If you will, let's turn in our Bibles this morning to Revelation 2. Revelation 2 verses 8 through 11. We're continuing our study through the seven letters of Christ to the churches of Asia Minor. We began the first one just last week with Ephesus. This morning we come to the second and the shortest of the letters that Christ composes to these seven churches that dot the landscape of Asia Minor in the ancient Roman Empire. This morning we come to the letter to the church at Smyrna. Revelation 2 verses 8 through 11. We'll draw our attention there this morning. As we anticipate doing that, I've acknowledged that this is the shortest of the letters that we're going to study in this series, but at the same time, there are some really difficult theological issues that we're going to have to look at even this morning in this very short collection of verses. Jesus calls people that call themselves Jews a synagogue of Satan. That's pretty tough. And then also, he can talk about the devil throwing Christians into prison, and yet that's part of God's purpose to test them. So there are all these questions that can come up. So this morning, I'm going to ask as we come into this text, we want to keep the main thing, the main thing. We want to think about how Jesus deals with the reality of suffering in the Christian life. But even as we do that, I want us to be sensitive to some of the issues that are coming up in this text, because we want to have a fully faithful understanding of what God is saying to us in his word. So let's begin reading in Revelation 2, verse 8. And then we'll seek to work our way through this text together and understand what Jesus would say to us this morning. And to the angel of the church at Smyrna write, the words of the first and the last who died and came to life. I know your tribulation and your poverty, but you are rich. And the slander of those who say that they are Jews and they're not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison that you may be tested, and for 10 days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, he will not be hurt by the second death. In recent years, there have been a number of studies to explain why, in many respects, younger people, especially young professing Christians, have begun to walk away from the church. There are all kinds of different answers to the questions that can come up with that. There are all kinds of different challenges that we face as we seek to understand what Jesus is calling us to do and who Jesus is calling us to be and what Jesus is calling us to believe. But studies have indicated that there are two primary intellectual challenges that young people who walk away from the church cite as they explain why they've left the church. The first is the difficulty of reconciling what they're hearing from science and what they're seeing in religion. The difficulty of making these things work together. Those are important issues that we have to think about as we're trying to make sure we understand how God's word is utterly and completely true and yet there are all these different realities that we're hearing about from the scientific community. But there's another issue that comes up and I think it really touches on the heart of a lot of the reason people pull away from the life of the church. It's the reality of human suffering. Many people can't wrap their minds around how God can be good and powerful and loving and we exist in a world full of so much brokenness and sin. Sometimes the question gets sort of presented in this very broad way, but when I was in high school I had a friend who liked to put it even more narrowly and I think more helpfully in some ways for defining the real issue that lies at the heart of the questions that a lot of people are asking. He would ask it this way. If God is so good and if God loves the church and loves the people that have believed in Jesus, why then do Christians suffer so much? Have you ever wondered that? It's easy for us in some ways to step back and look at the world around us, and as we see immense suffering, and so much of our soul cries out, why are things this way? This doesn't feel fair. But then at the end of the day, we can explain that, well yeah, sin brings consequences. But when the world looks at the church, they say, you suffer the same way that we do. If you're God's people, why do you suffer so? That's the question that I feel like is on the heart of the Christians that are in Smyrna as we come to Revelation 2, 8 through 11. It's the question that Jesus is seeking to answer in many respects because these Christians in this particular church at this time in history are suffering immensely. And as they're trying to make sense of the suffering that they're experiencing Jesus has words for them that help to clarify why they're suffering and how ultimately he can take even their suffering and use it to good and glorious ends for the glory of God and the good of his people. So how do we process the suffering of Christians? I want you to notice three things in this text with me this morning. Three things that help us to make sense of suffering Christians. And I want to say from the outset that these are going to challenge us intellectually and spiritually. But my hope is that these can give us encouragement to continue to press forward in faithfulness even in the darkest of days. So notice with me first in this passage as we think about the reality of our suffering in relationship to Jesus. Notice firstly that Jesus knows our suffering. Jesus knows our suffering. Verse 8, and to the angel of the church in Smyrna write, the words of the first and the last who died and came to life. This description of Jesus, which is unique to this letter, each one has a unique description of who he is, is highlighting the fact that Jesus as the first and the last knows the fullness of human history and indeed is the sovereign Lord of it. So verse nine is particularly appropriate. Now I've already alluded to the fact that there are some issues that we need to think about as we understand what Jesus is addressing here. Jesus is addressing real Christians in real history who are experiencing real suffering and he tells them from the outset that he knows what they're going through. He understands their tribulation, their affliction, their experience of persecution that's coming upon them because of their desire to know and follow and be faithful to Jesus in the midst of a cultural context that is deeply opposed to Jesus and his exclusive claim to be the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. This reality of persecution can express itself in a lot of different ways and we see that reflected all throughout the New Testament. One of the ways that it can express itself we see even in the next description. I know your tribulation and your poverty. In the ancient world, there were a couple of really important things to maintaining wealth. One of them was you needed to participate in a trade guild. A trade guild was basically a group of people in a particular business that got together and worked together to make sure that they were getting all the right business and that they were on top of all of the pricing and all these different things. Not that different than the unions and things that we see today. But as these particular trade guilds were organized in the ancient world, they often had patron deities. They had gods that they recognized had some connection to the particular work that they were doing. So in order to be successful, for example, if you were a carpenter, you needed to not only do good business, but you needed to appease the god who blesses carpentry. If you were engaged in smith work, you needed to please the God that blesses silversmiths and goldsmiths and blacksmiths. You recognize in this ancient context that there was this religious dimension to the work that people were doing. And if you wanted to be successful in a particular field, it was basically career suicide to separate yourself from these guilds because you could not worship the gods that they worshiped. So these Christians who were engaged in all these different business activities because of their commitment to Jesus were forced because of their loyalty to Jesus to step away. And as a result, they experienced poverty. But not only that, we have evidence from the book of Hebrews that as local authorities became increasingly concerned about the influence of Christianity, and as we'll see in a moment, as Christianity began to be distinguished from the life of the Jewish community in a given city, local authorities would steal Christians' stuff. They would come and they would take it away. The author of Hebrews can talk about the plundering of the goods of the people that were part of that church community. So these Christians, as part of their experience of persecution, were experiencing poverty. Their means of earning a living was beginning to dissipate, as was their experience day to day, as their goods were taken away, their property was taken away. And Jesus can say, I know what you're going through. I see your affliction. I see your poverty. And then he makes this little side comment, though you are rich. What Jesus is acknowledging here is that these people, though they have lost physical wealth, they retain and even experience to a degree, greater than many of us with all of our relative wealth, they experience spiritual riches in Christ Jesus in the midst of their poverty. One of the great burdens that we need to have as Christians is this recognition that losing our stuff is not a sign that God is opposed to us. In fact, God may bless us by taking away the things that we have so that we can learn dependence on him. So we can learn what it means for Jesus to say that if God cares for the birds of the air and the flowers of the field, how much more will he care for those whom he loves? For us, for people. Jesus knows these dimensions of their suffering, but then he says something that should give us some pause. He says, I also know the slander, the blasphemy of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. That's strong language, isn't it? If you walked around in public calling anybody a synagogue of Satan, people would not be very happy with you. And yet here's Jesus himself, referring to this assembly, this fellowship of Jewish people as a false Jewish community who are not in allegiance to the one true God but are actually in allegiance to Satan. And the question that then comes is what in the world does this mean? And commentators have offered all kinds of suggestions but I think the most natural explanation is the best one. As Jesus is here speaking to the church at Smyrna, he's acknowledging their situation. There are a couple of things that may be happening simultaneously, but basically here's what would happen in this context. Christians were viewed initially as part of the Jewish community. Many of the first Christians, as the gospel advanced, were Jews, right? You remember from Paul's missionary journeys? Where was the first place that he often went when he entered into a city? A synagogue. Why did he go to the synagogue? Because there were a whole bunch of people there who knew the Old Testament and who were waiting for the Messiah. And so Paul would do what any of us would do. He'd go to the place where he most naturally expected people to have a common religious framework so that he can begin to work from their common foundation to demonstrate to them that Jesus is the Messiah. And so in many of these communities, even as some Jews turned their back on the gospel message, many embraced it. And so there was this basic unity in many local authorities' mind between the Church of Jesus Christ and the Jewish community from which they were emerging. And this is why that was important. In the Roman world, every single person in the Roman Empire was required to worship the Roman emperor as God. They were required to make sacrifices to the Roman emperor as God. Can you imagine? If our political leaders required that we make sacrifices to them as God, we would be absolutely flabbergasted. We would think, what in the world are we doing? But in this particular time, kings often were viewed as deities, as representatives of the gods on the earth. And so there was this expectation that you were going to offer sacrifices to the Roman Caesar. The only way you could be accepted from having to offer these sacrifices is if you belong to a protected religious group. Guess which religious group was protected? Jews. Jews were not required to worship the Roman God Roman Emperor as God. They did not have to participate in the various rituals and ceremonies that got associated with that. They were a protected people. And so what that meant for the earliest Christians is that as long as they were associated with the life of the local synagogue as long as they were viewed as Jews they didn't have to worship the Roman Emperor but they could continue to maintain their exclusive allegiance to Jesus. But as we read all throughout the book of Acts oftentimes conflict emerged in the midst of these Jewish communities between the Jews and the Christians. And as we learn church history we learn that often these Jews out of anger at the Christians and what they were saying about Jesus and who he was as Messiah would push the Christians out of their synagogues. They would make a distinct separation between them and the Christians and that meant for the Christians that now all of a sudden they had lost their protection. So they had to worship the Roman emperor as God and if they didn't they were subject to all kinds of persecution because they were in the minds of the Romans atheists. They did not believe in the true God. This was a devastating sentence for them to experience. But things could even be made worse. We have evidence that local authorities wouldn't punish people for the religious objections that they would have to the emperor cult unless they knew about them. So it seems like probably what's happening even in Smyrna is the Christians may have already been pushed out of these Jewish communities, but these Jewish synagogues that are gathered around the city are going and they're telling local authorities, hey, these Christians over here, they don't belong to us, and they're not worshiping the emperor as God. And now that they've got the report, what's gonna happen? Persecution. these Jewish people out of their zeal for trying to preserve the worship of the one true God and their community of Jews in these particular contexts were beginning to be the cause of suffering and persecution for the people of Jesus. And so Jesus is here saying that these people call themselves Jews and they're not but they're a synagogue of Satan. What in the world does that mean? Well what Jesus is saying here is that ultimately Jewish identity is not about ethnicity. It's not about who you're descended from. It's not about being from Abraham and Isaac and Jacob ultimately. Ultimately, Jewish identity is about faith. Because what was the distinguishing mark of Abraham in the Old Testament? It wasn't who he was, he came from idol worshipers himself. It was that Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. The New Testament authors are consistent in clarifying this over and over and over again, that Jewish identity is first and foremost about faith. Romans 2, 28-29, Paul says, In Galatians 3, 7, Paul says, know then that those of faith are the sons of Abraham. Verses 27 through 29, he says, for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. And here's what Jesus is saying to these Jews. By rejecting Jesus as Messiah and by persecuting Jesus' people they were in fact rejecting their own Jewish identity. They were saying they were not going to be Jews anymore because they were missing all that God was doing in bringing about the fulfillment of all of his promises through Jesus. Now why in the world does this matter for us? Well Paul applies it in a couple of different ways. First of all we need to understand that there is salvation and no one but Jesus. There is no salvation but through Jesus Christ. Sometimes I think we can think, but the Jews are so close. They're so close to us. They hold a half the Bible that we have. Surely there's something different there. And there is, I'm gonna explain that in a moment, but there is no salvation apart from faith in Jesus Christ. You cannot be saved because of what your mommy or your daddy believed. And you cannot be saved because of your particular nation to which you belong. You can only be saved through faith in Jesus Christ. And what we need to grasp right now as Christians living in Mantee, Mississippi, is that we can quickly follow the Jews' path. Paul alludes to this himself in Romans 9 through 11. We can think, oh, we're safe because we're in this basic Christian community and bubble and never actually know Jesus for ourselves. But if you don't know Jesus personally, you can claim all you want to be a Christian, but you are not. In order to experience salvation and life and to belong to the people that Jesus is creating for himself, you need to believe in Jesus. And so we need to take seriously the exclusivity of Jesus. There is no salvation apart from faith in Jesus Christ. But as we push beyond that we also need to recognize that even as Jesus can say of the Jews that they're being a synagogue of Satan that's not because Jesus doesn't love the Jews. If you go into the gospel accounts you'll read in multiple synoptic gospels of Jesus lamenting weeping for Jerusalem and her unbelief in Luke 13 34 and 35. For example Jesus talks about as he weeps over Jerusalem how he would have gathered them under his wings like a hen gathering her brood of chicks. He loves the Jewish people. Paul in Romans 9 1 through 5 says he would give up his own salvation. if it could mean the salvation of the Jews, of the Israelites. So just as an aside, even as we're acknowledging that Jesus is saying some really difficult things about Jewish identity, we as Gentile Christians need to recognize that God loves the Jews, and that he earnestly desires their salvation. And in fact, you can look at statistics right now coming out of what God is doing in geographical Israel, and you can see the way that God is at work among the Jews there. but we ought to be desperately eager to see the salvation of the Jews because to them belong the patriarchs and the promises and the covenants. At the same time, we need to understand that at the heart of all identity is what we do with Jesus. So the question for us this morning is what have we done with Jesus? Are we really trusting him? Have we recognized that He and He alone is the instrument of our salvation as God has purposed it? We need Jesus if we're going to be saved. Now, that's kind of a rabbit trail. I understand we had to go there. We needed to explain the synagogue of Satan. But I want to come back to Jesus's interaction with our suffering. Because what Jesus is here saying is that He knows the suffering of the smirning Christians. He identifies with them. He understands what they're going through. And here's why that's important. When we say that Jesus knows our suffering, we can say that Jesus knows about our suffering. This is an intellectual awareness. Jesus knows what we endure as we suffer for the sake of the gospel. He is not surprised when suffering happens to us. He is not ignorant of what we experience. And that in and of itself should bring us comfort. I tell my wife pretty much everything that happens. I tell her everything. And one of the greatest comforts to me is in moments when things get particularly hard and I'm struggling and I need help, I can look at her and know without her saying a word that she knows. She knows. And she can't do anything for the situation, but she knows I have someone that I can share this with. Brothers and sisters, when we suffer as Christians, we look to heaven and we see Christ, our great high priest, and he knows. But he doesn't just know this intellectually, he knows this experientially. Remember what Isaiah calls the promised Messiah in Isaiah 53? He's a man of sorrows who's acquainted with griefs. In Hebrews 4 we read that Jesus is able to sympathize with our weaknesses because he has been tested in every way that we are and yet without sin. See this morning we understand that Jesus knows what it's like to suffer for faithfulness to God because Jesus himself suffered far more than any of us ever would. And so we go to him. We pray. And we recognize that we don't have a Savior who's sitting in heaven saying, what's wrong with you people? We have a Savior who looks at us with sympathy, who knows our weakness and to whom we can take everything in prayer. Jesus knows our suffering. Secondly, Jesus uses our suffering. Jesus uses our suffering. We're gonna move a little more quickly now, but as we come through the course of these verses, we see Jesus describing the significance of the smirn and suffering and telling them that it's not over yet. Verse 10, do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison that you may be tested and for 10 days you will have tribulation. Jesus is here acknowledging that their suffering isn't over yet. In fact, he acknowledges that even as they're suffering at the hands of the Jews and as they're suffering at the hands of the Romans, their suffering is actually part of the devil's plot to try to eliminate faithful people to Jesus. Who does he attribute the work of persecution to here? Who's the one throwing them into jail? The devil. The devil is the agent of their suffering. And yet, at the same time, Jesus says something remarkable. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison. Why? That you may be tested. The devil is not in the business of testing. This is significant. Who tests Christians? It's God. It's Jesus. Now this leads us into a massive theological challenge because what Jesus is affirming here is the devil can be doing one thing but Jesus can use that very thing for the good of his people. This is the same thing we see in the story of Joseph remember. Remember at the end of Joseph's ongoing conflict with his brothers his brothers come to him and they're afraid of what he might do to them now that their father has died and they're talking about all that's happened. And Joseph looks at his brothers who had persecuted him so significantly he says what you meant for evil God meant for good. Now I can't explain all that is happening when we say that somehow at the same time Satan can be doing something evil and in the very same moment God can be doing something good. Paul gets into some of this in one of the most difficult passages to interpret in all of the Bible. And you know where he ends? He talks about the heights and the depths of the knowledge of God. And he says how inscrutable are his ways. We can't wrap our mind around all that God is doing at any given point. But what we can understand is that even in the worst of our moments, even in the worst of our sufferings, we know that if we belong to God, he really is working things, all things together for the good of those who love him. I can't make sense of all of that in any given moment. I can only make sense of the suffering that I've experienced and the goodness of God and the gospel, and I'm trying to figure all this out, but what I know in my heart is that none of the suffering that we experience is meaningless. Jesus doesn't put his people through meaningless suffering. He's doing something in all of this that's designed to promote your good and his glory. Now, here's where the rubber meets the road in this particular instance. As Jesus is testing the Christians in Smyrna, who is the test benefiting? Is it benefiting Jesus to prove that these Smyrna Christians are really committed to him? In a sense, there is good in that, but at the same time, Jesus knows those who are his. So who is the suffering benefiting? Even as they're suffering the suffering is benefiting the smirning Christians because as they endure this suffering at the hands of Satan they have an opportunity as they're tested to prove not just to Christ but to themselves that their commitment to Jesus is real. Sometimes we need to be willing to acknowledge that if we pray, God show yourself to me, God teach me to depend on you, God teach me your ways, teach me your goodness, show me what it means to know your power and your love. Sometimes the way that God may show us that for our good is by putting us right in the smack dab middle of suffering. Because it's through that suffering that we learn the goodness of God. There's a famous minister from the 1600s. I've learned here that church history illustrations feel very distant. That's okay. There's a famous minister from the 1600s. I'm gonna keep this brief. His name was Samuel Rutherford. He was in Scotland. He was part of a group that was trying to make the church in Scotland more faithful. And because of some things that he had said about the established church and the king and all these different things, he was removed forcibly from his pulpit in a little village called Anweth, and he was taken to be under house arrest where he could not continue to minister. And if you go back and you read his letters, you see how immensely he suffered as he was experiencing all of this. He loved his people. He wanted to be free. He wanted to carry out his ministry. But at the same time, he could say that he had such sweet fellowship with Jesus in the midst of his suffering that he would not exchange it. Jesus takes the reality of our suffering, brothers and sisters, and he uses it So we don't walk into suffering going, oh no, more suffering, what do I do? We walk into suffering recognizing that Jesus has a purpose in all of this. And we depend on each other, that doesn't mean it's not hard, right? One of the most annoying things that a pastor can do is walk into a hospital room with a suffering and family and say, well, you know Romans 8, 28 says. Because in that moment, people feel grief and it hurts. Suffering's not easy, but at the same time, If we steal ourselves with the realities that the Bible is teaching us, we really can, in those most difficult of moments, say that God is doing something right now. That Jesus is using the reality of our suffering. He doesn't cause the evil that we experience. But his good purpose can work in and through and under and by and all those things, the suffering that we experience. He can take the mess of the fallen world in which we live and he can make sense of it. Our suffering is part of Jesus' purpose to shape us into the kind of people that he wants us to be. Number three, Jesus rewards our suffering. Jesus rewards our suffering. We have to be careful, I know, when we come to the language of reward, right? Because we're not saved because of anything that we do, right? We don't get heaven because of anything that we do. We're saved by grace through faith, not of works. It's the gift of God, right? We aren't saved because of anything that we do. And yet at the same time, the Bible is very clear that in some sense, our experience of eternity with Jesus is intensified in its joy because of our faithfulness to Jesus in this world. I haven't been there yet, so I don't know what that looks like, but I understand that there is some reward that Jesus attaches to our faithfulness to him, and that's especially true in the midst of suffering. Jesus acknowledges to these smirning Christians that they're gonna go to prison, and they're gonna be tested, and he says they're gonna be tested for 10 days with tribulation. In the Roman world, if you went to jail for a little bit of time, it wasn't because you were going to jail because you did something minor. It was because you were going to jail to be on death row. The Smyrna Christians were going to jail, some of them, because they were about to die for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And Jesus here gives them a promise that can sustain them. He says, be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. This is like those crowns that Olympians would get when they were victors with the leaves. Have you seen those before, pictures of those before? These are these crowns that would be awarded to somebody who had won, who had been victorious. And we look at these situations and we say, how can these people say they're winning when they're losing their lives for the sake of the gospel? But we have a worldly perspective. The most victorious people in all the world are the people that can look in the face of death and persecution and say, make my day. I wanna be with Jesus. I want what Jesus has. And if Jesus suffered, it was my joy, as Peter and John and the other apostles could say, it is my joy to be counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. And Jesus says, your suffering is not in vain. I will give to you the crown of life. Verse 11, he who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death. Revelation can speak of death in two phases, right? There is a first death, right, when we die, our bodies die. That death is scary enough in its own right, but there is a second death. And this is the death that we all need to be very aware of this morning. There's the death that we will all experience when we are resurrected and stand before God's throne. He acknowledges our sin and if we are outside of Christ he throws us into the bottomless pit to the lake of burning sulfur where we will suffer forever apart from his presence. There is a second death coming. And as fearful as we may be of the first one, the second one is far worse. And Jesus says here that if you are faithful unto death in this life, that you won't have to experience that second death, but that he is going to give you the victor's crown, which is life with him forever. Listen, we need to have a perspective, brothers and sisters, that says, look, I'm not trying to seek out suffering. I'm not trying to make myself suffer. There have been Christians who tried to do that before, and that's just silly. But we ought to have a perspective that says, hey, if suffering is coming, I gladly meet it. Why? Because in that suffering, I become more and more and more like Jesus. And in that suffering, I have the security of knowing that while this present suffering is difficult, it's going to give way to future glory that nobody can take from me. We need to have a perspective that reflects the perspective of Jesus himself who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross despising the shame. And here's the question we have to ask this morning. Is this our perspective? When we watch the things that are happening around us and we consider the possibility of intense persecution or pressure coming against Christians, not just in America, we hear right now about persecution and pressure that's happening around the world that's affecting even some people that we know and love. The question that we have to ask is, are we gonna have a worldly perspective that says that this is not how things are supposed to be, I need to get out of this, whatever it takes, I'll make a sacrifice to the emperor if I can just get away safe and then Jesus will forgive me later. Or do we look at the situation and say, I will endure the loss of all things for the sake of Christ. I count all the good things that I have as rubbish that I might gain him. What is our perspective? This leads to a final observation as we draw to a close. How can we expect our children and our grandchildren to have any interest in following Jesus? when they look at our lives and they say, you're not willing to sacrifice anything in order to have him. Are my children going to look at my life? My grandchildren, if the Lord grants them to be going to look at my life. And are they going to say that he laid everything out in order that he could have Jesus, that Jesus was worth everything to him. I'm convinced that for many of us in the relative comfort in which we've lived by God's grace, God has given it to us. But I'm convinced that we've become so comfortable that when the rising generations look at us, they see a distinct departure between what Jesus said the Christian life would look like and what our lives actually look like. Not because we're suffering or not, but because of the perspective through which we engage the suffering we do see. What do people say of us? If you're lost this morning and you're here in this room, Maybe you've watched Christians and you've said, you don't take this stuff seriously. It's just an ornament that you put on the top of your life to make yourself look better around you. It's just a crutch that you use one day a week to try to get you through, but you don't take this Jesus stuff seriously. I've said this before and I'm going to keep saying it. You don't trust in Christ because of how good Christians are. You trust in Christ because of how good Christ is. So I would urge you this morning to come to Jesus, recognizing that even if we fail you, Jesus never will. Come to him and receive his salvation. But for the rest of us this morning, as we're about to sing together, as we're about to resolve to follow Jesus, and that's not just a one-time thing that you did a long time ago, that's something that we need to do right now, resolving to follow Jesus as we leave this place. What I want to ask us to do is to ask, am I actually willing to follow Jesus? no matter the cost. Because if I am, if I'm willing to count the cost and say that Jesus is worth it, even my life, I would lay down for his sake. Then I think we can begin to see the kind of transformative influence that we're supposed to have in a community, in a county, in a country that desperately needs Jesus and the gospel. and in a world that God has purposed to redeem for his eternal glory in our good.