Summer with Jesus Sunday Gathering

Hey, good morning.

Welcome to church online this morning.

And uh happy Fourth of July weekend.

Yeah.

Um man, we're so glad you're here.

Yeah, that would have been epic.

Just like just really do that.

We shouldn't know that.

Yeah, we're talking to that guy.

Yeah.

Hey, I'm Brandon.

I'm Cody.

We're so glad you're here this morning or there and uh wherever you're at.

And we just uh expect it that God's gonna do something in our time together.

So thank you for joining us.

We know that you could uh be doing a lot of different things this morning, and uh we're just thrilled that you're here.

It's been a part of your weekend with us.

Got a lot of things coming up.

Uh this summer has been jam-packed already, and it's not over.

No.

Man, it's been so fun.

So we just had our students go to camp this past week.

Uh, our kiddos are coming home from camp today, and so it's been a week full of lots of camps.

Camp, yeah.

It's been amazing.

Um, and we know that God, I mean, God just uses camp in a powerful way.

So uh students and kids being able to pull away from normal life and spend some dedicated time just with the Lord.

And so uh, man, it's been an amazing, amazing week.

So that's that's happening.

And then uh today we're gonna continue our series Summer with Jesus, diving back into the gospel of Matthew as we're tracking along uh with Matthew, following the life of Jesus through his eyes.

And uh still got a powerful word coming today from Pastor Russ, live here to Wanna Grove.

It's gonna be so good.

So love it.

Cannot wait, cannot wait.

But before we jump into all that, let's get house cleaning.

House cleaning.

Is that what we call it?

House cleaning, spring cleaning, summer cleaning.

Uh download that app.

Do it, do it, do it.

Is that all the house cleaning?

That's all we got.

That's it.

Just kidding.

Download that app.

Like you got everything that you need uh to stay connected with what's going on in our church, is uh right there at your fingertips.

So um also summer's still going, so you can still get plugged in with Fish for Kids.

Um fantastic way for us to be serving our local community uh right here in Wallace County.

And um, yeah, we need to make that happen.

So if you haven't done that yet, please go ahead and uh hop on to see um how you can partner with them either with just giving them food or actually going and passing out boxes.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

Love that.

Uh so make sure you do that.

And like Cody said, I mean, literally any next steps that you feel like you need to take towards Jesus uh or becoming part of the family here, you can do that on the app, whether that's uh submitting prayer requests, taking sermon notes this morning, um, steps towards baptism, community groups, all that good stuff.

It's right there on the app, and the app is the best way to stay connected with us all having kind of crazy summer schedules.

So make sure you're doing that.

We also have a reading plan following along with our journey through Matthew.

Uh so you can go to the Bible portion of our app and click on the plan, and it will give you the daily reading.

So I've been tracking along with that.

It's been really great.

So make sure you're doing that, following along with us.

Speaking of our journey through Matthew, we're gonna dive in.

Let's do it.

The next installment of the series is not we need Pastor Russ coming at you live from Walnut Grove and the Gospel.

I like how you have those transitions where it comes from either side of the screen.

Mm-hmm, you can like close out a screen and whatever.

Yeah.

We need a ball to eagle.

Just America.

Fourth of July.

I try.

It's not all gold.

Some of it is, but not most of it, though.

You gotta mind, you gotta mind for it.

Okay.

Hey, we're jumping into the sermon.

Let's see you in a bit.

Amen.

Amen.

My name is Russ, and I am one of the pastors here at Church of the Grove.

It is great to see all of you, especially on a on a holiday weekend.

We do we celebrate uh the fourth, we celebrate our our freedom and our independence as a nation, and so we don't we do not want to take uh those things lightly or take them for granted.

Uh I want to welcome in our social circle campus in with us this morning as they join with us as we open the Word of God.

I want to continue to pray for Pastor Nathan as he is on his sabacle.

We want to pray for our brothers and sisters at the Social Circle Campus.

We're excited that you're with us this weekend to celebrate.

Yeah, let's join the, let's welcome them in this morning.

Yes.

And so um, and so we want to pray.

Our family is is going through um uh, you know, we've got some uh members of our church family that are going through some difficult, some struggles, and uh we want to pray.

We want to pray for our friend Michael down in social circle.

Um one of our longtime friends, Andy Bullard, um, that many of you might remember um that was with us for many years here at the Walnut Grove campus.

He passed away this past week, and so we want to um pray for Andy and and their pray for Andy's family, specifically uh Denise and his kids, and so we're thankful for Andy's faith in Jesus and just his encouragement as a friend.

And so we're gonna be in Matthew chapter 16 today.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

So as we continue in the gospel of Matthew, we had a little bit of uh break last week, and you got to hear from uh Professor Um Josh uh uh uh from Luther Rice University, and you got we had uh um uh who who preached down at Social Circle last week.

I'm trying to remember.

Dr.

Bumpers.

Dr.

Bumpers, yeah.

So we had two guests from outside the family, uh Dr.

Richard Bumpers and Josh, Dr.

Josh Stewart from Luther Rice, and and so always excited to have both of those men come and share the word.

And so we took a break from Matthew.

We're back in the gospel of Matthew today, chapter 16.

And I'm gonna be honest with you, as I read, as I read for this for this passage, uh, it was easy for me to kind of gravitate toward the end of the chapter uh where Jesus takes the disciples to Caesarea Philippi.

That is one of my favorite passages in the Gospel of Matthew.

It would have been easy for me to gravitate to that little section and just preach it alone, but I felt like that God was just telling me to preach the whole chapter, the whole passage.

And here's what here's what the Holy Spirit prompted me with is that it's easy to be led to our favorite passages and forget what God says in all of his word.

So I can't pick and choose my favorite passages and leave out the whole chapter that is so important.

I mean, God draws a line in the sand.

Jesus draws a line in the sand when he gets to Matthew 16.

As a matter of fact, as he gets to the end of each of his gospels, he begins to turn up the temperature spiritually as he begins to head to the cross.

And he becomes he begins to challenge the people more directly.

And he draws a line in the sand.

That's what Jesus does here.

And he's just very blunt and very honest.

There are going to be some that miss out on the eternal blessing of salvation.

There are going to be some that will face eternal judgment.

And he's speaking directly about the Pharisees and the Sadducees here.

But let me read a couple of passages that speak to this issue that set us um that set us up for Matthew 16.

John 1, 9 through 11 says, the one who is the true light, talking about Jesus, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.

He came into the very world he created, but the world didn't recognize him.

He came to his own people.

He was Jewish.

Jesus was Jewish.

He was sent to his own people, and even they rejected him.

Romans 1, 20 and 21, the apostle Paul says, fore since the world was created, people have seen the earth and the sky.

Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities, his eternal power, and his divine nature.

So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn't worship him as God or even give him thanks.

And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like.

As a result, their minds became dark and confused.

And here's what he thinks.

And I was asked this question 30 years ago.

And I remember it like it was yesterday.

Rush, what happened?

What about the people that never hear the name of Jesus?

What about the people all over the world that never hear the name of Jesus?

Every person on the earth Even though they never heard the name of Jesus, they're the worst creator.

The beauty and the wonder the heavens and the universe.

And they are held.

Because they they walk out and say, There has to be a creator.

Look at all of the design in the creation.

And it says, here's why.

This is the foolish ideas of what they think God was like, and as a result, their minds became dark and confused.

Jeremiah says it this way.

The prophet he said, listen, you foolish.

Jeremiah 521, listen, you foolish and senseless people with eyes that do not see.

And ears that do not hear.

And so Jesus is building on these scriptures, this understanding that you are going to be held accountable.

Everybody will be held accountable.

There is a line that we're drawing in the sand.

And Jesus is asking the question who do you identify with in this passage?

Who is it?

And so we're looking at these simple ideas of no faith, little faith, saving faith, and serving faith.

No faith, little faith, saving faith, and serving faith.

In a way, we're gonna have a faith lift today.

Yeah.

I know it's pretty sad, but but some of you laughed.

So this will that'll that joke will be used in the second service as well.

But but God is, Jesus is drawing a line in the sand.

And here's what he says.

He says, one day the Pharisees, verse one, one day the Pharisees and Sadducees came to test Jesus, demanding that he show them a miraculous sign from heaven to prove his authority.

He replied, You know the saying, red sky at night means fair weather tomorrow.

Red sky in the morning means foul weather all day.

You know how to interpret the weather signs in the sky, but you don't know how to interpret the signs of the times.

Only an evil and adulterous generation would demand a miraculous sign, but the only sign that I will give them is the sign of the prophet Jonah.

Then Jesus left them and went away.

And here's here's what he's he is leaving them.

With he's leaving them with judgment.

He is walking away from them and leaving them without his presence, with the consequences of unbelief, no faith.

See, the Pharisees and the Sadducees had this desire to silence Jesus.

They were so different, and they competed with one another.

They were two religious groups of that day, both from the Jewish nation.

The Pharisees were the conservative group.

They believed in the literal law.

They wanted to follow it to the very detail.

They were considered the conservative theologians and the conservative religious leaders of the day.

They valued scripture.

They valued sound doctrine.

And then the Sadducees were on the other end of the spectrum.

The Sadducees were very liberal in their theology.

They didn't believe in the literal resurrection.

They didn't believe in miracles like the Pharisees did.

They didn't believe in a lot of the same religious beliefs as the Pharisees.

They were more aligned with the political ideology of the Roman Empire.

They wanted to make sure that in the end that they were on the right side of the political beliefs.

They were going to make sure that they somehow positioned themselves for political victory.

And so they found themselves at odds, but one thing that brought them together was Jesus.

They both were threatened, and they both groups were hostile to the teachings and the person of Jesus.

And so they come to Jesus and they said, Show us a sign from heaven, and we will believe that you are the Christ.

And that word sign is it literally means a demonstration of power, a sign of wonder, a sign that is a miracle.

And so they're looking, they're seeing this, even though they've seen Jesus perform many miracles.

They've watched him cast out demons, they've watched him take bread.

Just in the previous passages, take a few loaves, a few fish, and turn them into feeding thousands of people.

They've seen all of these miraculous signs already, but they keep asking Jesus for a sign.

And of course, it's a sign of their unbelief.

It's their lack of faith.

And so Jesus says, you keep looking for a sign.

He said, but I've already given you a sign.

It's the sign of the prophet Jonah.

And he it's alluding to Jesus' death, burial three days in the earth, and then his bodily resurrection.

Jesus had already mentioned that.

He said, I will show you.

I will show you by my bodily death and my burial and my bodily resurrection.

And he calls it the sign of Jonah.

And so Jesus is telling him, I've already given you a sign.

Miracles, listen, miracles are a confirmation of when there is already faith, but not where there is willful unbelief.

See, miracles can give us confirmation of where there is already faith, but they don't give us faith where there is willful unbelief.

Jesus is using this analogy or metaphor of the weather, and it was a saying they had, and it was common in that day.

He says, if you look at the sky, if you look at it, it says red sky at night means fair weather tomorrow, red sky in the morning means foul weather all day.

You know how to interpret the weather signs in the sky, but you don't know how to interpret the signs of the times.

And Jesus saying this, he said, you are caught up with looking for a miracle when you need to look at the bigger picture.

The bigger picture of the signs of the times.

And that speaks to us today, especially after the coming of Jesus and his death and his resurrection.

We live in an age where we can look at the seasons and we can say that his return.

Return is coming.

It is sooner rather than later.

And we look at some of the events in our culture and what's happening in our world, and we say, man, it is Jesus is coming soon.

I've had multiple conversations with people just in the last year or two.

We're just honest with each other.

Look at how crazy this world has become.

And look at the signs of the times.

Jesus says, you won't know the day nor the hour, but you will know the seasons.

And so his return is coming.

And so we believe.

But the Pharisees were different.

The Pharisees and Sadducees did not lack evidence.

They lacked honesty and humility.

Their heart was distant from Jesus.

They were considered an evil and adulterous generation.

They were guilty of physical adultery, not just physical adultery, but spiritual adultery.

These men were worshiping a false God of their own manufacture.

And this is false worship or idol worship.

They didn't worship the one true God.

And so this is no faith.

And there's consequences of no faith.

The consequences are the fact that Jesus will leave your presence.

It says he was done with them.

He left them.

He has a brief conversation, and it says he Jesus left them and went away.

He said, I'm done.

Judgment.

Judgment.

But we see that he turns his attention to the disciples.

And he speaks of them having little faith.

Little faith.

Little faith is this misunderstanding of who Christ is, not quite knowing who he is.

Verse 5, later after they crossed the other side of the lake, the disciples discovered they had forgotten to bring any bread.

Watch out.

Jesus warned them, beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

At this, they begin to argue with each other because they hadn't brought any bread.

Jesus knew what they were saying.

So he said, You have so little faith.

Why are you arguing with each other about having no bread?

Don't you understand?

Even yet, don't you remember the 5,000 I fed with the five loaves and the baskets of leftovers you picked up?

Or the 4,000 I fed with seven loaves and the large baskets of leftovers you picked up.

Why can't you understand that I'm not talking about bread?

So again, I say, beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

Then at last they left, understood that he wasn't speaking about the yeast and the bread, but about the deceptive teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

And so Jesus is talking about the yeast of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the doctrine, the deceptive teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

And he's using this the analogy or this picture of the yeast that goes all the way back to the Exodus when God's people were told not to put yeast in their bread because it would take so long for it to rise.

You go without the yeast, but the yeast represented sin.

It represented unbelief.

And so it is all through Scripture.

It represents evil.

It represents the being without Christ.

And so Jesus is speaking to them, and he's talking about their little faith.

They don't understand the spiritual understandings of the truth of Scripture.

It's kind of like when Jesus had the conversations with Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee, who later put his faith in Jesus.

He says, You must be born again.

And Nicodemus is trying to understand.

He said, I've got to go back into my mother's womb and be born again.

He says, No, Nicodemus, I'm saying you, this is a spiritual new birth.

You need to understand what the spiritual truth is.

It's like when Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman, she's trying to draw water, and he says, he tells her, you need living water.

I am the living water.

What we're going to celebrate today is the Lord's Supper, is communion.

And so it was very much a misunderstood topic, especially among the Pharisees and Sadducees.

They thought, we're going to eat the body of Jesus and drink his blood?

They're thinking on a level, whole level without spiritual understanding.

And so the disciples are struggling, but Jesus does not pass judgment on the disciples.

As a matter of fact, he says, you have little faith.

You have little faith.

And here's what I wrote down in my notes a little faith is better than no faith.

Because I can grow my little faith.

I can't do anything without the faith that is given to me as the gift of Jesus.

And so he speaks about this little faith.

Their little faith kept them from understanding his teaching and depending on his power to meet their needs.

But it leads us to the next section, which is saving faith.

This is where Peter confesses Jesus as the Christ, confessing Jesus as the Christ, as the Messiah, as Lord.

Look at verse 13.

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say that the Son of Man is?

Well, some are some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.

Then he asked them, but who do you say that I am?

Simon Peter answered, You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

Jesus replied, You are blessed.

Simon, son of John.

Because my Father in heaven has revealed this to you.

You did not learn this from any human being.

Now I say to you that you are Peter, which means rock.

And upon this rock, I will build my church.

What he's saying is upon this confession, upon this truth that has been revealed to you by the Holy Spirit, upon this gift that is given to you by Jesus, I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it.

And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

Whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven.

Whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.

Then he sternly warned the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

And so Jesus took the disciples 25 miles north of the Sea of Galilee to this place called Caesarea Philippi, which at the time would have had three temples built to different gods.

And behind this big open spot in the rock, the side of a mountain, was a cave that went as far as they could imagine into the depths of darkness.

And they called it the gates of Hades.

The gates of Hades.

What we would say now the gates of hell.

And they thought this was a place that all the evil spirits, all of this is what the Jewish people thought.

All of the evil spirits came out of the depths of Hades.

And so Jesus walks up and he turns and he says, Who do people say that I am?

And they said, Well, some say you're Elijah, some say you're John the Baptist, some say you're Jeremiah.

He says, Who do you say that I am?

And then Peter speaks up.

He was always quick to speak up.

And many times he would stick his foot in his mouth, but this time he got it right.

He said, You are the Christ.

You are the Lord.

You are the Messiah.

You're the Son of God.

You're the one we've been waiting for.

And he says, On what you just said, on this confession, on this rock, as he points to this mountain that had been formerly known as the gates of Hades, on this rock, it will be the foundation that I will build my church.

And the gates of hell, as he points at that big open place that led to the darkness, he said, the gates of hell will not prevail against my church.

That's where we have hope.

That is saving faith.

And so the disciples have reached a place of maturity, at least Peter has right now, which we know later.

He will stumble.

He will fail.

He will fall.

He will deny Christ three times later.

Then he'll be restored.

And so it's this idea of saving faith.

Understanding and knowing who Christ is.

But not just an intellectual belief.

A surrender of heart.

Giving him our life.

It's this, and listen, this kind of faith only comes through the power of the Holy Spirit, revealing to you who Jesus really is.

So how do you get saved?

You turn, you repent, you believe.

You repent and you believe.

What happens before we repent and we believe?

Martin Luther says that we are set free by the Holy Spirit from the bondage to our sin, which allows us to be free to turn and repent and put our faith in Jesus.

There is this mystery of the human will and the divine meeting.

Do we choose or does God choose us?

I would say yes to both.

There is a mystery where God's sovereign will reaches down into our heart and gives us saving faith.

But he doesn't end and stop right there.

That is good news.

That is the revelation of God that is that as these disciples go, they have been separated from the Pharisees and the Sadducees by their little faith, but now they are graduating to a greater faith, but now they're going to move to the next level.

And it's a serving faith.

What does he mean by serving faith?

It means following Jesus, giving your life to him.

Verse 21, from then on, Jesus began to tell his disciples plainly that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem, and that he would suffer many terrible things at the hands of the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of the religious law.

He would be killed, but on the third day he would be raised from the dead.

But Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things.

Heaven forbid, Lord, this will never happen to you.

So which is so interesting, because Peter goes from like, yeah, yeah, yeah, he called me the rock.

I'm I am.

He thinks of himself way up here, and then the next, I mean, just the next few verses, he sticks his foot in his mouth again.

And he says, May it never be.

He reprimands his own, his own Lord.

He says, Heaven forbid, this will never happen to you.

Jesus turned to Peter and said, Get away from me or get behind me, Satan.

You are a dangerous trap to me.

You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God's.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, if any of you wants to be my follower, now here's what he does: he draws a line in the sand all along this passage.

As Jesus gets closer to the cross, the intensity begins to ramp up.

He becomes more direct.

He calls his disciples up.

This is the very first passage where he uses the word church in the New Testament, which means the called-out assembly.

Those who have been chosen to follow me, those who have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, those that will confess me as the Christ throughout all eternity.

Then he says, verse 24, if any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross and follow me.

If you try to hang on to your own life, you will lose it.

But if you will give up your life for my sake, you will save it.

And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?

Is anything worth more than your own soul?

For the Son of Man will come with his angels and the glory of his father and will judge all people according to their deeds.

And I tell you the truth, some standing here right now will not die before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.

And today, in the in 2023, the cross is a beautiful symbol that we wear on our necklace or we hang on the wall in our house.

But in that day it would have been a horrible picture.

A horrible picture.

The Romans used crucifixion as a means of execution for not following the empire or surrendering your will to their system.

In fact, no Roman citizen could be crucified, only those outside of the empire.

And so Jews were potentially chosen to experience this terrible death reserved for their enemies.

Jesus had not yet specifically stated that he would be crucified.

He does this in Matthew chapter 20, but his words follow the emphasis of the cross, as he says here.

Matthew 20 · chapter mention

You've got to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.

Let's look at the picture on our screen.

I hope they put on the two columns.

I just want you to look and let's take a look at it for a second.

What he says in this verse.

What he says in this passage.

He says to deny yourself or live for yourself.

Drawing a line in the sand, Jesus says.

I'm ramping it up.

We're headed to the cross.

He says, you take up your cross or you ignore the cross.

You follow Jesus or you follow the world or the ways of the world.

You lose your life for Jesus' sake, or you save your life for your own sake.

You forsake the world or you gain the world.

You keep your soul or you lose your soul.

You share his reward and his glory.

Or you lose his reward.

And his glory.

Right here in this passage.

And we love that.

We love that.

I do.

I love the end of that passage.

I love that when Jesus takes his disciples to Cesarea Philippi.

And he says, The gates of hell will not prevail against my church.

I love that.

Man, I eat that up.

But I've got to read the whole passage.

The whole passage, he's saying, listen, if you want to be like the Pharisees or the Sadducees, you're going to face judgment.

They had hardened hearts against me.

Now he's speaking specifically about that group because we know specifically two Pharisees that ended up putting their faith in Jesus.

One of them, I mentioned Nicodemus, the other was Joseph of Arimathea.

He says, now, there's little faith.

Now some of us have have, we're young in our faith.

We're new to the faith.

And Jesus is challenging his disciples.

He says, Listen, it's time for you to grow up.

It's time for you to carry some of the heavy weight.

It's time for you to take a step.

No longer remain in your young faith and your little faith.

Grow up.

And he gives us the gift of saving faith, which means that our name is written into the Lamb's book of life.

Our salvation is secure.

We are introduced to the Savior.

We've we've at some point we've repented and we believed.

Our identity is clear.

Our allegiance is known.

But he's saying, listen, you keep growing.

You keep graduating.

You serve.

You share.

It's time for you to step up.

The apostle Paul says it in Galatians 2.20.

He says, I have been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me in the life that I live in the flesh.

I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave his life for me.

That is graduated faith.

As the apostle Paul said.

So we're going to celebrate communion this morning.

That is our that is our time of really response this morning.

It's communion.

And the apostle Paul challenges us in 1 Corinthians 11, he says, for I receive from the Lord what I also deliver to you.

That the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me, in the same way he also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

And he goes on to say, whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and the blood of the Lord.

And he says, Let a person examine himself then and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.

And so if you come to the Lord's table, this is another line in the sand.

It is a celebration for those who put their faith in Jesus.

Jesus celebrated this at the Passover with the disciples.

He took the cup and he took the bread and he said, You do this until I return.

And it is a memorial.

We celebrate.

What do we celebrate Tuesday, the 4th of July?

It is a memorial day.

A much more important memorial is the Lord's supper, communion, that memorializes the broken body and the spilt blood of Jesus.

And he says, when you keep doing this and you keep looking back and say, man, isn't God good?

Isn't Jesus faithful?

Isn't He a gracious Savior?

He is provided for our salvation.

And Paul says, examine your heart.

It's a time for us.

Hey, are we in right standing with others?

Other Christians?

Do we have saving faith?

Are we growing?

Are we graduating?

And so here's how we do this practically at the grove.

We have a plate of matzah bread.

It's unleavened bread.

It's symbolic of that bread without yeast, without sin.

It's how the Jewish people would still, they they that's how Jesus would have celebrated at the Passover, how they would celebrate still today.

And the juice represents the blood of Jesus.

So we got the body of Jesus, the blood of Jesus, and I'm going to pray in a second.

And I'm going to invite you to come.

You can come as an individual, you can come as a couple, or you can come as a family.

And so before you come, let me just stop for a second and let me just ask you.

Do you have absolute certainty that you possess saving faith?

And if you don't, can I invite you to repent and to believe in Jesus?

And he invites you to come to the table this morning potentially for your first communion as a follower of Jesus.

And for those of us who have already put our faith in Jesus, it's a time for us to examine ourselves.

Can we pray?

Can we pray?

Father, thank you for your goodness and your grace.

God, thank you for those of us who have saving faith.

We have saving faith and we have just an assurance of the gift of salvation given to us by our gracious Heavenly Father.

Not of our own doing, but as a gift from our Father, paid for by our Savior Jesus, who invites us into a relationship where we are his disciple.

He is our rabbi, and he leads us.

And Father, give us wisdom and discernment as we read the scriptures and we look at this world that we live in, that we would have discernment of the times that we live in.

Not that we would live out of fear, but we would live with confidence and we would live with a passion to share the faith of Jesus with others.

Father, we love you.

Lead us and guide us.

For it is in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

I'm gonna turn it over to Megan and she guys.

Man, it's been so good journeying through the Gospel of Matthew and uh just really seeing the life of Jesus through Matthew's eyes.

And um, and so man, we just hope you were challenged by that this morning.

And listen, if you feel like God is leading you towards any next steps, we'll partner with you.

Uh, we believe that this is a lifelong journey of follow Jesus.

And uh, and so no matter where you're at on the journey, there is a next step for you, and we would love to come alongside you and help you in your journey, give you some resources for that.

So if you would text start to follow to 9700, a start to follow all one word to 97000.

And again, we just love to come alongside you, give you some resources.

Absolutely, absolutely.

We love it.

And thank you so much for spending time with us this morning.

I know I say it every week, but it's an honor.

Um, there's so many places that you can be visiting online, and the fact that you're here with us this morning is fantastic.

Uh, so yeah, just uh make sure you have that out.

Make sure you are checking in on ways that you can get involved with either um the things that we have going on this summer or just life groups, community groups, border pillow groups community groups, sorry, you know, those things, groups, they're great.

Uh so um, yeah, we just love you guys and we're grateful for you.

And so if there's anything that we can do for you all this week, please let us know.

Otherwise, have a great 4th of July week.

Yeah.

And hopefully you got some days off weren't.

Yeah, that'd be nice.

Yeah.

Get some rest and uh a little RR.

That's right.

See ya.

Rest and uh recuperation.

Right, though.

There we go.

Oh.

Yeah, R and R.

That's why I risk.

That's what that's nice.

Rest and I don't know.

Resuscitation.

Rest and I hope that you don't have to be resuscitated.

Okay, let's just go.

We love you guys.

If there's anything that are you good?

We ready?

Okay, alright.

We'll see you guys next week.