How Does Jesus Send Us Out? And Why?

[0:00] We hope that you enjoy this teaching from Christ Church. This material is copyrighted and no unauthorized duplication, redistribution, or any other use of any part is permitted without prior consent from Christ Church.

[0:15] Please consider donating to this work in the San Francisco Bay Area online at ChristChurchEastBay.org. Good morning, my name is Melissa Orsoniega, and I'm part of the El Cerrito Kensington Community Group and Oikos Group, and I'm a deacon.

[0:39] Today's scripture reading is from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 10, verses 1 to 20, as printed in your liturgy. A reading from the Gospel according to Luke.

[0:50] After this, the Lord appointed 72 others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.

[1:04] Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go, I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals, and do not greet anyone on the road.

[1:20] When you enter a house, first say, Peace to this house. If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them. If not, it will return to you.

[1:33] Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house. When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is offered to you.

[1:46] Heal the sick who are there, and tell them, The kingdom of God has come near to you. But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, Even the dust of your town we wipe from our feet as a warning to you.

[2:03] Yet be sure of this. The kingdom of God has come near. I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town. Woe to you, Chorazin.

[2:16] Woe to you, Bethsaida. For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.

[2:30] But it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades.

[2:42] Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me. But whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me. The 72 returned with joy and said, Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.

[2:58] He replied, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy.

[3:12] Nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. This is the gospel of the Lord.

[3:25] Praise to you, Lord Christ. Well, let's go to the Lord in prayer as we open up his word. Father, we want to hear from you.

[3:38] We want to receive your gracious invitation to follow the ways of Jesus. And we also want to heed your challenge to us, to deny ourselves and take up our crosses and follow him wherever he leads, knowing that he's our good shepherd and he only leads us to green pastures, even though we might walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

[4:01] Help us to trust you. For your son has shown us that he is trustworthy. So would we behold him this morning in the preaching of your word. In Jesus' name, amen.

[4:12] Amen. You know, a few years ago, I'm not exactly sure when, but my wife and I, we were actually at Kylie and Jensen's house, the Aang's household, and I'm not sure why.

[4:26] I think we were picking up Lindsay or Aaron, maybe both of them, to go to some church thing. I don't remember the details at all, so why am I telling you the story, right? But I don't remember those details, but what I do remember distinctly is as Lindsay, or maybe both of them, were hopping into our van, as they were leaving the house, I distinctly remember Jensen raising his hands toward his daughters and saying, the Lord be with you.

[4:52] Just like we say here, every single week before communion, he said, the Lord be with you, like he was sending his daughters out of his home with a blessing, and to be a blessing. And that made such an impression on me that I try to do the same thing now with my girls in our home when we're getting them out of the house, every morning off to school or to whoever they need to go, I say, I love you, and then I say, go in the name of Jesus to love and serve this world, right?

[5:20] And I've trained them to say, thanks be to God, right? Just like we do here, every Sunday, you hear me and Jonathan say this, every Sunday, go in the name of Jesus to love and serve this world. We call this what?

[5:30] We call this the benediction, right? The benediction, this idea that yes, we gather to worship and to commune with one another and to commune with God, but we don't just gather to gather, we gather to be nourished for when we scatter.

[5:42] The benediction, this closing exhortation to go in the name of Jesus to love and serve the world is a reminder that we gather in order to scatter. Every Sunday, we speak God's words of blessing and benediction over you to remind you that you are ambassadors and representatives of the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

[6:00] We're wanting to be intentional. We're wanting to say, that's what our worship is for. It's not an end in itself. It's for us to go out and love and serve this world. So thank you, Jensen, one of our deacons, for sharing this practice with my family because, you know, I so want my girls to be going out of our home and into the world, not just to do what they gotta do, right?

[6:20] Not just to jump right back in to the rat race to fulfill their academic and extracurricular obligations. No, I want to be a family on mission, a family on God's divine mission, a family that goes out of our home with clarity in our minds and clarity in our hearts that we've been sent by God to fulfill His purposes for us and for His world.

[6:43] And, you know, I share all this because I think for so many of us, we live more by society's distracted default than by God's deliberate design. I think the temptation for so many of us, me and my family included, is just to get out of the house for either self-preserving survival or, if we're a little bit more privileged, for self-defined success.

[7:06] I really think that that's the default most of us live by, self-preserving survival and or self-defined success. For so many of us, our first thought in the morning as we get out of bed, hop into our cars, it isn't, what is God sending me out into the world to do?

[7:21] How can I be God's workmanship, His masterpiece today? What are the good works He's prepared in advance for me to do to bless the world today? No, for far too many of us, our first thoughts are probably more like, how can I keep my head above the water today?

[7:37] Right? Or maybe, for the more privileged of us, again, it's like, all right, what's the next step I'm gonna take in my empire building endeavors, right?

[7:48] For so many of us, we send ourselves out, we send ourselves out into the world pursuing self-preserving survival or self-defined success. But what God's word has to say to us this morning is that Jesus calls His followers to something better, something higher, higher than self-preserving survival, higher than self-defined success.

[8:08] If you are a follower of Jesus, you are called to self-giving, spirit-filled service. If you are a Christian, if you confess that Jesus is your Messiah, your Maker, your Lord, and your Savior, King, God's word to you today is that we aren't just called up and in to a relationship with God and His kingdom, but we are called out to go in the name of Jesus to love and serve this world.

[8:32] So today we're in chapter 10 of Luke's Gospel, and you know, for the first eight chapters of Luke's Gospel, the question that he's trying to answer is, who is Jesus and what can He do? Who is Jesus and what can He do?

[8:44] But starting in chapter 9, which we looked at last week, we find Luke shifting the focus from who is Jesus and what can He do to how then shall we live? If Jesus really is the Messiah who heals the sick and casts out demons as the Son of God, as the true King of the entire world, how then shall we live?

[9:03] So last week, Jonathan, he opened up chapter 9 for us and we heard Jesus challenge His followers saying, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

[9:13] Basically, if Jesus is the Messiah, King and God's Son, then we should be His disciples, His followers, His diehard entourage, following Him in every aspect of our lives, even taking up our crosses and denying ourselves for His sake and for His agenda, just like He did for us.

[9:29] But now today, we're in Luke chapter 10, and what we'll see today is that being a disciple isn't just about following Jesus as a student follows a rabbi, but it's also about being sent out by Jesus as an ambassador, as a representative of the King.

[9:44] We're not to gather into this little insular enclave of religious disciples who just stick to ourselves and hope people will come in to join us and join our tribe. No, Jesus sends us all out as His disciples.

[9:56] And the key word is all, not just some of us. He sends us all out. Look with me at verse 1. After this, the Lord Jesus appointed 72 others and sent them two by two ahead of Him to every town and place where He was about to go.

[10:11] Now, in case you're wondering what this after this refers to, it refers to chapter 9 where Jesus first sent out the 12, right? The famous 12. Jesus says to them in chapter 9, verse 1, He gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and heal the sick.

[10:27] But in case some of us might be tempted to think, well, of course, they're the 12 apostles. Of course they were sent because that's the clergy's job to be sent out by Jesus as His ambassadors to preach and to heal and to cast out demons in case we're thinking that Jesus only sends some of His disciples out.

[10:43] Our passage this morning tells us otherwise. Jesus sends out another 72. And this number 72 indicates fullness. It's the same number of all the nations that were established after the flood through the sons of Noah, Ham, Shem, and Japheth.

[10:57] It's also the same number of elders that God appointed to help Moses lead the people of Israel in the wilderness. The same number of elders that God anointed with His Spirit to empower them to go do all the work that needed to be done in addition to all that Moses was able to do.

[11:12] Jesus is leading a new and better exodus here as He's sending out these 72. And yes, He's the central figure. He's the Messiah. But He's also a king who delegates His authority and involves His people in the marvelous work of His Holy Spirit.

[11:28] So this is what Jesus is doing here. He's sending out not just the 12 but an extra 72. We don't even know their names but they go out just like the 12 preparing every town and place for the coming of the Messiah and announcing to each town that the kingdom is near.

[11:42] Now we're gonna go through this passage from verse 2 all the way to verse 20. And while Jesus' words here are specifically to this group of 72 and not explicitly to us living here in 2025.

[11:53] There are many things to glean and to notice and to apply as Jesus' disciples living today in the 21st century. And I hope to pause and bring these things out as we go.

[12:04] So let's start with verse 2. Look at Jesus' first words to these 72 disciples in verse 2. It's not, it's not, listen, it's not, hey, go and be super eloquent.

[12:16] Go and work hard and do your best and remember everything I taught you because this is a really important job and hey, good luck out there. No. He says the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.

[12:28] Ask the Lord of the harvest therefore to send out workers into his harvest. And this is the first thing about being sent. It's not a maybe mission, all right? It's a guaranteed one.

[12:39] Jesus is sending them into a field where they're already guaranteed to be successful. The harvest is plentiful, he says. And this is a word for us to those of us who are hesitant to go out and to boldly engage the world in the name of Jesus.

[12:54] To those of us who are hesitant to share with our coworkers and our peers and our colleagues how Jesus inspires us towards excellence and non-anxiousness and graciousness in the workplace and in the classroom.

[13:04] To those of us who still haven't mustered the courage to invite our friends to Alpha or to tell them why we love following Jesus as our Lord so much and why we highly recommend it. To those of us who think that no one could possibly believe this Christianity thing.

[13:19] To those of us who believe that everyone's just going to be hostile to us, everyone's going to be uninterested and think we're crazy, Jesus reminds us the harvest is plentiful.

[13:30] That there are people outside these walls starving for some good news and eager to be harvested and brought into the family of God. Do we realize that there are outside these walls prodigals all the way out there tired of their muddy pigsties?

[13:48] Jesus says that the soil has already been prepared. We just need to go and discover it. Also notice here in verse 2 Jesus' word to them is not to be diligent but to be dependent.

[14:01] The first thing he tells them to do is what? To pray. To ask the Lord to produce more workers for the plentiful harvest field. He's already putting multiplication into their minds. He's sending these 72 out to go and roll and grow a snowball of more and more disciples into his kingdom.

[14:17] Now this plentiful harvest it doesn't mean that their road is going to be smooth and safe and easy and that they're going to be met with acceptance completely at every turn. Jesus continues in verse 3 and he says go I am sending you out like lambs among wolves.

[14:33] Jesus is fully acknowledging that there is a vulnerability that we will experience when we go as his sent ambassadors. And not everyone is going to be sympathetic to the kingdom of Jesus Christ particularly those whose empires are doing just fine dominating the rest of the world.

[14:50] But Jesus calls us lambs but when he calls us lambs it's also meant to highlight our dependence on him as our good shepherd. He's the one who's going to protect us. He's the one that we can follow even in the midst of wolves who might push back and who might even bite.

[15:06] And for us living on this side of the cross and the resurrection we know Jesus has already proven this to be true. At the end of the story the lamb triumphs over the wolves even if it involves the suffering and the slaying of the lamb.

[15:20] And this is all the more reason for us to go out and to make Jesus known there is no better story there's no better king there's no better kingdom the king who is both a lion and a lamb you can't make this stuff up it's the greatest story of all time.

[15:33] He offers us a kingdom where you don't have to be a wolf to win. We have incredible news to share with the world. The next thing Jesus says to the 72 in verse 4 is do not take a purse or bag or sandals and do not greet anyone on the road.

[15:50] What he's telling them is to be completely single minded and to have absolute clarity about their mission and the mission is this it's to speak and offer God's peace it's to speak and offer God's shalom to anyone who is willing to accept it.

[16:03] Look what he says in verses 5 to 7 when you enter a house first say peace to this house if someone who promotes peace is there your peace will rest on them if not it will return to you stay there eating and drinking whatever they give you for the worker deserves his wages do not move around from house to house you know I think so many of us we get anxious about engaging others even our friends even our families even these colleagues that we see every day even our neighbors we get so anxious when we talk about engaging them and talking to them about Jesus because we think of these missionary encounters as battles and arguments to be won and we think of these people as opponents to be persuaded but look Jesus doesn't tell us to go and win arguments or to go and make converts Jesus is simply telling us to speak his shalom his peace this is the person of peace principle he doesn't say go and convert go and proselytize he says go and speak peace so the question really is why wouldn't we want that why wouldn't we want the shalom of God for every person we encounter do we not believe that we have the best thing the best person in the world to offer everyone we come across in Jesus Christ it's not up to us to change people's hearts

[17:23] God does that but like loving like a loving father wanting to involve his children into his work to know his joy and to be a part of the process he invites us to invite others to experience his peace his shalom the wholeness that every broken person desires healing for the hurting the wounded and the afflicted honor and glory for those who are filled with shame justification and forgiveness for those who are filled with guilt satisfaction and security for those who are hungry everything we love about Jesus and what he's done in our lives and what he promises to us this imperishable imperishable inheritance hope that cannot be stolen grace upon grace fresh new mercies every morning a peaceful purposeful way to follow abundant eternal resurrection life communion with the living God the maker of our souls Christians we've got the goods we've got the goods and how dare we not share them with the world as Christ's representatives there are tons of people out there tons of people out there and Jesus is saying these people are eager to receive this peace that we have in Christ so eager for it that they will feed us and care for us and support us as we share it with them and others we're simply called to go to take our sentness seriously and really just just be human and love others

[18:51] I love how the first thing Jesus tells them to do when they're welcomed into a town in verse 8 is to just eat eat what is offered to you it's so basic it's so human it's so organic just go and see who will accept you and your message and then stay with them and eat with them and love them and be human toward them verse 9 heal the sick who are there and tell them the kingdom of God has come near to you bind up their wounds care for their bodies as much as for their souls just love them and make it clear to them that whatever peace and healing that they experience because of Christ in you amongst them that that is a sign of the kingdom of God breaking into their lives breaking into history coming near to people who for far too long have been afflicted by alternative kingdoms of darkness and you know there's a ton I would love to say here about healing and how we go and do that I think for some of us we hear this and we're like alright well I'm gonna pursue the gift of healing and you know we can over spiritualize it and turn healing into some kind of religious formula where if you get the rightly worded prayer and just the right amount of faith you get healing that's the equation right whether spiritual mental emotional social economic or physical that's what it takes to get healing right that religious formula and then for others of us we can kind of under spiritualize this and seek people's healing just through pragmatic formulas take your medicine get your exercise eat right see a therapist see a doctor and then you'll be healed hopefully right but what I want to say is that we should always be seeking people's healing of every sort and we should seek it by every God ordained means possible so how this works in my own family in our house is like when my girls are sick they have a headache a cold

[20:36] Leah had a canker sore this week what I do is I remind them that God doesn't ultimately want them to be sick and hurting I remind them that God can heal them instantly if he wants to and that Jesus promises to heal them eventually even if not immediately because he's coming to make all things new that they can take to the bank and then what I do is I pray for them and I ask God to show them his love and his power by removing their sickness and removing their pain and we thank God for his assurance that even if not now their sickness will be removed by the power of Jesus and I make them take their medicine and drink their water and go to sleep and listen to me and mommy because we always know best right and when my daughters are healed and they always are I make sure to remind them that whether it was the medicine or the prayer or both we can't ultimately know I make sure they know it was God who healed them just the other day my youngest again Leah she had a canker sore and she was whining about it and I prayed over it with her and the next day when it was gone as I expected it to be she didn't say daddy it finally went away because we all know canker sores don't last forever no she said daddy God healed my mouth and she wasn't lying she wasn't lying because even if she was healed by the natural process of her body who made that natural process and is that natural process not also supernatural because it is held together by the hand who made and sustains all things

[22:12] I want my girls to have an enchanted view of the world an enchanted view of reality rather than a godless purely materialistic view of the world and I also want us to be a church that has an enchanted view of the world and that goes forth in the name of Jesus in faith and in boldness for the healing of all things even the most broken things that we have a hard time believing can be healed our neighbors our communities our colleagues our friends our systems and institutions as well we are not fools to seek this from the Lord to beg him for this during the prayers of the people and to lay hands on people and to believe that God can do things right now to call the elders to anoint people with oil to seek people's health and wellness our God loves to write unbelievable testimonies of his power he raised Christ from the dead so even for those illnesses and afflictions and areas of brokenness that seem impossible to heal your cancer your debilitating back pain your marital challenges your mental health disorders your anxiety your crippling depression systemic injustice homelessness poverty and addiction there is nothing too hard for the hand of God and Jesus himself said very truly

[23:39] I tell you whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing and they will do even greater things than these because I am going to the Father and I will do whatever you ask in my name so that the Father may be glorified in the Son you may ask me for anything in my name and I will do it this is God's word and promise to his ambassadors we are invited to bring him glory and to pursue the wholeness and the health of those around us because God wants this world to be healed and he is at work toward that end even if we can't see it we simply are invited to participate and to point people to this kingdom that Christ wants them to experience this kingdom of light and health and wholeness now for the sake of time I am going to have to go more quickly through verses 10-16 and in these verses Jesus basically lets these 72 know that hey not everyone is going to be receptive though and I want you to notice how he doesn't tell us to push the issue or to linger in argumentation or to condemn and curse these places and people who aren't receptive no he makes it very clear that judgment is in the hands of the Lord and all are going to be held accountable before him those who have been exposed to Christ and the power of his kingdom and yet do not welcome him and his messengers

[24:56] Jesus says they are on the path to death rather than life and it will be more bearable even for what the Jewish people consider to be the most sinful cities Sodom and Tyre and Sidon because according to Jesus the worst thing you could do is not simply break God's laws but break God's heart by rejecting his one and only beloved son and by denying his authority and power so Jesus says to Chorazin and Bethsaida and Capernaum all these towns where he performed tons of miracles yet all these towns that did not fully receive and embrace him he says to them woe to you woe to you which is not a curse listen woe to you is not a curse woe doesn't mean curse you it's an expression of sadness and distress and grief and regret on behalf of others it's incredible empathy and broken hearted compassion that Jesus feels here this is what Jesus feels for everyone who is far from him and this is also why we his followers must go out to those who he sends us to how can we not have this same broken heartedness for those who have yet to welcome Jesus into their lives the stakes of not embracing Christ are high judgment is real and if people reject the one who is the resurrection and the life if they reject their maker and their sustainer only rejection and death are left for them that's why Jesus says in verse 16 whoever listens to you listens to me whoever rejects you rejects me but whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me this is the word of the Lord alright so now you've just listened to me talk for almost 25 minutes about what it means and what it looks like to be sent out by Jesus it's not being anxious it's not being awkward it's not being argumentative it's being human it's visiting people with compassion and love and goodwill in our hearts it's eating with them and offering the shalom of God to them and bringing them healing and announcing that all of this is a sign of God's way better kingdom and my question is really what's the downside then of going out in the name of Jesus to love and serve this world what's the worst case scenario and even if you can't imagine it being pretty bad how does that downside compare to the upside look at verse 17 just as Jesus predicted the 72 returned with joy and said

[27:30] Lord even the demons submit to us in your name so they've come back and the harvest was indeed plentiful just as Jesus said and they're filled with joy because they've gotten to go to work with daddy and do the big boy big girl things that make an eternal impact on the world and even the demonic spiritual forces that they once feared they've discovered that these powers have less authority than they thought that they in Christ have far more authority than them and their faith and their joy and their excitement have only grown because they take their sentness from Jesus seriously and Jesus celebrates with them and confirms their authority and their success verse 18 Jesus replied I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven yes guys I'm aware of your wins on the spiritual battlefield verse 19 I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy nothing will harm you but look at what Jesus tags on to all this at the end in verse 20 however do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you but rejoice that your names are written in heaven and do you know what Jesus is saying here do you know what Jesus is doing right here he's saying yes guys great

[28:46] I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven as you went out in my authority to battle the demons but guys I also saw Satan the prideful arrogant power hungry one fall like lightning from heaven and you must beware of the same you see hopefully we've come to the end of the sermon and you've received at least a few more motivations to go out in the name of Jesus to love and serve the world to tell people about him because the harvest is plentiful and God wants to use you to demonstrate his power and his power is real and it's ready and it's in you to share God's shalom with the world this is incredible stuff incredible motivation to go out on behalf of Jesus and his kingdom but if that is our highest joy if our highest joy is our experience of God's power and that demons submit to us and that we can heal the sick and that we can bring peace to the afflicted if our highest joy is in what we do and accomplish for God then we've missed his heart we've missed the gospel and we've missed the central feature of his kingdom if our highest joy is God's power coursing through us and us having the dominating authority of God over every other power then we will become what everyone hates about so many

[30:09] Christians throughout history and rightly so we will become domineering antagonistic hostile arrogant imperialistic proselytizers with a superiority complex and we will only ever go out imposing God's power and authority over all of our select enemies but if our highest joy is simply that our names are written in heaven hey that changes everything now in case you're unfamiliar with this concept of a name being written in heaven you see among the ancients particularly amongst the Jewish people most of them believed that when judgment day would come the books would be opened and in them would be written all the things you've ever done good and bad and if you had enough good deeds if you lived a righteous enough life then your name would be written in the book of life rather than the book of death but here Jesus is offering us a far better narrative about the books on judgment day everyone thought that you had to wait till the end to know according to the logic of the ancients we could only rejoice at the end when we've done enough for God because that's what will bring us security and peace and blessing but according to the logic of the gospel according to the logic of Jesus' kingdom it's quite the opposite instead of rejoicing in what we've done for God

[31:29] Jesus says to rejoice in what God has done for us Jesus says to rejoice in the fact that our names are already written in heaven before the ends of our stories are completed and they've been written not by us or as a result of our good works our good deeds but by the loving nail pierced hand of God securing our peace and our blessing and our security forever you know earlier I said that Jesus by sending out the 72 he was showing himself to be the new and better Moses right well that wasn't the only way that he's the new and better Moses you see in Exodus chapter 32 when the people of Israel who had just been rescued from Egypt they're at Mount Sinai and God's about to make a covenant with them call them his people what do they do they end up making that golden calf right and they bow down to it and God's anger burns against these people and he even proposes to Moses that he should wipe out the whole nation of Israel and just make a new nation out of Moses instead God but also what happens is Moses he begs God to show mercy and he looks for a way to atone for his people's sins and so what he suggests to God is that instead of God wiping out all of Israel

[32:43] Moses offers himself as an atonement even though he had no part in the golden calf and he says to God please forgive their sin but if not then blot me out of the book you have written did you hear that he offers to be blotted out of God's book instead of his people now ultimately God doesn't blot Moses out of his book in the place of his people and he still shows mercy to Israel and allows their nations to survive because you know Moses's life Moses's righteousness could never atone for all the wickedness of the people of Israel but someone else's life someone else's righteousness could the greater Moses of the greater exodus Jesus Christ who though completely innocent and without sin bore our sins bore our shame bore our curse on the cross to secure for us life and glory and blessing by his resurrection and this is how our names are secured in heaven not by our righteous deeds but by trusting in him and in his righteousness on our behalf and this is the gospel the good news that changes everything about how we show up and move toward the world that

[33:59] God sends us to we dare not dominate our neighbors and morph into wolves because the way of our Lord is the way of the lamb and yet we dare not fear or shrink back from the wolves because our lamb is also a lion who triumphs over the wolves at the end of the story Jesus reminds us that while the empires of this world rejoice in power the power to secure for ourselves glory and honor and blessing and peace and joy while these empires say rejoice if you're a wolf in Jesus's kingdom we don't rejoice in power but in humility and grace and mercy and love in Jesus's kingdom we rejoice in the lamb slain for the sins of the world and yet risen in power a power unforeseen and beyond all worldly wisdom kingdom and so my question is is there any other kingdom than Jesus's that's worth getting out of bed for and running through walls for is there any other kingdom more worthy than

[35:05] Jesus's that we'd rather be sent out into the world to share we've got the goods we've got the gospel our names are written and there are many more names to discover so let's go in the name of Jesus to love and serve this world let's pray oh god fill us with your spirit and faith and conviction and boldness and humility and an adoration for the gospel of Jesus Christ the lamb who was slain for the sins of the world would you fill us with all of that that we might go in the name of Jesus to love and serve this world in power and in humility and in compassion and in a way that lifts up the beautiful story of Jesus Christ and the gospel of his kingdom in Jesus name we pray amen you know I pray that as we come to this table every single week that does not grow old for us that we receive these this this grace at this table that we receive the mercy of

[36:30] God fresh and new every Sunday as we hear Christ's body given broken for you Christ's blood shed poured out for your sins I pray that this never grows old for us so let's stand together and confess this faith with conviction with fresh hearts before the Lord Christ church what do we believe I believe in God the father almighty maker of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ his only son our Lord who was conceived by the Holy Spirit born of the Virgin Mary suffered under Pontius Pilate was crucified dead and buried he descended to the dead on the third day he rose again from the dead he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the father almighty from there he will come to judge the living and the dead I believe in the Holy Spirit the Holy Catholic Church the communion of saints the forgiveness of sins the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting amen the

[37:38] Lord be with you lift up your hearts let us give thanks to the Lord our God it is right to give him thanks and praise oh God it is right and a good and joyful thing always and everywhere to give thanks to you father almighty creator of heaven and earth therefore we praise you joining our voices with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven who forever sing this hymn to proclaim the glory of your name holy holy holy holy holy lord god of power and might heaven and earth are full of your glory heard heard heard heard Hosanna in the highest.

[38:34] Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

[38:48] O God, would you strike us with the holiness of this moment as we commune with the living God who has sent forth his Son for us.

[38:59] We give thanks to you, O God, for the goodness and love which you have made known to us in creation, in the calling of Israel to be your people, even when they were rebellious and turned away far more than they knew.

[39:12] In your word spoken through the prophets, you have shown us your goodness, and above all in the word made flesh, Jesus your Son. For in these last days you sent him to be incarnate from the Virgin Mary, to be the Savior and Redeemer of the world.

[39:25] In him you have delivered us from evil and made us worthy to stand before you. In him you have brought us out of error into truth, out of sin into righteousness, out of death into life.

[39:38] And we ask that here at this table you would so nourish and fill us and convict us that we would desire this for those outside of this place as well.

[39:49] That they would be brought out of their error, brought out of their sin, brought out of the way of death and into your way of resurrection life. We ask all this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.