Okay, let's find a seat. We'll get started here. Okay, let's pray. Father, we do thank you, Lord God, for this opportunity to come together to talk a little bit about the heart of our Lord and Savior, Jesus. about his great love for us, about his desires for us, and about what makes him happy. Father, we do thank you for Dane Ortlund, Lord, for laying it on his heart, the desire to introduce us more closely and more fully to you. So we do ask, Father, that you would bless our time together. But most importantly, Father, we pray that you would be glorified. And we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. OK, so last week we learned in the first chapter that it's the heart that truly defines a person. It's possible to put on a good act for a while, a really good act, but eventually It's going to be the heart that will reveal the true person. Are you really generous or are you putting on a show? Are you really compassionate or does it just suit your purpose at the time? Ortland says that it's the heart that drives all that we do. It is who we are. And he uses Matthew 11 29 where Jesus tells us about his own heart. Matthew 11 29 says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. Jesus tells us that he is gentle and lowly in heart. He's not forbidding, he's not aloof, but he is gentle and approachable. But how is it possible to know what lies in the heart of a man? Well, in chapter two, Ortlin's gonna be taking us through this. He's going to show us Christ's heart in action. And he says that what we see Jesus claim by his words in Matthew 11, 29, he is going to prove with his actions time and again in all four gospels. And he begins, Ortlin begins on page 25 in his heart in action. He says what Jesus does or what he is, he does. He cannot act any other way. His life proves his heart. So when the leper says, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. And Jesus immediately stretches out his hand and touches him with the words, I will be clean. And Orland points out that the word will, in both the leper's request and in the request of Jesus, and in his answer, is the Greek word for wish or desire. So the leper was asking about Jesus' deepest desire, and Jesus revealed his deepest desire by healing him. When I first read that, his deepest desire, I was like, Okay, how does Ortland know that it is Jesus' deepest desire to do anything? But then I was thinking about us, you know. We tend to do things half-heartedly. You know, we'll go a bit, you know, a bit in the right direction. But what Jesus does, it's never half-hearted. If Jesus says he's going to do something, it is his desire to do it. He's not going to put on a show. It's what he wants to do and what he will do. Ortling goes on, when a group of men brings their paralyzed friend to Jesus, Jesus cannot even wait for them to ask for what they want. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven in Matthew 9 too. Before they could open their mouths to ask for help, Jesus couldn't stop himself. Words of reassurance and calm tumbled out. In traveling from town to town, brought up in the sermon this morning. He saw the crowds and he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless. So he teaches them and he heals their diseases. Simply seeing the helplessness of the throngs, pity ignites. And this compassion comes in waves over and over again in Christ's ministry, driving him to heal the sick Having compassion on the crowd because they have been with me for three days, he fed them. He taught the crowds and he wiped away the tears of the bereaved. Orlin says the Greek word for compassion is the same in all of these texts and refers most literally to the bowels or the internal, the feelings in the heart of a person. It's an ancient way of referring to what rises up from one's innermost core. This compassion reflects the deepest heart of Christ. And then again, twice in the Gospels, we're told that Jesus broke down and wept. And in either case, is it sorrow for himself or his own pains? In both cases, it is sorrow over another. In one case, it's Jerusalem, and in the other, it is Lazarus, his friend. So it's the anguish of others. That's what drew his heart to the point of tears. So time and again, it is the morally disgusting, the socially reviled, the inexcusable and undeserving who do not simply receive Christ's mercy, but to whom Christ most naturally gravitates. He is, by his enemy's testimony, the friend of sinners, prostitutes and tax collectors. Orland goes on to say that when we take the Gospels as a whole and consider the composite picture given to us of who Jesus is, what is it that stands out most strongly? He says, the dominant note left ringing in our ears after reading the Gospels, the most vivid and arresting element of the portrait is the way the Holy Son of God moves towards, touches, heals, embraces, and forgives those who least deserve it, yet truly desire it. So far to this point, Ortlin has been emphasizing the tender compassion or the compassionate side of Jesus. But now we ask the question, what about the harsher side of Jesus? And he quotes J.I. Packer in Packer's A Quest for Godliness, that a half-truth masquerading as a whole truth becomes a complete untruth. Now there's several areas here in these next two chapters that I'm going to let Ortlin speak for himself. Paraphrasing is good to an extent, but I really don't want to miss anything that he wants to emphasize. So on the second sentence on the first paragraph on page 28, if you would like to follow along. regarding the harsher side of Jesus. He says, this is an especially sensitive point when we are talking about the Bible's revelation of Christ. The heresies of church history are not universally upside-down depictions of Jesus, but simply lopsided ones. The Christological controversies of the early centuries affirm all basic Christian doctrine except one vital element. Sometimes the true humanity of Christ, sometimes his true deity. Are we in danger in talking of the heart of Christ, of neglecting his wrath? Extracting one side of Christ to the neglect of another? Perhaps for many of us, the danger is subtler than outright heresy. We may be fully orthodox in our theology, but drawn for any number of reasons to one side of Jesus more than another. Some of us may have been raised in a rules-heavy environment that suffocate us with an endless sense of not measuring up. We are drawn especially to the grace and mercy of Christ. Others of us may have grown up in a chaotic free-for-all, and the structure and order of a morally circumscribed life flowing from the commands of Christ may be especially attractive. Others of us have been deeply mistreated by those who should have been our protectors in life, and we long for the justice and retribution of heaven and hell to make right all wrongs. As we zero in on the affectionate heart of Christ, how do we ensure that we are growing in a healthy understanding of the whole counsel of God and a comprehensive and therefore proportionate vision of who Christ is? Three comments are needed here. First, the wrath of Christ and the mercy of Christ are not at odds with one another, like a seesaw, one diminishing to the degree that the other is held up. Rather, the two rise and fall together. The more robust one's felt understanding of the just wrath of Christ against all that is evil, both around us and within us, the more robust our felt understanding of his mercy. Second, in speaking specifically of the heart of Christ and the heart of God in the Old Testament, we are not really on the wrath-mercy spectrum anyway. His heart is his heart. When we speak of Christ's heart, we are not so much speaking of one attribute alongside others. We are asking who he most deeply is, what pours out of him most naturally. Third, we are simply seeking to follow the biblical witness in speaking of Christ's heart of affection towards sinners and sufferers. In other words, if there appears to be some sense of disproportion in the Bible's portrait of Christ, then let us be accordingly disproportionate, better to be biblically than artificially balanced. And I like that statement. Throughout the rest of our study, we will return to the question of how to square the very heart of Christ with actions of his or biblical statements that may seem to sit awkwardly with it. But the above three points should be borne in mind throughout. This is going back to the last week, and I mentioned that there was a critique of Ortland in that he tends to go, you know, he forgets about Jesus' wrath. But I think Ortland is doing a really splendid job of covering all of those objections. I don't know where he got it from, but hearsay, hearsay. And then just since down the bottom of the page, our sole aim is to follow the Bible's own testimony as we tunnel in to who Jesus most surprisingly is. And if the actions of Jesus are reflective of who he most deeply is, we cannot avoid the conclusion that it is the very fallenness which he came to undo, which is most irresistibly attractive to him. And Ortlin expands on that point a little bit later. And Ortlin points out that this conclusion is more profound than just saying that Jesus is loving and compassionate. You know, we're asked, okay, well, what about Jesus? Yeah, he, he's loving and he's compassionate, but it goes much deeper than that. You know, pain and suffering, we know is the result of the fall and it's something that we really try to avoid. But Christ's deepest impulse, however, according to Ortlund, is to move toward that sin and suffering and not away from it. On page 30, he goes on to say, one way to see this is against the backdrop of the Old Testament category of clean and unclean. In biblical terms, these categories generally refer not to physical hygiene, but to moral purity. The two cannot be completely disentangled, but moral or ethical cleanness is the primary meaning. This is evident in that the solution for uncleanness was not taking a bath, but offering a sacrifice. The problem was not dirt, but guilt. The Old Testament Jews, therefore, operated under a sophisticated system of degrees of uncleanness and various offerings and rituals to become morally clean once more. One particularly striking part of this system is that when an unclean person comes into contact with a clean person, that clean person then becomes unclean. Moral dirtiness is contagious. Consider Jesus. In Levitical categories, he is the cleanest person to have ever walked the face of the earth. He was the clean one. Whatever horrors cause us to cringe, we who are naturally unclean and fallen would cause Jesus to cringe all the more. We cannot fathom the sheer purity, holiness, cleanness of his mind and heart. The simplicity, the innocence, the loveliness. And what did he do when he saw the unclean? What was his first impulse when he came across prostitutes and lepers? He moved toward them. He spent time with them. He touched them. We all can testify to the humanness of touch. A warm hug does something warm words of greeting alone cannot. But there is something deeper in Christ's touch of compassion. He was reversing the Jewish system. When Jesus, the clean one, touched an unclean sinner, Christ did not become unclean. The sinner became clean. So Jesus' healing touch was more than giving back health or even life, but he was giving back humanity itself. Ortlin has concluded, or included, excuse me, a quotation from a Jürgen Moltzmann. He's a contemporary German theologian, even older than John, he's like 94 years old. But he's a contemporary theologian regarding the healing miracles that Jesus performed. He says, Jesus' earthly ministry was one of giving back to undeserving sinners their humanity. We tend to think of the miracles of the gospels as interruptions in the natural order. Yet German theologian, Jürgen Moltmann, points out that the miracles are not an interruption of the natural order. but the restoration of the natural order. We are so used to a fallen world that sickness, disease, pain, and death seem natural. In fact, they are the interruption. When Jesus expels demons and heals the sick, He is driving out of creation the powers of destruction, and is healing and restoring created beings who are hurt and sick. The lordship of God to which the healings witness restores creation to health. Jesus' healings are not supernatural miracles in a natural world. They are the only truly natural things in a world that is unnatural, demonized, and wounded. Jesus walked the earth, rehumanizing the dehumanized and cleansing the unclean. And then he concludes this chapter saying, but what that was when Jesus lived on earth. What about today? So here's an encouragement for us. Here we remember that the testimony of the New Testament is that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. The same Christ who wept at the tomb of Lazarus weeps with us in our lonely despair. The same one who reached out and touched lepers puts his arm around us today when we feel misunderstood and sidelined The Jesus who reached out and cleansed messy sinners reaches into our souls and answers our half-hearted plea for mercy with a mighty invincible cleansing of one who cannot bear to do otherwise. In other words, Christ's heart is not far off despite his presence now in heaven, for he does all this by his spirit. We will give focused attention to the relationship between Christ's heart and the Holy Spirit in chapter 13. For now, we simply note that through the Spirit, Christ himself not only touches us, but lives within us. The New Testament teaches that we are united to Christ. A union so intimate that whatever our own body parts do, Christ's body can be said to do. 1 Corinthians 6, 15, 16. Jesus Christ is closer to you today than he was to the sinners and sufferers he spoke with and touched in his earthly ministry. Through his spirit, Christ's own heart envelops his people with an embrace nearer and tighter than any physical embrace could ever achieve. His actions on earth in a body reflected his heart. The same heart now acts in the same ways toward us, for we are now his body. So what do you think? Too much emphasis on his compassion and not enough on his wrath? Or what do you think? go hand in hand. It's not a seesaw. Mark? What thought? I think a lot of it depends on the context of who you're talking to about what emphasis they need to be reminded of. Like when I was coaching, there's some kids that need you to be really harsh to get them in the and there's other kids that really need you to be gentle and bring them up with me. I'm the same person. Those are both aspects of me coaching. But depending on the person, you may need to hear a certain aspect more or less. So it's not that either one is less or more important, but if you're prone to be angry and judgmental in reading about the judgment of Jesus Christ, can convict you and draw you closer in that way. Yeah, good. Rachel? Kind of along the same thought, like for myself personally, I find it a lot easier without even thinking to get angry or judgmental. And so taking time to learn who Jesus is in this life especially when I'm dealing with a lot of unbelievers in the workplace. Because it's so easy for me to forget my own testimony. And the first instinct for me is to have a harsh word back or to speak something unkind. And so just taking time to step back and a whole Jesus, like both of them, as like you pointed out, it's a balance. It's really helpful. Right, yeah. It is a balance. Who needs to see Jesus' wrath? Who's gonna be judged by the lamb? Those that don't know him. Those that don't know him, yeah. But those that know him, we really do need to focus upon Jesus' compassion, because that's something that we so often forget. Orlin will point this out. It's really easy for us to neglect to thank Jesus for his compassion. I was raised in a Southern Baptist background, where they taught hellfire and damnation. I think sometimes as a kid, because of that, I dwelt too much on the wrath of God and not on the love of God. The illustration with Peter, you know, Jesus doesn't... rebuke him or threaten him with eternal condemnation, and he gives him a boatload of fish, and Peter repents. I do think sometimes we think, again, it's this kind of rough and ready, you preach the law and get people convicted, and then you preach the gospel, and then they go to grace, but sometimes it's the gospel that breaks your heart and makes you really repent. One thing that I read in preparation, another quotation from Enersheim that remained on the cutting room floor this week was he made that point that the rabbis preached repentance as a kind of end in itself. And then if you were repentant enough, God would receive you. Whereas Jesus just offered himself to people, and that created the repentance in their heart. So part of this wrath thing is we don't really think that sin is bad for us, and we don't really think that going to hell for all eternity is a bad deal. Otherwise, we would thank him for warning us to flee from the wrath to come, instead of saying, how come you're so harsh? It's kind of like being on your neighbor's door in the middle of the night, screaming at them to get out of their house. Well, in normal circumstances, you know people look at us and see us and how are we you know are we going to be standing there hellfire and brimstone? Or are people going to look at us and our actions and think, okay, well, what is this? Why are you treating me kindly? You know? If you go up to somebody that doesn't fit in in the workplace, and yet you were there to come alongside them. They see that, and they see the compassion that you have in your heart. That's where we have to watch out for motives, because we're so easily, we can fool our own hearts. Our means to an end needs to be to show the compassion of Jesus to a dying world. Good. So now I'd like to move on to chapter three, and we'll see as Ortlin talks about the happiness of Christ. What makes him happy? And I know if you've read ahead, you're gonna know the answer to this first question, but I'd like you to forget about that answer. And here's the question that Eric asked me about earlier. So chapter three begins with a fill-in-the-blank statement. It's begun by Thomas Goodwin. Christ's own joy, comfort, happiness, and glory are increased and enlarged by what? How would you fill in that blank? What do you think increases Christ's happiness? See, I think Jesus is happy when I obey him. Anything else? Oh, yeah. Obedience. Yep. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Believing. Yeah. Jesus tells us who he is. He tells us what's in his heart and we want to believe him. Glorifying him. Yeah. Yeah. Normal. A contrite and a broken heart. Yes. Yes. Faith in Jesus. Yes. Absolutely. Loving. Uh huh. Yeah. You will know my, you are my disciples. If you love, have love one to another. Yeah. So there are many things that we think of that makes Jesus happy. And then Portland completes the sentence for us. Goodwin completes his sentence like this, Christ's own joy, comfort, happiness, and glory are increased and enlarged by his showing grace, and mercy in pardoning, relieving, and comforting his members here on earth. And then he goes on to give us the example of this physician, a compassionate doctor who has the means, he has the medications, he has the knowledge to heal this primitive tribe, jungle tribe of a serious disease. What happens if they don't come to him? They're aware that he can do this, but they don't come to him for this medication, of course, or for the treatment. Of course, we know that he's gonna be sad. He went there to do something, he went there to minister to these people, and yet they don't want him. But if they do come to him for the cure, he's gonna feel joy. He knows that they want him to help them. Nortland says on page 36, how much more if the diseased are not strangers, but even his own family? So with us and so with Christ. He does not get flustered and frustrated when we come to him for fresh forgiveness, for renewed pardon with distress and need and emptiness. That's the whole point. It's what he came to heal. He went down into the horror of death and plunged out through the other side in order to provide a limitless supply of mercy and grace to his people. But there's a deeper point Goodwin is making here. Jesus doesn't want us to draw on his grace and mercy only because it vindicates his atoning work. He wants us to draw on his grace and mercy because it is who he is. He drew near to us in the incarnation so that his joy and ours could rise and fall together. His in giving mercy, ours in receiving it. Goodwin even goes on to argue that Christ gets more joy and comfort than we do when we come to him for help and mercy. In the same way that a loving husband gets more relief and comfort in his wife's healing than in his own, Christ brings into himself more comfort than it procures to them when he sees our sins being placed under his own blood. And Orland continues to quote from Thomas Goodwin as he reflects on Christ, who's our heavenly mediator. But thankfully, Orland gives us a translation. He says, when you come, his translation, when you come to Christ for mercy and love and help in your anguish and perplexity and sinfulness, you are going with the flow of his own deepest wishes, not against them. So when you come to Christ for mercy and love and help in your anguish and perplexity and sinfulness, you are going with the flow of his deepest wishes, not against them. But to put it the other way around, when we hold back, lurking in the shadows, fearful and failing, we miss out not only on our own increased comfort, but on Christ's increased comfort. He lives for this. This is what he loves to do. His joy and ours rise and fall together. Now here again, Ortlin returns to somewhat balanced, he goes back to the Bible and he says, but is this biblical? We wanna make sure. So let's consider Hebrews 12. There Jesus is called the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God, Hebrews 12, two. For the joy, what joy? What was waiting for Jesus on the other side of the cross? The joy of seeing his people forgiven. Remember the whole point of Hebrews. Jesus is the high priest to end all high priests who has made the final atoning sacrifice to completely cover the sins of his people so that they are provided for to the uttermost. And remember what the writer means when he speaks of Jesus sitting down at God's right hand at the end of Hebrews 12. Elsewhere, the writer to the Hebrews is explicit about what this signifies. After making purification for sins, Jesus sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. Chapter eight, verse one. Now the point in what we are saying is this, we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven. In Hebrews 10, 12, but when Christ had offered for all time, a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. In all these texts, Jesus sitting, seating at God's right hand is associated with his priestly atoning work. The priest was the bridge between God and humanity. He connected heaven and earth. Jesus, Jesus, he does this supremely through his climatic and final sacrifice of himself, purifying his people once and for all, cleansing them of their sins. It was the joyous anticipation of seeing his people made invincibly clean that sent him through his arrest, death, burial, and resurrection. When we today partake of that atoning work, coming to Christ for forgiveness, communing with him despite our sinfulness, we are laying hold of Christ's own deepest longing and joy. Portland includes a quotation from a Benjamin Grosvenor in conjunction with a quotation from Thomas Goodwin, but I found a kind of a fuller quotation online. This is regarding, it says, if you meet the poor wretch who thrust his spear into my side, it's taken from Grosvenor's, the temper of Jesus Christ towards his enemies and his grace to the chief of sinners. Now he wrote, He was a 17th, 18th century pastor. So his repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem, Luke 24, 47. He said, it is very affecting that the first offers of grace should be made to those who, of all people in the world, had done him the most harm. One would rather have expected the apostles would have received another kind of charge, and that Christ would have said, let repentance and forgiveness of sins be preached, but do not carry it to Jerusalem, that wicked city that has been the slaughterhouse of my prophets, whom I have often sent. Last of all, I myself, the Son, came, and with wicked hands they have crucified and murdered me. They may do the same to you, Do not let the gospel enter those wicked gates through which they led me, its author, to crucifixion. But Christ singles out exactly these murderous people of Jerusalem to make monuments of his mercy and commands the first offer of eternal life be made to them. As if our Lord had said, lest the poor house of Israel should think themselves abandoned to eternal despair, as cruel and vile as they have been, go, make the first offer of grace to them. Let those who spilled my blood be welcomed to its healing virtue. tell them that there is repentance and forgiveness even for them. Nay, if you meet that poor wretch who thrust his spear into my side, tell him that there is another way, a better way of coming to my heart. Even my heart's love, tell him that if he will repent and look upon me whom he has pierced and will mourn, then I will cherish him in that very bosom which he has wounded. tell him that he shall find the blood which he has shed to be an ample atonement for the sin of shedding it and tell him from me that he will put me to more pain and displeasure by refusing this offer of my blood than when he first drew it forth. Matthew nine 13 for I have not come to call the righteous but centers to repentance. And then in conclusion, our unbelieving hearts tread cautiously here. Is it not presumptuous audacity to draw on the mercy of Christ in an unfiltered way? Shouldn't we be measured and reasonable, careful not to pull too much on him? Would a father with a suffocating child want his child to draw on the oxygen tank in a measured, reasonable way? Our trouble is that we do not take the scripture seriously when it speaks of us as Christ's body. Christ is the head. We heard his own body parts. How does the head feel about his own flesh? The Apostle Paul tells us, he nourishes and cherishes it. And then Paul makes the explicit connection to Christ. Just as Christ does the church because we are members of his body. How do we care for a wounded body part? We nurse it, bandage it, protect it, give it time to heal. for that body part isn't just a close friend, it is part of us. So with Christ and believers, we are part of him. This is why the risen Christ asks a persecutor of his people, why are you persecuting me? Jesus Christ is comforted when you draw from the riches of his atoning work because his own body, is getting healed. And I really like that emphasis on that. So often forget that we are Christ's body. And when we hurt, he wants us to come to him. That's what makes him happy. I think we still have a couple of minutes and any kind of observations or anything that really stuck out that you would like to take away. One of my favorite takeaways was when he was talking about how in the Old Testament the clean person came in contact with unclean that made them unclean. comes to Jesus and they're clean. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And there's no hesitation on Jesus' part to go to that unclean person or even to allow that unclean person to come to him. Yeah. Yeah. Roberto. Going back to page 32, when you said that Jesus Christ was made yesterday and today and forever, I heard Okay, yeah, well in order to To know if something is a miracle, it would actually require a special revelation to say definitively if that was a miracle, but the Lord works. behind the scenes, on top of the scenes, throughout. So his working, we could say, is always miraculous. We don't know. But it's the same way with demon possession. How do you know if it's a true demon possession if you do not have that special revelation to know that it is a demon possession? not to say that Satan's not in the world and he's trying to do his best to trip us up or, you know, call, draw people in. Um, but yeah, without having that special revelation, we really, I can't see how we would be able to say that it is, you know, definitely or definitely not a miracle. You know, we pray for people and we pray that the Lord will heal them. And the Lord sometimes does heal them. You know, even when medical professionals said, you know, that's it, there's nothing we can do. But if it's the Lord's will, the Lord's purpose, he will heal. Yeah. Chuck, I was just going to say that, you know, I like the part about when Jesus, you know, touched these prostitutes and glamors, and I was thinking, you know, about the people today, like, you know, who we consider unclean in our society, you know, like the homosexuals, or we as Christians, you know, reaching out. Yeah, yeah. You know, I, Along those lines, I think back of during the AIDS, when AIDS was the major epidemic that it is, then Chuck McElhaney and the church up there at First Press in San Francisco had that ministry to those that basically shunned them. Yeah. T? On page 30. conclusion that his bearded fullness, which he came to endure, that is most irresistibly attractive to him. Just piggybacking off of what Dave said, in my profession, you interact with many walks of life. And I've had to take care of prostitutes, prisoners, prostitutions, many homosexuals, homeless, druggies. You know, going into it, a lot of my Christian friends ask me how I can do that. And I really, it's just, before you even step into the room, sometimes you're going to be verbally abused or whatnot. It's just like, God just reminds me, this is how you are. This is how you are to me. Even me, I'm not a prostitute or homosexual or anything like that. This is how you are as a sinner, and you need to be me to them. Approach them the way that I approached you. If you were lost in your sin, I'll care for them the way I would have shown love to you. So it's an everyday battle, but God always gives grace, and it always amazes me how the Holy Spirit can so easily give you that love for them. and to just like not be judgmental and to take care of them as if we were taking care of the other person next to them, you know, who's like a board member or whatever. Right. Yeah. So, and it's only Christ who can give that. And, and just to, he's just a great example and, you know, to emulate that. It's a challenge, but, you know, he gives grace. Yeah. Amen. OK, the bell rang. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm going back to what makes Jesus happy. Aside from what we talked about, I think what only for me, what makes Jesus happy is that during his baptism, you know, that's it. He wants to be with the Father in heaven. I think so. like how I look, how, what makes him happy in this life. To do the will, whatever work I want, ask him to do, and then go back to him, to be with the father, because the father is always pleased with him. He wants to please the father. Do you think we can go back to using the little microphone like we used to? Oh, OK. OK. OK. So you can't hear the comment. OK. OK. We'll get a microphone. OK. Yeah. We will see what we can do, Mark. OK. Let's pray. Father, we so want to do your will. And we so thank you for the example of Jesus. Lord, it is our desire to glorify you. So Father, we pray that you would give us hearts to do just that. Lord, make us a lighthouse to those who are lost and dying. Father, give us opportunities to minister to those around us. And Father, I do thank you, Lord, for your word. I thank you for the truths that are there, for the encouragements that are there. Lord Jesus, I thank you for your atoning work upon the cross, your desire that we come to you for cleansing, for comfort, We thank you, Holy Spirit, for your empowering us, for your bringing to mind those things which we do know, but so easily forget. But Father, we pray that you would strengthen us. Please be with us the rest of this day and grant us the ability to glorify you in our actions and our thoughts. And Father, we do pray that even now you will prepare our hearts to come together to worship you this evening once again. And we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.