Heavenly Father, we thank you that you've given us your very best, despite the fact that we do not deserve it. where you blessed us abundantly above and beyond all that we could ever ask for. And now we pray that you would give the work of your kingdom out of grateful and thankful and joyous hearts. So we pray that you would use this offering to bless others and to further the advance of your kingdom to glorify your name before the whole earth. We pray this in the name of your precious son, Jesus Christ. Amen. Our scripture reading for today is going to be taken from Exodus chapter 30, verses 11 to 16, as well as Exodus chapter 31, verses 1 to 18. This is the word of the Lord. The Lord said to Moses, when you take the census of the people of Israel, then each shall give a ransom for his life to the Lord, when you number them, that there be no plague among them when you number them. Each one who is numbered in the census shall give this, half a shekel, according to the shekel of the sanctuary, the shekel is 20 giras, half a shekel as an offering to the Lord, Everyone who is numbered in the census from 20 years old and upward shall give the Lord's offering. The rich shall not give more and the poor shall not give less than the half shekel when you give the Lord's offering to make atonement for your lives. You shall take the atonement money from the people of Israel and shall give it for the service of the tent of meeting. that it may bring the people of Israel to remembrance before the Lord, so as to make atonement for your lives. Now moving to chapter 31, verses 1 to 18. The Lord said to Moses, see, I have called by name Ezeliel, the son of Uri, son of her, of the tribe of Judah. And I have filled him with the spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood to work in every craft. And behold, I have appointed with him Aholiab, the son of Ahissamak, of the tribe of Dan, and I have given to all able men ability, that they may make all that I have commanded you. The tent of meeting, and the ark of testimony, and the mercy seat that is on it, and all the furnishings of the tent. the table and its utensils, and the pure lampstand with all its utensils, and the altar of incense, and the altar of burnt offering with all its utensils, and the basin and its stand, and the finely worked garments, the holy garments for Aaron the priest, and the garments of his sons for their service as priests, and the anointing oil and the fragrant incense for the holy place, according to all that I have commanded you they shall do. And the Lord said to Moses, you are to speak to the people of Israel and say, above all, you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. You shall keep the Sabbath because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. Therefore, the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations as a covenant forever. It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed. And he gave to Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God. Let us pray. Father God, as we come before Your Word, we just pray that You allow it to illuminate us, to let us better understand our purpose in this life and the purpose that you've created us for. I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Our passage today is broken down into three sections. It's not really easy to hear, to capture on reading at first, but throughout this series I've been talking about how when Moses went up the mountain, God talked to Moses in seven instances. What we're actually looking at today is in the first instance we covered in chapter 25, verse 1. What we're looking at today is actually the second instance where the Lord says something to Moses. And that's the one that we read in chapter 30. And then the sixth and seventh time he speaks with Moses up the mountain. And there's a there's a pattern in this instruction, and we've we've acknowledged the pattern of kind of a recreation idea, but there's at the instructions that we're looking at this morning. We're looking at first. The instructions for how to be counted before God. How to be counted before God? And then the second section deals with how people are illuminated to work for God and before God. And God has basically, through the power of his spirit, inspired people to work on his behalf. And then the final set of instructions explains how we are to rest before God. And so to boil that down in a more brief way, which is hard for me, involves an accounting. It involves instructions on working and instructions on resting. Instructions on accounting for, on working, and the idea of rest. And all three begin with the Lord said. all three of these sections. Because when the Lord says something, it has the power to change things. It changes the world. We live in a world where a lot of things are changing, happening at this very hour we live. And yet most of those major changes, the people of God do not like. Most of the major change agents in the world do not want to hear from God who speaks. but the Lord still speaks. And when the Lord speaks, it has the power to change. It had the power to change this small community that's still Israel, that's still alive today and changes the world today. God's intervening with them in this moment in the exodus changes the world that we still live in. And our reading begins in chapter 30 verses 11 through 16 with God giving instructions for a census. Now this is the first time in scripture where God has even brought up a census or a census has even been discussed. There are some genealogies earlier on before this moment in scripture. But it's sort of an interesting thing, because a census is a counting of individuals. A census is something that nations do, and ancient nations did this as well. And yet, God is going to give very severe instructions on how people in His congregation are to be counted as one of His. Now, The instructions of an average ancient census had two goals. You would count the men. You would count the men of a certain age. The Bible here talks about men of 20 years or older. You wanted men who were able to be of fighting age. Who are, and so you, by counting the men, you would ideally have a rough estimate of how many households you have in your nation, how many fighting men you have in your nation. You would have a good picture of a census of your nation, of your power. You know, in the Pentagon right now, for instance, they are not worried about, you know, the nation state of, let me pick one, Uruguay, maybe, taking over the United States. They look at the numbers, they look at the demographics, they look at the breakdown, and While we do have a nation that calls, you know, January 6th a great insurrection, that same president also said you couldn't take over the U.S. without F-16s and nuclear bombs. So, you know, that's the world's understanding of power. World's understanding of power is how many warriors do you have? How many households do you have? So that's fallen out of disrepair in this nation and these sorts of things. And God has created a nation and he knows the nation's gonna want to count the numbers and and there's this thread of a census in the Bible where in King David's time It's not done properly and there's a plague that breaks out There's a census that changes the birth narrative of Jesus in unique ways in an unexpected way. We talked about every Christmas but here God says you want to know who's counted in my people and Every one of my people who are counted have to know that basically they come as a sinner. They have to have a ransom paid for them and an atonement offering made for them. And if they don't, they don't really understand those three things, they're not counted as my people. Actually, I will put on a plague on them. And that's a really drastic thing to think about. We just kind of brush over that. But imagine if, for instance, as the U.S. does its next census in the future, if China threatened that as we did our census, if we didn't follow a specific pattern of counting, that they would spread a plague around the United States. You would go, wow, that escalated really quickly. And yet, here is a God that says, I care about this. I care about the people who are counted in my midst. And I don't really care if you're rich or poor. If you're, you know, you have the riches of Solomon or you've embraced the lifetime poverty of John the Baptist. Everybody's offering is the same. Everybody's offering that they come before Me. This ransom payment. This atonement offering. It's the same offering that redeems one or the other. And what this does is it teaches us something rather radical about the Gospel. It's the great leveler, right? The great fact that Anyone can be saved. You in the Bible. It tells us don't tell the Roman Catholics they get so upset about this, but the best of all people born of women is is not Mary. It's actually John the Baptist, according to the Word of God. But and then the chief of sinners, according to the Bible is the Apostle Paul. But we we obviously know the redemption story of Paul is great. But. The reality is the gospel is so good. That yes, it can save an individual like John the Baptist. Who did sin, who did fall away, who did doubt at times. But it also has the power for scandalous grace. For grace to save somebody like a Jeffrey Dahmer. Who did something that was of nightmares. And there were pastors who ministered to him who sometimes wonder. And that's even hard to say, that idea. But that's the idea of the ransom, the atonement, the payment that settles all debts. That it's that scandalous. so that none of us can come before God and go, oh, well, he had his work cut out for him. I was a pretty good person. I didn't have much. No, the same payment, the same payment of ransom and atonement that the worst of all needed is the one that you needed. And that's the great humble reality of the Christian walk. And it is, when we get a hold of this idea, it can do wonders to tackle our pride, to tackle that kind of haughty spirit where we think of ourselves as better than others. We're not. We needed, we all needed, regardless of the sins that we came in here with, all needed the bleeding Savior upon a cross. There's a passage in 1 Corinthians. A passage in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Am I going in and out? Is it going in and out for you? Okay. I know these things. All right. Okay. 1 Corinthians chapter 6 and it lists a whole host of scandalous sins. I'm going to shift over here. It means I can't wander. It lists a whole host of scandalous sins. sins of sensuality, sin of homosexuality, sins of greed, of slander, of envy, murder, these sorts of sins. And then in the Apostle Paul in chapter six of 1 Corinthians says, and so were some of you. The reality is that Christian faith is one where, again, the biblical faith, Here what God wanted to teach this people. As they were before him, as they thought to come before him as a people of God. Here he wanted to instruct them. You need a ransom offering. You need an offering for your atonement. It's not that God needed the money. It's not that God needed to know the numbers of the census, but for all those who wanted to be counted as His people, they needed a payment. By the way, this is, if you think I'm off on connecting this payment, this tax, to the atonement itself, this is actually one of those great stories in the gospel. It comes to us from chapter 17 of Matthew, where Jesus is talking about what's going to happen with him, how he's going to die, how he's going to go to the cross, how he's going to be made a sacrificial offering. And then there's this tax mentioned. And Jesus basically points out that he shouldn't have, it kind of alludes to the fact that he shouldn't have to pay this tax. But he sends out Peter to pay the tax for him anyways. And how does Peter pay the tax? He catches a fish and the fish has the coins in it. The tax here had been kind of repurposed at the time of Jesus in order to pay for that tabernacle. And what Jesus was declaring in Matthew 17 is that I'm sinless. I don't need to be atoned for. I don't need to have a ransom payment for my sake. or for my salvation. But leading into that, in the same breath, what he had pointed out is that he was going to be the atonement offering. He was going to be the one as the payment for our sins. And so this is where a faithful congregation starts. And this is why he gets us ad campaign. In one sense, it gets the first point of this sermon. Yes, the playing field is level. It's everyone can be saved. Everyone can be saved. There was a great spinoff on it this week created by a truly Christian group that pointed out and corrected the inaccuracies though. What we're going to see, though, as right as the Lord makes clear this atonement offering this ransom payment that is for anyone that the level playing field is level. It doesn't matter if you come rich or poor. Is that now in being having that payment done? Two things change radically. How you work in this world. And how you rest in this world. And the purpose of rest in this world. And so that's what we're going to begin to look at here. And when it comes to work. This is a section where we have to recognize God inspires the work. First, God inspires work. I had a great question I fielded last week after the sermon. It might have been from David Seasholtz, but I don't want to embarrass him. But he was talking about the describing of the tabernacle and all that stuff. And he goes, how does the individual know if what they're going to build out, for instance, in the curtain looks like how God wants it to look? And the reality was, it's a great question. And we get the answer from here. God inspires the workforce. God inspires the individual to go out and labor. I think of even how God has worked in my own life. For instance, as I look forward to next year versus this past year, I think God is prompting me to move away from certain things and also to move into different things in ministry. And I'm sure God has been prompting you to do things, because God, once He gives us that radical sense of the fact that He's atoned for us, that He's saved us, that He's been the offering for us, He puts us to work. He changes us. He inspires us. And so everybody has their thing that God wants them to do for the kingdom, and that thing might change from time to time. And we have to be very careful in a small church like ours, because We can often. I mean, there are more ministries here. There are more things we're doing in this church, which is less than half the size of the previous stop that I was and then my previous church had. And it's great. It's great if your thing is is this and this and this. But you have to remember how God inspires the people, and we see an illustration of this here, is that he inspires certain people to work this way, certain people to work that way, certain people to work that way. So that it's okay at times to say, that's not my call. That's not something I wanna be a part of or help with. You can get in a lot of trouble if you kind of try to circumvent the Holy Spirit and kind of be the individual who says, oh, well, you really have to go to this study or you really have to do this thing. I remember one time sitting in a sermon and there was a pastor and he was struggling with people not coming out to a certain ministry of the church and he said, I should just go preach to a graveyard. I'd have more success than to preach to you people because they wouldn't participate in this one ministry, which was a nice idea kind of ministry, but it wasn't the focal thing. And so one of the things that we learn in this second thing about work and work for the kingdom, work for the tabernacle, work for the sanctuary, work for God, is that God inspires the laborers. God inspires the workers. And we need to trust in the fact that we don't need to guilt people. We don't need to Try to force people to help with our thing, but we also need to ask ourselves. How is God been prompting me to help the kingdom? How is God been helping me? Prompting me to serve and sometimes that service might be out in the world. Sometimes that service might be here in the congregation and I would guess ideally for most it should be a blend of the two. God inspires the work. And he anoints those by name to help. I remember a great piece of advice I got from a pastor. His name is Patrick. He's my brother, which means genetically he's of the finest stock, because genetically he's the closest thing to me. No, I'm kidding. But he told me early on in ministry, Kevin, Don't let people make your thing their thing your thing. His point wasn't to not be at work, not be in ministry, but basically his point was allow the Lord to lead you on this. This is the principle of work that we're called to have. We're supposed to be many parts of one body. And in many parts means that we are to be people spread out. We are not to be, and certain people are gonna feel calls in one way, and certain people are gonna feel calls in another direction. Because once we grab a hold of that atonement, once we grab a hold of the one who's paid the ransom price, he inspires us to work for him. So what is God trying to build out in your own life? What have you maybe been resisting God building out in your own life? How are you working for the one who's atoned for you? And some of that is just in the regular, ordinary vocations that we have of life, of being a parent, a spouse, a mom, a dad, a son, a daughter. But usually he gives us special inspiration as well. And then with any work comes rest. And the seventh and final instruction God gives Moses on is on the Sabbath. This new work of recreation that he's doing. And in each of these verses from 13 to 17, God tells us something more about what rest looks like and why it's important. And I really want you to be able to read this with kind of fresh eyes because it's rather remarkable what he says. For instance, we read in verse 13. You are to speak to the people of Israel and say above all. You shall keep my Sabbaths. For this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations. Above all. You shall keep my Sabbaths. This is a sign for you and throughout your generations. Let me illustrate this in this way. What does a rainbow mean to the world right now? Yeah, it means sexual debauchery and pride. A rainbow is a symbol for sexual debauchery, hedonism, and pride about it. What is a symbol of a rainbow to a Bible-believing Christian? Of God's mercy to us, even in our debauchery, even in our pride. that he offers grace and mercy and forgiveness from the flood of judgment that we deserve. Now, just finish. But from fall throughout most of winter, what does Sunday represent to the world? It's football season. It's time to worship the closest team. Or the team from the city I used to live in. Culminating in the great worship service of the Super Bowl. Here God says. The Sabbath. Is supposed to be a continual sign for you. We look at the rainbow and we go no way a covenant. For some reason, here as Moses is receiving the commandments, he's receiving the law of God from Mount Sinai, we have somehow failed to appreciate the fact that he's also receiving a sign as well. It's not a rainbow, it's not circumcision, it's the Sabbath. So that one day out of seven we're to have unique rest. And I'm not going to get into an aside of why the Seventh-day Adventists are wrong about celebrating the Sabbath on Saturday. Go listen to my Revelation series. I think I bring it up there. But the Sabbath is an eternal sign. That one day out of seven we hold distinct and unique for the Lord as a sign to us. It's no different than a rainbow in one sense. It's so different than a sign like circumcision. It's it is a sign. And what's the purpose of the sign? I'm glad you asked. God tells us. That I mean that you may know that I the Lord sanctify you. What's the purpose to a Sabbath? that you learn more about the Lord and his sanctifying power of your life. That he's actually called you out of the world and not to be of the world, but to actually transform and change by the renewal of your mind as you engage with the world. And he says, really, if you want to do that well, you need to set one day a week aside in order to be renewed and sanctified and set apart. And that's a wonderful thing when we grab a hold of it. You know, I do some dumb things week in and week out. And I just, often I'll sit and just get utter madness at it all. You know, Lord, why did I do that? Why did I say that? Why did you do these things? And I need a place. I need a place to go where renewal, where I hear about the atonement. I hear about the ransom that was paid. I hear about the inspiration of the work that God has called me to do, where I find rest at the word of God, where I hear from God. I need a Sabbath. You need a Sabbath. And God knows this, and so he says you shall keep the Sabbath because it is holy for you. I uniquely basically abide in your presence and bless you and sanctify you in the Sabbath. One fourth of Americans bet on a Super Bowl last week financially. How hollow is our society? We look and we go, how has it gone this way? And yet we worship at a church that has a history from the earliest foundations, from before this was a country, when this land was ruled by King George II. And you want to know what the settlers did when they came here? A large part of those who came here in faith is they dramatically had a different idea of the Sabbath than is common in Christian circles in our day. A morning and evening kind of service, a morning and evening kind of faith, a morning and evening kind of dedication to the worship of God. And do you think they were worse off for it? No, they were better off for it. They were changed by it because sitting under the Word of God, while we don't always see the milestones, it has a unique power of washing and renewal and regeneration. And through the sacraments and these things, these gifts that God has given to us, I think God gives warnings. He gives the Hebrew idea of an exclamation point in verses 14 and 15. He says it twice, that everyone who profanes the Sabbath, basically does not hold it sacred, shall be put to death. Think of that, the immediate context of Moses' day, how restful was their Sabbath? If they violated it, they would have been struck down dead immediately. That would have been a pretty fearful thing in the tent. But here we've gotten so cavalier and so casual with the Sabbath, we don't realize there's still a death penalty going on. That there are often people who go out that door and say, you know what? I don't need to go to churches anymore. We saw that in 2019. Churches thinned out in America about 30%. Just cut, boom, gone. Government said I don't need to be here, okay. I'll never return. Gone. Sabbath didn't mean much. Sabbath didn't mean much. And out there, they can embrace humanism. Out there, the world can be of their own creation. They can be their own God. They can do everything in their own likeness. They can get all the goosebumps out of commercial that says, God loves you exactly as you are. He doesn't wanna change you in the work that you do and in the rest that you find. And he doesn't wanna sanctify you in that rest. That's the world's philosophy and they've been perfectly happy to leave. And that's a form of spiritual death, folks. You wanna know the greatest instance of death that happened in 2019? It was the eternal variety. Where people cleared out of churches and never came back. Because their government gave them permission to. Where people cleared out of communities and never came back. Because who needs that? That's a death penalty, folks. It's a spiritual death. And it's a far more devastating one than any virus could give. God wants the Sabbath to be eternally sanctifying for his people. He's making that clear in this passage. It is a sign, just like the rainbow's a sign, just like there are other signs and seals within the scriptures. And if you don't keep this sign, God is saying, I will put you to death. God gave us one day of the week and seven for us to rest in Him and to allow ourselves to be sanctified by Him. How are you with this commandment? I think of times where as a young believer and where the greatest battle was just coming to church week in and week out. And while I still struggle with sin, I am So thankful for God building out that pattern and not just because I have a technically, you know, work here on the Sabbath. This isn't work for me. This is renewing. To hear the word of God, it doesn't just, it strikes all of our hearts. It's renewing for all of us. And there is a unique rest. There's a unique goodness in our in our weeks where sometimes the only thing I can think of in the week is this week is maddening. But there's a rest coming. There's a rest coming. Do we look at the Sabbath and go, oh, I need more of that in the world? All right. And let's look at the last verse. Let's close here. Because here's been the interesting part of this passage. We've seen the atonement, we've seen the ransom, we've seen the work that God calls us to and the rest that he calls us to. And there's been plagues talked about and death penalties talked about and a lot of things that if you're looking at this passage are somewhat terrifying. And yet in verse 18 I think there's something really beautiful here for us Christians to see. We read and he gave to Moses who had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai. The two tablets of the testimony tablets of stone written with the finger of God. Now that's interesting wording here. The finger of God writing these because. There's one instance in the gospel, and it's always a very popular question that you're fielded with as a pastor, is what did Jesus write in John chapter eight with the woman caught in adultery in the sand? He was writing with his finger. What do you think he was writing? And I definitely think he was writing out the law. He was writing out the law, and I think so because The apostles, Matthew, knows his Old Testament. He knows what the finger of God wrote. It's first shown writing, and it's shown writing the commandments, but here we had this scene with this group of Pharisees who wanted to kill this woman who was caught in adultery. Her sins made it so that she deserved the death penalty. And so Jesus gets writing on the ground, and And he says the line of he who is without sin throw the first stone. And we love this scene because everybody is disarmed by this reality. It's the great leveler, right? He levels the playing field where the most self-righteous in the group and the greatest sinner in the group all kind of realize I can't condemn. I am not without sin. I can't cast that stone. And we love this scene, and we love this moment. And Jesus comes to this woman, and he goes to this woman, and he says, is no one here left to condemn you? And the answer is no. And he says, I do not condemn you either. But does he stop there? No. So go and sin no more. What I'm saying is, in this description of this passage that we've been in, while it was confusing at times, and the Lord in his providence had a microphone go out, is that The things that we've seen God testify of in Exodus 30 and 31 have a unique similarity to that woman caught in adultery in chapter eight of Gunner John's Gospel, where she was offered forgiveness, she was offered mercy. There was a ransom that was gonna be paid, an atonement that was gonna be paid where she could be forgiven of her sin. And yet, within that same breath, Jesus asks her to sin no more. And we don't look at that story and go, Jesus, you legalist. Oh, Jesus, you're so awful. Oh, you know, you forgive her, but then you put this legalistic standard of go and sin no more as she's sitting there and she sees the law written on the ground. We don't say that. Sorry, didn't mean to make a baby cry. We say we need a love like that. We need more of that. That's how we look at that story. We don't look at Jesus asking this woman to go and sin no more and go, oh, what an awful God that is. We say, wow, what a wonderful God we serve. And so Christian, when we look at the Christian life, we look at life where we've been atoned for by the ransom payment that the son was for our sin. And that atonement changes how we work, and it changes how we rest, and it changes the very idea of being sanctified and growing in holiness. So that it changes the life that we were living that was leading to death and gives us a new way to live in Christ Jesus. Amen? Amen. Let us pray. Father God, We thank you that you made the full payment for us, the one who did not have to pay. You came and paid for us all, giving your life for the forgiveness of sin so that your blood might be shed. for us and for our salvation. Help us then to be changed. Help us to look at work differently. Help us to be inspired and find new ways and to love and to serve you. Help us to understand also that you inspire others to come alongside and to help as well. And let us continue to stay united as a community on a great day of division throughout our world. Also pray, Lord, that we honor the Sabbath, that we understand that you desire us to grow in sanctification and set-apartness and holiness. That Sunday should be an excuse to say no to all other things, first and foremost, in order to be renewed in your presence, under your word, within your community. We ask these things in Jesus' name, amen. Now let us quietly and privately confess our sins before the Lord. Now let us read our corporate confession of sin with one another. Father, forgive us, for we are prideful and selfish. Thank you that you are the King who reigns in truth and love. Grow us in the desire to follow you, because we are still sinful, blind, and easily distracted. Help us to see the glory of your kingdom and to love it more than we love our own. Help us to die to ourselves and to serve your kingdom with humble gratitude. Amen. Now let us hear a word of renewal from the Lord, our assurance of pardon. It comes to us from Psalm 103, verses eight through 10. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever. He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, And now is an opportunity to continue our worship to realize that we did not have to pay the ransom payment. We did not have to make atonement for our sins, but Christ has already done that on our behalf. And so for all those who believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ, believe that he is a sufficient payment for all our sins for our salvation. We welcome you to come to the table. Will the elders please come forward? Andy, if you would assist us. For those who believe, let us say the Apostles' Creed together. We believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, son of Ferdinand Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell. The third day, he rose from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. For thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead. We believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen. Rob, would you pray for us? O Lord, our God, What a great savior and deliverer you are. You have brought us into your kingdom and into your family through the body and blood of your beloved son. You laid down this life for us that we too might live. Live to God. Live with God. Have lives. that have been changed. And we thank you, Lord, for the great deliverance out of your condemnation, out of hell itself. So now we rejoice and think deeply of the body and the blood shed for us. And we ask that you would bless this time and meet with us in great ways, strengthening us. In Christ's name, amen. On the night Jesus was betrayed. He took the bread, breaking it, saying, This is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. The bread which we bear is the communion of the Lord. In the same manner, on the night our Lord was betrayed, he took the cup, saying, this is the blood of the new covenant. Pour it out for the forgiveness of sins of many. Do this in remembrance of me. What a great shift here. The cup which we bless is the communion blood of Christ. Pat, would you close us in prayer? Now let us stand and sing together our closing hymn. We've all been battling the cold, right? And then you put wine on that. Or you're just warming up the vocal cords for the hymn. Hymn number 434, Blessed Assurance. Shepherds, this is the time, for the Lord is moving nigh, and salvation comes so nigh, when the Spirit of His blood. This is my story, this is my song, ♪ This is my story, this is my song ♪ ♪ Praising my Savior all the day long ♪ ♪ Turn to me gently, my delight ♪ ♪ Wishing for the rapture of my soul's delight ♪ ♪ I will stand before you, my love ♪ ♪ I praise your mercy, my soul's delight ♪ This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long. This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long. This is my story This is my song Let us look up to the Lord who so loved us that he gave us a scandalous love where he could forgive sinners like us. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance and give you his peace. Amen. ♪ And with the Holy Ghost be peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace ♪ Look at her fancy