Don't Miss Jesus - Luke 19:38-46

Happy Palm Sunday. My name is Connor.

I'm the community's pastor here and a couple weeks ago we had

grandparents in town. My wife and I have a nine month

old and as you do with grandparents, you make your way

to the new Barnes and Noble out in Eagle and you spend a few

hours just looking at books. While we were there, I found a

book from author I loved named Mitch Album and his most recent

book called Twice, and I began reading this book and it's a

book all about this fascinating idea if you had the chance to go

back to any moment in your life twice.

You go back to any moment as much as you want any moment

twice and relive it, redo it, see how it might change.

It's told through the lens of a guy named Alfie Logan.

Alfie gets this power as a boy from his mom and he uses it

throughout his life to fix things that he does to change

circumstances. One particular poignant moment

comes when his father he finds is in the hospital.

He had gone away off he had in his father's car for the day and

because he had his father's car, his dad needed some medicine for

a headache that he had. There's none in the house.

So he made his way by foot to the local store and on his way

he got hit head on by a car. When Alfie finds them, his leg

had already been amputated and the doctors are telling him your

dad is probably not ever going to be the same.

This is going to take a toll on his body and on his psyche.

He may develop depression and get ready to, in the next few

years, probably say your goodbyes.

Alfie that day had borrowed the car to go on a particularly

stellar date with the girl of his dreams, and without second

thought, he taps himself twice and says the word.

And he goes back to that morning's breakfast with his

dad, and he says, dad, I'll no longer need the car today.

I'm going to stay home. Now, my guess is, as we hear at

Alfie's story, there's probably some moments in all of our lives

that if I asked is, would you want to go back and relive it

twice? You probably say, yes.

If I could redo that moment, that decision, that day, that

season of my life, I would redo it.

I'd go back to it in an instant. Now, sadly, we don't get that

opportunity. Many of us would love it, but we

don't get it. But what we can do is learn from

those who have gone before us, those who have lived and have

the opportunity to follow God or not, to see from their lives

what it takes to live our first chance the right way.

Now, there's a lot of things that we probably care about.

We'd like to know the secret to, we'd like to learn about.

But there's one thing in particular that sets up all

things the most important question, the most important

decision, most important moment of our lives.

And it's the moment that we have to know God.

It's when God shows up. He's there to be found, to be

seen, to be known, and we have the opportunity to know him and

will we choose to know him, to follow him, to say yes to him.

And so we're going to be considering the story of Jesus

life here this Palm Sunday. So go turn with me to Luke

Luke 19 · chapter mention

chapter 19. This is five days before his

crucifixion. And this is this.

This is the scene for us this morning.

Jesus is has ascended to the Mount of Olives.

He's overlooking the city of Jerusalem and he is surrounded

by his disciples. And he says to two of them, you

guys go into the city, go into the city and find a colt, a

donkey. He's tied up and you're going to

grab the donkey and bring him back to me.

If they ask you, the owners of this donkey, what you are doing,

just simply reply. The Lord has need of it and

he'll allow you to take it. They'll allow you to have the

donkey. And so they go.

They bring the donkey back. They make their way back to

Jesus, and then he gets on this donkey and the disciples begin

to pick up on what Jesus is doing.

They recognize what this moment is.

Jesus is about to ride into Jerusalem, the capital city of

Israel, on a donkey with a procession of people.

And so they began to and our narrative and Luke layout cloaks

before them. In other narratives in the

Gospels, they layout palm branches.

That's why we call it Palm Sunday.

They begin to layout the cloaks before Jesus, and the people

around the disciples see what's happening.

And as Jesus makes his way down from the mount of all of that to

the city of Jerusalem, he's surrounded by the crowds of

people. And they began to sing from

Psalm 118, this phrase in verse 38 of chapter 19.

Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in

heaven and glory in the highest. Some who were there, the

Pharisees, they see this and they tell Jesus, make those

people be quiet. They do not know what they're

saying. They should not be saying this

about you. Make them be quiet.

And Jesus tells them, I tell you, if these should keep

silent, the stones would immediately cry out.

Maybe the stones of the temple beforehand were the stones of

the ground. Whichever Jesus is saying, if

these men and these women, these children were to be silent,

creation would begin to sing my praises.

Then Jesus makes his way into his room and he makes his way to

the temple. And he goes into the temple and

he sees people selling and making a profit off of the

sacrifices that people were going to make in the coming days

for Passover. People of Israel would come to

the temple. They would buy an animal or two,

whatever they had need of in order to make that animal the

sacrifice for Passover for themselves and their family.

So there's those in the temple selling the animals and Jesus

goes in and he drives them out. He drives them out.

And he says this in verse 46. It's written my house is a House

of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.

Now, this is the scene that we celebrate every Palm Sunday.

And a lot of times we'll focus on the praise, the joy, the

happiness, and we'll get there. But as you guys know, we've been

in a series talking about the hard sayings, the hard teachings

of Jesus. We've gone through from Luke

Luke 9 · chapter mention

Chapter 9 all the way until now looking at what are the hardest

passages from each chapter of Luke and what can we learn from

those hard passages? And I've been super encouraged

and helped by these passages, ones that we don't always look

at the most. And so today we're going to look

at one of the more difficult moments in the Palm Sunday

message before Jesus goes into the temple.

As he's riding on the donkey, the people are singing his

praise. There's this moment where he

begins to weep, begins to cry, And then he preaches this

sermon, this little sermon that begins to speak in earshot of

disciples and those who are worshipping him.

And this is what Jesus says. If you had known even you,

especially in this day, your day, the things that make for

your peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes.

For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an

embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every

side, and level you and your children within you to the

ground. And they will not leave in you

one stone upon another. Why?

Because you did not know the time of your visitation.

Jesus is pronouncing judgment on the city of Jerusalem He's

riding in. They're singing his praises, and

he's looking out at the different characters and people

groups around him. And he pronounces this

statement. Statement that's not too fun to

look at, but is important First off, because it is a

historically accurate statement. What's important for us to

understand is when Jesus says this, he's not talking in

hyperbole. In fact, he's understanding

things a little bit. He's not just talking in this

prophetic way that we never see actually come to fruition, but

Jesus is prophesying about an event that would happen about 33

years later during the same feast of Passover when the

Romans would come in and lay siege to Jerusalem.

It's a kind of here's how it goes.

Just to give you the back story. If you don't know, this is a

real event that happens a few decades after Jesus life.

Jesus ascends to the right hand of the Father.

He tells his disciples, wait. And when I send my spirit, then

go out. And then we see in Pentecost the

Holy Spirit descend and flames of fire like on their heads.

And then many Christians in Jerusalem begin to go out to the

nations to preach the gospel. And as they're doing that, as we

read the book of Acts, the nation of Israel, in particular

the city of Jerusalem, is going through political revolution.

As we read the book of Acts, there's this man named Flores.

He's a leader of the Roman people.

He's the leader of Rome in Israel.

And Flores hates the Israelites, can't stand them.

When debates come to him with his Gentile versus an Israelite,

he always chooses the Gentile. And at one point he decides to

go into the temple and to take out 17 talents to take out a

large sum of money from the temple treasury.

Something that was not only right, wrong to do because it's

stealing, but the people of Israel saw this as profaning the

temple, to take the money offered to God in his temple and

then to take it for government use, for the government of Rome.

How could you? And so there's a couple of

revolutionary men in the city, and they band together and they

decide to poke fun at Flores, is that they grab some empty, empty

baskets and begin to go around to the poor of the city.

And they ask the poor, hey, the emperor is poor.

This man Flores, who's our leader, he's poor.

Would you mind donating a few little bits of change for him?

Flores gets word of the way these men are mocking him.

And he asks the Israelite leaders, the Sanhedrin, to hand

them over. The Sanhedrin decides not to.

So Flores decides that he will lay waste to that part of the

city, and he destroys it. He destroys the southwest corner

of the city, and he massacres anybody who's to be found there.

Now, this rightfully stirs up the people of Israel.

This is not how we are to be treated.

This is not how we are to live. And some of the Christians in

the city in this year 66, they see all this happening and they

remember Jesus's words and history tells us that some of

them decide to leave Jerusalem they hadn't already and to flee

to the hills, to flee to surrounding cities.

But for those who stayed, there's a man named of Aspasian,

one of a new leader of Rome. He comes in to do a florist

couldn't to end the political violence and wildness that was

happening in the city. He begins to take different

cities around Judah. He basically takes Jericho in a

couple other places and he has control now of the whole region

and begins to set up to take over the city of Jerusalem, the

capital. Now he gets held up for a few

years because the emperor named Nero commits suicide.

So the Spacian gets recalled back to Rome, and while there he

gets named the new emperor and he names his son.

Titus sends him to go and finish the job in Israel.

OK, we're following so far. Titus is going to Israel to lay

siege to them. And in the year 70, Titus shows

up at the city and he does exactly what Jesus describes

here. He begins to set up siege ramps

and battling Rams, and over the course of several months breaks

down two of the city walls. And after months of famine for

the people of Israel, including all those who had come to

Jerusalem for Passover, he breaks through and begins to go

through the city and massacre anybody insight without regard

to age, gender, rank, ethnicity, he begins to just destroy and

kill the entire city. The accounts that we have

described the the city as a city with streets flowing with blood,

and it's estimated that 97,000 people were taken as prisoners

of war and 1,000,000 people died during the siege.

Now, maybe that's a little bit of hyperbole in history, but a

lot of people die and a lot of people are taking captive back

to Rome. And you can still see evidence

of this a few years ago. And my wife and I were on a trip

to visit the heralds who were praying for this week in Italy,

and they took us into Rome and we got to see the Arch of Titus.

The Arch of Titus is this arch that Titus, the man from the

year 70 who destroyed Israel, his brother set this up in honor

of all that he did. And if you take a look at the

inside of the arch, you can see the scene of Israel in 70 AD.

You might recognize the menorah and the people of Israel being

LED out back to Rome as prisoners of war, the Temple

gold and all of the treasure being taken to Rome a few years

later. The Spacian uses this money and

these slaves to build the Colosseum, to earn favor with

the people of Rome, to earn favor with the people he was

leading. And so this is what Jesus is

speaking into. He's speaking in these few lines

in the sermon, in some ways not even doing justice to the whole

of the violence and bloodshed that would take Jerusalem in

just a few short decades. The Jewish historian Josephus

says this. And so ended the first Jewish

revolt against Rome. Wonder if God would say it this

way. And so ended the judgment on

Israel prophesied by Jesus. Happy Palm Sunday right now.

Have you started this series? And you were someone who would

have said, you know, I love Jesus as a great teacher.

We could just take his teachings, forget about all of

the the other stuff. How are you doing?

Because this is one of the teachings of Jesus is one that

we have to grapple with and understand and begin to make

decisions about for ourselves. Now we don't know when the day

will come right for each of us, but what we do know is this,

that there was for the people of Israel a day of the Lord, a day

when God's judgment showed up and they had no more second

chances. They couldn't go back.

The day had arrived, Rome was at the door, and if they hadn't

left, judgment was coming. And ultimately there will be a

day of the Lord for all of creation when God returns and

Jesus is seated on the throne forever and the new heavens and

the new earth endure. And there also be for each of

us, whether it's then or by ourselves, alone, personally, a

day of the Lord, a day that we do not know when it is coming, A

day that will come like a thief in the night.

A day that we won't get a second chance on to go back to that

morning's breakfast and redo the decision to follow Jesus or not.

And since we won't get to go back twice and redo the things

that maybe we wish we would have, we're going to learn

today, hopefully from a few of the key groups, the key

characters in today's story. What kept them from seeing Jesus

when Jesus was there face to face with them, teaching and

living in their midst to see how what we can learn to be the

Church of Jesus, the church Jesus desires us to be.

So here's the question we're going to try to answer with

three different groups of people.

How did they miss what Jesus was up to?

How did they not see him? Now before we get into the, the,

the few reasons that we have from them, there's one reason

that we might be tempted to believe that it's just not true.

It's not true that they did not desire to know God.

They did not desire to see God. In fact, the last 100 years for

Israel at this point is one of Rome being in the city, being in

their place, and they're calling out to God.

And they all have their ways of desiring God and seeking God and

hoping that God returns. And so it's not that they don't

desire God or want to see him or hope that he shows up.

It's that their motives for wanting God to show up are

mixed, and it's to those motives, those competing desires

that we will look in. The first group we're going to

look at is maybe the most unlikely group to learn about

not seeing God from. Because in the story we just

read today, it sure looks like they are recognizing what's

happening. And that's the group of people

who are singing Psalm 118 over Jesus as he rides into

Jerusalem. In the story today, it seems

like these people will get it. This is your king, Israel.

He has shown up and you are worshipping him and you're

following him into the city. Now here's here's the problem.

If we Fast forward just a little bit to four or five days later,

as they are seeing Jesus be arrested and then tried, this

crowd, the verbatim crowd, goes from worshipping Jesus on Sunday

to chanting crucify him on Friday.

Now certainly there was probably some that remained faithful to

God and weren't in the crossover, but the crowd in the

Gospel of Luke goes from worshipping to ridiculing.

How did they get there? I think as you read the story,

you begin to see that they had in their minds a different idea

of what Jesus would do when he entered Jerusalem.

Their minds were mistaken. Imagine being an Israelite in

this day, living in the city of Jerusalem, and you hear about

this man named Jesus. And Jesus is said to be the

Messiah. He's going to be the one to

bring peace, to bring joy, to bring hope to the nation.

And you know, the main reason you don't have hope or joy or

peace is because of the Roman army that's taking up residence

in your city, the Roman army that's just marched in a bunch

more troops to make sure that nothing happens over Passover.

And so when you hear that Jesus is coming down from the Mount of

Olives on a donkey with the procession, you think this is

the time Jesus is going to bring in the Kingdom of Israel.

And it is going to be beautiful. And so you join in the crowds

and then you wake up on Monday morning hoping that you're going

to read in the headlines of the Jerusalem Times that Jesus has

LED a revolt. You're sleeping with maybe your

sword or some whatever weapon you could find your plowshare by

your bed, knowing that you might be called upon to fight in this

battle against the Romans. You go to bed Monday night still

wondering. And Jesus did say some things in

the temple. He did throw out some people.

Maybe Tuesday's the day. And then Tuesday comes and goes,

and this Messiah, the Savior who's supposed to throw out the

Romans, he's not doing a whole lot to do that.

Wednesday comes, you're waiting, you're looking as you're

working, you're peeking out the window wondering, is it

happening yet? And then Thursday and Friday

come and you hear that Jesus, the supposed king of the Jewish

people, the supposed person who has followers and

revolutionaries behind him, he's been arrested and he didn't even

really put up a fight. In fact, the little fight that

did happen, he put an end to and then healed the person who was

injured. What is this Jesus doing?

He must not be the Messiah. He's not doing the things that

we thought he would do. He's weak, he's miserable.

We might as well just kill him and hope for a new one.

Now, ask us this because I bring this up because maybe we don't

have that mistake and desire about Jesus, but I think we

might have some similar ones. One commentator says this.

We arrive at Jerusalem. He's talking about these people,

the crowds. We arrive at Jerusalem with

Jesus. And the question that presses

upon us is this. Are we going along for the trip

in the hope that Jesus will fulfill some of our hopes and

some of our desires? Yeah, I hope Jesus does some

cool things for God. But really, I just want my

desires to be met. Want the Romans to be kicked

out. I want the taxes to be lowered.

I want to have a bit more freedom, a bit more peace.

So here's the question for us. I'm asked one question for each

of these people for us to ponder.

Are you someone who can put the ways of the Kingdom of God above

what your flesh or our culture says makes for peace?

Are you able to put God's desires above your own?

Or when you think about what it would mean for Jesus to show up,

it includes some personal desires, some personal wishes,

some personal little blessings here or there.

The next group we turn our attention to is the Pharisees.

Now the Pharisees are an obvious one because throughout Jesus

ministry, you know, they are the group that got most of Jesus's

ridicule and witty statements. They're the group that most

often we point to as the group we do not want to be.

Yet the Pharisees are people who we are often most like.

They were religious. They believed that the King of

God was going to come because of ritual purity, that they were

going to be so pure and so sinless and so God like that God

was going to have no choice but to return and to rescue his

righteous and holy people. But the problem, one of the

problems for the Pharisees is that they spent their whole

careers being respected and revered by the masses.

And it's a problem for them when Jesus shows up, because this

Jesus of Nazareth, the no way little village, the Jesus of

Nazareth, this no name little rabbi begins to pick up a large

following of people who don't even deserve to be his

followers, don't even deserve to be students under a rabbi,

fisherman and tax collectors, zealots.

And now this man is riding into Jerusalem receiving.

If you were a Pharisee, what you might believe is your rightful

praise and renown. And maybe you don't want people

to worship you like that, but you do enjoy the respectful nods

that you get in the marketplace. You do enjoy the greetings that

people greet you with. You enjoy the awe that people

look at you with from across the street.

And the Pharisees say this to Jesus.

They say, Teacher, rebuke your disciples.

In other words, Jesus tell them to stop praising you.

And when they see that they stopped praising you because of

what we said to you, they'll see that we really are the superiors

here. Here's our question for the

Pharisees. Are you someone who is truly OK

with God receiving praise and not you?

Now I'd venture to guess that most of us wouldn't want Psalm

118 sung over us. But if you're if our church

worked out like if, if revival happened in our city and it

happened in our church, would we be people who really actually

wanted God to get the praise for that or will be people who say,

you know what, I just I'm so happy that I go to that church

that that had that that God thing happened there.

Recently heard of a pastor. He was talking about how for

years he would pray for revival in his city and he always would

pray that it would come through his church and then eventually

got to the place. It's I can say this now after

about two or three decades of ministry, that I want God to

show up so bad that if he showed up in the church down the

street, I would be just as happy as if revival happened in my

church. Now that's incredible.

Could we say that? Can we say that about our

families? That man God, I pray that my

family is blessed to pray that my kids grow up well and I'm OK

if they grew up well. And it's in spite of everything

that I did, not because of it. And they tell the story of why

their life turned out so well because of someone they met in

college or a church they went to after they left home.

Are we OK with not receiving the praise for raising disciples

from our homes? Are we OK to do work in the

workplace unto God for His glory and to not receive for it, not

even desire for it a raise, a promotion, but that God would

just simply receive the glory? Finally, we turn our attention

to the last group, the group that was in the temple, the

group whose hands were eager for unjust prophet.

Verse 46, Jesus walks into the temple and he says, it's

written, my house is made a House of prayer, but you have

made it a den of thieves. And we often villainize these

men who were in the temple making a prophet.

How could you ever get there selling stuff in the House of

God? Here's the question I think for

us Are you someone who's able to live your life without taking

advantage of people or even God to get ahead?

Now imagine you are one of these people.

Selling sheep in the temple might have started out as a good

idea. People are wandering from far

away and they need a certified unblemished offering that's

really hard to get here. So I'm going to sell them some

for my from my flock. And of course, I probably should

make a little bit of money to cover my cost, but that'll be

it. And then year every year, you

start to think, man, maybe if I just made a bit more, I mean,

I'm providing a really good service here for people is

really helpful. And so, yeah, if I take a little

bit, add a little bit, it's fine.

Over the course of time, what becomes maybe let's start it as

maybe a nice kind of thing to do becomes exploitation, becomes

thievery. And I wonder in our lives, in my

life, in yours, how often the blessings of God start out as a

really strong desire, really pure desire.

God, I want to be blessed for your glory, for the good of

those around me. And that slowly and suddenly

begins to shift and people and God himself become means to

profit, to gain, to blessing, and not the other way around.

Now these are questions for us to wrestle with in a culture

that tells us that our future safety and prosperity depend on

our group, our side of the political aisle, our

denomination, our friend group getting their way.

That we deserve to be revered, served, loved.

You do you, whatever it is, and that a successful life is always

up to up and the right up and to the right, putting the pressure

on us to take advantage of others.

We always believe that to be successful is to make more, to

do more, to have more. And if I can't do that, then I

need to pray more to God to receive unjust blessing and

abuse people to get my game. Now thankfully, we're not 1st

century Jewish people in the city of Jerusalem hearing this,

with only a little time to make our decision and maybe with the

window already closing, we have some time.

You have time this morning. What can we learn from Jesus,

what we learn from these people that our lives and our hearts

and our minds will become alive to what he is doing.

Now, there's one detail in this story that we kind of skimmed

over and it's a detail that changes.

I think that the, the meaning of this message for us today,

because in one sense, reading the words of Jesus sounds really

harsh, Am I right? It's kind of hard to read these.

We probably struggle to pray this or say this over any

anybody or anywhere. But as you guys know,

communication, right is not just verbal, it's also non verbal and

the fact it's probably over 90% non verbal.

And so let's ask the question, how does Jesus say what he says?

Is he walking in, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, saying

what he says here with victory in his eyes, his hands

outstretched? You are getting what you

deserve. I am victorious.

I'm here to be worshipped. You will be destroyed and

vanquished. Is he coming into Jerusalem with

anger? You guys are evil and I am.

I'm righteous and you are about to get your just dessert and I

cannot wait for the day because I am a God of justice.

No, he's riding into Jerusalem and as he looks out with people

praising his name, singing Psalm 118 over him, he's weeping.

Every sentence that he utters, every syllable is through a tear

soaked SOB. He looks at the city, the city

of Jerusalem, the people God has been wooing for all of the Old

Testament to know him, to follow him, to accept His Son.

And as Jesus speaks these harsh words, his heart is moved to

love. When author puts it this way,

the terrible judgment that's been pronounced and will shortly

be, yes, be executed, proceeds not from a stern and cold

justice, but from a heart of love that wants the best for and

from the people. These tears are not just the

human reaction to a sad and frustrating situation.

They are the tears of a God of love.

They are the tears of the God of love who Jesus says wants peace.

If you would have known what made for peace.

Now for some of us in the room today, when you hear that word

peace, you think I know what makes for peace because I have

it, I got it. My life is wonderful.

I live the epitome of a peaceful life here in kind and outdoorsy

Boise, ID. And the truth of the matter is

that our peace is actually just comfort.

Your life is comfortable. It's not peace with God and man.

There's others of us here who when I say that Jesus wants to

offer peace, your hand wants to shoot up because that's what

you've been longing for. Peace in your marriage, peace

with your children, peace just in your mind and in your body as

you try to live day by day. And here is the truth that we

see in these words of Jesus, that peace will only come on the

other side of peace with God. Peace in this life, peace in our

hearts and our minds and our bodies will only come through

peace with God. But that window, opportunity to

see God, to know God, to follow him, is closing just as the

window is closing for the people in Jerusalem.

It's closing for every one of us to accept the peace of God or to

go on living our lives in comfort, to accept the peace of

God or to go on just trying to do things in our own strength,

knowing that and accepting that we'll probably never receive

peace. So here's the question for us

today, but also this week as we celebrate Holy Week in the lead

up to Easter. Are we willing to surrender our

lives fully to God as He really is?

To lay down our ambitions, our goals, our desire to be praised,

to do His will while there's still time, while there's still

time for us, before the window closes because we won't get to

go back twice and redo it. And so in response to this, this

joyful message that Jesus has peace on offer for any of those

who would accept it, I'm reminded of the words in Isaiah

55. I read them this week in my

quiet time. It says this.

Seek the Lord while he may be found.

Call upon him while he is near. The Apostle Paul says that this

way. For you yourselves know

perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the

night. For when they say peace and

safety, then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains

upon a pregnant woman, and they shall not escape.

But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this day

should overtake you as a thief. You, brethren, are all sons of

light and sons of the day. We are not of the light nor of

the darkness. Therefore, let us not sleep as

others do, but let us watch and be sober.

And so this week, as Tucker mentioned, we're taking time as

a church to seek God while he can be found, to seek his joy,

to seek his peace, to seek his face.

And we're going to be doing that through a week of prayer and

fasting is we like to invite each and every one of us to join

in. This, however, is possible for

you. Now, as I mentioned, prayer, we

were praying together. It's a week of prayer.

It's not just a few times of prayer.

And so if you can't make it to the the sessions, feel free to

pray on your own. And it's also a week of fasting

a week where we're staying to ourselves.

We're going to go without starve our flesh to feed our spirits to

seek God. Fasting is helpful for us

because it helps us to re engage our minds, transform them to the

way of Jesus That does something to our hearts to help our hearts

be aligned with gods. And it of course does something

to our bodies to call our bodies to loving justice and goodness

in the Kingdom of Christ. And so we're going to be doing a

week of prayer and fasting. And one pastor says it this way,

that prayer is powerful on its own and fasting is powerful on

its own. But when you combine the two,

it's like a chemical. A reaction occurs as we offer

ourselves to God. And so is our prayer and our

hope that God would do something, that we would see him

together this week. And so maybe for you, it looks

like if you think you could do it and say, if you think you can

possibly do it, go for it. You can fast from tonight

through Thursday night and seeking God do it.

That's a bit daunting to you. You might choose to just do a

fast of a meal or two a day, maybe eating dinner or luncheon

dinner. Maybe because you have your life

stage or the way that your body is fasting isn't for you.

But you can go without something else like digital media or your

car or something to remind yourself that your life is not

your own. And so we do not want to miss

this opportunity to seek God in the lead up to Eastern.

So our invitation is for all of us wherever we're at, however we

can this week to pay extra mind to Jesus.

Thanks for joining us today. If you would like to watch the

full service, check out the link in the description.

For next steps and to learn more, visit calvaryboise.com.