Worship:

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Message:

Communion song was Come to the Table by Sidewalk Prophets

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Transcript:

All right. Well, good morning, everybody. Glad to glad to see you guys here today. I can't imagine any reason why you wouldn't be here right? Jesus Christ is my living hope. Amen. We are more than conquerors, my friends, because of what Jesus Christ has accomplished. But make no mistake about it. Make no mistake about it Jesus will use in our lives, the things that take place in this world to test our faith. Absolutely not because he wants to put you to shame not because he wants to show you what a miserable sinner you are, right? That comes naturally. It's because he wants your strength to be bolstered. He wants your strength to be made stronger. He wants your faith to increase and so he allows us to see things he allows us to go through things that allow that to happen in our lives. You know, any kind of training that you would ever receive, whether it's through the military or some sport or whatever the case may be, you know, if you got through the first day of practice or if you got through the first day of boot camp and the drill sergeant said, Listen, guys, this is movie week. All right, we're gonna watch some. We're gonna watch some Marvel films. We're gonna eat some chicken wings. That's right, we're gonna take care of you. Right? You would probably say to yourself, first of all, this is awesome. Right? I should have signed up earlier. But secondly, you would say I'm probably not going to learn to be a soldier here, right? You would expect the drill sergeant to come out to be very, very mean to you to say horrible things to you. Right? And to whip you into shape. That's what they do. That's what a good coach does, right? Well, Jesus is a lot more gentle with us and He loves us a lot more than any drill instructor or coach. But Jesus wants each and every one of us to be soldiers of the cross soldiers of the cross of Jesus Christ, ambassadors of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and he needs people who are willing to follow him no matter where he leads, no matter where he leads. No matter what the cost, that's what Jesus is looking for. Remember when the man approached him and said, I'll follow you anywhere. And Jesus said, Really, because birds of the air have nests and foxes have dens but the Son of man doesn't have a place, even to lay his head. what he was saying to the guys count the cost, counts of cost. If you want to be a follower of me, that means you follow me anywhere that I go. And so appropriately, we are in the book of Numbers. We are in the book of Numbers, chapter 14, and we're going to be finishing up chapter 14 this week. You know, it's interesting. This country has been a country for what, 250 years 275 years. Does anyone know the exact number? Something like that right. 17 sent with users I'm not good at math. Right to failure. Give or take Thank you, doctor.

The children of Israel were in Egypt for 400 years, 400 years, the last 300 and so of which were in bondage were in slavery. And not just any kind of slavery, not the kind of slavery that they had in ancient Rome, where there was just as many slaves, if not more slaves in Rome than there were citizens of Rome. And they were part of the family Luke, the physician who wrote the Gospels, Luke was probably a slave. It was very commonplace. No, no, no, this is the this is the, the as bad as it gets slavery, where they serve with rigor, and they were beaten by the taskmasters and the taskmasters. Whip was a common sound, and they were lives were taken from them,