Morning church going to ask you to open your Bibles to Luke
Chapter 7 verse 11. Today, Luke Chapter 7 verse 11.
I want to start by asking a question this morning.
Maybe it's a question you've been asked before.
Who are you? Who are you?
How do you answer that question when somebody approaches you and
ask you who you are? Yeah, thinking about that for
myself this week. And it's a whole bunch of ways
we could answer depending on who's asking us, right.
I started thinking about the list of things.
So you could say I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a son, I'm an
uncle. Oftentimes we'll talk about what
we do as who we are. And so maybe I'd say I'm a
pastor, although I usually try and hold that off for as long as
possible when I'm meeting somebody new just so that they
can apologize to me after they've sworn in the
conversation at some point. I'm a Costco member.
That is true. I'm a Dallas Cowboys fan, I'm a
Raptors fan, I'm a Toronto Blue Jays fan, and I am a Toronto
Maple Leafs mocker and skeptic. I'm a winter hater.
I am a healthier eating convert. Maybe I'd say that I'm a
follower of Jesus and I'm a Sinner who's fallen short, but I
am a St. in Jesus Christ. I'm a deeply loved child of God
who still struggles to believe that and still struggles with
deep failings and flaws. Identity is a complex thing,
isn't it? It's complex.
We started walking through Luke Chapter 7 and eight last week
and I said we're going to spend these next 10 weeks, we're going
to explore the question of identity as it comes to to Jesus
because that's what Luke is going to give us pictures into.
He's going to give us pictures into who Jesus is.
And I told you last week, I don't think there's a more
critical question that we could ask then who is Jesus?
If what Luke shows us to be true about Jesus really is true and
not just the truth to know, right?
Not just facts about Jesus to have on hand, but like something
that is true to us, then that has huge implications for our
lives. Like I've I've been around
church long enough to know that those of you who have been
around church could do a really good job of listing off the
factoids about who Jesus is. That's not necessarily a
problem. But also that as much as we may
believe those things, we're also all unbelievers.
And here's what I mean by that. For every single one of us,
there are areas where we struggle to really believe what
we believe about Jesus to as we talked about last week, to just
take him at his word, We struggle.
I mean, we can say that. We can say he's the one with
authority and I'll take him at his word.
But to believe that, to believe that what he says about us is
true, that that we struggle as much as we know things to know
them in our hearts. And today we're going to see a
new truth about Jesus in this series, that Jesus is the
compassionate life giver. And some of us here, you know,
like in the fullness of reality, we would say we're unbelievers.
I maybe you're here today or you're watching online or you're
listening. At some point you'd say, I don't
actually believe that Jesus. And Jesus was alone.
Alone is the one who out of compassion and love gave his
life so that I could have life. And I mean, I'm just so glad
that you're here, that you're tuning in, that you're
listening, that you're exploring and grappling with this
question. Many of us here and many of us
listening would say we have believed that to some extent.
But we still struggle, right? We still struggle to live as if
those truths are true, to live out the implications of the
truth that Jesus is the compassionate life giver.
We know in theory Jesus is compassionate, but we struggle
to believe that he could have compassion on us, that we could
be those who Jesus looks on with compassion.
We struggle to model compassion to others.
We struggle to actually live lives of compassion to others.
And so as we get into this day, I just want to start and ask
that God, wherever we are today and whatever the extent of our
unbelief, would meet us and help us to believe more today.
Let's pray. Father God, help us to see you.
Help us to see Jesus, to see him for who he is.
God, if we're here today and we're exploring Jesus and we're
not sure if we really have a handle on on who he is, God, I
pray that you would do. We can't do for ourselves who
You by Your Holy Spirit would open our eyes and give us eyes
to see that Jesus is the one who died to give life and Father for
those of us who You have done that miracle in our lives.
You and you alone have brought us from death to life, have
given us eyes as the blind to see who Jesus is in those areas
where our hearts still struggle to believe.
Would You lead us into deeper and greater belief so that we
could act in fullness and accord with what our heads know to be
true? We ask this in Jesus name, Amen.
All right, let's read this story.
I love this story. You know, if you've been around
the church a long time, you grew up going to Sunday school or
kids ministry, you probably heard this story a few times.
Maybe you can picture the flannel graph you saw it on.
I love this. Let's read it together.
Afterward, he was on his way to a town called Name.
His disciples in a large crowd were traveling with him, and
just as he neared the gate of the town, a dead man was being
carried out. He was his mother's only son,
and she was a widow. A large crowd from the town was
also with her. When the Lord saw her, he had
compassion on her, and he said, Don't weep.
Then he came up and he touched the open coffin.
The pallbearer stopped and he said, young man, I tell you, get
up. And the dead man sat up and
began to speak. And Jesus gave him to his
mother. And then fear, as you can
imagine, came over everyone. And they glorify God, saying, a
great prophet has risen among us, and God has visited his
people. And this report about Him went
throughout Judea in all the vicinity.
May God bless the reading of His Word today.
So if I was to ask you right now, just immediately as you
think about Jesus, what comes to mind?
What words and descriptors come to mind?
I imagine we would get a whole bunch of responses, Savior,
Lord, loving, holy, gracious, merciful, humble, authoritative,
and we could list off all of these different things.
And those are all true, but I hope you see in this story, Luke
wants us to understand there is a reality about Jesus that we
have to get that he is compassionate, that Jesus is
compassionate. The the Greek word that that
Luke uses for compassion here is splagnisomae.
I love this is Splagnisomae. He uses this word and and the
the synoptic gospel writers, the writers of Matthew, Luke and
Mark use this word to describe Jesus a dozen plus times in the
New Testament. And splagnezomy means this.
It means to be moved in one's guts, to be moved in like the
pit of your feeling to, to just have your innards moved.
And it's such a powerful descriptor in the Greek that the
Jesus in this moment, he sees this woman who's in pain, who's
grieving, who's broken, and he feels it down to his guts.
I hope you have experienced that before, where you just like you
just feel it. You feel the pain for somebody
else. Here he sees a mom who we see
has, first of all lost her only son.
And that is devastating. It's devastating.
Like, on a personal level, we would feel that devastation.
But there's extra meaning here. You see, in the Old Testament,
the death of the only son was considered to be the epitome of
what grief looked like. It was the loss of all future.
In Jeremiah 626, Jeremiah, the prophet on behalf of God, tells
the people of Israel they ought to mourn as one would for an
only son, a bitter lament. He says he was his mother's only
son. And we see a second fact here.
She was a widow. She's a wife who first lost her
husband and now lost her only son.
And not only is there a depth of relational loss, there is there
a heartache and grieving that some of you in this room know
all too well. But in this circumstance, in
this society, in this time, in this culture, it means she has
lost everything. There is no social safety net.
Her husband and her son were her social safety net.
That was where she was going to be taken care of out of in her
old age. There would be 1 to provide for
her. She has lost it all.
She's lost the death of her family line.
She's lost her social safety net.
She's lost her future. She's lost hope.
And it says that when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on
her. Those words matter to the Lord
saw her. It's idea that the Jesus with
everything that is going on around him, that his attention
is drawn towards this woman who is in pain, in grief, in
brokenness. And he seals, sees this pain and
he feels it deeply in his gut. I have had the blessing and it
is a blessing to visit a number of countries now where the
brokenness of this world, the injustice of this world, the
pain of this world like it smacks you in the face and in
your senses the moment you walk off the plane until you get back
on and enter into Canada. And in those places, I've had
the deep privilege but also challenge as a Canadian who
quite honestly lives in an in a make believe bubble of comfort
to go in and speak in these situations.
How, how should I speak to somebody who has next to
nothing? How do I speak to somebody who
has moved from one country, lost all they had there, moved to
another country, lost all they had, there is a refugee through
war and crisis and now is in a third country?
How do I look at somebody who has just been so forgotten by
the world, by their governments, often times, unfortunately by
their brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ in other countries,
who just feels totally unseen? What do you say in those
moments? And in those moments, I've so
often found myself going to a passage in Exodus chapter 2 and
in that space, in that passage in Exodus chapter 2, verses 23
to 26, the people are there. God's people are enslaved,
oppressed, taken advantage of. And it says in the midst of
that, in their groaning, in their crying out, verse 25 says
God saw the Israelites. God saw the Israelites and God
knew. And so this is really important
language. When it says Jesus saw her, it
doesn't just mean that he notices her, but that his, his
heart, his attention is moved towards her.
And today I would say this to you, if you're here and you're
in a place of pain and brokenness and heartache and
hurting, and you're feeling like probably so many of us are in
this moment, just the deep brokenness and brutality of this
world. God sees you.
Jesus sees you. He sees the lost, He sees the
hurt, He sees the suffering, He sees our needs, he sees our
heartache. He knows it and and he feels it
in his gut. He aches for us.
But when the gospel writers talk about compassion and they talk
about a compassion that's deep down, it's never just about
feeling this. This matters so much.
See, I need you to see the Jesus feeling of compassion here.
His emotion of compassion is directly linked to actions of
compassion. Jesus compassion moves him to
action. The compassion Jesus feels.
Whenever this word is used it, it is a word that denotes both
feeling and movement, feeling and action.
Most frequently it is translated moved by compassion and and here
we see this Jesus feels this feeling in his gut and it moves
him to act and moves him to compassion that acts when the
Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and he does something.
He actually does two things here.
First he says this and he said don't weep, don't weep.
The first way that Jesus compassion moves him to action
is to step into the grief that this woman is feeling.
He doesn't just stand at a distance as he watches this
funeral procession come out the gate and just oh man, what a sad
thing and and just feel bad as he watches have no, he enters
in, he steps up, He says, don't, don't weep.
Now we often struggle to enter into proximity with people when
they are hurting and broken. And I think if we're really
honest, it's more about us than them.
I, I, I felt it in times where I just like, Lord, I don't want to
go in there. I don't know what to say.
You ever felt that? I don't know what to say, but
that's not a me, That's not a them thing.
That's not about them. That's about me.
I don't want to do it. This is uncomfortable.
There are lots of things you can't fix in this world, but you
can always OfferUp your presence to someone who's hurting.
You can always enter in. You don't have to fix it.
You don't have to have the words that make it all right.
In fact, don't weep is probably the worst thing that we could do
if we were entering into the situation.
Most of the time when we mess stuff up is we're trying to find
the right words to say. Just shut up, don't say
anything, be present. Let them know they are loved and
care for. Jesus tells her not about to not
to weep because he's also about to do something so much more
than that, right. He's coming in to fix the cause
of her pain. It says he came up, he touched
the open coffin and the pallbearer stopped and he said,
young man, I tell you, get up. And the dead man sat up and
began to speak. Jesus enters into the pain and,
and because Jesus is God, he says get up and the dead rise
because that's what Jesus does. And it said this last week,
because Jesus speaks reality into existence.
That's who he is. That's the authority that he
has. I think it's important to
recognize no one asked Jesus to do this.
You know, there's a lot of people out there who would teach
you that miracles only happen because you have enough faith.
Nonsense. Nobody here asked Jesus to enter
in. Nobody.
This is not about a human faith thing.
It is about a God is sovereign and he acts thing.
God will act. Mercy often precedes faith, but
at the same time it always seeks to awaken faith.
God doesn't need faith to enter in to start this miracle, but as
we're going to see, it spurs faith when God acts in mercy
towards people in the miraculous.
Faith is a requirement for ultimate salvation, absolutely.
But faith is no requirement for God to work a miracle.
God does what God will do. So Jesus acts, He moves.
He works because he has compassion, and his compassion
then moves him to action, and he acts in a way that only God can
act. He.
He raises the dead son of a grieving mother to life.
So we could say, of course Jesus acts.
How could he not act? I mean, if I was the Son of God,
if I had that power, I would, in fact, I would act all the time,
every time, everywhere. But Jesus is also 100% human.
He's fully divine and fully human, and his action comes at a
cost, and it's easy to miss that if you just skim over this whole
thing. But we need to see that Jesus
puts aside his comfort to act with compassion.
There's there's at least three ways in this passage where Jesus
puts aside his own comfort and acts at a cost to himself to act
with compassion. The first is this.
Jesus acts even though he had to be utterly exhausted.
There's a little line right there at the beginning that says
that he's traveled from where he was today.
Now we actually know where he was because we were just there.
He's in Capernaum. The journey from Capernaum to
name the people who were reading this would know was 40
kilometers. You remember maybe growing up or
maybe you've done this as a parent.
You say, you know, when I was your age, I used to walk to
school 5 miles in a Blizzard, uphill both ways.
Jesus literally just walked 40 kilometers and it was all
uphill. It's down by the lake up into
the mountains. And these are not little hills.
This is this is not Hamilton Mountain.
OK, He's, he's really gone up. It's a long, exhausting journey.
The average Canadian walks 4 kilometers a day on flat ground
and we're tired. 9:00 PM. I'm falling asleep on the couch
after my 4 kilometers of walking around the church when I'm
tired. I don't know if this is true
about you, but it's definitely true about me.
When I am tired, I tend to think only about me and I have a
really, really hard time thinking about others.
And yet here is Jesus in his humanity.
He would have been tired and exhausted because he's human
just like you and me. He knows what this feels like.
He's tired. He just wants to get to a bed
and get some food and rest. Man, when when we were young
parents, we had a 19 month old and then Luke was born our
second child when Maya was 19 months.
So we had 219 months and younger at her house.
And Luke was a tough baby. I've shared this before, but he
was, he was rough. Two PM, 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM every
night. Every night for like 8 months.
Screaming screaming. And as much as I love my son,
there got to a point where all I could think about was how tired
I was. Maybe you're there.
I just want to let you know it gets better if you're there
today. But man, when we're tired, it's
difficult to care for those who we love.
Jesus here, His heart is moved to compassion towards somebody
he's never even met and doesn't even know.
But he sees her and he's moved to act in compassion.
Jesus was weary and he still stepped forward and he acted
with compassion even though there was big social risk here.
Did you see this story? If you have ever been a
pallbearer or you've ever been to a funeral, if you can imagine
just if you were here at the church and we had a recessional
going out, the recessional comes out into the lobby.
A stranger who's just walked in the door into the church,
doesn't know a funeral is going on, comes up, steps in front of
the pallbearers with the coffin and stops the thing.
And then he comes up and he's going to lay hands on this
coffin. I mean, I'd be ready to punch
him in the face if I was the pallbearer in the midst of my
grief. What are you doing?
How, how dare you do this? This is an honor.
Shame culture like this is a shameful behavior that you would
do this, but Jesus out of his compassion and his care, it
causes him to disregard the social discomfort of what's
about to take place. See, Jesus is facing rejection
and he still steps forward, but there's a third thing.
He acts with compassion despite the religious stigma that is
attached with what he's going to do.
Touching a coffin is one thing for us.
Touching a coffin that's open and placing your hand on a dead
body for a Jew is unacceptable. It's unclean to touch a dead
thing. To touch a dead body is is an
absolute no, no. And so there's a whole nother
level of stigma. And yet he's going to show his
authority over these laws that the Son of God can't actually be
made unclean. He's the one who is clean, who
makes unclean things clean. But he demonstrates here a
willingness to break religious stigmas and boundaries, to put
his reputation on the line and step forward.
You may say, well, that's all well and good for Jesus.
What does that mean for me? Well, the first thing I want you
to see is this. Jesus puts aside his comfort to
act with compassion towards you. Some of you.
This whole time as I've been talking, you've been sitting
there and maybe you would never say this to anybody.
You just keep it quietly to yourself.
But deep down you're saying that's great, What about me?
I'm in pain, I'm grieving, I'm hurt.
This world's been terrible to me.
I've just suffered so much injustice, but I don't see Jesus
showing up here to see me. If Jesus is so compassionate, if
he's so powerful, if he's willing to put his side, his
comfort for the sake of others, why does he do something for me?
And I would just say to you, that's the story of the Gospels.
He has his compassion for you, His compassion for me, for the
person beside you, in front of you, behind you, in the car with
you, on the couch with you. It's the entire reason he came.
His compassion for you, His compassion that moved him to
action for you, that Kozno put his comfort aside for you.
Jesus, compassion for you led him to leave the comforts and
glory of the most beautiful, incredible, amazing, perfect
place you can imagine and enter into this, into all of this
stuff that we wish so badly we could get out of.
To come in and to experience what it meant to be hungry, to
experience what it was to grieve and to suffer loss, to be
betrayed, to be abused, to ultimately be scorned and mocked
and beaten and whipped and nailed, bloody and naked to a
piece of wood and to asphyxiate on that piece of wood.
What would move God to leave the glories of heaven and come to
earth? His compassion for you, His love
for you, Paul says in Ephesians 2/1.
He did it so that we who were dead in our trespasses and sin
would be raised up with him and seated with him in the heavens.
He made Himself unclean, taking on all of our sin and burying it
on the cross to cleanse us from all our sin and unrighteousness.
You want to know how much compassion He has for you?
You want to know how moved to compassion He is for you?
Just look at the cross. That's how moved to compassion
He is for us. And then He also promises us to
meet us right now, right here in the midst of this brokenness, in
the midst of this pain, in the midst of this world that is so
unjust, and to lead us towards healing while we're in the thick
of it. He gives us, John tells us, the
one who is called the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, that God
himself comes and he takes up residence in those who believe
in him and trust in Him. And he seals us for the day.
He prepares us for the day. He leads us into the day when
all of that brokenness and all of that pain and everything that
is wrong with this world is set to right.
The compassion that raised a dead son in name is the same
compassion that Jesus had in giving His own life up for you
and for me. And the invitation that He
offers is just this. To believe that, to be true, to
trust in it, to place your faith in it, and to receive the life
that the compassionate life giver offers through belief in
Him and trust in Him and following Him, That's the good
news of the gospel. That's why the gospel is such
good news. The gospel is such good news for
us that Jesus would act with compassion towards us.
But yet this story is not simply good news for us.
It acts as an example to us. See, to follow Jesus requires
putting aside our comfort in acting with compassion towards
others. If we believe that Jesus is the
one who acted with compassion towards us, that ought to move
us to do likewise, to be people who bring compassion into this.
I don't know if you noticed this, but the world could use a
little compassion. I don't know if you felt that at
all. If you're a disciple of Jesus,
you have to ask the question. Are you willing to put aside
your comfort to serve others, to step into the brokenness?
Sometimes we got to ask ourselves a question twice.
So I'm going to say this to you. Are you willing to put aside
your comfort for the sake of bringing compassion to this
world? Really.
Like really, am I willing to do that or do I only do it so long
as it fits within my schedule? So long as it doesn't interrupt
my plans? Do we wake up praying the prayer
that Jesus prayed in the garden as he was headed towards the
cross to give up himself for us? Do we say, Lord, but not my
will, but yours be done? Is that the posture of our
hearts as followers of Jesus? Will you sacrifice your calendar
and your agenda? Will you put your finances on
the line to help somebody else in crisis?
Are you willing to get uncomfortable to serve those
that Jesus called the least of these?
And I want you to think whoever you think the least is, that's
who you need to serve. On the flip side, some of us,
man where our hearts already move with compassion, right?
But are you willing to call people out out of love, Not out
of judgement, The ground is flat at the foot of the cross, but to
see the brokenness and the sin and the brokenness that somebody
else is bringing to somebody else's life and out of love for
them and love for others, to stand up and say, hey, you got
to stop to call them out so you can call them up.
Are you willing to put that type of comfort on the line because
you have compassion? Are you willing to risk
rejection because listen, it's there.
It's amazing how often you will act with compassion and love for
others. It will ultimately lead to some
people rejecting you. There's some of us who, just
like I, can't share the gospel with somebody else.
They might not like me. And again, I've said this
before, I'll say it again. You know what that tells me?
We care more about us being liked than we care about them
going to hell. Our hearts moved for the sake of
others. Were we most concerned about our
own comfort? Are you willing to risk your
reputation with religious people by getting your hands dirty with
the people the religious people wouldn't hang out with, wouldn't
want to be seen around? I mean, Jesus did it all the
time. Were we willing to engage with
people that some of the people around us who look real clean
and polished up would view as unclean?
I started by saying, hey, we're all unbelievers.
We all have parts of us in our heart where we struggle to
believe what we say we know is true.
Do you really believe? Do we really believe today that
Jesus is the compassionate life giver?
Do we believe it to such an extent that we would be those
who would live as compassionate life givers Today?
We're going to take communion together, our first communion
together as a church here in 2026.
And if you're new with us, maybe you're new to church, here's
what communion. Communion is a time for those of
us who have placed our faith in Jesus, who are followers of
Jesus, who have trusted in him to join together and to remember
the price that was paid, the comfort that was put aside, the
cost that was paid by Jesus to bring us to life out of his
compassion. And so if you're a follower
Jesus, that even if today, even if today is the day where you
said, hey, I think I believe who Jesus is, I'm going to follow
him. I trust that he died on the
cross for me. We would love to have you join
us. Let this be your first
community. We'll celebrate with you in
that. And if you didn't receive a cup
when you came in, you just put your hand up.
We've got some people in the aisle, some of our front lines
team who will get a cup over to you.
So just keep it up until they've got that to you.
If you're here today and you haven't come to that point yet
where you have decided to trust in Jesus again, I just say, hey,
we're super here. Glad that you're here, that
you're tracking along, that you're exploring this.
But this is a declaration that this is what we believe.
And so if that's not true for you, I don't want you to live in
a a life that doesn't live in integrity.
So, so don't take this with us today.
Be honest about that and be welcomed here today.
These two elements, they are tangible expressions of Jesus
compassion. That's how I want to take them
today. So I'm going to ask you first of
all, just to take out the bread. Paul says that this wafer, this
bread, reminds us that Christ's body was broken for us, that his
flesh was torn by whips, that a crown of thorns was pushed down
into his head, that a spear was shoved into his side, that his
naked body was nailed to the cross in the most painful way
possible. Why?
Because he was one who acted with compassion for you.
If you doubt the compassion of Jesus for you today, look at
this wafer. This is the reminder of his love
and mercy. And I know you're in some spots
today where you're hurting. And it's easy for Satan to get
into our ear and say Jesus doesn't love you.
He doesn't care about you. He doesn't see what's going on.
He doesn't feel it in his guts. He did and he does.
So here's what we're going to do.
Just ask you again to bow. You bow your heads, close your
eyes. Nothing magical about this.
It just helps to remove distractions in a distracted
world. Take this wafer and first of
all, just take a moment and thank him for the love and
compassion and mercy he has shown to you.
And when you're if you're struggling to feel, ask him to
help you experience it in your guts today that He would pour
his love out in into you and you would know it.
Father, we thank you. Thank you for loving us.
Thank you that You are the compassionate life giver and
this wafer is the reminder of both compassion that you had for
us and the reality that you have given us life through Jesus
Christ. We take this as a reminder of
your body broken for us. Let's take it together and let's
eat together. Now I'd invite you to take out
the cup. In Matthew chapter 26, Jesus
says that this cup is my blood of the covenant, which is poured
out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
As we were talking today about acting with compassion, let me
just say there's so many times where I've fallen short of
acting with compassion, where my comfort has trumped any
compassionate. And maybe that's true for you.
In fact, I I would just about bet that every single one of us
in this room, that's a true reality.
May even be true this morning. Maybe you got here this morning.
And if we were to have a video camera playing in your house or
in your car on the way here, it wasn't exactly a compassionate
scene with your family today. You know, the good news of the
gospel is forgiveness is always available.
We are forgiven. And when we come to Jesus, we
ask for forgiveness. He gives it and he gives it, and
he gives it and He gives it. So I want you to take the cup in
again. Let's close our eyes.
Let's bow our head. Some of us need just a moment of
confession today. Maybe it's a confession about a
very specific action that as I've been talking this morning,
we've opened up scripture. The Holy Spirit has brought some
people to mind. He's brought some things to mind
and you just need to say, Lord, I'm, I'm sorry, help me to act
in the newness of life that you've given to me.
Help me to be who you have made me to be.
Forgive me. Maybe you just need to invite
the Holy Spirit to reveal some things in your heart where
you've got a hardness in your heart towards.
Maybe it's an entire group of people, the people that you
would call those people. Maybe it's an ethnicity, maybe
it's a socio economic reality, maybe it's a certain type of sin
that people fall into, maybe it's a political designation.
Whatever the tribe is that you see yourselves as better than
other than you would ask God to forgive you and give you heart
to see them and to serve them. And then Father, this is what we
know, the beauty of what you promised us, that we confess our
sins, You are faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness, that all of
this stuff, all of this sin, all of our shame is washed clean by
the blood of Jesus. So as we take this cup today, if
you have called out to God for forgiveness, know that
forgiveness is yours. It's it's been paid for and we
take this in remembrance of the forgiveness that Jesus has given
us. Let's take and drink.
Worship is always as Pastor Keith was sharing to our team in
in the backroom before we started today.
It starts with God. It's a response to what God has
done for us. So we're going to sing now, and
let's sing in response to God's goodness and grace and mercy and
compassion and life giving to us.