[0:00] The following sermon is from Grace and Peace Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Grace and Peace is a new church that exists for the glory of God and the good of the northeast suburbs of Hamilton Place, Collegedale, and Ottawa.
[0:16] You can find help more by visiting gracepeacechurch.org. Thank you, sir. It's a real privilege to be with you this morning.
[0:30] My wife and I do count Benji and Natalie as friends, and we at North Shore Fellowship have been in Chattanooga for two years, and we've been praying for grace and peace for most of that time.
[0:42] I would say at least once a month, probably more like two or three times a month. We have a Thursday morning prayer group, and this congregation, this group right here, has been the subject of our prayers.
[0:54] And so we're very grateful for what God has done here, and we're grateful for you all keeping an eye on Benji and Natalie, keeping them out of trouble with the law or the neighborhood.
[1:05] And it's really great to be with you all. It does produce some real problems for me, and I'll just be honest about some of those problems.
[1:16] So at North Shore Fellowship right now, we don't have a pastor. We have three assistant and associate pastors, and we're sort of running things right now in an interim season.
[1:28] This morning, they're going to announce a pulpit committee, and the congregation will vote on that in a couple of weeks. So you can be praying for us in that transition moment. We're looking for a pastor.
[1:38] But that means that I get to do some fun things like scheduling the sermons and deciding what's preached and when. And, you know, I can give my colleagues really challenging passages, right?
[1:51] I think you need to work on this, right? This is something that, you know, I think would be really helpful for you to work through. But when you visit another church, you don't really get that opportunity. So Benji says, I want you to preach on this in this way.
[2:05] So the passage this morning, Benji really wants us to focus on the first paragraph that's present here. And that just happens to be something that I'm not particularly good at. I wanted me to talk about the response to conflict.
[2:18] And I'm a conflict-averse kind of person. Anybody else have this sort of thing going on in your life? You just don't particularly like conflict?
[2:29] And so it's been a really conflicted thing for me to actually have to work through this this week and focus really on this first paragraph up to about verse 31.
[2:41] But we're going to read all the way to verse 37 from Acts chapter 4. So please follow along in your bulletin or in your Bible and join me in this. passage 3.
[2:52] When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it, they lifted up their voices together to God and said, Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, why did the Gentiles rage?
[3:16] In the people's plot in vain, the kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed.
[3:27] For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and plan had predestined to take place.
[3:42] Now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.
[4:00] And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. Now, the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.
[4:22] And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them.
[4:33] For as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.
[4:48] So Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet.
[5:06] Holy Fathers, we ponder this word and pray that you would give us food that we need to sustain us, to grow us into the image of your Son.
[5:18] Speak, O Lord, for your servants listen. So this is about conflict. This is about a response to conflict. If you remember last week in chapter 4 and the preceding chapters, the apostles are getting all kinds of pressure from the Jews, the Jewish leaders, and later on they're going to get pressure from the pagan leadership as well.
[5:43] They're not really free to do whatever they want without crazy amounts of attention coming on them and a lot of pressure coming their way. They were threatened by the leadership and then they were released.
[5:55] And so they go back at the beginning of this passage, they tell everyone what's happened, and then you have to figure out what you're going to do. If this is the case, if you're in the middle of conflict, if the world around you doesn't like the message that you're proclaiming, then you have to figure out how you're going to respond to this.
[6:13] What's interesting to me is that this is not really persecution. I think sometimes in the church we throw that word around way too quickly. And so I would prefer to use something like conflict as a catch-all label for this rather than persecution because there's pressure, there's influence, there's antagonism going on, but there's not any, at this point, there's not any outright persecution.
[6:39] No one has lost their job. No one has been beaten up for following Jesus or the like. Here's what one scholar of early Christianity from the University of Edinburgh says about the first couple of centuries.
[6:55] He says, Prosecution of Christians by Roman authorities and also in Jerusalem by Jewish leaders was mostly localized, intermittent, not an empire-wide threat to most Christians for the first couple of hundred years at least.
[7:11] And so what was frequent, though, was social abuse. Social abuse. Believers have their families and their acquaintances put pressure on them. They start to lose social standing.
[7:23] They start to be mocked and made fun of. And this is because what they believe is offensive. It's anti-social according to the norms of the day.
[7:35] It's contrary to the culture. And so there's all kinds of pressure from people saying, Look, what you believe and the way you're living is unhelpful. It's unhealthy.
[7:46] It's wrong. And it goes against the grain of our world. This is not good for you. So conflict is probably a little bit better label than persecution. Let me give you some examples of this.
[7:59] I'm sure you're all familiar with social pressure of various sorts. I have a friend who's really a hero of mine. And he's a missionary in Japan, has been there for many years.
[8:10] If he had just learned Japanese fluently, he would be a hero. But not only is he doing that, he's gone to the most expensive place to be a missionary, raised all that money, gone there and taken his family.
[8:24] They were the only people that we ever had in our tiny little house in Boston who said, This is so spacious. As they live in about, you know, 900 square feet in Tokyo. And so they're serving as missionaries there in Japan.
[8:38] And as he set out to do this, you have to understand what my friend Roger was giving up. He was trained at Juilliard in Columbia. Roger is no dummy and majored in physics and in organ performance and just phenomenally gifted individual.
[8:55] Could have done all sorts of things. And his grandfather took one look at him when he found out what Roger was doing. He's raising money and he says, What you were doing is offensive to me.
[9:09] This rich New England family, his grandfather says, I am writing you out of the will. What you were doing, going and telling other people about Jesus and trying to get them to believe what you believe, that's morally wrong.
[9:21] So I'm writing you out of my will. And Roger takes that in stride, loses I don't know how many millions of dollars in the process, and he follows Jesus and he goes to Japan.
[9:33] That's the social pressure dimension. That's the conflict that we're seeing here. But very often, I mean, that's a really wonderful and inspiring story to me.
[9:43] A lot of the stories of conflict are not nearly so inspiring. In fact, it's one thing to stand up and talk about, you know, people in certain parts of the world where they're persecuted for the faith and people even lose their lives for Jesus.
[10:00] That is deeply inspiring to me. Here's what's a little less inspiring. I was in East Africa with my family for a couple of years, and we had a wonderful church in a very peaceful part of the country.
[10:14] But not everyone who was there got to experience what we experienced. So one of my colleagues had a church in a very old historic church in East Africa in a place that's 98% Muslim.
[10:29] And one week he had a bomb go off in his sanctuary. Thankfully not during church, but just an absolute mess. And I got in touch with my friend and I said, Listen, you know, we're praying for you.
[10:42] Is everything okay? Are you okay personally? He said, Oh, that's nothing. He said, Jason, you don't understand. The thing that's going to kill me is not a bomb. And even if it did, that would be fine.
[10:53] I'd be okay with that. What's killing me is the finance committee. I mean, I'm going to have heart problems from dealing with, like, committees at church and the angst and the conflict inside the congregation.
[11:06] That may be a little bit more familiar to many of us. That's a little less inspiring. But the same God who is the, you know, sovereign over your conflict, if you're suffering in his name in glorious fashion and people write songs about you, is the same God who is in charge of your suffering, your conflict, when the conflict is between brothers and sisters over a mundane committee.
[11:33] I'm sure that would never happen here. I hope it wouldn't. And then there's the conflict inside each of us, right? The conflict within our own hearts as we wrestle with our own sin.
[11:47] We're born into conflict. To be born again into Christ is to be born on a battlefield with yourself, sometimes with your brothers and sisters in Christ, and with the world.
[11:59] And so in the rest of this passage, we see how we're supposed to respond to conflict. These are not the only methods. This is just sort of what popped out to me as someone who's conflict-averse, likes to avoid conflict.
[12:14] And the first thing let's look at is Psalm 2. Especially the citation from Psalm 2 that the apostles, you themselves, the rulers, are gathered together against the Lord and his anointed.
[12:27] The first thing you need to know about conflict is that the great conflict is not people who are against you. It's that all of us, to some level, are against God, as we prayed in our confession of sin.
[12:40] This is the bigger problem, right? It's not just that someone has offended you. If they've come after you in an unjust fashion, they haven't just sinned against you.
[12:51] They've sinned against God. You may remember David's observation when he's caught in wretched sin. He has the gall to say this in Psalm 51. It's against you and you only have I sinned, he says, to God.
[13:05] And of course, he's sinned against others, but his point is that the main offense is always against God. Jesus is going to make this clear later in the book of Acts. Do you remember when he arrests Saul?
[13:18] Here Saul is going to arrest Christians, and it actually turns out that Jesus is going to arrest Saul. And do you remember what he says to Saul? Why do you persecute me?
[13:31] Now, Jesus is up in heaven. He's resurrected. He's ascended. He's enthroned over all things. So what does that phrase mean?
[13:44] Why do you persecute me? It means that your conflict, because you are united with Christ and because he identifies with you, he identifies so closely with you that when people are coming against you or opposing you, they are opposing Jesus.
[14:01] They're not just persecuting you, they're persecuting your Savior. At least that's what Jesus indicates to Saul. So when someone throws a bomb at your church, and hopefully no one brought a grenade this morning, you don't have to take it personally.
[14:17] They're fighting against God. And so see your conflict in light of Psalm 2, in light of this conflict that the world has against its maker and against the Messiah.
[14:29] Additionally, another thing that you need to see is what do they do? They go to community. This is a beautiful thing right here at the beginning. They're released. I personally, when I'm in conflict, I need alone time.
[14:41] I need to retreat and go away, you know, out in the woods back there or something like that. But they came forward to all their people. When they were released, they went to their friends, verse 23, and they reported what the chief priests and elders had said to them.
[14:58] And then they all lifted up their voices together. This is a group exercise responding to conflict. That's a really beautiful message.
[15:10] It's tempting. Now, it's tempting to see community as the key. But if you take your conflict to your community, and you don't take it in a Godward direction as well, what's going to happen?
[15:23] You all are going to be very good at fighting, right? You're going to be warriors together against whoever or whatever is opposing you. And that's not what they do.
[15:34] They don't create an isolated community that pulls away from everyone else. The main focus of their response is not community. It's an important ingredient, but it's not the main feature.
[15:45] The main focus of their response, and maybe this sermon, if I stay on track, is getting a vision of who is in control.
[15:56] So from conflict to control. All right. Who is big enough? Who is strong enough to end your conflict or use it for his great purposes?
[16:09] For his great ends? The response to your conflict has to be theocentric. God-centered. And when you fail, and I fail to take a God-centered approach to our conflict, whether this is conflict within the church, conflict within your marriage, conflict with neighbors, with seven-day Adventists, whomever, when you fail to do that, you're assuming that you're in control, and you're assuming that some other Savior other than the Almighty God is going to show up and fix the situation.
[16:42] Here's what Paul David Tripp says. He says, If you are not feeding your soul on the realities of the presence, promises, and provisions of Christ, you will ask the people, the situations, and the things around you to be the Messiah that they can never be.
[17:02] And so you've got to take your conflict to God instead of simply trying to solve it yourself or solve it in community. And so here's what the apostles do.
[17:13] Because they know this, they go directly to prayer. When they come together, it's not simply to gross and complain and to talk about how bad the chief priests are. Yeah, I always knew the Pharisees were terrible.
[17:24] I've never liked them. You know, that's not what you see in the text. What you see is prayer. They lifted their voices together and said, verse 24, Sovereign Lord. And here's how this prayer goes.
[17:38] Let me just give you three elements that they cover here. Number one, they talk about what God, and they say, You made, O Lord. You made. And then they're going to say, You spoke.
[17:50] And then they're going to say, You decided. You decided. So let's unpack that just a little bit. Verse 24. You made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them.
[18:03] This is Apostles' Creed, basic Christianity and Judaism 101 right here. And it turns out that the basics are extremely helpful to us.
[18:15] You made everything. And they sort of enumerate it, the heavens and the earth. And they kind of get a little bit of granular detail. And that's an invitation to meditate on God's creative power.
[18:29] If he's made everything out of nothing, then nothing is impossible for him. It's a beautiful thing to meditate on. He's the comprehensive creator of creation.
[18:42] And everything that exists, including the people that you're coming into conflict with, owes its existence to God. Notice the title that they use for God here.
[18:55] Sovereign Lord, despotes, comprehensive, unchallenged control, can do whatever he wants with whomever he wants. And when you're the despotes in a particular situation, you are not subject to a higher authority.
[19:14] In moments of seasons or conflict for you, let me ask this question. What title are you using for God? I hope you're praying. When you pray, what title are you using for God?
[19:25] Are you focusing on his total sovereignty, his total control? So we see this in the way that he makes the world. And then we see it in verses 25 and 26.
[19:39] Through the mouth of our father, David, your servant, you said by the Holy Spirit, you spoke, you communicated. This is a second form of control. Although I don't normally think of this, to be honest, as God's work of God's control, when he's speaking and communicating.
[19:57] But when God speaks, he created the world. And when God speaks, he directs his people. It's very helpful, if you're in the middle of conflict and difficult situations, to think about God's speaking power.
[20:12] And to think of him almost as taking a pen and writing the script of your life out. Writing your story.
[20:22] And somehow your conflict is part of that story. Just as conflict with God and the Messiah is part of the story of the world in Psalm 2, which is what they cite here.
[20:36] We just read that. Notice what happens here. It's very cool in certain theological circles to deny that the Bible is the word of God. If you want to be very sophisticated about this, you say, well, God uses the Bible and when it's preached or when it's useful, it becomes the word of God.
[20:55] But that's not what this text says. There's a miracle here, a really profound thing, that when David is communicating, God is speaking.
[21:07] The Holy Spirit is using David's own written words and making them his very own. And this goes back to God's creational power that he can create from your words things that are inerrant, which is really remarkable.
[21:22] He can do this for you as well. Your communication, your writing, your emails and texts won't be identical to Scripture and they won't be inerrant, but God can still take them and use them for his purposes.
[21:35] And I hope that's deeply encouraging. So God creates, God speaks, and he tells us of this great conflict that we're involved in and he tells you how that conflict is going to end, which we saw in Psalm 2.
[21:48] And then we get something, we plumb even deeper into the mysteries of who our God is. Verse 27 and 28, Truly in this city, there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, Herod, Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles, the peoples of Israel, and they were going to do whatever they wanted.
[22:12] Is that what it says in verse 28? They had all control and authority and they were just going to take care of, you know, do what they wanted to do, what they had mapped out.
[22:24] No. Because Peter and the apostles know there's something deeper and more profoundly true here than just that you have your will and you're working out your will.
[22:36] They believe that God had predetermined, it says predestined in the ESV here, the NIV says, decided beforehand what would happen with Jesus and his conflict.
[22:51] God was in total control of that scenario. He was not wringing his hands wondering, I don't know if this is all going to work out. That's the positive side of God's authority here.
[23:07] Every good gift comes from God. There's a negative side as well. Even the most sorrowful and wicked and wretched things are still under his control. Let me just help you think through this just a little bit.
[23:21] The death of Jesus, his treatment by these sinners is the most wicked thing that's ever happened in human history. But here's how the apostles think about it.
[23:33] Go back to, if you have your Bible open, go back to Acts chapter 2. This is verse 23. They're preaching to their friends around them who don't believe in Jesus and they say this, Jesus of Nazareth was handed over to you by God's deliberate plan and foreknowledge.
[23:50] And then he goes on and says, you with the help of wicked men put him to death by nailing him to the cross. Do you see what they just did there? Who is in charge of the death of Jesus?
[24:01] Ultimately, God is working out his plan in this. But that doesn't absolve these people of their wickedness and of their role in doing great evil by participating in this.
[24:15] Acts 3, Acts 3, 17. They're preaching again. My brothers, I know you acted in ignorance as did your leaders. You didn't really understand what you were doing.
[24:27] I'm still guilty. But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets saying that his Messiah must suffer. God spoke it beforehand and he worked it out in history even using evil people.
[24:41] And then, of course, we come back to chapter 4 and we read again three times in three chapters God was ultimately in charge of this act as evil and as brazen as it was.
[24:55] Here's what this means. Let me just go back to the positive side of this. One of the things that I love about Paul that's really interesting to me. I would thank you for your hospitality this morning and I was particularly blessed by the keytar.
[25:10] I'm a bass guitarist from way back and so hearing some bass lines is really a beautiful thing to me always. And I had not heard a keytar in a long time so that was like a real highlight.
[25:23] But what Paul does when a congregation blesses him when he's getting help he never says thank you grace and peace thank you Philippians he never does that.
[25:33] Here's how he phrases it very carefully I thank God for you. Now God did not strap on the keytar this morning right?
[25:46] But he's he's gifting us he's providing for us he's filling us with his spirit and giving us the energy and everything that we need in order to make this happen. And so everything that we contribute to isn't simply our work it's God's work.
[26:01] And then of course what the apostles are focusing on here is that if that's true then even the negative things are somehow in his hand as well. So in Acts 2 and 3 and 4 the apostles are insisting that God was in control even of the most wicked event in human history.
[26:21] Do you remember what Jesus said in John chapter 10? No one takes my life from me. What are you talking about? We've read the rest of John we know what happens these people come they beat you up they put you on a cross they take your life from you and Jesus says no you don't understand like the deeper magic here you don't understand the deeper power at work that no one can take my life from me I lay it down and I have the power to pick it up again.
[26:51] That is total control. So the question when we're confronted with conflict is not just who can end this conflict God end this conflict please that's a good prayer the bigger question is who can use this conflict for his purposes and how is he going to do that and this is this message of God's sovereignty can be incredibly encouraging to us I would caution you in your pastoral care for people in your family or in your church family not to jump to it too quickly because sometimes people need to wrestle and they need to lament before they're taken to the throne room and you want to give people space to grieve on this something I've learned as a pastor and we also it takes a lot of imagination to understand like how God can use bad things bad conflicts in our lives that leave deep scars how can he how can he use this for good and we may have to say
[27:54] I can't imagine how God is going to take this conflict in your life and turn it to his to his purposes I can't imagine how that's going to work out for your good and his glory but I can imagine that he will do it because he has a track record because he did it in the death of Jesus so how do they respond then to this message of God's total control what is the thing that they pray it's not take this conflict away it's use this use us even in the midst of this conflict look at verse 29 now Lord look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness while you stretch out your hand to heal and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus and they get the answer in verse 31 when they had prayed the place in which they were gathered together was shaken this is a sign that God has shown up and that God is indeed answering your prayer they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they continued to speak the word of God with boldness
[29:08] God continues his creative power with his presence and his people working out his will among them and he enables them to do what they've asked that their courage would not falter look if I had wanted to reach Udawah you know if God had come to me and said I really I really want to reach Udawah what do you recommend now God would never do that for obvious reasons but I would be tempted to say look I've been around people a lot they're sinful they you know they I've seen them try to like share these verses they've memorized they don't even get it right they're using the wrong translation what you need you know use use obedient German shepherds use parrots who will repeat perfectly what you know the text actually says they won't mess it up they won't innovate and go off on their own you know use anything other than people and God says no
[30:08] I'm I'm going to use a community I'm going to use people and he's going to do that because you are the house what we're seeing here when God shows up and shakes the place where they are this is this is a substitute for the temple this is the kind of thing that God would do when he inhabited his temple took up his residence and started receiving the praises of his people he's now doing that inside the community that he has in Jerusalem and now even in Udawah because you are his dwelling place this is where people are going to encounter the living God and that should give you courage because God is present with you he is providing power for you to have evangelistic conversations with neighbors and ask really awkward questions like what do you think about religion do you think about what do you think about God and religious things you know are you into Jesus and so the courage and power produce more community verses 32 through 35 these seeds that are sown by this courage and this commitment to speaking to their neighbors produces beautiful things in community here the full number of those who believe were of one heart and one soul not conflict but community no one said that the things that belonged to him was his own they had everything in common there was great power verse 33 great grace verse 33 as they testified to the resurrection of Jesus and then there's remarkable acts of care and distribution of resources that start to happen in their community how does all that happen people who are confident and courageous even in the face of conflict those people can do remarkable things
[32:00] I'm conflict averse one reason that I don't like conflict is because I don't do very well and that means to me the message that I take from that is I'm not focused on God enough and on his control and his ability to use the conflicts that I actually need to be engaged in for his purposes including making me humbler making me more confident in him and more courageous because of who he is people who are confident and courageous have very different community than people who live in fear have you noticed this if you really believe that God is in control and that God is capable of bringing a community together he's capable of saving people and bringing them to himself and making a community here in Udawah it's going to make you a lot more courageous if you really believe that where fear is cast out radical generosity can take root where fear is cast out there's public conversations about Jesus and awkward conversations can take place where fear is cast out there's great grace present and great unity and God is able to guide and control the church's mission in spite of persecution and sin the one story that kept coming to my mind as I thought about this this week was the story of Joseph you remember the story of Joseph in the Old Testament kids raise your hand if you remember the story of Joseph what did Joseph have
[33:34] Joseph had some awesome threads anyone remember what did he have I can't hear that far can you yell it he had a really colorful robe he had a really good looking robe that's excellent work and so Joseph gets this because he is he is the chosen child he is his father's favorite and it turns out that God also has picked Joseph to do some things for him and Joseph has some amazing dreams and then he starts bragging about them a little bit it seems like to me a little bit too full of himself I'm an oldest child so I know what it's like to be the favorite and to brag about it a little bit it's really hard for my younger sister so Joseph has this problem right he's a little bit full of himself and so God uses conflict in his life to bring him down a little bit his brothers betray him they plot to kill him and then eventually they decide to get rich off of him they sell him into slavery and he goes off to Egypt and his brothers have just have done incredibly wicked things not just to him but also to their father who loved him and his younger brother Benjamin his mother all these people have been incredibly wronged by Joseph's brothers you probably remember how the story goes
[35:07] Joseph's brothers come back right to come to Egypt and they go to Egypt because they're starving and Joseph sees them and he knows who they are and here is his choice here's what he can do he can continue the conflict and throw them in jail or pay them back or do to them what you want to do to people when you're in the middle of conflict or he can create community he can recognize that God is in complete control of his circumstances that God was the one who ultimately put him into Egypt God is the one who's writing his story out not his brothers his brothers were not ultimately in charge of him even though they actually did from a human perspective the evil deeds that resulted in him going to Egypt and here's what Joseph eventually opts for I'll give you the short version Joseph opts to believe he chooses to believe that God is in control of his circumstances even his suffering his father dies and his brothers come before him they've been taking care of him they've been welcomed to his table and provided for him and he says they say to him look our father's dead are you going to kill us and Joseph says in Genesis 50 20 he says you meant it for evil but God meant it for good to save many people who are alive here today and then he says in verse 21
[36:34] I will take care of you and your little ones and this is a beautiful picture his brothers dine with him they're welcomed into community it's a picture of the Acts 4 community here right at the beginning of Israel's story where Joseph welcomes these evil brothers with whom he'd had so much conflict that's just a little picture of the way that Jesus Christ has welcomed you who had conflict with him and still have conflict with him to his table to say I am providing for you I am caring for you your conflict is not the last word in your life my sovereignty and my control over all things is the last word and you belong at my table and in my kingdom to the extent that we believe that we'll be moving forward in courage despite conflict not away from conflict and we'll be building community together and it's my prayer that that's what happens in Udawah let's pray holy father you created you spoke and you decided lead us now to feed on you by faith at your table remembering your provision give us a taste of your control over all things we come as needy children meet us as a good and generous father we ask that you would set apart these common elements from their common purposes and use them for your holy purposes to communicate to us our share in you that just as
[38:23] Jesus said to Saul why are you persecuting me we can we can understand that you now live in us and identify with us because we've eaten your flesh spiritually and and trunk your blood spiritually it's in Jesus name we pray amen brothers and sisters let's read the words of institution here together you can join with me in this God's word calls us to taste and see that the Lord is good let us then come to the table of our Lord Jesus Christ as we pray together we do not presume to come to this your table oh merciful Lord trusting in our own righteousness but in your abundant and great mercies we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table but you are the same Lord who delights to show mercy grant us therefore gracious Lord so to eat this bread and drink this cup that in feeding on Christ by faith our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body and our souls washed through his most precious blood that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us amen and if to join