Risky Rejection Luke 16 Vs 14-18

Sunday Announcements and Church Calendar

If you'd like to turn in your bulletins to the announcements, there's Bible study on Wednesday the 20th at 5 .30, and we're gonna be in chapter two of the Praying with Paul book. The missionary of the month are John and Becky Knox, and John and Becky serve with biblical ministries worldwide in Japan.

And let's pray for them that there will be provision for their missionary team and the students that they work with to accept Christ. There's also a biblical counseling course on Saturday, March 23rd at 9 .30 a .m.

On the 31st, Easter, we are not having our normal Sunday school. Instead, we are meeting at 10 a .m. for a time of fellowship and food and celebrate the Easter Sunday. Then we'll have the morning service at the normal time.

Let's pray. Dear God, thank you so much for this time that we have to be together and worship you and praise you and learn from your word. Pray that you'd bless the pastor as he brings the word and the folks with the music that we might lift you high, Lord, and we give it all to you, Father, in Jesus' name, amen.

And welcome if this is your first time here today as well. We're glad you're here. So our first song, hymn, is gonna be Standing on the Promises, and I looked it up and it was written a long time ago by a gentleman by the name of Russell Carter.

He was a professor, he was an engineer, sciences, but he had a near-death experience and he committed to the Lord right then and there that he vowed to be used by God, and that's why in this song you see standing on the promises, standing on the promises, standing on the promises, and that's what we need to do and we can do because we have God's word to do that.

So please stand together. Perfect wisdom of our God, and you'll notice the first verse is wisdom in creation, and only wisdom can be found in God, not through man. Second verse is God's wisdom directs the life of a believer, and then the last verse is a prayer for peace and love for the trials that do lie ahead.

Christ Fulfills the Law and the Prophets

Scripture reading is gonna be on Matthew chapter five, 17 through 20. Do not think that I come to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the law until all is accomplished.

Whoever then annuals one of the least of the commandments and teaches others to do the same shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. This is the word of the Lord.

Let's stand together again as we sing how firm a foundation and that foundation is in the Lord. It is his word. And without that, we wouldn't be here today.

Please turn with me to Luke chapter 16,.

Verses 14 through 18. Luke chapter 16, verses 14 through 18. Now the Pharisees who were lovers of money also heard all these things and they derided him. And he said to them, you are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts.

For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God. The law and the prophets were until John. Since that time, the kingdom of God has been preached and everyone is pressing into it.

And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail. Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery and whoever marries her who is divorced from her husband commits adultery.

This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray. Gracious Father, you are so good to us, so merciful that you have given us your son, Jesus Christ, to die for our sin, suffer the judgment that we deserved so that we may be forgiven and be adopted as your children in Christ.

Help us to reflect his glory and honor as we live today, knowing that we don't live for ourselves, but we live for Christ, the risen Lord who reigns from heaven. In Jesus' name, amen. So this passage follows Jesus' parable regarding the importance of stewardship and looking ahead to the kingdom of God that is coming.

And this is the reaction of the Pharisees. And the Pharisees cared about their money. The Pharisees cared about their outward appearance. They were the authority, the religious authority, the religious establishment.

And although they held to the Old Testament scripture, both Moses' writing, the law and the prophets, everything else following Moses' writing, they did not actually internally obey God. And that's because it is easy to hypocritically look clean and pure on the outside, but hide the sins inside.

And in response, Jesus talks about the consequence of rejecting him and his kingdom. And he has a message that's similar to what was read by Hezekiah this morning from Matthew 5. And it's about how there is not even a tittle from the law, a dot from the law that is eliminated.

Even if heaven and earth pass away, none of the law would be passed over. And when Christians hear that, it's troubling, mainly because there are parts of the law we don't quite follow the way the Jews did and do to this day.

So how are we to understand that? And I do want to cover what does that mean, that the law doesn't pass away, yet we obey the law not the same way as the Jews did. The key word here is fulfillment. In Matthew's section of how Jesus has come and no part of the law is erased, Matthew uses the word fulfill.

Hezekiah's translation used the word accomplish. They're synonyms. What this means is when Jesus came, he fulfilled the law and the prophets. He fulfilled them. And that's what Matthew 5 says. One thing to note is fulfill does not mean maintain.

Fulfill does not mean maintain. Maintain would mean to keep it just as they have already been kept. Right? Obey the dietary restriction. Don't eat bacon, don't eat pork, don't eat shrimp, don't eat lobster, don't eat eels, right?

Those are unclean animals according to Leviticus. That's not what fulfill means. Fulfill also does not mean eliminate, as in let's go to the Old Testament and take away the ones that we don't like, right?

That's specifically what Jesus says that's not happening. Nothing from the law or the prophets are eliminated. So what does fulfill mean? It means to take it to its anticipated end. Take it to its anticipated end or accomplish it to its intended goal, right?

Fulfill does not mean maintain, but it means to take it to its anticipated end. So the Christians do not discard the law. We do keep it as scripture. It is scripture. Christians, however, do not obey the law the same way that the Jews did.

Christians obey the law as it has been fulfilled by Jesus Christ. In fact, Jesus follows up with multiple examples on the Sermon on the Mount, what that looks like. That's why Jesus starts with this formula and he repeats this formula over and over again.

He says, you have heard it said, but I say to you. That's what fulfillment looks like. So for example, what Jesus does is he takes some of the 10 commandments and shows how he fulfills them. He takes them to its intended, anticipated end and what it looks like for Christians to obey the law that has been fulfilled by Christ.

So for example, Matthew 5, verse 27, he says, you have heard that it was said, do not commit adultery. But I say to you, whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

What Jesus is saying is while the law prevented the physical action of adultery, Jesus' fulfillment of the law gets to the heart of it. It's not just prevented, it's not prohibited to sleep with a woman you're not married to, but rather, you're not even to even imagine that in your mind.

The fulfillment of the law gets to the heart of the matter. When Jesus came to bring the kingdom of God on earth, he gets to the heart of the matter. And that shifts how we read the Old Testament. It's no longer just a physical ritualistic cleanliness, but in the end, those things pointed to the purity of the heart.

That's why we don't avoid unclean animals. Because back then, avoiding pork, bacon, shrimp, that the purpose was to keep it physically clean. They were to physically cleanse themselves, keep away from anything that resembled death because those things ate things that were dead.

And God's people, Israel, who worshiped the God of life had to keep away, separate themselves even to a degree of things that eat dead things. Pigs, shrimp, lobster, eel, eagles. However, what Christ says here is that he fulfills the dietary restrictions.

It's no longer the outward cleanliness, but what that pointed to, and that is the inward purity. And for all of us who believe that Jesus Christ died for your sin and rose from the dead, you are made clean inside.

The Holy Spirit regenerates your heart. You are made a new creation. Hence, following the dietary restriction as Christians is to receive Jesus Christ and be purified in the Spirit. It is no longer the external things that we need to be cleansed from, but it is the internal, it's the sin.

So, for Christians to follow the law, even the dietary restriction, as Christ has fulfilled it, does not mean to avoid pork. Rather, to avoid things that make you unclean inside. That's what it means for Jesus to fulfill the law and the prophets, and that's what it means to follow the law and the prophets as Jesus fulfilled them.

With that in mind, let's get to the text. As I've mentioned, this passage follows the parable in which it was emphasized that God's people need to look forward to the future kingdom as they steward all that they have faithfully.

And here, we will see that the Pharisees scoff at that. They say, what baloney? The main point of this text is, what are the consequences of rejecting Jesus and his kingdom? What are the consequences of rejecting Jesus and his kingdom?

Rejecting Jesus to Please the Public Leads to Divine Disdain

First, rejecting Jesus to please the public ultimately results in the divine disdain. Rejecting Jesus to please the public ultimately results in the divine disdain. After hearing Jesus' teaching on the importance of faithful stewardship, the Pharisees immediately challenged Jesus.

Now, the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things and they derided him. First, we see why the Pharisees challenged Jesus. They love their wealth. They are personally offended by Jesus' teaching to choose God over money and using money to prepare for the coming kingdom rather than the current kingdom of self because they're personally invested in it.

They love their money. And for those who love something, they normally seek to protect it. So, they respond in derision. They derided him. What that means is the Pharisees ridiculed him. They mocked him, right?

The same word is described, used to describe how the rulers will mock Jesus when he's on the cross, right? They mock him. They insult him, right? They make fun of him. He saved others. Let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the chosen one, right?

That's the mockery that Jesus will face ultimately on the cross. But here, Jesus is mocked yet again, this time from the religious establishment. And it's only the beginning of the opposition against Jesus.

And that's because Jesus preached on things that were offensive to those who are in sin. Now, rather than staying silent, Jesus takes on the challenge. You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your heart.

Jesus gets to the heart of the matter. The Pharisees, their lifestyle, what they teach, with how they live, they justify themselves before men. What this means is that they care about the court of public opinion more than the heavenly court.

They desire to be accepted by men more so than being accepted by God. Their passion is the positive opinion of men. While they disregard any opinion from God. They want to be viewed right in the eyes of men.

Their focus is the outward appearance rather than the inward purity. And this is a logical and natural thing. If your main goal is to be loved and liked by the public, other fallible human beings, there's really no incentive to work on your inward purity.

There's no incentive to be inwardly pure. After all, they don't see what's going on inside. So, they just embellish what's on the outside. Inside may be disgusting, disturbing, and just trash. But as long as the outside is golden, it's all good.

Although they may have fooled the public, Jesus states that God is not amused. He can see right through their facade. For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God. Although men may be as easily impressed by their appearance of godliness, God finds their act repulsive and repugnant.

Their self-exaltation may seem attractive to the public, but God sees it as an abomination. God is not pleased with their moral behaviorism, but God is looking for inner devotion. And in our nation, how we are viewed by others is even more emphasized.

We have to build up how others view us. And that can be seen in how people post on their social media. It is curated. It is, it's decorated. They put what's best out there, and they would not share anything that might be offensive to anyone.

Not only that, this seeps into the church. How Christians are viewed by the world seems to be more important, oftentimes, than how Christians are viewed by Jesus Christ himself. This is why many so-called pastors avoid preaching on sin and hell in order to please the public.

This is why many Christians get really apologetic as in they apologize for doctrines that are found in the Bible on sexual purity, on genders. And that's because they're pursuing positive opinions of men by rejecting God's approval.

When we do that, we would rather be received by the world even if it means rejecting Christ and his teaching. After all, all the powerful institutions in this country, whether politics, business, academia, or media, they're publicly against Christianity.

If the focus is mere outward appearance and the positive opinion of the world, there's actually no incentive to preach the truth, to speak the truth in love. Jesus, however, tells us how God feels about the obsession over the outward appearance and chasing the worldly praises.

It's an abomination in the sight of God. Pursuing the world's favor will inevitably lead to God's disdain. And that's what the Pharisees were doing. And that's the danger for us in the church today. And every one of us has a choice to make in our lives.

Do we want to be justified by the world or justified by Christ? Because you cannot be both justified by the world and justified by Christ. You can worship only one God and you can only stand before one judge in righteousness.

Do you want to be seen right by the world even if it means you're not right with God? And that's the natural result if we pursue man's approval rather than God's approval in Jesus Christ. Are your friends' love more valuable than God's love for you?

Are your colleagues' respect more precious than God's esteem? Are your public influence more important than Christ? And these are questions that we may have to face even on a daily basis. And there are hard situations to be in.

I'm not saying they're easy. But we must look toward to whom we gain rather than what we lose when we follow Christ. Oftentimes, people focus on what we lose. I'm gonna lose my business. I'm going to lose my friends.

I'm going to lose my influence. I'm going to lose my job. I'm going to lose my respect. In the end, all those things we're not entitled to have. However, we need to focus on what we actually gain. In the end, we gain Christ.

We gain the king who was disdained by the world himself to obey his father to the uttermost. We gain a king who understands what it means to be hated by the world because he loved his father and his people that much more.

We gain the king who was humiliated on the cross so that he could rescue us from our sin and make us his. We gain Jesus Christ. And when we consider what kind of humiliation and disdain that Jesus faced in order to gain us, to rescue us from our sin, our loss seems so little and gain so much bigger.

Rejecting the Kingdom Means Rejecting the Law and the Prophets

Now, what are the Pharisees truly rejecting when they mock Jesus' kingdom? Rejecting Jesus' kingdom leads to discarding all of God's redemptive promises. Rejecting Jesus' kingdom leads to discarding all of God's redemptive promises.

Jesus spells out the implication of the Pharisees' mockery. The law and the prophets were until John. Since that time, the kingdom of God has been preached and everyone is pressing into it. This verse needs to be unpacked to be understood here.

The first phrase is that the law and the prophets were until John. John here is John the Baptist. The law and the prophets represent the Old Testament. In fact, that's how the Jews understand the law and the prophets to be.

They consider the law to be the first five books of the Old Testament, right? Genesis to Deuteronomy, written by Moses, the giver of the law. And the rest to be the prophets and the writings. And they even consider people like Joshua as a former prophet.

So the book of Joshua, that's a prophetic book. And so on. It's not just Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel here. They consider Samuel, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel to be a prophetic book, right? These are all prophets.

So what Jesus is saying, the law and the prophets were until John. What that means is the old era ended when John the Baptist came. And notice who John the Baptist is. He is the last prophet before Jesus coming.

In one sense, John the Baptist, although he is born in the New Testament time, represents the end of the old era. He's the bookend. He's the last page of the old era. And remember what his main role was.

We don't know anything about John the Baptist's miracles. To our knowledge, we don't know if he performed a single one. What he's known for, what his purpose was, it was to prepare the way for the Messiah, the Christ, the King.

He was preparing God's people for the coming of Jesus Christ by calling on to Israel to repent, turn around. And Jesus is telling them the old era came to an end when Jesus himself entered the scene. The promise of the old era, all the promises of the old era find their fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

All the promises of the old era find their amen in Jesus Christ. Now, how are the promises being fulfilled? Since that time, the kingdom of God has been preached and everyone is pressing into it. The preaching of the kingdom of God comes with Jesus Christ because he is the King.

We cannot separate the King from the kingdom. The kingdom is useless if we forget the King. The kingdom's greatness only comes because of the great King. The kingdom of God that's preached is the gospel.

It is the good news that the King is finally here to bring his lost people into his kingdom. It is the good news that the King has come to rescue his people who are under the domain of Satan and sin, that he could bring them out of that and then transplant these people into his kingdom through his death and resurrection.

The King has come to redeem the enslaved from their sins. The King has come to deliver them even if it means he is delivered into the hands of his enemies to die. That's the kingdom that's preached. And ever since the kingdom of God has been proclaimed, people have been responding to it in massive droves.

They're pressing into it. They're eagerly entering. Imagine a Black Friday sale. People are waiting to get in. They're pushing each other to get in. That's what's unfolding as the kingdom has been preached.

The new era has dawned when the King Jesus came and the Pharisees are missing out when they mock and reject the King himself. The prostitutes and tax collectors excitedly enter, yet the Pharisees would rather stay outside the gate with their arms crossed.

Now, what's the point of this? It is important to remember that the Pharisees held on to the law and the prophets. That was their authority. What Jesus states here is crucial because he reveals the true nature of the Pharisees.

On the outside, they seem faithful to the law and the prophets, Moses and all the prophets who came after him. On the outside, they appear doctrinally sound and practically perfect, yet the moment they reject Jesus and his kingdom, they have rejected everything that came before Jesus Christ, the law and the prophets.

You think you are holding onto scripture, but the moment you reject Jesus Christ, you have rejected them also. It's a judgment. It's a warning to the Pharisees. You better reconsider what you're doing here when you're mocking Jesus Christ.

You better reconsider what you're doing here when you reject the King. You're actually rejecting what came before him because those point to him. Unless we think that Jesus has come to abolish the law and the prophets, he clarifies the consequence of the coming of his kingdom.

And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail. After all, the Pharisees could easily claim that the kingdom of Jesus, it's hijacking the Old Testament. No, no, no, that's a cult.

That's an easy argument, right? If you're saying the kingdom is greater than the law and the prophets, you're a cult. However, Jesus says, absolutely not. He says, it would be more possible for God's creation to pass away than the law to fail.

Consider what heaven and earth are. They are the secure and stable parts of creation. Think about this. When we look at God's creation, you look outside, there's grass, flowers, and ladybugs. In due season, they wither away or they just die.

You've seen dead bugs. You've seen withered grass. However, that's not part of the creation that Jesus chooses here. He chooses earth and heaven. No one wakes up in the morning with the fear that the sky's falling down or that earth will give away.

Right, or we wouldn't step outside, would we? Jesus has chosen the most stable and secure parts of creation, the ones that we expect to continue on. And he says, those will pass away. But a tittle, a small marking on some of the Hebrew letters, just a little dot.

Think of a single dot over the lowercase i in the English alphabet. Sometimes, even when that's missing, we can still understand the context of the word, right? We know what word it is, even if the dot's missing, right?

Those of you who sign names and sometimes you forget the dots, that happens. Yet, Jesus is saying, even those dots will not pass away. Even the seemingly most insignificant part of the law will remain compared to what we normally consider secure and unchangeable, heaven and earth.

And Jesus shows the reality of his kingdom with an illustration. Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries her who is divorced from her husband commits adultery.

In the New Testament, there are clearly two cases in which a divorce is warranted, as in, you can do that and you're not sinning and you're not committing adultery. And those are Matthew 19 and 1 Corinthians 7.

However, Luke does not mention them here. And because of that, I will not go through these passages today. And I understand divorce is a sensitive and complex topic. So if you have any specific questions or concerns, I will be able to talk to you after the service.

Because I understand it is, it's a big problem in this culture and it's personal. In Luke, Jesus sets the standard for divorce. If a divorce and remarriage were to happen, it breaks the covenant of marriage.

First, the covenant between the couple and God, because when you're married, the witness is God. Second, the covenant between the man and his wife. Third, even the new husband who marries the divorced commits adultery.

It goes even further. What Jesus is doing is he's setting the standard for what commitment looks like. In his kingdom, the commitment to God and others are valued and protected. And for many of us, this seems like out of the blue.

The topic of divorce may seem random, but we need to understand its historical context. In ancient Israel, there was actually a debate regarding what is allowed, what's an acceptable reason for divorce according to the law.

First, we do need to clarify, unlike the modern culture, only men got to divorce his wife. There's no case in which the woman initiates the divorce. Second, there were two different theological viewpoints regarding what is an acceptable reason for divorce.

One group taught that a man could divorce his wife for any reason. For example, if a man did not like his wife's cooking, that was enough to grant a divorce. You think I'm making it up. This is, that's what they really believed.

It was just for anything. And in fact, you kind of see that cultural mindset after Jesus discusses marriage in Matthew 19 because his disciples said, then who can get married, right? If divorce is that hard, then who's gonna get married?

That's because in their mindset, divorce was so easy. That's one view. The second view was much stricter. They only allowed divorce for immorality, which not always a clear-cut adultery. Again, if the husband gets to decide, immorality could be fudged a little too, right?

Oh, that's immoral. Certificate of divorce, there you go. Now, this debate even continued in Jesus' day because it totally depended on how you interpreted Deuteronomy 24, the main passage about divorce.

So it was debated back and forth, back and forth. There was a whole spectrum. Now, Jesus enters the world. He has just revealed that his kingdom is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets, and now he gives the standard for divorce.

His standard does not look at the convenience of the man, and it does not set various loopholes to make it easier. His standard focuses on what's truly important in his kingdom, and it is the commitment and faithfulness to God and to one another.

Jesus' kingdom brings the focus back to God and his character. The fact that he sets the standard is a testament to who Jesus is. Jesus is declaring that he himself is the final authority on the interpretation of scripture.

Yes, there are two groups of Jews who debate what all they want regarding what is the acceptable reason, but ultimately, Jesus is the one who sets the standard. Jesus gets to set the value for his kingdom.

Jesus is the measuring rod. Jesus has the final say because Jesus is the king of his kingdom, and in our pluralistic culture, people want to find similarities. Pluralism means there are many different options out there that lead to the truth, and the thought is maybe if we all find the common ground, we can coexist, and you've all seen the coexist bumper stickers with different religious symbols.

Many theologians and religious figures spend countless hours trying to get Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all to agree on something. Oh, yeah, they're Abrahamic, right? It's like they can all link back to Abraham.

Now they can fellowship together, they can commune, or when you talk to Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, they will vehemently claim that they're Christians. They want to be grouped along with the Christians if you're a Christian, of course, right, if you're talking to them as a Christian, and pluralism is problematic because Jesus tells us how we ought to respond to the true Jesus of the Bible and how we respond to the true Jesus of the Bible determines how we respond to God's kingdom and the fulfillment of all the past promises in the Old Testament.

The past promises of the Old Testament, here are some. God promised that He would do away with sin. God promised that He would crush the head of the serpent. God promised that He would get rid of diseases.

God promised that His people would reign forever. God promised that His people would be cleansed from the inside. God promised that He would dwell with His people, and God promised that His people would get to know Him personally.

Those are some great promises. God promises, God promised in the Old Testament that there would be no war. God promised in the Old Testament that there would be prosperity among His people. Those are great promises.

Now, all of those promises depend on how you respond to Jesus Christ. That's what He's saying here. The law and the prophets, they contain all those promises, and how you respond to Jesus determine whether you enter into those promises or not, whether you get to see the fulfillment of those promises or not.

And it's about your response to that one person, and it is Jesus Christ. The Pharisees believed all of the Old Testament. They were not foreign to the promises of the Old Testament. They knew it better than we did because they memorized large chunks of the Old Testament, like the back of their hands.

They revered Moses and all the prophets. However, their rejection of Jesus kept them outside the kingdom and the promises. The crux of everything is how we respond to Jesus Christ. It is true that Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses claim they believe in Jesus, but their Jesus is completely different from the true Jesus of the Bible.

Their Jesus is a fake figure whose salvation can be earned through your good works rather than freely given by His divine grace. It is true that Islam and Judaism can trace their roots back to Abraham.

However, the true children of the promise need to be born again through their faith in Jesus Christ. We respect Jews. We respect the Old Testament. We pray for the Jews. We pray for Israel. At the core of it, at the core of all the prayers that we pray for Israel, yes, we do want peace.

Yes, we do want protection. At the core of it has to be that these people will believe and trust in Jesus Christ because they will not be able to enter into the blessed kingdom without Jesus Christ. And that goes with the Islam too, Muslims.

When we do pray for the Muslims, it has to be more than just the peace in the Middle East. It's that they would find the lasting peace with God in Jesus Christ. That no longer would God of heaven be against them because Jesus had taken away their sin on the cross.

They cannot experience the blessed peace, the eternal peace of God when they reject the King Jesus. And that is the same case for us this morning. America will not reach a national peace some sort of unity because we elect a single person this November who can bring us all together.

I don't know what that means anymore. That unity will not last. And I don't even know if it can happen. But America will. And Americans, most importantly, will experience peace and unity with God only if they respond to Jesus Christ in faith.

That's the only source of lasting unity and peace. Not this election. Their choice in believing Jesus Christ. That's the most important choice that we have to make this morning if we haven't yet. Not in some political candidate, although that's important for another reason.

Don't get me wrong. Elections do matter. But the most important for all of us is how we respond to Jesus Christ. Did he die for your sin and rise from the dead? Did he take away all of your sin and suffered on the cross on your behalf?

Or is he just some historical figure who taught love your neighbor? What we find out this morning is all of the prophets and the law in the Bible find their fulfillment in Jesus Christ. And if we reject Jesus, we forgo everything.

Let us pray. Father, we are grateful that through Jesus Christ, through our faith in Jesus Christ, we can enter his kingdom and experience the blessings of the law and the prophets in him. Thank you that it is not our doing.

It is not because we are good that we are blessed by you, but we are actually horrible. We're sinful. And we only can experience your blessing because Jesus Christ had accomplished for us on the cross.

Help us to respond to him in faith this morning if we haven't done so already. May your spirit work in all of our hearts to experience his love and compassion for us that draw us in. In Jesus' name, amen.