NOV 3 2024 | Job: Hearing God in the Whirlwind S1E4 | Though He Slay Me

Sea Change Church · NOV 3 2024 | Job: Hearing God in the Whirlwind - S1E4: Though He Slay Me
Job 13:1-16
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

that we would see real breakthrough and change happening for every individual here that has a breakthrough prayer, a breakthrough need, that you would just hear those prayers, Lord, and just answer them miraculously so that it couldn't be possibly from anybody else from you, Lord, but you. I pray that you will continue to guide our church in unity, continue to guide our nation in unity, and we just praise your name. Amen.

The book of Job, chapter 13, verses 1 through 16. Behold, my eye has seen all this, my ear has heard and understood it. What you know, I also know. I am not inferior to you. But I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to argue my case with God. As for you, you whitewashed with lies. Worthless physicians are you all. Oh, that you would keep silent, and it would be your wisdom.

Hear now my argument, and listen to the pleadings of my lips. Will you speak falsely for God and speak deceitfully for Him? Will you show partiality toward Him? Will you plead the case for God? Will it be well with you when He searches you out? Or can you deceive Him, as one deceives a man? He will surely rebuke you if in secret you show partiality.

Will not His majesty terrify you, and the dread of Him fall upon you? Your maxims are proverbs of ashes. Your defenses are defenses of clay. Let me have silence, and I will speak, and let come on me what may. Why should I take my flesh and my teeth, and put my life in my hand? Though He slay me, I will hope in Him. Yet I will argue my ways to His face.

This will be my salvation, that the godless shall not come before Him. This is the word of the Lord. Good morning. If you have your Bibles, open up to Job. Job. It says 13, 1 through 16. I don't think that's right. I think it's Job 1. But my notes say that. Some of you there's a mistake in there. But it is early in the Scripture, so follow me as you can.

You're going to see it on the screen as well. It's also in your notes, and I'll have that. If you come back second service, I'll have that sorted, okay? Why don't you know, as we're in this passage, I'm really hesitant to preach Job, especially when I know some people who are in a really deep seasons of suffering. So there's a few people in our church that have gone through some really difficult things.

And many of you have done that, but some are in the midst of it at the moment, right? And that's kind of my target audience here. The rest of us, I want to give us some really good Scripture, some meaningful Scripture, because I want this to be a Wednesday sermon. On Wednesday, you're thinking about it. On Wednesday, you're applying it. But I did have someone reach out to me who probably is at the peak of really struggling, probably really more than the majority of us at the moment.

And they wrote me this email, and they're just like, hey, this is really blessing me. And I was like, I felt, I don't know, that just hit, I was like, okay, I think we're finding the right place because Job is a difficult book, right? Job is a really difficult book, and I don't want to give a bunch of bumper sticker answers. I don't want to, you know, just name it, claim it, or, you know, our God, we shall persevere, you know what I mean, and then go on, and, you know, and then I go to, you know, get my coffee, my latte for the day, and you go off into your suffering.

You know what I mean? Like, I don't want to do that. I want us to really look at these Scriptures, and I'm trying to find some things that really make a difference. So it was good to hear that. With that, I want to say the main thing. That I'm personally getting out of Job, and I do want to encourage you to do a binge listen to the whole thing, or do a binge read.

It'll probably take you about two hours. Read the whole book, 43 chapters, or listen to it. You really can't understand Job unless you read the whole thing, and reading it at once is really helpful, because at the end, as we're going to see in the next two weeks, God starts to speak, and that's the part I'm looking for, and so, and I've always looked for in the text.

When I'm reading it, I'm like, okay, I just can't wait to get to where God speaks. It's so awesome when he begins to speak, and let me just tell you the main thing I'm getting from it. You can, other theologians might have other things, but I have found that rest, my own personal rest, my own personal peace, is found in trust. The more I trust God and that he's in charge, the more I believe that he has got this sorted, the more I just have faith beyond my understanding.

He says that he will give you a peace beyond your understanding. The more I do that, the more I just give things to God, and I just rest in it, the more I find my peace, the more I find my ballast, the more I find my center. I wrote, I don't think it's in your notes, but I put, God will tell you what you need to know when you need to know it. And as I read Job, that's what I find out, that God is in charge, and I can ask him as many questions as I want, and he will answer when he decides to, if he decides to.

But this book is calling us to live beyond the answers, right? And mature believers can live beyond the answers. Now, there's a tension here because you go to Ephesians, it's like, I'm gonna show you the mysteries of the universe. I'm gonna show you the mysteries of creation. There's all these mysterious things that God is gonna show us, but two things can be true at once.

He can show you deep truths and mysteries, and he can also say, I'm gonna put pause on giving you the answer to this because I want you to lean in in faith, and I want you to know me more than you know an answer. And so that's what I'm getting out of it, and really where I'm trying to live. There's two things we're gonna look at today, two main points.

One is this. The first point is a straight to the source. I wanna encourage you to go straight to the source. The further something gets away from the source, the more diluted or contaminated it can become. So when it comes to getting those answers, where do we go to first? Are there waylays? Are there bus stops along the way before you actually go to God?

Or do you go directly to the source? Job was a source person. He wanted the source. He didn't want a bunch of fluff. He wanted source. The second is becoming satisfied with God's sovereignty. It means knowing that God's in charge is enough for you. That's a hard place to get to, right? Look at what's happening in our nation at the moment. You look at what's happening in relationships, in your own personal life.

Different things. But when you get to a place where God, your sovereignty is enough for me. And we're gonna come to a place, I probably would say, besides faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness, you're gonna come up to a verse here, in verse 15, that says, though he slay me, I will still hope in him. It's probably, in my opinion, humble opinion, in the top five verses you're gonna find in the entire Old Testament.

Even if God were to take out a sword and slay me down, I'm gonna hope in God. That is radical, right? So this is where we find Job. So the first is straight to the source. The second is satisfied with God's sovereignty. And sovereignty means that God has supreme power to govern. God has authority. God has control. Think about something like our upcoming election.

The Bible's very clear. Nobody is put in leadership unless God puts them there. You can read the polls. You can follow the polls. Whoever God wants to put there, he will put there. And he'll put them there because we deserve them. The scripture's clear. Either to bless us, or to bring judgment upon us. You see this through the Old Testament with Israel over and over again.

He puts Nebuchadnezzar in charge. You see this over and over again. But the question is, not what he's doing in our society, not what he's doing in our lives. Do you just trust that whatever God decides is okay with you? That you can rest? And when you find that place, that'll give you the rest. Now this doesn't remove your responsibility. We see Job here regularly leaning into God, wanting a one-on-one conversation with God.

That doesn't mean, que sera, sera. I don't need to pray. I don't need to do anything. I don't need to, once again, to a political one, I don't need to vote. That's not what the scripture says. It says, whatever happens, though he slay me, I'm still gonna hope in God. Because my chips are on the table for God. And that's the book of Job in a nutshell. Let's go straight to the source.

Verse one. Behold, my eye has seen all of this. So he's talking to his friends at this point. His three that have come to comfort him. They're not doing a very good job. My ear has heard it. It's understood it. What you know, I also know. I'm not inferior to you. But I would speak to the Almighty, and I would desire to argue my case with God. This is interesting, because for Job, it's straight to God.

Every time. No detours. No diversions. When Job has an issue, it's straight to God. He doesn't go to his friends. You know, his friends show up, but they show up on their own volition. Job didn't send somebody to go get his friends. I'm not saying wise counsel isn't amazing. You need to have friends around you. It's awesome. But he didn't send for them right away.

It wasn't the first thing that he did. He didn't go to his spouse right away. Spouses are great. You want a spouse that comforts you, right? And we want to have that relationship. He didn't go to his spouse. He didn't go to a distraction. You see, when he goes to God in the beginning, when this first happens, he goes and he just throws him down in worship, right?

And says, blessed be the name of the Lord. He tears his clothes. He immediately goes to God. He doesn't say, well, hey, I'm going to go to this distraction first to kind of soothe how I'm feeling at the moment. He doesn't go to an addiction and then to God. He goes straight to the source. Absolutely straight to the source. For Job, it's straight to God every time.

No detours, no diversions, not friends first, not spouse first, not distractions, not addictions, nothing. Job was a straight to the source person. I want to ask you, when it comes to the issues in your life, where do you go first? I had some things this week that bothered me incredibly. Things that, with a little more thumb on the scale, I could change, right?

And I realized sometimes when I put my thumb on the scale, whether it's a relationship or a business or whatever it is, I tend to don't have enough, like the pressure never seems to be enough. You know what I'm saying? It's either too little or too light or whatever. And as I was reading this, I was realizing, why do you go towards your own abilities before you go to God?

Before you have that difficult conversation with somebody, do you go straight into it or do you go to God? Before you want to make a move in business, when you have suffering in your life, when something happens, where do you go, right? I find that I go to distractions, right? I go to distractions. I go to negative thinking. I want to be with friends.

I want to surround myself with lots of opinions. I go to books. I go to podcasts. I go to everything oftentimes first, and I get to God last. In 1979, I was sitting outside Notre Dame. My parents took us on this trip. My mom did, actually. My parents were divorced. For the divorce, my mom thought, I'm going to take the kids. We're going to go to Europe.

And so she scrolled away a little bit of money and took my brother and I for an incredible three-week journey in Europe. And it was awesome. And that's when you could still smoke on the plane. Do you guys remember that? And there was a smoking section. Do you remember the smoking section? It was really good. They pulled a curtain. You know what I mean?

And we went there, and I was sitting. I remember I was sitting on the north side of Notre Dame, and I know exactly where it is because I walked by since then. And I remember my brother and I made a joke because they were selling something that you never buy. They were selling water, which was weird, right? So if you're under 40, you're like, what are you talking about?

We always sell water. If you're over 40, we did not sell water, okay? That was a joke. You don't buy water. We're like, we have a tap. Why do we need water? How stupid. And I remember I drank my first sip of Evian. I bought an Evian. It came out in the United States in 1978. But I drank my first, I remember it was Evian. I remember it. And I drank this Evian, and I thought, what a weird thing.

We're drinking bottled water. There's a couple things that are interesting about Evian. I've become a bit of a water purist and a bit of a water snob, right? So I only make my water either with reverse osmosis water now, Evian, or my second favorite, Fiji water. I don't know. Now, you could think, these are not advertisements. I am not paid. If you do want to sponsor me out there, I will be more.

We'll do all of our baptisms only in Fiji water. I didn't think this was really any different than Dasani or whatever it's called. What I have found out is, if you go research it, the three best waters in the world, I'll just give you two of them. These are considered two of the best waters in the world. It goes back and forth. This is kind of considered number one.

Some people will say this is number one. And I didn't know that. And it's actually a great equalizer because you don't have to be rich or poor to drink like the best water in the world. You can't drink a lot of it, but you can drink some of it. What I found out about Evian is the company, I began to study it this week for this message. And one of the things I found out is, they have done everything in their power.

They found it like in the 1800s. They have done everything in their power to make sure that the source stays pure. They have invested within 35 miles of their aquifer to make sure that anybody who farms there does not use any chemicals, and it's organic farming. They're putting money into it. They only take so much out. They don't allow, they're trying to stop pollution in the area.

The whole point is to keep this as pure as possible, to go right to the source. And so, I'll put Evian down there. Maybe we should do our baptism with Evian. I actually like Evian a little bit better. The whole point is this. What dilutes your journey to going straight to the source? When you think about God, do we keep as sacred the ground? When you have an issue, when you have something in your life, maybe you want to get your kid into a preschool, your kid's struggling at school with their relationships, one of your children has depression, whatever it is.

Is it, hey, I'm gonna start researching medication. I'm gonna look for the great doctor. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna call the principal because this is unfair, and I'm gonna make, or do you go straight to the source? And the source is God. And the thing that we see with Job here is Job goes straight to the source. Go to 120. You'll see a chapter, if you have your Bible, it's in chapter one, verse 20, and it's also in the notes.

It says, then Job arose, tore his clothes, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshiped God. This is right after it all went down. The first thing, when his stuff had been stolen, his children had died, he immediately goes to the ground and worships God. In your footnotes, I put down about 10 different places in the book of Job where he just immediately pleads to speak to God.

As he's talking to his friends, his friends are debating theology. Oh, this, this, and this. And 10 different times I found, this is just 10, there's probably more, where while he's talking to him, he's like, hey, you guys are whitewashed tombs. Somebody else used that term talking to the Pharisees. I had a few people get frustrated that I called his friends idiots.

Well, he called them whitewashed tombs. He said, hey, you could be wise if you shut up. He basically said something like that. He was saying, your wisdom is contaminating what I wanna hear from. I wanna go to the source. And Job was a person of the source. So what I wanna put before you today is to think about whenever you have an issue, whatever that issue is in your life, where are you going to first?

If you start at the source and hear from the Lord, you question the Lord, you ask the Lord, what's going on here? You know, I wanna hear from you. Why is this happening? You can ask all those questions. Job has incredible questions that he asked. But at the end of that, every single time, he comes back to an issue of sovereignty. And that's where we're going next.

So first is going to the source. I wanna give the next thing that we see is if you go to verse 13. This is being satisfied then with God's sovereignty. I'm saying go to the source and then be satisfied with his sovereignty. Go to verse 13. Let me have silence and I will speak. Let me come on me what may. Why should I take my flesh and my teeth and put my life in my hand?

Though he slay me, I will hope in him. Yet I will argue my way to his face. I argue my ways to his face. And thus will be my salvation. I wanna say the one thing that we see on a regular basis. If you ever watch UFC, UFC is kind of mixed martial arts. It was, it happened after boxing. Boxing's actually coming back. Mixed martial arts about 25 years ago, they had guys that were karate, jiu-jitsu, all these different, you know, techniques of self-defense.

And they said, what if we just put them in a cage fight together and see who wins? And the beginning was really, really brutal, right? That they had this. Now they had this one thing. You could do whatever you wanted, but if at any point, you tap your hand three times, it's called a tap out, right? And it means you're out, you're done. You've had enough.

What I see Job doing spiritually is something that's really powerful. And he does it over and over again in the scripture. He's frustrated. He's like, he's wrestling, like Jacob, he's wrestling with God. He's saying, I wanna speak to you. I'm not gonna accuse you of anything, but I have some questions. I wanna speak to your face. That's that one line.

He says, you know, I take my flesh and my teeth. What he's saying is like, to speak to God is a big deal. God could kill me. He could just take me out, but I'm gonna speak to him. And then you could say, and if he doesn't give me the right answer, then I'm gonna leave God to heck with him. But he says, no. Though he slay me, I will hope in him. And so what we see over and over again with Job is that when Job has a difficult question, at the end of questioning, he doesn't keep questioning, he actually taps out with a declarative statement of who God is.

He actually says, blessed be the Lord because he's worthy to be blessed. He'll have this really difficult time. He'll have all these questions. And then he will wrestle, but at a certain point he'll, but though he slay me, I'm still gonna hope in him. Over and over in the scripture, there comes a time where he taps out to the sovereignty. You see, he's wrestling with questions.

He's wrestling with God's sovereignty. He's going to the source. But then he gets to a place where he says, enough is enough. And there's these declarative statements. I just wanna show you one in Job 13, 24. He says, this is just one example of it. Why do you hide your face? And why do you count me as your enemy? And what's so interesting is over and over again, he has all these difficult questions, but he responds to these tough questions with profound, truth-filled declarations.

Here's another one in Job 2, where he gives this declaration, and his wife had come up to him and said, hey, why don't you curse God and die? He was struggling. And all of a sudden, he says this to her. But he said to her, you are one who speaks as a foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive good from God, that from is important, and we shall not receive evil.

He doesn't say evil from God. He said, should we receive just all the things that are good from God and not receive what is evil in the world? That's a declarative statement. And you can't have declarative statements of truth unless you know the truth and you are anchored in the truth. Jesus has this same thing. Jesus has this difficult question. In Matthew 27, Jesus does the same thing.

You're gonna see Jesus is wrestling, and then he makes a declaration. He taps out to God's sovereignty, and he makes a declaration. In Matthew 27, 46, in about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani. Sabachthani. That is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Maybe you felt that way yourself. But you see that Jesus, earlier in the piece, was in the garden, and later on in Luke, we see that he withdraws from them in that garden, right?

This is a little bit earlier, before that time on the cross, Jesus answering these hard questions. He withdrew from them about a stone's throw. He knelt down and prayed, saying, Father, if you're willing to remove this cup from me, says, if you are willing to remove this cup from me, but nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. And there appeared to him an angel from heaven to strengthen him.

A couple things I really like. One is Jesus is tapping out to God's sovereignty. It's really hard to do. We want to continue to wrestle. We want to continue to be upset. We want to continue to take things in our own control. And Jesus says, you know, why is this happening? Why are these things happening? But then he says, nevertheless, the declarative statement, nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done.

And then from that moment, he was strengthened. It's interesting that the angel came after that. And what I have said at the beginning, to take us back to what I think the meaning of this entire book is for me, because I have to give you my meaning. I think it's true. I think it could be used as a generative declarative statement of the meaning of this book, is that rest and restoration is found in trust.

And Jesus is saying, I just give it to you. And I trust you in this. And then appeared an angel from heaven to strengthen him. This week, as I looked at those things that I wanted to change, I wanted to make a couple phone calls, I wanted to set some meetings, I wanted to start doing my thing, right? And then I just felt like, I have not worked the ground enough to sow those seeds yet.

I don't know about you, but I'm really good at just casting these seeds on dry ground, on hard ground. But prayer is like a shovel, and the word of God is like a pick that will make the ground soft, where you go to God first. And you know what? I actually didn't make any moves. Because of this scripture, because of preparing this message, I just, I didn't call anybody.

I didn't make any moves. And the more I've spent time with God, I feel like a lot of it doesn't even matter anymore. Like a lot of it, I'm like, you don't even care about that. I'm just gonna, I don't even care about that. It just, all of a sudden, I got a piece about it. That's where that piece comes. And so, here's the practical takeaway. The practical takeaway is, I wanna have a church, and we wanna be a church that's mature, that actually drinks straight from the well.

I was in Africa this last month. And when we were there, they had invited me to cut a ribbon on a well that people had put in. I had nothing to do with the well, but they wanted me to cut it. And I was like, okay, I'm more than happy to do it. Happy to do it. There's a picture of it here. You'll see the picture of the well. They did an amazing job. Just the fact that they had to get a ribbon, I don't think you understand.

If you haven't been to Africa, like, we are so far from anywhere. It's like driving on the moon. You know, you go forever. We went through a game reserve and the roads, and it was just, you get way out there, and there's nothing out there. There's a little store, and people eat, they have like a four-item diet per day. I don't know where they got this ribbon for, but it was a big deal.

I realized, they didn't just, you can't just go to the party city, you know what I mean, down the street. And before we went to that well, they said to me, hey, we want to take you down and show you where they get water. And behind there, where the person's standing, is this dry creek bed. So then we walked down to the dry creek bed, and the guy who's in charge of it, Davidson, said, hey, last year, a woman was taken by a crocodile here getting water out of the creek.

Now, the creek was dry at the moment. These are problems we don't have, right, in La Jolla, right? And he said, so we thought we'd put this well in, right? So we go down there, and the creek bed is completely dry. It's only during the wet season when the waters come up from Lake Malawi, and then the crocs will come up as well. And we go down there, and they're just showing it to us, and there's all these little mud puddles about this big.

It's hardly any water. It's the end of the dry season, and just these little mud pebbles. And we look down, we see this group of kids, okay? There's a group of kids right here. Let's see that next picture. There's this group of kids, and these kids have their clothes in a bucket, and they're putting their bucket in the dirty water, and they don't have soap because they can't afford soap.

And it's true. And they're washing, that's their chores, to wash their family's clothes in the dirty water. And Phil, who started Why Malawi, he said, we had this new well that we're putting in. There's a whole bunch of kids there that they have sponsored. And so you have these other kids that have been sponsored, and they have like outfits on, and they're going to school, and they're learning how to read, and they're up there.

But these other kids don't feel like they can, they belong in that yet. And what I learned was in the poorest of the poor places, you still have people that are more poor than certain people in the poor areas. You kind of just throw them, lump them in together. These are people that live in the village, and they're all the same, but they're not. These kids have one set of clothes, and I could go on and on.

And so Phil said, hey, we want them to be the first ones to use the water. And so we called them up, and they looked at us, and we called these kids up, and we brought their bucket, and I cut the ribbon, and then we started pumping the water, and all of a sudden, these kids went over, and they saw fresh water, probably for the first time coming out of the ground like that, and began to wash their clothes.

And we watched them wash their clothes. We finally, the other kids were waiting to jump in the water. They start playing. These kids didn't play. They just went back to work. And then I saw them take their bucket, put it on their head, and walk back to their house. I ended up wanting to work with them, with some of those kids. We want to get them in the school program, so I worked with Phil to make sure that those kids were getting taken care of in the school program.

But the point is this. How often is there a well that is God's presence, consolation, love, I mean, 50 feet away? And we're down at the edge of the water in a mud puddle with the clothing of our lives, and we're just washing it in muddy water, right? Thinking that it's going to get the clothes clean. When God is saying, I want you to go back to the source.

I want you to go to that place where the fresh water dwells. I want you to be the people of the word, a people who immediately go before God. And then after you've spent time with God, we tap out to his sovereignty and say, God, you're in charge. Whatever you will, I will be in peace. Amen? Amen. Let's stand if you would. We're going to have to take communion today.

We're going to invite our communion team forward today. We have these volunteers that just do a great job with the Lord's Supper. If you've not made a decision to follow Jesus and you want to make a decision to follow Jesus, after the service, you can come forward. We want to lead you in prayer to make that decision. For those taking communion, communion is, the Bible speaks, is for people who know Jesus.

So if you're like, hey, I don't, I haven't made a decision to follow Jesus, we encourage you, it's totally cool, but only take communion if you're part of following Jesus so it'll have that meaning. And if you want, afterwards, we will pray for you that you would know Jesus Christ as your Savior and we'll give you communion at that point. It'll be the first time you take communion.

It'll be amazing. But with that said, we're going to invite you forward to come get the elements and we'll go back to our seats and then we're going to hold the elements and then we're going to take those together. So once you get them, the body and the blood of Jesus, you will hold those and just contemplate God, the source, and then we'll take it together.

Amen? Let's invite you forward. Amen. Jesus, name above all names, beautiful Savior, Glorious Lord, Emmanuel, God is with us, blessed Redeemer, living Word. Amen. You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, the of the �� �� �� �� ��t �� �� ��s ��u �� ��n ��j Amen. Amen. Jesus, name above all names, beautiful Savior, glorious Lord. Emmanuel, God is with us, blessed Redeemer, living Word.

Amen. Amen. Jesus, name above all names, beautiful Savior, glorious Lord. Emmanuel, God is with us, blessed Redeemer, living Word. Plydic, to the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the right, the I want to thank the team for just doing this sacred act.

And if you want to be part of our communion team, let us know. It's, I really appreciate you guys. Awesome. Thanks for all the work you do. I know you love to be acknowledged in front, but thank you so much. If you'd stand. Just take a moment and hold the bread. Source of life. You want to eat his flesh and drink his blood, as he said. Controversial as it may be.

That's the source. The Lord Jesus, on the night of his arrest, took the bread. And after giving thanks to God, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, Take, eat, this is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And let's break it if we would. We can take it together. In the same way, he took the cup, saying, This cup is the new covenant, and it's sealed in my blood.

Whenever you do this and take of this cup, do this in remembrance of me. Let's take the cup together. Let's pray. Gracious God, may we who have received this sacrament live in unity of your Holy Spirit. That we may show forth your gifts to the world. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. We're going to say the Lord's Prayer together, and then Chris is going to lead us in a final chorus as we end the service.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

We're going to do a benediction with Chris singing. I'm going to bless you then, and then we'll end the service. But Chris, take us through the chorus. Amen. I surrender all. I surrender all. I surrender all. All to thee. All to thee, my blessed Savior. I surrender all. If you extend your hands in that posture of surrender, if you have something you want to surrender, maybe you can even turn your hands the other direction, that's up to you.

If you have something, I just got to give this to you, God. I'm going to rest in your sovereignty. And I just want to bless you either way. Lord Jesus, I want to bless your people. We want to be a people of the source. We want to be a people of substance, God. We want to be people that are in solidarity with your heart, Father, that know you, that want to know you, that want to allow you to reign in our homes, God.

And though we might not understand, we say your will be done. God, we want to meet you, God. Remove the obstacles that are in our way that we go to first. Let us find consolation in you. This week, as we go to you first, let us find consolation in you. I bless your people from the top of their heads to the bottom of their feet in all their endeavors.

You say whatever we commit to the Lord, you will cause to succeed. You say that all things work together for good for those that love God and are called according to his purpose. You say that you own the cattle on a thousand hills, God. You say that the boundary lines fall in pleasant places for the righteous, Lord. You say that though some will fall on my left or on my right, God, 10,000, God, that we would be safe and we will not be harmed.

So, God, I pray these blessings upon your people. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. We love you. If you need prayer, come forward. We appreciate it. If you could write a letter for us, that would be great. We love you. Bye-bye.