As you've already noticed in the bulletin, the text for today is the same two chapters that you heard read a while ago. Revelation chapter 4 and chapter 5. And I want to talk a little bit about worship, what's happening when we gather here for worship. I think in many, many instances we've not really thought through what we do when we gather as a body of Christ, as a people of God. I get asked questions sometimes, and I've had a lot of them through the years, questions about worship and a lot of other things. And I never have a lot of really good answers, it seems like. We worship every day, don't we? Now if you have a time of devotion, you get up in the morning, this individual now, and you open the scriptures and you start listening to them and responding to them you're hearing the god's word and you're praying because anytime we respond to god's word let's call it prayer we're just offering some answering speech to what he's already said we're asking for things along the way we have a lot of petition in our praying don't we but he told us to ask him So just because we're overwhelmed at times with petitions, doesn't mean we should sort them out and not pray for some of those things in order to just be able to have some good worship time. Well, I just want to suggest that the whole of life, when we're living it toward God and from God, is a worshiping life if our attitude is involved in that right. That we sometimes try to separate and define pieces of the journey or the action, rather than embracing the whole as truly being an act of worship. We use worship more often as an adjective than we do as a verb. Worship, service, worship, singers, worship, leader, worship, choir, worship, all kinds, it's an adjective. But what we're doing on Sunday morning from the opening, Let Us Worship God, until the final Amen, is something that a verb identifies. We're opening our heart to God. We're worshipping Him. We're worshipping Him in the songs. We're worshipping Him in the prayer. We're worshipping Him in the preaching. We're worshipping Him in the hearing of the preaching. We're worshipping Him in our response to the Word. We're worshipping Him in all of that. And I learned a lot of years ago now that corporate worship is so significant to us as people of God. And more and more people don't see that. Institutional, they say. Well, we're not institutionalized so that we're locked into doing it because somebody demands it, but we do things that may be classified as, it's just an institution. But I hope that in the church we have the life of the Holy Spirit at work. that makes it more than just a practice of certain things when we get together, that we're open to Him doing what He wants to do in us. Corporate prayer, how important is it? And I realize that, you know, I sometimes have called this a pastoral prayer, but it's really a congregational prayer. I just, as an under-shepherd or the great-shepherd, get to voice the prayer, but it's taking in all that we are and all that we do. and from that prayer we pray in the week ahead we pray from that corporate prayer toward that corporate prayer we pray from worship toward worship and as we live we're worshiping the god we serve you stop every once in a while don't you and say thank you lord something happens and you know it's him thank you lord you started out with help help me lord and you ended up with thank you Lord that's perfect those are the two most significant prayers will ever pray because we're needy and we're thankful Amen now it looks pretty mundane when we come in here to have service doesn't it I mean some of you're still finishing up getting it looking right you just you probably did if you're Melanie and she does it in the car That's usually on a work day, though probably not today, she had a long time to get ready. It's not the best thing, ladies, it's just, you know, it's worse than texting in the car while you're driving. But, you know, we're trying to get presentable all the time, and I find even as a male, we males always look pretty good, like the bird kingdom, see all the beauty in the males. Leave that lay there, you know, God knows what He's doing. and somebody said what about make-up i grew up in a church that didn't want you to wear make-up i didn't wear any so i didn't have to worry about it that's one of those good things and the women who wore make-up most often didn't but you know if a barn needs paint what do you do with it if a house needs paint what do you do with it paint it just not too much it gets crazy off of that on to this Corporate worship is an amazing opportunity for us to hear together and voice together the prayers of the people we love and the nation we love and the church we love around the world, brothers and sisters everywhere. And when you go out of here you'll remember some parts of that when you pray. And you'll voice them again. And you'll say, thank you Lord, having said help me Lord. And that's what we do. Worship shapes the human community in response to the living God, Eugene Peterson said in his introduction to Revelation in his Message Bible. Worship shapes the human community in response to the living God. And of course the response we have first of all as believers is a response of gratitude, having been redeemed, right? Aren't you thankful that you have been redeemed by the Lord, that you have this life that sustains you when you face hard things? Yes, we are thankful for that. And I've looked at Revelation 4 and 5 a lot of times. I haven't preached on it much, but I love the view we get of worship when the door opens and we look into heaven, or into the place where God is in the book of Revelation. I love what opens up there. I love the fact that that is what is there, as John saw it on Patmos, that Lord's Day. He had this marvelous vision of Jesus, chapter 1, and this marvelous vision of all that's going on in worship of God as we get to chapter 4. And in between He buried us with the seven churches of Asia and their problems with a few good spots, not many but some. Every single church representing some element of need, some need to repent. some need to hear what the master of the church, the one who is the great shepherd of the church has to say to them, and what he requires of them. So I'm going to look at it probably this week and next week, because there is no way I can do it in twenty-five minutes, and that's how much time I have left. I should go on at least ten minutes for the shaking hands stuff, but I don't want to. I love what happens at the end of the letter to the church at Laodicea. Now if I mention the letter to Laodicea from the head of the church himself, you will immediately think of lukewarmness, won't you? If you know the story, you will know that the church is not hot and not cold. It's kind of in that drag-along in-between state, which might not be too far from a lot of the American church today. Just kind of going along doing what we do and the interesting thing is the laity in church thanks they're rich they think they don't have a need in the world they think they're doing wonderful he said you're lukewarm neither hot nor cold is third chapter beginning down about verse fifteen i will spit you out of my mouth because you're lukewarm For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, I need nothing, not realizing that you are here is His assessment of them, wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, naked. That's a little bit of contrast between their view and the Lord's view. You see that? You know, it's a whole lot of contrast. This is what he says to them, I counsel you. And he gave them some counsel to buy gold refined by fire, get the real thing so that you may be rich, get white garments clothed in righteousness that you will not be ashamed in your nakedness. Those whom I love I reprove and discipline. Now if they stopped right there and thought about it, they're being reproved and are being disciplined. What does that mean? He loves us! He loves us! God is at work in our congregation, and we've had some struggles. We've had some real losses, some real things that are unexplainable to me. I don't know exactly what God is doing. I am not His right-hand man where He tells me everything. But I do know that He said to me very clearly, just walk with Me. Trust, pray, care for the sheep, walk, be obedient, see the glory. When's it going to come? I don't know, it might be when we're all dead and gone, but it's coming. Hope we have. But He says to them, those whom I love I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. Now's the time. And then he said this, "...Behold, I stand at the door, and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and eat with him, and he with Me." Who's he going to spend that fellowship with if somebody opens the door? With the ones who let him in! Could it be one, two, ten, twenty, thirty, forty? I don't know. It's the church he's knocking on the door of the church! We often, always in fact, take it to mean individuals and run away from the church in Laodicea. It's the church in Laodicea that he's concerned about and somebody's got to let him in. Somebody's got to say, my heart's open Lord, here I am. There's probably not one church near death anywhere who doesn't have one or two believers who want to see that church live. So there is this opportunity. But repentance is never easy. God working it here, giving an invitation, come. And what He's inviting them into is, come sit with Me. Hey, there's the table. We're always ready for the table, aren't we? The meal with the Lord. We just had it. Fellowship in worship centers on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ always. And Jesus has done for them what was necessary to make it possible for them to open that door again and say, come, we want to sup with you. We realize that we have been redeemed. We realize that we've not done what you've called us to do. We come in, Lord, come in. And the Lord's table becomes a place of worship. Come and worship me. Come and worship with me if you want to really understand who Jesus is as the great high priest of his people. He's the leader of the worship. He's the leader of the worship. Come. Hymns are sung, the word is read, the word is preached, prayers are prayed, offerings are given, the life of Christ is received in the form of bread and wine. All in the context of worshiping Him. The altar becomes the place of worship. But the problem with Laodicea is this. They have no sense of need to drive them to Him, for they have no need in their minds. There is no poverty of soul or anything else to draw them to Him in that community of friends. They have no anything held in common because they don't have to. They don't have to share with others because we're doing great! No hunger and thirst for righteousness to compel them to the banquet table. We have to feel sometime when we come for the meal that if we didn't have this meal, we'd have nothing. That if we couldn't feed on Him, we would die of starvation. That nothing else that I ever touch or have can ever satisfy me at all. And most of us have tried to satisfy ourselves with it through maybe the earlier years of our life, or maybe the middle of our journey, I don't know. But there's not one single thing that will ever satisfy a thirsting soul who has tasted of Him. He alone can. And so the message to them is pretty severe. Repent! I'm knocking at your door. time to worship. John sees the door open. Man, what a marvelous opportunity he has to see what's going on and to be able to write about it. And he's got to write about it like a poet, because the language is so, it's so difficult to take everything in there just as a literal word. You've got to somehow grasp how he's saying things, what he's trying to say with what he's revealing. Those living creatures got me stumped, you'd say. Or that all those angels, what are they doing? How do they look? How loud is that shout? How great is that song they sing? So we have to pause and think about it a little bit when we get to these kind of chapters. John, hey John, just write down what you see. That's all you've got to do. And he wrote it down as he saw it, as the best he could do, in the language he knew. He wrote it down. We've been trying to figure it out ever since, some of it at least. He sees the door open and the glorious significance of what the church does on a Sunday morning. is right there in front of him at the throne. Now we have to bridge a little space here with our imaginations, don't we? That's not what the church does here. I didn't see those living creatures with eyes everywhere! And angels, if they showed up, we'd all be laying on the floor! Yep, the elders were on the floor part of the time in the vision he sees, right there in that throne room. On the Lord's Day, John writes about it in chapter 1, and he's told to write it, what you see in a book, send it to the seven churches, the seven that are mentioned in chapters 2 and 3, ending with Laodicea. So he's instructed to write and who to write it to, and THEN he turns. And what does John see when he turns? I turn, I love this, I turn to see the voice. What does that mean? That means that voice had something in it that made him attentive. He spins to see what that voice looks like. That's in verse number 12. He turned to see the voice. Chapter 1 of Revelation, verse 12, "...turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, And in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest, the hairs of his head were white like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace. His voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars. From his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword. And his face was like the sun, shining in full strength. And there's the time to be on the ground!" That's a sword coming out of his mouth. What is he writing? Is it words coming out? John might write words as a sword. He has some understanding of things. Bright like the sun is the radiance of his face, white hair like snow, like wool, golden sash. This is Jesus, meek and mild, walking down the street of Jerusalem. No, no, this is the man in his habitat. This is the one that we love and worship. When I saw him, John said, I fell at his feet as though dead. There you go. You've heard people say, haven't you, or maybe you've said, When I get to heaven, I'm going to ask Jesus about that. Yeah, that's after you get up. I don't know how long you're going to be there, how many thousand years, but it'll be after you get up. Have the audience extend his hand toward you and say, Come up close. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead, and he laid his right hand on me, saying, Fear not. That's a great word from the Lord, isn't it? I am the first and the last and the living one. I am the was and the is and the coming one, all together right there. I was, I is, I'm coming. I died and behold I'm alive forevermore. I have the keys of death and Hades, the grave, hell. Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those who are to take place after this. As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches, and the debate over whether those angels are men or angels is on again. Are they the pastors or the angels in charge of the churches? That debate depends on who you read. It's still as great as ever. But there's the churches, seven of them, one church in a menorah, each an arm. each a part of the body belonging to Christ. And John is responsible for the spiritual lives of those seven congregations scattered in that part of Turkey, what is now Turkey, in Asia Minor. That's the first vision. Now after the churches, we're ready for the second one. Here it is in chapter 4, "...Then after this I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, like a trumpet, Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this. At once I was in the Spirit. And behold, a throne stood in heaven, One seated on the throne, he who sat there had the appearance of jasper, carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that looked like an emerald, had the appearance of an emerald. And around the throne were twenty-four thrones, seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clothed in white garments with golden crowns on their heads. From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings, and peals of thunder. And before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God. And before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass like crystal." Now there's an acronym that fits that. Wow! Wonder of Wonders. The place where God is. right in this marvelous vision. John was in the Spirit when he beheld the glorified Lord in chapter 1. He had heard a trumpet already, and he heard that same trumpet again in chapter 4, when he in the Spirit sees the throne room presence of God. Today, we Christians worship with the conviction that we are in the presence of God when we gather. Do we not? This is the God. The God on the throne with all the representation of the Holy Spirit in the seven flaming fires, one whole work of the Holy Spirit in all seven And the Lamb has got some seven connections to the Holy Spirit, too, which is showing up. We've got the Father on the throne, no identifying words about how He exactly looked. What does He look like? Well, He looks like color. He looks like light, all kinds of expression. There's this beauty on the throne that's just so full of light, and the colors are just enormous. The flaming fires add to it. And then you look down on that crystal sea out in front of it, and what you have there is so much reflection. You know what crystal does when you have a crystal piece and put some light on it, don't you? Add some colored emerald-type light, and what do you get? Every imaginable expression of light in its beauty and color. How do you explain what God is like? God is spirit. We've learned through Christ to worship Him in spirit and truth. And here He is on the throne. It's the Triune God represented on the throne room. We deal with the Triune God of grace in all of our living. We come to the Father through the Son by the Holy Spirit. We worship the Father in the Son by the Holy Spirit. And we live our lives to the glory of the Father through the Son by the Holy Spirit. One God, three persons. Someone wrote, and I like it, said, Our participation by the Spirit in the Son's communion with the Father is what worship is all about. Worship is participating in the Son in His worship to the Father. The Son submits to the Father, the context of that. Our position is always acceptable to the Father because we're in the Son. And not only are we in the Son, but the Son, according to the Scriptures, is in us by the Holy Spirit. And even Jesus said one of these days, boys, and I was asking questions about what was going to happen when Jesus left them, He said, The Father and I are going to come and dwell in you. And you get this relationship to God that is absolutely beyond anything we've yet imagined. We look, when we come to the table, we don't know if He's here or not. When we come to church, we're not sure if He's going to show up or not. Listen, we've got to think differently than that. He doesn't show up, He's here leading us in. He lives in us by His Spirit. And when we get here, He's ready to do what His Word declares. He's ready to act upon what we believe and declare. This living God rules, speaks, reveals, creates, redeems, commands, and blesses. He's the God who knows what He's doing. We're blessed by His presence as His people, and in this service, and in every time we gather for worship, we are here to respond to His salvation. That is the working of God that always leads toward salvation as a wholeness. One of these days, every knee will bow. Every tongue will confess that this Jesus of Nazareth is the Lord. Now when you get down on your knees, you're worshiping, aren't you? You're acknowledging. We bowed our knee to Him already. He brought us to our knees. He showed us our sin. He redeemed us from our sin. Stood us on our feet and said, You're mine. You're my child. That's beautiful. And sometimes when we've been in church, and I did this for so many years like a lot of folks I knew did. We come to church so desperate for Him to show up or do something or meet our needs, pay attention to us, do something for us. that our worship, quote, becomes nothing more than a charade. We're not worshiping, we're begging. We're not bowing before the God who's already provided. We've forgotten. He's on the throne, He's in charge, and our task is to fall on our faces and worship Him, and be ready to respond to His majesty. Two things, and I'll do it in five minutes. How many believe that? How many do NOT believe that? Five? Ten? I was going to really count for time, now I know I'm just kidding. A couple things. Worship centers us, keeps us centered. What is important in this world, most important above all things? My relationship, your relationship, our relationship to the Living God. That is it. That is it, my relationship, your relationship to the living God. The door is open in heaven and there is the throne. And there on the throne someone sits that I can only find identified as colors, light. Can you understand why? He is the light. He is. the one who illumines and changes and brings life and light to us, that's Him. And a throne centers the authority. The one who has the authority sits on the throne. So church, come on, come on John, look up here, take a look, what do you see? He said, I see someone sitting on the throne. He said, yes, that's the God you serve. Now keep your eyes there. The throne's got a lot of action going on, but on that place, on the throne, sits God Himself. You worship Him! Oh, and by the way, Laodicea, when you open the door, that's where you're taken. That's where you're lifted to. Your worship now becomes centered on the God you haven't been able to pay much attention to, the God you now focus on, the God you now see, the God who will keep you centered if you'll walk with Him in obedience in the days ahead, that you'll recognize your need and trust in Him. You will walk with Him. He will not fail you. He will not let you go. He will not leave the throne. He is God, sovereign. A throne centers the authority. All but about five chapters of Revelation have the word throne in them somewhere. In worship, God is gathering His people to Himself. Why are we in here? We come to meet with God. He revealed Himself to us in Jesus Christ, who is now in a glorified body and at the right hand of the Father and in charge. But it is God being revealed to us that we come here to worship Him for. We come to worship God, that's what we do in this place. We are centered in the God who will never fail, who will accomplish what He has determined, who will finish His work regardless of how much we stumble along. And if you're His, He's working in you. He wants you to follow on, be involved in it, be a part of it. We worship so that we are able to live in response to Him from the center, the living God. Response to Him and from Him our life is. What is your life for? To glorify God. How do you live? I live listening to what He has to say and responding to Him in worship. That's my life. Paying attention to the God who's going to finish things up. When we decide that we're going to worship so that He will like it, we've just messed up! And that's what most of worship in churches is. We're going to hope he likes our worship. No! He loves you! The person that can't sing a lick can stand up in a sanctuary like ours. Isn't that right, Phil? I'm sorry. Phil, my brother, I didn't know you couldn't sing until your wife told me. I bet he can sing. I bet how God hears it would amaze us, because His heart would be reaching up to Him. Phil's heart reaches. And when a heart is reaching out toward God, God hears with joy that celebrative song. of a loving soul. One who says, Abba to the Father. May not do real hot with holy, holy, holy, but he can get the heart up, open to God. That's the one. I have the same kind of problem. I've got these hearing aids that won't let me hardly stay on tune, so I cut loose every once in a while. Not only do I figure out I'm not in the right place on the note, I've got the wrong words. I don't have anything to do with these. But I'm up here sometimes doing that. And the ladies all assured me when I sing over here that they're not smiling because I'm way off. I appreciated that. Maybe just a little off, but they're seeing something else. But it's the heart! If we are gathered to Him, and He's going to reveal Himself to us, if He brings us to center, what He's after is a heart that loves Him. And then everything we do comes because of our relationship to Him through Jesus Christ and because of our heart's desire to walk with Him and to please Him and to love Him. If we fail as churches to worship from the heart, listen, if we fail as a church to worship from the heart as we gather corporately, we will live our lives in a series of spasms and jerks trying to figure out what God wants us to do. We won't have a set flow. So what do we do, Pastor? Well, what do we do today? We gathered in the presence of the Lord to hear His Word, to worship Him, to pray to Him, to sing to Him, and to go out and serve Him. Have we received anything today? Oh, I think you'll notice. You probably did when you take off this week. These are not big things. This is the most organic way of church life we know. I've often looked, I'll watch some kind of an old cowboy movie or something out of church, it's usually a little white-framed church sitting in the middle of nowhere with no trees in the west, which is not all true. There are trees out there, you just have to hunt them. Except in no trees, no trees, Texas has no trees, they don't, and we've been there. But you see this church building and people bugging up and loading up, going to church on a Sunday and they most of the time would spend, maybe have a meal together because the neighbors got together. Didn't have a lot of churches, just a church. And I'm kind of a simple guy. So I think, wouldn't have to ever think about an iPhone, not once, no sir. None of that special fancy stuff. Don't have a telephone. Don't have a carrier pigeon. I'll talk to them on Sunday. when I see them at church. A gathered family, just simple together. We're way past that, but there's something that was real about those kind of connections. That ability to live in a community and be a part of that community and a part of the church made up of that community was pretty special, if we had heart after God. Now, if you didn't, you just went to church and died, and they said you were a United Church or Methodist or whatever it was you were. And they laid you to rest, hoping you'd make it to heaven, because you had the right label. But that doesn't work. The only label that counts is Jesus Christ, the Lord, the name above every single name. Without worship, we live manipulated and manipulating lives, and we get swept into a kind of a vast nothingness of direction. Don't we always have to be planting new stuff, Pastor? I don't think so. I think we need to find out how to live this present stuff first. See what God wants. Let Him open the door in your heart and give you what to do. But we don't want to worship false gods. We don't want to worship things that we think help us get to God, like a lot of churches do. It's easy to do this. You can worship music. You can worship theology, to the point that you're just kind of squeaked out of it. You could worship a lot of things, make them the god in place of the god. God is a person, a being that loves us and reveals himself to us. Israel was plagued for centuries and centuries by false worship. They had their destination in Jerusalem, even at some of the best part of their life, you know, they had this temple in Jerusalem, and they had this place to travel to, and they'd travel to Jerusalem for the feast days, and they'd travel by all these little booths set up on the hills. Fertility rites were going on there, bales, false gods were all along the roadway at times up on the hills places where israeli men israelites would participate in these fertility rights which involve sexual activity many of them as worship god's people drifting out there the false gods And it was said of them by Jeremiah, God speaking, they have forsaken Me, the spring of living water. They have dug themselves cisterns for what they want, holes in them, cracked. But another source altogether for Me. They're pursuing what is not to be pursued. And God promised a return to faithful people. I will stop your backsliding, I will get you back on track. Oh, they had a hard time responding to that, but there is a time coming when God turns His eyes on them. Now see what we have at the throne room are twelve tribes of Israel represented in the eldership, and twelve apostles of the Lamb, New Testament. Twelve and twelve, twenty-four elders. Because in redemption, Jesus came to provide redemption for Jew and Gentile alike, didn't He? To make of two, one. To bring them together as His people. And yet, when we go into the throne room, we've got to keep this in mind, you've still got distinct twelve and twelve. They didn't just get immersed into each other, but they were part of what God was doing in order to bring redemption to mankind. And you've got twelve plus twelve at the center, at the place of worship where God is. Twelve and twelve. But the hills were a delusion. They were false. They were not for God's people. Psalm 121, one of the Psalms of Ascent, says it this way, "...I lift up my eyes..." You remember this prayer? "...I lift up my eyes to the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth." And if you're not careful, because I didn't see it for a long time as a kid, I thought what was being, you know, you're looking for God, you look up to the hills! Now when you look to the hills, you remind yourself that those hills and the delusionary false worship does not give you life or deliver you. You've got to look to God beyond the hills, the God who made the hills, the God who is the sovereign God over it all. These false gods are not where you're going to find your help. You find your help in the God you can't see. We have to get settled in the presence of God, don't we? where God works. And I see the changing world of the church in literature that I read, some of it theological, professional, wonderful, but it sure is a lot of it heading off into the wrong road, embracing too many things, rejecting too many others. getting sidetracked. We don't run from place to place to find His presence. He comes. He's with us. He draws us together. He's here. I wish I'd have known this a lot better years and years ago. You know, you pastor a while and you think, I really would like to have a little better challenge. And then the Lord would work on me, and I'd stay put and fuss about it again six months to myself or to my wife. And we moved some, but every time we moved, we had a call someplace else. And it was hard. The last couple of moves we made before we came back home were troubled churches. I didn't have any idea just how troubled. when i got to the first church that we've taken hand at this church was uh... here in texas and it had it had real opportunity to grow and reach lost people when i got there after i'd said yes i'll come preach for a couple times finally said yes winter and the question you know when you start asking about what happened well these two guys almost came to fisticuffs in here and told me to go outside and fight if they're going to fight dividing the church which it was divided they were all sitting there but they were divided i said all this will be fun but in in both of the cases where i'm grace and i went that we had our we had our challenges early on but the lord just in each case just took the simple preaching teaching of the word and you started laying people in that place laying people in that place putting them in until the building was running over in a few months' time. And then the Lord opened up in West Texas and said, This is where I want you to be. I was just setting you ready for it. Our people weren't too happy in Texas. This place went to West Texas, and we weren't too happy for a while. but we were not unhappy with the church it was a hard place and needed growth we said settle down be a pastor for a while not hurry it dwindled down to about two hundred and started up and i'd recognize again fire but i've been blundering along on my own are probably not going to be the one of them but god knows how to put us there now And I want us, I want us to just start looking around to see who the people are that need Jesus most. Don't worry about ten or twelve of them, just find one. And let's find a way to just be an instrument of God's grace to one or two folks this next few months. See what happens. Tell them about what Jesus did for you. Start there. I'm still praying Bill gets to walk some so he can talk to people out there in his neighborhood. Maybe you can have your wife drive you through and you see somebody just stop, roll the window down and say, Come over here, I want to tell you about Jesus. Because Bill is a man who's always been watching out for the one who needs Jesus everywhere. And many of us, maybe more of us than I know, are doing that. We never know what we might do. Closing. We got to see our son yesterday. Dan. And I want to tell you about how he's doing, because he wants me to tell you. He's doing better than he was here. His life in relationship to the Lord is just magnificent, beautiful, real. He's all smiles with thanksgiving for where he is. He's happy to be where God has planted him for the moment. and he's not in a hurry about anything. It's hard to see him there, but it was a contact visit, so we got to do the big hug overs a few times, which helps. And I don't know when he's going to get out. He says, I don't know, but I know it'll come sooner than they said, because they got so many people coming here every week, it's just amazing. Several hundreds of people weekly. pouring into it. But all he could talk about was Jesus. No complaints, trying to live in a way that shows he cares about people that he's with, whether they're guards or fellow incarcerated inmates. And so we're just praying that God will use him all He wants to use him while he's there. And I thank you for your prayers, because it's a good thing. It's a good thing. God's legitimately at work. Here is one man who had to hit the bottom in order to have his life turn around, and who has it turned around by the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And in that place, we're just praying God help him connect to people that will listen. He's cooking, I mean he's not cooking, he's helping in the kitchen. They give him job assignments. So he's got eight hours a night in the kitchen, five days a week, forty hours of work. and he gets it on thing good about it i get to eat little more breakfast and i would if i were out on the line and he said at one thirty they feed those guys at three o'clock every day a m three to four and the whole thing is fed and one hour they get ten minutes he said i don't know i don't know i'm done and sound like healthy but he said it's right where i need to be So I wanted to report that to you to let you know one life transformed is what matters. One life transformed. So we'll see what the Lord does with that. I didn't get through. I had five things. I got one. And the one I got was that the throne centers the authority, and there is God on the throne. So hold that thought, will you? And read chapters four and five a couple of times. before next week. We'll work into it. Let us pray. Father, what a privilege it is to serve you, to know you, to walk with you. I want to thank you for answered prayer. I want to thank you that you alone control all things. You are the sovereign God who reigns. And I thank you for your faithfulness to this congregation through the years and Our desire, Lord, is to please You and glorify You, and I'm glad, I'm thankful that You're changing so many of us to shape us to the present hour so that we can be about the business You've given us in these last days. Thank You, Lord, for the salvation of souls. Thank You, Lord, for the building up of Your people in this body and spiritual life. Thank You for the hope that we live toward. In Jesus' name, amen.