Legalism Versus Grace (Mark 2:13-22)

But we're gonna be in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 2, and we're gonna be reading verses 13 through 22.

Mark 2 · chapter mention

So let's stand if you're able for the reading of God's word.

Starting in verse 13, it says, Jesus went out again behind or beside the sea.

The whole crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them.

Then passing by, he saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax office.

And he said to him, Follow me.

And he got up and followed him.

While he was reclining at the table in Levi's house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who were following him.

When the scribes, who were Pharisees, saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples, Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?

When Jesus heard this, he told them, It is not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick.

I didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners.

Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting.

People came and asked him, Why do John's disciples and the Pharisees' disciples fast, but your disciples do not fast?

Jesus said to them, The wedding guests cannot fast while the groom is with them, can they?

As long as they have the groom with them, they cannot fast.

But the time will come when the groom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.

No one sows a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment.

Otherwise the new patch pulls away from the old cloth, and a worse tear is made.

And no one puts new wine into old wineskins.

Otherwise the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost as well as the skins.

No, new wine is put into fresh wineskins.

Would you pray with me?

Lord, I thank you so much for your word.

Pray that you would open our eyes and our ears and our hearts and our minds to the things that you have for us today.

That we would not leave here unchanged, but we would allow your word to form us into the uh the image of Jesus Christ to be more and more like him on a daily basis.

Lord, help me to rightly divide your word here today.

Speak through me as your mouthpiece, pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So before we jump in today, I think it'll be beneficial for us to talk about the old covenant and the new covenant.

It's going to really help us with what we're going through in our text.

So, first, a covenant is an agreement or it's a contract between two or more parties.

And in the Old Testament, we see the law and the covenant that God made with the people of Israel.

And this is referred to as the Old Covenant.

And God promised that if Israel followed the law, that they would enjoy tangible physical blessings and protection from God, along with spiritual blessings as well.

But this covenant, the old covenant that we're talking about, was law-based.

It was about doing, it was about personal sacrifice.

And breaking the law could only be forgiven through animal sacrifice with the help of a priest.

Now, in contrast, when we look at the new covenant, it was established through Jesus, and it's based on grace.

When Jesus instituted communion, he said, This is the cup, the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you, which we just looked at last week.

So the new covenant is based on the works of Christ.

It's based on grace, it's no longer dependent upon us and our own works.

Jesus became the sacrifice for us.

He made a way for us to have direct access to God.

And there was no longer a need to go to any earthly priests because Jesus is the high priest.

So when we compare old covenant, which is the law, with new covenant, which is the grace, we see that law is what we're supposed to do, and grace is what God gives us, so we have the ability to actually do it.

The law reveals sin and grace forgives sin.

The law, in a way, it's like a mirror.

It gives us a way to self-examine ourselves so that we know where we need the blood of Christ, where we need grace most in our life.

So even though through Jesus we're under the new covenant of grace, it doesn't mean that we have free reign to throw out the Ten Commandments and do whatever we want.

Grace gives us the ability to follow God's law and the forgiveness when we fall short of his commands.

So keep that in mind as we go through this passage this morning that Jesus is ushering in this new covenant of grace, which we're going to see with these tax collectors and these sinners.

And then we'll see how the religious leaders are hanging on to the old covenant, and they're even trying to improve upon the old covenant that we see in the Old Testament.

So, with that said, let's jump into verse 13.

Look at that with me.

So Jesus continues his ministry around the Sea of Galilee, and he was continuing to teach them.

Just like we saw a couple weeks ago in Mark chapter 1, verse 38, where it said, Jesus was speaking, he said, Let's go on to the neighboring villages so that I may preach thereto.

Mark 1:38

This is why I have come, to preach the gospel, the good news that Jesus is the Savior that all of Israel has been waiting for, and God's kingdom is finally at hand and accessible to man.

And these huge crowds of people are flocking to him from all over Israel and even outside of Israel, and they all have various motives for why they're coming, some for good intentions and some for bad intentions.

So let's look at verse 14.

It says, Then passing by, he saw Levi, the son of Alphaus, sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, Follow me.

And he got up and he followed him.

So we talked a lot about the call of a disciple to follow a rabbi back on April 11th.

So if you want to listen to that, that's going to add a lot of context to this sermon here.

And you can find those on our website, all of the past sermons.

But right here we see a very unsuspecting character get that same call that we saw with the fisherman.

Follow me.

The fact that a tax collector gets this call is really interesting.

You'll notice as we read this passage and other passages within the Gospels that tax collectors and sinners are always lumped in together.

The tax collectors were considered traitors to their country.

Now remember, Israel at this time is under Roman oppression, and Rome is occupying their land, and the Jews were sick and tired of the oppression from the Roman government.

So think of it this way to give us a little modern-day context.

What that would be like is if some world superpower came and took over the United States, and they gave us a really heavy tax burden, and we have to do whatever they say, and their officers are just roaming the streets everywhere, and injustice is abounding everywhere.

So that's the context of where we are.

And then your neighbor all of a sudden says, You know what?

I'd like to collect taxes for that world superpower.

I'd like to do that for them just to line my own pockets and to get rich off of this.

Willing to be called a traitor, to be an outcast of society, if it meant that they got lots of money.

That's Levi.

That's who we're looking at here today.

This traitor that's working for the Roman government just to get rich.

And the way that taxes worked at this time in the Roman-occupied lands is that they would allow people to bid on contracts.

So your neighbor here in Tascadero would say, you know, I'll collect for a Tascadero.

And I'll guarantee you, the Romans, that I will bring you$20 million by the end of the year.

And I'll collect all of it and I'll hand that to you.

And the Romans would say, Okay, it's yours.

Job's yours.

You do the tax collecting for us.

At the end of the year, we're gonna knock on your door.

You better have$20 million.

Now, the Romans didn't care what else the tax collectors did as long as they got their$20 million.

So you could collect$22 million, however you would like, and as long as you handed the$20 million over to the Roman government, you could keep the$2 million for yourself.

So tax collectors actually had an incentive to cheat and to use force through the Roman soldiers to get over and above what the Roman government was actually requiring for taxes from the Israeli people.

So you can see why tax collectors were so despised in this time.

The Jews wouldn't even allow them to testify in court.

They would get excommunicated from their families, and they wouldn't even be allowed into the synagogues because they had contracted with the biggest oppressors that Israel had ever faced.

Now also remember that most of Israel believed that the Messiah was going to be a political figure that would come and overthrow the Roman Empire.

And here the one claiming to be the Messiah is asking a tax collecting traitor to be on his team.

So even further, as we'll see, Jesus is asking this tax collector to be one of the building blocks of the church.

So you can see why the Pharisees were asking this question as we read verses 15 and 16.

Look at it with me.

While he was reclining at the table in Levi's house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who were following him.

When the scribes who were Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples, Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?

So not only did Jesus just call Levi, he's hanging out with other tax collectors in a group that's just referred to as sinners.

So who knows what warranted that title, but it they just got lumped in, tax collectors and sinners.

But basically, Jesus is eating through the Pharisees' eyes with the scum of the earth.

He's hanging out with the cultural outcasts.

And really, I wish I could have been a fly on the wall.

I wish I could have just seen how Jesus did this.

These sinners wanted to be around him.

He was attractive to sinners, not in a physical way, but sinners wanted to hang out with him and wanted to be with him.

They desired to be in his presence.

And what this tells me is that Jesus was not the moral police.

He didn't expect perfect righteous behavior from someone that hadn't even believed in him yet.

Jesus knew that the behavior was gonna come later.

And we see that Jesus desired relationship first.

He showed grace to these sinners.

And he cared more about their souls than their current behavior.

Because Jesus knew that the behavior would come later.

And we see that Jesus desired that relationship with them before he cared about what their behavior was becoming.

So Levi becomes this building block and this foundation of the church.

But we still see that he was collecting taxes when he was called.

Levi goes on to become an apostle.

He writes the gospel of Matthew.

He has two names, Levi and Matthew, same guy, the first book of the New Testament.

That's Levi here.

Jesus didn't tell him, Go change all this, do all this, stop all of that, get your act together and then follow me.

He says, follow me, and all that other stuff is going to come in time.

And the Pharisees are not happy about this.

The Pharisees were a religious group that prided themselves on holiness, which is kind of an oxymoron, isn't it?

As if pride could exist with holiness.

Yeah, that should have been the first thing.

But the Pharisees were a respected conservative religious group in Israel.

Their name in Hebrew literally meant separated ones.

And unfortunately, as Jesus is going to expose, that was just an outward appearance that they maintained.

But the Pharisees were the opposite of Jesus in this way.

They wanted you to look good and to appear holy, and they cared more about that.

But Jesus wants to make Levi holy and then allow the appearance of true holiness to follow.

So the religious leaders questioned Jesus' disciples.

Why is he eating with these sinners?

They didn't go to Jesus this time.

Notice that.

They went up to the disciples.

And this could be because they're tired of Jesus putting them in their place.

Because we just keep seeing that over and over.

They have a question and Jesus just puts them right in their place.

Or maybe the Pharisees' intent was to inject doubt into the disciples' mind.

Is this guy you're following really holy?

Sure doesn't look like it to us.

Like Satan with Eve.

Did God really say you can't eat from any tree in the garden?

Is this Jesus guy really holy?

If he is, then why is he hanging out with the scum of the earth?

And maybe that's why Jesus jumps in in this next verse in verse 17.

Not for the sake of the religious leaders to answer their question, but maybe for the sake of the disciples.

So they're not going to bed with that thought in their mind.

Is Jesus really the Messiah?

Is Jesus really holy if he's doing these things that the Pharisees aren't doing?

Maybe the Pharisees are right.

But Satan's really good at this, isn't he?

Especially right before you go to bed for some reason.

Injecting those doubts and letting them fester in your mind.

Just like injecting yeast into a lump of dough.

You let it fester and it expands and it grows.

Oftentimes Satan will inject doubt into our mind.

And he wants it to fester and he wants our mind to take over and do all of the rest, coming up with all of the worst case scenarios that we possibly can.

And it expands just like a ball of dough, and it expands until truth is injected and it renews our minds.

Now, before we jump into verse 17 and hear Jesus' truthful injection, his truthful response, I want us to pause for a second because this is a great teachable moment for a church, especially for a young church.

You know, usually when there's any sort of unrest within a member of the body of Christ, the pastor is usually the last one to know.

Usually it starts with a doubt or someone unhappy with something that happened or the way that something appeared.

And what usually happens is someone goes to another person in the church asking, you know, what do you think about this?

Or what do you know about this?

Or did you know that X, Y, and Z?

And then that person goes to another person, or a ministry leader, or a disciple, like we see in this case here this morning.

And then the story gets a little bigger with added details and added opinions.

And by the time the pastor hears about it, somebody's sitting in their office really, really upset.

Or we find out that someone has already actually left the church over an issue that really wasn't an issue in the first place.

And I'm speaking from lots of experience here from the previous churches that I've worked at.

If the first person would have gone straight to the pastor or to one of the elders, a simple explanation, an injection of truth would have diffused the whole situation.

So we're a new church, and I've only had the chance to become acquaintances with some of you, and fortunately we haven't seen this happen in our church.

But I thought this was a good time to talk about this and to give you an open invitation to just come ask.

Me or one of the elders, if you ever have any confusion, if you want to clear something up, if you want to talk to us about a decision that maybe the elder board has made, I just want to give you an open invitation to come and ask those questions.

I actually enjoy those questions, even when they're hard questions, because it just means that truth is getting injected all over the place, and that really just things seems to calm things down.

You know, rumors and gossip can be such a painful thing for churches, and I just want to make sure that we're doing everything that we can to just have truth spread all over, to stay, you know, as transparent as we possibly can.

So please just come.

I promise I don't bite very hard.

But open invitation at any time, please.

Okay, rabbit trails finished.

Back to our text here this morning.

Verse 17.

When Jesus heard this, he told them, Is it not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick?

I don't, I didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners.

Now, we know that there is none that is righteous, no, not one, according to Romans 3.10.

So I want to be clear that Jesus is not telling the Pharisees that they're okay because of their outward appearance of holiness.

They need Jesus just as much as the tax collectors and the sinners do.

But the Pharisees don't know that they need a doctor.

And the tax collectors and sinners can quickly come to the conclusion that they do need a doctor.

It's like the tax collectors have these broken arms and gaping wounds, and anybody can see them and say, you need to go see a doctor.

But the Pharisees have like an internal bleeding or something like that.

They look great on the outside, but they're actually dying on the inside.

And until the Pharisees could see that they needed a doctor, there was nothing that Jesus could do for them.

You can't treat a patient with internal bleeding if they don't come and submit themselves to the hands of the doctor.

So Jesus is saying that I came to heal those that know they are dying and know that they need me.

I came to perform spiritual surgery to save those that know that they need it the most.

Jesus was in the triage business.

He was an ER doctor.

And right here we see him in this context dining with his patients.

Now, unfortunately, some people will read this passage, they'll read this response, they'll see this whole situation that's going on with Jesus and the tax collectors and the sinners, and they'll think, okay, I need to go out to a bar where all these ER patients are, and I need to get wasted and hang out with these people.

And if I get wasted, then they'll know that I'm one of them.

And then I can share Jesus with them.

No, that's not how this works.

That's not what this passage is about.

Jesus never sinned and he never compromised to hang out with sinners.

A doctor doesn't enter into a room full of sick people to become like them.

He goes into a room of sick people to help cure them.

But it's interesting as we look at this passage that those sinners, those tax collectors, wanted to be with Jesus.

You know who didn't want to be with him?

The religious leaders of the time.

Those that thought that they were already righteous, that were proud of their holiness.

Jesus perfected being in the world, but not of the world.

And I think we need to all ask ourselves, who wants to hang out with us?

We can't be like the guy that said, I can't stand people that are judgmental.

I can tell who they are just by looking at them.

We can't be like those people.

But honestly, who wants to be like us?

I mean, who wants to hang out with us?

Is it only the righteous?

Or maybe we're only willing to hang out with the righteous.

The righteous.

It's my prayer that literally anyone can walk through, well, I guess not through the doors, can walk onto this lawn or down that sidewalk and feel welcomed.

That we as a church wouldn't worry about appearance or background if they're not Christ's followers.

Jesus is gonna take the care of the behavior and the appearance in his time.

Now I would never condone someone living in sin or in rebellion to the teaching of the Bible while they're professing to be a follower of Christ.

You become a follower of Christ, the actions need to change.

But until somebody becomes a follower of Christ.

We shouldn't expect those people to act like Christians, to be like Jesus.

They have no reason to.

And they don't have the ability to.

They don't have the Holy Spirit living inside of them, teaching them and counseling them along the way of how to become more like Jesus.

And they may not even realize that they need a doctor as we're interacting with them.

For those of you that do know Jesus, you better believe that if you're living in sin, we're going to have a conversation.

Billy Graham was famous for saying this.

Said, it's the Holy Spirit's job to convict.

It's God's job to judge, and my job to love.

So I really want to know how Jesus did this.

How he lived a perfect life, yet sinners and full-on traitors wanted to hang out with him.

How he so graciously loved these people and yet never compromised once.

He must have been so filled with hope and joy and love that people just couldn't wait to hang out with him.

Which, by the way, the world is lacking in all of that right now, isn't it?

Hope, joy, and love.

So I want to ask myself, I'm loving myself into this, but all of us, who wants to hang out with us?

And are we projecting the hope, the joy, and the love that can only be found in Jesus Christ?

Do people look at us and see that we have a hope and a future that this world could never remove from us?

Or do people look at us and say, they're just as miserable as I am?

Or do people that aren't following Jesus see us coming and say, here comes that stick in the mud?

You know, that wet blanket, that moral policeman is coming.

So my prayer is that Jesus would show us how to be like him specifically in this way.

To love our enemies, the people that we see as traitors, to see potential in them and love them with the love of Jesus Christ, and then say, Hey, come follow Jesus with me.

Now, before we jump into verse 18, this is where we're going to be really honing in on the old covenant of the law versus the new covenant of grace.

So look at verse 18 with me.

Now, John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting.

People came and asked him, Why do John's disciples and the Pharisees' disciples fast?

But your disciples do not fast.

So Jewish law only required the Israelites to fast once a year.

And that was on the Day of Atonement.

We learned that in Leviticus 16, 29, if you want to look it up later.

And the Pharisees say, Once a year?

That's all we're required?

Okay, then we'll do it twice a week.

Which became their custom.

They would fast every Monday and every Thursday of every week.

And I mentioned that because this is a perfect picture and definition of what legalism is.

Well, the law says this, so let's add to it.

Let's pretend that God's standards aren't enough, and let's make things harder.

And let's not stop there.

Let's take our standards and then impose them on other people as well.

And that's what the Pharisees did, just like we see here with fasting.

But being under the new covenant, what that looks like for us today, what legalism looks like for us today, is Jesus' sacrifice wasn't enough for God to be pleased with me.

So I need to introduce some of the law back into my life.

Legalism back then was the law and adding something else.

Legalism today is Jesus and adding something else, or adding the law into our relationship.

It's saying through the work of Jesus and my doing X, Y, and Z, then God's going to be pleased with me.

And then I'll impose X, Y, and Z on everybody else so I can look down upon them.

So verse 19.

These people have asked Jesus the question John the Baptist and his disciples are fasting.

The Pharisees are fasting.

Why not your disciples?

In verse 19, Jesus said to them, The wedding guests cannot fast while the groom is with them, can they?

As long as they have the groom with them, they cannot fast.

So it would help us if we understood Jewish weddings just a little bit.

It was a week-long celebration that they would have.

A huge celebration, large amounts of people and food, and celebrating, celebrating the fact that two people are coming together, that two families are coming together and becoming one.

And it was a lot bigger and more elaborate and a lot longer, probably than any ceremony that we've ever witnessed in the US.

And in Adam Clark's biblical commentary, he gives us a little bit of insight into this time.

He says, in the days of Jesus, some rabbis declared that if the observance of any law came in the way of having a good time during a wedding, you didn't have to keep that law.

You could just go and have a good time.

So obviously that's not biblical, but that was the teaching of some of the rabbis in this time.

But it's basically saying, if your custom is to fast on Thursdays, yet you're at a wedding, don't worry about it.

Just keep on feasting.

It's okay, don't worry about that.

Just have a good time, celebrate, and just keep on feasting.

So Jesus, in his response, he's saying, the bridegroom, which is him, is with them.

These disciples, these new disciples.

And they're entering into this relationship as the bride of Christ.

No one fasts at a wedding.

And this is the inauguration of God's kingdom being available on earth.

Why should they fast when they should be feasting?

That's what Jesus' response means.

And Jesus goes on in verse 20.

He says, But the time will come when the groom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.

So, just to be clear, Jesus wasn't against fasting.

We saw that he did it for 40 days straight himself.

We see that he actually instructs the disciples on how to fast, instructs the disciples on how to fast.

He told them, When you fast, don't look all glum.

Wash your face, anoint your head, be joyful while you're doing it.

Don't be like the Pharisees that wanted everybody to know what they were doing and to feel sorry for them or think that they were more holy and set apart because they were fasting and looked horrible.

So what Jesus is saying right here is that there is a season for fasting.

And for his disciples, they would be fasting, but now was not that season for them.

He's for it, but not the stringent pharisaic, you must do it this way, and you must do it on these days.

Because then it becomes a good luck charm.

Well, God answered my prayer because I fasted.

And then we can twist that into thinking that somehow we coerced God into answering a prayer that he didn't want to.

Or we can start to think that God's not pleased because we missed a day of fasting, and all of a sudden something's wrong with our relationship with him.

And please don't hear that I'm against fasting regularly.

That's not what I'm saying here at all.

I'm against fasting as a good luck charm.

Or something that's done in routine, or something that is because it's a result of legalism in our life.

Because then it becomes Jesus and legalism, right?

Jesus and anything else.

It becomes Jesus and fasting will lead me to being or having God be pleased with me.

So Old Testament fasting, old covenant fasting was done for lament.

It was a sign of mourning.

So Jesus is telling them, My disciples are at a wedding, they're not at a funeral.

So they're not going to be fasting right now.

And in the New Testament, we never find a mandated fast.

Nor do we find instructions on how to fast outside of what Jesus teaches.

Because Jesus and the New Testament writers, they weren't worried about the schedule.

They weren't worried about the consistency.

They were worried about the heart behind why people were fasting.

That it should be done as personal devotion.

That it should be done out of heartfelt liberty, not out of legalism.

And I think it's a good time to kind of talk about what fasting is.

It's a time to deny our flesh, the old man, to deny it of food and to feed our spirit.

It's fasting from food and feasting on the Spirit of God.

It's saying no to the flesh and yes to the spirit.

And it's actually great spiritual training because if you can say no to your food appetite, then you're going to be able to say no to a lot of your other appetites as well.

So when we see that the apostles fasted and prayed, or we see how couples should fast and pray for a season in the New Testament, it's a time set aside to feast on the Lord and to seek him and enjoy him with all of our heart.

Instead of eating, it's giving that time to prayer and to seeking and to enjoying God.

Not to mention, hunger pains are great reminders to pray.

You feel that?

So, new covenant fasting is to be done with joy and willfully out of devotion to God.

And then Jesus goes on in his response in verse 21.

He says, No one sows a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment.

Otherwise, the new patch pulls away from the old cloth, and a worse tear is made.

And no one puts new wine into old wineskins.

Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost as well as the skins.

No new wine is put into fresh wine.

No, new wine is put into fresh wineskins.

So Jesus is talking about the old covenant of law versus the new covenant of grace.

You can't fit the new covenant into the old covenant and make it one.

You can't patch it on and add it to the old covenant.

It can't be the old covenant and the new covenant.

It was a whole new container.

It was a whole new garment.

So back then they would put wine in goat or sheepskin.

And that's how they would allow it to ferment.

And through the fermenting process, it would expand, and the new pliable, soft leather would expand with it and stretch out.

And then once fermented, the leather got all stretched out and it would start to dry out and it would lose its pliability.

If you were to put new wine into an old wineskin, all of the stretchiness was gone.

And as it started to ferment, the whole thing would explode.

And Jesus is saying the new covenant and the old covenant, they can't be mixed together.

And by the way, it's a symbol of the new covenant.

What is the symbol of the new covenant?

It's the wine, right?

As we talked about last week.

So it's a very appropriate analogy that he's giving here of the old wineskins and the new wineskins.

And remember, this is all in context of legalism, the legalism of fasting regarding the Pharisees.

Jesus is saying legalism and grace cannot exist in the same container.

You can't mix those things together.

Stop trying to do more than what is required.

He's saying God's grace is sufficient.

It's enough all by itself without us trying to help out.

Without it being Jesus and fasting, Jesus and one hour in the word daily.

Jesus and one hour of focused prayer daily.

Jesus and no-rated R movies.

Jesus and fill in the blank, whatever it might be.

And all those things can be great, but only out of devotion and love and never out of illegalism.

We should be doing those things because we're enjoying our relationship with the Lord so much that we can't help but want to do those things.

So as we close today, this is what I want us leaving here thinking about today.

I want to make sure that we never leave here just like, wow, that's good information.

But that we have things that we can apply to our life and then things that we can go out and take with us and continue to think on during the week.

So the first question is are we living in the love and grace of Jesus Christ?

Or are we trying to help God in some way?

Are we trying to earn our way to God in some way?

And the second thing I want us thinking about as we go out, can others tell that we have the joy of our salvation pouring out of us?

Are we exuding love and hope and joy, all of those things that we're finding in Jesus Christ?

Are other people able to see that and witness it and say, that person's different?

I want to hang out with that person.

And I want to know what that person knows that I don't know.

Because I want to do what they're doing and I want to be like them, and I want to have that same hope and joy and love in my own life.

You know, as I was thinking about this whole message, I think it can be summed up in one sentence.

We cannot improve upon the work of Jesus Christ.

And it's pure pride if we try to improve upon the work of Jesus Christ.

Will you please pray with me?

Lord, again, we thank you for your work.

Jesus, we thank you for the amazing example that you gave us of loving the people that don't know you, of showing grace to those people, caring more about their souls than their actions.

Lord, help us.

Show us, teach us how to be more like you in that way.

To where people are actually asking us.

We don't have to start the conversation, but people are asking, what's different about you?

What is your source of hope?

What is your source of joy when the world seems to be falling apart around us?

Lord, we just have that open day to say it's Jesus Christ, and my hope is in eternity, not in this world.

Lord, show us how to dwell in this world and to not be of this world.

It's only through your strength that we can do this.

Lord, it's only through what you can provide that we can do any of this.

So through the power of your Holy Spirit, Lord, I pray that you would empower us, that you would move in and through us, and that you would do amazing things for your kingdom, and that we would see souls won constantly for your kingdom and added to your kingdom.

God, we love you so much.

And thank you, God, that you love us even more so.

Thank you for that gift of Jesus Christ, Lord, that we can be forgiven of our sins.

And if there's anybody here today that doesn't know Jesus or consider themselves a follower of Jesus Christ, please come and talk to me afterwards.

I would love to meet you and tell you more about that and what that looks like.