Pastor Brian and Jacque Lother
Brian: When we reflect upon the first Christmas, the night that Jesus was born, I think it's safe to say that on that very first Christmas, that the earth was pretty oblivious to all that was happening. Wouldn't you agree with that? The church was pretty oblivious to really what was happening on that first Christmas. But here's something that we need to understand. Heaven wasn't oblivious to what was happening. Oftentimes in our lives, we think that heaven is nowhere to be found in our lives. We think, where is God? Don't you see what I'm going through here? Even Israel had been crying out for centuries for help. The night that Jesus was born, virtually all of Israel was oblivious to the fact that their savior had come.
I really believe that the angels weren't told an hour before they left heaven to come to the earth about what their assignment was. I had kind of suspect that they might have been practicing for a few centuries, maybe about what they were singing and what they were going to say. You know, they were full of anticipation. They were waiting in anticipation to break forth in praise and worship and adoration at the birth of the newborn child because this child's birth actually meant what we call deliverance for the world. He was the deliverer. We see where when the angel came to Mary and gave her a little bit of a foretaste about what was about to transpire, we see what he said to her in Matthew chapter 1, verse 21. This is a quote from, of course, the book of Isaiah. But this is what the angel said to Mary.
Jacque: She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.
Brian: This was the real reason that Jesus was born, was to save us from our sins. What we often forget at Christmas is that Jesus knew that in order for him to save his people, he also knew he was going to have to die. Now, we don't a lot of times connect the crucifixion and his death with the birth. Sometimes, it feels a little too somber to do that, and we like Christmas to be a little bit more warm and fuzzy and joyful. But have you ever thought for a moment about some of the goodbyes that must have taken place in heaven for that first Christmas Eve to happen?
It's not like Jesus was a stranger in heaven. He created Michael, the arch angel. He created all of the heavenly hosts. He had relationship with all of his creation. Probably the most interesting goodbye might have been the goodbye that happened between Jesus and his father and the Father to the Son and the farewells that were going to happen. Because during Jesus' sojourn on earth, heaven was absent of Christ. There was an empty cherish, so to speak, in heaven.
We've had thanksgiving with our parents for many, many years in Christmas Eve. And, and then all of a sudden, Ted just ups and dies on us, although he was 91. And then not too long afterwards, my dad did. And there were two empty chairs at our Thanksgiving table that we were kind of going tilt with because Ted always sat here and my dad always sat there. There was an empty throne in heaven those years that Jesus was on the earth.
Hebrews chapter 10, verses five through seven describes what many theologians believe was a conversation that Jesus and the Father had before he came. Other theologians have disagreed with that and feel it was a conversation Jesus had with his father after he came. But the context of this whole conversation really is what is very meaningful to understand. I kind of lean towards the fact that this conversation took place with his father in heaven before he came. And so, Jacque read that for us. Hebrews 10:5-7.
Jacque: Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said, sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me. With burnt offerings and sin offerings, you are not pleased. Then I said, here I am. It is written about me in the scroll. I have come to do your will, my God
Brian: Isn't this interesting verse, where the whole identity of Israel was wrapped up in making animal sacrifices. Their whole identity was wrapped up in that and to the point of legalism. And then of course the greed and selfishness that often as so much part of our hearts came into play as well. And they began to do ex money exchanges and so forth and take advantage of especially the poor to go through this system of almost penance to somehow get God's approval to accept us.
Jesus has this conversation with his father and he says, sacrifices and offerings is really not what you desire or burnt offerings and sin offerings. That's not really what pleases you, but what pleased you father was what is expressed in John 3:16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever would believe in him would not perish, but have everlasting life. In this scripture, Hebrews 10, really reveals the heart of Jesus even before his birth, where it says that you father have prepared a body for me. So the earthly body of Jesus was actually prepared in advance by our Father in heaven. I personally believe that then the spirit of Christ was put into that body.
That's why Jesus was all God, yet he was all human at the same time. Because God is what God is spirit. And just like we have a spirit, our spirits were created by God. But the spirit of Christ wasn't created by the Father. It was all he's there. That's why he's called the begotten son, not the created son of God. Jesus and our Father and Holy Spirit are eternally existent, one, and they are spirit. That spirit part of Jesus was placed in this little infant in Mary's womb.
He says that what really brought you joy, father, is that you prepared a body for me and I've been written about in the scrolls and that I have come to do your will. I have come to do your will. Don't you think our world would be better off if everybody's attitude was Father, I just want to do your will today. Wouldn't our lives be better off if, if we would really pray that every day: father, let your will be done in my life and when I find myself not being in your will, would you just kind of tap me on the shoulder and get my attention, please, and help me to get back on course. If we kind of simply lived that in that place of awareness, our lives would be better off and so would all the people's lives around us be better off.
This scripture, of course reveals the heart of Jesus before his birth. And Jesus knew what he was coming here for. He wasn't coming here to make an impression on how powerful he was. Although he was, that wasn't he? He knew what he was coming here for. He was coming to die for the sins of the world, and he knew it. I think what is even more important for us to understand than just that is that he was also doing it willingly. Our father in heaven and Jesus didn't have a century worth of conversations with the Father trying to convince Jesus what to do. Jesus was willing to do this. That was the whole point of the incarnation: what Jesus was willing to do.
The important issue of Christmas is not, is really not so much that Jesus came as much as why he came, as to why he came. Because the fact of the matter is there was no salvation just in his birth.
Nor was there any salvation, at least to us, given to us by the sinless way he lived his life. He could have lived a sinless life and then be taken to heaven like Elijah in a chariot of fire, and there would be no salvation extended to any of us. His example, as flawless as it was in how he lived his life on the earth, could not rescue any of us from our sins. His obedience to the Father in all the other aspects of his life outside of Calvary, if he would've obeyed as he did, that still wouldn't have provided salvation for us. Even his teaching, which of course is the greatest truth that's ever been revealed to man, could not save us from our sins. There was a price to be paid because of our sin. Jesus was the one that was willing to pay that price.
I'm not going to go into much detail today on this cuz this could be a topic for five sermons or more, but the challenge that God had in the whole forgiveness issue was how do you actually, in a government and the kingdom of God is a government, how do you reconcile justice and mercy? That's a challenge even in our own judicial system, isn't it? When someone breaks the law, how do you show that person mercy and not somehow undermine the law? Because if you have a law, let's say we have a speed limit, 30 miles an hour is our law. The police pull you over and say, "Hey, you are going too fast, but I'll let you go this time." And every time you get pulled over for going too fast, they let you go. And everybody else that gets pulled over, they let them go. In essence, we don't really have a law. We don't have a speed limit. Because in order for that law to actually have any punch or value or effect. The law has to be enforced. Doesn't it?
God spoke a simple law in the very beginning, in the garden. That law was given to Adam and Eve. And that law was very simple. It was this: and the day that you eat of it, you will die. That was the law. Jesus shows up into the garden to have fellowship with his creation, and they are not there. They are hiding. God is calling out to them, where are you? We are hiding. Well, why are you hiding? Well, we are naked. Well, who told you that? You see the innocence of little children, two and three years old and they run around the house, they get out of the bathtub, they run downstairs soaking wet. They don't care who's their visitors. They don't care. They are just innocent. Nobody has told them right. That they need to be covered up.
This law was broken. They had this awareness now because they had sinned. So the challenge that God had was this: I don't want them to die. I don't want them to be separated from me forever. I love them in spite of their disobedience. In spite of their failures, I love them. So what can I do that will uphold the law and allow me to show mercy to those who I love? Yes. And he said, ah, I will send a sacrifice for them, someone who is pure and spotless, who's never sinned. I will put their sin on him. That one was, of course, Jesus. This is the conversation or something like it that I believe Jesus and our Father in heaven had maybe during the course from the fall of Adam, almost all the way up to Christmas Eve, that first Christmas Eve. And Jesus said, "I will do it and I will go."
It is true that Jesus came to earth to reveal God to mankind. He said, "If you've seen me, you've seen the Father." Part of what Jesus came to do was to show us what the father was like. He also came to teach us the truth because we were lost in our own blindness. He came to fulfill the law, to show that we can't actually obey God. He came to offer us his kingdom. He came to show us how to love. He came to reveal God's love to us. He came to bring peace. He came to heal the sick. He came to do miracles and minister to the needy. But all of those reasons are actually incidental to the main purpose for why he came. That main purpose was so that he could save his people from their sins.
He could have done all of those other things, actually, without being born. He could have been like Melchizedek in the Old Testament, or what the Old Testament calls the angel of the Lord. He could have come in that form and done all of those things and accomplished all those things that I just mentioned in that list and more. But he had one additional reason for coming. And that reason was he came to die. He came to be the substituted penalty for our sins, so that the penalty that we deserved, he took it. It was called the vicarious substitute. He became that penalty so that we wouldn't have to suffer the penalty. And because the penalty now was done and the law was still upheld, the kingdom was still upheld, the word of the king was still upheld, now, the king could extend mercy to the lawbreaker if that lawbreaker was willing to accept it.
This is the side of the Christmas story that oftentimes isn't told too often, the soft little hands fashioned by the Holy Spirit in Mary's womb were made so that one day nails would be piercing them. I'm not sure that Mary understood that the night that Jesus was born. She may have because she pondered a lot of things in her heart. But I'm sure the shepherds that came and worshiped him and the wise men, I'm sure they didn't look at those little hands and say, well, one day nails are going to go through those hands. Those little baby feet, unable to walk, would one day walk up a dusty hill to what we call Calvary and be nailed to a cross. Even that sweet little innocent baby's head--
Right now, since I had a stent put in in September in my heart, I go to heart rehab three times a week. And I went to the hospital last week to do my rehab session and, and this lady was carrying out, because where I go is right next to kind of a birthing place. This lady was carrying out this tiny little baby. The head's only about this big. I thought about Jesus' head being about that big, and how when Mary and Joseph looked at that little baby's head and the smile on his face and the little coo that would come out of his mouth, I wonder if they actually realized that one day a crown of thorns would be put on that head because of our sin.
Even that tender little body, maybe the first time she bathed them or after he was born, I'm sure she had the materials there to clean him up and wash his little tummy and just wipe him down. And I wonder if she realized that one day a spear would pierce that side. Jesus was born to die. I don't want to put a damper on Christmas here far from it. Because you see, the death of Jesus, even though it was devised and carried out by men with evil intentions-- we know the evil intentions of the Sanhedrin and Caiaphas and possibly even some of the collusion with the Roman soldiers, et cetera, the death of Jesus was in no way censor form a tragedy. Because a tragedy is a traumatic event without a purpose to it. There is a difference.
A tragedy isn't just something that is hard to see or accept, but a tragedy is a traumatic event that doesn't have a purpose. But there was a marvelous purpose in the death of Jesus. That's why I don't believe the death of Christ can ever come into the category or definition of a tragedy. It still was done by evil men, but even evil men can carry out the purposes of God. We have to understand that.
Even politicians that we just think are the worst invention that God ever created, can do the will of God. Go back to the book of Ezra where it talks about Cyrus, the king of Persia, right there and then that defines what kind of person he was. If you know the history of the Persian empire and the kind of people they were, and Cyrus, king of Persia in the first year of his reign, God stirred his spirit up to make a declaration that all of these people from Israel could go back home. So don't ever worry about who's in the White House. Don't worry about that. Just pray for them like we are supposed to do. Just pray for them. And you know what, you will find as we pray for them, God has somehow empowered in a greater way to carry out his purposes on the earth. There is a couple more scriptures I want to read here before we are done. Hebrews 2:9 says this:
Jacque: What we do see is Jesus, who for a little while was given a position a little lower than the angels.
Brian: That's because he was made in all points like us. And so he was human. His body was human; his spirit was God.
Jacque: And because he suffered death for us, he is now crowned with glory and honor. Yes, by God's grace, Jesus tasted death for everyone.
So notice this phrase: he suffered death and then he tasted death for everyone. This is like the all-inclusive party. Everyone's invited; everyone's invited. His death was not an easy passing. We know that for sure. It was excruciating. It was agony. It was torture of the worst kind because of course it was on a cross. But in his death, we have redemption and in his death and what he suffered, that's why some theologians call it the bitter cup of Calvary because it was traumatic. It was very full of suffering. But he experienced all the pain. He experienced the weight of the world. He experienced the sins of mankind being placed on him, all of those torments, all of that. Yet Jesus did it voluntarily. He did it voluntarily.
By the way, that's one of the big differences between Jesus and the sacrifices of the Old Testament. There wasn't one of those animals that said, oh, I'll go. We are kind of inoculated away from it. We haven't ever really witnessed any of that. We don't even like to go near the stockyards where we eventually get our hamburger from and stuff like that. We kind of ideologies the temple. But the temple was a bloody place and there was a lot of unwilling animals being dragged to their death there.
Jacque: To be sacrificed.
Brian: To be sacrificed. Yes. And yet Jesus wasn't dragged to the cross. He willingly went. He carried his cross there. He did it voluntarily so that he would receive what we deserve so that we don't actually have to receive it. And that is why Jesus came. That's what one Corinthians 15:3 means.
Jacque: I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as a scripture said.
Brian: This was prophesied about; it was spoken about. And the angel told Mary this, that he will save his people from their sins. You are to give them the name Jesus Messiah, the Christ, for he will save his people from their sins. He paid a price for our sins. He made redemption possible. We incurred a really great debt that we could not pay. I love the parable that Jesus teaches about that. We incurred this debt too great for us to pay. And then he paid it. He paid it, slate, wipe clean.
We sometimes have a real challenge in understanding that because if anybody pays a debt for us, there is almost always strings attached. Aren't there, collateral? Well, what do you got? If I'm going to loan you this money, what do you got that I can take of yours if you don't pay me back? Whether that payment is extracting some kind of behavior or whatever it might be, or actual repayment. But he didn't come because we asked for an intervention. Remember what I said at the very beginning? The world was really oblivious to the fact that Jesus came, he didn't come because we had sent an invitation to heaven and said, would you please come and save us?
Most of us, we really didn't know that we needed to be saved. Most of us really didn't know we needed redemption. I'm not so bad. How many of us have said that through the years? Well, I'm not so bad. I'm a good person. I don't murder anybody or whatever. We've all done that, haven't we? We kind of tried to justify ourselves in some way, shape, or form, but he didn't come because we asked for his intervention or because we even deserved his intervention. He came because he is a God of grace. Notice I didn't say he was a God of grace. He is a God of grace. That grace, even today, is without limit. And it has no end to it. He has no end to it. No one in the whole universe could actually have taken the life of Christ if he had not given it up willingly. And he even said that in John chapter 10, verses 17 and 18.
Jacque: The Father loves me because I sacrifice my life. So I may take it back again. No one can take my life from me. I sacrifice it voluntarily.
Brian: I wonder if Pilot really realized that when Jesus was before Pilate, where Jesus said, "Nobody can take my life from me, but I voluntarily give it."
Jacque: For I have the authority to lay it down when I want to, and also to take it up again for this is what my father has commanded.
Brian: We need to understand in spite of the fact that evil men plotting evil plots were certainly part of the story and the equation, nobody took Christ's life from him. He willingly gave it up. His love was very overwhelming in that sense. He looked at us humanity as sinful man, and he did see the inevitability of death and ultimately hell, which was made for Satan and his fallen angels. He looked at that and he paid the price himself. He said, "I'm willing to go so that I can show mercy to these lawbreakers and still uphold my kingdom and still uphold my word, that my word means something." Because the person who continually gets away with breaking the law begins to formulate an attitude, " They'll never do something about it, or it's not that big of a deal, or it doesn't matter to them."
We are at a place in our culture today where we are deciding to change what is actually a felony because we just don't want to prosecute these crimes down here anymore. That's where we are at as a culture. And it's like Dr. Spock way back in the sixties. He said, "The problem with guilt, the reason people feel guilty is they are taught to 10 commandments. So all we have to do to remove guilt is to get rid of the 10 Commandments." But the problem is, the laws of God are still written on our hearts. You can not teach the 10 commandments in school. You can take them off of all the buildings that they were printed on or engraved on. You can remove it from our consciousness, but in our hearts, God has written those same laws, and when we violate them, we feel guilty. You don't do away with guilt by doing away with moral law; you do away with guilt by receiving the redemptive gift of Jesus. That's how we get rid of the guilt in our lives and shame.
That's why what we have to offer the world is so important regardless of what decisions come out of Washington DC or the ACLU or any other organization that tries remove God in any form or mention in our culture because the world, humanity has been created by God in such a way that they feel guilty when they murder. I'll tell you something, even when killing another person has been described or labeled as justified, like war, why do you think so many military people come home with post-traumatic stress, and they suffer with nightmares and screaming in the middle of the night? It's because a person's life has been taken at their hands at times. Don't get me wrong; I'm thankful for our military. If we didn't have a military and we didn't have a police, do you think any of us would feel safe from invasion?
I'm thankful for people that put their lives on the line and interdict themselves on our behalf to protect us and give us our freedoms. But at times, those people, even though it's justified by law, they have to take another person's life. It affects them emotionally because we were not designed by God to ever take the life of another human being. We just weren't. That's why we have so much mental illness and so much emotional stress and so much addictive behaviors in our culture, particularly in the military, and often in the police and people who have been on in a sense, those front lines. We need to pray for these people. They need our compassion because they are asked to do things that the average person would never be exposed to in their lives. And so we do get this wonderful gift of the removal of guilt and shame from our lives.
I remember as a child, this man coming and knocking at our door. My father, of course, was a pastor, and this man was just rough and gruff and not well kept. He sat down in our kitchen and dad sent me to my room. So I went halfway up the stairs so I could listen to what was happening. He told a story. He had been in World War ii; he was stationed in the Pacific. He was on one of the islands that we were capturing on our way to try and get to Japan. He was on a mission one night, and he came across six Japanese soldiers sitting around of campfire eating a bowl of rice. He had his machine gun and he shot all six of them. He was tormented from that day forward.
Perfectly legal. He was actually given medals. They would've killed him. They would've killed him if he hadn't have done it, given the chance. And yet he was in our kitchen in 1960, some 15 years after the war, tormented at what he had done. And could God ever forgive me? My dad was able to say, absolutely, absolutely there is healing for you. I'm not even sure he actually needed forgiveness in the, in the truest sense of the word, but he certainly needed healing in his mind and in his heart and his emotions.
Jesus came and was born in a manger to offer that to us as part of the redemptive story. Even when he was mocked and rejected and hated and killed, it didn't stifle one ounce of his grace towards us. Didn't he say on the cross, "Father, forgive them for they don't know what they do?" And so at Christmas, we need to enjoy the tender scene of the manger. I love manger scenes. I like it when we go by yards and I see a manger scene where Santa's kneeling at the manger. I might talk a little bit about that next week. I love that picture. I think the manger is one of the most tender sweet pictures that we can have in our minds. But it is also important that this holiday season for us to look beyond the manger and see what Jesus came here for.
It wasn't just so that we can party. Although I love to have Christmas parties. I love the party we had here yesterday. It was wonderful. But we can never just let that be the end. We have to let everything go beyond the party, beyond the gifts that we give to each other, which I love to do and I love to receive. I love the look on my grandchildren's face when they are about to open up a present. I love that. I love all of the things about Christmas. I love the lights. I love Christmas trees. I don't think Christmas trees are evil. I think it's wonderful. I think anything we do at Christmas to somehow remember the birth of Christ is a wonderful thing. But we can't just end at the manger. We have to go beyond, or as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story.
The rest of the story is that he came to die. He could have come and I said, as I said, lived a wonderful life and did all these miracles and touched people and made a good impression on everybody and left us with all this wonderful teaching. But without him being the substitute of the person who took our penalty, we would still have to have been the ones that the penalty was inflicted upon because we all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory. I don't mean to hinder your self-worth by this statement, but you know, y'all are lawbreakers. You've all broken the laws of God. And I am glad to stand with you or admit to that with you. I'm not glad I did that, but I'm thankful that I'm not in that category by myself. We are all law breakers and we all needed someone to come and pay our fine, someone to come and take our penalty for us. And that was Jesus. That was Jesus.
He died for you and me. He bore our sin. He purchased our salvation. In that salvation, he also guaranteed that he would work in our hearts to sanctify us. Because how many know that if all you do is pardon a law breaker without changing how they think, what are they going to do? Break the law. They are going to just go back and break the law, aren't they? So that's why we just can't pardon somebody who hasn't truly had a change of heart. God is no different. But hopefully as we view not just the baby and the manger, we view the sufferings of Christ and what he did for us, our hearts will be transformed and we will say, because of what you've done, I don't ever want to do what I've done ever again. There is sanctification that is embedded in the Christmas story of Jesus coming.
But he also destroyed the power of the enemy over us with his resurrection. The enemy is still powerful, but he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world. We have to keep reminding ourselves of that. Today, he is what I would call a very sympathetic high priest. We we are not part of the Catholic persuasion. But there are a lot of things in the Catholic persuasion I like. One of the things I like is confession. Do you think if a person went into the confessional and they confessed to the priest and the priest said, you did what, do you think that person would ever go back to the confessional? No. But they find a sympathetic priest. Today, we have a sympathetic high priest who live to make intercession for us. He's interceding for us today even as we speak at this very moment. Jesus is that high priest
I'm going to ask Pastor Jeff to come and just pray over this message. As he does, let's just this Christmas keep one eye on the manger and let one eye go to the cross because that's why he came to die.
Jeff: One eye on the manger; one eye in the cross. Most of you here today have received forgiveness. Many of us might still need healing. You may be on livestream watching for the first time and you've never even received forgiveness. But as Pastor Brian just shared, this baby in the manger came so that you could, and not just forgiveness, but wholeness as that vet dead sitting at your dad's kitchen table. Isn't that amazing? When Jesus enters your life, everything changes, everything.
We are just going to, together, invite him again because that encounter with Jesus isn't just a one-time thing. Is it? I need him today just as much as I did yesterday and I'll need him tomorrow just as much as I need him today. Because I still need his work of grace to forgive me when I fail and to make me whole, and I'm not there yet. So we are just going to receive it right now. What I'd like you to do, if you are here or even at home, you are welcome to just stand with me. We are going to combine a couple of prayers here today. We are going to receive the grace of God for ourselves to start, but then we have some really dear friends that we love, that we want to join our hands together and pray for today as well.
We got our sister Lori, who has been here singing. It's been so wonderful. She had a little relapse with her back, which is really not okay because Jesus healed her. It's not her fault, but we know the devil waits for a more opportune time and we don't want to let him get away with that, so we are going to pray for Lori today. Of course, we have to pray for our dear sister Deb, and continue to trust the Lord, to do the miracle in her life that she totally expects she does to happen. We want to pray for Butch because the word of the Lord to Butch was you shall live and not die. And we are going to continue to declare that over his life because when Jesus speaks, right Lou, he watches over his word to perform it.
I want to pray for Nikki. You've been struggling with a lot of leg pain, nerve pain. Maybe some of you can just gather around Nicki and we are going to lay hands on her and pray for her. Many of us need healing in some way, shape, or form, so let's receive it from the Lord today because he came in the manger and he left on the cross and he lives today to give us salvation in so many different ways that we need it.
Jesus, we open our hearts to you. There may be somebody with us today who has never, ever done this. If you are one of those, all you’ve got to do is say, Jesus, I open my heart to you. It's as simple as that. And he will flood in with his love. He will wash you clean. And Lord, many of us who have received that forgiveness and we understand your great mercy and we live in it every day, but still we need your healing. So this morning, as we stand together, hand in hand, we open our hearts to you and we ask you to keep doing your work of healing inside of us to make us whole.
Lord, there are things that we've done and things that have been done to us. And so many of us, we live with these things, but you are the one who brings wholeness, healing, comfort. We receive it now. Thank you, Jesus. We receive it now. Lord, for our friends who we love, who we know you love, for Deb, for Butch, for Lori, for Nikki, we just released the full measure of your goodness and the full measure of your power to them right now as we stand before you. We thank you, father, that your word does not come back void. You've spoken to each one of these. In fact, Lori gave us a tremendous testimony about the work that you did. We stand in that testimony, Lord, with her and for her because what you do is complete. It's never halfway. So we bless Lori, we bless Butch, we bless Deb, we bless Nikki with the fullness of your healing and your grace and your provision. In Jesus' name. Amen. You are so good. You are so good. We thank you. Pastor Brian?
Brian: I just want to clarify. If it sounded like I said there is no service next Sunday, that's not correct. Next Sunday, Bill Campbell will be with us and then Pastor Robert is going to be speaking on the 18th and then on Christmas day, we don't have a service here. We will be taking an offering for Bill next Sunday to help support the children's home in Uganda as well. So if you can come prepared to help with that, that would be great as well. Let's lift our hands together.
And now may the Lord bless you and may the Lord keep you. May the Lord make his faces shine upon you and be gracious to you. And may the Lord turn his face towards you and give you his peace. We pray this in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. God bless you. Jacque will be serving communion this morning for those who would like to have communion. We will have prayer teams at the altar for those of you who would like prayer today. God bless you. Thank you, all of you on livestream for tuning in as well. Have a wonderful day. Bye-bye.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 12-4-22. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.