"We follow Jesus who prepares us for whatever we face, and He gave His life for us – not just so that we could live another day, but so that we would be God’s treasured possessions, His sons and daughters forever. Jesus was seen again after His death because in Himself, He is the resurrection and the life, and therefore He is our hope. Our ultimate preparation for whatever we face in our lives is placing our hope in Him."

"As much as I love America, any country will let you down, it will faulter, it won’t always be just because we’re filled with sinful people in a broken world. But if you love that country, then I will tell you about another country, another kingdom. One that will not, one that will not let you down. If our earthly country is one you love so much that you would lay down your life for it, let me tell you of this other country that loves you so much, that her very king laid down His life for you."

"We can trust His word; we can rest in His word. We have this hope – not wishful thinking – but certainty. We can know that we are the Lord’s now and forever. Now obviously, Jesus and the scriptures don’t give us the kind of details that our curious minds would like to have, but that’s really a blessing because our focus is on God, the Living God, the God of the Living."

"Not knowing the scriptures and not knowing the power of God condemns us to a sort of withered Christianity – a Christianity that offers no good news and no real hope. If God is no bigger than we are, if God’s purposes are no larger than our own, there really is no hope. But one of the great gifts of genuine faith is that it admits us to the presence of the real God. The God who is finally beyond anything we can imagine and whose goodness, and wisdom, and power are gloriously beyond our reckoning. "

"So the summary is this: present warfare with heaven breaking in, followed by victory and joy at the last. It’s been a story worth the telling and a year worth the living."

“When we depend upon the grace of God, when we seek it, when we cry out for God’s mercy, when we cry out for His grace, we become more than ourselves. And that’s good news.”

"Because, in Jesus, we’re not banking on ourselves to be acceptable on our own before God, it means we no longer have to hide our sin from God. Jesus has freed us from the separation that our sin places between us and His Father, which means we’re free to actually be honest with God. We’re free to stand before God, in the midst of our sin and name it and acknowledge it, just like the tax collector did. And one of the wonderful, really paradoxical, mysteries of this freedom, is that as we bring those things before God – our sin and our shame – God not only welcomes us in for the sake of His Son, but He also begins to set us free from the bondage of our sins, to set right in us those things that sin has twisted and confused."

"There’s an image here of this pilgrim being sent back out from Jerusalem back on his journey again and the blessing that God would go with him. If the God goes with you, that’s the best-case scenario. But this is a potent promise of God that we have that God will be with us. And it’s not just reserved for the heroes of the faith, for Moses and for Joshua, but it’s a promise for us as ordinary believers as we leave this building today that God goes with us. In fact, we have something even better than the Psalmist did. We have the guarantee that Jesus Himself does go with us. That the Spirit of the Living God goes with us."

"Let us be reminded through this 3000 year old story, that even in the worst circumstances that we find ourselves in God is at work to restore His people. That the God we – you and I – are worshiping here today, right now at this very moment, is a God who has made promises to keep and sustain and lift up His people – even from death."