NOV 20 2022 | The Message

Sea Change Church · NOV 20 2022 | The Message
Isaiah 53:1-3
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Saved ! Hallelujah He Has Me The My Soul Long Jesus Satisfies My Long Through His I Now Am Saved Through His Blood I Now Am Through His Blood With Blood Now Am Saved Good morning Church, we're Dustin and Jess Punches serving youth in Baja Mexico through Aleph Surf International. Today we are bringing you the Word of God. Today's scripture comes from Isaiah chapter 2. Today's scripture comes from Isaiah chapter 53 verses 1-3.

Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. Nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men. A man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one who has been from whom men hide their faces. He was despised and we esteemed him not. This is the word of the Lord.

and the name of the Lord. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This is a prophecy for Isaiah. It is one of the most well-known prophecies. And it was written 2,800 years ago. So almost 3,000 years ago. Now there's only 6,000 years of written, recorded history where we have human writing. This is from halfway back. And it talks about a Savior. It talks about a Messiah.

And we're going to challenge you to immerse yourself in these 12 verses for the next six weeks or whatever it is until Christmas comes. This is the message of the child that would come, whose message was to come as a suffering servant who would leave everything behind for the sake of the people whom he loved. And this is a passage you can dive into.

Now, I want to tell you, as I was getting ready to prepare for this message, I was trying to find an opening that would work. I was trying to find something that would work, that would be easy, that would be palatable, that would kind of reach all the different types of learners that we have here at our church. I got to tell you, I was struggling.

I just couldn't come up with something, especially after the low-hanging fruit of Nehemiah. So, Nehemiah, a complex book. But when you get into these narrative books, right, you get into these books like Nehemiah was here and he said this to this person instead of saying this. It's so easy to preach, right? Nehemiah was like almost a break for me.

It was such low-hanging fruit, so fun to preach. I love the ideas of the walls and the citadels of our life. And that's where I live. I love, like, helping people strengthen their lives, know what their values are, make sure that things aren't coming into their lives that shouldn't, and making sure that the things from our heart that should be going out of our lives are.

And it was just, it was so fun to preach it. And then I got to this passage in Isaiah, and I just hit a wall. I literally hit a wall. And I was all day on, not all day, but most of the morning on Wednesday. And usually I can frame up a sermon probably in about 20 minutes. I can frame it up. I mean, it doesn't mean I get all the pieces built, but I can frame it up.

I know what I'm going to say. And I'm four hours in on Wednesday. And I'm like, where do I go with this? What do I say? And then Thursday, I'm grinding on Thursday. And I'm working about one. I'm getting texts from Drea. Hey, and Chris, hey, where's the sermon? Need the sermon? We've got to print the bulletin. And it's coming. It's coming. I'm getting it to you.

I send it in. Not happy with it. All right? Send it in. Don't know where I'm going. And I'm laying in bed last night, and I still am like, I need an opening. I can't get in. I can't cry. This is the opening, by the way. I cry. I decided that, by the way. But, and as I was sitting there, I was laying in bed. I'm like, Lord, what do you want me to do with this scripture?

And he says, I felt like he said to my heart, this is the eternal mystery of the gospel. You're not supposed to understand it. You're supposed to immerse yourself in it. And you're supposed to live in it. And all of a sudden, it was interesting because when I'm, I don't know about you, but when I open the scripture, I feel like I live in the scripture.

Like, when I open the Bible, I feel like I didn't step into the house of the scripture. Personally, and maybe this is just a gifting for preachers, but when I open the Bible, I feel like I just kind of stepped out of the bedroom into the house that I already live in. And this passage, for the first time in a long time, I felt outside. I felt I was outside banging on the window, trying to look in, trying to, hey, did everyone remember I'm out here?

I just went out to walk the dog, but now I'm locked out, and I lost my keys, and I didn't know where to go. And in this passage, this is what I felt like the Lord said. This is a passage that you need to live. You need to breathe. You need to get your scuba outfit on, and you need to go a deep dive. You need to actually free dive. If you know what free diving is, is to go deep, to not breathe for a very long time and go in, and then when you, you know, immerse yourself in this text.

And so, one of the challenges at the end of this message is going to be for you to immerse yourself in this passage over the next few weeks. So, with that, let's just jump right in. And I do have a bit of an opening analogy. This was the part B I was going to open with, but that's actually the part. But I still want to say this. One of my favorite people that reminded me of Isaiah is a modern preacher by the name of John Wesley.

I was highly influenced by John Wesley. I grew up Catholic on one side when my parents were divorced with my dad. We were at the Catholic Church. And on the other side, I was at a Wesleyan Methodist church. And John Wesley is known for being a circuit rider. And if you don't know what a term circuit rider is, it is someone that has a jurisdiction that they ride on horseback.

Before there was a cars where they would ride on horseback and they would preach the gospel to those that were out in their circuit. Now, this was very controversial because the church, the message of the gospel had shrunk down to where it was illegal to preach the gospel outside of a church setting. Only the priest or the pastors could preach it.

They kept a tight hand on the Bible. And we didn't want you to screw it up. We can't trust the people with the word of God. And Wesley and a bunch of others said, that's not true. I'm going to go out. I'm going to ride the circuit. And he began to preach in the streets. He began to preach in fields. And the farm workers would come in. And he began to tell the story of the gospel.

It is said that John Wesley rode 250,000 miles on horseback. Ten times around the world preaching the gospel. There's a bunch. You can look up onto him. And you can read more about him. But one of the things he reminded me of was Isaiah. Now, Isaiah was a circuit rider. What's a circuit rider? He was a prophet, but he was a prophet that went around all over Israel, over the southern kingdom of Israel, and in Judah, and telling people about the coming Messiah, prophesying for God, and being a living message of the gospel.

Let's look at Isaiah real quick. A couple things in your notes as we set this up before we dive into the first part of this passage. Isaiah was a prophet. His name means Yahweh is salvation. His whole life. His name embodied who he was, embodied his calling. Yahweh is salvation. What that said to me is does my name, not Adam, so to speak, which means of the earth, but does the life that I live, the very thing that I live, does it express the gospel in everything that I do?

Isaiah was a preacher, a prophet, mainly to the smaller kingdom of Judah, the capital of which Jerusalem is also called Zion. So he had a specific region that he went to, that he rode to, that was on his circuit. In a moment, I'm going to ask you, where is your circuit? Where do you go? Most of us have eight to ten places we go on a regular basis.

We have the same Starbucks, the same dry cleaner, the same gym, the same basketball league, the same school, the same whatever it is. You have a circuit. And are you riding that circuit with intention? You see, John Wesley rode the circuit with intention. Isaiah rode the circuit with intention, living out his name's calling, God is salvation. The next we see is Isaiah prophesies in the days of four kings.

Four kings. He's Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. Hezekiah is a really interesting king. If you want to go back and give a little more context to Isaiah 53, go back and look through the passages of Hezekiah. God, I mean, Isaiah had this incredible relationship with Hezekiah. I can't go into that at the moment. And I would say this, that Isaiah spoke eternal words and is quoted more than 50 times in the New Testament.

He spoke eternal words. And what do I mean by that? Our words will fall and end when this universe ends, when this time ends. But if we speak eternal words, words of life, words that have the touch of God, scripture upon them, your words actually become eternal. That's how you break out of the death that is over our culture and oftentimes over our world by limiting it in eternal life.

When you immerse yourself in things that are eternal, you live a life that goes beyond the temporal. So that's Isaiah. Now let's look at Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53, let's package this up for you. Isaiah 53 is about a child that would come, but he would be a suffering servant. Isaiah 53 is one of four songs in a structured part of Isaiah that has four songs.

And there's 12 verses, so I want you to see Isaiah 53 as a song that actually crescendos. Probably I would say somewhere around verse 6. But as it begins to look, as you read through it, see it as a song. And the chorus being perhaps, and we are healed, by his stripes we are healed. Or he was crushed for our iniquities. If you listen to the verses, if you listen to them as a song, you will see that they build up, starting with what we'll see today is who's believed our message.

You see, he was a circuit rider that had a message to share. And we're going to start with, are you riding the circuit of your life with a message to share with eternal words, with a message that says God is salvation? It's a great question. Isaiah 53 is known as the forbidden chapter. Why? Because it's not allowed to be read aloud in synagogue.

This chapter has become so controversial in the last thousand years or perhaps more, there are no synagogues that will read this chapter aloud in the reading within the synagogue. And so you can look up Isaiah 53 in the forbidden chapter, and one of the arguments is that it's been misunderstood. That when Christians speak about this, they see this speaking about a Messiah, an individual, a human being.

And it actually, it's really hard to defend the argument that Jesus was not the Jewish Messiah, if you're looking at this passage. The argument has been that it is not talking about an individual, that it's talking about Israel as a whole. That Israel will do these things. That Israel, you know, will heal us as a nation. But I would say, I would argue, and I'm, you know, I'm not a Hebrew scholar, but I would argue that Israel and all the scriptures has never said in the Old Testament that Israel would be the source of salvation for the people.

It was always God. And so to look at Isaiah 53 and say that Israel is salvific, because as you read this passage, by his stripes we are healed. He was crushed, wounded for our iniquities, will be saved through him and these things. Because you can't really apply that in the context of the rest of the Old Testament in what Israel is actually going to accomplish.

Because only God can accomplish what Isaiah 53 says that this individual will do. So that's the counter argument. It is known as the forbidden chapter. Two takeaways today as we look into Isaiah, as we begin to immerse ourselves into this Christmas passage. Because there is no more of a Christmas passage than the meaning of this passage, the suffering servant.

The first is this, be the living gospel. Know your circuit, ride your circuit. Be the living gospel. Know your circuit, ride your circuit, preach your circuit, heal your circuit, bring hope to your circuit, be there over and over again. Be a circuit rider. We tend to only, oftentimes, circuit the things that we want for our own life, our own happiness, pain avoidance, you know, all these different things that we go through.

And everything we do in our circuit is about us. We want me. I want that. I'm still in the sweet cream cold brew phase right now. Now, I should have switched over to the hot drinks. But hot drinks get after the old midline for me. So I'm still here at the, you know. And I find myself like, I want to go get that Starbucks. I want that sweet cream cold brew.

It's so good. And the Irish cream cold brew is really good. Why am I telling you this? Because I go to my circuit to get my sweet cream cold brew and I bounce. I don't want to be bothered. Don't chat me up too much. I'm not feeling it today. I go and I show up to the circuit. I've got no God of salvation to share with them. I've got, I want my cold brew.

I want my caffeine. I want my sweet cream. And I might take that sweet little, you know, Christmas cookie as well. But then I want to bounce. I'm not riding that circuit. I'm not doing that thing. So that's the first thing is this. Be the living gospel. Know your circuit. Ride your circuit. Preach the gospel. Number two, and this one, I think, I didn't really know how to put it other than this.

The gospel is more grit than glamour. And what I'm trying to say by that is there's a simplistic gospel here that was shared. And you'll see from the opening that Jesus was very simplistic. As you're going to see today, there was nothing that would attract people to him. He was just so simple. Now, I've started by saying that this is one of the most complex.

It's an enigma, this passage. It doesn't offer the pop culture Jesus. It doesn't offer the vending machine Jesus. It offers this incredibly rich passage. You could spend hours and years and months of your life digging into this particular passage. But we see that it's also simple. That Jesus was this unassuming person who was also God, who walked very naturally.

And if he were to go into Starbucks, he would laugh and he would know the person's name and he would look into their eyes and he would care for them. And the fact that there was a bunch of people trying to kill him outside the door wouldn't bother him in the moment because he'd be so into the person he was talking to because he loved them so much.

And he cared so much about bringing the salvation to them. That's the Jesus. That's simplistic Jesus. And so when I say that the gospel is more grit than glamour, what I mean is it's simplistic. It's more, it's real. It's practical. It's alive. There's flesh on it. And so that is what I think it's easier for me to do than try to explain all the complexities.

Let's just jump right into the first one. We're called to be the living gospel. We're finally to the passage. Thank you for allowing me that large intro, but we need to do that to set this up on the first week. Verse one, we're called to be the living gospel. There's two questions in verse one. Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

So this passage, Isaiah 53, these 12 verses, open up with the opening verse, the opening salvo into this song. Ask a question. It doesn't start up with God is good. It doesn't start up with Jesus died for our sins. It doesn't start up with any of those things. It actually brings the entire focus back to the circuit rider. It brings the entire focus back to Isaiah.

Isaiah, and Isaiah is not standing alone because if you look, he doesn't say who has believed my message. He says who has believed our message. And I believe that that is an ever-encompassing message that encompasses you and me to be sharing this message on a regular basis. And so it's asked this, the first question is who has believed our message?

And you can put a question mark behind that. The next, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? You never know how God is going to reveal his message and to whom he will reveal his arm to. But it will never happen unless we carry the gospel, unless we carry the message. Go to Romans 10, 14 in your notes. How then can they call on the one they've not believed in?

And how can they believe in the one in whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone riding the circuit for them, preaching to them? I added that extra part. How can they hear? They hear, they accept the gospel. Who has believed our message? And so the first thing is this, if you have no message, no one's going to believe it. And you have to have a message.

And I want to, to make it easier for you, that message can be simple. It can be gritty. We'll get to that in a moment. You don't have to understand the complexities of the systematic theology. Some people love to dig into that. But I think a simple gospel has saved more people than a complex gospel. You see, the deep dive oftentimes happens afterwards.

Some people like C.S. Lewis have to do the deep dive first before they accept. But most people come to a place in their life where it's no longer working. And a simple gospel has been revealed to them through a message. From our family, a kid by the name of Chris Conrad invited my brother to Disneyland. And that was the opening, that was the opening invitation for us to have a life-changing event.

The why I'm here today, the why my whole reason, my whole family throughout their East Coast, through my mom's intervention in the gospel, knows Jesus. Because somebody, he was riding the circuit. He didn't know it maybe, but he was riding the circuit as a sixth grader and invited us in. Chris Freund shared this week at the men's event. By the way, thank you, man.

Such an incredible event. Had such a good time. If you guys missed it, don't miss the next one. It was awesome. He said that God kind of led him to dive into his faith and invite, I believe, ten men to come to a Bible study. He said, I didn't know what I was doing, but I'm just going to invite ten guys to come to a Bible study. Three friends of mine, people I'm acquaintances with, he said nine said yes.

Been running that Bible study for nine people. I know he hates it. I'm bringing him up right now. Sorry about that, Chris, but I'm going to bring it up. Because that is what is happening. Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Isaiah, that message was more than just preaching a gospel. Isaiah was a living gospel.

That message that you preach as you ride your circuit is a message of hope. Isaiah preached the gospel of hope. He, you know, what is prophecy often? Sometimes it's gloom and doom. But a lot of times it's hope. He preached hope. He preached salvation. He preached about a Jesus. And if our world needs anything at the moment, it needs hope. It needs inspiration.

One of the things I try to foundationally input into my messages every week is inspiration. It's inspiration over challenge, high challenge, but not challenge with guilt. Challenge with inspiration. Of who God and the goodness he will do. He preached hope. He was actually also called, we're not all called to this. He was called to the government.

He was working closely with four kings. He was having influence in the government. And some of us are called to work in the government, to have influence there. And some are not called to. Some are called to work in the schools. Some are called to work in the homeless shelters. Some are called to work in a family gathering in a home church. Some are called to be on a sports team.

Some are all over and over. But it's your circuit. Know your circuit. And this idea that every Christian has to be a political Christian is bunk. If you're called into it, we need to be aware. But not all of us need to be called into that. One of the things I realized this week, politics has no beauty. It has no poetry. It has no, it has rarely has life.

As I watched it this week, I thought it can be so ugly. And Jesus is so beautiful. Even mutilated and beat upon the cross, Jesus is so beautiful. But he was called into politics. He was preaching hope, writing his circuit. He was working within the government. And he was healing people. We know that he healed Hezekiah. Prayed or God healed Hezekiah.

But he was there healing. On your circuit, who needs healing? Who are you speaking to? I know my circuit. I'm riding my circuit. Sometimes the circuit recently, you can get discouraged on that circuit, can't you? Get discouraged. And then all of a sudden, boom, God comes and encourages you. Last week when Nicole got baptized in the second service, if you missed it, it was phenomenal.

Go watch it back online. It was phenomenal. She said, I was sitting in the church and Pastor Adam preached two sentences. And those two sentences changed my life and I gave my heart back to Jesus. I didn't even know what sentences she was talking about. I was just preaching. Just riding the circuit, right? I'd been a little discouraged about certain things and whatever it was.

And then I was sitting there getting ready to baptize her. And I thought, I just rode the circuit. God revealed His arm to her. Because He will reveal His arm because of a message. I was just preaching. I was just doing my job. You know? Yesterday at the girls' basketball fundraiser. I'm running the fundraiser. So I'm on the foundation now. That's part of my circuit now.

Down there raising all that money, having fun. We had a shoot-a-thon. We're shooting free throws. And two girls came up. And the one girl said, are you a pastor? I said, yeah. She goes, no. I said, yeah. Really? You're a pastor? I said, yeah. She goes, I can't believe it. I said, well, most people feel that way about me. She goes, your daughter do the faith club?

And I said, yeah. She goes, we go to that. They have free donuts. And I said, awesome. Well, we run the, you know, Harry and a bunch of our team, about four or five girls on the basketball team, run the faith club from our church. It's just awesome. They're riding their circuit. That's a quick little story. We were playing. Lucy had her best game ever the other night.

And she said this girl was giving her elbows. And she said, you know, she goes, I had to push back, but I had to balance it with my pastoral heart. And I was like, man. I was like, I'm going to tell you, my pastoral heart's not until the game's over. We lost this week, which was discouraging for me. And I did throw a guy on the ground accidentally.

He hooked my arm. Sorry. Nonetheless, let's keep moving in that circuit. Some circuits we need to get better at, right? Next thing is this. Who's God revealed his arm to? Isaiah was called to share the message of the Messiah, not to ensure that they accepted it. Really, really key. It says, to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? We have a message.

I just, I kept getting this vision of Jesus, like God with like tattoos, like a full sleeve of tattoos that just had the gospel on it and him just rolling it up and showing it to somebody like that, you know. And just said, like, I don't know why I kept getting that, but I'm really intrigued by sleeve tattoos. And if I wasn't a pastor, I'd have sleeve tattoos and one on my neck.

I would. I would have family. I would have neck tattoos. I wouldn't have a job anywhere, but except maybe Twitter. But I want to get my whole family on my neck. I'm not going to. Don't worry. And so it's not going to happen, but I'm intrigued by it. But God's going to reveal his arm. It's the arm. They say, but what does that mean in the scriptures?

You look at the Hebrew scriptures, that arm means the history. To whom is he going to reveal his story? For some reason, the strength of his arm, you can look, just do a search on the arm of God and you will see that it is strength, it is power, it is comforting, it is love. To whom has he revealed his arm to? If you just had the arm of God, the arm of Jesus, you would have enough to feast on for your entire life and to eternity.

And that's not even without seeing it. That's without seeing his face. But we will see his face and it will be revealed to us. If you could only see the feet of Jesus, the wounded feet of Jesus for eternity, you would have enough to feast on for the rest of eternity. I picture myself in worship sometimes just kissing the feet of Jesus. It happened to me one time at an altar.

I had an experience where I was just kissing the wounded feet of Jesus and I got this thought, I could stay here for eternity. I never have to go anywhere else. That's enough for me. The wounded feet of Jesus is enough for me. Is it enough for you? But we want sometimes so much more. Who is the arm been revealed to? It says that some people, you know, won't accept this message, but that shouldn't stop you from preaching it with your whole life, riding the circuit that you ride.

John 12, 37 through 41 says, even after Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence, they would still not believe him. This was to fulfill the word of whom? Isaiah the prophet. Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? You see that passage right there in John? We're reading it today. That's in Isaiah 53.

To whom has the Lord's arm been revealed? What a great prayer. God, reveal your arm. Reveal your arm through me. Bring your strong arm of comfort. The arm of a father. I love the strong arm of a mother, but I like the strong arm of a father better when it comes to protection sometimes. I need that fatherly arm. I need that strength of God to come in and to protect us.

The world needs protection. The world needs inspiration. The world needs to know that someone loves them, that they're not alone, that it's not all about what you think. Because when you live in that humanistic, self-centered idea, you're all alone. When you're the king of the universe, of your own universe, I'm going to tell you what, it might feel good.

There's a lot of power there, a lot of enjoyment, a lot of hedonism, a lot of dopamine, but you're all alone. I don't want to be that person. I want to live under the arm of God. I'm finding Romans 10, 20. And Isaiah boldly says, to boldly go, where no gospel has gone before. I was found by those who did not seek me, and I revealed myself by those who did not ask for me.

You've got to realize that sometimes you're going to be preaching a message with your life, and you're going to come in. You're never going to mention the name of Jesus. You're just going to be there. Hey, how's your mom? Hey, how can I pray for you? I'm a person of prayer, and if you are a person of prayer, people will begin to know that, and they'll begin to ask you, hey, I know you, do you pray?

My wife just had that where she worked. You pray, I got somebody sick in my family. Would you pray for them? And all of a sudden, that message, they're not seeking, they're not seeking God, but all of a sudden, the arm of the Lord is revealed. Through your message, through the circuit that you ride, Jesus will reveal his message, preach the gospel.

And like as Francis of Assisi said, and sometimes use your words. Preach the gospel, and sometimes use your words. We're coming in for a landing here with the final point. The gospel is not glamorous. Go to verse two. Excuse me, verse three. And we are moving over verse two, and there's a lot. Man, you could go so deep into verse two, because it identifies with David, the Davidic kingdom, the tender shoot.

I'm going to have to leave that on the table for you guys, because we're not going to get through it in six weeks. But let's go to verse three. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. Nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. That is so mind-bending, soul-stretching, counterintuitive against the way of the world, everything the world is.

Make it more attractive. You know, get a little fix. Get a little change. Be as attractive as you. Make everything as beautiful as it can. Woo people in with the beauty. Woo them in with the power. He had nothing in his appearance that would attract us to him. Nothing. There was nothing glamorous. There was nothing glitzy. There was nothing but Jesus just offering himself.

Some would have even said he was ugly. Some would have said that he would have been considered ugly, or at least plain, for sure. The scripture says he's at least plain. When he was beaten beyond recognition, Isaiah, I believe it's Isaiah, it says that he was unrecognizable. That his face was so contorted that he was unrecognizable. And the gospel oftentimes is shunned because it doesn't have the shine at first appearance.

You see, the cross is not beautiful until you stand in its shadow and it changes your heart and you accept the grace and the blood of Jesus. The bloodied body of Jesus is not beautiful. It's not glamorous. Until you understand that it saved you from your sins. And it's only once you step through the door and take the risk of faith to jump over that barrier, that stumbling block of Jesus, the unattractive Jesus, that you get into another side, the other side of the kingdom.

And you see and you look and you see the beauty and the glory of the gospel. That's the gospel. He had nothing that we would share. Two verses and we're done. First Corinthians 2, 4 through 6. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, this is Paul speaking, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom but on God's power.

What does it mean by power? It means you're putting your hand over a cancer ward and everyone gets healed or you go to a funeral and someone raises from the dead maybe. But I think that power is more simplistic. It's helping your neighbor with their trash can. It's being beside someone when their child dies. It's pulling the car to the side of the road when you're in a hurry and you're going to miss something that's important to you to help someone with their tire.

It's being willing to have the boldness to actually say the name of Jesus when you speak to them. It's praying in public perhaps or whatever it would be. It is that message that we have as we step out. Not on human wisdom. That's power. Not on human wisdom but on God's power. You never know the slightest thing where God will reveal his arm. As you share your message on your circuit, God's going to reveal his arm over and over.

And I began to pray yesterday as I just, I was laying in bed as last night and I just said, Lord, I'm just, I need to encapsulate myself in this scripture. And I took it like a blanket and I began to meditate on the words and I just, all of a sudden I became comfortable with it. And I just got, I'd have to understand it but I just wrapped myself in it like a blanket.

I was in my little bed, my blanket, my little comforter and I began to think of these scriptures and to step into it and say, God, reveal it. And then finally, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel, Romans 1.16, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew and then to the Gentile. Two challenges for this week.

Challenge number one, be the living gospel. Ride your circuit. Know your circuit. Ride your circuit. Ride it with intention. Bring hope. Bring salvation. Bring healing. Bring prayer. Bring love. Bring life. Step out of your own carnal desires of just fulfilling the needs that you want, grinding to make sure you get where you're going and be the message of salvation and hope.

And then finally, begin to immerse yourself in these 12 verses. I want to challenge you to read them every day until Christmas Day. Every single day, 12 verses. Just pull them out. Before you do your quiet time, when you get up out of bed, whenever you do your time, 12 verses. You don't even have to try to understand them. Just read them and sit in them.

Just steep. Just steep in the verse of who Jesus is. Amen? Stand up if you would. Before I pray a blessing over you, which we do, I want to know if there's anyone in here who would say, I need that salvation. Maybe you've already had it in your life, but you need that salvation. Just put your hand up and say, that's me. I need that salvation you're talking about.

I need that Jesus. Is there anybody in here today or outside? I want to give that opportunity as much as possible. Now for the rest of us, maybe you need the salvation. You're already saved, but you need, instead of being saved as well, right? You need more. You need to step back into that circuit. You've not been on the circuit. And in that circuit, you're going to find life.

That circuit will heal you. Because by his wounds, we are healed, right? So as you speak about his wounds, as you focus. It says, you know, somebody once said, our worldview is shaped by our suffering. But if you exchange your suffering for his suffering, then you'll be shaped by that suffering. And that suffering leads to glory. If you extend your hand, let me just bless you.

Lord Jesus, I bless these people. We bless them with the power of the gospel. Then let your arm be revealed to them, Lord God, to us. Let your arm be revealed, both your arms, the strong arm of God. Let it be revealed to us with power and strength. And let them understand it. And then as we go into this Christmas season, let us not find the Black Friday Jesus.

It's on sale. He's on discount. He's made to look good. He's made to look beautiful. But come into an understanding and the depth of your mercy and your grace and your glory. By your wounds, we're healed, God. As we focus this Christmas on the wound on your side that poured blood and water. As we focus on the wounds on your hand, the crown of thorns on your head, Lord God, that you were sent for our salvation.

And in it, let us find your love that we are your children. God loves you. And may you understand his love. May you bless them with your love. May let them fill his children and be able to wrap themselves inside this passage and find hope, comfort, joy. So, God, we anoint everyone in here for the Christmas season now. Let it be different than it's ever been.

In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. If you need prayer, come forward. We love you. We'll see you next week.