Luke 22:39-53

Hey, thanks for tuning in to the Haven City Church podcast.

The following sermon was delivered on February 24th, 2019.

We're looking at Luke 22, 39 through 53.

If you'd like more information about Haven City Church, you can go to Baltimorechurch.com or visit us on a Sunday and the upcoming weeks.

So we've been going through Luke.

I was looking back at our Instagram account, and we started Luke at the beginning of December 2017.

And we're winding down.

We're coming down to the end.

We're in the last hours before the cross.

We finished up the Passover setting where Jesus has washed the disciples' feet.

We know that from John 13.

Judas left early on in the meal to go in rendezvous with the chief priests and the elders to betray Jesus.

Jesus has repurposed the cup and the unleavened bread of this historic thousand-year-old ritual called the Passover.

And he's made it into a memorial that will be practiced by his followers over the next 2,000 years.

Jesus has warned the disciples about his capture and he's told them that, Peter, you're going to betray me.

The disciples have argued over greatness in Jesus' kingdom, and Jesus is taught about greatness.

And now we come into this setting where Jesus leaves the upper room.

It says in John that he passes over the Kidron Valley, the brook, Kidron Brook, into the Mount of Olives where there was a private garden that we call the Garden of Gethsemane.

So wealthy patrons that lived in Jerusalem would own private gardens, kind of how we do sometimes in the city, where we share a garden, right?

You don't have enough space in your backyard, but we might have a community garden, or you may be wealthy enough to own a private garden.

And somebody owned the garden of Gethsemane that had these olive trees in it.

There are three locations, sometimes four locations.

If you go to the um, if you go to Israel, you'll see these different locations that are claimed to be the garden.

We're not sure which one it was.

It's very likely, even though many of the gardens that they'll take you to in Israel have these very old olive trees, it's unlikely that those olive trees date back to the time of Christ because when Jerusalem was sacked in 70 AD, they burned and cut down the trees in the immediate area.

The parallel passages for the text we're looking at this morning are Matthew 26, Mark 14, and John 18.

So this is um this story is told four times, and each one adds different aspects to it.

The book of John tells us that Jesus left Jerusalem, crossed the Kidron Valley into the Garden of Gethsemane.

Gethsemane, by name, isn't mentioned in the Luke account.

In the other two accounts, in Mark and Matthew, we see that Jesus prayed three times.

Here it's referred to one time.

And then John records a lengthier exchange between the chief priests, the elders, when Judas betrays, after this kiss takes place.

One of the things that John talks about is that when this group came to arrest Jesus, they asked Jesus, they were asking for him, they're looking for him, right?

That's why Judas set up this sign of I'm gonna kiss the one who is, who is Jesus.

And that when they ask who is Jesus, Jesus says, I am he, and they fell backwards.

Um because what Jesus says, he doesn't just say it's me, he says in Hebrew, I am.

I am he.

And that's the same title that God gave to Moses when Moses said, Who's sending me?

in in Exodus 3, right?

You know the burning bush, and Moses is there, and God sends him back to Israel.

He says, Who's what's the name that I'm supposed to tell Israel that sent me?

And God said, I am.

I am that I am.

So the chief priests of the elders come to Jesus, say, they say, you know, are you the one?

And he says, I am, and everybody kind of falls back.

It's like this uh powerful moment that takes place.

So those are the kind of the accounts we get from the other text.

Now, what I want to do this morning is I just want to focus in on um prayer and temptation, pray that you will not fall into temptation, and then we're gonna talk about Jesus praying a bit, and then we'll go and spend a little bit of time on Judas' betrayal.

So um verse 39 through 46 is a paragraph or what we call a pericope.

It's a it's a it's one kind of embodied thought.

And what's the repeated word out of there?

You guys are Bible students, you know, you've been with us long enough that when we want to interpret a text, one of the things we're looking for is what's the repeated word.

So, what's that repeated word?

You have the text in the bulletin in front of you if you want to look at it.

If you were to go through and you just kind of spend time on it, you're gonna find that the word prayer, prayed, praying, that's the repeated word.

This whole section here is about prayer.

In fact, Jesus tells his disciples, pray that you will not fall into temptation.

Then he comes back to them and he says, Hey, you need to pray so that you do not fall into temptation.

Note that the prayer doesn't alter both Jesus' prayer and the instructions that Jesus gives here.

This prayer doesn't, it does not alter the plan of God, but Jesus isn't saying, pray so that you can escape.

He's saying, pray so that you do not fall into temptation.

Pray so that you do not fall into temptation.

So let's just talk about it for a second.

How do you and I react in the midst of pain and suffering in our own life?

What's your like default mode, right?

Is your default mode to fight?

Do you become feisty?

What would your friends say about you, your spouse, your kids say about you when you're suffering?

Are you a fighter?

Or is it flight?

Do you run away and hide, find a hole?

Right?

Do you melt down emotionally?

It's like, that's it, I'm done, I'm out for the count, and you're like just a ball of tears.

Or are you the conniver, the one that's playing your angles, always trying to figure out how can I escape?

Maybe you're the stoic, a logical problem solver.

We need to take a deep breath when we face our trials, and we need to return to the Lord.

Your pain and suffering is a challenge to the authority of God.

So when you feel pain, whether it's anxiety, right?

We we live in a culture dominated by anxiety.

How many of you wake up 2, 3 a.m.

from anxiety?

Just a show of hands, real quick.

That's a few of you.

Okay, well, I do.

Um, and it can be over the dumbest stuff, right?

Things that I know, like in my head, it's like I shouldn't be worried about this, but it's there, right?

Some of you suffer and you're in the midst of like a relationship, and it's just like hell.

You're like, uh what?

It was who signed me up for this one?

This is uh, this is uh a wreck.

This is a wreck.

You know, others of you are just going through it with physical suffering, you know.

Some of you have gone through loss.

Some of you are lacking finances, and it's just like, God, why?

Why am I why am I suffering with this just financial lack?

All of these things challenge the authority of God.

Do you realize that when you face these particular issues, it um it's like you intersect with the idea of the authority of God.

Right?

You're suffering, and the question is, is God still in control?

So you think that, but it also in a very real sense, it it's like, is God in control?

Like so you process it, but there's also an aspect where the pain and suffering that you experience is really a challenge.

It's it is a challenge to the authority of God.

It can cause you to turn from the Lord to your default reaction.

But that is the very moment where you and I need to remain connected to the Lord, right?

We need to default to the Lord, not to our whatever it is, right?

We need to turn to the Lord.

Let's look at it like this, right?

So we're in the middle of what we talked about last week.

We used the word motif, right?

What's a motif?

It's like it's a pattern that you can lay over other scenarios, right?

And there's these beautiful motifs throughout scripture.

Where and and the one that we're looking at here, the one of the beautiful ones is just redemption, right?

The process of God rescuing his people.

You have that motif over and over and over and over again.

So as Christians, we like to talk about, hey, you need to get saved.

You need salvation, right?

And what we're talking about typically is like you need to move uh to a place where you have a personal relationship with God, and your future when you die is that you're gonna live eternally in God's presence in heaven, right?

You're not destined for hell.

But the Bible uses the word salvation all throughout, right?

God is the one who saves, not just ultimately to send us to heaven, but he's the God who rescues his people over and over and over again.

It's a motif.

We talked about last week how the disciples are arguing over greatness and they're not recognizing that they're in the middle of a pattern called the way of the cross, right?

That's what we're gonna call it, the way of the cross.

I was hoping when I went to the Compassion Center this morning to pick up our stuff that I could find literally a sewing pattern to hold up here in front of you to just say, hey, this is a pattern.

There is a patternedness to the work of God.

Because I want you to leave today with that image in your head that God works in a patterned way.

Right?

Your life and the story of your life fits within the pattern of God.

It fits within a with God, God does this thing that He's been doing for thousands of years, he wants to do it in your life.

It's the way of the cross.

Now, um last week we talked about it in this sense of like, God said, You want to be great, you need to be the servant of all, you need to be the newbie, you need to be young, and then you'll be exalted, right?

You need to be exalted in due time.

Through me, I'll exalt you, I'll endure you, I'll entrust you with a kingdom.

I'll set the table for you, I'll give you a throne that you can sit on.

And here we are literally watching the way of the cross play out.

So we're gonna come back to prayer in a second, but I want to give you just this some of the clearest scriptures that lay out this pattern.

This would be something worthy of writing in the back of your Bible.

Because this pattern, this is like important for you as you process your own life, because you're somewhere in this pattern right now.

Okay, you're living in this pattern.

If you're a follower of God, you're somewhere in this pattern.

So the first one is 2 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 1, 8 through 10.

Now, Paul is writing the book of 2 Corinthians in the midst of deep suffering.

Deep suffering, okay?

So if you ever, you know, which you will, we all as humans suffer.

Paul is explaining, he's he's doing this beautiful job of explaining how suffering works.

Because here's the thing, right?

You suffer, I suffer, and you think God doesn't love me anymore, right?

That's how some people process it.

The second way that you process suffering is um I've done something wrong and God's coming back to get me, right?

Am I still a Christian?

Right?

That's another one.

Um, I suck, like that's another one.

There's a whole bunch of ways that people like just process suffering.

And Paul says, no, no, no.

Let me help you, let me help you understand suffering.

Okay?

2 Corinthians 1, 8 through 10, he says, we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, of Corinth, about the troubles that we have experienced in the province of Asia.

We were under great pressure, far beyond, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself.

Verse 9.

Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death.

Do you see that?

We felt like we had received the sentence of death, but this happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

There it is, okay?

We felt like we had received the sentence of death.

Do you see what Paul's saying?

This is God.

This is the apostle Paul we're talking about.

You know, this guy has written all these books throughout Scripture, and yet he says we've received the sentence of death from God.

He's allowed us to receive the sentence of death, but it happened, and here's the cause, here's why God allowed this suffering, that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

Do you see the motif?

The pattern here is that God sets you up.

He sets Paul up so that you will not rely upon your own strength, but that you'll rely upon his strength.

So God allows suffering in our life, pain in our life, things that we would prefer to avoid, so that we will trust in him.

Okay?

So he says, this happened so that we would not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

That's the God that you are following, right?

If you've placed your faith in Jesus, you're following the God who raises people from the dead.

He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again.

On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us.

Okay?

2 Corinthians chapter 4.

2 Corinthians 4 · chapter mention

So we turn over another to chapter 4, a few pages over, probably to the right.

2 Corinthians 4, 7 through 11 says this.

But we have this treasure of clay to show that this all surpassing power is from God and not from us.

So here he's talking about we are like containers holding the gospel message.

Your life is um carrying the gospel.

Like you didn't just believe the gospel that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, but you're literally like embodying the gospel message, right?

But he says, you as a vessel are a clay pot.

You're a jar that's like a commonplace jar that you'd bump into and break around the house.

Verse 8, we are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed.

We're perplexed, but we are not in despair.

We are persecuted, but we are not abandoned.

We are struck down, but we are not destroyed.

We always carry around in our body what?

What do we carry around in our body?

The death of Jesus.

What?

You carry around in your body the death of Jesus so that, oh good, he's gonna explain it to us.

Why do we carry the death of Jesus in our body?

It's so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.

For we are always being given, what, wait, wait, wait, verse 11, look at that.

We are always, we are alive and are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake.

Wait a second.

Hold on, that's not what I see on TBN.

I turn on TBN, you know, you got these pastors, wife's got the big hairdo.

And it's not about that doesn't line up with verse 11, right?

It says, for we are we are alive, we who are alive are always being given over to death.

That's not what I heard on that channel.

I'm gonna stick with what the Bible says, I think.

So that his life, right?

His life may also be revealed in our mortal body.

Do you see the pattern?

It's like God gives you a death sentence.

Not because he doesn't like you, not because you haven't done the right thing, not because you suck.

No.

The reason you have the death sentence is because he wants to put on display through your life his power.

He wants to demonstrate his power in your life.

He wants to raise you from the dead.

He wants to make you a demonstration of the power of God.

Now you'd be like, hey, I want to avoid this stuff.

I want to get away from this pain, right?

But no, this is the motif, this is the pattern of God, right?

One more scripture, Philippians 3, 10 through 11.

Philippians 3, 10 through 11.

Same author, same guy writing this to the church in Philippi.

He says, I want to know Christ.

Yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings.

Becoming like him in his death, right?

I want to know Christ, I want to become like him in his death.

So somehow, and so, and so somehow attaining the resurrection from the dead.

Twice he talks about resurrection.

Here's the thing, Paul understands, like for me to know God, to like to know God in a powerful, intimate way, means that I need to go through this pattern.

Like I need to embrace the way of the cross and understand that God's work in my life is to lead me to death so that I can be buried, so that he can raise me from the dead.

Right?

God this this may be shocking, and this is definitely not what you're hearing on most TBN sermons.

But God wants you to die.

He wants you to suffer so that he can raise you from the dead.

And I know that that is, and it's like, I don't like that.

I don't like that.

But here, here's the thing: Jesus did it first, right?

The one we follow, our Lord went to the cross, right?

He laid down the pattern.

And Paul isn't saying like he's not a masochist, he's not like, I love death.

No, you know, and so that's not what's going on.

He's like, he loves resurrection.

He understands that I've got to go through this so that I can experience the resurrection power of God.

When we get to Easter, we'll talk some more about this because it's the day we celebrate resurrection.

But but this is the idea is that that today, the thing that you're facing, um, wherever you're at in this process, you gotta understand that like God is God is demonstrating his power through your life.

God wants to put on display his power in your life.

So Jesus tells his disciples to pray, pray so that they will not, pray so that they will not enter into temptation, right?

So this is the thing.

Knowing that pattern exists, right?

So you know that there's this pattern, what does that mean about our life?

Like, what should we be doing?

We should be a people that are praying, right?

Because God buries you, right?

There's some circumstances where you feel like I'm with Jesus in the grave.

Like there's nothing I can do.

I'm a dead man.

I'm a dead woman.

Like I'm buried.

I cannot connive.

I can't get out of this.

I can't fight my way out of it.

I can't just buckle down and grit my teeth.

I am dead, right?

In that place.

Pray.

Pray so that you will not fall into temptations.

You got two choices here in the text.

You can either pray or you can fall.

You can either pray or you can fall.

And here's the question: what voice are you listening to?

Are you letting God speak into your life at this very moment and encourage you with the hope of the resurrection that God's gonna raise you from the dead?

Remember, we as a church, right, we believe that we're all missionaries.

We're called to be missionaries in our everyday lives.

So some of that's verbal, right?

That means that you're engaging your neighbors, but others of that is just a demonstration where it's just like people get to watch you suffer and they get to see the hope of the resurrection put on display in your life.

It's kind of crazy.

It's kind of crazy, but it is the way that God works.

Jesus promised these trials and persecution.

You and I are called to follow Jesus, and the path has a cross and it has a resurrection.

Maybe you're buried in the grave because of a relationship.

Maybe you're buried in the grave because of a health diagnosis.

Maybe you're buried in the grave because of a career change.

Maybe you're buried in the grave because of financial obligations.

Jesus instructs his disciples to pray, to pray so that they will not fall into temptation.

Now, they fall asleep.

They fall asleep.

Right?

The disciples do such a good job of embodying our failure.

They just are like, yep, I've been there, right?

Isn't it one thing to go to church and you're like, yeah, yeah, that's like, that's so good.

And then it's like you get into the week and it's like we fail.

Like we know the ideal, but we just fail, right?

So here's the disciples, like Jesus is telling them, like, you should pray, and they're off like sleeping.

And in fact, they're not only are they sleeping, but then in a in a minute they're like, they're like whacking people's ears off, right?

So they just embody, they embody our human failure, our human frailty.

But Jesus, Jesus is praying.

What was the temptation?

The temptation for Jesus was to run away from this moment.

Not, uh, or note, not note, not not, note, note that the will of Satan and Jesus are aligned, because he says, Not my will, but yours be done.

He's looking, Jesus says, says, Father, if there be any way, cause this cup to pass from me.

All throughout Jewish literature, you have this language of the cup of God's fury.

Um, throughout prophecy, Isaiah 51, we don't have time to look at it now, but it talks about how God is gonna take his cup of fury and pour it out upon Israel, upon the disobedient.

And so Jesus talks about this cup.

Remember, he tells his disciples, he says, You can't take this cup.

Like you're not capable.

He kind of rhetorically asks him, are you able to take the cup that I'm gonna drink?

It's this cup of God's wrath.

Jesus is about, and the cup that he's praying about in his prayer here, is that this cup of God's wrath upon humanity.

He says, Can the cup pass?

What's the answer?

What's God's answer to Jesus' prayer?

You need to go through it, right?

So this is why we believe in the exclusivity of Christ, that there's no other way.

There's no other way to get to heaven but through Jesus Christ.

Because Jesus said, Is there any other way?

Is there any way for me to get out of this, right?

Not my will, but yours be done.

If there was any other way, God would have interrupted her at this point, right?

Jesus would have been spared.

But instead, Jesus has to go to the cross.

There is no other way for humanity to be saved other than Jesus taking this cup, drinking the wrath of God on our behalf.

Notice this language of, I do not do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

Jesus has been saying this throughout his whole ministry.

In John 5 19, Jesus is explaining his relationship to the Father.

He says, Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself.

He can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does, the Son does also.

Here is Jesus is saying, Not my will, but yours be done.

When we talk about the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we teach that each are a distinct person, that they have personhood because they have a will.

Now they're one essence, but they're three distinct persons.

And the way that the Son relates to the Father is he says, I'm not here to do my will.

I'm here to do the will of him who sent me.

You know why that's really important?

Is because Jesus models that, he models that and he models it, and he explains it, and he says, I have a relationship to the Father.

Yeah, we're one, but I submit to the Father.

He says that for chapters and chapters throughout John, and then we get to John 15, and he says, Look, abide in me, and I in you.

Do what I tell you.

So he says, the way that you've seen my relationship with the Father, that's how you're supposed to relate to me.

You're supposed to be in me, just like a branch is in a tree.

You're to do what I tell you to do.

I had a bunch of great scriptures here when he says that, but I've got to move on because of this for the sake of time.

But I want to I want to just pull out because you guys, you know scripture, right?

You know scripture well.

And there is this beautiful, there is this beautiful contrast that's going on here.

The contrast between the gardens.

The whole of history starts off in a garden, right?

God makes this garden, he puts his man in it, and he he gives that man a job, right?

He gives Adam and Eve a job to oversee the garden, to tend to it, to populate the earth.

Like he is God's man and given God's word, right?

And yet he fails to obey God's word in the garden.

Now, fast forward four, five thousand years in history, and we get to a new garden, Garden of Gethsemane.

And we get to the new man, Jesus, in the garden, and he's facing a moment of temptation.

A moment of temptation.

We know that Satan here is again probably attacking him through Judas, betraying him.

This is that moment of testing that the first Adam faced, and yet here Jesus is obedient in the moment of temptation.

Man, we needed this.

We needed Jesus to come through this temptation on our behalf.

There's a theological concept called the federal head.

We've talked about it before, but it's the idea that when Adam was in the garden and he was told by God, do not eat the fruit of the tree of life, and in the moment that you eat it, you will surely die, that Adam represented all of humanity in that moment.

And so when he took and he disobeyed God's word and he took upon himself autonomy, he represented us, and sin was imputed to humanity through that act.

He was the first Adam.

He was called Adam, right?

It's the same way that when you're cooking pasta, right?

And I which I think I did this week.

Yeah, I did that this week for my kids.

I didn't take every string of pasta out of the pot to test it.

I could take one out of the pot and test it, right?

And when that pasta, that one was good, I knew the whole pot was good.

That's who Adam was, right?

He was the federal head, represented humanity.

Jesus is called the second Adam.

When you go to Romans 5, turn over to Romans 5 really quickly.

Romans 5, 12 through 21.

I put the whole thing here, but we don't have time to go through the whole thing.

But let me just show you the first two verses, okay?

Romans 5, 12 through 21 says this.

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, how did sin enter the world?

Through one man.

What was the name of the one man?

Adam, right?

And death came through that sin, right?

So he disobeyed God, death came into the world.

And in this way, death came to all people because one sinned, right?

That's the teaching of the first Adam.

To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone's account where there is no law.

So he's a kind of, we're mid-context with that verse, verse 13.

Go to 14.

Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to Moses, who brought in the law, even over those who did not sin by breaking the command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.

Do you see that, Adam?

Adam is a pattern of the one to come.

But the gift is not like the trespass.

For if many died by the trespass of one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to many?

Here's the point.

As you go through Romans 5, you'll see that Jesus is the second Adam.

He acted on behalf of humanity.

So when Jesus is there praying in the garden, sweating great drops of blood, right?

And he's saying, God, if there be any way, let this cup pass from me, but not my will, yours be done.

He is the second Adam.

And he is coming through on behalf of humanity.

So when we say in the church as Christians, there's an invitation.

There's an invitation that God has given you to follow Him, right?

And then we have this idea of you place your faith in God, you become a follower of Jesus.

That's all you do, that you're saved through faith, and then you're baptized as an outward sign of what God's done in your life.

Literally, you're going, you're switching DNA from the first Adam to the second Adam.

And everything that the second Adam accomplished through the cross becomes yours.

So that's why, in when you get into Romans 6, it literally says there is an internal change in your personhood.

You've become spiritually alive.

You're no longer enslaved to sin because when you're in Adam, your relationship to sin is that you must sin.

You're like, oh no, I have a choice.

No, you must sin when you're in Adam.

But when you turn to Christ, that relationship to sin is broken.

You still sin because of the flesh, but you're not enslaved to sin because of the work that Jesus did.

That's what we talk about, imputation, right?

It's the idea that the work of the cross is imputed to your account.

Theologically, we're talking about like technical stuff.

Like if you're in the medical field, we're kind of there in the spiritual world, right?

This is the idea that the guts of who you are changes when you come to Christ.

And you're set free from sin, you're given the hope of salvation, and you're a new creation.

You've got a new heart, you're a new person, you have a new identity.

It's a beautiful thing.

So I just we can't go past this text without recognizing that beautiful parallel between the two gardens, the two Adams, the two temptations, and yet Jesus wins.

Jesus wins.

Amen.

Judas.

Judas betrays Jesus.

So this group 47 through 53, the chief priests, the elders, they come in.

Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss.

The disciples, one of the disciples, we know it's Peter.

He grabs one of the two swords that was talked about in the previous, I was going to say episode, but one of the previous paragraphs.

And he whacks off Malchus's ear, who is the high priest's servant.

And Luke is the only one that records for us that Jesus takes that and heals him.

Again, Luke being the physician, this blows Luke's mind, probably, that on the spot the ear is healed.

And then Jesus rebukes the chief priests for their method of coming and arresting him in this setting.

He's like, he's just rebuking him.

He's like, this is your hour of darkness.

And they're just like, the chief priests and the elders, they're just stacking up their guilt of just like, look how wrong this is.

And that, and Jesus doesn't let the moment pass without emphasizing, look how wrong this is.

So let's wrap up.

Let's wrap things up.

If we go back to the beginning, we see in Genesis Adam and Eve disobeying.

And then we come to this text and we see Jesus obeying.

Back in Genesis, we're told, we're given the first prophecy about Jesus.

It says that the serpent is going to bruise the heel of the woman's seed, but that the seed of the woman is going to crush the serpent's head.

We're watching that take place.

That promise, that prophet prophetic word is being fulfilled in this text.

The bruising process is now underway.

Right?

Jesus is taking on the sin of humanity.

As we go through this story, we are watching the darkest moment of human history unfold.

The perfect man, the God man, is betrayed by humans and put to death.

There's no time lower in human history than this very moment.

And yet God makes this day our redemption.

It is the crowning achievement of God in the history of humanity.

God takes the worst thing that humanity can do and he turns it into our salvation.

The guilt and sin and garbage of humanity is paid for through the work of the cross.

So the question for you is: are you buried?

Are you buried under the weight of guilt on impossible circumstances?

God's invitation to you is come and talk with me.

Come and connect yourself with me.

I will order the world.

I will order the world around you.

I'll give order to it in this conversation that He wants you to have with Him.

God will take the worst day and turn it into the best.

This is the God who raises the dead.

He crushes our enemies.

He wants you to talk with Him.

He wants you to talk with Him in prayer.

And let's pray.

Lord, you know You know the hairs of our head.

You know our story.

And we some some of us are just still bearing wounds from recent pain.

And Lord, our pain is not an indication of your love for us.

It's a process.

It's a process, Lord, of you bringing glory to your name.

So Lord, we offer ourselves up to you.

Lord, that that's a really it's a statement of vulnerability to say, Lord, we're yours.

Like we we we offer ourselves to you.

That's scary.

But Lord, there's this hope of resurrection.

So Lord, if if you're gonna raise us, we'll offer ourselves to you.

If you're gonna bring us back to life, Lord, we're willing to embrace you.

We offer ourselves to you this morning.

Would you glorify your name?

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Let's stand together and sing this last song together.