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[0:00] Thanks, Lisa. I appreciate it. Hey, good morning, everybody. Those of you who don't know me, as Lisa said, my name is Jesse, one of the pastors here, and I want to just extend again a warm welcome. If it's your first time here, we really are so glad that you are with us.

[0:15] I'm going to jump into the sermon in a moment. Just want to say hi to those listening online. And today, we are starting a new series. So if it's your first time with us, man, you're in right at the beginning, right at the get-go. Great Sunday to choose coming here.

[0:28] And we're going to be starting a series in the Psalms, which is, if you're wondering where the Psalms are at, it's like the easiest place to find. If you have a Bible, you just go right to the middle and you are in the Psalms, right? And this book, this book called the Psalms, it's a collection of 150 poems that were written thousands of years ago. Now, the good news is we're not going to go through all 150. And so we're going to take some selections of the Psalms and kind of work through them. But what we want to point out is that these poems, it's not like one guy sat down and just penned like the perfect songs and the perfect poems. These are actually written by various authors over generations and across generations. And what I love about that is God's like penning it through these guys, these various guys that lived during various times. And they were writing from different experiences, right? They weren't always high on the mountaintop. Sometimes they were really in a low place and a difficult place, but they're writing out of that. But it's good to know, and it's worth knowing, that the Psalms, in the sense that they're poetry, but they're poetry from a particular perspective. And the common perspective is all of these authors were part of God's covenant people.

[1:48] So God's covenant people, they had this special relationship with God. They were Jews, they were Israelites. And so they understood this special thing that God had done for them in sending them apart. And so the Psalter, which is a fancy name for the Psalms, the whole book of the Psalms, has been called the hymn book or the prayer book of God's people. They were poems, they were songs written to God for various occasions. And that is true for the Jew and the Christian as well. These are things that we get to enjoy as the church. And the Psalms have always been a treasure for the church. In fact, right from the beginning, after Jesus died and ascended to heaven, and you had the apostles, and a lot of the New Testament was written by these guys, is that these writers, they often reference the Old Testament to explain how Jesus was the fulfillment of it and everything that he was the long-awaited Messiah that Israelites had been waiting for. But you know what? The book of the Bible that they referenced the most in doing that? Anybody want to venture a guess? It was the Psalms. The Psalms have a prominent place. The Psalms have a prominent place in our history, in our tradition, in our doctrine as Christians. But the Psalms aren't just for use by New Testament scholars. They are for you and me, the everyday Christian. And I just want to say this too. If you're here and not yet a Christian, man, my hope is that we talk about the Psalms. I'm hoping, and I think it will, give you an insight into what God and who he is really like and how we are meant to live before him. And I want to say to all of us in the room, the great hope of this series is that we will grow into being more authentic with

[3:36] God and with other people. It's why the subtitle of the series is what it is. It's bringing the real you to God. And it's worth acknowledging that for many of us, poetry just isn't our thing. If you're like me, I'm not like one who goes and finds books on poetry and reads them. They are, man, you read some and you're just like, man, what in the world is this person talking about? Can they just be direct?

[4:00] And explain what they're trying to get at. Sometimes poems can be hard to read and understand. However, I would say also on the other hand, a good poem accomplishes what no other form of writing can.

[4:14] See, the beauty of poetry, the beauty of that linguistic skill is that it paints a picture that gives deeper insight and feeling to the human experience where words tend to fail, where the typical kind of word tends to fail. And the Psalms are just that. It is poetry that covers the whole human experience. There is a Psalm for everything you could possibly feel and possibly go through in this life. And as poetry, it gives linguistic expression that's designed to move us at a deep level. That's what God wants for us. He doesn't want us to be a bland people. He wants us to be a passionate people. He wants us to be connected to what we are feeling and bring those feelings to him. Think about it this way. You can explain a sunset in a very scientific way. You can read its definition in the dictionary, right? And that kind of hits at our minds. We're like, okay, the sunset is the sun going down. It's spray some color. But a good poem about a sunset connects us, connects to a deeper part of us, right? It can stir the emotion. It can move our soul. Now, here's the reality. The beauty of the sunset never changed, but our experience of its beauty through that poem becomes more true to what the beauty of that sunset is. And that's the power of poetry. And that's what the power of the

[5:38] Psalms can give to us. What the poem can do to connect us to the beauty of something like a sunset is what the Psalms can do with connecting us to the glory of God. It gives us words where words fail, which is actually usual when you're trying to describe something transcendent. But the Psalms aren't just poems that fill our soul with joy and wonder. They also deal with the darkness of life, the dark parts of life that can fill our souls with hurt and heaviness. And I don't know if you know this, but the Psalms, 150 of them, the majority of them, or I shouldn't say the majority, there are more Psalms of lament or Psalms that are expressing anguish and sorrow and pain than there are Psalms of praise. See, God doesn't just want our praise and thanksgiving. He wants our sorrows too. He says, bring all of you, whatever you're feeling, whatever you're going through, whatever pain you may be in right now, bring them to me, bring it to me. There are Psalms that vent about betrayal, evil, injustice.

[6:42] There are Psalms that vexate over depression, loneliness, unfulfilled longing. Every emotion you and I can ever feel for every life circumstance is given rich treatment in the Psalms. John Calvin said this about the Psalms, it gives us an anatomy of all parts of our souls. The Psalms teach us how to bring every situation, every emotion, good, bad, and ugly to God, which is really so helpful, right?

[7:11] And especially probably if you're a guy, we tend to be more emotionally disconnected, right? Like my wife often asks me, like when I get some bad news, she's like, what are you feeling right now?

[7:21] I'm typically like, I don't know what I'm feeling. What should I be feeling? It's hard, right? We're like emotional infants at a lot of times. We're like, buddy the elf, the best thing we can, I'm like, I feel warm. My tongue's swollen. I was like, I don't know what else to say. Like what's going on?

[7:39] So I'm picking on us guys. And that, I mean, that's true. But the reality is like that, that's true for many of us. Many of us struggle to be very deep and honest and authentic with God and with other people. And the Psalms are beautiful because they could help us with that. And here's the good news. It's like, you don't have to start like studying Shakespeare and talking like Shakespeare and figuring out that. You don't have to do that. And it's not like start like using emojis more. That's not what we're getting at. But you and I can grow in this by simply just using the Psalms for ourselves. That's what they are for. God gave us a collection of 150 pre-written prayers for every occasion. And I want to say to us, these aren't just any prayers. The Bible says about itself that every word in the Bible is breathed out by God, which means these Psalms aren't just man's clever words. God influenced and guided the author of every Psalm as they sought to give expression and meaning to what was going on in their soul. So if one of your hangups with prayer is that you don't know what to pray, I get that. Or that you might be praying the wrong thing, I get that too. And do what my dad told me a long time ago when I was a young Christian. He said, Jesse, just pray the

[9:00] Psalms. There's no better prayers that you could pray. And when you pray the Psalms and make them your own, you can pray with confidence that there isn't a better prayer to be prayed. And I just want to encourage you in this, as we move along in the series in Psalms, if you follow us on our Facebook page, Winter Harbor Church Havelock, what we're going to do Monday to Friday is we are going to post a Psalm for you to pray for that day. So you can wake up in the morning or anytime during the day and you could pray that Psalm and make it your own and know that there's probably a lot of other people in this room that are going to be doing it that day as well. So I hope that you are excited as I am about what the Psalms are and encouraged about what this means for us as we journey in this together. And so we're going to kick off this series in Psalm chapter one. And because it's a short Psalm, I'm going to read it slowly for the purpose of allowing us to really take in every word that is being said. And hopefully we could see the beauty, but also just feel the tension that is happening in this

[10:06] Psalm. So Psalm chapter one, verse one, it says this, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord. And on his law, he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit and its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

[11:08] This Psalm shows us a few things. It shows us the way of the righteous. It shows us the way of the wicked. And we're going to focus in on the way of the righteous today, and specifically what they need, what they love, what they become, and where they're going.

[11:30] First, let's look at what the righteous need. In the righteous, we need discernment.

[11:42] Discernment is the ability to judge well. Spiritually speaking, when we look at it in the Bible, it is seeing things clearly for what they really are, particularly what is true and what is false, what is good, and what is evil. And the righteous need discernment because we live in a world where morality and ethics are constantly changing. There is a narrative, there's a value system that is constantly being held out to us through messaging of various kinds, saying, no, no, this is the way you should walk in. This is what is right. This is what is good. And here's the other thing about the world we live in, man. It makes right and wrong confusing. It's not always black and white. It's not always obvious. Good and evil always seem to be in flux. I mean, think about this. You can look back across generations and see how morality and ethics have changed along the way. And some of those things aren't bad things, right? Like, if you look back a few hundred years, you see that, man, slavery was an institution that the majority said, hey, it's okay, it's no big deal. Thankfully, that has flipped. But that makes my point. How can you know that the culture today and what it says is good is really good, is really righteous? See, the problem is that every generation thinks they have a more righteous mind, a more righteous understanding than the previous one. And the psalm is saying that the righteous in any generation will always be able to discern what is good and what is evil. Which means that we can look at what the messaging and what society says is right and wrong, and we can celebrate and join in society when they get it right. We could say, yeah, that thing that you're talking about, that's a good thing. Good job. But then there are other things that they say, no, no, this is good. And we could say, sorry, man, you're getting this one wrong. And that's our job as the church, is that when they get it wrong and when society is calling evil good and good evil, we stand up and we say, no, no, guys, you're getting it wrong. That is not true. We reject it and we call it out for what it is.

[14:00] In verse 1, there are three things that it says the blessed man or the righteous man does not do. They don't walk in the counsel of the wicked, they don't stand in the way of sinners, and they don't sit in the seat of scoffers. And at first glance, this seems like three different warnings to us, right? But this is a poetic device called parallelism that is meant to just drive home one point, right? And so it's parallelism is a way of like looking at the same thing from like three different views. And what it's saying to us, what it's begging us to reckon with is like, man, what does the righteous not do? Think about your own life. Is your life informed and influenced by the counsel of the wicked? Are we taking our stand with sinners? Are we standing on the right things? Are we standing on the wrong things? Are we sitting in the judgment seat with humility? Knowing what is good and evil?

[15:03] Are we sitting in the judgment seat with the scoffers as Eugene Peterson rendered it, the arrogant know-it-alls? See, these warnings call us to be cautious of just hearing and adopting whatever society has made normative and whatever they are celebrating is good. And this doesn't mean we demonize our culture and remove ourselves from it. Rather, we engage it, but we engage it with discernment. And that discernment doesn't come in an instant. It's not like, Lord, give me discernment. He drops discernment on you and then suddenly you walk around as the person that sees everything most clearly, right?

[15:43] It doesn't work that way. How do we get discernment then? It's cultivated. Where do we cultivate it? Well, the answer here is in Psalm 1 verse 2. His delight is in the law of the Lord.

[16:07] When you see the Lord written in a lot of the Psalms, the Lord is written with like a capital L and then lowercase like O-R-D, Lord, that is actually referencing the covenant name of God. He revealed himself to Israel like Yahweh is that name. And so these things are founded on the law of the covenant.

[16:29] And he says, man, the man who is discerning is the one who cultivates it by delighting in the law of the Lord and meditating on that law day and night. The righteous become discerning because where they spend their time and the righteous love being in God's word. This Psalm is calling us to consider where we spend our time. Because where you spend our time shapes if you are discerning or not discerning.

[16:57] And it's important to realize that this was written well before Jesus walked the earth. And when it talks about the law of the Lord, it's referring to the Torah. The actual word law there in the Hebrew is Torah. And the Torah is the first five books of the Bible, right? Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. It's those first five books. And the Torah are Israel's testimony of God's covenant with them. And in them is written everything that they need to know about who God is and who God called them to be. See, God had set them apart. They were a people set apart not to live for themselves, but to live to God. And in this way, they would stand out from the nations and yet still be a blessing to the nations. And it's interesting as you look over and you read the Old Testament, you realize that, man, there were times where, man, more often than not, Israel was not doing a good job keeping the covenant. And whenever Israel drifted away from God and went after the idols and practices of other nations, it coincided with forgetting and forsaking the Torah.

[18:06] Throughout church history, this has been a danger too. Many times in many places, Christians have been deceived and taken away by the norms and values of the nations around us, the people around us, the very places that we live. We don't have to look back that far to find out that there were Christians and churches that adopted the majority's sentiments about slavery a few hundred years ago.

[18:31] That doesn't mean every Christian did that. Thankfully, there were those richly invested in God's word that were able to discern those lies and stand against it, eventually bringing it to an end.

[18:42] And, you know, we can look back and it's easy to look back with what we know today and wonder, man, how could any Christian have compromised in something like that? But every generation of the church is in a battle to hold fast to the truth of God's word. We're being pummeled today. We're being told to compromise in various ways. There's pressures on us from what maybe the moral majority would tell us is good and right. But we have always been the moral minority in this world. The Bible calls us exiles, sojourners in this land. We've always been the moral minority, a prophetic people that speak truth and call out what is true and what is false. But that won't happen if God's people forsake his word.

[19:30] And I think that's one of Satan's, like, you know, one of his schemes that he likes to play very often, what is his best weapon against the church, is that if he can keep us out of God's word, he can keep us from being discerning about what is false and what is true. And we could be led astray. And here's the thing, he doesn't come at us with obvious lies. It's not his way. His messages are often lined with half-truth. So it's really tempting to accept, accept those things in whole, because we can see common ground with what we believe. We're just like, man, that seems kind of right. But it's important to remember half-truths are also half-lies. And while they sound good, they lead to death and not to life, which is why the serpent's temptation of Eve in the beginning was so crafty. It was a little bit of truth mixed with lies. And she was deceived. Satan's deceptions, even when it's mixed with some truth, will always lead us into some type of disobedience, some type of compromise. And what is interesting about that story of Adam and Eve and the fall, the original fall, is that Satan doesn't speak directly to her as he truly is. He takes on some other form, right? He took on the form of a serpent.

[20:44] That's what Eve saw. And the interesting thing, it's not like, I guess serpents were able to talk back then, because Eve's talking to that serpent like it's no big deal, right? Probably all of us today, with what we know, we'd be like a little freaked out. But her, she's just like, sweet, here's a good conversation piece to have. Let's go for it. And that, there's a lot to learn from that. But one of the big things is, is that what this teaches us is that Satan speaks to us through familiar things.

[21:14] Things that just seem like no big deal, that they're mouthpieces and avenues that just seem okay. I think one of the ways he's getting his message, and his message is seeping into the church and diluting, I think gospel fidelity is through politics. It's a touchy subject, I know. But it's happening a lot, guys. And I'm talking to both sides of the aisle. We become trusting and familiar with our side. And everything they say and do seems righteous to us. And everything the other side says and does is demonized and must be evil. And here's the thing, so much of our time and our energy and our passion and even our money are given to politics. And too many Christians spend more time in that arena and in those places than in God's word. And here's the thing, whether you might consider yourself a blue Christian or a red Christian, your side doesn't have it all right.

[22:22] Can you discern where it's right? Can you discern where your side is wrong? Or do you see your side is righteous and the other is evil? And my challenge to us in the room that are Christians is this. Man, it would be good for us to spend less time in our political bubbles and echo chambers and more time in God's word. And I guarantee you, I guarantee you that when you do that, you're going to start seeing things more clearly. You're going to become more discerning. You're going to love your party less and God's word more. And here's another big thing that I think, and it will really help us.

[23:04] You'll put less hope in what your party can accomplish and more hope in what God is accomplishing through his church. Because the hope of the nations isn't the Republican party or the Democratic party.

[23:17] The hope of the nations is God's redemption that he's bringing about through his church. When Christians start doing that, if we started doing that, guys, man, we would become more effective, more impactful. And that doesn't mean that both sides are going to start loving us all of a sudden.

[23:38] Probably it means they're going to like us even less. But that's okay. It says they hated Jesus too. But for the hopeless and the hurting and the sinner and the seeker and the lowly and the poor and the oppressed, we are their champion and the church is their place of refuge. We have their hope.

[23:56] Nothing else does. And when we delight in God's word and live it out, our life will bless others.

[24:08] Verse 3 says, Life gets better the more you're in God's word, is what this is pointing out. But because the more you're in his word, the more his word gets in you, the more it gets in you, the more God's life comes out of you.

[24:43] That's what's happening here. And that means the righteous become faithful and fruitful, which blesses everybody. Now, when it talks about trees planted by water, this is written by somebody that lived in a desert.

[24:59] That's what they knew, right? So when they talk about a stream here, don't think about the big noose right there, right? That's not what they're talking about. I mean, there is degrees of difference here that you cannot fathom.

[25:11] Think like more like a small trickling stream surrounded by arid wasteland that doesn't get a lot of rain. That's what he's talking about when he's talking about streams of water.

[25:22] Water to a psalmist is a precious and rare commodity. It is a life source you don't take for granted. In the desert, a tree by a stream is unlike other plants of the desert that depend on the rain.

[25:35] The difference is that in times of drought, the tree by the stream is still okay. It still has leaves and it can still bear fruit because it's pulling life from a dependable water source.

[25:49] While the plants that depend on the rain wither and die in times of drought. And here's what it's trying to tell us, man. The heat of life, the heat of life is going to come for all of us, right?

[26:03] Life isn't always like sunshine and rain, then sunshine and rain. It's like, man, there's times where it feels like drought. And there's times it feels like the heat is on, right? And that's when we quickly find out where our water source is.

[26:17] And I've been greatly benefited by men and women that, man, they are life-giving to be around. Even when their own life is marked by trial and hardship.

[26:30] It doesn't mean they're being fake. It doesn't mean that they're ignoring their own pain. And just like they're invincible and just always rising above it. But even though they could be in the trial, even though they can feel sorrow and mourn and hurt, at the same time, they're not falling apart either.

[26:48] Because they're tapped in to a life source that never ends. They are like trees by the stream of God's living water. They are faithful people, rooted and grounded, drinking deeply of God.

[27:03] And I think here what the psalm is pointing out is drinking deeply from God by abiding in his word. By enjoying his law and delighting in it and meditating on it day and night.

[27:14] There's a consistency there. There's a faithfulness there. And so they can mourn the trial, yet still hold on to hope. They can lament and yet not become bitter.

[27:25] They can be content in times of plenty and in times of need. And this picture, what it gives us, it gives us a picture of what faithfulness is about.

[27:36] And it's a faithfulness that leads to fruitfulness. The one who delights in God's law and meditates on it day and night, that's the person that is like a tree by a stream of water in the desert. Some may think that, man, all this abiding in God's word and all this happening, it sounds really legalistic.

[27:55] But I would contend that, hold on, wait a second. God is the one who has established that his word is life. And this has been from creation.

[28:06] Remember, at the very creation, God spoke. He didn't like, he didn't think, he didn't think, let there be light. He spoke a word. He said, let there be light. His word went into the emptiness and the chaos and the darkness of the void of creation.

[28:21] And what did it do? It accomplished what it set out to accomplish. It brought forth life. It brought forth light and it brought forth order. So whenever you open the Bible, think about this. As you're spending time in God's word, you're reading those things.

[28:35] But what God is doing in that moment is he's sending his words into your heart, into that place where there could be chaos. And darkness and confusion, right? And emptiness or loneliness.

[28:46] And what he's doing through his words, they land on there. And by the power of the spirit, it brings out life and beauty and order and peace. That's what God's word can do.

[28:59] And the more we are in it, the more of that grows in us and begins to spill out of our lives, which in turn blesses others. Now, I want to say this.

[29:10] You can't control your fruitfulness, right? God isn't saying you better be fruitful. Now, man, what we do is we leave the fruitfulness up to God. God is going to bring fruitfulness out of our lives, right?

[29:23] In his own measure, in his own way, in his own time. But there is something that we are called to do, and that is being faithful, right? God cares about our faithfulness. And here's the thing. Faithfulness will lead to fruitfulness.

[29:34] And this psalm gives a clear path for how the righteous live and are blessed in this life. But it also shows that the blessing of the righteous goes well beyond this life.

[29:46] Verse 4 says, We are being asked to consider here how short this life is.

[30:09] And then what? What are you living for? Because one way leads to life, and the other leads to death.

[30:21] It says here the righteous will remain, but the wicked will perish. And what signifies the wicked? Well, it's the very opposite of what the righteous do.

[30:31] The wicked do not delight in God's law, right? They don't want to submit to the authority of his word. They don't want to be in the word. They don't want to draw their life from God and his sources of life. And they aren't strong, immovable trees whose leaves never fail.

[30:46] It says they're not like that at all. They're like chaff. Well, let me tell you something about chaff. Chaff is part of the stock of wheat that is absolutely useless. It doesn't taste good.

[30:58] It isn't a seed that can be used to sow and plant for the next harvest. It really doesn't make a good gift. It's just chaff.

[31:09] And, you know, back in the harvesting season, what they would do is they would get the stalks of grain off the wheat plant. And then they would separate the wheat grain, the good grain, from the chaff by throwing it up in the air.

[31:24] And the wind would separate them. And the wheat would fall to the floor and the chaff would just blow away in the wind. It would disappear. And that's what this is saying the wicked are like.

[31:36] They are like chaff. Their life and their way and their values, the things they think are so important, they are blown around by the wind.

[31:47] And you never know when its direction is suddenly going to change. But ultimately, it disappears. It perishes. It says that the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

[32:07] And here's what this psalm is ultimately getting at. There is a judgment that we all will face when we die. You and I, we will stand before God.

[32:18] Every single person will stand before God. And Jesus even said this. Every word, every action is going to be judged.

[32:30] But this psalm says here, the way of the righteous will remain, but the wicked will perish. The wicked will not stand in the judgment. No sinner will be welcomed into heaven's great congregation of the righteous.

[32:44] And we have to be cautious here. This is not meant to lead us to put our hope in our own works of righteousness, right?

[32:55] It should cause everyone, Christian or not, to despair. Because who could truly stand under that judgment? We know we've all sinned. We know we're all sinners.

[33:06] Because none of us have lived up to the charge of this psalm. I may kind of delight in God's word and his law, but I can't say that I meditate it on it day and night.

[33:17] I don't delight in it that I obey it and submit to its commandments 100% of the time. And there are times where I do lack discernment, that I do get deceived. I do believe in the wrong things. I do hold on to false stuff.

[33:29] And I trust and care about those things. But here is the good news. And it's actually the good news of the gospel that began in the Old Testament that carried through and Jesus fulfilled. See, this is celebrating the law of God.

[33:42] And he says, man, if the righteous will live by it, man, their way is guarded and they will not perish by the wicked. But guess what? God knew even back then they were going to pull it off. And that's why he had the sacrificial system.

[33:55] Because they were all really good at sinning. And they needed atonement all the time. Right? And what did Jesus come to do? He didn't come to say, like, forget about the way of the righteous man.

[34:09] He came to atone for our sins once and for all. He came to be our righteousness. He is the fulfillment of Psalm 1. He is the righteous man that did all of this perfectly for us.

[34:23] Sin would knock us off the way of the righteous and disqualify us. But through Jesus, we are qualified and called to stay on that path. By faith in Jesus, your sins are forgiven.

[34:34] You are robed in his righteousness. You are saved from perishing with the wicked. But this doesn't free us from pursuing the way of righteousness. What it frees us to do is to pursue it.

[34:46] Man, in freedom, knowing that, man, we can never be disqualified. It doesn't matter if we don't do it 100% of the time. And so when we fail, we know that we can pick ourselves up and know that this is the way God still intends us to walk.

[35:00] And we will walk in it. If I could have the band come up. I want to respond. The call is to respond. I want to speak to you in the room.

[35:11] If you're not yet a Christian, I want to ask you, where are you putting your hope? Consider your way that you're walking in. And I ask you, man, is Jesus your righteousness?

[35:25] Or are you hoping in your own righteousness? Because that is a fool's errand. Do not do that. Do not hope in your own righteousness. You will fail. And I want to implore you and talk to you.

[35:40] Say, man, don't perish with the wicked. God holds out salvation and it says, man, salvation is in Jesus and Jesus Christ alone. And he calls you to repent and believe in that.

[35:54] Christians in the room, I want to speak to you. Are you living the righteous path of delighting in God's word? Where are you putting your hope? And I want to ask you to examine yourself before we take communion in a moment.

[36:09] How is God calling you to respond? What adjustments do you need to make? And we're going to examine our hearts before we take communion. And I want to give us just a few moments, precious moments, to do that.

[36:21] And so just take time right now. Bear your heads, close your eyes. Just really focus in on what God is calling you to respond right now. Appreciate it. Amen. Amen.

[37:19] Lord, you've seen every heart. You've had many conversations with many in this room just right now, and I just pray that we would lean into your grace. Your grace for repentance and your grace to empower us to continue to walk the righteous path.

[37:42] I pray for those who are wrestling even with the very idea of faith and trusting in you for salvation.

[37:53] Open their eyes to see your grace. Give them faith to believe. Amen. Would you stand with me?

[38:04] We're going to take communion together. And we do this every week because it brings us back to the one that we truly need more than ever.

[38:21] It brings us face to face with our need for him, for his sacrifice in our place. He is our righteousness because he died for us, and this meal brings us back to that.

[38:33] And it not only reminds us that he's our righteousness, he's also, it's also this, by taking this, it's a confession of your faith. You're confessing to all of us in the room, this community of believers, that I still believe and I will still follow him.

[38:50] Where he leads us as the good shepherd in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. So take the bread. This was his body broken for you and me.

[39:02] Let's take and eat it together. And this is bloodshed for the forgiveness of our sins, atoning for us so that we can continue on this path.

[39:21]  Let's drink to our Savior you qualified us. Amen.