From The Heavens To The Dust | Celebration Weekend

If you have a Bible in your hand, if you want to turn with me to Psalm 113, in that Psalm, it says the name of the Lord is to be praised.

And that's what we intend and have done this morning and we hope to do this hour.

If you uh call Providence home, welcome home.

It's good to see you.

And um let me just say, if you're a guest here, we are honored that you have joined us on our prayer.

Is that as a church family, what we would mean to you, what we would be to you, first of all, if you don't know the Lord, we're so glad you're here, and we thank God that you have a heart that is curious as to who Jesus is and what he's done.

And we pray that we would have the opportunity uh to help you to learn just a little bit more about who he is and what he's done, because we believe that he is transformational in life and um absolutely critical to life.

For those of us who know Christ, our hope is that Providence would do a number of things in our lives.

One is to help us to grow in our faith in Christ.

Uh, second is to grow in real fellowship with each other, that people would know you and you would know them.

They would pray for you and you would be able to pray for them.

And third is each one of us, our days are numbered.

And as our days are numbered, it's only natural for us to look up and say, I want the work of my hands to be established.

I want what I do to matter.

And so what we do frequently here is we simply do just what Psalm 90 tells us to do as people who have a limited number of days, and that is to say, Lord, this is how many days I have left.

And with them, what I want to ask you is, what are you doing in the world?

Because then we know that your work, it will be established, and we simply want to join what you're doing.

And so we pray that God is gonna use this church family to be a blessing to you, as the church family has been a blessing to me.

So let me pray.

Father in heaven, we acknowledge you and we thank you for sending your son, the Christ, and giving him the name Jesus, the name that is above every name.

And we desire to honor you, we desire to praise you.

Lord, we desire for everything that we can imagine, everything we can see, everything we can strain to see and recount of your faithfulness, that not to us, but to your name be all the glory.

And so we pray as we open up Psalm 113 that you would speak to our hearts and that you would use weakness to do so, that you would create within us a holy curiosity for your word.

And for some of us, Lord, that this would be the day that we would be saved.

For each one of us, I pray that you would help us, Lord, to navigate through the fog of our lives, the parts of our lives that are confusing, the parts of our hearts that are, Lord, that are really hard right now, or the parts of our life where there's a lot of pain, a lot of disappointment.

I pray, Father, that you would help us to see that this is the day that you have made, and it's fitting for us, even in our brokenness, to rejoice in you and be glad.

And so help us, we pray, in Christ's name.

Amen.

Well, what we saw in that video repeatedly is evidence that Christ has been good to us.

And I do not mean that the inspiring memory of a man who lived a long time ago and who lived a really good life now inspires people like us to do some good in the world.

No, Christ, who I'm talking about, is the one who's the Son of God, who came to the earth, who lived without sin, who died for our sin, who rose from the grave never to die again, who is alive and active, actively looking upon us as a church family, pouring out his grace, helping us over and over and over again.

This is what we find in Psalm 113, is evidence of how God is actively at work in the lives of real people still today.

And he has done that in our midst.

We have seen it time after time after time.

It's been amazing to see how the Lord has drawn us to him and to each other, how he has forgiven us a thousand sins, how he has taught us, transformed us, protected us, provided for us as a church family, how he has unified us.

I always think this is amazing.

This church family is made up of a thousand people, I should say thousands of people, and thousands of people have thousands of ideas about what the church should be and what the church should do.

Any church has the capacity to splinter into a thousand different directions on the basis of what we think this should all be about.

And yet God, by his grace, has moved in our hearts in such a way that we have been unified to say, this is what we'll be about.

Introducing all peoples to Jesus Christ and growing them up to love and worship him.

And we've seen how he's moved our hearts to connect and grow and serve and go, and how he's inspired our hearts to do something that literally is a miracle.

It's transformational because it removes, it forces us to remove our selfishness even for a moment, and that is to be willing to extend ourselves to the point of discomfort in order to reach people.

Christ has been good to us, faithful to us.

And Psalm 113 tells us how to respond.

He says, Praise the Lord, praise those servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord.

Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore, from the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised.

The Lord is high above all nations and his glory above the heavens, who is like the Lord our God, who is seated on high, who looks far down on the heavens and on the earth.

He raises the poor from the dust, he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people.

He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children.

Praise the Lord.

Well, friends, every year, if you happen to be brand new with us, every year we set aside one weekend to look back, to recount his faithfulness, goodness, kindness in our lives so that we can give him thanks.

It's a day that we simply, it's a weekend we simply seek to celebrate.

But this is an interesting thing.

It's always this either the third or fourth weekend in August.

We put it on the calendar, but this is what we know.

Pain is no respecter of a calendar.

And what that means is every single year that we plan it is the year that some people come in here and they're emotionally unfit to celebrate.

Some of us have heard really bad news this week.

Some of us are experiencing significant loss, divorce, death, grief, terrible diagnoses.

And all of a sudden we're like, let's celebrate.

And it doesn't feel right to you.

Each one of us has been taught our whole life that celebration is tied to happiness.

When we're happy, we celebrate.

Happiness comes from an old word hap, which means circumstance or fortune.

And so it's only natural that when our circumstances seem fortunate, when things seem to be going well, when life is really nice, it's pretty easy for our heart to find space to celebrate.

But when life is sour and we're going through really difficult times, celebration feels forced like putting on a shoe that's simply too small for your foot.

How in the world can we do this today?

Well, what's interesting is God Almighty knows.

He knows what's restorative to us, and he knows that when we as an it as people, even in our brokenness, he knows that when we will choose to see his goodness and kindness, and we recount his faithfulness and we give him thanks and praise, that the very act of doing so is restorative to our heart that sometimes is confused and weary and selfish, in pain, anxious, fearful.

It's restorative.

And so the Bible teaches us the discipline of celebration.

That seems like they don't fit together.

You've heard of a spiritual discipline.

You maybe have heard of it with prayer or fasting or Bible study, where in discipline we open up the Bible and read whether we feel like it or not because we know it's good for us.

We pray whether we feel like it or not because we know that it's good for us.

And people who discipline themselves in these practices over a long period of time tend to grow.

It's like going to the gym.

You may not want to go, but if you go consistently, you see effect.

Well, in the Psalms, one of the spiritual disciplines that is presented to us is the discipline of celebration.

You say, Well, what is that?

The discipline of celebration is not the discipline to wait for a day without any pain.

Nor is it to ignore the pain in our day.

In fact, if you notice, the psalmist himself is praising the Lord, and yet the bitter realities of barrenness, emptiness, and poverty, he writes within the psalm.

No, the discipline of celebration is to strain to see God's kindness in our day.

Because the reality is if you only celebrate and give thanks to the Lord when you feel like it, you will not do it enough.

And it is restorative to your heart.

And as a congregation, just imagine the impossibility that if we had to wait until everyone was having a good week for us to celebrate his faithfulness to us, we would never celebrate his faithfulness.

And so we read Psalm 113.

What does the psalmist try to help us see in order to elicit and awaken praise from our mouth?

Three things.

The first is that Christ has a name that is above every name.

He has a name that is above every name.

The Bible says, At his name, every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

At his name.

And I have a name.

And Jesus is his name.

The angel came to Mary and Joseph and said, You will name him Jesus, mean Savior, for he will save his people from their sins.

And interestingly, the name Jesus is sort of like, if you can imagine as a metaphor, a necklace.

And upon that name Jesus, the Bible stacks up diamond after diamond, or name after name after name after name, to give us a description of the greatness of Jesus.

Each of these names not only seeks to describe who he is and his character, but also the ministry that he intends to provide and give to us.

And so within the scriptures, I can't go through all of them this morning because there's so many of them, but I want to give you a sampling.

And the Bible calls him the bread of life because he satisfies the desires of his people.

The Bible calls Jesus the light of the world because he illuminates the path of his people.

The Bible calls him Emmanuel because he walks the path with his people.

Well, the Bible calls him the Lamb of God because he died for the sins of the people, and Lion of Judah because he conquered the grave for his people.

Well, the Bible calls him also the name fountain.

And the reason is because he is able and capable to satisfy the soul of his people.

Calls him cornerstone because he gives stability to his people.

He gives them the name high priest because he intercedes for his people.

He gives them the name King of Kings.

And the reason is because he humbly serves his people.

He gives them the name Lord of Lords because he kindly commands his people.

He gives them the name Wonderful Counselor because he guides his people.

Prince of peace because he comforts his people.

And perfecter of faith because he keeps his people forever.

Name after name, the diamonds that are added to the name Jesus, making his name the name that is above every name.

And interestingly, if you notice in the first three verses of Psalm 113, what you find is that he is mesmerized by the name of the Lord so much so in three verses he speaks about the name of the Lord three different times.

And the superiority of his name is not in the sweetness of the syllables, but in the strength of his collective character.

This is why this proverb says that the name of the Lord is a strong tower, and the righteous run to it and are safe.

Now, our nature is that anytime we see something that is worthy, that has worth, that we assume has worth, such as food that we find that is delicious, a shirt that is comfortable, an experience that is invigorating.

Anytime we see something of worth, beauty, a sunset, art, touchdowns, doesn't matter what it is, when something moves our heart and we say that has worth, what happens from the mouth is it travels from the heart that senses work and it comes out of our mouth and we want to praise what it is that we see.

But interestingly, God has made us to not only be spiritual people, but also relational people.

What that means is He's made our joy to actually be more magnificent, more real when someone shares our joy with us.

And that's why whenever we see something that is worthy, we not only want to praise it, but we want to invite other people to praise it, to experience it, to share our joy in it.

And this is what Psalm 113 is.

This man has seen the name of the Lord, that it is the name above every name, and he wants to invite people to praise.

And so he begins in verse one and he simply says, Praise the Lord.

This is as general as you possibly can be.

So just imagine that you're in a park and all of a sudden you see somebody fall out.

They have an emergency, a medical emergency, and you run over there and you're not talking to anyone in general, but you begin to yell, help, help, anybody.

It doesn't matter who it is, just help.

And that's how he begins.

He's saying, I have seen that the name of the Lord is above every name.

It is worthy to be praised.

And he comes and he simply says, Somebody, anybody, praise the Lord.

But then he gets more specific.

Think about if you were there in a park and there was somebody who was laying down and you're crying help, and suddenly you look to the right and you saw two paramedics having lunch at a picnic table, and now all of a sudden you're like, all these other people doesn't matter.

Those are the people I want their attention.

I need them because they're trained for this.

And that's what he does next.

He moves from general to specific and he says, Praise, O servants of the Lord.

Those of you who've been saved by him, called by him, helped by him, changed by him, strengthened by him.

If he's provided for you, protected you, if he's done anything in your life, you've been trained to praise him.

And so he looks at us and he says, You gotta join me in praising him.

So then we start asking the question well, how long should he be praised?

And so you notice in verse two it says, Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Blessed is a different verb.

To bless him means to think something highly in your mind, to praise him means to say something great about him with your mouth.

In other words, not only should we be saying magnificent things about him, but we should be thinking magnificent things about him.

And those words and those thoughts should be as enduring as his character, which is why it says, from this time forth and forevermore.

And then he says, Now where should he be praised?

And in verse 3, he says, From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised.

Three and a half billion people today do not have access to the gospel.

They're not praising him.

And he is worthy of their praise.

The greatest burden in the heart of missionaries and people who care about is not the mercy we have to the people who haven't heard.

Although that's a close second.

The most important driving influence in our life is when you see that Jesus is worthy of praise and you see that he is not being praised.

It moves our hands and feet to try to fill that gap.

Which is why next week, when we look forward on Vision Weekend, instead of looking back and saying, What has he done?

We look forward and we say, What do you want us to do next?

Is such an important time for us as a church.

And so Christ has a name that is above every name, and when we see it, we want to praise him.

The second thing he says to us and shows us is that Christ is exalted, yet looks upon the lowly.

We have the Bible, and the Bible is God's revelation to us about who he is, who we are, and how to live in his world.

We don't have to guess about God.

We don't have to invent who God is because he tells us precisely who he is.

But let's just imagine that just as it says in Romans chapter 1, there's people all around the world and they know there is a God, but they do not know him.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

They know there is somebody higher than them, but they don't have a Bible to tell them.

And as a result of that, they have to make up things.

If we were living in the world and we saw things like our sense of justice, human consciousness, the beauty of a sunrise and a sunset, the magnificence of a strand of human DNA.

We saw all these things and we think, I know there's a God.

I don't know who He is, but I know there's a God.

And if all of us found out that all the rest of us were having the same experience and we came to this room in order to invent a God that we could worship, we would invent a God who is big and exalted.

And I can tell you that with certainty because our superheroes, all the man-made religions, and all mythology features gods who are big.

And therefore, we're not stunned when we read verse 4.

Verse 4 says, The Lord is high above all nations and his glory above the heavens.

Now, truth be told, one day we're going to see his glory and we're going to learn that his glory far exceeds our imagination of his glory.

We're going to see that whatever we thought about him and what he actually is, there's such a discrepancy between the two that what we thought about him was so small in comparison to his glory.

And yet, his greatness as a category is not stunning to us.

Because we all imagine that God is big.

What makes him so stunning is what makes him incomparable.

And you notice in verse 5, he begins with a comparison question.

And he says, Now who is like him?

Who is like him?

Of all the so-called gods in the world that people are worshiping, why is he fundamentally different than all the rest?

And he answers the question He says, not only is he seated on high, but also because he looks far down to the lowly.

So imagine we were living a long time ago, great kings roamed the earth.

And let's just say a great king was coming into our city.

The crowds would flood into the streets, and we would join that crowd, and we would see soldiers lining up, all the dignitaries would come, trumpets would be sounding, the king would come.

What he says here is this just imagine if we were one of those citizens in that little town or city and we kept looking at the king as he came in, and we'd be struck by something.

And that is that even though there's all these noble people, all these dignified people, all these celebrated people all around, all the pageantry is that we would be absolutely stunned.

Just imagine if we kept noticing that the king kept looking beyond all of us, and instead he was looking.

At people who have been marginalized from the curb, pushed back the sick people, and the sinful people, and the poor people, and the widows and the orphans.

This is what makes him incomparable.

Is the king who reigns on high has eyes for the lowly.

He cares about our problems and our pains.

He is above the heavens, and yet he takes interest in what happens on the earth.

He is exalted and yet he looks on the lowly.

And for those of us who come face to face with the reality of our own personal weakness, this becomes something that will cause you to rejoice because then you know that the king of all the earth cares about you.

That he sees you and your weakness and your anxiety and your fear and your inconsistency, and he says, I see you.

But not only does he see us, the third point is really what takes the top off the lid of the psalmist worship.

And that is that Christ is holy yet lifts us from the ashes.

He's holy, but he lifts us from the ashes.

In the Bible, of course, our Bible, most of us have a Bible that's written in English.

I say written in, it's translated in English.

It was not written in English.

It was written, Old Testament, mostly Hebrew, some Aramaic, and then the New Testament, Greek.

And those languages in Greek and Hebrew are really an interesting thing that we asked them to do.

And that is that they were asked to do something impossible.

Those words were asked to describe both man and God, using the same vocabulary.

So you can imagine words are asked to describe the magnificence of God.

And so the words they begin to buckle under the pressure, the weight of everything that they're asked to describe, and the discrepancy of what they're asked to describe.

What do I mean by that?

Well, you open up the Bible and it says, and there was a guy, and he was kind.

And then the Bible describes God and says, He's kind.

Now think of the chasm between this man's kindness and God's kindness.

And then he uses words like faithfulness to describe both man and God, mercy and grace, generosity to describe both God and man.

And so when the writers are trying to use these words that if we only had to describe ourselves, we'd be like, oh yeah, he's good.

He's kind.

We wouldn't need much more than that.

But we use those same words to describe perfection.

Well, the Bible has a real hard time.

And so, in when the Bible wants to use superlative to show emphasis, it's interesting that the Bible doesn't use what we use.

Like we use a bunch of varies, really, super dupers.

We're like, he's super duper holy.

He's he's really, really, really, really, really loving.

And and the Bible doesn't do that.

Instead, what the Bible does is it takes the word and simply doubles it.

He's faithful.

Faithful.

He's kind.

Of all the attributes of God, there's only one that's tripled.

And it's holiness.

Holy means to be set apart, it's to be unique.

It literally means to be set apart in purity and perfection, which is why holiness is the distinguishing part of every attribute of God.

What do I mean by that?

When we use the words like faithfulness to describe God and man, his faithfulness is a holy faithfulness.

What does that mean?

It means that his faithfulness is pure and perfect.

His love is pure and perfect, his generosity is pure and perfect.

And this is the distinguishing mark between the words that are used to describe man and the words, the same words that are used to describe God.

Well, throughout the Old Testament, what you find is people are pressed in their heart and they're thinking, wait a minute, if God is this perfect in purity, how can he interact with us?

And this is what causes the psalmist and his worship to explode.

Notice he says in verse 7 and 8 and 9, he raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes.

He gives the barren woman a home.

Praise the Lord.

In other words, this king, Jesus, doesn't merely notice the lowly, he raises them to sit with princes.

He doesn't just see that you have an issue or a problem.

He's not just attentive to your pain.

He intends to lift us from that pain.

And this is the beautiful thing.

In fact, what's amazing is this promise of the Christ was actually spoken earlier.

Notice it says he raises the poor from the dust, he lifts the needy from the ash sheep to make them sit with princes.

Then he says, and he gives the barren woman a home.

This interestingly, back in 1 Samuel chapter 2, a woman who was barren named Hannah had a baby.

1 Samuel 2 · chapter mention

God opened up her womb.

She got pregnant, had a baby, and she explodes with a song in chapter 2.

And suddenly God, while she's singing, anoints her to actually prophesy and to say words that were not true about her son, but would be true about the coming Christ, the son, who would rescue us and set us free.

And guess what words she spoke?

Psalm 113 says, He raises the poor.

And 1 Samuel 2.8, Hannah's song says, He raises the poor from the dust.

He lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes.

And wouldn't you know it in the fullness of time that God made good on his promise and he sent the Christ to the earth in order to lift us from dust and ash, these holy hands of his had to touch dust and ash.

He touched lepers.

He touched bleeding women.

He touched sinners and tax collectors.

And then the Bible tells us that although he had no sin of himself, is that he laid himself down in the dust on top of a cross.

And Roman soldiers drove nails through his hands and feet.

They hoisted him up.

And there Jesus died on the cross for our sin.

Now, why would that be?

Well, the Bible tells us that God is just, and he said that the wage of sin is death, and we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

And so either we must die for our sin or a sinless person can die for our sin.

And there's only been one.

His name is Jesus.

He lived without sin.

And by his grace, he went to pay the penalty to satisfy God's justice.

So that God was not only just but loving.

So just that someone had to die, so loving that he sent his son to die.

You know, nobody has ever invented in the history of world religion a God that has an attribute of humility.

And yet, Philippians chapter 2 describes Jesus this way: He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

He died for our sin, and then he rose on the third day.

And the Bible says that if we will admit that we have a sin problem, if we will acknowledge that before him, that we have a debt we cannot pay, and if we would put our faith and believe in Jesus, his life, his death, his resurrection, and confess him as Lord of our life, then he would forgive us and cleanse us, restore us, give us his righteousness and begin to lift us from the ashes.

Make us sit with princes, calling us sons and daughters.

Sons and daughters of the king are called princes and princesses.

That is what Christ has done.

And so let me close this message by encouraging you with a few things.

First of all, for those of you who have never put your trust in Christ, would you put your trust in him today and be saved?

You can stop listening to me and simply start praying in your heart to him right now and saying, I believe.

I believe I have a sin problem.

I believe in Christ.

I confess him as Lord.

Forgive me and save me, and he will, and he will lift you up.

I urge you to put your trust in Christ.

Many of us in the room have already done that.

So what I want to ask you to do today is to strain, to strain to see, to see the goodness and kindness that the Lord has given to each one of us.

You see, the most amazing thing in the video that you just saw is not the things that we could tell.

It's the fact that God's holiness in his holy hands had to dive into really, really, really dark and dirty places in order to accomplish that.

You say, What do you mean?

Well, just think about the situations that we've asked him to enter.

Even recently, many of us have been in counseling sessions where a situation is all busted up, everything is broken, this relationship, this challenge is all before us, and we think, what are we supposed to do?

And there's many times we're sitting there like, I don't know what to do.

I'll tell you what, let's ask Jesus to enter this situation.

Think about what those holy hands have to enter into to enter into our mess.

Think of all the sins that He has forgiven us.

Think of all the selfishness that he had to put away for 1,500 people to get on an airplane over the last five years from Providence to take the gospel to people who have never heard that we didn't know before we got there.

Think of the fact the fact that all the selfishness he had to put away, literally for over 150 people to pray every single week in the upper room for people they don't know.

For 1,300 people to serve.

All of this is the grace of God.

And it's important for us to look at, to recount so that we can give thanks.

And this is what Psalm chapter 9, verse 1 tells us to do.

Psalms 9:1

He says, I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart.

I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.

Why do we recount so that we can give thanks?

Now, what does it mean to recount?

It means to count again.

Many of us can remember if we try some of the some of the faithfulness and kindness that the Lord has given to us.

But here's the deal: if you stop recounting, you'll stop giving thanks.

But I should give a warning or two.

Counting in the Bible is a pretty serious thing.

And it can be a very dangerous thing.

And this is why.

There's two senses in the Bible.

One of them was called for by God.

When God tells us to count and we count the way He wants us to count, it's a really beautiful thing.

He said before the people were going into the promised land, I promise you, I'm going to protect you in the wilderness.

I'm going to keep a nation.

I promise you, you're going to go.

And sure enough, at the end of that time, they get into the promised land, and God says, Now count in order to prove to yourself my faithfulness to my promise to you.

And it became a beautiful thing.

But there came a day when a man named David, who was king, not to praise the Lord or to trust in the Lord, but to find confidence in the size of his army, he called for his own senses.

He says, Let's count.

Let's count so that we don't have to trust the Lord today, but instead we can trust in the size of our army.

And God condemned that counting.

And so how we count and why we count really matters.

And yet I also want to give you a second warning because as you look at counting, and here at Providence, I'm very familiar over all these years, is that we kind of have a hard time allowing ourselves to count for fear that we're going to count in the wrong way.

But it's very possible to back away from one cliff, not wanting to fall into it and to fall off another cliff.

And what is that?

Well, one day, ten lepers met Jesus on a road.

They wanted to be healed, and he says, I'll heal you.

And in advance, as a show of faith, I want you to go to the temple to show yourself to the priest.

All ten began walking, and all ten were healed.

One of them, a Gentile, turned around, didn't go to the temple because he knew I need to go back and say thank you.

And so he comes back to Jesus and he says, Jesus, you're the one who healed me.

I needed to say thank you.

And it's interesting that Jesus does not commend him returning.

This is what comes out of Jesus' mouth.

Where are the nine?

God forbid that we would experience such blessing and kindness from the Lord and he would look at us and say, Now, where is providence?

Just gonna go on and not return to give thanks?

No, no, no.

So what I want to ask you to do today is to take stock of your life.

Think of the last year.

What has he done in your life?

What has he helped you through?

What have you endured?

How has he helped you endure?

If your heart today is in a thousand pieces, then praise him with a thousand pieces.

Attribute the good that you've experienced to his hand.

Identify a short list and then come back tonight for prayer and worship at six o'clock, where we're going to give him thanks, but also proclaim to one another the things that he has done for us.

The last thing I want to ask you to do is what we're about to see, and that is to celebrate with those whom Christ has saved.

We're about to see a number of people who will be baptized.

And if you are brand new to this, the water, it looks like a cleansing, but actually it's just symbolic of a cleansing.

The Bible says that only the blood of Jesus can forgive us and cleanse us of our sin.

Each of the people who will be baptized here in just a moment, they've all put their faith in Christ.

They've all asked Christ into their life, they've all confessed him as Lord and He's forgiven them of their sin.

But now, as they're Lord, they look within the Bible and they see that Jesus, as an act of obedience, has told us to obey him by being baptized.

To go into the water and to come out of the water is symbolic of Jesus dying and rising from the dead.

And so each person, as they go into the water and out of the water, what they're saying is, I'm identifying with Jesus Christ.

His death and resurrection is the hope of my life and eternal life.

It takes a lot of courage to do what they're about to do.

And so if you know Christ and you're a follower of Jesus Christ, then I want to ask you when they come out of the water to celebrate with them as the family that we are.

So let's pray.

Father in heaven, we bow before you.

Thank you for your kindness to us, and thank you for each of these individuals that you have moved in their life, that you have changed, that you have transformed, that you've inclined their hearts to believe, and now they are ready to be baptized.

And I pray, God, that you would give them a peace that passes understanding, and you would give each one of us either a curiosity as to why they would do this, to ask questions of the gospel, or celebration in our heart as we recount the fact that you are the one who deserves all the praise and glory.

So we acknowledge you now, we celebrate, we pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.