Two Gates, Two Trees, Two Homes
Download MP3I invite you to turn to Matthew chapter 7. Matthew 7. I realize we're a little crowded. I I raised my hand in worship, and we were so crowded I couldn't put it down. If you're single, this is the place to be as we just squeeze you together.
Joel Brooks:You you actually could fit more people. Guys, if you would put your arm around the person next to you, it helps us tighten it up. I'll probably get in so much trouble for that. Just begin the recording of the podcast now. Alright?
Joel Brooks:We do wanna welcome back our college students. We have missed you this summer. As a matter of fact, if you are a college student, I'd ask that you would stand right now. College students, stand. Usually it's okay.
Joel Brooks:We got our balcony here. Welcome back. Stay stay standing. Nope. Stay stay.
Joel Brooks:If y'all say nope. Nope. I didn't just you can't sit down yet. Stay standing. If you, if you're just an attender here or a member here and you are deeply impacted, through a college ministry this is about 2 thirds of us here, and and I know there's some people I was your college pastor and you feel forced to stand.
Joel Brooks:I get it. Alright. Alright. Y'all y'all can sit. This is why we do college ministry.
Joel Brooks:And I realize that, when our college students are here, it puts a squeeze on us. But hear me. We will always find another seat to pull up to the table. We strongly believe in investing in our college students here. And so, we are really thankful you are here.
Joel Brooks:The fruit of what God is gonna do in your lives was gonna bear fruit for many, many years to come. So we come to the conclusion of our series on the Sermon on the Mount. For those of you who have been here this summer, I hope it's been a transformative study for you. It certainly has been for me. If this is your first time here or you're just coming back here from the summer break, you're in luck because we're actually gonna summarize the last 13 weeks in one sermon.
Joel Brooks:So you're gonna get it all in one sermon. So we'll begin reading Matthew chapter 7 beginning in verse 11 sorry, verse 12. So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them. For this is the law and the prophets. Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction.
Joel Brooks:And those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, And those who find it are few. Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?
Joel Brooks:So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. Not everyone who says to me, lord, lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.
Joel Brooks:But the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do mighty works in your name?' And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and great was the fall of it.
Joel Brooks:And when Jesus finished saying these finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at His teaching. For He was teaching them as one who had authority and not as the scribes. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Pray with me.
Joel Brooks:Amen. Father, I pray that you would bring clarity and conviction to these words, that You would write them on our hearts, that Jesus, through Your Spirit, we would hear You talking to us, longing to be with us, drawing us to yourself. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. Lord, may your words So we begin this conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount with what we know as the golden rule. Jesus is he gives us a saying that we know as the golden rule, which is a summary of the law and the prophets.
Joel Brooks:It's not a total summary, a complete summary. It's not everything about the law and prophets, but it's a applicable summary of the law and the prophets. We know it is do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That's that's how probably many of us memorize that. It's the most famous verse in the Bible outside of judge not.
Joel Brooks:Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And what Jesus is doing here is he's correcting a misunderstanding, a misapplication that we actually all have concerning the law and the prophets. And it's one that's so great, so severe in our lives, we actually even misapply Jesus' own summary of the law and prophets. You see, when we hear the law and the prophets, we hear things, you know, like, do not murder, do not steal, do not commit adultery. And we basically interpret or summarize those words as this, You leave me alone and I'll leave you alone.
Joel Brooks:You leave me alone and I'll leave you alone. And that the from one another. After all, I can't steal from you or murder you or have an affair with you if there's a relational distance between us. And so we interpret those laws in such a way that we think we need to live them out in isolation of a community. That's the best way, the safe bet to obey the law and the prophets.
Joel Brooks:You leave me alone and I'll leave you alone. That's how my mom interpreted the law and the prophets. Perhaps yours did too. I grew up I have an older brother and older sister and we grew up in the time before the SUVs. And so when we went around, it was the 3 of us all crammed in the back seat of the car.
Joel Brooks:And we did what siblings would always do, which is just annoy one another. And so we would always be poking one another, elbowing one another, you know, giving one another wet willies, like doing all of these things. And then mom would come back with law and she would say, stop it. Stop it. I don't want anybody touching one another.
Joel Brooks:And so even though you're crammed together, you would have to squeeze to where your shoulders weren't even touching because mom thought, if I could keep a relational distance, if they if they can't even touch one another, then they'll obey. And that was the law and of course we would, you know, push it, we would just get up and we do like this and one another's faces. I'm not touching mom, there's, you know, there's still the distance between us. But we would try to not do to one another as you did not want them to do unto you. That was our understanding of the law, and we had to have some relational distance between us.
Joel Brooks:So that misunderstanding, misapplication of the law, we read into the golden rule. Even though we know it says, Jesus says, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, we actually apply it as do not do unto others as you would not like them to do unto you. So we tell our kids, hey, don't talk bad about other people. Don't interrupt people when they're talking. Don't gossip behind people's backs.
Joel Brooks:Don't hit other people. Tell them why? Well we're supposed to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But actually, that really doesn't fit with that statement. We're telling them not what to do to others because we don't want other people to do those things to us.
Joel Brooks:But what Jesus here gives us, really was the intent of the law all the time. It was not to isolate us from one another, but it was to force us into this radical new community. You cannot obey Jesus' words without having a deep, deep relationship with other people. It's driving you into community. I would go so far as to say, this is what the trinity, the relationship within the trinity can be defined as they are doing unto one another as they would have the other person do unto them.
Joel Brooks:They're always giving honor, always giving glory, always seeking to serve one another, and it's out of that in which we get this commandment, which builds an entire new community here on earth. And Jesus is saying, this is what the kingdom of God should look like. We are to do for other people what we want them to be doing for us. This is a proactive statement here. The thou shall's, well they can be obeyed in isolation.
Joel Brooks:Thou shall not murder. Thou shall not commit adultery. Thou shall not steal, but the due for one another, we've gotta be in a deep relationship with one another. And we need to be using our imagination as to how we can actually give to other people Because we know we want honor, we want respect, we want kindness shown to us. We want people to see our needs and help meet them.
Joel Brooks:We want these things. So now how do we do that for others? Last summer, I was going hiking with Mark Peoples, who's here, and we were in Glacier National Park and we were hiking back country 5 or 6 days there, and you don't really get to see many people, but this is what happened every time we saw somebody. We would see somebody and Mark would be talking to them and Mark would just say, hey, do you need anything? And the first lady we came up on, she's like, gosh, the mosquitoes are killing me.
Joel Brooks:Mark goes, well, Joel, why don't you give her your mosquito spray? It's like, okay. I don't know what I'm gonna use, but here. So I would give her the mosquito spray. We come up on somebody else and Mark's talking and say like, hey, do you need anything?
Joel Brooks:Did you pack enough food? And they're like, we think we did, we're not really sure. Hey, Joel, why don't you give them some of your bars? Well, now, no, give her the give the good food. We come up on somebody else.
Joel Brooks:Mark would ask them, like, hey, do you need anything? Are you guys doing all right? I'm just looking at them. Do you have enough fuel? He's going through the list.
Joel Brooks:They're like, yeah, I think we have enough fuel because you probably don't. Hey, Joel, just give him our fuel. That's doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. You're actively trying to find how you can be serving the other person. And you're not ever worried about running out because you've obeyed what Jesus has said before, ask and you shall receive.
Joel Brooks:And you know your needs are coming in from God and it frees you up to give to the other person. Now, I could and you know, Mark don't get a big head because I could use other examples that deal with other points. I'm gonna save those illustrations about some things that happened on our hiking trail. Yes, easy. There you are.
Joel Brooks:But we're to always be thinking, what can I do? What can I do for another person? That I would like for other people to be always be looking at my life thinking, what can I do for them? There's a physical and an emotional generosity that we have here. We all want our emotional cups filled.
Joel Brooks:We all want people to come and meet our needs. We all want people to respect and honor us and we are to try to find ways to do that for other people. This is a sweeping statement that Jesus gives here. Building an alternative society. And He's saying, this is what those who are part of the Kingdom of God look like.
Joel Brooks:We do well to just chew on this, not just for the next 20 minutes, but for the rest of your life. But I want us to move on to Jesus' conclusion. So that's Jesus' stunning summary of the law and the prophets. And then He concludes things, he wraps things up by telling us about 2 gates, 2 trees, and 2 houses. Now there's certainly benefit to talking about each one of these things in isolation.
Joel Brooks:There, you could benefit a lot from those and they're worth a sermon in their own right, but there's also a danger that you can miss the forest for the trees. And so, I wanna look at all of those as a unit Because they're all about the same main point. And it's one that should astonish us. This sermon ends with these people being astonished at Jesus' words. And there's a danger for us living in the buckle of the Bible belt that we're no longer astonished.
Joel Brooks:We're just familiar with these words, but not astonished. But if you actually understand what Jesus is setting up, when he talks about the 2 gates and the 2 trees and the 2 houses, you will be astonished at His words. I've been studying these these words for months now and they have hit hard. So He begins by talking about what we know as the straight and narrow. Verse 13.
Joel Brooks:Enter by the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction. And those who find it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life. And those who find it are few. Now for those of us who, you know, grew up, knowing the King James version, we, we remember this as straight is the gate and narrow is the way.
Joel Brooks:And so we would talk about the Christian life as one in which we are to walk the straight and the narrow. And it's a phrase that is still used today. We're just supposed to walk the straight and the narrow. Now, growing up, when I heard those words, I would think of it this way. I would think of, well, the straight and narrow, it means that we're supposed to not walk the crooked path.
Joel Brooks:We're not supposed to walk the immoral path, but we're to do good and we're to walk the straight and the narrow. But that's not the word straight that Jesus uses. And I don't know if it was just me just reading too fast or if it's a dyslexia or if I just heard the people as I said this. But Jesus doesn't use the word for s t r a I g h t. Is strait.
Joel Brooks:Straight as in narrow like dire straits. It's it's the word that's used throughout scripture to talk about an extreme narrowing or suffocation or strangling or a smothering there. That's why these people were astonished because that term is used throughout scripture negatively. But Jesus here, He's saying, the gate here that I want you to go through, it's gonna feel like it's gonna smother you. It's gonna feel so narrow that it's gonna be like suffocation.
Joel Brooks:But that's the one that's gonna lead to life. And the one, the road that's before you that you think is gonna lead to an openness or a spaciousness or a freedom, which is what you all long for, that's gonna be the road that leads to your destruction. And so He turns the tables on us. And hear me, there there are times where we look at the path that Jesus wants us to walk and we are utterly convinced. If I were to do that, it'd made the end of me.
Joel Brooks:Because we have these desires and we think the only way that I could ever be happy. The only way that I can ever be free to be who I am is to give into these desires and to do this. And Jesus says, that might look like openness. That might look like freedom. It might look like life.
Joel Brooks:But it is death. The way I'm offering you now, yes, it's narrow. It might look like it's the end of you, but what I'm offering is freedom in life. The word straight when it's applied to a body of water, it's that thin little channel of water that then opens up to a deep expanse of water. That's a straight.
Joel Brooks:And that's what Jesus is offering us here. You gotta squeeze in, but when you go through this gate, it's freedom and life. Don't miss it. And so we hear Jesus saying this. That we're supposed to walk the straight and the narrow.
Joel Brooks:And we immediately think we get it. Okay, I understand this. You know, to walk the straight and the narrow and to not go on that broad path, it means that we gotta do good things. If you do good things, that's walking the straight and narrow. If you do bad things, that's the road that leads to destruction.
Joel Brooks:So good things, we go to heaven. Bad things, we go to Hell. But that is not at all what Jesus is saying here. Those are not in any way the 2 paths that Jesus is laying out before us. Hear me, walking the straight and narrow has nothing to do with being good or being bad.
Joel Brooks:Absolutely nothing. So Jesus is gonna flesh out what He means though by giving us a couple more illustrations. He's gonna talk about sheep. And then he's gonna talk about how there's wolves in sheep's clothing. He's gonna talk about these 2 different trees and about these 2 different homes.
Joel Brooks:But here's the key. In each one of the examples He's gonna give, on the outside, these 2 groups look the exact same. It's only the inside in which they look different. The outside, they look the same. So you look at what appears to be 2 sheep, they look the exact same, but only one is a sheep and the other is actually a wolf dressed up as a sheep.
Joel Brooks:You see 2 trees and on the outside, they're the exact same. But on the inside of one of them, there's a disease. And that disease results that when they put out fruit that looks the exact same, one is a bad fruit. And that word bad can be interpreted as poisonous. It will mean your death or destruction.
Joel Brooks:And then you see the 2 homes. They're the exact same. But underneath, one's on the sand and will fall apart. So throughout the sermon, Jesus has been talking about these 2 different groups of people. He has been making a distinction between 2 different groups of people, 2 different paths, 2 different trees, 2 different homes, But He hasn't been laying it out as these are the ones who were doing good and then these are the ones who were doing bad.
Joel Brooks:That has not been the distinction that Jesus has made. That's pretty easy to see. It's kinda easy to see when one's doing good or one's doing bad. The 2 groups that He's been putting forth, both look the same. They look the exact same and they're both doing good.
Joel Brooks:So Jesus, He didn't talk about in His sermon, if you remember from a few weeks ago when Dwight preached on prayer, He didn't talk about there's there's those who pray and they're good and then there's those who don't pray and they're the ones who's bad. No, he actually put up 2 groups of people who both prayed. They both were doing good. But one prayed to be noticed for their many words And the other prayed quietly in their heart. Then He talked about 2 groups of people concerning giving, but it wasn't separated.
Joel Brooks:There's those who give and then there's the unrighteous who don't give. He actually presented 2 people who both give. He says, but one person gives to be noticed by men. The other person gives in such way they don't even know what the right hand doesn't even know what the left is doing. He presents 2 groups about fasting.
Joel Brooks:But it's not those who fast and those who don't fast, they both fast. But this group here, they fast in order to be noticed by men. The group here, well, they do it quietly, hidden, only to be noticed by God. That's the distinction. That's the 2 groups that Jesus has been putting forward throughout this sermon.
Joel Brooks:And he says, one of these groups is on the road to destruction and the other is on the road to life, but they look the exact same. From the outside, they look the exact same. And so what Jesus is doing here is He is comparing the religious person with the Christian. The religious person with the Christian, in which outwardly, they look the same. But inwardly, they have completely different motives.
Joel Brooks:So outwardly, the religious person looks like a sheep, but inwardly they're a ravenous wolf. I like that word ravenous. It's actually probably not the best translation for this though. It's an interesting word. It appears several times throughout scripture, but this is the only time it is ever translated as ravenous.
Joel Brooks:The other times it's translated as a swindler, an extortioner, a blackmailer. This is the only time ravenous, but I get it. You have these translators and they're coming with a wolf and you can't have, like, a wolf, you know, committing blackmail against somebody. It just doesn't make any sense. And so they're kind of in a bind and so they use this word ravenous, but you actually, you really, in order to understand what Jesus is emphasizing here, you need to hold up this notion of extortion or blackmail or swindling.
Joel Brooks:Otherwise, you're gonna miss the meaning of what Jesus is putting here. Jesus is saying this. You can outwardly be a good moral, religious person. Yet inside, the reason you're doing all these things is to get what you want. It's all about power.
Joel Brooks:It's all about taking from others. You're using your your religiosity to grab things from other people. And so you give to the poor, not out of a love for God. You give to the poor because you want respect. You want honor from other people.
Joel Brooks:You want to be noticed for those things. You're seizing glory and honor. You want people to be impressed by you for your many words. You might even pray to God in order to get things from Him and so you remind Him of, I've been doing this. I've been doing this and doing this.
Joel Brooks:You owe me. Now You owe me, God. Give me a spouse. I've been going to church. I've been a good person.
Joel Brooks:Give me a better job. And we try to extort things from God. So why do we pray? That's the question. Why do we put money in the offering?
Joel Brooks:Why do we give? Why do we fast? What's the motive in our heart? Jesus looked at these morally upright religious leaders and He said, you know what? Even the pimps and prostitutes get in the kingdom of heaven before you.
Joel Brooks:Are you starting to feel a little unsettled as you read through this? I am. Absolutely, I am. You guys know me. I try to, you know, comfort you with the gospel.
Joel Brooks:But Jesus begins His Sermon on the Mount with blessings, but He ends it with warnings. Very severe warnings. And His most severe warning is found in verse 21. He says, not everyone who says to me, lord, lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do mighty works in your name?
Joel Brooks:And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. So Jesus here, he says, on that day, many will say to him, Lord, Lord. Now that on that day, that that day is judgment day. And Jesus just casually mentions here, there's a judgment day, and I'm the judge.
Joel Brooks:You'll all appear before me on that day. And he says there's gonna be a group of people who, on that day, they say, 'Lord, Lord,' Meaning that these are people who absolutely believe Jesus is the Lord. Completely convinced He's the Son of God. In the Hebrew culture, you would actually double something in order to show emphasis. They're not just saying, Lord, they're saying, Lord, Lord, meaning they really believe in the lordship of Jesus, that He is the Son of God.
Joel Brooks:Absolutely convinced of it. These are people with good theology. They probably grew up in church, went to Sunday school, they know their Bibles. And it's not just an empty belief. They actually had the works to follow their beliefs.
Joel Brooks:They prophesied in Jesus' name, which at a bare minimum means that they were teaching and they were preaching correctly about Jesus. And they also cast out demons and they did many mighty works or miracles in Jesus' name. So they helped a great many people. They cared for people. These are people who actually possess what we would call the spiritual gifts.
Joel Brooks:I mean, does that shock you that non Christians can possess the spiritual gifts? But we see that here. And not only do they possess it, they are extraordinarily gifted. More gifted than most of us here in this room, if we were to be honest. I mean, I'm looking around and we probably have had some, but not many who have prophesied or cast out demons or who have healed other people, but these people have.
Joel Brooks:And so, what we see here in this situation is what appears to be an Orthodox believer who strongly believes in the lordship of Jesus, who's been using their giftedness to preach and to heal people and to do all sorts of miracles, And yet somehow on that day, when they're before Jesus in judgment, He says, Depart from me. I never knew you. He doesn't just say I I now don't know you or I don't know you. He says, I never never knew you. You might have been a very religious, a very upright person.
Joel Brooks:You might have done a whole lot of good things, but we don't know one another. When I was in Montana a few weeks ago, I was helping out a friend of mine named Matt DeCero and he runs a ministry called Hope Ranch. And he needed my help getting some pack horses up a mountain and it was a job. It was a task. We had 12 pack horses that had to go up a really steep, rocky terrain.
Joel Brooks:Took us all day. It was over a ton of supplies. Pouring down rain, then pouring down hail, then lightning storm. The horses are freaking out, getting separated from one another. So, I'm gone from early morning till late at night, just helping my friend out here.
Joel Brooks:And I get back to the cabin and, Lauren asked me, So how was it? I was like, It was great. It was really good. She goes, so how's Matt doing? Like, I don't know.
Joel Brooks:I guess he's doing alright. She goes, oh, well, like, how are the kids? Alright. I didn't talk about his kids. How's Hope Ranch?
Joel Brooks:I don't know. We we really we didn't talk about it. So, what did you talk about? Well, we actually we we really didn't talk. She's like, you were with him all day.
Joel Brooks:Literally, it was just the 2 of you. Just the 2 of you on a trail going all the way up and all the way down, and you're telling me you didn't even talk. I was like, we were busy. Like, I mean, we were just doing things. There is a danger for every one of us here to try to relate to God that way.
Joel Brooks:We just get really busy doing things. Convinced that we need to be doing these and somehow we're actually doing them for Him. That we're working hard, we're praying, we're giving, we're going to church, we're trying to obey the law and we're, we've convinced ourself all the while we're doing this out of love for Him, yet we're not even trying to get to know Him. That's not what is fueling us in this. And if we don't know Him, we certainly cannot love Him.
Joel Brooks:We cannot adore Him. These people here who were crying out, Lord, Lord. They were pointing to the Lord and affirming His lordship and then they were pointing all the things that they were doing that they thought for him their entire lives. It's like, we've been really moral people doing all these things our entire lives, and they were pointing to that, and they're saying, God, we did all of these good things for you, and God says, you didn't do it for me at all. That was all for you.
Joel Brooks:I never knew you. And can I say as a pastor, these words have hit me especially hard? Because, I'm drawn to the gifts of the Spirit because I like to get work done. I like to see tasks done and the gifts of the Spirit, they're kinda like the power tools, you know, that God has given Christians and I like power tools. You were to go to my house, I have 9 different power saws in my work shed.
Joel Brooks:Alright. I like power tools because it gets things done. You can accomplish a whole lot in a short amount of time, but knowing Jesus cannot be rushed. There's no power tool for getting to know Jesus faster. This is just simply taking time and adoration with Him.
Joel Brooks:Martin Luther, when he was commenting on this, he said these people, these Lord Lord Sayers, they are far more busy and far more energetic than any genuine Christian. So we need to create space, unhurried time in which we adore Jesus. Because you know it? On that day, Jesus is only gonna ask us one question. Do you know me?
Joel Brooks:Not do you know about Him? Not have you been doing things that you think are for Him, but do you actually know Him? That's how Jesus ends His sermon. He's not impressed. He's not impressed by our good works.
Joel Brooks:You know, some of us on that day, we're gonna treat Jesus, talk to Him just like we've been doing our entire lives, simply pointing out all the things we've done and then we're gonna show that we really are a wolf. Because we wanna say, I have been doing all of these things. Now give me this. I've earned eternal life. And Jesus doesn't say you did none of those things for me and no one extorts me.
Joel Brooks:I never knew you. So the question is this, do you have a real living relationship with Jesus? On that day, you can either trust in everything that you've done or you can trust in everything that Jesus has done on your behalf. Everything that Jesus has done in order to have that relationship with you. That actually brings us to this table here, in which we remember what Jesus has done in order to be with us.
Joel Brooks:Jesus literally went through hell in order to be with us. In order that we can have a relationship. Did you get what the judgment was? The punishment? I mean, other scripture, you know Jesus, He'll use other imagery to talk about the horrors of hell.
Joel Brooks:He'll talk about, you know, the flames. He'll talk about the darkness. He'll talk about the gnashing of teeth. But here he really simplifies it for us. Here is judgment.
Joel Brooks:Depart from me. You can no longer be in my presence. Depart. This is actually the judgment we see that Jesus received on the cross. When you look at all the things that Jesus endured on the cross, it certainly boiled down to one thing.
Joel Brooks:When Jesus was in agony, we know He did not say, my hands, my hands, they hurt, The nails, they hurt. He didn't say my feet, my feet. He didn't say my say my head, my head. This this thorns are pressing in and they hurt so much. He didn't say any of those things.
Joel Brooks:What Jesus said was, My God, my God, why have you left me? You've departed from me. I no longer feel your presence. And at that moment, Jesus is in the heart of hell, And He went there so you would never have to be. So you would never ever have to depart from His presence.
Joel Brooks:He has taken that punishment for you. Have you taken full advantage of that? Are you still bringing to Jesus your little feeble good works or saying I trust wholly in your name and what you have done for me? And are you striving with all your heart, soul, and strength to simply know your Lord and your savior? Let me pray for us.
Joel Brooks:Jesus, we repent of holding on to all of our good works as as if that impresses You. And we confess that so often we have done these things as a way of extorting You, demanding things from you and trying to take things from other people as well. We are here now expressing that you are our only hope. You are our righteousness and we thank you that you went through hell in order to be with us. We celebrate that, Jesus, in this place.
Joel Brooks:In your name we pray, Amen. For our servers, we'll go ahead and come on up here.
