Justice Through Victory

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I'm excited because last week at the end of service, Sarah set forth a miracle. She doesn't know that she has a gift of prophecy, but she said at the end of last week that we were $35,000 towards our $2,000 goal. And she set forth a chain of prophetic events that I don't think she knew at that point in time. The truth is we were at 35,000 of our $200,000 goal. Not quite as cheerful, you know, if you're 32, $33,000 over your goal.

Like we're going cheese. When you're under your goal, you're saving money, you're eating beans and rice. Am I right? Grace Groves? Right, Beans and rice.

Thank you. By the way, club at your family. It's very nice to have you guys with us today. $35,000 is where we were at last week. And as I stand here today, we are at $102,641.

We are, by our estimation, we are about $7,000 from where we're going to need to be to write a check on a down payment. And so the elders asked, you know, like, what are we going to do? How are you going to say this? And I was like, I have notes for my sermon. I have no idea how I'm going to say this.

I'm going to say whatever comes out, whatever the Lord wants. But I think it is important. I wasn't going to say this, but I think it is important to tell you because we have existed as a church in transparency and we will continue to exist in transparency. And that is on Christmas Day. I did the cardinal sin and I worked, I had a board meeting.

And in that board meeting, after the elders had already made the decision, we voted unanimously to put a offer of intent on a facility in Southwest Oklahoma City. So at this point, it is in the Lord's hands. It is in the Lord's hands of whether that's the property for us or not. And if that's not the home for us, I am at complete peace. I have had peace this entire time.

If that's not the home for us, we will continue to look for the home. Because the Lord doesn't raise over $60,000 in one week with a church whose average age is under 40 years old. He doesn't do that just so he can say, hey, by the way, we got 42 more journeys in the wilderness. And so I am excited, great anticipation for what the Lord's going to do. This is not a like, yes.

And now we can just all go back to the sidelines. We still have a long way to go. We still have a lot of money that we're going to need to be able, if they do accept an offer, to put the down payment, closing cost, just to get in. You wouldn't believe how many searches I set up on Facebook, Marketplace, Craigslist, ebay. This week, I'm looking for commercial coffee equipment.

I'm looking for folding chairs, like, looking for everything. And every once in a while, I'll look for our house, too. I'll look for a new bathtub or whatever, but for the most part, I'm looking for stuff that if you ever come to my house and you see a commercial coffee machine, like, it's just because we don't have our own building yet, and I wasn't able to put it there. We're just kind of stockpiling things. We're out of space in Cam and Sarah's new garage.

And so now it's all starting to end up in my garage. And so last week, it was awesome to have Brent back on the pulpit. My family was watching while we were in Austin, and true to Brent's fashion, he flat out brings it. And so I appreciate not only when Cam or Michael or Brent or even my wife pray and prays and teach when we are on vacation, because it does make me be at peace with the fact that we have so many people who are gifted, talented, and anointed in this church. And so, you know, a lot of times the pastor feels overwhelmed.

They feel like they have to do everything, and. And I simply don't feel that way most of the time because I know that we have so many amazing people and we're just getting started. You know, there's people right now who are going through discipleship and through other things in the church, and it's going to be amazing. And so last week, Brent started off our Kingdom of Heaven series, and we'll be in this series until the first week of February. It was supposed to end at the end of January, but all of the elders are forcing me to take a weekend away with them.

Oh, they pulled my arm and they twisted it. And we're going to have an elders retreat to be able to hang out with each other and just enjoy each other's company, talk about the church and not talk about the church all at the same point in time. And so on the 23rd of January, Erica Brauns, one of the senior pastors of our Dallas campus, is actually going to be up, and she's going to be speaking and preaching that week. And so I'm super excited. Brad and Erica are amazing people, excited to have them here with us.

And so last week Brent kicked off the start of Matthew chapter 12. We saw that Jesus had confronted the Pharisees in regards to the Sabbath. I don't know about you. I've been keeping the Sabbath since January of 2007. In January of 2007, through all the Sabbaths, I haven't done the math.

But in all the Sabbaths that I've done, anytime I read about the Sabbath in the scripture, I specifically take note of this. There's Christians of all different denominations, all different walks. They meet on Sundays, they meet on Monday nights, they meet on Saturday nights, they meet whenever. But we are a Sabbath loving people. And so when we see something happen around on about the Sabbath, I kind of just stand up and take note of that a little bit more than some others in Christianity do.

And so when Jesus is dealing and confronting with the Pharisees in regards to the Sabbath, he talks about referencing how David had ate the showbread, the consecrated showbread. That was an act that was technically unlawful. It was against the Torah, yet it was permitted because the mercy is greater than the ritual. He declared himself greater than the temple. This is a statement that would have been one of the most blasphemous things that could have ever been said to that group of people.

The temple was the icon, the temple. Think of the place that you go for your family. It might be the Grand Canyon, it might be Washington D.C. whatever this monumental place is that you can think of in your mind, this was their place. It was the temple. It was the epicenter of everything that they did.

It was where they believed that God dwelled with his spirit, his ruach, Hakodesh and the holy of holies. And yet here Jesus is saying, one who is greater than the temple is here. And that would have been a cosmic slap in the face because they believed that God could only dwell in the holy of holies inside this temple. And now all of a sudden, one greater than that is here. Whoa.

He invoked the title once again of the Son of Man, which hearkens back to the prophecies in Daniel 7, which claims divine authority and dominion. And he demonstrated his lordship over the Sabbath and he refocused the goal of the Sabbath, which was life. What was the result of all of those? I mean, if this was somebody in the political world, that's an awful lot like you accomplished an awful lot, right? What was the goal?

They Plotted to kill him.

He accomplished a lot there, and they plotted to kill him. Jesus exposes that their devotion to the law was actually a devotion to their own authority. And his presence threatened the system that they had used and built off his Torah. So I ask you today, is your devotion to the law to honor Jesus and the kingdom of heaven, or is it to honor yourself because one is fruitful and one will bring about the power of the kingdom and the other is not fruitful, and it will cause chaos and death.

I have to confess my sins to you because he is faithful and just to forgive me my sins and cleanse me of all unrighteousness. I have a love hate relationship with the season of Christmas. I actually prefer when Hanukkah falls, you know, right around Thanksgiving. And you can listen to the Thanksgiving song and the Hanukkah song at the same time. When it falls around Christmas, I have a wrestle in my spirit because there's specific songs that we sing at that point in time about the festival lights and Yeshua and then Yeshua being born and all these things.

And I wrestle. There's a beautiful song called Mary Did. You'd know, and you would think the blind would leap. The lame will seek the presence of the Lamb. And I'm like, mary knew.

That's my approach. I'm angry Mary knew. Well, there's only one other one that gets my blood boiling more than Mary did. You know, Little Drummer Boy.

I watched a special years ago with Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson, and she sang that song. And every time she did Pahrumpa pom Pom, you could tell she had some choir school background, maybe Presbyterian choir school, because she enunciated with her lips and was like, rum pump, pom pom. And I was done. I couldn't listen to the song anymore. And then Brent, our teaching elder, comes up here and utterly destroys my theology, utterly destroys my heart, and leaves me weeping at my friend's dining room table to think all the times I heard that song.

And as a musician, like, you find you find joy in a lot of songs where you're like, theologically, the lyrics aren't great or whatever, and you're just like, oh, okay. But it's a good melody. It's got a good meaning. I never, ever in my life thought of the Little Drummer Boy as a parable. I was like, there wasn't a drummer boy I'd been around for the worship wars.

He didn't come around until 1942. And so, like, I'm like, I'm analyzing this Little Drummer Boy song. And then Brent comes in last week and he's like, just the little gift, the parable of the gift just. And that resonated with me all week because many times I think if we're all being honest, we look at what we have as not being good enough for a king. If you think everything you have is good enough for a king, then we can deal with the narcissism later.

But being in a place of humility to understand, no matter what you have, no matter what your wealth is, no matter what your looks are, no matter what your intellect is, that what gift can you bring to a king of kings and Lord of Lords, the one who created all things? And that broke me. Absolutely broke me. And so, Brent, I appreciate you for teaching me lessons even when I'm seven hours away. And I wasn't looking to be taught a lesson, but it absolutely wrecked me.

Today we're going to be in Matthew chapter 12, starting in verse 15. But Jesus knew what they were planning, and so he left that area. He healed all the sick among them, but he warned them not to reveal who he was. Throughout Matthew, Jesus is managing the revelation. He's not managing the pace of revelation because there is some like, aha, got you moment.

It is because his mission required timing, not exposure. In the end of his mission, all would see that there is this resurrected king and you would have a choice. You would be faced with a choice. So the pace of his revelation is to do what it is to fulfill the Torah and the prophets. And he withdrew not because he was overwhelmed, but because it was important to the mission that he managed.

The pace of the revelation to all hear, to all have an opportunity to bow. He still healed everyone who came to him, but he told them not to make him known. I find that hard sometimes as a pastor because, you know, you're in a position where you want to keep people moving towards Jesus. You want to keep people excited for the power and the presence of Jesus. And so when you see something, when you see somebody healed or you see some beautiful thing, like we raised 60 something thousand dollars in less than a week, like, you just want to turn into Michael W. Smith and be like, I want to tell the world.

And here Jesus is literally performing miracle after miracle after miracle, and he's saying, tell no one. The time is not yet. Premature fame would ignite premature conflict. And Jesus was on mission to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth and show the fulfillment of the Torah and the prophets. He also set the example.

Healing comes In God's timing and revelation comes when he chooses to reveal. A lot of times we'll study over and over and over something because we want this revelation from the word of God, we want the answer from God. And we forget that even in this very moment, in this scripture, Jesus reveals the Father and Jesus reveals the mission on the time of Jesus. For the glory of Jesus, for the character and the nature of Jesus, every miracle pointed forward to the cross and the resurrection. And he needed Israel to see the entire picture before they defined him by one part.

That hit me really hard this week because we come from an area where we like to define Jesus by one part. Maybe it was the fact that he was a Jew, maybe it was the fact that he ate kosher, maybe it was the fact that he honored the Sabbath day, maybe it was the fact that he wore a ztzio. We like to define him by one specific part. And so when Jesus was waiting for Israel, for all things to be fulfilled and for the time to come, it was so that he could paint the entire picture of who he was for them, so that they didn't define him just as a Jew, just as a kosher eater, just as a Sabbath keeper or a feast keeper, Jesus was far more than just those things. And while those things are true and they embody a part of who he is, he was unlike any Jew who had ever came before and any Jew who would ever come again.

He was unlike any kosher eater that had ever come before and any that would come, come again. And I hate to break it to you, for all of us trying to get our gold stars, he was the best Sabbath keeper ever that he got the title Lord of the Sabbath. Matthew 12, 17, 18. This fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah concerning him. Look at my servant whom I have chosen.

I will put my spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations. Matthew cites Isaiah 40:42, which is commonly known as the servant song, to show that Jesus is not a random miracle worker. Early on in the testimony of Scripture, we have the confrontation of Pharaoh and Moses. And when Moses came, he would throw down a staff, they would throw down their staff. He would do this, they would do that.

So we already have a case study in Scripture where it was possible they could have just considered him just to be another prophet, another miracle worker. Quoting Isaiah 42, the servant's song was intentional to show that he was not just another worker. He was not just another prophet. He was the chosen servant of Yahweh. He was chosen beloved spirit filled, bringer of justice and the hope for the nations.

This was deliberate. Israel was called to be a light to the nations. Yet their history repeated. A cycle of obedience, compromise, rebellion, exile, and then restoration. And once they did that, they would start all over again.

And yet, where Israel had failed, Jesus comes to succeed. He is the true Israelite. He's the vine, he's the embodiment of everything that Israel was meant to be and yet fell short of. Many of us know what to do. That's not the problem.

We know what to do. That's not the struggle. It's actually doing it. Where most of our wrestle is, and it starts at a very early age, even before we're talking about wrestling with God, we wrestle with obeying our parents. None of you kids would ever do that.

We wrestle with doing our chores on a regular basis. My kids are older now. Elias is in the double digits, basically. And he's in this place where, like, he's been taking out the trash since he was 5 years old. And yet multiple times a week I have to remind him his job is to take out the trash.

That doesn't change when we get older. And that didn't change here in the scripture. They knew the Torah better than anybody else. They knew the warnings of the prophets better than anybody else. And yet they were still struggling, and we are still struggling today.

It's not that we don't know what to do. Everybody in this room, no matter how long you've been a believer, you know the two greatest commandments is to love God and love your neighbor. And yet what are the two things we struggle with? The most loving God and loving our neighbor started with our ancestors. They were literally given two trees, one of which told not to eat from.

Shocker. They ate from the one they were told not to. It's the same cycle over and over again. And this is why we needed a king, a savior, a helper, God in the flesh, Emmanuel with us to come, to take on flesh and to show us the way. Jesus was deliberate in calling the Torah observant Jews into a new cycle of patterns.

It was a cycle of mercy, not sacrifice.

Matthew 12, 19, 20 says, he will not fight or shout. He will not crush the weakest reed or put out a flickering candle.

The Israelites had longed for a Messiah who would come and overthrow a person, who would restore the national and political power. There is not a Jew of the first century who liked that they had to answer to Rome, that the taxes they collected had to be in addition to what they gave to Rome. They didn't like to be subservient to that. They wanted to be restored without worldly influence in the temple leadership, the Torah in the communities, in the synagogues. They wanted a king who would restore that national and political power.

They wanted a king who would conquer their enemies by force. I liken that to when we have a disagreement with somebody and they come to me like, hey, Pastor, I think this person did me wrong. I want you to deal with them. They're not saying, hey, Pastor, I would like for you to go put your arm around this person and talk to them with a lot of compassion and then release them with grace and mercy and ask them to not do it anymore. They're secretly wanting me to go.

The power of Christ compels you to stop sinning because you're wrong. I don't know anybody who comes to me is like, hey, could you be. Could you be super gracious to the person who's offended me in the church? They're like, they hurt my feelings.

Some things don't change. Maybe we're not that much different than our first century family members. And they also wanted Jesus to lift the influence of the religious elite off of their shoulders. But Isaiah didn't foretell of that type of a king. He foretold of a different type of king.

Not the king that many wanted, but it's the king that God knew we all needed. He was a gentle king, a compassionate king, a king whose justice restores rather than destroys.

My wife and I like to watch Netflix docu series and when we're watching these Netflix docuseries, some of them that are on are of people who have been wrongly accused, accused and incarcerated. They've been incarcerated for things they didn't actually do. And at some point in time, whether it's a confession or DNA or whatever, their conviction is overturned and they're released. Jesus was a person and a king who came to people who were all guilty.

We couldn't claim there needed to be some other DNA evidence or some other testimony. He came for people who were all guilty and had fallen short of the glory of God. And yet he came to release and restore each and every one of us. Yet the Pharisees had wielded their authority. They had wielded it in a way that would bring shame, burdens, and they would crush and exclude people.

We saw that all throughout the first part of Matthew, whether it's the woman with the issue of blood or it's the leper. We see the man with the withered hand here. The they were outcasts. And even though outcast doesn't necessarily mean that they were all, like, you know, 45 hours away, they just were not allowed to be in certain places in intimacy the same way. And yet here comes the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, and he says, I will restore you because I love you.

Everybody in this room has something you need to be restored. Some of it is physical. You have ailments. We've got Mark Jeffries with his back and his knee. We've got Brent, who's had back issues from time to time.

We've got Thane and Penelope struggling with childhood cancer. We've got people who have had seizures. We've got people who walk with limps and knee problems. We have people who have anxiety.

And we all sin. So we all have issues, and then we all fall short. We all need a God who came with compassion, grace and mercy to restore each and every one of us, because every single one of us needs restoration in at least one area of our life. Yet the Pharisees had used that authority to present Yahweh as harsh, distant. He was impossible to please, argumentative and elite.

But Jesus, the perfect manifestation of the Father, reveals Yahweh as compassionate, as gentle. He's near to the brokenhearted, and he restores. This is a perfect picture of what a church should be. Gentle, compassionate, near seeking for restoration. Husbands.

This is a perfect picture of what you should be. Compassionate, gentle, near to your bride and restorative.

If Jesus reflects the Father, then the Father is not violent or cruel as he's many times accused of. His justice is a healing justice. It's not an oppressive justice. It hasn't been that many years that we saw the topic of justice being marched upon in our streets.

It's not an oppressive justice. It is a healing justice. It is not an exclusive justice. You don't have to pay a membership to get is available to all who call on the name of the King. It says the weakest reed is not cut down.

The the faintest flame is not sniffed out, and the vulnerable are not discarded. They are restored. We talked a couple weeks ago about repentance.

Repentance is a free gift that was given by God so that you could be restored to God.

In the most simplest of terms, it is a cosmic magic eraser. It takes the stains, the mistakes, and it cleanses it back with the righteousness of God. Matthew 12:20. Finally, he will cause justice to be victorious. This is where I got stuck and where it caught me, where I kept going back, even this morning at 4am, going back and back and back and back.

Justice is not God punishing wrongdoers.

That's too incomplete of a definition. The justice of the Bible is God setting the world in right order.

We have a justice system. We all render justice and judgment at some point in time. All of ours. All of ours has some degree of wanting to punish, some degree of vengeance. It's our heart.

It's our heart problem. Jesus has none of that. Jesus is not oppressive. He is trying to set the world right. He's the only one who can.

He's the one who spoke the world into existence.

When we find ourselves in situations where we're hurting, something's out of order, there's a chaos. Jesus is the only one who can bring justice. He's the only one who can set it right in perfection. And Jesus doesn't do this through political domination. He does it through the acts of humility, obedience, suffering, sacrifice, and through the resurrection power.

Isaiah prophesied a gentle yet persistent work, a work that would come through Jesus. Yet it requires patience and enduring hardship. I'm going to say that again. The prophecy in Isaiah, the servant's song, prophesies of a gentle yet persistent work of this king. A work that would come through the power of Jesus Christ.

Yet it will require patience and enduring hardship.

We want victory. We all want victory. Whatever it is that you find yourself enslaved to, every person in this room wants it to be restored. They want it to be removed. They want to have victory over those things in their life.

Yet the Bible shows us and tells us how this will come. If Jesus endured hardship for us, what makes us think that we're going to achieve victory without hardship?

See, it's become more popular in today's society to talk about what's fair.

The Bible isn't fair, it's righteous.

Jesus didn't deserve one single thing that happened to Him.

That's not fair. And yet he modeled that your healing, your restoration. And the revelation of God comes in his timing, through his manifestation and through the hard work and the hardships that come with life.

I come to rain on your parade today. If Jesus had to endure hardship, you should expect that you're going to endure hardship as well. And if Jesus was slow and methodical and intentional about ushering in the kingdom of heaven, what makes us think that the kingdom of heaven is always going to come to us like a lightning bolt and and leave like a rushing wind? We're not going to have to do hard things. We're not going to have to be patient and persevere with Him.

One of the most beautiful things we see in the Gospel of Matthew is that Jesus was patient, persistent, and he invited his disciples to be with him ongoing. The power of God could have said, peter, I've just downloaded everything you need to know. Now go and tell the world. The power of God could have given all revelation to one human being at any point in time. Yet he invited his apprentices to do life with him ongoing, patient, humble, and endure through the hardships.

God invites us to do hard things. And in those hard things he will cause us to pass from the chaos of our previous decisions into the life of his blessings. His justice causes us to be victorious. His victory is not a triumph of violence, but it's a triumph of compassion that is empowered by his spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, as Paul calls it. And then Matthew continues on and says, and his name will be the hope for all the world.

That's why I love celebrating the birth of Christ. For 400 years, there was silence, there was anguish, there was heartache.

They felt like they had been abandoned by God.

And they kept doing the things that they had remembered over and over and over and over again. And this is one nation, this is the Israelite nation. The other nations were doing their stuff. Not much change. They didn't believe in Yahweh, they weren't really practicing with Yahweh, they weren't practicing at the Temple.

And so they were just doing their gods and doing their thing. Not much changed for them. But the Israelites had a 400 year fast from the presence of God.

And yet on one night, the heavens opened up and the angels declared hope had come.

Some of us would struggle if the service ran over 40 minutes. Can you imagine waiting 400 years for your God and your king? And yet on one night, one special evening, the heavens and the earth together united to proclaim, hope is here. Not only hope for the Israelites, but the hope for the nations. And the nations didn't even know that they needed hope at that point in time.

They didn't even know about the restorative power that was coming to them. The Israelites knew that there would be one who would come. But the majority of the Israelites we see in the Gospel of Matthew, they struggle to accept this mashiach that's in front of them. And yet the lowly of lowly, if I can just barely get to his garment, if I can just get in front of him, I can be healed, I can be saved, I can be delivered, I can be restored. I can be set free.

That's the hope for all.

And without that, there is no hope. Without Jesus, there is no hope.

See, this is the climax of the story. The mission was always global.

We get caught up in our house, we get caught up in our calendars. We got a couple close friends, we get caught up with their calendars in their house. The mission for God was global. It was for all households. Every household would have the opportunity to hear, some have the opportunity to see.

And. And everybody can profess that Christ is Lord and they can pass from death to life. The plan of salvation from Eden was always for every nation. Jesus had come first to Israel, but he never came just for Israel. He came for all.

In him there is no longer Jew or Greek. We're all passing from a nationality, a political identity, into becoming sons and daughters of family.

And for those of you who grew up in a dysfunctional home or a divided home, he promises that this family in the end will be one with him. This shifts the language of the kingdom from national to familial, from political to relational worship team. You can come back from boundaries to belonging. He's not simply the King of Israel. He's the hope for the entire world.

And yet Jesus doesn't crush the weakest rod.

And neither should we.

Jesus didn't seek to put out even the smallest of flames, and neither should we.

We're invited into gentle justice, empowered by the Holy Spirit, carrying the hope of the nations.

The kingdom of heaven advances not through the justice of human might and power, like so many of us want, but through the victorious justice of the power and the gentleness of Christ. It's a justice that restores, it's a justice that heals. It's a justice that reaches down and lifts up the hurting and welcomes the outsider. It's a justice rooted in compassion, not in conflict. And through Jesus, the servant, the beloved, there's a hope for all, for us to go and tell the prophets foretold the way John prepared the way the angels declared the day, Jesus modeled the way, so that today I can stand here and say that there is no justice through victory without Jesus Christ.

And so today, actually on Sunday of last week, send a text out canceling children's class. I know canceled children's class. And I told him that I wanted to end the service a little bit differently than we normally do.

As we continue to read through the Gospel of Matthew, we continuously see that there is this cosmic shift, shift in the power and the authority manifested amongst humanity through Jesus. Christ.

And yet many of us come in here every single week and we don't feel victorious. We feel in enslaved. We feel oppressed.

We feel like we're never going to measure up. We're never going to be good enough. You're not. I'm not. We never were supposed to be good enough.

There's only one who is ever good enough. We're supposed to know and cling to him, know and lock arms with that king so all of us who think we're kings can bow before that king. And so today, I'm gonna call Brittany and Matthew up and call Cam and Sarah up here, the front. Call Brent over here. Not everybody likes to come down front.

I understand that. All my camera operators, Isaac in the back. Keep the cameras on the worship team. Put them on the seat if you got to. This isn't about show.

Jesus wasn't about show. The revelation of the power of Jesus Christ came when he wanted it to come. And some of you in this room have been asking Jesus to forgive you, asking Jesus to restore you, asking Jesus to remove whatever oppresses you. It could be guilt, shame, condemnation. You could need physical healing.

You could need spiritual healing. You could need healing in your marriage right now. You could need healing because you are the one who keeps causing issues for yourself. I don't care what it is. We all have something.

We all came in here today as if we were hopping on a flight later with our baggage.

And I believe in the power of what we just read, that God came to heal, restore, to bring gentle justice to victory in this world and in your life. And so today, as we respond and we sing, I trust in God. I'm just gonna give you an invitation. That's all it is. I am not God.

I don't have the power to heal you. I don't have the power to tell you you're going to be healed today or that. That God is going to remove the anxiety or the guilt, shame, condemnation that you have. But I can tell you right now, if you go before the Father, there is far more of a chance that he will work on that inside of you than if you don't.

And so today, as we respond, if you need prayer, it could be simple. It was like, oh, I don't have anything, like, really big in my life. Okay, let us pray with you. Maybe you have a mountain in front of you. There's some people in this room who have mountains in front of them right now.

They need it moved. Let us pray with you. Let us stand and petition the God of all creation, the hope of the entire world, that he would help bring his justice so that we could see the victory in overcoming the things that are in front of us and His. His time revealed when he wants to. And so as we respond, if you don't feel comfortable to come down front, that's fine.

Pray in your seat.

If you see somebody come down front, pray for them. You don't even need to know prayer. What's exactly happening, we don't need to know for God to heal, but we can stand together as brothers and sisters, petitioning the king for him to come and to move mightily in this room. And so as we sing, we're saying, I trust in God.

And if you need prayer, Michael and Delilah, will you guys go in the back corner over there, too? Vicki, will you go over there? It's okay. If you don't want to come down front, be seen, that's totally fine. We've got elders in the back who can pray for you, too.

But if you need prayer, let us pray with you.

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The Gospel of Mark 4:1-25 - The Kingdom Insiders vs Outsiders