Before It Becomes Murder | Foundations | Josh Leake

Come on, give it up for Serve Day coming up next month. This is one of those things that we would love everybody in the church to be involved with, pick up our towels like Jesus and serve our community. And so start thinking about how you can be involved in that next month. And let me welcome you to Allison Park Church. Everybody, it's great to have you here. My name is Josh and I'm the lead pastor here, which is the first official week that I can say that. It's crazy, but it's very exciting. Thank you. And let's also welcome our guide behind bars, Campus over in Somerset. We love you guys so much. Give it up for them. And we're starting a new series this week called Foundations. Everybody say Foundations. Foundations. So this series is gonna be based out of Matthew 7, where Jesus uses a illustration to wrap up one of his sermons. It's a very popular illustration that Christians and non-Christians generally know alike. So see if you know it, Matthew 7, verse 24 says this. Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew

and beat against that house. Yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand and the rain came down, the streams rose, the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell with a great crash. So again, Jesus wraps up probably his most famous sermon with this picture to say, if you put my words into practice, you hear them and put them into practice, you're building a strong foundation. So if you get your foundation wrong, everything else is threatened. Doesn't matter how structurally sound everything above it is. You can use the best materials possible when building a house. You can hire the most talented contractors, but if your foundation is weak, everything else is by default. So Jesus is again, using this at the end of a teaching, the Sermon on the Mount, and a lot of times, I think we don't always remember what comes before this. So we sing songs about this in church, about building our house on Jesus as the solid rock. But Jesus actually used this to say, if you put these words into practice, and he's referencing everything before it.

So over the next couple of weeks, we want to just look at, as disciples of Jesus, what are the things that he taught in the Sermon on the Mount leading up to this picture of building your house on the rock? We'll walk through it week by week here. And so the first week we're gonna look at here is about anger. So we'll give you a little tease here. We won't dive into the whole passage, just a little bit, and then later on, we'll dig into it. So if you wanna turn there in your Bibles, we're gonna turn to Matthew chapter five, or on your phone, we'll put it on the screen as well. But here's the first little snippet, a tease of what we'll look at. Matthew chapter five, verse 21. It says, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, you shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. So we're talking about anger, and this is almost a little bit of a confusing way to start, like a sharp way of saying, just for being angry, you're subject to judgment? Because anger feels so natural to us on a daily basis. There is so much to be angry about. Sometimes we're just irritable, and we are grumpy, and we have to deal with annoying classmates or coworkers,

sometimes on a daily basis, right? And we get angry. It feels like Jesus is saying, you're in danger of hell for being angry. That feels crazy. Or sometimes we have really difficult, painful people that we've tried to reconcile with. We've tried our best, and they just are obnoxious. It feels like no matter what we do, they just, you know, they bring the anger out of us. And then when we look at the world around us, you hop on the internet or you see a news headline, it feels like there is so much to be angry about that's happening in the world around us. And so much, so many of us in the room deal with anger on a daily basis. Some of us maybe an hourly basis, depending on who we're dealing with or what we come across. And if you wanna reveal the anger in us really quick, I think the way to do it for most of us in the room is put us in a car. You know what I'm saying? Anybody struggle with road rage in the room? I don't believe any of you. That is not true. You're all lying. I live on a busy road. So I live right next to McKnight Road, if you know where that is. And all day long, there's a lot of traffic there.

And you can tell. who's having a terrible day by how long they lay on the horn. So sometimes you just hear like, and this happens all day long, you hear, meep, and somebody got cut off and they're like, hey, don't do that. Every once in a while, Allie and I will be sitting outside and we'll hear, meep, and we'll like raise our eyes at each other. That person is letting the whole world know I'm having the worst day of my life. Like they're just, all of their anger is going right into that horn. We also, I was riding with my friend, Pastor Tim. He was just up here a second ago. We went to get breakfast the other day. We were cracking up because there was a guy, we saw him on the other side of the road. He got cut off by like a city bus. And he was so angry that his whole body was like pushing that so hard that he was like pushing himself into the seat. Like, and I shouldn't have been laughing, but we were cracking up, like just anger. It feels like everyone's anger in the car gets dialed up to 110%. Like everyone just automatically gets angry. I also remember when I was a kid, I really struggled with anger. So when I was about 11 years old,

I remember going into the bathroom and locking the door because I had just gotten grounded. I like didn't finish my homework. I was being lazy and I was so mad. This injustice, I locked the door and I just started lifting the sink. I was, I didn't think it would break. I was like, what's gonna happen? 11 year old Hulk just like popped it and it snapped the pipe. And so I had to save up to fix that. Is my mom in the room? I don't know if she remembers. I don't know if she is. She would remember that very well. Point is, anger is a very natural response that is so easy for us to get into. And it feels like what Jesus is saying here is if we're angry, we're subject to judgment. So we'll really dig into this in a second here. But before we dive into studying the rest of this passage, we've gotta understand the significance of this sermon, of this moment. Because this is a really significant one here. The Sermon on the Mount. For the rest of Matthew chapter five, Jesus kicking off this sermon, he teaches in chunks by saying what he just said, what we read, where he says, you have heard it said.

And then he says, but I tell you. So he's actually, when he says, you have heard it said, he's referencing back to over 1,000 years before where Moses, the guy who parted the Red Sea, he gave the Jewish people the 10 commandments and God's law. So when he's saying, you have heard it said, he's referencing back to that. And then he says, but I tell you, he's not contradicting what Moses had given from God. He's actually illuminating the greater heart and the true purpose behind the Mosaic law that was given that had sort of been lost over time as humans had kind of made it into what they wanted it to be. So now, and this is very cool, Jesus is being shown as, in this sermon, as the new Moses. Here's what this means. Moses, if you know that story, he was the hero of the Jewish people's founding story. So he rescued the Israelites from slavery at the hand of the Egyptians, and then he gave them God's law as he was leading them. So now Jesus, just like Moses, was the hero of Israel, and Moses saved God's people from slavery and then went up on a mountain to give God's law. Now Jesus is going up on a mountain and he's giving people God's law and he's saving people, not from Egyptian slavery, but from spiritual slavery to sin and death.

I think this is so cool how Jesus is the fulfillment of what Moses was pointing forward to. And so let's really dig into this passage here now. Matthew chapter five, verse 21. We'll start there again and then we'll go through the rest of it. Verse 21 says, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, you shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. So again, he's referencing back to the Mosaic law, actually to commandment number six, you shall not murder. And then, but I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Now, this word judgment, what it meant was justice from local authorities. Continuing on, again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, raka, which was this Aramaic word that means empty-headed. It's like you were insulting somebody's intelligence. He said, anyone who says raka is answerable to the court, which was like the Jewish Supreme Court. And then the last part, anyone who says you fool, which in American culture, you fool, that's like what a supervillain says in a monologue. You know what I'm saying? That's not what this means here. What it means, the phrase originally meant like a deeper insult to someone's integrity or their moral character. So anyone who says you fool.

will be in danger of the fire of hell, which is God's eternal justice for evil. So let's ask now what I think is the most pressing question here, which is, is Jesus really saying that if I'm angry or I act out of anger, it's a sin that puts me in danger of hell? That seems very intense. And here's the short answer that we'll expand upon is the answer is it can. Because there is a tendency for humans to focus on propping up and flaunting outward morality while excusing inward impurity. He called the religious leaders whitewashed tombs. Jesus, to their faces, imagine being a bystander in this moment, powerful, influential religious leaders, the Pharisees, and Jesus says to them, you're whitewashed tombs. And then he elaborates on that. Whitewashed tombs, you look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside, you're full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean, full of hypocrisy and wickedness. His point is, humans' tendencies is to focus on our outward morality, excuse our inward impurity. So here's an idea that will just frame the series for us. We'll put it on the screen. Building on Jesus's foundation means addressing more than external behaviors. We have to resist that tendency

to only focus on the external and to ignore or even excuse what's going on underneath. So back to the question then, is anger really that serious of a sin? How can it, when it's something that's so natural? So we gotta look at a couple different types of anger because there are different expressions of it. We'll look at three different ones. First of all, there's the anger that's just the short-lived internal emotional feeling that we let go of quickly. Okay, this is not a sin. When someone insults us, someone betrays us, something bad happens, and we have this reaction of this isn't right. We feel frustrated and it stays internal and then we let it go. That's not a sin. That's the first one. Second one is a reaction that bubbles up into something that we express verbally or physically. So this is when we get frustrated and we say, you idiot. Some of us may have done that this morning. You know, we just have a bad morning and it bubbles over and you say something you shouldn't. So that's the second one. The third one is anger that we hold onto and that we feed. This is what we call contempt. So it's disgust with somebody or insulting them, disdain towards them, disrespect, sarcasm.

It's treating somebody as beneath or deserving of scorn and insults. So the first one, again, the short-lived internal emotion that we let go of, that's not a sin. But what Jesus is warning us about is the other two. They harm our soul and they harm others. Jesus' point here is this, killing somebody and acting out of anger. That's the two things. He said, you've heard it said you shouldn't murder, but I say don't act out of anger. His point is not that they're the same thing, but they have the same root. So here, we'll put this on the screen. Here's the idea of the message. Murder is the final act of devaluing life, but Jesus confronts the first acts too. The first acts of devaluing life start with expressing anger and contempt. Jesus' point is murder actually starts in the heart with your attitude. So anger and contempt are the inward sinful roots of devaluing others. And while you may never commit the ultimate act of devaluing someone by taking their life, we all easily commit the inward sin of devaluing others through feeding anger or expressing contempt. We all have the tendency to easily excuse this inward impurity while staying religiously in bounds.

I'm following the 10 commandments, but Jesus' point is you can actually stay religiously in bounds and excuse the inward problems that are destroying you and your soul. So again, we have to be careful not to just look at the outward, but look at the inward. That's what building on Jesus' foundation is, putting what he said into practice. So let's make a couple observations now about Jesus' teaching. How do we put what he's talking about into practice in our daily lives? Because this is what he said at the end. If you want to build on a strong foundation, it's not just hearing it, it's putting it into practice. So how do we start to do this? Okay, first observation here. Number one, contempt for a person dishonors the God whose image they bear. So this is the very beginning of the Bible, Genesis 1, verse 27. It says this, God created. mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. So we see God's original good plan was to make male and female and to make them in his image. So what does this mean? It means every human is an image bearer that contains something sacred

because they were created in the image of God. This also means that feeding or expressing anger towards somebody doesn't just devalue that person, it directly dishonors the God who created them. So this is what Jesus is warning us about is you have to be careful about what you're feeding or you're expressing because it's more than just an emotion. You're actually dishonoring God when you allow that to be fed or expressed. This can be so challenging because seeing the image of God in somebody who drives you nuts is not easy. Try seeing the image of God in somebody who's chewing with their mouth open in front of you. It's like a cow. It's all you can see in front of you. It's one of my biggest pet peeves. Try seeing the image of God in somebody who still watches Survivor. I'm just kidding. I heard somebody, what, gasp. That's actually just a diss at my sister-in-law, Ann. She loves Survivor. Anybody love Survivor in the room? Okay. So I said that last night. No one raised their hand. Not a single person.

It was just Ann. And then afterwards, they come up to her and they were like, I really actually like Survivor. So I feel like Survivor fans don't like to represent in the room. That's totally fine. So okay, again, we're saying human life is made in the image of God. Taking the life of another is a violation of a sacred law that all humans know. Every human, no matter their background, no matter where they live, every human knows that taking a life is a violation of something sacred, that it's objectively wrong. Every human conscience knows this. And by the way, this is actually one of the strongest arguments for the existence of God. If you're into apologetics and those sort of debates, I find this fascinating. Why is it that all humans know that murder is objectively wrong? Some would say it's because society has just agreed that it's not good, it's not beneficial. Or some would say we've come to an evolved understanding where we realize that's just not beneficial for the collective. But those are subjective reasons. There is an objective understanding. C.S. Lewis is an author who actually writes about this idea.

There is a moral law that everyone agrees exists, but it makes no sense without a law giver. Because baked into our souls is an objective understanding that life is sacred. So to devalue or dishonor life through murder is a violation of what's sacred. But Jesus is extending that to show God's original heart, which murdering is not the only way to devalue life. When you feed anger and you feed contempt, whether you express that or it's an attitude that you hang onto, it's actually devaluing that person and the image of God in them, which is dishonoring to God. So this is the thing that Jesus is warning and encouraging us to pay attention to. There's a pastor that I love named Brian Jarrett who explains this so well. Here's what he said, you cannot honor God while dishonoring another image bearer. That's a theological contradiction. So inwardly feeding, outwardly expressing contempt or anger towards another human is devaluing the image of God within them, and it's dishonoring to God. Jesus is correcting how we see other people, especially difficult people. This is, by the way, one of the things that Jesus talked the most about was learning to love your enemies, learning to pray for difficult people, learning to extend goodwill and reconciliation towards those who don't deserve it.

So building on Jesus's foundation for our lives means we have to recognize our tendency towards feeding or expressing anger and contempt and starting to surrender that to God, which goes into the next observation here, number two. Anger hardens our hearts when we feed what we should surrender, when we hold onto it and we feed it. It's not something we just experience quickly and we let go. It's something that we express or we feed. It's dangerous to our soul. It actually distances us from God when we feed this. Sometimes we don't even realize it. But we see the distinction actually in the Bible between the short-lived anger and the anger that becomes sin or contempt. In Ephesians four, here's what it says. In your anger, look at this, do not sin. Meaning you can be angry and not sin. in, but you can't feed it or express it. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry. So the short-lived inward feeling of anger is not the problem, it's what you feed and it's what you express. So let me just give you a push as your pastor now. Be very careful of the things that feed your anger because the media world profits and makes money off of stoking your anger. It's not an accident that the things

that are getting the most attention are things that feed that anger and they get us addicted and they keep us coming back. And if you just look at the wording of the videos that are popular or the headlines, it sort of clues you into what they're trying to feed you. So you'll see titles like, watch this person you already disagree with get absolutely destroyed by facts. You ever seen something like that? I've never clicked anything like that before. And then you'll see one that's like, you won't believe how wrong this stranger is. Like, I gotta see that, right? These are the things that they're feeding us and it feeds us these feelings of disdain, frustration, anger, disgust, and it gives us this sort of superiority feeling. I think every single one of us can easily fall into this because the system is designed to learn you and to feed you what will keep you coming back. And it feeds contempt, feelings of superiority, resentment, disgust, and without realizing it, this contempt, anger can actually harden our heart to God. So here's an exercise for you. In the next week, as you open your phone or you look at headlines, whatever it is, ask yourself, what are they trying to feed me? Because there's always something that's trying to keep you coming back.

So we have to be aware of feeding our anger and our contempt is dangerous to our soul because we can easily consider ourselves above the line of being good. I'm doing all of the right things and inwardly we're feeding something sinful and we're hardening our heart to God without even realizing it. So if what we see around us, if it grieves us and we pray and it causes us to love others more, it causes us to spend more time crying out to God and spending more time in the word, that's great. But so often this is not what happens. It corrodes us and it causes us to become more callous and more frustrated and more bitter. So Jesus is trying to get us to focus on who is the person you're becoming. We get so focused on the world out there that we don't pay attention to who God is forming us into. So before we get to the final one, let's just finish out this passage together. Matthew chapter five, verse 23, before we go to our final observation here. It says, therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them, then come and offer your gift. So Jesus is saying, worship to God

is not just come and bring something to him. He actually wants you to stop doing that and go and be reconciled if you remember something. And then this next passage, we'll go through 25 through the end. This is all an illustration to say, do not let anger grow. Look at this, he says, settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way or your adversary may hand you over to the judge. And the judge may hand you over to the officer and you may be thrown into prison. And truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny. What's his point is, if you let anger grow, there are consequences to your soul and to who you're becoming. So cut it off quick, don't feed it. Don't allow yourself to express it. When you do express it, take responsibility, reconcile. This is point number three here. Third observation, reconciliation is a part of worship because a loving God can't be detached from loving people. Again, it's a theological contradiction because part of worshiping God is celebrating the peace that we have with him. It's recognizing that we could never be in right standing with God on our own. We were all corrupted by sin, disobedience, but Jesus through the cross made a way for us

to be in right standing, to have hope, to have a future. And now we have peace with God. So when we're coming into God's presence and worshiping him, we're celebrating that peace that we don't deserve with God. So Jesus is saying, listen, if you try to celebrate your peace with God while refusing it to somebody else, That is the hypocrisy that will destroy you. When he's warning about separation from God and hell, it's about this tendency to do outward things and excuse what's going on underneath. So building on the Jesus Foundation is understanding how much reconciliation with others matters to God. And for some of you, the Holy Spirit is speaking to you about a specific person. They're coming to mind that you need to talk with or reconcile with. And for others of you, you have someone that you can't or should not approach because of how intense the situation is, but still you have been inwardly feeding this feeling of anger or contempt. And we do need godly counsel to know the difference between those, when we should approach and when we shouldn't. But even when we can't approach somebody, we can still inwardly forgive and release them and pray for those people. And this is actually a form of worship to God,

is to seek reconciliation, even inwardly when we can't approach them. It's a sacrifice of worship because we're doing it to honor him, even when it's painful or we don't want to, or it's difficult. And there are many of you, I've been praying this throughout, getting ready for this weekend. There's many of you, you've been unable to let go of the anger that you've been clutching to, maybe for years. And God is now calling you to release it and to begin to forgive. Reconciliation always starts with remembering that you and I did not deserve God's forgiveness. We didn't deserve it, we couldn't earn it, we were hopeless. But God forgives our debt of sin freely when we surrender to him. There's a story that a woman named Corrie Ten Boom shared, and Corrie was a Dutch Christian woman. Her family hid Jewish people during the Holocaust from Nazis. And eventually, Corrie's family was discovered for doing this, and they sent the family to concentration camps. And Corrie survived, but her sister Betsy was killed in the concentration camp. It was called Ravensbruck.

So after the war was over, Corrie traveled around the world and taught about the forgiveness and love of Jesus. And one day, after she was speaking on forgiveness in Germany, she came face to face with one of the former guards at Ravensbruck, which was the camp where her sister was killed. So I wanna read you her words of this experience as she saw this guard. Here's what she said. That's when I saw him working his way forward against the others. One moment, I saw the overcoat and the brown hat, and the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones. And it came back with a rush. The huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister's frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. This man had been a guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp where we were sent. And now he was in front of me, hand thrust out and said a fine message. How good it is to know that as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea. He would not remember me, of course. How could he remember one prisoner

among those thousands of women? But I remembered him. It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze. You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk, he was saying. I was a guard in there. No, he did not remember me. But since that time, he went on, I've become a Christian. And I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Again, his hand came out. Will you forgive me? And as I stood there, I, whose sins needed to be forgiven every day, I could not. Betsy, my sister, had died in that place. And could he erase her slow, terrible death simply for the asking? It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me, it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do. For I had to do it, I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition, that we forgive those who have injured us. If you do not forgive men their trespasses, Jesus says, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.

And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion, I knew that. Forgiveness is an act of the will. And the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. Jesus, help me, I prayed silently. I can lift my hand. I can do that much, you supply the feeling. And so, woodenly and mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, and it raced down my arm, and it sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. I forgive you, brother, I cried with all my heart. And for a long moment, we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then. Isn't that beautiful? Reconciliation is often difficult and painful and costly, but we extend reconciliation to others because God extended it to us through the most costly means possible. The son, the death of his son, Jesus, on the cross, paid the ultimate price. And the way many of us were raised is that murderers are in danger of the fire of hell, but as long as you try your best to be a good person,

you'll go to heaven. Jesus actually reverses this idea. He says, you are actually in danger of eternal separation from God when your heart inwardly becomes hard through sin. And there are people whose society considers good that will end up separated from God in hell because inwardly, their hearts were hard against God through sin. And likewise, there are people who have committed murder that will end up in heaven because they pleaded with God as their savior for forgiveness. So I wanna say to you, especially those of you in the room, that you are far from God. Maybe you've never surrendered your life to him, but you feel him calling to you. Don't fall into the trap of thinking like society does in terms of good people and bad people, because what happens is that you can do the very thing that Jesus warned about. You can consider yourself above the good enough line, and yet inwardly, you can have a heart that is hardened by sin. When you start to understand the truth of reality and humanity, you understand that every single one of us needs forgiveness. All of us are sinners, that's it. None of us could ever get above the line of being good enough on our own.

There's no way to do that. So there are sinners, and then there are sinners who've been saved by the grace of God. This is why Jesus came to earth. He came to rescue us from slavery to sin and death. And when you call on the name of Jesus, when you put your faith in them, he gives you new life. And so I wanna say, I've got good news. If you feel far from God this morning, if you feel lost, or if you're feeling worthless, if you feel too far gone, you've gotta know Jesus has not given up on you. You are not too far gone for Jesus. So this morning, I'm gonna give you that opportunity to give your life. He wants you to know you are not a mistake. You are not an accident. There's more to life than what we see here. This is actually the whole point too of building your life on a solid foundation. Because most people spend their time building a foundation that could be destroyed in an instant. Spend your life building on a foundation of pleasure, or a foundation of your career, or your finances, or your kids, or a relationship. And then when the storms of life come, everything's gone. Life has lost its meaning. Part of what Jesus calls out to us to do is to see there is more to life than what's right in front of you.

You are not the center, you're not the main character, but you have a heavenly father who loves you so much that he knew that you could never climb out of the pit of sin on your own. That he sent his son, Jesus, to absorb the cost of our sin on the cross so that you and I can be made new and experience not just eternal life in heaven, but new life here on this earth. You'll experience peace and joy and hope like you never have before. This is what it means to follow Jesus. And so can we close our eyes, bow our heads together. If you're in the room, you're far from Jesus, and you know in your heart, I need to make the decision to follow him. I wanna give you the opportunity to do that. When I count to three, I want you to raise your hand. Why do I have you do that? When you're making a decision that's about your eternity, it's important to not just have it be a silent, I thought it in my head and I moved on. No, we gotta have it be a silent. Be bold about this, right? Jesus gave his life for you. So if you're in the room and you're saying, I know that's me, I'm done trying to build my own foundation and live my way and I need Jesus to save me, I need him to give me a hope and a future. Listen, when I count to three, I want you to be bold.

Okay, don't worry about it when anybody else in the room thinks, right? That's not gonna matter at the end of the day. This is you and God and making this decision is the most important decision you'll ever make. So when I count to three, be bold, raise your hand. Ready? One, two, three, say, yeah, that's me. Awesome, yeah. Stretch it out to say, Jesus, thank you for choosing me. Thank you for dying for me. Lord, now I give my life to you. That's beautiful. You can put your hands down. And all together, let's pray a prayer of commitment to Jesus together as a church. Repeat after me, say, dear Jesus, thank you for dying on that cross. Thank you for suffering in my place. Jesus, I need your forgiveness. I need you to change me, transform me on the inside. Now I surrender my life to you. Lord, I pray, let me experience your love. Let me experience your hope. Let me experience your joy as I surrender to you. In Jesus' name, everybody said together this morning, amen, amen. Come on, give it up for those that made that decision. That's awesome. And now we're gonna get ready to take communion together.

And if you did raise your hand for the first time, or maybe you're coming back to Jesus, you've been away, we would love to meet you. I would love to meet you personally. So we have an area right back here. One of our pastors, Pastor Matt, is back there waving his hand. Right outside those doors is an area we call our Salvation Center. We got a couple of tables and resources. We would love to meet you. Shake your hand and give you some resources so you can take some next steps. So as soon as his service is over, I'll be out there, stop by. But here's what we'll do. To take part in communion in this part of the service, you don't have to be a member here, you don't even have to attend here. The only requirement for this moment is that you have surrendered your heart to Jesus and have made him your king. If you have not done that, you can just let the trays pass you by. So what we'll do now is the team's gonna sing, they'll distribute the elements, and then I'll be back out in just a minute to lead us in communion. ♪ I will trust in you ♪ ♪ For you know just what to do ♪

♪ In my weakness you are strong, Lord, you are strong ♪ ♪ You are strong, I will trust in you ♪ ♪ For you know just what to do ♪ ♪ In my weakness you are strong, Lord, you are strong ♪ ♪ Oh, I will trust in you ♪ ♪ For you know just what to do ♪ ♪ In my weakness you are strong, God, you are strong ♪ ♪ I will trust in you ♪ ♪ For you know just what to do ♪ ♪ In my weakness you are strong, God, I will trust you ♪ ♪ I will trust in you ♪ ♪ For you know just what to do ♪ ♪ In my weakness you are strong, God, you are strong ♪ ♪ You are strong, I will trust in you ♪ ♪ For you know just what to do ♪ ♪ In my weakness you are strong, God, for you are God ♪ ♪ Ever faithful, you are love, no one like you, I adore you ♪ ♪ Above, more than able, solid rock, God of the impossible ♪ ♪ For you are God, ever faithful, you are love, no one like you, I adore you ♪ ♪ High above, more than able, solid rock, God of the impossible ♪ Can we sing, I will trust in you? Come on, put your trust in me as we sing it. ♪ Oh, I will trust in you ♪ ♪ For you know just what to do ♪ ♪ In my weakness, you are strong, Lord ♪ ♪ You are strong, oh, I will trust in you ♪ ♪ For you know just what to do ♪ ♪ In my weakness, you are strong, Lord ♪ ♪ You are strong, oh, I will trust in you ♪ So now as we're holding these elements together,

we're remembering before we ever go out and approach reconciliation with other people and forgiveness and all of that, we're remembering that it stems from this moment right here, where we could never be right with God on our own, but Jesus loved us so much and he saw us, that he gave his life in our place so that you and I have hope and peace in a future, all because of what Jesus did. So would you now take the bread in your hands and hold it up now as we'll just pray together. So Lord, we remember what you endured on that cross as the nails went through your hands and feet, as you were beaten and bruised and bloodied, you suffered, your body was broken in our place. We say thank you, Jesus, for what you endured because you loved us and because you wanted us to be able to be in right standing with you. Lord, we thank you so much for what you gave up, that you gave your life so we could know you. We say thank you, Jesus, in your name we pray, amen. Let's take the bread together. Now hold up the cup like this and let's pray. Lord, we thank you, this cup represents your blood, which you shed on that cross. And it also represents the forgiveness of sins that comes not through our effort, not through our begging, but it's the finality of the final sacrifice when you died. So now we can be free in the name of Jesus Christ. So we remind ourselves today that we are free,

that we are not bound to our sin, even stuff that's happened this past week, where we've been feeling shame, where we've been feeling bound. We remember it's the blood of Jesus that sets us free. We don't have to live under darkness. We don't have to live under anxiety. We don't have to live under sin or what other people have said about us. We remember that because of the blood of Jesus, we are a child of God. Lord, we say thank you for your forgiveness, for your love, for your covenant you made with us through your blood in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Let's take the cup. Amen. Yeah, now just stretch forth your hand like this. Let me pray a prayer of blessing over you before we go. I pray that this week, that as you trust God, that he would give you peace and wisdom as you approach releasing anger, as you approach reconciliation, that you would feel a lightness in your step as you lean on him, that things that other people maybe even think should feel heavy, you'll just begin to feel a burden lifted off your shoulders as you trust in Jesus, as you surrender to him, as you dig into his word, that you'll begin to sense the voice of the spirit

leading you. I pray his blessing upon you, his grace upon you and your family. In Jesus' name we pray. Everybody said amen and amen. Awesome. Thanks for being here, guys. Hey, a couple of quick things before you step out. First of all, we have next steps happening right by the sliding glass door. So if you are newer to the church and you don't really know anybody and you're not plugged in anywhere, stop by there so you can just start to see what we have. It's not a commitment, but you can just see what's available. Stop by. If you gave your life to Jesus this week or in the past couple of weeks, I'm gonna head back there. Would love to meet you. And every time we do communion, we have food to try to be together as a church family. This is a really big part of what it means to be united together as a church. So grab some pizza. We got pizza out there. Talk to somebody you don't know. Thanks for being here. Have a great weekend, guys.