Matthew 7:1-6

As a church, we're going to Matthew, the book of Matthew, and we are in the Sermon on the Mount, which is um famous material.

In fact, the verses we're gonna hear today, you may have never been in church ever before, but you probably have heard the verse we're gonna start off with, Matthew chapter 7, verse 1.

Matthew 7:1

So great material.

I'm so glad that we get to go through these six verses together.

But before we jump into the actual text, I just want to set the stage by saying this: that across societies, people strive to occupy the moral high ground.

The moral high ground.

So taking a stand for uh what you perceive as morally right and good.

Here's just a few examples.

You may have uh the environmental activists who are advocating for regulations to combat climate change, and they see their actions as a moral imperative to protect the planet.

You may have a um uh a justice um uh mindset, individuals who are championing reforms in the justice system, believing in a moral necessity for fair and just treatment for all.

You may have um the uh the this would be the picture of abortion, right?

So pro-life.

You have the uh those who defend the rights of unborn babies, viewing their stance as a moral commitment to the sanctity of life.

Um you may have, for another example, those who advocate for uh free speech.

This is the a picture of the intellectual dark web.

All these people are championing the idea of free thought and the expression of free speech on the internet, and they view that as a moral issue.

Uh you may have the you have the group that is advocating for gender fluidity, and they view that as a moral issue.

You have another group of society that um views uh people advocating for a diet that does not require the death of an animal.

Here's some protesters who are against um eating animal uh or any animal brought byproducts.

Behind these causes is a moral judgment, a moral judgment.

So, for example, here with these um PETA protesters, they view it as immoral to kill these animals.

And I'm not making a statement on their position or the other positions.

What I just want to do is I want you to have these images in your head of people who are trying to take a moral high ground within society.

They're trying to hold a position because here's the other side of it.

People engage in these issues, and then the temptation is to wrap oneself in a sense of self-righteousness.

To once you take this position, to then um believe that you are a better human because you are holding one of these positions.

So maybe you're with Peter, maybe you're advocating for gender fluidity or the intellectual dark web, whatever it is, it can tend to breed in our hearts a sense of moral superiority.

But look at this statement.

This is a little bit flamboyant, this statement.

I don't really mean it, but Christians can be the worst when it comes to their moral high ground.

Do you?

Yes, I do.

They can, sometimes.

I was born and raised in a Pentecostal situation.

And if you didn't agree with them, then you would outcast it.

I'm glad you're here.

I'm so glad you've been judged harshly, too.

Yeah, I I know.

I've been in that setting too.

Does anybody else feel like they've been in that setting before?

Yeah?

Yeah.

Sometimes, and here's the thing so we're in the middle of Jesus' teaching on the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus is teaching a moral standard.

But the temptation is whether you have a faith-based moral standard, or you derive, you hold on to some moral high ground that's not necessarily faith-based, but it's in with within society, the temptation is to become self-righteous.

And so that sets the stage for the teaching this morning.

Here's some of the things, maybe if you're a Christian, some of the things that in the Christian camp where we have this self-righteous position is somebody might say, Well, I homeschool my kids and think that they have this kind of high moral ground because of how they work with their kids.

Or it could be like, look at me, I don't listen to that kind of music over there, and therefore I'm I can wrap myself in this sense of self-righteousness.

Or there can be this, look, I listen to Dave Ramsey and I don't use credit cards, and so for some reason I think of myself as a more moral person because of my relationship with debt.

Listen, this sermon this morning, I'm the most guilty of this.

Okay, so just want to be real transparent with you.

I love the um moral and and just the more the vision, the social vision that Jesus lays out, but this temptation to flip that, like to follow Jesus and to love your neighbor as yourself, the dark underbelly of that is to become proud in your performance.

And Jesus has something to say to me this morning, and hopefully you'll listen as he is correcting me.

Jesus talks about, and we've read this, Jesus talks about honesty within society, forgiveness, fidelity in marriage.

All of these things are beautiful.

It's this beautiful vision of life, but again, the danger is to become self-righteous, self-righteous and proud.

Let's read these um verses together, and then uh we'll kind of unpack it.

Do you recognize this verse?

I told you you'd recognize it.

Here's what he says do not judge so that you won't be judged, for you will be judged by the same standard with which you judge others, and you'll be measured by the same measure you use.

Why do you look at the splinter in your brother's eye, but don't notice the beam of wood in your own eye?

Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the splinter out of your eye, and look, there's a beam of wood in your own eye.

Hypocrite, first take the beam of wood out of your eye, and then you'll see clearly to take the splinter out of your brother's eye.

Don't give what is holy to the dogs, or toss your pearls before the pigs, or they will trample them under their feet and tear you to pieces.

Tear you to pieces.

Lord, we would ask that you would come and teach us by your spirit.

Lord, where we become self-righteous and proud, Lord, would you please forgive me?

Forgive us for that self-righteous mentality.

Even if it's not following you, but holding one of these social issues and believing we have the moral high ground.

God, if we're not walking in humility before you, then we're walking in a lie.

Lord, forgive us of our sins and teach us and instruct us and give us hope, Lord, as we read through this text this morning.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

I want to put this question before you as we look at this text.

In our pursuit of what we believe is right, that's a moral statement.

How do we ensure that we don't fall into the trap of judging others and overlooking our own flaws and need for growth?

I think, I think that's the question, that's the question that this text is going to ask of us.

Let's look at this first two verses, okay?

This is that that section on judging.

Do not judge so that you won't be judged, for you will be judged by the same standard with which you judge others, and you'll be measured by the same measure you use.

So we're talking about judging.

I'm gonna give you a quote which I think really sums this up well.

It's a longer quote, multiple slides, but it gives us a good framework for understanding what Jesus is saying here.

So for track with it, he says, judging, because the word judging, it's used a lot, right?

In just these two verses, judging, this is the theme.

So here's what he says.

He says, judging in this context, it doesn't mean a court trial or an admonition.

It can't refer to discerning or evaluating what is right or wrong.

How do we know that?

Well, he's gonna explain that.

Here's why all of these things are valid for Christians, followers of Jesus.

All of these things are valid for believers.

These are all Bible references that you can look up at some other point if you want to.

Because in and he points to these verses because these are all examples of when Christians do hold a trial in the courtroom, or like they they use the church as if it were a courtroom, or they're evaluating or admonishing that fits.

So we want to know what is Jesus saying when he says, don't judge, what is Jesus talking about?

So what does judge what is this judgmental attitude connote?

It means looking down.

Look at this, this is important.

It means looking down on a person with a superior attitude.

What was your name?

Felicia Felicia, is that what you that looking down?

Is that what your experience?

Looking down, right?

Looking down on a person with a superior attitude, criticizing or condemning them without a loving concern.

That's important, right?

The loving concern.

If the loving concern is not underneath, if it's not underneath, then it's Jesus is like, hey, that shouldn't be a part of it.

The opposite of the second we pedition of on forgiveness.

I think this keeps going.

The key component, here it is, the key component is the absence of love.

Admonition has a humil, uh, a humility that says, I love you enough that I want to help you, and tomorrow you will need to correct me.

So Jesus is not against you holding a moral position.

And even as we do community life together as a church, there are instances where somebody, and we've had we've had it in here, we've had people who come into church and they are mean.

And it's not our job to say, oh, I'm not gonna judge you.

No, because of the protection of our church, there are people that are not here this morning because they're mean.

And I've had to tell them the way you're behaving is wrong.

And they're like, no, it's not.

And I'm gonna sue you before telling me that.

And I've said, Well, great, you're not welcome here anymore.

That person was judged.

Did you have a question?

Yes.

Yeah.

Save that because we're gonna come back when we go a little bit further in chapter 7.

In fact, read ahead.

He's gonna talk about evaluating who you spend time with, and he's gonna say, You see, you see a tree, it has good fruit, or if you see a tree that has bad fruit, that's the the the and he says your life, the people's lives are like trees.

Some of them are bearing good fruit from their lives, and some are bearing bad fruit.

Well, to determine if a life has good or bad fruit, you're judging them in a sense.

So Jesus is gonna say that just in a few verses.

So when when we when you hear somebody say when somebody comes up to you and says, Hey, judge not lest you be judged, and they're quoting this verse, you should first say, Wow, you know the Bible.

I know the Bible too.

I love the Bible.

What are you reading in your quiet times, right?

So anyway, but besides that, what you should say is, hey, what do you think that means?

What do you think it means to it means this.

It means this idea of like, listen, we need to work with each other with the context of love.

We need to have this context of love because yes, I believe in a in morality.

And and because I'm a follower of Jesus, my morality comes from Scripture.

I believe what is right and wrong is determined by what the Bible says.

But if I'm not loving and instead I'm condemning and saying, hey, you are going to hell, you're damned, then I'm falling short of the standard that Jesus here is teaching.

And so he says, but this is notice this as well.

Jesus correlates, if we go back here, Jesus is correlating our judgment with the judgment we'll receive.

Do you see that?

It's Jesus is saying, don't judge so that you won't be judged.

And then he he substantiates it.

In other words, he's gonna back up verse one by explaining it better in verse two.

He says, for you will be judged by the same standard with which you judge others.

That's only fair, right?

Like if you're gonna go around and judge everybody else, don't you expect that that that that you would be like held to that same standard?

That's only fair.

Now, Jesus teaches this in other places.

I gotta show you this in Luke because it's similar material, but it adds a couple of other components.

So we have this is another book about Jesus' life.

It's the Gospel of Luke, it's the third book in your New Testament, in your Bible, and it's as this is Jesus' teaching.

Do not judge and you will not be judged.

Do not condemn.

So this is kind of the new material.

Do not condemn and you will not be condemned.

Forgive and you will be forgiven.

Give and it will be given to you, a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, and it will be poured into your lap, for with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.

So there's not only in this um account here, Jesus is not only teaching in the negative sense this correlation between the way you do it and what comes back at you.

It's almost like a karma thing, right?

But it's not um, but the um the thing about karma doesn't attach it to a um personal God.

Here, Jesus is teaching that there's this um, this is a correlating law within the universe, but God is overseeing this.

Now, here's the crazy thing, right?

And man, I I'm so tempted to get off on a tangent with this, but the the world that God made, he designed it in systems.

And so when you sow a piece of a kernel of grain into the ground and it gets watered, and then the sun warms the soil, and the sun somehow that kernel of grain knows the direction of the sunlight, and it sprouts, it begins to come up.

What's happening is a system that God designed.

And in Galatians chapter six, or Galatians five or six, I think it's five, he says, Um, you will reap what you sow.

And so there is this principle in God's um uh universe that he's designed of systems working, and that's why science, the the arena of science exists.

If you're a scientist, you love the fact that systems are predictable and you're able to replicate um and see causation uh that and effect cause and effect in the universe.

All of that stuff is because of how God made it.

Now, the beautiful thing though is that God can overrule his systems, and sometimes God takes the most judgmental and condemning and hypocritical person and he interrupts their cycle and he reveals himself like he did to Paul.

And he shows Paul, Paul, you're totally wrong.

As a Pharisaical Jew who's condemning Christians and throwing him into jail, the the God knocks Paul off of his horse on the way to go persecute Christians, and he says, Look, I'm the one that you're persecuting.

And so it's important to see that Jesus is laying out for his followers this society where he's saying, You cannot be a person that's condemning others, or you're gonna be, it's gonna be measured out to you in the same way.

It's the same laws are gonna be applied to you, but yet that God also is the gracious God who interrupts these cycles sometimes and says, I'm going to give you mercy.

Another place where Jesus does this is with the woman caught in adultery.

The Pharisees find a woman who is caught in the middle of sleeping with another man in an adulterous relationship, mid-act.

They pour in front of Jesus.

The law in Exodus and Leviticus condemns this woman to death.

And so they say to Jesus, What are you gonna do with her?

And here's what Jesus said.

When when they persisted in questioning him, Jesus stood up and he said to them, The one without sin among you should be the first to throw a stone at her.

You see, Jesus is again correlating this idea of judgment, saying, All right, which one of you is ready to jump into this arena and be this woman's judge?

One of the um followers of Jesus was the younger brother of Jesus named James.

He seemed to have been deeply impacted by what Jesus said.

And so he puts it this way: he says, Don't criticize one another, brothers and sisters.

Anyone who defames or judges a fellow believer defames and judges the law.

If you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge.

There's one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and destroy, but who are you to judge your neighbor?

I think that's a sound system that did that.

I'm I apologize.

We're having there's like a frequency thing.

No, it's so loud.

The um so James, James is again, he's he's tapping into the same principle that Jesus is teaching.

He's tapping into it, saying, Listen, when you jump over into this realm of judging, you're tapping, you're jumping into a realm where you don't belong.

Paul, when he talks about this, he says, Who are you to judge?

You know, uh another man's slave.

Like uh the he answers to his own master.

That that's the metaphor that he used, slave and master, kind of that that relationship.

He's like, you can't judge that other person.

So Jesus here, again, he's framing up society.

Here he's talking about judging, and man, that the temptation that exists as we follow Jesus and as we're as Jesus is changing our life, right?

Because the Holy Spirit comes into us, right?

So so you find out about Jesus and you decide, okay, I'm ready to surrender my life and be a follower of him.

And the Bible says at that point, God places his spirit in you.

Your body becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit.

What does it become?

The temple.

That what is a temple?

It's the worship center, it becomes a building where God's presence is at.

And what does he do?

He begins to go to work on our on our character and our thoughts, and there's temptation that he deals with, and we begin to change.

He begins to transform us from the inside out.

But as he's doing that, and we're excited because we look at we're looking at somebody that we now feel comfortable with, and our our conscience is feeling more at ease, and we're like, I have a respect for myself.

Myself because what God is doing in me.

I'm now a person that was honest in that situation.

Or I was loving when I was being and I was patient when somebody was mean to me, right?

And there's this sense of like self-worth and happiness, and you're happy about just kind of holding that higher moral ground than you once did.

But at the same time, all of a sudden, what creeps in?

That self-righteous pride, right?

Of like where you begin to start talking, why is it why is that person over there not growing?

How come they don't hold my convictions?

How come they don't care about God's law as much as I do?

And and all of a sudden, you're no longer that beautiful, like sanctified, humble Christian.

You're now that, you know, what was Dennis Menace's uh neighbor's name?

Mr.

Wilson, you're one of those Christians, the Mr.

Wilson Christians, that's kind of crabby and like, get off my lawn, right?

That's the temptation.

As you're walking with Jesus, you start to think that you made yourself good, and that everybody else should make themselves good like you and play like and so yeah, so at least that's what I do.

I don't know about you, but but that's how it works in my life.

Well, this is that passage from this is what Paul says in Romans.

He says, Therefore, every one of you who judges is without an excuse.

This is an interesting flip-on because Paul like turns it around on the Jews.

He's like, hey, you want to judge?

You don't have any excuse anymore because you are evidencing that you know.

Well, he he continues.

He says, For when you judge another, you condemn yourself.

Since you, the judge, you're doing the very same thing.

Now we know that God's judgment on those who do such things is based on the truth.

Do you think any one of you who judges those who do such things yet do the same, that you will escape God's judgment?

There is this seductive like thing about just being able to you know criticize somebody else and identify like what they're doing wrong and why they're doing it and psychoanalyze them and be like, man, they're just messed up.

I I know that I've worked, like, I've been in ministry and a pastor for a long time, and there have been seasons where like my fellowship, quote unquote fellowship with other Christians was just criticizing the wrongs of other people.

And that's wicked.

Jesus is like, that is wrong.

That's not what it means to be a Christian.

It is like looking down your nose at other people.

But some of you have been the victim of that attitude, that mentality.

Okay, so let's summarize.

Summarize Matthew 7, 1 through 2.

In essence, Jesus' teaching is echoed throughout the New Testament.

It calls us to a posture of humility.

What does it call us to?

Humility.

Humility and love in our interactions of others.

It's not merely about abstaining.

This is it's not just abstaining from judgment, but it's about transforming our attitude from one of superiority to one of loving concern.

Right?

If you see somebody who's overtaken in a fault, it says in Galatians, we love those people.

We bring them in.

It's like, how can I you don't want to be stuck in that that addiction or or continuing to fall or or to destroy your life because you have some bad character quality?

No, I'm concerned for you.

I'm not looking down my nose at you, right?

We are reminded that the manner in which we judge others, it reflects our understanding of the grace and impacts how we experience God's grace ourselves.

As followers of Christ, we are called to exercise discernment with compassion, remembering that we too are under the same grace we extend to others.

This challenges us to live not as judges over our neighbors, but as fellow travelers in need of mercy, striving together towards the truth and love embodied in Christ.

A couple of weeks ago, go back like a couple months, we we saw in Jesus' teaching on prayer, he said, Forgive them as we forgive our debtors.

Forgive us as we forgive our debtors.

Again, those correlating principles of like God is working with us as we treat others in that way.

That is the idea of Jesus' teaching.

Now, a little bit of humor from Jesus.

We get it in three through five.

One of the times where Jesus is just funny.

Verse 3 Why do you look at the splinter in your brother's eye?

But don't notice the beam of wood in your own eye.

Or how can you say to your brother, hey, let me take the splinter out of your eye?

And look, there's a beam of wood in your own eye.

Hypocrite.

First take the beam of wood out of your eye, and then you'll see clearly to take the splinter out of your brother's eye.

It's this, it's this idea, you know, of like having a beam like just sticking out of your out of your eyeball as you try to help other people.

You can't even get close.

It's just and and and the absurdity of it.

That's that's that's the humor.

Like Jesus Jesus here is just um come up with the most absurd image of like a two by four hanging out of a person's eyeball, which is like not even possible, but imagine it.

You can't even you can't get close to like the other person's eye because there's a beam there, right?

And he's like, What are you doing?

Just trying to kind of use the shock value of the image to just say, look, be evaluating yourself.

This ties perfectly in with the sentiment of verses one and two.

The text is centered around, again, the importance of humility, self-awareness, discernment in our interactions, and judgments.

It's about recognizing our flaws, uh pointing out our faults, or point, yeah, understanding our faults and understanding when and how to share these truths wisely.

This passage encourages a reflective and discerning approach to life and relationships grounded in self-examination and humility.

We're out of time.

So let me just kind of give you this one last idea.

Again, here's the question, and then this spiritual practice that we'll give you.

Again, here's the question.

In our pursuit of what we believe is right, how do we ensure that we don't fall into the trap of judging others, overlooking our own flaws and a need for growth?

Here's the spiritual practice that I would encourage you to kind of implement in your own life.

It's this practice of self-examination.

Self-examination is a process whereby the Holy Spirit opens my heart to what is true about me.

This is not the same thing as a neurotic, shame-inducing inventory.

Instead, it is a way of opening myself to God within the safety of his love so I can authentically seek transformation.

Confession, which follows a self-examination, confession embraces Christ's gift of forgiveness and restoration while setting us on the path to renewal and change.

If there was any any if there was ever anyone who held a moral high ground, it was Jesus.

And yet, the way in which Jesus dealt with humanity, the only people where he was harsh and critical was to deal with the self-righteous.

Jesus was approachable.

He had a rag tag group of disciples who were former fishermen and tax collectors.

In his entourage of people that followed him were people who had been freed of demon possession, people who had been prostitutes, broken lives who were outcast from society, were the followers of Jesus.

And those people were welcome in his group.

And Jesus got in trouble with the Pharisees for eating with sinners and tax collectors.

The Pharisees, the self-righteous religious leaders, were upset with Jesus for being that merciful and that gracious.

Jesus sets the tone, and just like he did at the beginning of this sermon when he says he flings open the gates of his kingdom, and he says, This is the place where blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed are those who mourn.

Blessed are those who are persecuted.

You all are welcome here.

You people that are suffering and downcast and poor and trodden down.

This is my kingdom is all about you.

You're welcome here.

That is the attitude that is demonstrated by Jesus beyond this sermon and what made Jesus so attractive.

And he's telling us as his followers that look, let the Holy Spirit author that attitude in your life.

This is oftentimes a self-kind of condemning.

Unfortunately, it's oftentimes expressed by Christians through social media.

Sometimes Christians will be like this to your face, and that's unfortunate.

But there's something this kind of like uh sometimes about the anonymity of the internet or just the um detachment from face-to-face interactions, where people just feel freed up to use the internet and to be honri and Mr.

Wilson's, and to think I hold a higher moral moral ground, uh high moral ground, and I can condemn you for.

But this is the thing we as Christians, we're no better.

Like what are we as Christians that's different from non-Christians?

We're forgiven.

That's what's different about us.

We're not better.

There's a I have amazing friends that don't follow Jesus that are probably more loving, they're more humble, they're more peaceful, they're smart definitely smarter than me.

The common ground that we have as Christians that kind of sets us apart is that we get to say, hey, we've surrendered to Jesus and He's forgiven us of our junk, and that we want more people to experience the forgiveness of Jesus.

And then we get the help of the Holy Spirit, the assistance of God to bring us into the new life and this beautiful vision that Jesus is laying out here.

Aren't you glad that he lays out that Jesus here is he is criticizing and condemning the condemner?

He is He's saying, Look, I'm on your side.

If you're the recipient of the self-righteous religious condemner, I'm not on their side.

I'm on your side.

And I'm advocating for your close relationship with the Father.

So it's the love of God, the love of God that has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, bearing witness to his love for you and I.

Your love.

You are deeply loved by God.

Lord, we thank you for your word.

Thank you for loving us.

Would you forgive us of that self-righteous attitude of having the beam hanging out of our eyes?

Um Lord, please help us to be more humble.

Lord, help me to be more humble as and self-aware, Lord, of the sins that you have forgiven in my life.

To be cognizant of how sinful I am and what you have um forgiven, and that you have like washed me.

I pray that we would be marked as a church, as people who are who are like that, who are humble and that we're free to just confess our sins and just not to boast in our sin, but say like this is what I've done wrong, and I'm ready and happy to receive the forgiveness of God.

Thank you for that, Lord.

I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

We're gonna take communion together, which is a celebration of that forgiveness.

So for for us as a church, we have open communion.

That means that if you are a follower of Jesus and you were baptized, doesn't whether you're baptized here at another church, but you're a follower of Jesus, we want you to come take the bread and the cup, sit with those elements back in your chair.

As this song is playing, I'd encourage you to do this practice of self-examination.

And it's just saying, God, forgive my sin, cleanse me, cleanse me of these things.

Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins, and then we will take communion together.

Let's sing and help the Lord and receive help.

At church, let me see if I can turn my iPad sideways and make it a little bit bigger.

Sometimes church is new for or you've been in different settings.

So this is Jesus' teaching on communion.

It says that so Jesus is in an upper room with his disciples, and they're celebrating what was called the Passover Supper.

This had been a 1,500-year-old tradition that God had given to the nation of Israel, celebrating their delivery, deliverance from Egypt, slavery in Egypt, and the fact that God caused the angel of death to pass over the houses where the Hebrews lived.

And so they'd been celebrating this meal, but then so Jesus is there with his disciples, and Jesus took the bread and he blessed it and he broke it and he gave it to his disciples and he said, Take and eat, this is my body.

So he took the bread, and you have bread.

And this it was like this.

It was like a matzah or a uh because it was a ser it was not just like a normal like loaf of bread, but it was a ceremonial piece of bread for the Passover meal.

And then so it had significance going back to the book of Exodus, and you can read it.

But Jesus says, do you see what he does?

He says, This is my body.

So it's a symbol, right?

It's a symbol of what he did on the cross.

So let's hold it up.

I'm gonna pray.

Lord, we thank you.

Thank you, Jesus, for going to the cross and for your body being broken for us.

We're so grateful for your sacrifice.

Let's take the bread and eat it together.

And then you see the next verse there, 27, it says, Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he gave it to them, and he said, Drink from it all of you, for this is my blood.

But it's not just his blood.

You see, it's the blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the condemnation of the wicked.

No, it doesn't say that, right?

What does it say?

It's for the forgiveness of sins.

It's for the forgiveness of sins.

And then he adds on to this I tell you, I will not drink from the fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in my father's kingdom.

So we're gonna have this meal, he says, and then there's gonna be a future meal.

The Bible's full of eating.

Lots of meals, right?

All these meals.

And so this is a meal that we're eating kind of in the meantime while we're waiting for that party with Jesus, okay?

So he says, Take and drink.

This is my blood.

It's the blood of the covenant.

Let's hold up the cup together.

Thank you, Jesus, for your blood being shed for us.

We're grateful for the sacrifice that you made on the cross, and we're so grateful for a new covenant that we relate to you.

Let's drink together.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's stand together.

We close our church service with just a prayer.

I'm gonna pray over you, and we're gonna pray for the city.

Lord, thank you for letting us be here.

Thank you for giving us bodies that worked enough to get in the door and uh got up out of bed and we made it here, Lord.

We're so grateful for the freedom to worship you.

And uh, God, we we need you to go with us as we go into this week.

We don't want to go alone, Lord, into our week.

We're so and you've promised, Lord, that you'll your spirit will be with us, that you'll never leave us or forsake us.

And so, Lord, we we lean into that promise that God, you will you will guide us and that you'll deliver us from evil, and that you'll speak to us, and that you'll convict us where we need conviction, and that you'll go with us this week.

Continue, God, to transform our lives.

Continue to just provide for our needs and to teach us.

And Lord, we ask for your work in Baltimore City that you would continue to set people free from darkness, from their own self-destruction, set people free from addiction, from lies of the devil, set people free from toxic relationships, uh, set people free, Lord, this week from poverty.

Lord, we ask for you to be present in Baltimore City.

We we pray that you would um root out corruption in the government, and that you would uh shine a light and expose wickedness in the government.

Lord, please would you come and be the good king that reigns and rules in the midst of this city, bringing deliverance and hope and healing.

Lord, prepare our hearts to celebrate Easter in a couple of weeks.

We pray that people would be open to you, Lord, during this season, and that uh there would be not just people attending church, but there would just be um conversion that occurs in in the lives of individuals, people turning their life over to you.

Use us this week, use us in our families, use us in our workplaces, in our neighborhoods, and where we live at.

Lord, we pray that you would work through us and uh that you would bring about um your good work in the world where we are physically at.

We ask these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you for being at church.

It's good to see you.

We're gonna clean up in here.

So if you have a minute to stay, we work kind of as a team to clean up, and then we can go over to the compassion center.

There is some food over there, but listen, don't take food out of the center until we're done cleaning up here.

Okay?

We're gonna do it together.

Through the wind and rain.

I can hear you.