The Shepherd

The Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside still waters.

He restores my soul.

He leads me in paths of righteousness for his namesake.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

For you are with me.

Your rod and your staff may come for me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil.

My cup overflows.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Amen.

Well, welcome, church.

It is so good to see you this morning, whether you're in person with us or whether you've decided to join our online gathering.

It is such a blessing that you've chosen to come and worship the Lord with us together with our family here at the Grove.

And in case I haven't had a chance to meet you, my name is Tyler.

I'm one of the uh student pastors here at the Grove, part of the student team, and uh just such a blessing to have you here with us today.

Uh, if you've got your Bibles, turn to Psalm 23.

Uh Katie did a great job kind of leading us through that moment and and uh discussing what we're gonna be talking about today, and I love this, I love this psalm.

Um, but I really want to start off this morning by saying, welcome to November 2020.

I mean, this year is almost over, and all God's people said, Amen.

I mean, this year has been chaotic, this year has been ugly, this year has been brutal, and it's almost over.

And I'm so thankful because, you know, just when we thought it couldn't get any more crazy or any more chaotic, the calendar says, hey, there's a big event coming in two days that might rock your world a little bit more, right?

And so uh we got that huge event coming up Thursday, or coming up Tuesday, it rhymes with uh Schmelection, uh, which I'm not gonna get into a whole bunch of detail about, but I will tell you this.

Uh there's been a lot of uh angst in my own life over the last uh four to six months uh because I've allowed myself to get really critical and really cynical because I've been focusing too much on this cesspool called social media.

Uh when I back in July, I called a bunch of my friends in my inner circle, kind of my mentor group in my pastor circle, some are in this room, and I said, I've got to delete probably half the apps off my phone, uh, except Facebook.

Now I didn't delete Facebook because I've got I've got some adults uh that that are in my family that like to keep up with me, but all the apps that my students were using and that I used uh when I graduated college, uh, which was not that long ago, uh, I deleted because it just got so uh overbearing and so tiring to see everybody's opinion all at once.

It was like it created a just a vacuum of fatigue, and and I found myself being annoyed, reading news headlines.

I found myself getting anxious over all the panic as the as the case numbers went up and as the death toll went up, and I just got so tired of everything, and I said, I've got to shut it off.

I've got to shut it off.

And I found myself putting more value and more time and more research into my ballot than I did my Bible.

I found myself researching, you know, how I could make a difference with my ballot, and it was causing me to spend less and less time in my Bible.

And church, let me warn you if you're prioritizing your ballot over your Bible, we're in trouble as a church and as a nation.

Because listen, there is no name on any ballot that compares to the name that is in this Bible.

It's just not comparable.

There's no uh policy that can be enacted from a White House in Washington that can solve the problems of the heart.

And so, what you know, I I don't know about you, I don't know if you can relate to that.

I don't know if I don't know if you found yourself also getting sick and tired of being sick and tired, and you found yourself also being really cynical and really critical towards people because they expressed a view that you uh didn't necessarily agree with.

But I'll tell you why I had to get off.

I had to get off of social media because I found a lot of Christians who were more passionate about red versus blue than they were the words written in red.

That's a problem, church.

And then listen, it's not a church at the growth problem.

That's a that's a capital C, you know, big church problem.

Right?

We got to get back to the word.

We got to get back to talking about the goodness of God.

And the goodness of God is no more prevalent in the Bible than in the 23rd Psalm.

This this psalm is one of my favorite passages in all of Scripture.

Uh a lot of people who who who uh may not know much about the Bible know this verse.

This is, you know, it's like John 3.16.

Most people know that, uh, even if they're not familiar with scripture.

And a lot of people in the Old Testament point to the 23rd Psalm.

This uh Psalm is read at a lot of funerals, it's read at a lot of uh even some weddings, uh big events in people's lives.

Uh, this is a passage that is read.

And so I want to kick off this new series that we're gonna be going over for the next 30 days, and we're just gonna focus on taking this psalm and breaking it down and exegeting it, which means pulling the meaning out of the text that David, the author, originally intended.

A little background on this uh on this psalm is that David uh was a shepherd.

That was his profession.

That's what he'd grown up doing as a little boy, and so he's uh writing this from the perspective of his own life.

And he's writing it as a psalm of thanksgiving and raising up the name of Jesus.

Speaking of thanksgiving, uh that is the next holiday coming, and I am very excited about that because there's a lot of football involved, there's a lot of lazy boy recliner involved, and then there's a lot of what involved?

Food.

Amen, Dale.

Dale knows where I'm at.

Uh, you know, there's a lot of food involved, a lot of turkey, a lot of good stuff.

But here's I can tell you what we need to be thankful for on Thanksgiving, most of all.

And if you don't get your family around the table and pray, you need to, we need to be thankful that Jesus is King.

We need to be thankful that Jesus is Lord.

And I don't care, listen, whichever side wins on November 3rd, I know that I'm gonna wake up on November 4th and God will still be on the throne.

Because listen, heaven, you wonder my favorite thing about heaven, especially in election years?

I can stand and I can say, heaven is a one-party system.

And the only party going on is the party around the throne of Jesus Christ, being exalted the way that he deserves to be exalted.

So here's the big idea for this morning.

And it's literally the first verse, it's literally repeating the first verse of Psalm 23.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

I love how some translations say, the Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

And that's really what it means.

I shall not want means I lack nothing because the Lord is my shepherd.

You could you can almost reverse the clauses and read it that way.

I shall not want because the Lord is my shepherd.

As I said, uh the the background of Psalm 23 is this this Psalm is written by a broken man.

This Psalm is written by a man who had an affair with Bathsheba, who had her husband killed on the battlefield so that he could go and claim her as his own.

He gets called out by the prophet Nathan.

I mean, this is not a man who is without uh sin.

This is not a perfect man.

Uh this is not someone who who is without uh uh fault, without transgression, uh, but he's also the same man that God used to uh uh lift up Israel, and he's also the man God used to slay a giant with a sling and a stone.

And so we've seen different contrasts in David's life.

And so David, as he sits down to write this psalm, realizes that he is in need of the Lord.

The Lord is not only a desire, but the Lord is a need in his life.

He writes this as a background of a little shepherd boy who uh had gotten to know the Lord when he was in the field all by himself, uh tending to the sheep.

And so let's read the entire psalm together, and then we'll kind of trace it back to verse one.

I just want to read the whole psalm because it's just such a beautiful picture of who we are in relation to who Jesus is.

The Lord is my shepherd, verse one.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul.

He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake, and even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies, you anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

This morning I want to focus on that first verse, and just kind of unpack it because it seems like a pretty straightforward verse.

Most of the time when people read this psalm, they go right to, you know, he restores my soul in verse three, or they go right to verse four because it's a it's a denouncement of evil.

It's a proclaim, it's a it's a proclamation of the Lord's victory over evil, so that's the one we go to.

But there's a lot to unpack in verse one.

And here's the first truth that can be found in verse one.

We are not the shepherd, we are the sheep.

We are not the shepherd, we indeed are the sheep.

Did you know that over 500 times in God's word, the human being is referred to as a sheep?

Now, in case you don't know much about sheep, this is not a compliment, because sheep are not the most spectacular of God's creation.

Okay?

Uh when you see a guy with a with a tattoo of an animal, most of the time it's probably not a sheep.

Uh no one goes to the tattoo uh uh parlor and says, hey man, let me get a sheep on my bicep.

Like, no, like that's not something that ever comes out of somebody's mouth, right?

When you see somebody with an animal, uh it's usually a lion or a tiger or you know something something ferocious, right?

We don't usually think of a sheep as something that is you know strong and to be to be revered, and there's a reason for that.

Sheep are nature's victims.

They are literally, they can literally be eaten by anything: bears, wolves, hyenas, large birds, small dogs, even insects.

Did you know that flies can get into the wool of a sheep and a sheep can go bang its head on a rock trying to get the flies out of its wool and kill itself?

That can cause a sheep to kill itself.

They have nothing to defend themselves with.

They don't have any sharp claws or scary barks.

They have teeth, but they're nothing compared to those of an alligator or something of that nature.

They aren't particularly fast.

They can't climb trees, they can't dig holes to hide in.

They're just exposed.

They're out in the open, they're exposed, and they're impressionable.

They're not very smart.

They'll stand in the rain and cold and die of hypothermia before they seek shelter.

They'll die of hydration with a stream right in front of them.

They'll drink dirty water, polluted water, and kill themselves in the process.

So obviously, this animal's not bright.

And you're like, God, I thought you loved me.

Why do you keep calling me a sheep?

And the reason is because that's exactly what we are, church.

That's exactly what we are.

We are a lot like a sheep.

Even the smartest people in the room this morning, we do a lot of dumb things.

I know I do a lot of dumb things.

I'm a Georgia sports fan.

Right?

I mean, I do I do a ton of dumb things, right?

We continually walk in paths of self-destruction and self-harm.

We might know cognitively what is right, but we oftentimes fail to do what is right, and sometimes we purposely do the opposite of what is right.

We might think we're strong, but all it takes is one catastrophe, one COVID diagnosis, God forbid, one car accident, one near-death experience to show us we're not very strong at all.

We are sheep.

And here's the truth this morning: because we are sheep, in order for us to survive and thrive, we are in desperate need of a shepherd.

A shepherd is someone that the sheep run to for direction because they recognize their voice.

Sheep are trained to recognize the voice of their shepherd.

But what a lot of Christians and especially lost people don't realize is we all have a shepherd.

All of us have a shepherd in some form or fashion.

You say, Well, what do you mean?

Let me give you some examples of shepherds.

Maybe your job, maybe your employer, maybe COVID knocked your job out for a season, and you really were on a mad scramble looking for a job and looking for a way to provide for your family, and you got so consumed with this desire to have a job that the Lord was calling you this way, and you went over here this way because you said, I gotta have a job, I gotta provide for my family.

And so let me let me try to do things on my own timing in my own way to fill that void of income that's gone.

Maybe it's your education, maybe you're so stocked with information, you're the smartest guy or gal in the room.

Maybe you have so much knowledge and so much information about a particular topic that being informed has become your shepherd.

I can tell you for a season, uh, knowing that this was an election year, that became my shepherd.

I wanted to make sure that I was the most informed that I could possibly be because I didn't want to cast uh an ignorant ballot.

Right?

I was gonna do my civic duty, right?

For God and country, right?

America, right?

And I was so caught up in the electoral process that that became my shepherd.

I had to be informed.

And listen, I'm not saying it's a bad thing to be informed, but again, when you sacrifice your Bible for your ballot, that's a problem.

That's a problem.

And it's a problem that Christians could fall into if we're not careful.

Maybe your shepherd is a person.

Maybe your shepherd is a relationship, maybe it's a spouse, maybe it's a boyfriend, girlfriend.

Right?

Maybe you don't want to disappoint this person, so you follow their voice.

Maybe they're not walking with the Lord the way they should, and so just for the sake of your marriage or your relationship or your friendship, you begin to follow them instead of the voice of the Lord.

Maybe it's an addiction, maybe it's alcohol, maybe it's pornography, maybe it's some type of drug.

Maybe your shepherd is to self-medicate to bring temporary comfort to your soul because you see no other way.

I know Christians that struggle with these things.

Maybe it's wealth, more money, less problems, right?

That's the supposed philosophy.

Although in some of the songs I grew up listening to, they were hip hop, I'll tell you that.

Uh the motto and the saying was mo money, mo problems.

Right?

And so why is that?

Well, when you have more money, uh the problems tend to multiply because that's what people chase after.

I was watching a uh documentary on Tom Brady.

Tom Brady was a quarterback for a long time for the New England Patriots.

Uh, he won six Super Bowls.

Uh, he is married to a gorgeous model.

He lives in multiple mansions, has beautiful children.

Uh, and so, you know, he's got everything you could ever want.

More money than he even knows what to do with, times a billion.

And he's sitting down with this interviewer, and he's he said, you know, I've got all this, I've won six Super Bowls, you know, five league MVPs.

Uh, my wife is beautiful, my kids are gorgeous, they go to the best schools, I've got everything a man could ever want.

And then he looked in the interviewer right in the eye and he said, There's still something missing.

There's still something missing.

And I tell you this, you can look in the man's eye.

Here's what a lot of people don't realize is that we're we're scared to share our faith, but you can tell a lot about a person by looking them in the eye.

And there were millions of people watching this interview because Tom Brady is revered.

Tom Brady is revered as this cult hero who was drafted in the seventh round.

And for those of you who don't follow sports, you want to be drafted in the first round, not the seventh round.

So a lot of people overlooked him, and he overcame all the odds.

I mean, he's it's this great story.

He's this great story of triumph and victory and all the things that you would want to be.

And he looked at this interview and he said, you know, it's just, it's not all there.

Something's missing.

And you could look in his eyes and tell that his wealth had become his shepherd.

Maybe it's technology.

Maybe we bury ourselves in these mini computers.

Because that's what they are.

I mean, you got the world right here in the palm of your hand.

Maybe we focus too much on other people's opinions instead of the fact of the word of God.

Right?

This is, see, this is not a book of opinion.

That's that's that's what the world doesn't understand, is that, you know, this is this is not this is not an opinion manual.

This is this is not something that, oh yeah, it's got a lot of good truths in it.

This is the breathed out word of God.

This this is what changes lives.

But but because we're so preoccupied with this, even though this is on this, we don't use this for this.

Does that make sense?

I didn't make a lot of sense right there.

I hope you caught that online.

I'm sure Kevin will let me know if they didn't.

But uh, you know, we we we say, oh yeah, you version, right?

I use my you version.

Listen, that's great.

But I know most of the time, unless I'm disciplined enough to actually pick up my Bible, uh, I don't use U version as much as I should.

And that's me being vulnerable with you this morning.

So what's your shepherd?

Because all these things, these are horrible shepherds for our souls, and they lead only to destruction.

Jesus knew about this because he was God in the flesh, and he told us something very emphatic in the 10th chapter of the Gospel of John, verse 10.

He said, the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

And see, obviously that's referencing Satan, right?

But not only is it Satan, thieves are things that Satan uses.

Right?

And so your job, your education, your spouse, alcohol, porn, drugs, whatever, even though some of those things are good things, they can still be a thief if we allow them to be.

Verse 12 of chapter 10 says, He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees.

And the wolf snatches them and scatters them.

He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

All those false shepherds are hired hands.

Alright?

And I now I'm not I'm not calling your, if you know if you're married, I'm not calling your husband or your wife a hired hand.

However, if if you do put too much time into them and not enough time into the Lord, they will become a hired hand in your life.

It will become a thief instead of the thing that's supposed to bring you joy in the context of marriage, enjoying the Lord together, that your marriage can rob you of joy if that is placed above priority number one, which is Jesus.

The things of this world make horrible shepherds for our soul.

If you want to see that, look no more, look no further than college campuses.

Have you seen stats among young people today?

Have any of you looked that up lately?

There's this trend going on in the last decade called the rise of the nuns.

And no, that doesn't mean there are more sweet.

Ladies in black dresses, it means there is a rise of the nuns, N-O-N-E-S, which means when there is a new census, which there was this year.

I haven't looked at the new census, but when it comes out, I guarantee you there will be a rise among young people, 18 to 35, that says they have no religious affiliation.

Why is that?

Why is that?

Why is it that when our students go off to college that they fall away from the Lord?

It's because they're immediately bombarded with thieves.

They're immediately bombarded with false shepherds.

They're immediately bombarded with sexual promiscuity.

They're immediately bombarded with partying.

They're immediately bombarded with alcohol and drugs.

And so if you have students in your life, make sure that you build a foundation in them that is centered around the good shepherd.

John 10, 10, once again, the thieves come only to steal, kill, and destroy.

But then Jesus backs it up.

Look at this.

It's a beautiful truth.

I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

That's the second truth this morning.

The good shepherd brings abundant life.

And the truth that lies within that is if the Lord is our shepherd, if the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

Right?

I lack nothing.

But if I am in want, if I do desire uh other things, then obviously the conclusion would be that the Lord is not my shepherd.

If I spend a lot of time focusing on the things that I don't have, the Lord is not my shepherd.

If I lie in want, and listen, I'm I'm talking to myself, if I lie in constant want of something more and I don't find my full satisfaction in Jesus, then the Lord is not fully my shepherd because I am not allowing him to be so.

If emptiness, loneliness, despair, and frustration exist in our lives, then the Lord is not our shepherd.

And listen, if those things exist in your life, that doesn't mean you're not a Christian.

Christians struggle with all those things.

What I'm saying is, you're trying to be shepherded by someone or something that is not the good shepherd.

Because if the Lord is our good shepherd and we are finding in him all we need, we will not look to be shepherded by the things of this world.

In him, we have a life without lacking, a life in which one is completely satisfied and sustained, no matter what happens.

When the Lord is our shepherd, it's like building your house on a solid foundation, and when the wind and the rain come, you can stand firm knowing that your house is secure.

Even in the dark days of life that are marked by things that we think we lack, we have everything that we need in Jesus.

I know that in 1993, as my family laid there or sat there in the hospital, and they looked at a frail baby who was about 28 weeks, and he was gray, and he was just not supposed to be uh anything.

And they were told uh a 17-year-old mother was told, uh, hey, look, there's gonna be zero functionality there.

Uh God has used the past 27 years to basically say, I decide what's functional.

I decide how much functionality someone has, I decide someone's worth, I decide someone's value.

The world does not decide how beautiful you are.

That is up to your maker and your creator and your God.

And when we delight in the Lord and He becomes our all-in-all, it changes everything about us.

It changes the way that we look at life, it changes the way our thoughts uh are uh processed, and we begin to we begin to see things in a different light.

The way we look at life is revolutionized because our hearts begin to recognize that the things of this world will never satisfy our souls, and Jesus is the only one that can satisfy the void that is in our heart.

I think about the feeding of the 5,000 and how little food and provision the disciples thought they had, and they they went to Jesus and they said, What are we gonna do?

And he said, Just bring me what you have.

Right?

Bring me what you have.

And a lot of times that's all that's Jesus' only request.

You say, Lord, what am I gonna do?

I don't have enough, you can't use me, I'm I'm tired, I'm worn out, I'm I'm a I'm a backup player on the team.

Listen, there are no backup players on God's team.

Anybody can be used at any time.

And all Jesus says is, bring me what you have and watch what I can do with what you bring me.

So the disciples bring him a basket of a few loaves of bread and a few fish, and he feeds 5,000 people, right?

Well, what people don't realize is the 5,000 were only the men.

That's only them, that's only the number of men.

So let's say that each man had a wife and three children.

Okay?

I'm not a math major and I never will claim to be one.

But if each man had a wife and three children there that day, our Lord fed 25,000 people with a few loaves of bread and a few fish.

And you don't think God can work in our nation like that.

And you don't think God can work in our lives like that.

It's all about bringing Him what you have and saying, I want you to be my good shepherd.

I'm tired of being shepherded by other things.

You see, in Jesus we have life, but the way we have life is because of this truth.

The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.

The good shepherd gave his life for you and I who are sheep.

Look at John 10, 11.

I am the good shepherd.

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

Our biggest need we have is not material.

Our biggest need we have is not even relational as it relates to early relationships.

Our biggest need in life is addressing our sin problem.

Whether you're a Christian or whether you're a non-believer watching online or even here today, and you don't know Jesus, our biggest need we have is addressing our problem of sin.

We have broken the law of God, and without Jesus, we had no way to reconcile that relationship.

But 2,020 years ago, he went to the cross at Calvary.

He took a beating for us, he was nailed to a cross, and he took his final breath, and he said, It is finished.

And at that time, every sin, past, present, and future, for every person, was paid for by his body and his blood.

And that was for you and for me.

If you were the only person on earth, Jesus would have still done what he did.

He was crushed for our transgressions, as Isaiah 53 says.

And the most beautiful part about it is the Good Shepherd did something we could never do on our own.

Just like sheep are defenseless and unable to provide for themselves, we are unable to provide for our own eternal salvation.

There's nothing you can do.

You know, I've lived my life with cerebral palsy, and I've always felt, you know, to impress this person, I've got to go above and beyond.

Or to show people how hard of a worker I am, I've got to do this, and then three extra things.

To show people uh that I'm not insecure, I've got to hide it really well.

And Jesus is like, can't you just be content with the way I made you?

Because I don't make mistakes in the way that I form you.

I love Ephesians 2, verses 8 and 9.

Ephesians 2:8

It says, For by grace you have been saved through faith.

And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

So when you stand before God one day, he's not gonna ask you who you voted for in the 2020 election.

He's not gonna ask you how much money you made, he's not gonna ask you how how big of a family you had or any or any of that stuff.

He's gonna ask you, did you accept my son as your Lord and Savior?

And the only person who we will have to boast in is the Lord Jesus Christ.

He's the only one that deserves to be boasted in.

See, if Jesus never did anything else for us, this would be more than enough.

What he did on the cross would be more than enough.

But he didn't stop there.

When he rose again, he gave us the helper, he gave us the Holy Spirit because he wants to be daily involved in every thought process in our lives.

If it matters to you, it matters to Jesus.

And Jesus wants to be the one that matters the most to you.

One last thing.

I want you to see in this passage, it's a small word that gets looked over, but I want you to see the word my.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

See, David didn't say the Lord is a shepherd.

He didn't even say the Lord is the shepherd.

He said the Lord is my shepherd.

It's a very personal statement.

So my question for you this morning is does that personal statement apply to you?

If you're watching online this morning and you're sitting in your bedroom or your living room with your family, or maybe you're by yourself, does that statement apply to you?

Is the Lord your good shepherd, or are you being shepherded by the things of this world far away from where you need to be, which is in the arms of Jesus?

The Lord is my shepherd, is a sentiment carved on a tombstone more often than a reality that's written in our lives.

A lot of people have it written on their tombstone, but they didn't have it written on their heart.

So I ask you today, is it written on your heart that the Lord is your shepherd and you lack nothing because of that truth?

If not, I want you to create space today as we close.

I want you to create a space where you get alone with the Lord, whether it's in your seat or whether it's in your car on the way home, or whether you need a prayer closet when you get to the house, whatever it is, get alone with the Lord if you're a believer, if you're not a believer, and say, Lord, I haven't been allowing you to be my good shepherd.

I've been shepherded by a job, I've been shepherded by my family, I've been shepherded by uh my marriage.

But Lord, I want you to take priority over all of it.

And I want to go back to listening to the voice of the Good Shepherd.

One of my favorite stories in Scripture is how the Lord tells us that he leaves the 99 sheep that are following him to go and track down the one that's lost.

Maybe you're the one that needs to be tracked down today.

Let's pray.

Dear Lord, we love you.

We thank you for your goodness, we thank you for the truth of your word, that if you are our shepherd, we lack nothing.

We thank you for the reality that if all if all we do is bring you what we have, you'll redeem it by your blood on the cross.

If all we'll do is bring you what we have, however weak and however frail it may be, you can make something beautiful out of our shambles.

You can make beauty from our ashes.

If we'll just be faithful enough to bring you what little we have.

So, Lord, I pray for the non-believer and the believer here today.

Maybe they need to circle back to the good shepherd.

Maybe they've wandered off, maybe they've gone astray.

Lord, I pray that you would convict their hearts and they would come home and listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd once again.

And if you need to accept Christ for the first time today, if you don't know for a fact that He is your Good Shepherd, we want to help you.

We want to walk alongside you as you make that decision.

You can text the word start to follow.

Start to follow.

It's all one word to 97,000.

If you're online, text that phrase to 97000 and we will walk with you, we will connect with you so that you can rest assured that Jesus is your good shepherd and you can follow him all the days of your life.

Lord, we thank you that for all of our lives you've been faithful.

And for all of our lives you've been so, so good.

And right now we just want to sing of the goodness of God.

We ask all these things in Jesus' name, amen.

Would you stand this morning as we close?

As we keep that in mind.