On My Way Up: A Summer Pilgrimage in the Psalms of Ascent | Psalm 129

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And now, here is this week's message.

Um, thank you for the text.

I got texts and I got emails last week.

I, you know, I taught sitting down last week.

First time I've done that in 20 years here.

Sat down.

Last time I sit tried to sit down and teach, I was in a nursing home.

I was a student pastor in my 20s, and an older gentleman in the back of the room said, son, stand up when you talk to us.

So ever since then, I've it's anybody from Texas, you you would know, you know where that comes from.

Um, but no, my health was fine.

I just felt like that God had me deliver that word sitting down.

Um, I didn't know I would cause a firestorm, uh, thinking that my that my health, my health was, but my health is fine as far as I know.

So uh, but I will stand up today.

I promise.

I'll stand up today.

Um we're back into the Psalms of Ascent.

This is uh Psalm 129.

This is the 10th Psalm in this 14 Psalms from Psalm 120 to Psalm 134.

Um, one that I had promised to do over the summer, and I was actually I told the truth.

I've done it over the summer, it's just not over.

And uh so we're circling back to Psalm 129.

But here's a reminder in case this is the first time you've walked in the building and wonder what a psalm of ascent is.

These were psalms that were taught um to families three times a year.

Not I'm not saying it was exclusive to this, but but it was very intentional that on the three feasts that the Jewish families would go to Jerusalem for, um that these were with the these were taught.

They were sung and they were taught.

They were generational in nature, um, and that's what we've been doing.

So the intent of the Psalms was to cement the historical faithfulness and strength of God against the backdrop of generational hardship, opposition, and even rebellion.

The psalms accentuate the enduring patience and the powerful grace of God that sustained them as a people.

Um so they were always against the backdrop of Israel's history and the backdrop of their own personal history.

Um, in this series, I've highlighted the difference between treating our life like a journey or treating our life like a pilgrimage.

So for a journey, the way I've I have framed it is when you when we live life as a journey, we give a nod to the inevitable ups and downs of life, the twists and turns.

Um, and in order to survive life as a journey, we have to be able to roll with the punches and understand each day we just get what we get.

Anybody ever tell your kids that?

You get what you get, right?

That this is just what it is, and let's move on.

But when we treat life as a pilgrimage, it affirms that there is a purpose in the path we're taking, and there is a specific intended destination.

It's not it's not random.

Um, followers are Christ, we are making our way up to God daily, being one, being shaped into the image of Christ.

These are what our days due.

Our days should be shaping us into the image of Christ as we have as we're on this pilgrimage to be eternally with Christ.

So there is there is an end destination that we're going for.

There's an immediate destination.

Do I look more like Jesus today than yesterday?

Do I think more like him, look more like him, taste more like, smell like him?

You know, what is my progress towards him and his image in my life?

And then knowing that that won't ever be complete fully until the day in Jesus Christ.

But I can be different today than I was yesterday.

In a pilgrimage, we understand that God doesn't waste anything in our life.

All right.

In a journey, it's just so easy to say, well, that was hard or that was fun or whatever.

But in a pilgrimage, God uses everything.

He doesn't waste anything, he doesn't waste any victory, he doesn't uh waste any loss.

Yes, we experience loss.

He doesn't waste any of that in shaping us.

You may be familiar with Romans 8.

If you're not, I'm I look forward to introducing to you.

And generally speaking, follow Christ for a long time.

I I have generally read Romans 8 as something to get me through the next thing and not as a backdrop to my entire life.

So when you if you've heard it before, don't dismiss it.

Hear it in the backdrop of your entire life.

If it's the first time you're going to hear it, hear it not just for what's going on in your life now, but what's what your life is going to uh your your life in totality.

Verse 28.

And we know that in all things, and everything on this pilgrimage, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters, and that those he predestined, he also called.

Those he called, he justified.

Those he justified, he also glorified.

What shall we then say in response to these things?

If God is for us, who can be against us?

Doesn't say that no one's against us.

What are you saying?

In your measurement of who or what stands against you, none of those, none of those compare to who God is that stands with us.

Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?

Doesn't mean people don't people don't bring a charge against us.

Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?

It is God who justifies.

Who then is the one who condemns?

Doesn't mean we don't get condemned.

But in comparison to God, what is it?

No one.

Christ Jesus, who died more than that, who was raised to life, is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us, standing in the gap for us.

There isn't a moment in your life where you feel hard-pressed, pushed in the middle somewhere, where God, Jesus Himself, is not interceding on your behalf.

That the God of the universe's son prays for you.

I'll take it.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword, as it is written, for your sake we face death all day long.

We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.

No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors.

I'd settle for conqueror, personally, right?

But we're can we're more than conquerors through him who loved us, for I am convinced.

I'd say I blow by that for so many years.

For some for you to be convinced, you've had to weigh and measure.

You've had to experience, you've had to ponder, you've had to reflect, you have to lick your wounds, high-five somebody, look at the totality of what all those circumstances are to be able to say, I'm convinced.

I'm convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels, nor demons, neither the present, nor the future, nor any powers, neither height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation, and anything that I would possibly ever experience will be able to separate us, separate me from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Let's be convinced of it.

Nothing and no one has the ability and power to end your pilgrimage of being shaped into the image of Christ or to be eternally present in Christ.

Plenty of opposition.

None of that's conquering.

So Psalm 129 is known as a communal psalm.

So it definitely definitely has personal application.

I'm not suggesting it doesn't, but it calls us to look a kind of a higher look.

It's calling us to a communal look to who God is across history, thus who God is across our history.

All right?

Communal.

Now here's why this is important.

Well, I wrote a communal psalm takes the history of the community to speak hope to the future of the community.

And it's a bigger deal than it appears because if we only know God from our perspective, your experience, if we only got know God from that sliver of experience, then every time we face something new, it can introduce doubt into who God is and how God's gonna operate.

But if I learn and understand God as a communal God, a God of history, then I can look and see what God has done in history to know how God's gonna respond to me in my present.

Come on, somebody.

So good.

But I want to know, I want to know the breath of God as much as I can.

I want to understand who he is in history.

I want to see his character played out in your life.

So when I see his character play out in your life and I haven't hit that spot, I can learn about who God is and how he's gonna take care of me because how he's taking care of you.

Our community matters.

Our history and knowledge of the Creator God matters for how we live out, not just tomorrow, but how we end up picturing our entire life.

I told you I've been reading a biography on Truman.

Someone else in the congregation is too, and they're ahead of me.

I'm on page 600.

I only have 400 more pages left.

Truman, Truman is now post-war and um country's mess.

It's interesting.

He said he said multiple times, I wish we could come together in unity and peace like we come in unity at wartime.

Um, but one of the interesting things, Truman was recognized as being uh a student of history, and he understood the people that sat at that desk.

And in one interchange, he said, It's important for me to know how the other men that sat at this desk handled what they had to handle.

Because ignorance is the main reason for mistakes.

Me not knowing how other people had to deal with the stuff they dealt with and how they dealt with it.

My ignorance of that historically around a nation is what will lead me to do some of the same things wrong.

And it just struck me in reading that of how sometimes my ignorance of who God is, who he is, how he operates, what he thinks of me.

The ignorance of that leads me to make mistakes, and they're always underestimations of who he is.

They always turn out to be underestimations of what he thinks of me.

I I don't know about you.

I I rarely walk around going, boy, God sure loves me.

Man, I'm special.

It's usually, ah, screwed up again.

I fell short there.

The enemy wants to play with that and pull that and do all kinds of stuff there.

Separate us from one another, separate us from him.

But we know when we know when we're convinced of his character, it's a bigger deal.

And so this is what Psalm 129 is going to teach us today.

I have two big takeaways.

I'll I'll I'll get telling tell them to you up front in case I don't actually support them, and then and and you can't find them.

I'm gonna give them to you early.

God's justice prevails in the end, even when it looks like he has failed in the middle.

That's one of the things Psalm 29 is going to teach us.

That God's justice prevails even when it looks like it fails.

The second is perseverance is what marks a pilgrimage.

Here's Psalm 129.

They have greatly oppressed me from my youth.

Let Israel say, they have greatly oppressed me from my youth.

Isn't this a great thing to teach on the way up this?

But they have not gained the victory over me.

Okay.

Ploughmen have plowed my back and made their furrows long, but the Lord is righteous.

He has cut me free from the cores of the wicked.

May all who hate Zion be turned back in shame.

May they be like grass on the roof with roof, which withers before it can grow.

A reaper cannot fill his hands with it, nor the one who gathers fill his arms.

May those who pa pass by not say to them, The blessing of the Lord be on you, we bless you in the name of the Lord.

So the Psalm breaks down in two parts, one through four and five through eight.

The bulk of the meat here is in the first four verses.

Let me read it again.

They have greatly oppressed me from my youth.

Let Israel say, They have greatly oppressed me from my youth, but they have not gained the victory over me.

Ploughmen have ploughed my back and made their furrows long, but the Lord is righteous.

He has cut me free from the cords of the wicked.

So the psalmist is taking them back to the beginning from my youth, from our youth as a nation.

So he's bringing them all the way back to Genesis 12 with Abraham.

And Abraham gets called to be the father of his nation.

And we can read this in the first four verses of Genesis 12.

The Lord said to Abraham, Go from your country, your people, and your father's household to a land I will show you.

Sounds like a pilgrimage, doesn't it?

A lot of information here.

I will make you into a great nation.

I will bless you.

I will make your name great.

Abraham, I'm going to do this to you, with you, through you, for you.

And you will be a blessing.

My role, I'm going to make you into something.

Your role, be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you.

Whoever curses you, I will curse, and all the peoples of the earth we be blessed through you.

And verse 4, so Abram went as the Lord had told him.

You wonder where I get movement matters.

Faith subverb.

Can't have faith without movement.

You can have acknowledgement, you can have assent too, but you can't have faith because faith moves us.

Faith moves us, right?

And so in multiple Old Testament and New Testament verses, it says that this act of Abraham was credited to him as righteousness.

So really what we're looking at, this is a salvation moment for Abraham before we get to a Messiah.

This is what connects Abraham to God and then this covenant.

All right.

So if you trace Abraham's, if you trace Abraham and then Isaac and then Jacob and on, when you trace this pilgrimage of Israel, it's not pretty.

And he enters in then to Egypt as a slave and then an imprisoned slave before he's ever, quote unquote, a prince of Egypt.

And in that injustice that Joseph is experiencing, it's at the end, near the end of not his life, but it becomes the beginning of this nation of Israel, is he says, looks at his brothers and says, What you intended for evil, God has meant for the salvation of many.

See, if if we want to if we're going to judge the justice of God in any sliver of a moment our life, there are plenty of times where he will seem injust.

But if we have a global understanding of who he is through his history, then you will see that in the end, God's justice always prevails.

And so many things.

Things that we feel like are slavery to us or um or holding us down or limiting us.

God's building something bigger.

But in the moment it's going to feel, why am I being held down?

God's building something bigger.

The pilgrimage of Israel tells us a few things.

One, there's going to be spiritual opposition.

Spiritual opposition is a constant on a pilgrimage.

We learn that when we separate ourselves from God and try to walk on our own, that we fall down.

Anyone experience this?

When we stand for God and with God we overcome.

And that God only lets his people endure so much injustice before he delivers them.

That's what you see over the course of the nation of Israel.

That God only lets them suffer so much injustice from another nation until he says, Oh, that's enough.

That's enough.

So verse 1, when the writer uh says, um, but they have not gained victory over me.

That's a core lesson to be taught generation after generation after generation.

Right?

I mean, they're saying, I mean, I can picture like just teaching my daughter if I'm if I'm bringing my family up to is up to Jerusalem and saying, honey, I know the history of our country.

I know the history of our people.

I know there are plenty of times in this history it looks like that God has abandoned us.

Honey, he no one's overcome us.

The very fact that I got you and we're walking back up this mountain tells you that whatever we have experienced as what would be considered setbacks, they've just been part of the pilgrimage.

God's justice in the end, he is always just, even when it looks like, even when it looks like he's failing in the middle.

Oppressed means rivaled.

Saying we've been rivaled since our infancy.

Have you ever felt rivaled?

Where you're wondering, you would when are you going to get to feel the wind at your back and not just wind in your face?

Why is there always something or someone pushing against me?

We have been rivaled from our youth.

Plowmen have plowed my back and made their furrows long.

What an image he's given us.

Even if you have a farming background in here, this requires a few other look.

So this would have been an ard plow is what I've what I read that they were called.

Um doesn't look like our plows today, right?

But so there would have been the weight would have had to been applied to the plow, reins to a uh oxen that would be yoked together.

And it wasn't it wasn't going to go in there and turn over dirt, it was just gonna put this three to five inch just line in a field.

And this is the imagery he's giving us.

Plowmen have plowed my back, they have exerted weight to embed the tip of a plow, pulled by forces stronger than I can muster myself, and they have just pulled these gouges in our backs.

And then he says, and yet God has broken or torn the reins from their hands.

The message message version says that they were that God snatched them out of their hands.

And IV says they were broken.

So the images the the the oxen think they're doing what they're supposed to be doing.

They're still plowing.

But the plowman, the person causing the pain, is sitting there with no power.

Still holding the plow.

It ain't going anywhere.

Because God's justice.

Alright, that's enough, Rose.

We're done with this one.

We're done.

See, I love the honesty.

To me, the beauty of the gospel is in its honesty.

The beauty of Jesus to me is in his honesty.

In this world, you will have trouble, hardship.

It's honest.

But I've overcome.

It's it's the marrying of these two things.

But if but if we sit, if we sit in our in our pain, real pain, real, even feeling like God, where are you?

Anybody ever asked that question to God in the middle of something?

I would contend you've never been in something hard enough if you've never asked that question.

Where are you in this?

I need more experience than just what I got.

I need to be able to pull that.

I saw him in that there.

I need to see it in history.

You were there.

Snatching.

But the Lord is righteous.

He has cut free, cut me free from the cords of the wicked.

Um, so here's a key point that injustice in a moment does not negate God as just for a minute.

Evil's existence doesn't nullify God's goodness.

And this is what we would get challenged on time and time again, century after century.

If God's so good, why is there bad?

Why is there bad?

Simple answer.

Bad has existed because sin has existed.

Evil exists, it's here.

It just doesn't win.

God's justice prevails.

Anything hard, bad, evil does not negate his justice.

So here was the big lesson.

God's justice prevails in the end, even when it looks like it has failed in the middle.

The psalmist is teaching that no one moment in our history defines who we are as a people of God or just or the just character of God.

Um, yes, Israel sometimes brought hardship on their own, for sure, but they were opposed from the beginning because God was bringing salvation to the world through the Jewish nation.

It didn't matter what they did.

They could have sat on their hands, they could have always scored, they could have done everything right, and it was always going to be an opposition because God was going to bring salvation.

The end of sin, he was going to bring it through that one nation.

And so that was always, that nation was always going to be opposed.

And any of us that carry our purpose to glorify God and bring the message of Christ in reconciliation to those who do not, we will always be opposed.

The message will always be opposed.

You, just how you carry yourself.

If you want to carry yourself in a way that honors and glorifies and draws attention to God, you are going to take shots.

And they're going to come out of nowhere.

They're not going to be connected to what you're doing, and you don't understand what I'm just doing.

I'm trying to do all this the right way.

And I'm all I do is get this setback or that setback or that setback.

Just, it is just what comes when there is a link between us and salvation.

So the psalmist ends this way.

Uh, this psalm ends this way.

Uh, may all who hate Zion be turned back in shame.

May they be like grass on the roof which withers before it can grow.

A reaper cannot fill his hands with it, nor one who gathers fill his arms.

We bless you.

May those who pass by not say to them.

It's funny how it's written.

May those who pass by not say this.

The blessing of the Lord is on you.

We bless you in the name of the Lord.

We're not going to say that to you.

Um so this imagery, since we got a plow, this imagery is so flat, flat roof houses.

Um it's amazing to me that the stuff is the stuff on Karaba's roof.

I mean, is that real?

Like in this illustration, it's saying, like, who does let's put our garden up there, right?

So he's saying that the the it would collect your flat roof would collect, you know, it could collect several inches of dust and dirt and then seeds and other things.

And he's saying that everything they whoever they are tries to do will not amount more than a few seeds sprouting up and dying on your roof.

That a harvester doesn't can't even get their arms around whatever they've been trying to do.

It's not it doesn't stop what's happening, it's it's just not profitable.

It it will not produce the harvest intended for it.

And we're gonna walk by and say, May, may we not say to you, be blessed in the name of Jesus.

Right?

It's it's like it's this honest assessment that that it's it comes, it just doesn't produce anything.

And that injustice that you're experiencing doesn't amount to the justice, it doesn't counteract the justice of God.

Your injust moment doesn't negate a just God, his justice will will prevail.

So, what do you have to do then in the middle of injustice is you have to persevere.

You have to persevere.

This is what the psalmist is getting to.

This is the ultimate message of the psalm, is is that yes, God is just, will always be just, even when he looks and feels injust.

So, how do you get to the end of the justice?

You have to persevere.

You have to keep your head down, you got to keep walking on this pilgrimage path.

Galatians um 3, 26 through 29 connects us to Israel.

Because when I'm reading through it, sorry, destroyed that.

Um, when I'm reading through it sometimes, especially the Old Testament, I go, well, that's good for Jerusalem, or that's good for Israel, or that's good for the Jewish nation.

What about me?

I'm not Jewish.

So in Christ Jesus, you all are children of God through faith.

For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ.

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to his promise.

I can claim Abraham just like everybody else can.

Jesus tells us to persevere to the end, near the end of his life in Psalm or in Matthew 24.

But then this caused me to read a passage in Hebrews differently, too.

Here's Hebrews 12, 1 through 3.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, so pause.

So in chapter 11, the history of Israel's told through all these people who did not get to enjoy or experience that which they were promised in their lifetime.

But how they how the in the lineage of Christ then told through the story of people that stuck their shoulder to the plow, that drew lines in the sand, who said that I'm going to keep moving forward.

And so this writer is saying, okay, God, and in another hard time of history, the writer is saying, Listen, I know that each of us have this have opposition going on right now, too.

But in light of all that I have just showed you of the people and what they've done under the in the name of God, let us also throw off every weight and sin that so easily entangles us.

Don't get caught up in this stuff right now, the stuff that can trip you up and cause you to stop.

Because look at who God and what God has done all throughout this history, and He wants to keep doing it through us.

Do you understand this?

That we're we we're not just looking back at history.

We're living, we're living that history, living forward into that history.

If you can live forward into history.

But we have a we have a role and a place to play in all of this, facing opposition, facing what looks like injustice of God.

And how do you push through it?

You persevere.

You take what you know to be true and let that inform what you do in the moment.

Not how you feel, not what it feels like, not what's against you, what is whatever look, whatever that might particularly look like.

Let us develop everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.

Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer, the perfecter of our faith, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

There has been a race marked out.

It's not arbitrary.

It's not arbitrary.

It's been marked out.

And the way we learn perseverance is we look what Christ endured.

Christ endures it because of the joy that he saw on the other side of it.

There was two facets of that joy.

One was glorifying his father, fulfilling the role that he's that he was given.

But the second was me and you.

Me and you.

And that was joy enough for him.

That didn't matter what the cross looked like meant to accomplish, the shame that it was gonna hold.

Because he knew it was only gonna hold it for a couple days.

It was gonna hurt.

I'm not minimizing that.

The shame was gonna be felt a couple days.

He was being, he was gonna be calling an imposter for a couple days until he like got up from being dead.

And then it was a okay, there, oh, there's the wind.

But we know this.

We know how even his closest followers felt defeated on Friday and Saturday and on Sunday before they saw the risen Savior.

And then it was a game changer.

Oh, well, if death can't stop anybody, if death can't stop this, who can stand against it?

Perseverance isn't passive endurance, it's not hold your breath until the storm passes.

Perseverance is active forward movement.

Perseverance refuses to be taken out emotionally or physically by present hardship.

There's something to be said for being able to take a punch.

There's something more to be said about punching back.

Romans 1 and 5 tells us that perseverance is necessary because it is a pathway to hope.

And that hope is what we reap when we persevere.

Here's how Paul says it.

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.

And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.

Not only so, but we also glory in the sufferings.

Because we know that suffering produces perseverance, and perseverance character, and character hope.

Hope is what we hold on to, believing that what he said was true was true, is true.

We only get that hope through persevering, through other things.

And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

James takes it a step further.

Jesus' brother says, Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds.

Because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

Let perseverance finish hear it.

Hear him say it.

Let perseverance finish its work.

Don't be so fast to try to get this behind you.

Let the moment finish what it was designed for or what in which God will do with it, so that you be much can be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

When I say James takes it one step further, I mean I think when he says consider joy, he he what it what he's getting to is don't let the current injustice or hardship take you out of the game.

How many of us?

How many of you like me?

Sometimes I can get I can emotionally take myself out of the game.

Just check out.

No.

I've had enough.

Yeah, I'm gonna keep.

I'm gonna keep showing up on a Sunday, or I'm gonna keep showing up at work, or I'm gonna, you know, I'm not gonna leave my family.

I'm but I'm out.

This has been too much.

This has just been too much.

This is what I think James's challenge is.

Don't let emotional take you out of the game.

Consider what's being done in the middle of this.

And let your joy be attached to what God is doing.

Your hope attached to what he's doing, not just what you're experiencing right now.

That's perseverance.

So I don't know where this Psalm 129 has hit you today.

I don't know what injusti if you would classify whatever's hard, an injustice.

Um, we've been taught this, at least my parents' generation taught me.

Life's not fair.

Life's not fair.

And we use that when we don't get our way or stuff doesn't go our way.

Life's not fair.

Life's just life, folks.

Not fair or positive or it's just hard.

But when I can depend on God's just, even though there's injustice right now.

Okay.

Alright.

You haven't changed.

You have a whole history of the world.

And you haven't changed.

I'm not sure I'm gonna have the ability to stop you.

Right?

Like you're not gonna change because somehow I'm a screw-up.

Come on.

You're not gonna change somehow because I blew this one.

You're not gonna change because I've been curled up in my bed with the with the covers over my head.

All right.

No, he's not gonna change.

He's waiting for us to catch up.

And he's still at the he's at the end of that bed.

He's at the end, he's at your your work cubicle.

He's at, come on now.

Come on now.

He's perfectly fine with us crying on his shoulder.

Perfectly fine with that.

But he's gonna say after he wipes the tears away, all right.

Let's get back in the game.

Let's get back after it.

I'm with you.

I'm not going anywhere.

You're stronger now than you were two weeks ago.

And you're gonna be stronger in two weeks than you are right now.

And there's a whole bunch of people that need to see the history of God live through your life.

Because they're living on a just a thin experience with God.

And prayerfully, their exposure to you opens up a whole new world to who God is and what God's capable of.

This is not a pep talk, it's not a halftime speech.

It's Psalm 129.

Psalm 129.

Taught over and over, generation after generation after generation after generation.

And you may have never heard it before, but it's being taught to you today.

Let's receive that from the foot from the Lord.

Stand with me before prayer.

On the right-hand side, my right, there'll be a group of people that will be praying, would love to pray with you, link their faith with you.

On the left, you want to spend some time alone with the Father in prayer at an altar.

You can do that there.

Communions on my left and my right.

Dear God, is it even appropriate to just to thank you for how consistent you are in a world full of inconsistencies?

That you make sense in a world that doesn't make sense, that you are just in a world that's not fair.

Lord, and on this pilgrimage, we depend on you marking clear paths, being the person to be able to be leaned on.

And Lord, in this room, maybe watching later online, watching online right now, Lord, there are people that need to know that you are just and that's not going to change.

And you give the kind of strength necessary for us to persevere.

Do what only you can do in this moment.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

I invite you to move.

We hope you were encouraged and challenged by today's message.

Again, to learn more about Gateway Franklin Church, find us online at gatewayfranklin.com.

Thanks for joining us today.