The following sermon is by Capitol Community Church, located in Raleigh, North Carolina. Capitol Community Church is a people awakened to a holy God. If you are searching for a new church home, or from out of town looking for a church to worship with, or simply seeking for answers. Please join us for worship at 9 o'clock a.m. every Sunday morning. If you have any questions, please email us at info at CapitalCommunityChurch.com. We pray this sermon will help you grow deeper in your walk with Jesus Christ. Well, good morning. It's great to see you this morning. I hope you've had a just rich and fulfilling last few days as you spend Thanksgiving with your family and friends. We had a very special Thanksgiving in our house this year. Each one of our four kids invited an international friend or two over to the house. And so as we sat down for our Thanksgiving dinner, we had guests from Argentina and China and Serbia and India. And it was just a very special time as we went around the table and We shared things we were thankful for. We shared about things God has done in our life this past year. And then Ben grabbed his guitar and he led us in some worship songs and some other songs as well. And it was just a really special Thanksgiving at our house. I hope it was at yours as well. And I hope that you're still in the mindset of Thanksgiving this morning. I know Kenny's already moved on. He put up the Christmas tree and Jake's, you know, and all these decorations, but we're going to be eating leftovers this morning. So I want you to keep your minds back on Thanksgiving and what God teaches us about filling our hearts with thanksgiving toward Him. You know, I know this is a well-worn theme. You've heard lots of messages about giving thanks. And maybe after the last few days, you kind of feel thank you'd out. Or maybe you, you know, feel like you're a pretty thankful person. Many of us, you know, give thanks to God several times a day, just in our, before our meals and as things happen, and then we say thank you to others, and you know, thank you is a word that is rolling off our tongues all the time. But if you're like me, sometimes that thanksgiving just is up here. and it's a little bit shallow. I'll never forget going to the local vegetable market when we first arrived in Albania. We didn't know but just a few words, but of course, you know, two of the first words we learned were please and thank you, the magic words, right? Those are so important. And so we learned please, which is tolutum in Albanian, and we used, we learned thank you, Ben, which is so we had to get food to survive and so we headed out to the market and the market there was just four little concrete stalls side by side and it was mostly vegetables but this was not like you know Harris Teeter you didn't touch any of the vegetables you walked in all the stuff was behind the counter and you had to interact with with the guy or the lady standing there so you needed a little bit of language or something but We were armed with the magic words and so we would go in. These were just the first, you know, few days and we'd go in and we'd, you know, be pointing to something. Hey, tulutum, please. Two, two kilogram. Two. And, ah, falam derit. Tulutum, banane. Tre, tre kilogram. Ah, falam derit. Well, finally, one of the store clerks, after Ren and I had been going in there for a couple of weeks, looked at us and said, no more please and thank you in my store. You see, please and thank you were not the magic words in Albania. In fact, please and thank you were not used in the market at all. When you wanted something, you said, give me, and that was it. And at first that was kind of like, wow, these people are not very thankful people, are they? But it was a part of their culture. Please and thank you were words that were reserved for bigger occasions. And if somebody said thank you in Albania, you had probably done something pretty significant to help them out. One Albanian, this was later on, told me, You Americans use these words, please and thank you, so often that we wonder if they mean anything at all. And he might have had a good point. It's easy for our thanksgiving just to become a matter of politeness that rolls off our tongue, that's our good manners. But the reality is that God wants something deeper from us. He wants our thanksgiving to be something that wells up from our heart and comes out of our voices and is expressed to him with our full hearts. And so this morning, we're going to look at 16 verses from the Old Testament that command us to give thanks to the Lord. And my hope is as we look at these verses, we'll be challenged to move past superficial expressions of thanks and that our hearts will indeed be stirred up and truly overflow with gratitude towards God. Now, I hope you got an insert in your bulletin or you picked one up at the back. If you haven't, there's more back there. Maybe someone would bring them. And it's 16 verses. I think we're going to get it up on the screen here. It's going to be a little small to read it from where you're at. You might have to get on your reading glasses here this morning. But what I want you to see is these are all 16 verses in the Old Testament. that are the give thanks commands in scripture. And what I would like you to do is just take a brief look at them and see if you can identify any patterns that emerge as you look at these 16 verses that command us to give thanks in the Old Testament. Do you have that in front of you? They start at the bottom. in chronological order, starting from the bottom, as you move around that semicircle. So the first one is 1 Chronicles 16, 8. Oh, give thanks to the Lord. Call upon his name. Make known his deeds among the peoples. And then it works its way around. 16 verses that talk about giving thanks to God. Do you see any patterns there? I mean, I'm sure you noticed, and part of it's the design here, All of the verses start the same, don't they? All of them have basically the first whole phrase is the exact same, or close to the same. Give thanks to the Lord, or give thanks to the God of gods, or give thanks to the Lord of lords. All of these commands begin with this same phrase. In fact, they are the same word in Hebrew. It's this phrase in Hebrew, the hodu, That's this command to give connected to this word thanks. So all 16 of these are Hodu commands in the Old Testament. You might also have noticed that most of these 16 verses are in the Psalms. 11 of them are in the Psalter. And so you might conclude that giving thanks must have something to do with worship. Perhaps it has something to do with singing and raising our voices together. One of these verses, kind of near the bottom, Psalm 33.2 says, give thanks to the Lord with the lyre. Make melody to him with the harp and the 10 strings. Another pattern, as you begin to look at these, you'll notice is that five of these 16 verses are the first verse of a psalm. And you might remember in a few recent sermons, it's come out from the psalms that the first verse in a psalm is often a key verse. It's often a proclamation of truth or a key theme that, you know, declares a truth from which the whole psalm flows. And so we have five of those, Psalm 105 1, Psalm 106 1, Psalm 107 1, 118 1, 136 1. So these are important verses. Given a little more time, I think you would note that most of these 16 verses fall into one of two groups. The first group is a combination of three phrases which appear first at the bottom in 1 Corinthians 16 at the very bottom there. It says, O give thanks to the Lord, first phrase, call upon his name, second phrase, make known his deeds among the people. That same combination is found later in Psalm 105.1 on your sheet. And then later in Isaiah 12.2 as you go around that semicircle. So this is an important command in scripture. It's repeated three times. And while the Israelites proclaim this truth in a song, I would like us to proclaim it this morning. And if you could help me, I'd like us to do this just as a responsive round. So I'll take the first part and say, oh, give thanks to the Lord. And then why don't everybody on this side of the aisle, if you'd respond, call upon his name. Try that. Call upon his name. And then on this side of the aisle, you have the third phrase, which is, make known his deeds among the peoples. So let's try that. Make known his deeds among the peoples. You know, it wouldn't be a surprise to me if Israelites sang this as a round. So let's try it again. Psalm 105 verse 1 says, O give thanks to the Lord, Let's do it again. Let's raise our voices. O give thanks to the Lord. So we're going to come back and take a closer look at this command that's repeated three times in our 16 verses. But before we do that, let's go back to our 16, because I want us to look at a second group of commands. And this second group is a different combination of three phrases again. And they're first found in 1 Chronicles 16.34, the second verse there at the bottom. And they say, O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. Now, if you've been reading some of these around the semicircle, you're going to notice that this pops up everywhere, doesn't it? In fact, seven of these sixteen verses are basically this exact expression of the same three phrases. It's First Chronicles 1634, then around the side, Psalm 106-1, Psalm 107-1, Psalm 118-1, Psalm 118-29, Psalm 136-1, and Jeremiah 3317b. And then there's four more that are in this group that are very similar. They contain the first and the third phrase, and just omit the middle phrase, for he is good. So think about it. It's 11 different instances when God chose to put into His holy scriptures this command to give thanks to Him in this particular way. And when God repeats something 11 times, then we need to pay attention. It's something that we need to build into our lives. So I'd like us to do that again. If you would just help me again, we're going to do the same thing. I'd like us to do it as a round. So I'm going to say, I'm going to take the hard part. I'm going to say, oh, give thanks to the Lord. And then you have, for he is good. And then you guys have, for his steadfast love endures forever. So let's say it again. Oh, give thanks to the Lord. For he is good. For his steadfast love endures forever. Oh, give thanks to the Lord. You guys are getting better. You're improving. But you've probably already forgot the first one, right? So I want us to do them both now, back to back. So remember, you have call upon his name, and then, for he is good. You guys have make known his deeds among the people, and then, for his steadfast love endures forever. So we're going to do 105 immediately followed by 106. So here we go. Oh, give thanks to the Lord. Give thanks to the Lord. Amen. Those are great verses, great proclamations of thanksgiving to God that are repeated over and over in the Old Testaments to teach us how to give thanks to God. They all start with the same command, don't they? And at first these two might seem pretty similar, but upon closer examination, we'll find that the type of thanksgiving expressed in these two groups of verses is very distinct. So understanding both of them is going to help us to know better how to give thanks to God. And in order to do that, we're going to zoom in and focus now on just a few of these verses. And we're going to see them in their biblical context. And what we're going to find is that these two groups of thanksgiving were used to thank God in different circumstances, in different situations. The first group was used to give thanks to God from the mountaintops when things were going great and God was blessing his people and doing great things. And the second group was used to give thanks to God in difficult times, in times of distress, and in times of failure and sin. So let's take a closer look at this first group. It's Psalm 105. So open your Bibles with me to Psalm 105 and let's look at this psalm together that begins with this first verse, this proclamation of truth, and let's see what flows out from Psalm 105. Let's read the first six verses together. It begins with our proclamation of truth and thanksgiving. Psalm 105 says, O give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples. Sing to him. Sing praises to him. Tell of all his wondrous works. Glory in his holy name. Let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. Seek the Lord and his strength. Seek his presence continually. Remember the wondrous works that he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he uttered. O offspring of Abraham, his servant, children of Jacob, his chosen ones, So verse 1 gives us this theme of the psalm, this initial proclamation of truth, O give thanks to the Lord, call upon His name, make known His deeds among the people. And then notice in those following verses, it keeps expanding on that. It keeps mentioning God's wondrous works and His miracles and calls us to pay attention to them. So the foundation for giving thanks in this psalm is a heartfelt response to what God has done. And notice that as well in verse 6, it shows that the people of Israel were in good standing with God. offspring of Abraham, his servant, children of Jacob, his chosen ones. And then as we go through the psalm in verse 7, there's a transition. Verses 1 through 6 is second person calling to the people to give thanks to God. And starting in verse 7, this becomes an historical psalm. as the psalmist goes through and gives a summary of God doing great works and keeping his promises to the people of Israel throughout a period of time in history. So we're not going to read all of these, but just to kind of summarize in verses 7 through 11, it tells how God has kept his promise to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, his promise to give them a land In verses 12-15, it tells how God watched over the people of Israel and Canaan. Then in verses 16-22, it tells how He caused Joseph to rise up in Egypt and how He blessed him and caused him to save the people during the famine. Verses 23-38 tells how Moses was used to perform miracles and the ten plagues and to bring the people out of Egypt. Verses 39-42, how God provided for the people of Israel in the desert, how He did miracles, giving them manna and quail, and providing water for them. And then finally in verses 43 through 45, how he brought them into the holy land as he promised. So this whole psalm is just a celebration of what God had done for this people. They're in communion. This is one of the best times and the history of the people of Israel. They weren't perfect during this time either, but this was one of their high moments, one of their times of greatest obedience and fellowship with God. And this psalm celebrates that and celebrates God's great works. So this is why I'm calling it the thanking God from the mountaintops, celebrating the things that God had done for them. And you know, it's one thing that's amazing as I read through the scripture is how many times in scripture the Israelites go back and remember these things, and call out these things, and thank God for these same things over and over again. Many of their feasts were built around these great works of God. I mean, the Passover that the Jews still celebrate today is a celebration, a remembrance, a thanksgiving of this very event we just read about, God delivering them from Egypt. So as we move beyond superficial thank yous, Psalm 105 teaches us a unique way to give thanks to God. And that's by recording, remembering, and proclaiming God's great works in our lives and in the lives of others. And that's one of the reasons that I love our Thanksgiving holiday, because that's exactly what that does here in America. It records and proclaims God's faithfulness to our forefathers, the pilgrims in Plymouth back in 1621. after a very difficult winter, as God provides for their needs through friends, through Native American Indians, through a harvest that was plentiful, it records God's goodness. And then the people stopped, and they gave thanks, and they celebrated. It's a beautiful working out of Psalm 105. And my question for you this morning is, have you ever taken the time to kind of go back to the beginning when you were younger and record God's wondrous works in your lives? The times God has shown up in a big way, when he's answered a key prayer or provided for that need Or when he brought salvation into your heart or into the life of someone in your home? Or when he used you in a significant way in his kingdom? I know you have these things. We all have them in our minds, and they're floating around. Have you ever taken time to record them, write them down, remember them, declare them, celebrate them? About seven years ago I started a journal that I call Things I'm Thankful For. And it's not very original, but that's the best I could do. And so I have this Things I'm Thankful For journal on my iPad. It's very simple. Just during the year, when God demonstrates His goodness to me or answers a key prayer or something, I just jot down a line in this journal, one liner, just enough to remember what happened and how God worked. And they've ended up being about 20 or 30 items a year. I don't record everything, just times when God, I can look back and say, God was there. I can identify God was blessing, God was answering, God was working. So now I have seven years worth. Of things that of times that God has shown up in my life And it's it's been life-changing for me because I go back and I read over This journal often. It's short. It's easy to look at and I see how faithful that he's been to me and how faithful and good that he's been to my family And I look at them and I realize I would have forgotten a lot of these things as time passed But they call me back to remember God's faithfulness and to give him thanks. God calls us to remember his wondrous deeds, and he calls us, right there in that Psalm that we just read, 105.1, he calls us to proclaim them and to give him thanks. So let's do that one more time with Psalm 105.1, if you still have it in your mind. Call upon his name, make known his deeds. Oh, give thanks to the Lord. So now turn over to the next psalm, Psalm 106. And once again, verse 1 is our proclamation of truth and our command to give thanks. And Psalm 106 is about God's steadfast love. So the psalm actually starts with the opening phrase, praise the Lord, which is also the ending phrase. So it's kind of a parentheses. And then comes our give thanks command. Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. For He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever. So the basis for our gratitude now in this Psalm 106 is God's goodness and His steadfast love, which is fitting because Psalm 106 unfolds very differently than Psalm 105. It's also considered a historical psalm. But the history is different and the situation is different. Beginning in verses six through nine, we read episode after episode of the people of Israel's sin and unfaithfulness. How they fell in Egypt, how they fell by the Red Sea doubting God, how they fell in the wilderness complaining and having stubborn hearts, how they fell in the promised land as they forget God's goodness to them. Psalm 106 is often described as a lament. So even though it starts with thanksgiving to God, the psalm is really a lament of the people of Israel's unfaithfulness in the face of God's blessing. So finally, if you work down to look at verses 40 through 46, after all of this history of the people of Israel's sin and failure, we read about God's response. to them. And it begins with discipline. Look at verse 40. Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against his people and he abhorred his heritage. He gave them into the hands of the nations so that those who hated them ruled over them. Their enemies oppressed them, and they were brought into subjection under their power. Many times he delivered them, but they were rebellious in their purposes and were brought low through their iniquity. Nevertheless, he looked upon their distress when he heard their cry. For their sake he remembered his covenant and relented according to the abundance of his steadfast love. And he caused them to be pitied by all those who held them captive. So this is God's response to the people's sinfulness and we see he disciplines them. He delivers them over to the nations. But then he also delivers them from the nations many times. And really the culmination of God's response is verse 45. Look at that again. He remembers his covenant and he relents because of his steadfast love. And I want us to focus on this word steadfast love. It's the same expression that was in verse 1, right? For his steadfast love endures forever. And it's the same Hebrew word hesed. You might be familiar with this Hebrew word hesed because it's used all throughout the Old Testament describing God's love. And there's no English word that really captures chesed. Most translations use two words to try to capture the fullness of the meaning. So here in our ESV, it's one word in Hebrew, chesed, it's two words, steadfast love, in the ESV. In the New American Standard, it's loving kindness. Chesed is a special type of love. It's based upon God's covenant commitment, which is exactly what we see in verse 45. For their sake he remembered his covenant, and he relented according to the abundance of his steadfast love. So it's a covenant love. It's a promise keeper's love. It's also a love that's loyal and faithful and merciful. It's a love that responds when people sin with mercy and forgiveness and continuing to love. And so Psalm 106 is a call to give thanks to God from the valley, from the depth of our failures, acknowledging our sin and gratefully receiving God's love. So just as we need to remember to give thanks to God from the mountaintops when He blesses and when He uses us, we also need to remember to give thanks to God from the valleys in our times of failure and times of distress and thank Him for His steadfast love. And I'm sure we can all think of examples, instances in our lives like this, can't we? I remember one that comes to my mind took place when I was a sophomore at NC State. So I know some of you all are students in college. And I was studying electrical engineering. And I had this dream to go overseas and study abroad for a year. Ben can relate to this. He'd like to do something like that. And I had been accepted. for an exchange year in England for a year. But we were a family of modest means, and I simply did not have the money, and so I was turning over every stone, trying to gather enough money for the plane ticket and what I would need to spend a year in England. And my breakthrough came when I was scouting summer internships. And I landed an internship with an engineering firm back in my hometown in Charlotte. And it was going to be just perfect. It was high paying. And I calculated it all out. And if I worked the summer, I'd make enough. And I'd be able to get my plane ticket and go. So I finished up the semester. And I headed home for the summer. And the next day, I called up my boss. Dell to report into work. Well, this was 1982. And I don't know if you remember, 1982 was a time of recession in America. And when I called him up, his voice was rather somber. David, yes, I've been meaning to call you, but I couldn't find your number. You know that the country is in a recession. And actually, here at our company, we've had a huge downturn in business. I've had to lay off a couple of my engineers. It wouldn't be right for me to take you on right now. I'm not going to be able to use you this summer. Well, you can imagine how my heart sank. Now we were in a recession. I didn't have a summer job. And things were looking bad. I can remember that afternoon there in Charlotte, Snowbird Lane. Mom, you remember that? I went out in the backyard, and I was wandering around the backyard praying. I was trying to rustle up some faith, but it was more of a gripe session as I complained to God about ruining all my plans. I ended up finding a job that summer. It was a minimum wage job sorting envelopes at an Eckerd's photo lab, but it was a tough summer, and it looked for sure that my exchange year was off the table. Until one day in late July, I received a letter in the mail just out of the blue. North Carolina State Engineering Department was on the top of the letter. And I opened it, and it said I had been selected to receive a $5,000 scholarship for the following year and that it could be applied to my study abroad. I had not applied for any scholarship, so this came completely out of the blue. Actually, I knew where it came from. It came from God. He had had my exchange year in His pocket the whole time. He was just making me sweat. He was actually teaching me to trust Him with my finances. And that was a lesson that served me well for 25 years on the mission field. So I had an amazing year in England. But that's not the end of the story. Because two years later, I graduated from NC State and I didn't take a job in engineering because I decided to go straight to seminary the next fall. And so that summer after graduating in electrical engineering, where was I? I was back at the photo lab sorting envelopes for the summer. With a little bit better attitude, I would say. But midway through the summer, my plans were blown up again. A family member lost a job, and I realized that I needed not to go to seminary that fall, but to stay home and to help out for a while. And I needed a better-paying job than what I was getting at the photo lab. I needed an engineering job. And one day, I was sorting envelopes, trying to figure this out, and an idea popped into my head. Call up Bill from the engineering firm. I hadn't talked to him since that fateful phone call about two years earlier. So my lunch break at the photo lab, I found a quiet spot. Bill, this is David Thomas. Do you remember me? I was that, you know, guy who was going to do a summer internship with you a couple of years ago. You know, I'm planning to go to seminary next year, but I'm looking for a job in the meantime. Is there any chance you could use someone? Well, I can remember there was this long silence on the other side of the phone and Ben Dell said, yeah, I remember you, David. So you're looking for a job, wow. Usually I would never hire an engineer who's going to be around for just a year. It takes longer than that just to begin to learn the job. But you know, Dave, I've always felt so bad about not keeping my promise to you a couple of years ago. Come in tomorrow. We'll sit down and talk about it." So when I hung up the phone, my heart was racing, not only at the prospect of getting this job, but because I knew. I knew that two years earlier, when I was shaking my fist at Cod, accusing him of ruining my plans, And he had not only taken care of that need already, he was using that very event to take care of me two years later. He was already providing for me a job so that when I graduate, I can take care of my family and help me pay my way through seminary. It was such a humbling, but it was a faith-building experience. as God showed me that He was good even when I couldn't see it, and that His faithful, His steadfast love towards me is enduring even when my faith is wavering. Well, I'm sure you've been through situations like that where God has come through for you, where he's met you, maybe he's humbled you or had to discipline you or show you that his steadfast love is enduring. Maybe you're going through a difficult situation this morning. Maybe you have failed God. Maybe you have fallen to sin. Psalm 106. is a psalm to take to heart. He wants us to look past those times of failure and frustration and see his goodness towards us. To see his grace being extended to us because that's the kind of God he is. His steadfast love endures forever and it leads us to repentance. And it leads to His forgiveness and restoration. And then it causes thankfulness to well up in our hearts towards Him. If you've ever put your faith in Jesus Christ, His death on the cross for your sins, that's the greatest expression of His steadfast love for you. So that's the message of Psalm 106. It's quite different than Psalm 105. It's this great expression. And so let's say it together one more time. For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. Oh, give thanks to the Lord. He is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. Now if we had time, we could just go right on into Psalm 107. Because Psalm 107, the first verse, is again the same verse. And Psalm 107 is again a historical psalm. that describes four episodes of distress in which the people of Israel find themselves. So it's not so much emphasizing their failure and sin. Psalm 107 moves to these dark moments when Israel looks like everything's gonna fall apart, and then God shows up and comes through for them. And it's these four sections in Psalm 107. At the end of each section, it says, there's a verse that says, let them thank the Lord for his hesed, his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man. So this psalm is another example of thanking God for his steadfast love from the valley, from times of distress when God shows up. So what have we seen this morning from these 16 commands in the Old Testament to give thanks to the Lord? Well, I think we've seen two distinct proclamations of thanksgiving that were used in different circumstances. And I hope those will help us to know better how to give thanks to the Lord. Psalm 105 we've seen is a proclamation of thanksgiving from the mountaintops as the Israelites experienced God's power and blessings, and they declared to the whole world His wondrous deeds. Psalms 106 and 107 are proclamations of thanksgiving from the valleys. reminding us that despite how dark the situation seems, God is always there. His steadfast love towards us endures forever. I have a few brief applications for you before we close. First, I'd like to encourage you to take this slip of paper, these 16 verses, and just slip it into your Bible and take it home with you. And perhaps as you have your quiet times this week, read through these verses. Open up your Bibles and read them in context. We've just scratched the surface of just a few of them. And as you read them, you'll be joining the psalmist in recounting the great things that God has done in history. And then you can compare them with some of the New Testament commands to give thanks that we haven't even touched on this morning. There's so much here to help us to learn how to give thanks to God. And I believe it will cause your heart to well up with thanksgiving. Second, if you've never taken time to I mean, I know some of you probably keep a journal and have everything down, but if you've never taken time to record God's wondrous deeds in your life, set aside a couple hours this week. That would be a great project. Include the mountaintops when God has used you and done great things, include the valleys when he's shown up despite of your weakness. and make a list, and then recount them, and thank God for them. And then thirdly, choose one of those deeds and share them with someone this week. Share one of God's wondrous deeds in your life with someone else. That's the whole part of Psalm 105.1. It says, his deeds, make known his deeds among the peoples. And that's what we're supposed to do with our testimonies, with when God works in our lives. We need to declare his goodness to the people. So find one of the great things God has done for you and share it with someone this week. And then finally, you might want to consider starting a Things I'm Thankful For journal. And yours might look completely different than mine, but just a simple way of jotting down blessings, the goodness of God in your life as the year goes by. Just a few entries now and then. And I just found that it's something that's been life-changing for me. We serve an amazing God. His goodness. He's a good God. He's a God of steadfast love. He's a God who does wondrous things. Why don't we close this morning? If you'll help me out, let's close by once again declaring His goodness. Let's just declare Psalm 105 one more time together. We're going to do it in our three parts, and then Psalm 106, and then Jake is going to lead us in song. So Psalm 105, are you ready? Let's really shout it out from our hearts to the Lord. Psalm 105, verse 1 says, O give thanks to the Lord, call upon His name, make known His deeds among the people. In Psalm 106, O give thanks to the Lord for... Amen. Thanks for listening. For more sermons, information, and events, check out our website at capitolcommunitychurch.com.