It is Never Hopeless

This is celebration church, but it's more than just a building. Together we will raise the same. Jesus is famous. All the glory goes to God. This is our family. Welcome. Good morning. Welcome to Celebration Church. So glad that you have joined with us online this morning. Before we begin uh and get into our message, let's all recite together

The Apostles Creed, we do this every Sunday here at Celebration Church. The Apostles Creed is uh one of the oldest recorded things in uh Christian history. When you go back Almost 2000 years ago, and this is one of the things that people would give to new converts. that were about to get baptized. They would have them memorize this creed.

and they would say it together. And then it became so popular, so meaningful that they started uh saying it together as part of their worship whenever they would gather together. So this is an old part of Christianity that we have connected in with uh what we're doing today. So let's say this together. We believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth. We believe in Jesus Christ.

His only son, our Lord, who for us and for our salvation was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead, and on the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Christian Church.

the fellowship of believers, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. Again, so glad that you've joined with us uh this morning and Certainly appreciated Greg and our music team.

This one that first song was awesome. I don't think I've ever heard that song before. But that was the bomb as I was walking in here this morning. Wow. Very, very cool. We are very blessed and have some of the most talented musicians in the world. And great tech guys who make all of it sound so amazing as it goes out uh on the uh our streams on our website, celebrationchurch.tv or on Facebook or flip Facebook or wherever else. We are. What's TikTok? I never heard of a TikTok. Except my clock.

It's it's a new thing and it's You'll introduce me to it. I c I can barely figure out Facebook, man. I don't understand all this. stuff. I gave up on Twitter. I'm a twit. I don't get it with the little things. Anyway. Uh so glad that you uh all our our tech guys who make this possible, uh, and thank them for coming in.

during this time of quarantine in the state of Wisconsin and much around uh the world. Before I get into the message, uh, we're going to give you an opportunity to give this morning. Obviously we're not gathered together and can't hand out the buckets or whatever. But uh want to encourage you right now to go uh if you're watching it on our regular uh page, celebrationchurch.tv, you'll see a button there to give.

push the button and it'll give send you to the to the right page so that you can make a contribution this morning. Or if you are just uh uh using your phone you can go and text To this number, 77977. That's the number you're gonna text, 7797777777777777.

And then in the message part, you just top type C C W I, which stands for Celebration Church, Wisconsin, C C W I, and then the dollar amount. And do something, even if it's just a dollar. Don't Be one of these people who just sits and loves to take but never gives back. And right now, there's not a whole lot people can do in terms of giving back, but one thing you can do, particularly in this time uh of uncertainty and stuff, is to step out in faith and support.

the kingdom of God. Uh the Bible tells us very specifically that we are to contribute financially to those who bless us spiritually. So if you're watching this morning, obviously, or you wouldn't be hearing this, Uh you are receiving spiritual life and encouragement. Now the Bible says in response to that you should give back financially to that. So take a moment, uh push that button, send that text to s uh seven seven nine seven seven

and type C C W I in your dollar amount and it'll take you to wherever you need to go to complete that. So don't be a slacker. and sit around and do nothing. Don't you know, I d I d I don't get it. Don't just take we live in a world of just take, take, take, take, take, take, take, take.

Remember Pac-Man? I don't know TikTok, but I remember Pac Man. You remember you remember Pac Man? And Mrs. Pac Man? That was even cooler than the real Pac-Man. These are the video games where this little round ball was going around eating things. and you'd run around and see how many levels you could get. And a lot of people are just like Pac-Men. They eat. Don't contribute anything, but they love to suck everything up. Don't be like that. Don't be a Pac-Man or a Mrs. Pac-Man. All right?

Or a single Pac-Man, or whatever your status is this morning. All right, we are now in the uh fifth Sunday of Lent. Uh as we're coming up to Easter, this is gonna be really, really odd. It looks at this point that there will not be a Big gathering unless something changes. uh for Easter Sunday morning. Usually our most search is their biggest Sunday of the year. This is gonna be really weird. But we'll write it out and we'll just take it one step at a time.

Uh Lent means the word means spring. So this is the time of spring coming out of death into new life. But I have to tell you for a lot of us, it don't feel like no spring. But uh for most people it's the weather's getting nice, but it doesn't feel like very life giving right now because we are Stuck. Stuck in the middle of this coronavirus thing that has the world coming unglued and beside itself. Uh different categories of people there are those who think people aren't taking this.

strong enough actions. There's those who think we've been doing about the right thing. And there are those of us who think it's been a severe overreaction. Whatever category you're in. We are in what we are in. And uh and now we just write it out. To be honest with you, I've not been very stressed by this whole thing. uh, even in the midst of all this uncertainty. And this might sound really odd, but I'm an odd person. Um, the thing that's so comforting to me is that it's just not me.

Everybody's messed up. Everybody's thrown into the situation at the same time. I actually take great comfort in it. You know, it's like something when and you're going through something and you're the only one going through it and nobody else knows what's going on and you're man, I hate that stuff. 'Cause now the pressure's on. What about me? What can I do? And uh, you know, but when everybody's dealing with the same thing

It brings a level of comfort to know that you're all as miserable as I am. And uh you know, you know, it's kind of different. Uh uh when you're in class and the teacher calls on you, Mark, what do you think? And and then you panic because everybody's looking to you for an answer. But when they look at the whole class, what do y'all think? And none of us know anything.

You don't panic. So I I remember once I was uh Back in the early days uh before I was in ministry here at Celebration Church, I I owned a video production company. And we would go around and we we would produce uh videos for big companies and politicians and stuff. And we come into these boardrooms and have these conversations with these people about whatever they are wanting to discuss. It was I'm telling you.

I I was and I don't drink coffee. I should have. But so anyway, we're in this meeting and five minutes into it, all I'm hearing is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm not paying attention to anything. And and these are big accounts, right? And so the the CEO looks at me and goes, So Mark, what do you think? And I'll think never think the panic that went through my ma mind. AHHHHH

But I stayed cool. I went, huh. And I looked at the guy next to me and said, I don't know, what do you think? And it passed it off brilliantly. Oh man, thank God for that. Otherwise I would have went, I don't know what you're talking about. But I was able to pull it off. And uh then I caught up paying attention. After that I was paying attention, I'll tell you that. Anyway, so there's not a whole lot we can do, but obviously we are in a time of great s great uncertainty the thing is

Who knows what's gonna happen. I don't know how this plays out. I have no idea. Uh I don't think you know, there's very few things, you know, d Solomon wrote once, uh, there's nothing new under the sun. Every'cause he was depressed and For him life sucked and everything was awful and he b his whole purpose of life is you're you're born, you work and then you die.

So he wasn't in a particularly good place. Uh there's nothing new under the sun. And generally speaking that has been true. But I gotta tell ya, this one's new. This one's new. I don't I can't think of another time in human history where the entire world economy was suspended all at once. And again. The comforting thing there is they're all suspended. It's not like just America and everybody else is getting ahead of us or, you know, whatever the deal is. So

Is this never happened before? We have no idea how this is gonna play out. We don't know what's going to happen. Some of you you're not sure if you're still gonna have a job. Some of you not sure if you're still gonna have businesses and stuff like that.

But what I can say is uh I think it's good news in the fact that uh everyone's going through this together. And for us people of faith, I feel bad for those who don't have any faith. And I'm certainly hoping that during this time there will be people who don't have faith that will start to take faith seriously, realizing, hey, life Very you know. I haven't started preaching yet.

You know, people walk around and and they're kinda air in in our own like in America, you know, where oh we got everything, we got money, we got jobs. God da da da da and you kind of get arrogant a little bit and I think God just sits and laughs sometimes. All it takes is one bug, one Ety bitty bug that nobody can see, and the entire world collapses overnight.

So I mean, man, if you're if your hope and your trust is in the things of this world, oh, how awful is your world. You know, the good news for those of us who know Christ is that Our hope and trust is not in this world. We live in this world. We deal with this world. We still have to deal with this world. But our hope and trust far exceeds what's happening around us. As a result, those of faith are running walk walking in much greater peace

Barely in you know, you got you got one foot in the in the world and one foot in Jesus and you're kinda never taking this through and you're kinda rattled too. Hopefully this is a time that will cause you to have a little come to Jesus moment, literally. Where you'll start taking your life more seriously, eternity more seriously, and your faith more seriously, so that you can ride through things like this and not.

be filled with fear. So anyway, this morning in this fifth Sunday of Lent, coming up to Easter, I want to read to you from uh the Old Testament starting out

Uh, from Ezekiel. Now Ezekiel was one of them they call these, you know, different prophets, the major prophets and the minor prophets. Uh you can tell the difference'cause the major prophets are really thick. The minor ones are really the little tiny ones. But Ezekiel was one of these major prophets. Uh he lived at the same time as Isaiah, actually they were contemporaries. And what had happened was after

Centuries of Israel rebelling against God, uh, judgment, serious judgment. There were little minor judgments that came a long way where God would kick their butts and kind of bring them in line, but this was a major one, and he'd been warning them for a long time. Uh the Old Testament. Pretty much boils down to very simply Creation.

And then God finds one guy, Abraham, and through Abraham brings the whole uh all the blessings of God through the Jewish nation and then the Messiah. So that's kind of how the whole thing goes. Uh along the way, they decided they wanted kings after they came into the promised land.

And God said, you don't want a king. It's just going to give you pain. No, no, we want a king. He said, all right, you can have kings. So then Saul and King David was the was the major king. And then all these other kings came along. And most of them were rotten, disgusting, horrible human beings that God was constantly having to deal with. And you can read about the kings in uh two old testament books called First and Second.

Kings. That's how you know it's about the kings. And you read from one to the other. And some of these guys, they're horrible, awful. They did terrible things. And God would warn them, you better stop, or I am going to kick your rear end. And it goes on and on and on and on. And as you're reading it, you know, I'm reading this and about halfway through I'm like, kill'em already.

What's taking so long? So just as a word of encouragement, God is really patient. The Bible says over and over and over and over again, he is slow to anger. He does not have a quick fuse. I The Puerto Rican have a very quick fuse. Mine is more of a hand grenade where you pull the pin and step back in a couple of seconds. Boom, it's gonna go off. Pray for me. I still need to improve on that. And I haven't gotten very far in low these many years. But uh but God has a really, really slow fuse.

Those of you who think God's mad at you and is gonna No no no no He is so slow to anger. And if you doubt me, just read 1 and 2 Kings. It's a lot of reading, and you will see. Centuries goes by, one king after another after another, and he would warn them and warn them and warn them and warn them. And then finally he had it up to here and And the The butt kicking came in.

And now the uh Babylonians come in and uh and in a couple of waves they started shipping off people into Babylon. Uh initially they just took the cream of the crop. They would come in, they controlled everything. And they would take the best people, the smartest, the most well educated people, because they wanted as they were building their kingdom, they they conquered all these lands and they wanted to take the most brilliant people all back.

to incorporate them into their culture and benefit from them. That was their plan to build this long-lasting kingdom that they had. So the Babylons came in came in and did this and Ezekiel was taken up, him and his family in the second wave of people off into Babylonian captivity. Isaiah was still back in Jerusalem. And they both kept prophesying to Israel, you need to stop.

God has had it. He is serious. You would think they'd get a clue with all of a sudden the Babylonians coming in and starting to control everything, but they still would not change. And kept warring and then finally the hammer fell and the enemies came in and they destroyed. uh Jerusalem and wiped the city down to the ground, killed so many people, and then everybody was taken off into Babylonian captivity. Everything that they had built over the centuries.

of the Jewish world was completely, totally, and utterly destroyed. And you can imagine the depths of sorrow and despair that swept over uh the people. And at this point there aren't that many people left. Uh there was just a remnant, quite frankly, because they came in and they just started wiping these people out. And uh wow, eventually I mean you know, you don't want to push things too far because at some point uh things get really bad and they know they pushed it.

And then finally everything falls apart. But then uh Ezekiel starts changing his prophecies.

To prophecies of hope. He had warned them, sure enough they didn't listen. Isaiah warned them they didn't listen, judgment comes. And now Ezekiel is still now and he's prophesying to the people. And we want to pick up at uh chapter thirty seven, verse one. says and he has this incredible vision. This is like like an acid trip. I mean, some of these visions. Man, wow. So this is an intense vision. Read this with me. The hand of the Lord was on me, he writes.

And he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord. So he's having this vision. And he set me in the middle of a valley, and it was full of bones. That's creepy, okay? And he led me back and forth. So he's walking and he sees all these dead bones, all scattered and bones scattered everywhere. And uh he said, I saw a great many bones on the floor of this valley, bones that were very dry. And God asked me, Son of man, can these vo bones live?

And I said, Well, sovereign Lord, you alone know. And then he said to me, Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Is that all spiritual? The knee bones connected to the leg bone. Actually comes from the story. Anyway, prophesy these bones and say to them, Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. This is what the sovereign Lord says to these bones. I will make breath enter you.

And you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin. I will breathe in you and you will come to life. And you will know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded. He starts saying this to all these bones. And as I was prophesying, prophesying, there was a noise. A rattling sound. All these bones start shaking. Like I said, what a weird trip, huh?

And then the bones started coming together, bone to bone. And so all these skeletons they start coming and he starts making all these they start making skeletons everywhere as these bones come together. And then I looked and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them. So all of a sudden

These bones are now covered with flesh. Uh so now all just all bodies are laying everywhere. Again, this is one creepy vision. So now no more bones. He sees these bones all come together again and now they're just All these lifeless bodies laying everywhere. And then the Lord says to him, Prophesy to the breath. Prophesy, son of man, and say to it, This is what the sovereign Lord says, Come breathe, come breath.

From the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them, and they came to life, and stood up on their feet, a vast army. Intense vision, right? And then he said to me, Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say our bones are dried up and our hope is gone. We are cut off.

Therefore prophesied and of course that's how they felt, right? They felt ho totally hopeless at this point. There's not that much of us left of our entire nation. We've lost everything. It's hopeless. And he said, Prophesy to them, this is what the sovereign Lawrence says, My people, I am going to open your graves. I'm going to bring you up from them. I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and bring them up to the

uh bring you up from them, and I will put my spirit in you, and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken and I have done it, declares the Lord. Now when Uh Ezekiel is speaking these words, this seems like the furthest thing from reality for them. And that's part of the deal. When you are in the midst of the worst of worst circumstances, it seems hope is impossible. But what I want you to know this morning is it's never

Ever hopeless. Even in the midst of this hopelessness, God was speaking to them, saying, Look. This is all going to come back to life. And as you read through the history of the Old Testament, you start you see it come back to life. Eventually they come back, the nation prosps prospers, they start multiplying again. They come back, they rebuild. the city of Jerusalem and the temple, and all of that is in place when Jesus comes.

uh and not too long of a distance afterwards. So when Jesus comes, he comes into Jerusalem, the temple's there, the city's rebuilt. All of that had been completely destroyed. And now had been rebuilt, was it which was a prophecy that Ezekiel had spoken at a time when they had no hope.

But God said, Listen, there is always hope. It's never too late. Some people are wondering right now, what's going to happen? What if I lose my job? I will prophesy to you. You're going to get another job. Say, what if I lose my business? I will prophesy to you this morning. You'll get another business. It's never too late. There's going to be opportunities actually that come from this thing that will be amazing.

There will actually be people who will become multimillionaires, believe it or not, because they will see opportunities that nobody else is seeing and because everything is changing. This is a time of a reset. Here's a time of opportunity. Don't just walk around like Eeyore with a cloud over you. Oh, bother, and everything's awful. Look, this is a great chance of a new reset at some point in the not very distant future this whole thing's gonna be lifted.

I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't know what it's gonna look like. I can say this to you, that we as people of faith have God on our side. And when God is on our side, you have nothing to fear. It's like having Superman as your best friend. Or forget Superman, just having a big guy. You know, I've been in parts of the world where we've gone into very dangerous places. Uh but you know, you're young and when you're young

You think you're gonna live forever. Nothing bad's gonna happen to me, right? And when I think back on some of the places we've been around the world and some of the circumstances, I get totally creeped out and thinking, what was I thinking? you know? But I remember sometimes one of the things that because at the time, you know, I was a hundred and eighteen pounds dripping wet uh back then and uh and half of that was just my hair. And uh

And that's just bones walking around. And uh but I always felt safe, usually whenever there was another big guy with us, right? Some big lower, you know, and I like hanging around with really big guys. 'Cause when things get intense and you're in a dangerous situation and it looks a little threatening, it's nice to be walking around with a really big guy because you just

Feel better. I'm telling you what, you got a really big guy walking alongside you. His name is Jesus. And he ain't afraid of nothing. And this is all gonna be okay. No matter what your circumstances, no matter what you've gone through or what you're going through now. God always fills us with hope. He is constantly throughout the entire Bible and of course, you know, I know some of you got the time right now. To read the whole Bible.

Got nothing else to do. Locked it up. You'll see the story of in the midst of failure, in the midst of death, in the midst of destruction, one thing always keeps happening. New light. New life. It's like it cannot be stopped. It's like looking out the window here, as I see through our door there, in the state of Wisconsin. It looks like an atomic bomb just went off. There's nothing but death out there. There's no life. There's no

Leaves, there's no nothing, just a bunch of trees that's in there and surrounded by snow. It looks horrible. But you know what? No matter how dead it looks right now, life is gonna come. It always comes.

Always new life, and God has a way of doing those things. Reading from Psalm 130 this morning, uh verse one, he says, Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord, hear my voice, Lord, let my ears be attentive. to my cry for mercy. If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? In other words, if God did not let you off of your sins, we'd all be doomed. I know there's people who think that the way this works is

As long as you're a little better than you were bad, right? There's a lot of y'all listening to me right now. You you don't claim to be a Christian. Checking things out right now, maybe because of everything and the uncertainty, you're starting to look to faith. Most people you go to and you talk about God and stuff and they'll usually well I'm I'm not that bad. And we always compare ourselves to someone worse than us, so we feel better, you know? If uh I have a neighbor who's a real jerk.

Well, I'm not as big a jerk as he is, so I'm I'm okay, you know. So they think the way this all works is when you die, as long as you're a little better than you were, bad, more good than bad, then Yeah, then this is a scale and then then then you get to have an that's not how this works. You don't understand the seriousness of our sins, the seriousness of our sins. Our sins doom us.

Your sins go like this, all right? There is no uh little tiny balancing. Even the simplest of sins puts us in a bad, bad place of absolute hopelessness. Uh say, well, well, that sounds terrible. Well, yeah, it is terrible. That's the good news, though. That's why Jesus came, died on the cross.

So that he could take away the sins of the world. You don't work off your sins. You don't try to balance out your sins. You need to get rid of your sins. You need uh forgiveness and redemption. It's the only hope that we have. It's not like there's this little t you know I remember once I I heard an analogy of if you take two people and you put one on top of Mount Everest, the highest point on the earth.

And then you dig the deepest, deepest pit humanly possible, and you put another guy down. So we're talking a massive difference, okay? Mount Everest, the highest point and the lowest point on earth. And then you say to both of them, Okay, now reach up and touch the stars. Well it doesn't matter, you see. No matter how high or low, it's impossible.

You can't touch the stars. And the same thing was with all of us. Uh in our state of of sin. Some people are a lot worse sinners than others. This I will concede. Uh Becky, she's a horrible sinner. All right, but I got an audience of one here. My my audience.

And she's so sweet. She's the last of my stupid jokes. So anyway, so uh, you know, it's it's not there are people who are worse human beings than others, but it's like Everest and the biggest oh now now reach the heavens. Well it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You can't do it. Your sins, whether they be great or whether they be few, still makes you enable. Unable. Whatever the right English word is. To touch heaven.

and to touch God. The only way to deal with sins is to have your sins taken away, which thank God is what Jesus did. And it's why Christians celebrate. It's why we sing. It's why we do what we do and why we can have our spring on our steps. even though we're not supposed to be outside stepping at all because of the coronavirus. What's bouncing inside?

Because we have hope. Why? Our sins have been forgiven. But what's gonna happen next? I don't know. Well, aren't you worried? Not really. Why? My sins have been taken away. God loves me. There's always hope for me. So he says, Lord Who could stand? But in verse four, the next in that psalm it says, But with you there is forgiveness. Hallelujah. So that we can with reverence serve you. So if you kept a record of our sins, Lord, no one can stand, but with you.

There is forgiveness. It's always a situation of hope and never a situation of hopelessness. I I can't tell what time it is. I guess it doesn't matter. Where you gonna go? I could preach for an hour. Who cares? All right. Um

Let me end with a with a reading from the gospel here, the Gospel of John, chapter eleven. Now and I and I almost almost every year I come at at this time back to this. This is one of the most amazing accounts in the scripture. It is the most amazing miracle Jesus ever performed. Now there was a man named Lazarus, he was sick.

He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. This is Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick. She was the one same one that poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair, this dramatic story. This is the lady. So when this happens they became friends with the family, Jesus. And Jesus becomes really good friends with her brother, Lazarus. In fact, uh they refer to him as

The one that he that that he loved in the family. So the sisters sent word to Jesus, Lord, the one you love, talking about Lazarus, is sick. So when he heard this, Jesus said, This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory, so that God's Son may be glorified through it. Now let me ask you a question. If you are facing death, And the Lord says to you, This will not end in death. What do you think? I'm not gonna die. Right? Guess what happens? He dies! Well what happened there?

Well, he says it won't end in death. See, the end still hadn't gotten there yet. Oh man, I'm telling you, a lot of times when things go bad for us, we think this is the end, this is over. I was trusting God. God would say it would be okay. It's not okay, and we lose hope. But you're giving up. Too soon because it's never over. Never ever over. So while death is pretty final, one would think. But that's not what happens. So anyway, uh it turns out That uh that he dies. Uh Jesus in verse eleven

Uh told his disciples, uh look, we need to go back. Uh our our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. Jesus was aware of what had happened. No one had told him, but he's Jesus. He knows what's going on. He says, Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. I'm going there to wake him up. And the disciple said,'cause the disciple had heard that he was sick, he says, Well Lord, if he sleeps, good. He's gonna get better, he's gonna recover. Don't wake him up.

And Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep. So then he told them plainly, listen, boys, Lazarus is dead. And for your sake I'm glad I was not there, so that you may believe, but let us go to them to go to uh him. Why would he say that? He says,'Cause if I was there I wouldn't have let him suffer it. I would have healed him and I'm glad I wasn't there. And to go ahead and let him die. Okay, doesn't that sound like a horrible thing? No honestly.

If I'm facing death, I hope the miracle comes before the death, because I don't want to die. But in this case, sometimes God intentionally delays. And the intentional delay is only a delay. He said, When I was trusting God and and and my business failed, and and I was trusting God and I still lost my job and I was still trusting God and my husband still left me. And it's all no, don't give up.

All right, there's nothing worse than death here. And even in the face of death, Jesus said, okay, he's dead. Now let's go get him. Why we should have gotten there ahead of time. She said no, I'm glad I wasn't there ahead of time. So you can check out what's about to happen. So anyway, verse twenty, when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to him. Mary stayed at home because she's ticked.

Where was he? All right. Lord Martha said, if you'd been here, my brother would not have died. Verse 34, Jesus said, Well, where where did you lay him? And she said, Well we'll come here and see. And then the shortest verse in the Bible Verse 35 of John 11, Jesus swept. This is the shortest verse in the Bible. Now, the Bible was not originally written in verses.

Uh there wasn't chapters and verses. The reason they eventually added chapters and verses and that didn't even come to completion until Uh what uh ninth uh the fifteen hundreds, so fifteenth century. Um took a long time. for anybody. They started breaking it down into sections and then they uh eventually started breaking it down into chapters and then this guy by the name of uh Robert Ste Stevens or Ste Stefanus or whatever

comes and he says, you know, this would help if we actually gave numbers to everything. So he goes down, this one guy does all this. Everything that we're reading, well one guy does all of this. That's a lot of work. How could he do it? Because in the fifteen hundreds, there wasn't any T V There's nothing else to do. So they just work all day long. So he broke it all down. And uh quite brilliantly when he gets to this passion of scripture, he just leaves two words in in that one verse.

It's the shortest verse. Jesus wept. So if you're ever on Jeopardy and they want to know what The shortest verse of the Bible is, you can go, ding, Jesus wept. All right. So anyway, they're watching him weep, and the Jews are going, wow, see how much he loved him. And then others complain. Can't imagine that in the midst of something, everybody's whining somewhere, right? So well couldn't have he who opened the eyes of the blind kept this man from dying? Where was he? All right.

Uh and you don't want to be in that whiny group. Man, don't be in the whiny group. Nobody likes the whiny group. Uh and then the next verse says Jesus once more deeply moved came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. He said, Take away the stone. Martha says, But Lord, uh the sister of the dead man, Martha, by this time there's a bad odor. He stinks. Woo, he's been there four days. This is the incredible...

incredible part of the miracle. There's one thing for someone to drop dead and then Jesus touched them and brings it back to life. You know, maybe he was just mostly dead, maybe he wasn't really there's all kinds of, you know, ways you can look at this. Uh but when you're dead four days in a tomb, we've pretty much established you are completely and entirely dead. So he waits until that much death has set in.

And Jesus said, Didn't I tell you, if you believe, you'll see the glory of God? So they took away the stone. Jesus looked up and said, Father, I thank you that you've heard me. And when he said this, Jesus called out in a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. And the dead man came out, his hands and his feet, wrapped with strips of linen and a cloth around his face. He looked like a mummy hopping out of there. I man, I'd a had a heart attack right on the spot.

I go to a funeral and you come hopping out of your basket, your case, I'm I'm having a especially if you've been you're in a basket and you've been Something wrong with me. You come out of that. Man, I'm really impressed, all right?

But anyway, so anyway, so this incredible miracle happened. What was the point of all of this? Jesus knew it from the beginning. When you read the account, as soon as he heard he's sick, he knew what was gonna happen. He intentionally delayed. He told us this we didn't read all of it because we're I'm late. But uh uh just said just relax, he slowed down, finally okay, let's go wake him up. Oh good, he's sleeping. No, he's dead.

Jesus knew the whole thing by the time he got there it was four days. He does all of this to show us one incredible thing, and that is it is never ever. Too late.

All right, I'm gonna ask our musicians to come back out here as we get ready now to take communion. If you uh can, grab some bread, some wine, some elements uh from your kitchen there. Maybe you've already done it. We're about to uh get ready here. to uh have a time of communion. Uh you know, the Bible says that before we take communion, we're supposed to examine ourselves.

Where are we at? Where am I at with God? How how you been doing this last week? You been full of fear? You've been full of paranoia? You get your spouse getting on your nerves? You're barking at each other, kids driving you crazy. Look, sometimes we mess up, sometimes we make mistakes. The point of our time of communion is we stop, we reflect, and just a time of God help me to get things right.

And in with that in mind, I want to pray a prayer of forgiveness for all of us as we're watching right now. So if you'll just uh bow your heads with me, let's pray this prayer. Uh allow me to pray this prayer over you. Father, Before we partake of the bread and the wine this morning, in obedience to the Scriptures we pause to examine ourselves if we've sinned against you in any way. Maybe something we did, something that we didn't do.

Maybe we haven't loved you with our whole heart. Perhaps we haven't loved our neighbors as ourselves. Maybe even those people are stuck in that Uh whatever our situation is this morning over this last week, for the sake of your beloved son Jesus. Who gave himself as a sacrifice for our sins, have mercy on us. We know there is forgiveness with you, as we read in the Psalm. So we ask you now, forgive us of our sins. Take away our sins.

of God, and by the power of your Holy Spirit keep us in eternal life, that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways to the glory of your name. And as we're all just in a moment of prayer right now, as your heads are still bowed, maybe you're new to faith. Maybe you're watching this and you're kind of looking at a distance and you're thinking, man, I need this. I need God. I need some hope. Yeah. Just take a moment right now in your own words to into your life. Forgive you of your sins.

So anyway, go ahead and get your your bread and your wine together. The band's gonna sing a little bit here as we enter into time of worship.