Genesis: Tower of Babel

Well, good morning. How's everybody doing.

Come on now, man, it is a blessing to be

here and a blessing to have someone like John come

up and just show so much appreciation, and we want

to say thank you to you guys. You know, my

wife and I have been blessed to be here for

sixteen years. And I'll speak for both of us, and

I'll speak for all of our staff. When there hasn't

been a single year that hasn't gone by, has gone

by that we didn't feel total support and appreciation from

our church and so on behalf of the staff. We

just were so thankful and it is literally one of

the joys and blessings of our life that we get

to be a part of what God is doing here

in this community and be a part of you and

your families and what God's doing in your family. So

thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

If this is your first time here, well welcome. We

are hot in the middle. Nope, I lied, We're not

in the middle. Actually, if you've read the Book of Genesis,

you know it's pretty long. So we're really at the beginning.

We're at the beginning of a book of a series

titled Lamentation.

I'm just kidding.

It's Genesis that we are in today. And if I

haven't met you yet, my name is Morgan blessed to

be one of the pastors on staff here. We're continuing

through the Book of Genesis, and it has been an

awesome series so far. So far, we've we've talked about

so many things. We've talked about creation, We've talked about

the fall of humanity, we talked about canaan Abel. We

had that incredible message that Pastor Brandom preach on the

significance of the lineage of Adam. Pastor I spoke last

week about the flood, and up to this point, let's

just call it what it is, hasn't been too awesome

for humanity kind of seem to be stuck in some

repetitive rebellion and denying God. They go their own way,

they continue to reject and abandon God, and at some point,

like you read scripture and you just assume, well, they're.

Gonna get it right, Like.

We're gonna figure this thing out, We're gonna figure out

this obedience saying, we're going to figure out following God.

We're going to follow out, We're going to figure out

submitting to his will and these things, and you just

assume that it's gonna happen. Last week, Die spoke on

Noah and the flood, and here's this man, Noah, who

God singled out him and his family as the one

family that he would spare on earth as he essentially

starts over with humanity through the flood. And so today

we're going to pick up from there. See what became

of Noah and his family and the lineage that followed

that after the flood. It's important to remember that Noah

and his family, they were cooped up on that boat

for a long time. And I don't know about you,

anybody get a little seasick. I don't even want to

think about what my sea legs would have been like.

As I got off the.

Arc after experiencing that, no thank you, I go on

the boat.

For like two hours and I'm.

Like, oh Lord, right done. And here they are getting

off the boat last week. Pastor dimension that they were

on there, Yes, for the forty days and the forty

nights that it rained, but it was much longer period

of time than that that they were on the boat.

Most scholars believe that was over a year.

That they were on the boat, and I don't think

dramamine was created yet, So that's just rough.

That's rough.

After Noah and his family came out of the ark,

God had instruction for them. And I want to revisit

that instruction that God gives Noah and his family in

Genesis nine, verse seven. He says to Noah and his family,

but you be fruitful and multiply, spread out over the

whole earth and multiply on it. And when we pick

up in Genesis chapter ten, we find another.

Genealogy in scripture.

It's the genealogy of man post flood, so the new

beginning of humanity through the line of Noah. It's the

lineage of Noah's sons shem Ham and Jayfith. And I

don't have a super cool family lineage thing like Pastor

Brandon did a couple weeks ago. But what I want

you to notice is that they began to do what

God instructed them to do in chapter nine, verse seven.

And we know that because by the time that we

get to the end of this genealogy in chapter ten,

verse thirty two, ends by saying this. It says, these

are the clans of Noah's sons according to their line

of descent within their nations. From these nations spread out

over the earth. Chapter ten leaves us feeling a little

bit hopeful, like man, maybe they're figuring this out.

This might be the turning of the time.

Maybe they're going to figure out how to follow God's

will and be obedient to him and follow his ways.

And then chapter eleven begins.

The Tower of Babel, and that's where we are today.

Lucky you, lucky me. Open your bibles today Genesis chapter eleven.

I'm gonna read this first portion of scripture, and then

we're gonna pray, and we'll dive in today. This is

what it says in chapter eleven of Genesis says, now

the whole world had one language and a common speech.

As men moved eastward, they found a plane in China

and settled there. They said to each other, come, let's

make bricks and make them thoroughly. They used brick instead

of stone and tar for mortar. Then they said, come,

let us build ourselves a city with a tower that

reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a

name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face

of the whole earth. Let me pray for us this

morning as we dive in. Father, God, we thank you

for who you are in our life. We thank you

that your word is alive, God, that it speaks to

us here today as it has for thousands and thousands

and thousands of years. God, and we pray God that

you would do a work in our hearts. God, help

us to surrender to you the parts of our lives

that you're calling out of us, and help us to

walk in your ways.

We love you, We thank you when we praise you

in Jesus name.

And everyone said, Amen, there is something impressive about a

tall building, isn't there. I was walking through Seattle with

a friend that goes to the church here. We just

got done watching the Sounders game. Come on, go Sounders.

Thank you, Die Biels. I can always count on Die

Biels for a little cheer right there. But we were

walking home from the Sounders game. We were walking through

downtown Seattle and we passed the Smith Tower. Anybody familiar

with the Smith Tower and downtown Seattle. Now, if you're

native to Seattle, you know that the Smith Tower actually

holds some significance in our city's history. The Smith Tower

was built in nineteen fourteen, and at the time of

it being built, it was the largest tower, the largest

structure west of the Mississippi. People would see this tower

and they would be amazed.

It was a spectacle.

It is now where couples will go get engagement pictures

taken on the top of And now it is a

tiny building in Seattle. You almost don't know that it's there,

But in nineteen fourteen we're amazed by it. It'd be

sixteen years later that this building would be dwarfed in

comparison to the building that we're all familiar with thanks

to Home alone, the Empire State Building.

Right. Okay, maybe that's.

Not why you're familiar with it, but for whatever reason,

that's the first thing that came to my mind when

I thought of the Empire State Building. The Empire State

Building was built in nineteen thirty built in New York,

and when they finished construction, including its antenna, it measured

at one thousand, four hundred and fifty four feet, almost

one thousand feet taller than the iconic Smith Tower in Seattle.

Now we all know the events that took place on

nine to eleven in two thousand and one, and when

the Twin Towers fell, they reconstructed the one World Trade

Center in New York as a memorial to that, and

today it stands at seventeen hundred and ninety two feet.

But even that monster of a building, even that huge building,

is dwarfed in comparison to the tallest building on earth today.

If you go to Dubai. I have never been there,

but I heard it's great. I've seen a picture. This

building was completed in two thousand and four, stands in

downtown Dubai. It's called the Burj Khalifa, and its total

height finished in two thousand and four, was two thousand,

seven hundred and twenty two feet, just over a half

a mile in height. And there's a couple things that

strike me when I think of that and I see

that picture. I think, Dear Lord, I pray for whoever

goes to the top of that building and changes the

light bulb on the very top. And I also pray

that I never have to experience how long that.

Elevator right is.

There's something impressive about a tall building, though, isn't there

The tall building communicates something. When you see a tall building,

you assume that something is going right. For whoever built

that thing, that something is going right for the place

that it's constructed, and that something is going right for

the community or the town or the city in which

it was built. And this idea of what I'm talking

about isn't too hard to think about, because we all

know what it's like when people try to communicate their fame,

their success, their worth, their value, their achievements through their

own flexing of their own muscles. We see it every

day the way that we will build things in our

own personal lives. We will see buildings built around us

that are to communicate power. They're to communicate fame, there

to communicate worth. It's common to watch people show off,

to watch people attempt to justify or prove themselves by

the success of building power that they appear to have

or they maybe do have. And hear me say this today, friends,

this has always been the downfall of humanity, This idea

of thinking that we can build a life for ourselves,

or build a reputation for ourselves, or build fame, or

build fortune, or build this life for ourselves to communicate

that we have achieved something great. The moment that you

and I begin to measure our worth and value based

off fame, success, achievement that we can build for ourselves. Friends,

it is the same moment that we rob God of

what he is planning and hoping to do through our lives.

It's the same exact moment. It was this moment in

scripture in Genesis chapter eleven that we can begin to

see that humanity's motivation began leading them away from God.

And I want to look into that motivation that they

had this morning.

Are you guys with me today?

Let's dive into Genesis chapter eleven, and I want to

revisit those first four verses that we talked through. It

starts by saying that Noah and his family spoke the

same language. This isn't too hard to understand how that

would have happened, because as I was thinking about this,

I was realizing, well, you know, if God had selected

me and Nicole and my kids to be the last family,

we'd probably start with one language. Any of you who

are fluent in Italian, French or any other language, I

am sorry, I do not have those in my back pocket.

I've got one language, and.

I don't even communicate it that well, but it's the

only one that I got.

It says.

It says they spoke the same language, they use the

same words, and so it's understandable that after the flood

they started all on the same page. It then says

in verse two, the author says, as people moved eastward,

they found a plane in China and settled there. This

area has been identified being between the Tigris and the

Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia. If you look on the

map here you can see the two major rivers flowing

through flowing through what was then southern Mesopotamia. This is

about where they believe that the Tower of Babel would

have been constructed. And now later on in scripture this

area would be referred to as Babylonia, and now currently

today you would see this on the map of being

in the place of Iraq modern day Iraq. It's also

important to recognize that in Genesis, anytime we read of

God's people traveling eastward, it is communicating that they are

actually moving away from God's blessing. We see this multiple

times in the Book of Genesis. We've seen it already,

and I don't have time to get into all the

different examples of when we see it and where we

see it. But anytime God's people are moving east through

the book of Genesis, it is not only inplying that

they are moving out of God's blessing, but in a

geographical sense, they are moving further away from God's ultimate

plan of dwelling place for them in the west. So

they're moving eastward, further away from God's ultimate place for them.

People were moving away from God. That's what the author

wants us to understand here. Now let's look at verses

three and four, because there's a few really important things

that we need to capture from these two verses. Here,

let me read them again for us. It says that

they said to each other, come, let's make bricks and

make them thoroughly. They use brick instead of stone and

tar for mortar. Then they said, come, let's build ourselves

a city with a tower that reaches the heavens, that

we may make a name for ourselves and not be

scattered over the face of the whole earth. There is

a few things that you and I need to catch

of what is happening in these two verses, and they're

really important. The first thing is that we need to

understand is that plainly, they wanted to build a city.

They wanted to build a tower. Can I just asked

the question again to make sure you're with me. Who

wanted to build the city?

They did? Did God want them to build a city? No?

This was man's plan, man's idea, man's focus, to build

themselves a city. It was not the city of God.

It would not be what Jerusalem was, where it was

god instructed city being created. It was instead the city

of man. Second thing that we need to pull from

this is that not only they wanted to build a city,

but they wanted to make a name for themselves through

the city. They were concerned for their own reputation. They

were concerned for their own glory, their own attention that

they would receive through it. But it was not only

a desire for their own reputation. Can I tell you,

I think what may be a little more important there

is that it was also a desire for their own independence.

And here's why this is important is because what they

are communicating by deciding to build themselves their own city

is it is communicating that they are going to do

this without God's help, that they don't need him to

accomplish this great feat. This has nothing to do with

what God wanted to do through them. This has nothing

to do with God's plan for them. This has everything

to do with them wanting to do this on their

own for themselves. And the third thing that we need

to catch from this is that not only did they

want to build a city, not only did they want

the city to make a reputation for themselves, but they

wanted to be equal to God through this. That was

the whole point of a tower that reaches the heavens.

Many people will read this and they'll think, well, that's

cool that they wanted.

To worship God at a higher place.

That is not what they were trying to accomplish through

this act of building this high tower. Many scholars believe

that the idea of reaching the heavens wasn't just referring

to its height or a new place to worship the

God in heaven, but it was actually implying this was

man's attempt to reach or be equal to, or completely

replace God himself. And already in just eleven chapters of Genesis,

this isn't the first time that they've had the desire

to be equal to or replace God.

Can I tell you that this isn't the first time.

God is probably looking at this like really, like we

just got started, and this isn't the first time you've

done this?

Right?

Think back to Genesis chapter three. What was it that

happened in the garden of Eden? As the serpent tempts

Eve in the Garden of Eden In Genesis chapter three,

verses four and five, you'll remember what the serpent says

to Eve to tempter her. He says, you will certainly

not die, for God knows that when you eat from it,

your eyes will be open.

And what does it say?

And you will be like God, knowing good and evil?

And what does even Eden Eve do? She munches on

that apple. It was the same thing that has always been.

It's the same story playing out again. In our arrogance,

in our self sufficiency, in our independence, we attempt to

build our own way of believing, our own religion that

believes that we can be equal to or replace God,

that we can be the God of our own lives.

Maybe you heard people say that we can choose our

own truth, that we can control what we do in life,

that we are authoritative beings so that we can do

it all on our own. The story hasn't changed, and friends.

Still to this day, the story has not changed. Even today,

people are building and erecting their own view of God

and how to connect with Him every day. Every other

religion in the world today has the same basic feature.

Did you know that?

And it's how people can reach and attain God. But

can I tell you, friends, that is not what you

and I believe in this place. The true essence of

our faith is that God came down in the person

of his son Jesus Christ. We can see where it

all started to unravel in Genesis chapter eleven for humanity,

where they began to go against God's will. And so

what happens, Well, let's keep reading Genesis eleven, chapter eleven,

verse five. It says, but the Lord came down to

see the city and the tower that the people were building.

And this is what I love about scripture. Man, I

love these moments in scripture where you read it. You

could read it one hundred times and maybe not catch

just like how savage this statement is, like the Bible

is trying to say something that is so cool to us,

and you can miss how awesome this statement is. It

says the Lord came down to see the city and

the tower that the people were building. If you read

this scripture and you don't catch a little bit of

mockery of how puny and little humanity's attempts to reach heaven,

where you're missing out on how to read scripture as

a whole. It's almost the same. It's almost the same

feeling as when you're kid. You're at the beach with

your kids, and your kids you're like, dad.

Come look at what we built. Come look at the

sand castle.

And you walk over and it is literally a lump

of sand with a broken seashell and a nasty seagulls

feather sticking out of the top right, and you're like, wow,

that is incredible, buddy, Like that is really neat what

you have done there.

And this is what they're trying.

To communicate is that God had to come down. It

was so puny and so tiny and so small in

comparison to who he was that he literally had to

come down to look at it. I can almost just

imagine him coming down in there and being like, hey, guys,

let me see what you did. Show me the place right,

It's great. And I like how one commentator says it

in his portion here. He says here, the satire speaks.

The tower's top was in the sky where God allegedly dwelt.

But this was Yahweh, the.

Infinitely, transcendently and incomprepare incomparably super eminent God of the

whole Old Testament, of whom Isaiah declared, it is he

who sits above the circle of Earth and its inhabitants

are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a

curtain and spreads them like a tent to dwell.

And this Yahweh must draw near, not.

Because he's near sighted, but because he dwells at such

tremendous heights. And their works are so tiny, you see,

in comparison to God, the tower was so small that

it was as if God had to get on his

hands and knees to see what was happening. I love

what Desalmas says as he compares the scope of God's

supremacy to human works. And he says, the one who

rules in heaven laughs, and the Lord scoffs at him.

And Church, can I just say this this morning plainly

for us. God will not be mocked by our puny

and tiny excuses of how we can try to replace

him in our life.

He will not be mocked.

God is like he has to come down to look

at the things that are going on and not he

has to come down to see what we've been spending

time replacing our relationship with him with. And we sit

here on earth and we're like, well, look at my portfolio,

look at my good job, look at my wealth, look

at all these things that I have in God's like,

that's so neat, that is so Cute's that's really amazing

what you've done there, all the things that we try

to use it to give us a false sense of control,

all the things that we try to use to give

us a false sense of power and authority. And I

just imagine he just laughs to himself a little bit.

And friends, you know how easy it is to begin

to measure our life based on what we.

Achieve in life.

We can spend our entire life just trying to build

just this little better life for ourselves so that hopefully

one day people will look at us, and the world

will look at us before we die and say, well done,

rich and famous person, good job, what an impressive life

you've built for yourself. And friends, hear me say, it's

not that God doesn't want you to build a great life.

It's not that God doesn't want you to succeed. It's

not that God doesn't want you to spend your life

building and working and moving things forward and have dreams

and aspirations and to do great things. But can I

tell you, Church motivation says a lot about our desire

to build something. The motivation of your in my heart

says a lot about our desire to build. God wants

us to be good stewards of our opportunity to build

until we can't build anymore. But the difference is is

that some people spend their lives building their own personal empire,

while God is inviting us into building his kingdom. And

we spend our whole life trying to build up all

these things for ourselves and make a name for ourselves

so that we can be worthy and so that we

could be famous, so that people might pay attention to us.

And God is just looking at us.

Like that's neat.

But I've called you to so much more, like there's

so much more for you. There's so much more that

I have in store for you. It's a matter of motivation,

and we have to honestly look ourselves in the mirror

and ask ourselves these really hard questions of like who

am I building for? What am I spending my life building?

What are the things that I spend my life doing

that I find the most satisfaction in. Are you working

and toiling and striving so that you might make a

name for yourself? Or are you working and dreaming and

praying and believing and building to make Jesus famous. It's

a matter of motivation of the heart. And as God

comes down and he inspects the tower that's being built

for themselves, he says in verse six, he says this.

He says, if any if as one people speaking the

same language, they have begun to do this, then nothing

they plan to.

Do will be impossible for them.

This verse confuses a lot of people, but I think

the best way to view this verse is that this

verse gives us such an incredible look into God's motivation

for our lives. God's soul motivation in your and my

life is not to ruin your plans. It's not to

make your life harder. It's not to make things difficult

for us. It's not to derail the dreams and aspiration

that we have. Do you know what God's soul motivation

for us is. It's simply to be with us.

That's it. He wants to be with us.

You see, God wasn't threatened by what people would do

if they were to succeed in building this tall tower

that would reach the heavens. Why because, quite frankly, he

knew they wouldn't. They could build, and they could build,

and they could build, and he would still laugh at

their attempts. He would still look at what they've done,

and he would look at it. And the reality is

is that no matter how high that building went up,

they would never overthrow God. But what God was concerned

about for his people was that their independence and their

self sufficiency. He was worried that it would harden their

hearts to his word, in his truth and his plans

for their life. So God says in verse seven, he

makes a statement of his own. He says, come, let

us go down and confuse their language so they will

not understand each other. Now it's God's turn to say.

Come.

God was going to break apart unity. He was going

to break apart the rebellion that had been created. He

was going to break apart these things by using multiple

languages within the people to confuse them. And because of

the multiple languages, people would begin to segregate themselves and

move into different parts of the world.

They would begin to scatter all throughout the earth.

But because of God's motivation hear me say this today,

we can read this scripture and understand that this was

as much an act of God's judgment against these people

as it was an act of God's grace for these people.

He could see what was happening.

He could the way that their actions and that their

attitude and that their motivation was leading them in. He

had already promised that he would never start over like

he did before with the flood. He had already made

the promise of the rainbow that said, well, I will

never wipe out humanity the way that I did before.

And so what does he do As he sees humanity

go back to the ways of separating themselves and distancing

themselves and denying God and moving away from his plan.

He graciously says, I'm going to confuse you so that

I can yet again give you another opportunity to be

with me, to follow me, to know me. And so

he confuses their languages, and this is what it says

happens in verses eight and nine, and says, so the

Lord scattered them from over all the earth, and they

stopped building the city. And that's why it's called Babel,

because the Lord confused the language of the whole world.

From there, the Lord scattered them all over the face

of the earth. God's judgment was also an act of grace.

God scatters the people all over the earth. God told Abraham.

God told Adam the same thing that he told Noah

in Genesis chapter one. It was God's motivation the entire time.

He says to Adam and chapter one of Genesis, verse

twenty eight, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

And what's that scripture we read right at the beginning,

the instruction to know as he steps off the boat,

It's the same instruction that he gave to Adam, be

fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. But instead of

filling the earth, people were gathering, uniting against God. And

in an act of absolute grace, the Lord disperses them.

He separates them all over the planet so that they

could have the opportunity of following his will again. The

story of the Tower of Babel is another story of

humanity turning from God and God coming in in an

act of grace to have yet another chance for his

people to follow him. The Tower of Babble is a

painful reminder of the way that our own pride can

so easily separate us from living under God's blessing. Mankind

united to build for themselves, to build a life, and

to build a reputation, and to build glory for themselves.

They united to build security for themselves. They united to

build this new life for themselves, this life of freedom,

this life of protection. But do you know why God

opposes the proud friends. It's because God sees our attempts

to fight for freedom, to fight for protection, to fight

for safety, to fight for security. And what we spend

a life trying to build our own realm our own

tower of fame and fortune and security and freedom, and

we build our own little tower.

Over here.

God is coming down and he's looking at our tower,

and he knows that the only way to have real freedom,

the only way to have real security, the only way

to have real blessing, to have real salvation, comes from

him and him alone. His sole motivation is to be

with you I want to close us with this last observation.

Here in the Book of Genesis, in Genesis chapter eleven,

the Tower of Babbel, we've seen two different uses of

the same word come in this story.

Come.

You've heard it multiple times now through these nine verses

that we've read this morning. The first time you read

it spoke by man. You see it in verses three

and four, they say, Come, let us make bricks and

bake them thoroughly. Then in verse four they say, come,

let us build ourselves a city with a tower that

reaches the heavens. And this statement, this use of the

word come, is spoken by man to man against God.

They're beginning to unify, and they're separating themselves from the

need of God in their life. The second time you

see the reference and the use of this word come

is just a few verses later, in verses seven, when

God looks at everything that he's seen, and he says, come,

let us go down and confuse their language so that

they will not understand each other. And this use of

the word come in this portion of scription in verse seven,

is spoken.

By God to God.

Against man for their judgment. It was judgment, and it

was grace But the Bible, however, uses a third use

of the word come, which is an invitation that has

extended to us. This is an invitation extended by God

fore man, by God, two man fore man. God says

in Isaiah one eighteen, he says, Come, now, let us

settle the matter, says the Lord. Though your sins are

like scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they

are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. Later on,

Jesus himself comes down to earth and looks around at

the people, and he says, in Matthew eleven twenty eight,

he says, come to me, all who labor and are

heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Chapters later

in the Book Books, later in the Book of Revelation,

chapter twenty two, verse seventeen, the Holy Spirit would say, come,

and let the one who is thirsty come. Let the

one who desires to take the water of life without price.

What happens church, when we respond to God's invitation to come,

it's just as he says, our sins are washed away,

our burdens are lifted. Maybe you're here today and you

recognize that there are some aspects of your life that

you've spent to build up higher than God is in

your life, that you've put more trust and more faith

and more assurance and more security in the things that

you've built up in your life than you have in

who God is for your life. Maybe you're here this

morning and the thing that God has spoken to you

is the reality that we can so easily focus on

building our own personal empire that we can miss out

on the partnership and the sweetness of life in building

God's kingdom. And maybe you're here this morning and this

is the first time that you've even heard of this

opportunity to come and be in relationship with Jesus. And

can I just tell you his motivation in the invitation

that has extended to you today is purely this be

with me and experienced life like you've never experienced it before.

Experience a life of hope and freedom and purpose and

love like you've never experienced before. And if any of

those describe what you feel like God is speaking to

you today, I want you to hear the motivation behind

God's message to you this morning. It is simple and

yet incredibly life altering and profound. And the statement is this,

come come to him God even though I've even though

I've spent my life building up my own reputation, even

though I've spent my life away from you, even though

I've spent my life focused on my fame and my

fortune and my reputation and my things and my stuff

and my status.

Jesus invitation to you is the same. Come, Come as

you are God.

I've never had a relationship with God. I don't even

know the first thing to knowing what a life walking

with Jesus like. The motivation behind God's statement to you

is simple and profound and life changing, and it is

the same.

Come to Him an.

Experience a life like you've never imagined, not just building

your own little personal empire, but partnering with Him to

build a kingdom that will be far greater than any

of our own. So with that, I want to invite

you to bow your head and close your eyes. All

over this room, I want to give you an opportunity

to respond. This invitation to come is an invitation from

God to you for you this morning. You don't have

to wait. He gives you this invitation right now, right here,

in this moment, to leave your old ways behind, leave

the temptation to build your life on personal success and

achievement behind. Leave the burden of trying to pretend you

can do it on your own behind. Leave behind the

pride that has kept you from fully trusting God's plan

for your life. Leave behind the weight of always scraping

and clawing trying to do life on your own. He

is saying to you today, come be with me, walk

in my ways. Don't waste your life building your own

personal empire. Come take part in building my kingdom today.

And if that's you and you want me to just

include you in this prayer, would you just do me

a favor. With every head bowed, every eye closed, would

you just slip your hand up, just want to know

who I'm praying for in this place?

Yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Yeah,

I see that. Thank you. Thank you. Hands up all

over this room.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

You can put your hands down. Would you stand with

me today? I want to close this in a word

of prayer. Father God, we thank you. Thank you that

your invitation to us isn't a one time invitation, but God,

you extend the same invitation to us every single morning.

We wake up.

And God, we respond to that invitation this morning, and

some people are responding from a heart that says, God,

I've been building up my own life and I haven't

even put you on what I've been building, and you're

not even on the radar.

God.

And God, this morning, you invite us to come into

your presence to experience your freedom, to experience your love

and your grace for our life. God for the person

who realizes that they've been in here at church every

single week and they've been working hard and doing things,

but God, they have completely missed out on the opportunity

to partner in what you're building.

God, your invitation is the same.

Come and I pray that as they come, God, they

would experience purpose and a fight and a passion to

build what you have set before them like they've never

experienced before. And God for the person who said, for

the first time this morning, I just want to know

who you are.

I want to know what.

It's like to live life with you, Jesus God, to

pray that as you come, and as they come and

meet you, God, that you would fill them with a

love and a hope and a security that is only

found in you.

God. We love you. We thank you for who you are,

and we praise you in Jesus name. Amen.