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[0:00] Welcome to Ontario Community Church, where we are encouraging, equipping, and engaging lives for Christ.! I'm Pastor Patrick Daly, and each week I share sermons that balance the grace and love of Jesus Christ with the truth of the Word of God.

[0:15] Together, we'll explore Scripture using observation, interpretation, and application. This helps us discover practical ways to live out our faith every single day.

[0:26] Let's dive in together into God's Word. Well, good morning, everyone. And as I'm setting everything up here, I want to make a couple announcements as we're going through everything here.

[0:42] And the first thing I want to show you is exactly the OCC Connections Bible Study. There's been a lot of really good feedback and people who've been asking to, what about during the week?

[0:58] How can I open God's Word and just expand with all these references that you're doing in Scripture? And so moving forward, starting in this week, every week you will have a corresponding personal or group Bible study.

[1:12] And the really great thing about this is that it piggybacks off of the sermon, and it's for you. You can use it in your own personal study during the week if you'd like to open the Word and go deeper with it.

[1:24] And it's also an opportunity for us as a church body to invite our own friends, to invite people and to let them know to go over the Word. And so what you see here is the Tower and the Warring King and just some questions that you can reflect on.

[1:41] And I know it's a little small, but it's just for you. It's our kind of starting off with that, and that's really good. It's really powerful, and I'm really glad for the feedback that you guys have been giving regarding having things that are available during the week.

[1:58] And so I just want to start off by saying thank you for that. And I'd also like to not only say hello to everyone who is here in person, but also to people online. I'd like to thank Joe, who's going to be our moderator today.

[2:12] So we were kind of talking through that. It's really incredible when not only we think about those that are here in person, but those that are there online. And I just want to say welcome.

[2:23] All of you are here in person or online. I want to say goodbye.

[2:56] But what you see on here is a stone that has the word respond on it. And as we go through this sermon, I want you to think about the importance of each and every stone here is formed differently, right?

[3:13] Different shapes. Some of them have rough edges. Some of them are very smooth. I got to thank my wife for having the patience to write respond on every single one of these stones, because I sure don't have that kind of patience, but she sure does.

[3:27] But in each of these stones you see on here, the word respond. You might have different artwork and different things with them. And I want you to think how maybe the stone that you have might represent who you are or what you have been through in your own life.

[3:44] Some of us may identify with more having rough edges and being through a lot. Some of us may have mine here has a kind of what started to be a hole in here.

[3:55] And I'm thinking all the times of pressure points in life here. And so we'll go on into what this means when we're talking about our sermon today, the tower and the warring king.

[4:07] It's a very interesting and unique parable that's going on. And we're going to go ahead and go through it because it's it is very interesting nonetheless. Let's go ahead and open in prayer and we'll go ahead and get started.

[4:19] Father God, we thank you for this time and this opportunity. We thank you for this congregation that's here in person. And we're also grateful for those that are here online. We're just so grateful for who you are as the Lord of all creation.

[4:34] We ask, Father, that there will be a sense of understanding, a sense of unity. Let there be peace where peace is needed. Let there be comfort and healing where it is needed. And let there be transformation.

[4:46] I pray that everyone here knows that they are loved by you and is called to respond to your salvation, to grow in you and to be moved to do good in your holy name.

[4:56] Oh, our Lord and our God, we are certainly a needy people. And as we sang that song, Lord, I need you how we need you every hour. So be with us today.

[5:07] Be with us this morning. And I pray that this message will honor and glorify you and that it will be understood for all of those who are listening, all of those who are attending, all of those who are watching, whether now or later.

[5:20] We thank you so much. It is in the name of Jesus that we pray. And can I get an amen? Amen. So we're going to go ahead and go into, let's turn to the Gospel of Luke. It's going to be on page 1038 in your ESVP Bibles or your Bible of choice.

[5:35] That is fine. We have on here our blue ESVP Bibles. You are welcome to use one of these Bibles or a Bible of your choice in here.

[5:47] And so as we're turning there, I want to kind of give you a little bit of the context here. This is what is part of here at Ontario Community Church, the OIA method.

[5:58] Observation, interpretation, and application. First, we're going to open God's word and see what is going on here, right? And so in here, we see that there is some immediate context that's happening, right?

[6:09] If you go on chapter 14 of the Gospel of Luke, we have what's leading up to this, the parable of the wedding feast. When it was taught, where Jesus was talking about if when you are invited by somebody to a wedding feast, do not sit in a place of honor, right?

[6:25] It's talking about humility. Let someone more distinguished than you be invited by him. And he who invited you will come and say, give your place to this person. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place.

[6:35] So when you find your host, he may come to you and say, friend, move up higher. So that parable was talking about humility. You go down a little bit into the parable of the great banquet, where it was talking about when you are giving a banquet, you want to invite everyone, right?

[6:51] Where it says in, let's see here, in verse 17, he said to 16, a man once gave a great banquet and invited many, right?

[7:01] And he's inviting all of these people. But people are saying, I bought a field. I want to see it. I got married. I have five yoke of oxen. Please, I want to be excused. All of these excuses. But then it's going on into the banquet, this invitation for everyone.

[7:15] So there is still room. If you look at verse 21, go out quickly to the streets and the lanes of the city, bring in the poor and the cripple and the blind and the lame. So Jesus is talking about.

[7:27] So first we have humility. And then we have this sense of invitation for everyone to come into the great feast, right? Which is mentioning this all leads us to where we have in the cost of the discipleship.

[7:41] Now, it says here in verse 25, great crowds accompanied him. And he turned and he said to them, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

[7:57] This is a very challenging and often misused verse in scripture. Because when we're thinking about it, as we're going to go into this idea of counting the cost, there's actually a very unique meaning when we consider our stone or we consider our pebble.

[8:14] So let's keep going on. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me does not, cannot be my disciple. That's also a very heavy verse. Let's be honest here. We're reading this. It's like, oh my goodness, what exactly is going on for which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it.

[8:33] So we were going on into that. So the great crowds are traveling with Jesus and he's calling for a decision to follow him. And it's this idea that's tied in with this sense of humility, knowing that you people back then and even people now, we all have a decision to make.

[8:51] And it's a decision whether we are going to follow in the footsteps of Christ saying yes to Jesus Christ, believing in the death, burial and resurrection. 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 1 through 4.

[9:03] If we're going to believe in that or not. How many of you have heard that saying before that you need to cast your vote? I don't want to get too political here, but how many of you have participated in an election before, right?

[9:15] Or maybe you voted in who was going to be ASB president, right? Or maybe you voted who was going to be the class clown, right? Maybe you were the one that was voted as the class clown, right?

[9:25] There's many times and many opportunities for us to cast our vote on certain things. And we can think of that in America as voting, right? It could be voting for different legislation, different people who are those in authority.

[9:38] And that's some very interesting stuff. So when we're thinking about this idea of counting the cost, the original Greek is talking about this idea of considering your pebble.

[9:50] That's very interesting. When we're thinking about, okay, you have to surrender everything. It's talking about, think of the stone as a representation of who you are.

[10:01] Are you going to cast your vote into the things of God or are you not? Are you going to place your trust into the things of God or not? What matters is the word that is written on this stone, which as we continue to go, you'll understand more is the idea that we are to respond to salvation in Jesus Christ.

[10:21] And we are to continue to respond in what God has called for our very lives. And so we're going in here, the tower, right?

[10:31] The man sits down for a moment. I want you to think of this imagery where this guy, he's sitting here and he's thinking about a tower that he's going to build. He is calculating, right?

[10:42] This idea of counting the cost. He is thinking in his mind, how is this tower going to be built? How many of you have built a house or maybe a bird house or a tree house, or maybe you've put something together with your hands.

[10:55] When we're thinking of what we're going to build, we need to have a plan and we need to consider, do we have all of the tools necessary, all of these things that are the intricacy for building something, amen?

[11:06] And so in this sense, you're having a gentleman or whoever, you're having a person who's calculating whether he can finish the tower, right? If he lays the foundation and cannot complete it, well, there's people that are going to look at him and they're going to laugh at him.

[11:20] Now, I don't know about you. How many of you have gone by? Maybe you're visiting a town or maybe you know of someone. You see a house that's like almost built completely and it's not.

[11:31] And you wonder, well, what happened? And they run out of money? Like what's going on here? So we can kind of have some sort of similarity to the feeling of what's going on. Not that, you know, we're going to make fun of people who are not going to complete their building, but we at least think of it in our minds.

[11:46] What happened to this building project in Boise or what happened in Portland? What happened over there? What happened over here? All these different things that are going on. So it's going on into verse 28.

[11:59] Which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it. So talking about enough money here. Otherwise, when he's laid the foundation, all those who see it begin to mock him, saying this man began to build and was not able to finish.

[12:13] So then the second part is we have a king. What king going to encounter another king in war will not sit down first? And so again, it's this idea of sitting down and considering something, right?

[12:27] We can think of those movies where you've probably seen World War II movies or the Civil War and they have their plans all laid out. And sometimes they have the little cute little chess sets or whatever representation of their armies, right?

[12:40] And they're moving it all around and they're planning out their battlefield that's going on. Well, this king here, he's sitting down for a second and he's deliberating whether his army of 10,000 can go up against an army of 20,000.

[12:53] Now, it's not to say that the army is not strong or anything. We actually see what happens. If not, while the other is yet a great weight off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.

[13:04] He has thought to himself, with the army of 10,000 that I have, it's not enough. I'm going to lose the battle. And so we can think of this language about sitting down and considering, sitting down and calculating, sitting down and deliberating.

[13:21] Because when we're thinking of this idea and this notion for us to make a decision for Christ, we have got to consider. We've got to deliberate.

[13:31] We've got to calculate, as it's mentioning here. And as I use this imagery of the stone, where are you going to place your trust? Where are you going to place your stone?

[13:42] Some people may say, you know what? Don't want it. I'm going to hang on to my stone and place it somewhere else. Other people may say, you know what? I believe in Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life.

[13:54] I'm going to put, cast my vote or cast my pebble into this. It's a very powerful representation that we can think about. And so, in the end, in verse 33, therefore, any of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

[14:11] It is very heavy language. And we have to be very careful with this. It is understanding that the kingdom of God, that salvation in Christ, is far of more value than anything of the earth.

[14:22] Does that make sense, church? It's understanding that there are people in this world who have all of the money, all of the fame, all of the women, all of the cars, all of the mansions, whatever it is.

[14:35] They have all of these things. And I'm not saying money in of itself is bad. It's what you do with it. And you have to think, are you making money or fame or whatever it is your God?

[14:45] Because God is calling us to have him at the center of our life, for us to make a decision for him and to say yes or to say no to him. So it's saying, God, you are the most important one.

[14:57] I want to seek you and your salvation. I don't want to seek fame. That's not as important as you, right? That is not, nothing is as important as our Lord and our God.

[15:09] And for each and every one of us, as I've mentioned, the stone that you hold, how many of you may identify with your own stone you're holding? Maybe not, right? You think of how the course of your life, how we're all different, we're all made in the image of God.

[15:24] And we've all had our battles. We've all had our seasons in life. We've had the good, the bad, and the ugly in here. And so the tower, and just kind of as some fun facts here, the tower is likely a watch tower that was to be built back then.

[15:40] It would be visible and it would be costly if it was left half built. So think of someone who basically their reputation is on the line if they don't complete that tower.

[15:52] When we're thinking of the warring king, well, there are lives that are at stake when he's about to consider going to battle. He's like, if I don't make a good decision, I could very well lose this army of 10,000 people.

[16:04] Giving you different perspectives, different angles when we're thinking about counting the cost or considering your pebble. And so as I mentioned, this idea, calculate, it is from the Greek, which comes from the idea of pebble.

[16:19] And back then, pebbles were used for counting or for voting. And this symbolic pebble represents a choice that we all have to make. How many of you have thought, sat down and counted, as it were, considered your life, as it were, and thought about choosing or not choosing Christ?

[16:41] For each and every one of you, of course, I would encourage you, make a decision for Christ. Cast your pebble upon him, as it were, much like how we are to place our faith and trust in the living God, whose arms are open for all of us to respond to him.

[16:58] And when we really bring it home, when we think for a moment, maybe you think and identify with someone who has rough edges or a lot of pressure, just as mine has.

[17:10] It's right above my E. I have a big pressure point right here, right? Maybe you've been through moments of pressure. Regardless of what you have been through, the call remains the same to respond to salvation, to respond to the gospel in Jesus Christ.

[17:28] And so, with all of this, then, we go now into the interpretation. We have observed the text. We have observed the context and some of the connections that happen in here.

[17:40] So what can we then, in turn, learn from this? Well, the first thing that comes is to sit down and respond to Christ. And certainly, that can mean literally sit down, right?

[17:51] You could go sit down and take a few moments and think about that. But the idea of it is for you to be deliberate, be intentional about if you're going to respond to Christ or not.

[18:03] Really think about the consequence, as it were, of if you say yes to Christ or if you don't. So to sit down is to reflect. It is to consider these things.

[18:17] I know for, in my own walk with the Lord, one of the things that really helps me and helped me make a decision for Christ is, what would I lose if I did not believe in Christ?

[18:29] I would lose far more than I would ever gain. And that was one of the many things that made me decide that there is, that I need to respond accordingly.

[18:41] So to count the cost means to consider your pebble or to cast your pebble. And Jesus calls us to think, to reflect, and to pray. Most importantly, to respond in faith.

[18:53] Let your foundation be in Christ as the solid rock. And let God work in and through you to build up upon your life.

[19:05] Stay true to him. Seek God. Have him as that foundation in your life. Let that be the beginning of your new life in Christ.

[19:16] For some of us, we might have had moments where we felt distant or we have been hurt by people. Don't raise your hand if you've been hurt by people, because I know we all have.

[19:28] Even when we have had storms in life, even when we have had battles that we've had, things that have happened to us. As I've said before, and I will say again, man can and will fail you.

[19:43] But God will never fail you. I'm going to say that again. Man can and will fail you. But God will never fail you.

[19:55] And that, I hope that brings you great comfort. And knowing that we trust in the living God who is always there for us, calls for us to be saved, calls for us to be transformed, to grow in him and to become more like him.

[20:14] We think of these things. So begin your new life in Christ. Be molded in Christ. And let God finish that work in you. The second thing then is to consider the what, church?

[20:28] Consider the consequence. It's that C word that nobody likes. How many of you like the word consequence, right? Even us adults, we don't like that, right? There's a consequence for different things here. Well, we have the king's calculation here.

[20:41] Where the king was 10,000 versus 20,000, basically showing that he can't win that battle. So we had to find alternatives. Well, much like the king for a moment here, how many times do we think that we can do something on our own and we calculate and we think, we try to plot and scheme how things will go.

[21:03] And then we realize for a moment, wait a minute, I can't do it. That is a very similar, a parallel, as it were, with what you're seeing with the king. Where he has this huge army and he's thinking for a moment, I cannot do this on my own.

[21:17] I'm going to need to seek terms of peace, as the language is saying here. But how many of us need peace in our lives? How many of us have tried to fight a battle that we couldn't win, realizing that we need to seek the Lord and the peace that comes from him?

[21:36] That is important for us, church, to think about. And so counting the cost, then calculating and deliberating means that we are to rely on the Lord as our source, as our comfort, and as our strength.

[21:51] So we in turn, let us cast our pebbles onto Christ. The third thing then is to surrender the what life? The old life for the new.

[22:05] This is very powerful language, church, is that to believe in Christ, it is putting your trust in something that is higher than yourself, right?

[22:15] Letting go of the old life, saying, God, I need you for transformation. I need you for restoration. I need you for healing. I can't do it on my own.

[22:27] And to put away the old life and to let God transform your life. For some of us, it may be just a simple changing in the way that we think. For others of us, it may be healing that comes in our marriages or in our relationships.

[22:43] For others, it might be simple comfort when we're going through really bad times. How many of us have gone through a hard time?

[22:53] Don't raise your hand, please, by all means. We've all been through that. And we turn to the Lord for our strength and our comfort in those kind of moments. Knowing that God is going to transform us and to show us how to live and love like him.

[23:09] Knowing that there's peace that surpasses all understanding. There's insurmountable, inexpressible, inexhaustible joy that comes from him. I'm always amazed that when you find people, their house burned down or someone passed away and yet they have that joy in the Lord and you ask them, well, why aren't you sad?

[23:31] This tragic thing happened and they're like, I know, I know I'm going to be okay. Or I know this person's okay. It's something that a lot of the world doesn't understand, but yet God is working in them in such a profound way.

[23:45] I know that in many times in my life where I have felt so alone or I've felt hurt by people, to pray to the Lord and to ask God, give me peace and calm, that he supplies that peace and that sense of knowing.

[24:03] And I want to make this clear to you, church. No matter what it is you go through, when you place your faith and trust in God, God is always going to be there in your life.

[24:13] There are so many moments where we feel alone or where we feel like there's no one or nothing. But I'm telling you, knowing that Christ is there with you, despite what happens to us, should give us so much comfort.

[24:32] And so consider the parables we've talked about, the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price, setting aside the lesser things.

[24:42] It still makes me very excited when I think of that parable, that the guy found a pearl so valuable, no other pearl mattered.

[24:54] And he was willing to risk everything and to lose everything for it. That's got to be a pretty valuable pearl, right? It's got to be. And so in all of this, we now go to the application.

[25:08] So as I've mentioned before and I'll mention again, observation, interpretation, and application. What all that means is we read scripture, we look at what we can learn, and we look at what we can do.

[25:19] So the first thing is what? I want you to hold up your stone, and please don't throw it at me, all right? I want you to hold up your stone. And I want you to think for a moment how important it is for you to know your stone and to know what you're going to place your trust into.

[25:36] Let this be an imagery, a representation of your own life and what or who you are going to place your trust in. I should put that meme up there, Tim, one of these days of the guy from the, what is it, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

[25:52] The guy who says choose wisely, right? Those words still resound very true for us. You know what I'm talking about, the Knights of the Round Table. You got all those chalices, and the guy wants to drink the really fancy cup.

[26:05] You're like, please don't. You got to drink from the right cup. But it's the same concept, and it's the same idea, that we have to choose wisely who or what we place our trust in.

[26:17] And it's very interesting to me how there's so many mindsets or religions out there that say you need to seek truth. But what's so powerful is that in Christianity, we can read in our own Bible that Jesus is the way, that he is the truth, and he is the life, and that there is safety and there is security that comes from him.

[26:39] Let us respond by casting our pebble. Respond to the gospel and trust in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, as I mentioned 1 Corinthians 15, verses 1 through 4, which talks about how the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ is in accordance with the Scriptures, showing the consistency of our Word and how powerful it is for us to open the Word and to see how Christ being a fulfillment of prophecy.

[27:11] I know we can go on and on about that, but it's showing that in that verse that Jesus has been planned by God and that God is supplying what we need in him.

[27:27] Let us respond accordingly and ask yourself the question, have I decided to follow Jesus? Maybe you have, maybe you haven't, but believe in the Lord as it says.

[27:37] I always put that in your notes. Believe in the Lord and be saved. Let us remember that. And the second thing then is upon salvation then is to let God work on you until the end.

[27:51] Are we a work in progress? I think for a moment of how many of us we make a New Year's resolution and we say we're going to change our diet and change our life, change our eating habits, maybe go to the gym more, go for a walk.

[28:05] And how does that go? Not putting a burden on you, but right? We think of those things, right? That we are to, in the New Year, we try to work on ourself.

[28:18] But when we think of God working in and through us is that God is going to continue to transform our lives. First and foremost, be saved, believe in Christ, and then from there, grow in him.

[28:31] Let God change your mind. I always love the idea of repentance. Many of you here, repent and believe, right? Change your mind and believe in Christ and be saved.

[28:42] And there's this continued sense of repentance, which is this sense of God working in you and changing your mind and molding you as a potter molds clay or as these stones get molded in their own sense, right?

[28:56] When you think of, how many of you have ever had those rock tumbling machines? Do they still make those? Because you would rock it all around, right? Or some of you had the automatic one.

[29:07] Or some of you would just turn it and turn it until it got smoother, right? And we can think of how in our own lives, we might be tumbled around and around, right? We might have those moments where it's like, man, things are just going every which way.

[29:21] But we're going to be molded, as it were, into what God wants us to be. Now, granted, is every lesson that we learn about the Lord an easy one?

[29:33] Well, no. It's just like if you begin praying for patience, right? And you're wondering why you can't have patience right now, right? I want patience like I want my ramen noodles instant.

[29:45] Come on now. But many of us, we pray for these different things and it's asking God to work in our very lives. Praying to God for a softened heart or saying, God, I want you, I want to be more like you.

[29:59] I'm ready. May we be ready. And sometimes God will just mold us whether we like it or not. But very often, it's just at least knowing that God's going to work in your life.

[30:11] May you be ready and prepared to have God work on you until the end. Because let us be reminded that we are covered by the blood of Christ. What he begins, he completes.

[30:22] And let us rely on the Holy Spirit for leading and guiding. And let us begin. How can we reflect the light, love, and truth of God to other people every day?

[30:35] How can we do that? How can we speak truth and do it in love? That's always a hard thing. We think about it. A lot of us, we want to take the truth and we want to pound people over the head.

[30:46] Not with a stone, mind you. But you want to pound people over the head with it. But you have to deal in love in that. And for many of us that are very big on love, it's like, well, we have to speak truth to them as well.

[30:57] So it's important for us to understand we exhibit the love of Christ and the truth of it. It's a sense of balance that comes from the Lord. May we have habits of opening God's word and praying and being in community with one another.

[31:15] The kind of relationships that you can have by knowing brothers and sisters in Christ in the local church or whether you're online, the sense of community that you can have with one another is very powerful.

[31:28] That you can pray with one another. That you can be present with one another. You can ask questions and sometimes just be there and just listen. You never know what someone is going through.

[31:39] You never know their backstory. How many of you, you may have known someone their entire, most of their life and then they tell you something, you're like, wait, Uncle Steve, I didn't know that about you.

[31:51] You might have a relative like that. They went through something and you learned about it and you're like, man, I wish I learned that sooner. These kind of things. So let God work in and through you and consider as you are growing, how can you reflect that light, love, and truth of Christ.

[32:10] And then finally, we have, let the new, live the new life as God's hands and feet. It's very important for us when we think of the hands and feet, you're like, what are you talking about?

[32:21] What if you don't have a foot? What if, you know, these kind of things. It's living out the gospel through action. Now, for some people, we think of how, a lot of people, we like learning and growing.

[32:35] That's fine. But as you learn and grow, live it out in your life. Be a prayer warrior. Practice the ministry of presence, being present with those in need.

[32:49] Think of how you can share in your faith, even if you, some people may say, well, pastor, I work in a job that doesn't allow for Christians. That's okay. You can still exhibit in how you live your life as a testimony for who God is.

[33:06] Even if you work in the auto industry, right? Not to pick on the auto industry, right? But even if you work in different fields, you can still exhibit that light, love, and truth of the Lord.

[33:18] So it's very important. And let us remember that everything that God has given us, right? Every perfect gift that comes from above is from God. It is a blessing. We consider his time, right?

[33:30] Our time, our talent, and our treasure. And I've mentioned also another T is our testimony. With God giving you so much, can you not even give a little back to him?

[33:42] For some of us, it's no. Let God work in your life in that way. How you give back to the Lord is unique to you.

[33:53] How you can serve the Lord and how you can be that ambassador for Christ is unique to you. As we are given, then, let us give to others.

[34:04] Just as it says in Scripture, as we sow, so shall we reap. Let us mirror Christ in his love, grace, and truth being more like him. So we think of, there's a church that I would visit sometimes that, on the back here, if you can turn your heads real quick, if you can imagine, and the language that it was saying is, as you leave, your service begins.

[34:30] And those words really resounded to me that you're hearing from the word of God and you're worshiping him, but you still have to serve the Lord beyond Sunday. You have to be that ambassador for other people.

[34:45] So it's very, very powerful. It's for us to think about. And so in closing, then, let us sit down or reflect and consider our stone.

[34:56] Let us consider and count the cost as it says. Don't rush, but be intentional. Think about the consequence and why it's so important for us to believe in Christ.

[35:09] as that, I mentioned the, uh, Raiders of the Lost Ark choose wisely. May you choose wisely and seek, just as the king was seeking for peace in a time of war, may we seek the stronger king, the king of kings.

[35:32] and let us remember, let us let go of the things that hold us back from seeking the Lord. May we let God transform us every single day.

[35:46] And so, in all of this, as we close and we think about this parable of the tower and the warring king, it all comes back and I want you to keep this stone as a reminder from this Sunday that you need to respond.

[36:06] May you respond to Christ in faith and may you respond whenever there's a situation to grow or to live out your faith. May you respond accordingly.

[36:16] Let us pray together. And Father, we thank you for, we thank you for the, your word and we thank you for this very unique parable talking about the importance of us to count the cost and how interesting is it when we go to the language and it's talking about to consider our pebble.

[36:38] Something that's so small but yet so profound. In the same way, may we respond in faith. Something that is so significant, the greatest decision that we can make in our lives.

[36:51] Believing in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I pray for those that may have been hurting, those that may have felt distant or hurt by man, that there will be a healing process that you will comfort them and let them know that man will fail them but you, God, will never fail us.

[37:10] And I pray that we may all grow together and that we may all be moved to do good in your Son's holy name. We love you, Lord, and we thank you so much for giving us this life, another day to praise you and to come together as the body of Christ.

[37:29] And Father, I'm grateful for every person that's here today. Every person that's here in person and every person that's online. I just pray, Father, that you give them comfort. You lead and guide them.

[37:41] Whatever that means. I don't know what that means, but you certainly know how to lead and guide your people. In all of these things, we pray in the name that is above all names, Jesus Christ.

[37:54] And we all say together, Amen, church. Amen. Thank you for listening for this week's message from Ontario Community Church. I pray that you are encouraged and strengthened in your walk with Christ.

[38:08] For more sermons and resources, visit OntarioCommunityChurch.org. May God bless you as you live out His grace and truth every single day. Amen. Amen.

[38:18]  Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.