Putting Down Roots: Week 1

Good morning, Welcome to the Church of the Chrols. My name is James,

and today we were starting a news series on the Book of Collossians.

We're actually gonna be going through this book for the next five, six,

seven weeks. And who here has done a deep dive study in Collossions raise

your hand. Neither have I. So it was like one of those weird

books. I never had a college class on, a seminary class on and

preached through Collossians. And so my desk at my house has a stack of

commentaries that's big, and and I think I read until my eyeballs fell out

last week. So but what happened while I was reading this was it's really

cool when you just fall in love with a book. And so I'm so

excited and I appreached it Thursday, and then over the weekend I kept being

excited about sharing because this book really does tackle some things that maybe wouldn't normally

tackle in a series. So let's go ahead and pray. And that's God

to prepare And I would ask you just be faithful over the next several weeks

as we journey through this book together, and God speak to us, God

challenge us, God we want to change as a result of reading your word,

studying your word. So God, we just pray this now in the

mighty mighty name of Jesus Amen. My mom and dad recently moved into my

grandmother's old home, and so for the last year they have been getting my

childhood home ready to rent. And the last room did they have gotten to

is my old bedroom because when I went off to Bible College, my bedroom

became the storage room with all of my stuff still in it. So it's

literally a time capsule of my childhood. So about every other month I will

get several boxes and it's kind of fun. I hate go through them,

throw away what you don't want to keep, whatever. And so a couple

of months ago I got trophies, my baseball car collection, I got some

toys, and then, um now I got another delivery a couple of weeks

ago, and my wife was really surprised to find in one of the boxes

that we were going through, I kept and this is a air Jordans box

from I think ninety two ninety three. I really wish there were some Jordan's

in here, but this is better. This is better. I kept all

the love letters that Gina sent me in eighth and ninth grade. Yeah,

so I just want to say this, if any of you attempt to read

any of these, I will tackle you, um and security. You have

the same permission. They are an adolescent embarrassment of riches. She was clearly

out of her mind in love with me when she was writing these, and

this is a testament to them. Now. Now I gotta remember, this

is before FaceTime and texting. So if you wanted to have a conversation with

the person that you were going out with in junior high or high school,

you wrote them a note. And by the way, those of you who

did it, and we're talking many decades of doing this, you know,

it's not all love letters in here. High Yeah, some of them is

why are you a jerk? Uh, they're you're resolving issues and a lot

of these letters and so we didn't have we weren't able to text her in

class. So if you were unhappy about something, you wrote a letter.

If you were incredibly in love, you wrote a letter. If you wanted

to make plans for that weekend, you wrote a letter. And Gina was

really surprised that I kept all these, uh, you know, considering that

I'm so unromantic, But I told her, you know this is this has

nothing new for romance. This is the early makings of a historian. I

just kept these for reference and future points for future debates. But anyways,

now this is not something new. It's a historical practice. Actually, for

centuries and thousands of years, people have been keeping letters if the letter felt

like it was important or like it was worth revisiting. So when we get

to the New Testament, Paul puts together this letter and he sends it to

the people of Colossian. But as the people the scholars were putting together the

whole New Testament, they looked at this letter to the people of Colossa and

they said, you know what, this is a letter that really needs to

be remembered for all time. And so here's what we get to. We

get to this letter that Paul is writing to the people of Colossa and went

threw up a map for you, and here's what you're gonna see. It's

around the Mediterranean, but you're gonna notice that there's a lot of cities around

it. That way you understand that it's a church plant of a very new

faith. But there's still all the influence of all the towns around it,

and so along with Paul's encouragement for them to walk with Christ. Here's the

big deal of the Book of Classians. There was a false teaching that began

to infiltrate the church, okay, and these teachings just to kind of summarize

him. It was basically to not Christ off of the divinity pedestal another word

saying he's not truly God. And I think you know the best way to

explain what was going on in Paul's fears here is to look at a story

written by the famous theologian Mark Twain. Mark Twain tells the story of the

Prince and the pauper, and the prince one day decided that he would like

to exchange lives with maybe a pauper for those who don't know what, a

pauper is a very poor person. And so the prince fells like he's trapped

up in the castle. He can ever get out and find out what the

real world's like, And so he invites his pauper in. They trade outfits,

and of course the pauper's like, absolutely, I would love to be

treated at nice. You can go ahead and go out there in a cruel

world. So they trade outfits. But unbeknowns to both of them, they

did not expect that since they traded outfits, they would be treated so drastically

different. And the prince didn't realize that he was playing with fire when he

would just goofing off by putting someone else's clothes on. He had no idea

that all of a sudden they were going to treat him like the beggar,

and they were going to treat the pulper like a prince. He had no

idea that when he gave up his royal identity, his image for a moment

of fund, that he was actually giving up the privilege and the power that

came from being a child and a son of the king. So here's what's

going on in Colossus. Okay, the people who the Book of a Colossus

is addressed who they're facing the same circumstances. Paul has said, Hey,

if you put on this heresy, you put on this false teaching, and

you play around with this false teaching, there's a good chance this is gonna

lead you down a bad path where you are going to lose the benefits,

the power and the privilege of being children of the Almighty King of Kings.

So Paul scoops in to write a warning not to play around this heresy.

Now again, scholars are still divided. But balmb mine is it's about the

divinity of Christ and maybe he was a good teacher, but he's not fully

God. So what does Paul do here to combat this heresy? Basically,

what he decides to dude, he decides to show them who Jesus really is.

The heretics other day, we're offering a counterfeit Jesus, a faith Jesus,

a false image of Jesus. So Paul says, all right, here's

what we're gonna do. We're gonna go all the way back to the basis

and we're just gonna look and study who Jesus really is now cinterest. And

here's what he doesn't do, because I think a lot of people would do

this today. You would take each heretical statement line by line. The heretics

say this, but I say that, The heretics say this, but I

say that. Paul doesn't do that. Paul says, all right, if

we want to figure out who the real Jesus is, let's go study the

real Jesus. Now Paul does this, and by the way, it's it's

a genius move. By the way, see Paul does the same thing that

the experts do today. If you go to the federal government, those who

study counterfeit money, what they don't do is they don't study other counterfeit money.

They don't study forgeries. What do they study. They study their real

genuine bill. They know how it feels, how it smells, how it

bends, and they nobod it looks like in a light, no nobody looks

like when they see it through it. They study every aspect of the genu

wine article and that way they see anything that is off, they'll know it's

a forgery. Who in here watches Pond Stars, By the way, way

more of you should watch Pond Stars if you love history and watching People argue

this is a great show. But on Pond Stars they do the same thing.

You've got people always coming in wanting to sell an autograph, so they

always have the experts come in to verify if the autograph it's real or not.

I've never seen an expert bring in a false or forged autograph. They

always bring in a verified original autograph to compare it to the one being brought

in a store. This is what Paul does. He says, we're not

gonna look at We're not going to run down all these heresies and go point

by point what these people are saying. No, no, I want to

remind you of who Jesus really is. So he says, like a couple

of things to tell you about the real Jesus. So he backs all the

way up, and he backs up to let us know who Jesus really is.

There's two things that he wants us to know about the real Jesus number

one today. But before we get to that, I just want you to

understand this. All Paul is trying to get them to understand is if you

want to know the real thing, you got to study the real thing.

And so if you want to know the real Jesus, you have to study

the real Jesus. If you want to know who Jesus this really is,

you have to study who Jesus. So here's two things about the real Jesus.

Number one, Paul says, you need to understand that Christ is the

king over the cosmos, king over the cosmos. And let's look at this.

I love this scripture right here. This is powerful. It's it's Christ

is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created,

and he is supreme. We're gonna get back to this first supreme here

in a moment. Okay, just wait, over all creation. For through

him God created everything into heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things

that we can see and the things that we can't see, such as thrones,

kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in an unseen world. Everything was created

through him and for him. Now, then we're gonna get the verse seventeen,

which is a whole other thing. Here. He existed before anything else,

and he holds all creation together. So here's what I want to do.

Let's go back to the top, and I want to talk about the

very first statement that stands out. He says that Christ is the visible image

of the invisible God. So the very first thing Paul says is, hey,

I get it. God's invisible, but God has been made visible.

See he uses this word here in the image. The Greek word is icon

ei ko in if you transliterated an icon. He says, the Christ is

the icon of the invisible God. Now, in classical Greek, the word

icon had to do with using something, putting a die on something, or

putting a stamp on something. But by time we get to the New Testament,

they understood this word icon. It meant that you were making an exact

replica, a precise copy, a representation. And today we might say it's

a photograph. And so what Paul says, first of all, you need

to understand that Christ doesn't have just an appearance like God. Christ isn't just

a reflection of God. And here's Paul's made point. He said, when

you see Jesus, you see God. If you want to know who God

is, look at Jesus. When you see Jesus, you see God.

And then he goes on to say more about it. He goes he existed

before anything else was created, and it's supreme over all creation. I'm want

to focus on this word supreme, and a lot of you who grew up

studying the NIV Bible, it was translated another way, but we don't like

to use that one now because it confuses people. Okay, it used to

say the son is an image of the invisible God, the firstborn over creation.

But this firstborn really confuses people Okay, firstborn sounds like God created him,

God made him, that Jesus is somehow less than God. But if

you understood the Greek back then of that word, it's not talking about a

chronological order. It's not talking about first, second, and third. No,

it's saying in rank Jesus is first. What does it mean when it

says he's firstborn, it means in the Greek, he has the right to

rule, he's the heir, he's the ranking number one, he's the number

one an authority, he has the right to inheritance. And it goes on

and say, hey, you know, you need to understand that if Paul

when he was writing this, everyone in that culture would have understood that firstborn

here went along with the law of primogenitor. The law of primogenitor was a

common law that was around for thousands of years, and the law of primogenitors

basically says this, the firstborn son inherits all the father's wealth. The firstborn

son has the status of the father, the standing of the father, the

power of the father. Therefore, they would have understood this when Paul wrote

this. Paul is saying that the firstborn was equal to the father. So

Paul is saying, Hey, this one Jesus Christ. He's absolutely equal in

power to God and dignity in all things. He is beginning. He is

the creator. He is not in fear to God the Father. So he

goes on, Hey, you know what you need to understand something. Jesus

was even there when we created the earth. Check it out. Let's look

at Genesis one twenty six. So then God said, let us make human

beings in our image to be like us. There was us at creation,

Father, Son, Holy Spirit. So Paul goes on to say, through

him, God created everything in a heavily realm, and on earth the things

that we can see in the things we can on last fall, I was

out hunting for a few weeks while I was camping, and so I was

out in the middle of nowhere. And you know, when you get out

in the middle of nowhere, it's pitch black, but at night, on

a clear night, it feels like you can see a million stars. And

I would sit out there after thinking through all my regrets of all the misses

that day, and I would sit out there and as the stars would lie

up the sky. I remember a few times on my little trip there just

moving from going wow to all of a sudden worshiping. I'm like, God,

you are amazing. Look at the glory of God. And here's the

thing. I was only seeing a snippet of God's creation. I wasn't seeing

all seeing. When I think about the vastness of space, it boggles my

mind. Think about the sun. If you were to bore a hole in

the sun, did you know that you can fit one million, two hundred

thousand earths in there and still have room for four million and three hundred thousand

moons. The diameter of our Sun, which is ninety three million miles away,

is three hundred and eighty five thousand miles. That's the diameter in the

nearest star to our Sun, Alpha centuris five times larger than our son.

See, the universe just blows our mine. And that's how creation is.

Creation declares the glory of God. In Augustine, the famous theologist, said

this. He says, all creation is God's smile towards us. All that

you love out there, It points you toward God. And I need you

to understand us. For centuries before Jesus came along, and before we had

the Word of God, nature was God's greatest evangelistic tool. When you looked

up at night, you had to say there must be a creator. When

you looked around, it's all the complexity of nature, you would have to

say, there must be a creator. And so God uses for many centuries

as an evangelistic tool. But even though all these things pointed to a God

that existed, Jesus came to earth because God didn't want you to know that

he just existed. God wanted a relationship. It was not good enough for

you to just know what God exists. This God wanted a personal relationship with

you. See, knowing God existed because of his creation, it's almost like

a wedding ring. Okay, the wedding ring. If the groom was given

a wedding ring on the wedding day, that wouldn't be enough. The wedding

ring is not enough. It's a symbol, but it's not enough. No,

the wedding ring points to the true gift, the true prize, the

relationship he gets to have with the beautiful bride, and creation points us to

this amazing God. See, creation is not enough. It's meant to point

us to the Creator. Now I love the next verse. It says he

existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together. Now this I

have always found this phrase to be mysterious. What does it mean he holds

all things together? Or right? If you're a nerd, you're really gonna

love the next few moments. Probably gonna have a nerd revival here at our

church today. But all I want to do is just it's too mysterious for

me to understand. So let's just do this. Let's just talk about how

awesome our God is in our own creation that we live on here. To

this earth another way to think about how Jesus holds all things together. Think

about this earth he created for us, and how He holds all things,

and how things don't change. The rules of nature don't change. See the

reason we can send men up in little ten can men and women up in

the space and they can land in a space that we pretty much think they'll

land, it's because God made these rules of nature and they don't change.

See, He upholds the earth. The Earth's rotation. If it just slowed

down sped up, depending on where you were at, you would either freeze

or burn. The same thing would happen if we got further away or nearer

to the Sun, because the Sun is ten thousand degrees radius fahrenheit or ten

thousand degrees fahrenheight on the surface. Our globe sits on the access to twenty

three degrees. That's why we have four seasons. Or if you live in

Indianapolis, you get to have twenty two seasons. We have all these pike

seasons, Like here's a two eighty degree days of weather, and everybody's like,

oh, we get the plant, we get the plant, We get

the plant. You need to go out and plant. And then mother agres

like sike going back to thirty degrees. You gotta do the whole thing over

again. Anyways, a lot of money, what anyways. So because of

that beautiful twenty three degrees, we get twenty two seasons. What anyways.

But if we didn't have that tilt, the great ice continents would pile up

on the north and south, and if the moon was not the exact distance

from the Sun twice a day, the whole earth would be inundated with water

because the tides would overwhelm us. And if the oceans slipped down just a

few more feet, it would mess with the oxygen and the carbon did not

Dixide, and therefore vegetable life wouldn't exist. Man, somebody designed all this,

and somebody's going to make sure everything holds together. The point is that

our creator is the king of the cosmos, and he holds all things together

for us. And just the same thing. If you're a life, if

your life is not being upheld by God, your life will fall apart.

And if Christ is not the center of your life, all things will not

hold together. So here's what Paul does. Paul says, all right,

I'm gonna talk to you about who Jesus really is. First of all,

you need to know he is the creator. He is the King. He

is the alpha, the omega of the universe. And he goes another thing

you need to know. Number two, christis king over the church. Christis

king over the church. Let's look at Colossians two, verse eighteen, in

the first chapter. Let's look at this. It says Christ is also the

head of the church is his body. He is the beginning, supreme,

the same word as firstborn. But here we understand that he's supreme over who

rise from the dead. So he's first in everything for God and all his

fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him, God reconciled everything

to himself. And I love this phrase where he made peace with everything in

heaven and on earth by means of Christ blood on the cross. So Paul

says, hey, first of all, he's the only king of the cosmos,

but he's king of the Church. In other words, we are the

body, but Christ is the head. Now. And remember before Easter,

we all took a big journey. We're gonna find out what our gifts are,

our talents, our passions. And we said, all right, hey,

here's what we're gonna do as a church. Because our goal is not

to become a bigger church. Our goals become a better church. And to

become a better church, we're gonna become the hands of feet of Jesus Christ,

and we're gonna meet the needs of our community. In order to do

that, it's gonna take us being a body, a body that has unity,

a body and where everybody says, you know what, I'm not afraid

to get my hands and feet dirty. I'm gonna dive on in. And

so we we we've took time to figure out what are your gifts? Okay,

Now, that's what the body does. But how do we determine what

direction we go? That's the head's decision. And Christ is a head.

And what's a body without a head? It's dead, you see, the

Christ is the head. Let's think about the two main functions of the head,

specifically of the brain. The brain controls how our body moves, how

our body functions, what our body will do. The brain also decides what

will grow on our body. It decides if our cells are going to grow,

if our muscles are going to grow, if our body is going to

grow, and it regenerates things and and the brain is a growth center of

our body. And this is precisely what christ Us. See he provides growth

to his church by pumping his life into the church. And then he provides

direction by the word of God. Did you hear that? By the word

of God. See, there's no higher authority in the church than Jesus Christ.

He is the head of churches. No equals, nobody's in competition,

there's no power struggle. He's the head of the church. And he leads

a church, and he guys at church, and he grows the church.

Now I may be the senior pastor, but Christ is the head of the

church. And so you might come to me as a pastor, why are

we doing this or that, or why are we going in this direction or

that direction? And let me just simply explain how we operate here at the

church at the Crossing from from now in the future. This is how we

do church. Number One, we look at the head of the church,

Christ, and then we teach the Bible and we get in groups together so

that you can become like Jesus. That's first and foremost. We want you

to become like Jesus. So we study the head and then we try to

become like that. And then secondly, for the direction of the church,

we look at God's word, look at what Jesus and the disciples did or

they commanded us to do, and we just simply say, all right,

let's figure that out for our context. So we saw Jesus feed five thousand

people, so we'll do a pantry. We saw that Jesus prayed for people

to be healed, and so we'll have a prayer and healing ministry. We

saw that Jesus did all kinds of mercy works, and so we will figure

out the mercy works for our community. All we will do is simply do

this. We will look at God's word, we'll put it into context for

our community, and then we will obey. So we will simply try to

become like the head. And then we will live every day in and now

trying to be the hands and feed of Christ. So when people come to

me next election season and they say, Pastor, our church should do this,

I will say, we try to become like Jesus, and then we

try to do the works of Jesus. And then somebody will come to me

and said, Pastor, I really think we should jump on this bandwagon.

I will say, we try to become like this Jesus in the Bible,

and then we try to do the things that Christ did. We try to

be the hands off he to Christ and serve people. And then somebody comes

a pastor, there's these really cool, fast or growing churches. Whoop do

you do? All Right, here's what we're gonna do. We're going to

look at who Jesus is, and then we're gonna try to be the hands

of Christ. So when people come and we have agenda, so we have

ideas. If you're agenda an idea does not equal our help us become more

like Jesus or due to the things that Jesus would do, then it is

not considered because what do we do as a church. We follow the head.

There is no competition. And if I come to you and say we

should go in this direction, but it is not becoming more like Jesus or

doing the works of Jesus. And I have just qualified myself because we into

Church of Christ and are going to be a church that says we follow Jesus

and Jesus alone, and we will do the works of Christ. Any questions,

and that's our direction, that's our vision. You might not understand why

we're doing this or that, go back and ask is this something that Jesus

would do? It's that simple, and that's why we're not trying to be

a church that our main goal to grow. Our main goal is to be

a better church. And so we submit ourselves to the head and verse twenty

and it kind of tells us why he deserves to be the head, says

through Jesus, he has reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything

in heaven and all earth by the means of Christ's blood on the cross.

Now, why did Jesus go to the cross. This isn't the true question

from Sunday School to make peace? Peace between whodo God and man. There's

a little story to come out of World War Two where there's a fierce battle

between the Germans who hold up in a farmhouse house and then the French down

in these trenches. And there happened to be a reporter, you know,

on site watching all this, and all morning they just fired and fired and

fired at each other. It was a horrific battle. And at some point

in the day, the family who owned that farmhouse, their little child,

toddler, baby whatever, got out, and it actually walked out, scared,

not know what to do, freaking out, and it ran in between

the soldiers firing at each other, and all of a sudden boom, all

the soldiers stopped. No one fired another shot. And the writer said,

how fitting is it that a little babe came between these two and brought peace.

See there's a war raging between sinful man and a holy God. And

see man fires back with a hatred or indifference for God. But then God

sent his only son, a baby, to this earth to bring peace,

because he, Jesus, is alone, is the one who could take the

hand of a sin o man and connected to a holy God. Because of

his infinite sacrifice on the cross, he alone can reconcile us to God and

make peace because of the blood on the cross and the forgiveness of man.

See, that's what the King of our Church can do. And he continues

to do this to this day. He brings a sinner to God. Okay,

And that's what our king does, and our king is continue to do

that day in and day out. He's our king. He's a king of

the cosmos. He's the King of the Church. And that leads us to

the end. Today, the very natural question is Christ king over you?

Is Christ king over you? Let's look at this colossus as we close up

this scripture today, Colossus one twenty one through twenty two. He said,

this includes you, told about all of us. He reminds us, Hey,

you were once far away from God. You were enemies, separated from

him by two things, your evil mind and the things you did that were

evil. But now you've been reconciled. Why through the death of Christ in

his physic good body. So as a result, He has brought you in

to his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stay before

him fold a single faul. So first thing Paul does say, Hey,

don't forget your life has been changed. You loo everything to Jesus. He

is a reason you can have a relationship with God. He did it all.

Then he warns us first twenty three check this out, and this is

where he's worried about the heresy. But you must continue to believe this truth

and stand firmly in it, and don't drift away. See, the easiest

way for the people of Colossity to drift away was to get a distorted image

of Christ. He's not the true God. He's a good teacher, but

he's not divine. You know, he has some good sermons, but he's

not supreme. He did a lot of good works, but he was not

the creator, just just changed. Let's just distort this image to see when

our image of Christ as King becomes distorted or lesson in our life, at

least a sin, at least a rebellion, and our faith drifts away.

Tim Keller told the story, said he meant a man a long time ago,

and the man was sharing how on the weekends his wife will go away

and stay with her mother, and when the wife will go away and say

of her mother. He brought his mistress in for the weekend. And in

order for him to be able to commit the acts or the sin that he

was going to follow through with on those weekends, and also the mistress insisted

on this as well, he had to go through the whole house and put

down all the pictures of the wife so that he couldn't see his wife's face

all through the weekend. And he said, what he would do is that

he would put her pictures down and then he would sit there and think for

a few moments and think back on a time where maybe she was short with

him, or a time where maybe she wasn't as patient as she should have

been. And what he would do is he would create this distorted image of

who his wife was. And he had to do this because and the reason

he had to keep the pictures face down, because if he flipped the pictures

back up, as soon as he looked at the pictures of his wife,

he would be reminded about how much she loved him, how much she adored

him, and how she was crazy about him. And see, we often

do that, we decide, right, if we could just distort the image

of Christ in our mind. If he is not the God of the universe,

if he is not the King of Kings and the Lord of Lord,

if he is not the beginning in the end, if he is not the

Alpha and Omega, if he is truly not a part of the Trinity,

if he is truly not God, we just lessen God. He's a good

lessen to being a good teacher, a great mercy giver, a great philosopher.

He was a great man. If we could take him down a notch

and distort his image, then it's easier for me to sin. It's easier

for me to rebel, It's easier for me to drift away. And Paul

understood this. See Paul is trying to give the people a right image of

Jesus. He wants us to be in all of our King and all of

our God and all of our Jesus. Because see, when we have the

right image of Jesus and our mind, it changes the way we live.

It turns a center into a saint. It turns a hard man into a

humble man. It turns a liar into a lovable man. See our image

of Jesus in our mind directs the path of our life. It determines who

we become. And you know what, I this is one of the most

beautiful passages in the Bible. And by the end of my message, I

just felt like I don't have the vocabulary, are the words, or maybe

my brain just doesn't work this way. You know where I could where I

can exalt him in such a way that you would be like, yes,

yes, yes, yes, yes, that's that's my king. That's my

king. That's my king, that's my king. And so I was searching

around and then I came across this video, and so please indulge me with

this, because when I washed it, it really grabbed a hold of my

heart and it felt like to me, it summed up my whole message today.

And I'm sure some of you have seen him before, but it's old

recording, so you can we just take a couple of minutes indulge me.

And I just want you to hear someone brag on how awesome our Jesus is.

Check this out. The Bible says, my king is the king of

the Jews, he's a king of his meals, he's a king of rightlessness,

he's the king of the ages. He's a king of heaven. He's

a king of glory. He's the King of King, and he's the Lord

of Lord. That not king I wanted to do. You know it?

Not king is a sovereign king. No means of mega can define his limitless

look. He's enduring, less strong, he's in highly sincere. He's eternally

spitfast. He's immortally graceful. He's imperily powerful. He's impartially merciful. Do

you know him? He's a greedist phenomenon that has ever lost the horizon of

this world. He's broad flum He's a sinner's savior. He's a centerpiece of

civilization. He's unparalleled. He's unprecedented. He is the loftiest idea in literature.

He's the highest personality in philosophy. He's a pundamental doctrine of theology.

He's the only one qualified to be at all pustic in savior. I wonder

if you're know him today. He supplies to the trace for the week.

He's available of a tiptic and a tride. He sympathizes and he saves.

He's stritten and sustained. He bought and behind, he heals the sick.

He cleanses the levers, He forgives limners, He discardious, He delivers a

captive. He just didn't perceival. He blesses the young, He serves the

unmportunate, He regards, he rewards the dinniger, and he refinds me.

I wonder if you're knowing me. He's a key to knowledge. He's a

well afraid for wisdom. He's a doorway of deliverance. He's a bad way

of peace. He's a right way the righteousness. He's a highway of holiness.

He's a dad way for Florid, you know will. He is light,

His madness is limitless, His monday is everlaxing. His love never opinion

in the love his brain depic d in rikers and the young need it,

and it well like I would, I could incribing for her. He didn't

describable. He ain't come in the bottom hearing well. It can't getting roll

of your mind. You can't get him to me again. You can't out

minute, and it can't here without the palace. When you were standing when

they found out, they couldn't stop til time, and it wounded it.

He couldn't be killing couldn't have happened at the grave, couldn't. I just

want to take a moment and let's just shift and I'm want to ask you

all up, boy your head and clothe your eyes, and here's what we

want to do over the next few month moments. We want to take some

time to ask the Holy Spirit what area of our life is Christ not keen

over? Because if we don't move into application, then today you've just been

entertained. And that's not what we're doing here today. So let's just take

some time and let's go before God. Honestly, can you close your eyes

and bow your head? And I want you just to simply ask, simply

ask this question God, is there any area of my life that you are

not keen over? Now he will speak to you. Let him show you

what area of your life you've not given over to him, and ask yourself,

do you have the faith the hand that over to him. Let's just

take some moment right now and just see Father God, thank you for revealing

that to you. And now I hand this over to you. You are

the king of glory, You are the king of my life. Maybe it's

something you repent, Maybe it's something you've been idolizing whoever is handed over to

him. Go ahead and say that to your father. And maybe you're here

today and it's been a long time since you follow God, or maybe you

have, like the scripture socity, you've drifted away. And I want to

give you an opportunity to come into relationship with Christ. I recommit your life

to Christ. And so what we're gonna do now is we're just gonna pray

a prayer of salvation. Feel free to pray this along with me. Jesus,

I come to you today, and I ask you to be my savior

and ask you to be my king. I ask you to be my lord.

Forgive me of my sins, forgive me of trying to lead my own

life, for being indifferent to you. Jesus, I believe that you are

the son of God, and that you died on the cross for my sins,

and that you resurrected three days later. I give you my life,

lead my life. Be my Lord. My very eyes closing, Can you

just reread your hand if you pray that prayer just now. I see that

hand, to see thy hand, and amen, I see that hand.

Amen and amen. God, we just come to you today, we just

want you to be the king and the ruler of our life. God,

may you be exalted in Jesus name. Amen. Let's worship our King before

we head out today. Let us stand