Daily bread, hourly bread, momentary bread. We have everything we need. How often is the story we tell ourselves about the life that we live with God a story of insufficiency and lack? This is not Paul's perspective. He's saying, listen, you have been given everything. God has held nothing back. But it's going to require a walk that is by faith and allowing him to guide our steps to being aware and awake to him in the presence of our daily lives and rhythms. Paul says that the testimony about Christ, that they've been enriched in speech and knowledge, has been strengthened among the Corinthian church. The word for strengthen is used twice in verse 6 and verse 8. This testimony has been strengthened by the presence of spiritual gifts in their midst. Again, we'll get into that 1 Corinthians 12 through 14, by the power of the Spirit. But Paul is writing them to see Christ further lifted high in their life together. That these former pagans would be a place of profound holiness, sanctified by the love of God. And their love for one another as the body of Christ and the patient hope of Christ being revealed. The same word for strengthened is used in verse 6 and 8. It's a legal term meaning properly guaranteed security. The life with Jesus is a life that is long and uncertain. How many of us started on a road with Jesus that has included twists and turns that we never would have foreseen? This life is hard, right? And for some of us, we've ended up in places, desolate places, places that feel forsaken. And we have never once left Jesus, never once said, I don't believe in you. But found ourselves in these dead-end places, places that feel broken and desolate. Later on, I have the honor of uh officiating a wedding ceremony for two dear Ecclesians. A wedding is such an interesting picture of the life with Jesus. It begins with an extravagant celebration. It begins with promises that are made that have no context.

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Prayer And Invitation To Worship

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Those of us who've been married for a while, what does it mean? Richer or poorer? It's like I'd like richer. What does it mean for better or for worse? What does it mean in sickness and in health? Wait, we make promises, but we have no context for these promises. We throw a big party, and then people set out on the journey of living together. In the best of marriages, there is a deepening friendship and love, a shared sense of mission and purpose for the kingdom. In some marriages, there are children, some not. But in all of it, the end is not certain, and yet we will talk like it is. And for many of us, we know the pain of when that end is not certain. We don't have many ways of marking a 50-year anniversary like we do a wedding day. Bodies grow old and frail, the years calcify and weigh heavy. Now, I've seen some great celebrations of lives well lived together, but many of them don't have the obvious exuberance and hope that a wedding filled with young people and a life ahead of them contains. But what if, just suspend reality with me for a minute? What if at the wedding today there was a guarantee that no matter what, this covenant would hold? And not only that, there was a feast of eternal bliss that awaited on the other side of this journey. That bodies wouldn't merely dwindle and decay, but that this perishable body would be put on imperishability. That we will feast saying, Where, O death, is your sting, where, O sin is your victory. The image of God holding us is the image of a covenant promise that is made that will not be revoked. You see, yes, you have been called to follow Jesus. But it's not about your faithfulness, your ability, your discipline. It's about God's faithfulness that holds you. When I'm walking across the street with my little son, I put his hand in mine and I hold his wrist because he's a flight risk. But I hold his wrist because it's not about his grasp on mine, it's about my hands holding his. And the promise here about our present, about our future, is that God will hold us no matter what, come what may, that he can make promises that are irrevocable, that are not conditioned by the weather, whether of come what may, that are not for better or worse. They are say, I have chosen you, I will not choose any other. You are mine. That's the image of God's faithfulness here. The journey will be hard, the roads will be long, there will be suffering. But in the faithful hands of Jesus, we cannot and we will not fail. He will make us holy as he is holy, he will strengthen us. God is faithful. We pray, come, Holy Spirit. God, would you bring to us the reality of your very great and beautiful promises here this morning? God, for those of us who drug a past in here that we cannot seem to shake loose of. God, would the image of you carrying your cross, be an image of you carrying our past, God. And whether it be decisions that we made or a decision that was forced upon us, God, Lord, you have carried it all. God, that when we look back, we do not need to see our shame, our brokenness, our failure, but we see you. God, in our presence, if the story that we tell ourselves is always one of lack and insufficiency, like we're putting our card onto the reader and terrified if it will actually go through. God, can we see that even now in Christ Jesus, that we are seated at the right hand of God the Father with Jesus in the heavenly places? That every spiritual blessing has been poured out upon us, God. That we have been enriched in every way in speech and in knowledge. This doesn't mean there isn't conflict. This doesn't mean that there isn't tension, Lord. But what it does mean is that you are with us every single step, and that you are available to us at every moment. We can turn to you and find you there. So, God, would you make us a people who speak your words? Words of blessing, words of invitation, words that challenge the status quo. God, would you make us a people who draw from the well of your knowledge, God? That your knowledge is sufficient for living, that it is good, it is seasoned, it is weathered, Jesus. And in all of this, Lord, would you orient us towards a future that is sure and certain. On the day Jesus Christ is revealed as the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings, that we will be held securely in your hands, that your promises do not fail, that there is nothing that will ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Not hide, not depth, not angel, not demon, not life or death itself, Lord. But we are yours and you hold us in your grasp. And you hold us willingly and lovingly and expectantly. That the curse has been broken. We are the redeemed of the Lord. God, would you hold us here today? And would you bring this truth which changes the entire world to bear on our lives? We pray these things in your name, in the name of the Father and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen. And as they do, I just invite you to allow the Holy Spirit to minister to you. We believe that Jesus is alive, that he is present here, he is testifying to the truth of these matters, not just in regards to us generally, but to you specifically, and reminding us of his great grace that has been given to us without reservation. The Holy Spirit is here ministering. We allow his presence here. As the worship team is going to lead us in a song of response and worship. As we proclaim the good news of this God who has met us in his power and in his grace. Let's worship together in just a few moments. We'll come to the table.