Sunday Sermon: The God of All Comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabrielle Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

New Testament book. On Thursday is our Old Testament study, and then we answer questions from listeners on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the letters to the

Corinthians. This is the sermon that was preached last week from our pulpit. Here's Pastor Gabe.

In honor of the word of the King, let's all stand together. Second Corinthians chapter 1, beginning in verse 1 through verse 11.

Paul writes to the church in Corinth, introducing himself as Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother.

To the church of God that is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia, grace to you and peace from God our

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our

Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.

If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and for your salvation. And if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer.

Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.

For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction that we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.

Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us. On Him we have set our hope that He will deliver us again.

You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.

Let us pray. Our wonderful God and Father, who is in heaven, whose name is holy, is great, is worthy of our praise.

I pray that you would receive us this morning. As we have come before you in worship, as we desire to sit at the feet of the

Teacher and hear the words proclaimed that were delivered by your Holy Spirit to your

Apostle, I pray that your Spirit within us would open our minds to understand the things that are spiritually discerned, would open our hearts to receive the things that we in our natural disposition would otherwise be hardened to listen to.

And yet it is by the softening, by that washing of the

Holy Spirit, that we have been made spiritual people to receive spiritual things.

So I pray that we humbly come before you today and desire to be taught all the more by the

God who saves and is growing us and shaping us more like the

Son, Jesus Christ. We read here,

Lord, that you are the God of all comfort. And I pray that's what we take from the proclamation of your

Scriptures this morning, that we would be comforted in every way. All different people in this congregation, in different walks of life, whatever we are going through, may we find comfort and rest for our souls.

May there be comfort in our marriages. May there be comfort in our jobs.

May there be comfort in tax season. May there be comfort in the news that we hear going on around us, whether it's from the civic government or the state government or the federal government.

No matter what is happening in this world, in a world full of different governments, we have placed our hope on the

King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, who will come and rule all nations with an iron scepter, as is spoken about in the

Scriptures. What can man do to us when our King has saved us and has secured us passage into his eternal kingdom?

We have been washed by the blood of Christ. We have been forgiven of our sins. And now, standing before you righteous, a day will come when we will stand before the glorious throne of God, worshipping forever with all the saints, those who have come before us, those whom we are with now, and those who will even come after us.

Time holds no bounds for us when we are in heaven, and we will be with our

God forever in a place where there is no more evil, no more sin.

We're no longer even being tempted by the ways of our flesh. And as we look forward to that day, when all things will be made new by the power of Christ, may that be our comfort in the present.

We ask these things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and all God's people said, amen.

Thank you. Thank you. You may be seated. If I were to do a survey here of the congregation, and I were to ask you, what country on earth would you say has citizens in it that would declare themselves to be the most comfortable people on earth?

What country would you say would be at the top of that list? What's that? You just threw one out there.

Yeah, I heard USA. USA, you would be wrong. The United States ranks at the absolute bottom of that list.

In a survey that was done by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the findings published in November of 2017, they released a survey entitled

Unhappiness and Pain in Modern America. Among the questions they asked was not only trying to figure out a happiness quotient among Americans, but also was asking

Americans how comfortable they felt. How did Americans deal with pain?

In general, Americans complain about aches and pains and describe themselves as being generally uncomfortable more than every other nation on earth.

Among the most comfortable nations on earth are in Latin America. But just north of the border in the

United States, we complain the most about the aches and pains in our body.

The Washington Post, when reporting on the findings of this survey, said, all told the data underscore how country -level material wealth can be a poor indicator for the well -being of its inhabitants.

The surveyors themselves said as the US is one of the richest countries in the world and in principle might be expected to have one of the most comfortable lifestyles in the world, it seems strange to put it at its mildest that the nation should report such a lot of pain.

You know, there was a thought that occurred to me, and this is a joke, this is tongue in cheek, but nonetheless a thought had crossed my mind.

I wonder what the ratio of Legos per capita might be in all of these countries.

Because if there are more Legos per capita in the United States of America, I can understand discomfort because I've stepped on a

Lego and it hurts. My kids play with Legos and they have found the bottom of my foot on more than one occasion.

But that's tongue in cheek. All in all, we are a nation full of whiners. When we probably could boast about being the most comfortable nation on earth and yet we are at the very bottom of that list with people in the

United States of America complaining about the aches and pains that they feel in their body more than any other country.

People who are of lowest income complain the least.

And those who are of the highest income brackets complain the most. I mean, this screams of an entitlement culture that those who are the richest believe that they should not feel any aches and pains in their bodies whatsoever and yet all the money in the world cannot change the fact that this world has been subjected to depravity.

It's been subjected to futility. It is wasting away and we feel it in our bodies all the time.

But rather than rejoicing in the Lord for our aches and pains, knowing that a day is coming when we will be delivered from things like these, yet we find reason to have to complain because we are not comfort as though complaining will make you feel any better in your body than you would by not complaining about it.

This is one of the great reasons that our Lord Christ said, who has added an hour to their day by complaining in Matthew chapter 6.

Yet we think we can add relief to our bodies by complaining. Actually, science shows that the more you complain, the chemicals that are released by your mind actually makes it worse for you.

But yet we persist and continue to complain about our circumstances. I mean, it is a blessing, folks.

It is an incredible blessing of God that we live in the country that we live in and enjoy some of the comforts and pleasures and luxuries that we do as Americans.

And yet we're the most complaining nation on earth. We have no comfort in our bodies, but rather continue to complain about our aches and pains.

And I don't discount anybody complaining about a pain that they feel in their body.

I've experienced incredible pain so much that I couldn't even stand up. And I have counseled those in hospitals who have been struggling from the effects of cancer and the chemotherapy that they are on.

There was one woman who I went to the hospital to visit and asked her how she was doing. And her response to me was, it's difficult to be a

Christian when your head is in the toilet. And I understand the struggles that we go through in our bodies and the aches and pains that we feel.

But the thing that this reminds us of and that we're told about in Romans chapter 8 is the world is wasting away.

And the whole earth, all of creation is groaning and desiring deliverance from the futility that it's been subjected to.

And that deliverance for all of creation will come when the sons and daughters of God are delivered from this mortal plight into our eternal glory.

And then all of creation will be restored along with us. This is the personification of creation that Paul gives in Romans chapter 8, all of creation groaning together.

So when you groan in your body about your aches and pains, guess what? All of creation is groaning with you because all things have been subjected to futility because of sin.

My effort this morning is very simple, but the achievement is not.

I desire for you to know the God of all comfort.

And that is the title of the sermon this morning. We have it stated by Paul here in 2 Corinthians chapter 1.

As he says in verse 3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the

Father of mercies and the God of all comfort,

Father of mercies. You know, in the very fact that we're told that word, that we have received mercy from God the

Father, that in itself speaks of our sinfulness because we needed mercy.

We had sinned against God. We had rebelled against the throne over all creation.

And what we deserve for that is death. But God showed us mercy through Jesus Christ.

You know John 3 .16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, and whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

I remember watching Todd Friel one time with a blackboard behind him, diagrammed that sentence, diagrammed

John 3 .16. And he says, who is the subject in this sentence?

The subject is God the Father. He's actually the main character in John 3 .16.

For God, God the Father, so loved the world, he gave his son,

Jesus Christ, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

This is the mercy of God. This is the Father of mercies that we hear about whenever we quote that verse.

And this is the Father of mercies that Paul reminds the Corinthians of as he begins this letter.

Blessed be the God and Father, all praise be to him, for he is worthy of glory and honor.

He is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And he is our Father as well, merciful to us, though we have sinned against God.

He is the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.

And then Paul expounds on that point. He's the God of all comfort. Because God is merciful, we have comfort with God.

God of all comfort who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

How many times do you see the word comfort come up in just those two verses? As a matter of fact, folks, in those verses that we have read this morning, the word comfort comes up more here in this section at the start of 2

Corinthians 1 than the rest of the New Testament combined. Paul means for his hearers to know the

God of all comfort who comforts our spirits, who comforts our souls, anyone who is in any affliction.

There are not specific afflictions that are named here. Well, only if you're going through this, only if you're going through that, only if you've broken your leg,

God is a God of comfort to you. Only if you've been in a bad relationship and had your heart broken, only then is

God a God of comfort to you. That's not what Paul says. He is the God of all comfort who comforts us in a few of our afflictions, just a few afflictions that we have in the middle stages of our lives, but not so much at the beginning and not so much at the end.

He comforts us in all, all our afflictions.

As I was reading over this week and just this past week,

I was even reciting this verse over and over to myself. And honestly, I'm not going through anything right now that I feel like I need to be comforted for, meaning that I don't feel like anything severe is happening in my life in which

I need to be on my knees before God, deliver me from this. I'm not in that place in my life right now.

Nonetheless, this was something that I was reciting to myself over and over this week. Even as I was enjoying

Grace Community Church in suburban LA and having the 900 volunteers from that church caring for 3 ,500 pastors at this conference.

And they were feeding us constantly. I'm sure I put on about five pounds after coming back from this conference.

There was food everywhere. And sweet tea, I drank a gallon of it a day. I mean, it was everywhere.

I loved the food. And everywhere you turn, there were danishes or a meat and veggie tray or fruit or greasy food that you could stuff yourself with and clog your arteries.

I mean, it was everywhere. So I was very comforted in my body over the course of this past week.

But then on the second day that I was there, I was notified that a pastor friend of mine from Kansas was on his way to the

Shepherds Conference and got a kidney stone. And when he arrived there in California, it was so bad he had to be hospitalized and they had to do surgery to remove it.

And I'm remembering as I'm enjoying the comforts here of being weighted on hand and foot and being relaxed by all of the service that was going on around me, yet there was a friend of mine who was away from home, not anywhere near his family who's in the hospital getting surgery to have a kidney stone removed.

I found some of the members of his congregation that were part of his party that had come to the conference and I asked them, what hospital is he in?

I want to go see him. And they said, it's very kind of you, but we're pretty sure he's getting out this morning.

And sure enough, I saw him the last day of the conference and he was sitting at a table, probably because he didn't want to stand up and walk anywhere.

And I went up to him and talked with him. He said, I love this conference so much and the preaching here is so good.

I just could not stay away from here. I had to get here. I had to be here at least for the last day.

So as I was enjoying the comforts in my body, yet there was somebody who was reminding me so closely.

And as much as I could to feel the pain that he felt, not literally, but to struggle with him through that and to pray with him and to encourage him.

I was reminded in those moments that our God is a God of all comfort. And even if I'm not going through something in my life in which

I need to be on my knees before God and weeping and crying out and saying God deliver me from this, the reason why

I may not feel that way is because our God is the God of all comfort, is because he is comforting me in all moments of life.

And I'm filled with joy and passion for my God when

I read and I recite to myself over and over that we worship the

God of all comfort who comforts us in all our affliction. So like I said, as I was meditating on this this past week, one of the passages that came to my mind, especially in that part where I read that he comforts us in all our afflictions.

I was reminded of James 1, 2, where James says, count it all joy, my brethren, when you face trials of various kinds.

For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. I remember when

I was studying through James, when I was going through James on the podcast sometime last year, I was going through that passage in James 1, 2,

I think it's also verse 3, verses 2 and 3, where James talks about rejoice, my brothers, when you go through trials of various kinds.

I described it as being the junk drawer of trials. That's kind of what James is describing there.

So all the trials that you know that you go through in life and yet you've also got those miscellaneous trials that you don't consider a big deal.

But even when you go through those things, you still need to rejoice in God through trials of various kinds.

I prayed this morning that we would know the God of all comforts, even during this tax season.

As you file your taxes this year, you need to rejoice in God as you go through trials of various kinds.

Amen? You need to know even in tax season that God is the God of all comforts.

You need to know when you struggle to pay your bills, that God is a God of all comforts and that we rejoice in God when we face these trials of various kinds.

When you feel the aches and pains in your body, when you struggle in a relationship with somebody else, whether it's a friend, whether it's a spouse, whether it's a child, that in all these things, we know that we worship a

God of all comfort and we rejoice in God through various trials. Whenever there is some kind of calamity or chaos or something like that that's happening in the world, something that has the national attention and pastors will start preaching on that thing that's got everybody's eye and everybody's ear and they start presenting that to their congregation.

If it happens to be a pastor, I bring up a sermon online and I'm listening to what it is that he's saying.

I must confess a certain bias in my heart. There is something that I am anxious to hear that pastor say to his congregation.

I want to hear him say something to the effect of, rejoice when you face trials of various kinds.

Does this pastor, as he shepherds his congregation with the word of God, does he desire to comfort the hearts of his hearers with an understanding that we rely on the

God of all comforts or is he only trying to stir up emotions that have already been stirred up by this national thing?

What does that achieve? What does that accomplish? We might as well be Fox News up here. If that's all a pastor is attempting to achieve, stirring up emotions that has already been stirred up over the course of the week, as you have heard news pundit after news pundit talk over one another and never come to agreement, just presenting their views over the top of somebody else's views.

The pastor has a platform in which he's up here uncontested and so he's trying to stir emotions but without offering any comfort that we do need to rejoice as we go through trials of various kinds.

Praise God for this circumstance, for this thing. Among the preaching that I listened to this past week,

Mark Dever was one of the preachers, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D .C.

Mark Dever was preaching all the way through 1 Timothy. He basically did all of 1 Timothy. And when he came to 1

Timothy 2, one of the things he mentioned is that when Paul tells Timothy to pray for kings and those who are in high positions, do you understand who it was that Paul was telling

Timothy to pray for? Nero, one of the greatest enemies of the

Christian church in history, who would put Christians up on poles along the side of the road and light them on fire to light the streets.

And yet, Paul was telling Timothy, pray for this man, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

This is good, Paul says to Timothy. And it is pleasing in the sight of God our

Savior, who desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, even

Nero, even Donald Trump, even

Kim Jong -un, even prime ministers and captains and governors, military generals, state legislatures, mayors, everyone.

God desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. It is so easy to complain about politics.

I know that full well. I'm not saying that I'm any better at it than anyone else. But whenever those names come to our mind, instead of getting frustrated, instead of getting angry, why not pray for those individuals?

And thank God for the gift of government. Because we are told in Romans chapter 13 that government is a gift, that civic order has been given to us by God.

Imagine what this world would be like in anarchy. It would be chaos. That is not the standard.

That is not what God set up for us, that we may lead peaceful and quiet lives.

He gave us government that we would enjoy comfort in the safety of our government.

Yes, there are governments that are tyrannical. Yes, there are governments that oppress. But nonetheless, we rejoice in God when we face trials of various kinds.

Because why? James even goes on to say, because you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

This is one of the reasons why the prosperity gospel is so damning. Because it will teach you that if you just name it and claim it, it will be.

God, I named this situation and I claim that it's going to be better for me. And then it doesn't go that way.

And then your faith does not flourish. It flounders. It languishes.

Languishes, rather. Languages. You lose faith when your faith goes through trials and you can't rejoice in God through those trials.

When some false teacher has told you that if you just say it'll be better, it'll be better, you just need positive affirmation.

You just need to say right words and then your situation will automatically be better. Joyce Meyer has outright told her hearers that if you speak to your checkbook, there will be money in your bank account.

John Gray, who's got a TV show on BET, I've heard him say the same thing. I heard him speaking to a congregation in which he said, somebody listening to me right now is a college student who is struggling with your debt.

And I'm telling you right now, the Lord has put it in my mind that God just filled your bank account with money and so you can go home and be at peace.

He is lying. Nobody by these words just automatically received money in their bank account.

And when men say such false lying things, they give false comfort to their hearers.

It might be a comfort that is in ignorance. There are plenty of this world that are comfortable but do not believe in God and their comfort is ignorance because as the old adage goes, ignorance is bliss.

I don't know and because I'm not aware, therefore I'm happy, therefore

I'm comfortable. And this is why we see so many people who are comfortable in their sin because they don't realize that they have sinned against the

God of the universe. And for that sin, for that rebellion, what we deserve is death.

We deserve hell but we worship the Father of mercies who shows mercy to us through the

Lord Jesus Christ. As we've declared this morning in our congregational reading that it is by faith in Jesus Christ that we are saved.

It is by faith in the work that Christ has done on the cross. It is by faith in his resurrection from the dead.

That was even demonstrated this morning through baptism. Will being buried with Christ in his sins and risen again to new life as I hope that we all can testify to in our lives.

I was sinful, I was rebellious against God by the power of the Holy Spirit that regenerated my heart and washed my mind of the sinful state that it was in, of the passions of this world that I was pursuing.

I'm no longer after the world, I'm after God. And I desire to be like him.

And I desire to be like Christ and be made in the image of my Savior. All of us, my brothers and sisters, every single human being is made in the image of God but only those who are in Christ Jesus are being made in the image of the

Savior. Everyone in this world, as I've heard David Platt say, everyone in this world knows

God the Father, not everyone knows Jesus Christ. And that is why we need to be carriers of the gospel.

So that those who hear the gospel would be saved. And I'll tell you, when you tell them the gospel and when you show them the sinfulness that they have perpetrated against God, they won't be so comfortable anymore.

They should actually mourn over their sin. They should. I have and so should you.

Because as the Bible tells us, Matthew 5, 4, blessed are they who mourn for they will be what?

Comforted. They will be comforted. It's one of the first places in the New Testament that we see that word comfort come up.

And it's in the Beatitudes. It's the second Beatitude that Jesus gives. Matthew 5, 4, blessed are they who mourn for they shall be comforted.

And I've been going through the Beatitudes with my kids and we've been memorizing them together. And when it came to helping my children understand what that means,

I told my kids, when Jesus says, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted, we can receive an understanding of mourning in two ways.

There's two different ways that Jesus talks about the believer in mourning. Number one, that they would mourn over their sin.

They would mourn over the fact that they have betrayed a holy God. And in that betrayal, realize that they're worthy of condemnation.

Yet, God sent his son to die for us. Romans 5, 8, while we were yet sinners,

Christ died for us, and God shows his love for us in this way. And then we can be comforted in our sinfulness in knowing that our sins have been paid for.

So we mourn over our sinfulness and then we rejoice in knowing that God has taken away the stain of guilt and is training us in righteousness, growing us in holiness until the day that we go to be with our

Savior forever in heaven. So in this way, we mourn and then we're comforted by the good news of the gospel.

Blessed are they who mourn for they shall be comforted. That's the first way that we mourn. The second way that we mourn, we mourn over the fact that we're still part of this sinful, fallen, depraved, wretched -something world.

I ran out of adjectives. It's a horrible world that we live in.

It is a world that is going to be destroyed by fire, and we're reminded of that over and over and over again in the

Scriptures. When we see evil all around us, it is right for us to mourn. Habakkuk mourned.

Habakkuk mourned over the sinfulness that he saw. Those of you who were in Chris's class a few months ago as he was going through the book of Habakkuk, you saw at the very beginning of that book

Habakkuk saying, How long, O Lord, are you going to let violence go on all around us? Look at all this evil.

What are you doing? And God's response to Habakkuk was, Habakkuk, watch and see, for I'm about to do something you would not even know if I told you what it was going to be.

Habakkuk, not content with that, starts complaining again. Well, we've been conquered by the

Chaldeans. God, I know Israel's been bad. Yeah, we've been wicked. We worship false gods.

The Chaldeans are way worse than we are. So why are we conquered by the Chaldeans?

And, I mean, you're just letting them run ramshot over us. What are we going to do about that?

What are you doing? And God said, Come on, Habakkuk. You think

I'm going to let their sin go unpunished? I have a purpose for them in this time and place to discipline

Israel that they would come to repentance. And then I'm going to deal with the Chaldeans.

And you know how Habakkuk concludes this letter? It's Habakkuk 3, 17 -18.

He says, in a very short, minor prophet, He says, Though the fig tree should not blossom,

Nor the fruit beyond the vines, The produce of the olive fail, And the fields yield no food,

The flock be cut off from the fold, And there be no herd in the stalls, Yet I will rejoice in the

Lord. I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the

Lord, is my strength. And that's the way the book of Habakkuk ends. R .C.

Sproul, teaching on this particular passage, said the following, Habakkuk was now as fierce in his joy as he had been in his despair.

He was able to rest absolutely in God's sovereignty. His words, translated into modern jargon, might sound like this,

Even if the budget is never balanced, Even if the stock market crashes,

Even if food or gas prices skyrocket,

Even if my child never recovers from illness, Even if I lose my job,

Even if I lose my home, Yet I will rejoice in the

God of my salvation. God, the

Lord, is my strength. And so the

Apostle Paul presents to the Corinthians, the

Father of mercies and the God of all comforts, who comforts us in all our afflictions, so that what?

Verse 4, So that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

So my friends, my brothers and sisters, as I present you to this this morning, this is not just an effort to bring you comfort in your life, that you would be comforted, knowing that in Jesus Christ, if you have repented and you follow

Christ, you've been forgiven. Blessed are they who mourn, they shall be comforted. It's not just in knowing that though this world is evil, there's a day that's coming when we will be delivered from this, and we will be with our

Lord forever in glory. Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted. It's not just to bring you comfort, but so that in experiencing the comfort of God in your heart and in your soul, you may be able to comfort someone else.

That you can tell them we worship a sovereign God, and there is nothing that happens in this world that is outside of his control.

There are no maverick molecules, as R .C. Sproul has put it. For if there was one molecule that was able to go rogue and do its own thing, how could we trust in a

God of all comforts? If he can't even keep control of that molecule. Yet we know that God is sovereign.

We know that he has created all things, and he is working all things ultimately to his glory.

The way it's put for us in Romans 8, 28, is God works all things together for good for those who love

God and are called according to his purpose. And when you read verse 29, you understand what that good is that God is working according to his purpose.

It is to shape you in the image of Christ. And some of us are going to go through greater struggles than others.

Some of us are going to appreciate the truth that we worship the

God of all comfort more than others will be able to appreciate it. Whatever you're going through, whatever it is,

I tell you to put your faith in Christ. There is nothing wrong with you as a

Christian falling on the floor on your face in tears because the pressure of life has just gotten to be too much.

But I hope that when you do, when you get back up on your feet and you wipe the tears from your eyes, what you will know and what you will experience in your mind and in your heart is what

Paul describes in Philippians 4, writing from a jail cell, a peace that surpasses all understanding, that will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.

You will experience what David experienced in Psalm 13, where he says,

How long, O Lord, are you going to forget me forever? And then finishes that Psalm by saying,

But I will trust in God my Savior, for he has dealt bountifully with me.

You will be reminded, my brother or my sister in the Lord, that you were once a sinner, and you were once separated from God, but you have been forgiven in Jesus Christ and made a son or daughter of God the

Father and a fellow heir with Christ of his eternal kingdom. And that truth will comfort you.

You will be comforted by the God of all comfort. I had planned this morning to go through all 11 verses.

I only got through two, so we're going to come back to this again next week.

Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

On behalf of all of us here at First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ, when we understand the text.