Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 1:1-4
It was good to be back with you this morning. We had a great trip in Africa and it's always a blessing when you go to another country, another culture like that to get to worship with people and they worship different than we do and it's exciting to experience that and be a part of that but it's also good to come home and to be with your people and to sing songs that you know and words that you understand and a language that makes sense to you and even if you guys don't have quite as much rhythm as the folks had over in Africa, you made a pretty good effort this morning and appreciate our band and their leadership. If you have your Bible, take it out and find the Gospel of Luke chapter 1. We're going to begin a new series this morning studying all the way from beginning to end through the Gospel of Luke. The series is called the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost and no one has ever accused me of being overly creative and all I did is look at the theme verse for the Gospel of Luke which is Luke chapter 19 verse 10 and here it is. The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. That's the point of Luke's Gospel, that's the one big central idea that we're going to try to talk about every week as we work our way through this Gospel. Jesus Christ came to seek and to save the lost. That's the one idea you need to take home in this series and what I'm saying to you is this Jesus came and while he was on this earth he told a lot of great stories, parables, he had a lot of challenging teaching, great sermons but that was not the primary reason that he came. When Jesus was on this earth he helped a lot of people. He fed people who were hungry in miraculous ways. He healed people who were sick in miraculous ways. He did some amazing things but those things were not the reason that he came. Jesus came to this earth to seek and to save the lost. That's what the Bible is about. That's what the Gospel of Luke about and that's what we're going to talk about this morning. The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. There's an outline in your bulletin. If you want to follow along there we're going to work our way through that outline. As you get all your things out and settled, let me just say I'm excited to preach through the Gospel of Luke. I have led studies or sermon series on all of the other Gospels. When Brooke and I first got married, led a Bible study at the apartment complex we lived at. We went through the Gospel of Mark and so I've taught through Mark. The first church that I was the pastor of, the first sermon series I preached was through the Gospel of John so I preached through John. While we were in Oklahoma I preached a sermon series through the Gospel of Matthew and so now I'm excited to look through the Gospel of Luke with you. This is going to be a long series. This is not like one month. We're going to break it up and we're going to have four Sundays where we tackle the Gospel of Luke. This is going to be well over a year that we work our way through the Gospel of Luke and we'll break it up as we go but it's going to take us a while to get through the Gospel of Luke and the reason is Luke is a long book. In fact, Luke you may or may not know is the longest book in the New Testament, longest book in the Old Testament. It's the only Gospel written that has a sequel. Matthew and Mark and John wrote the story of Jesus' life roughly from his birth up through his death and his resurrection and ascension back to heaven. Luke covers all of that material and then he keeps going in a book that we call the book of Acts and he tells a story of how Jesus resurrected, ascended in heaven, worked through his church, through his Holy Spirit to grow his kingdom here on earth. So he's the only Gospel writer who wrote a sequel and really you need to understand Luke didn't set out to write two books. It's not as if Luke the Gospel tells one story and the book of Acts tells another story. It's just one story and the reason it's written into two books has to do with ancient technology and when these old Bible books were written, they were written on scrolls and you may or you may not know that the standard length for an ancient scroll was 35 feet. Some of you knew that, right? That's just common knowledge, 35 feet, ancient scrolls, everybody knows that. Notice what, if you sat down on an ancient scroll and you hand-wrote the Gospel of Luke, guess how many feet of scroll it takes up, 35 feet, you guys are smart. And then if you take the book of Acts and you do the same thing, guess about how much ancient scroll it takes up, 34 and a half, roughly, that's exactly right. Two scrolls, Luke had to write it in two books and so he said, "I'm going to sit down, I'm going to write Volume 1, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to write Volume 2." And as years went by in books or originally they were called codexes were invented where you could put a whole lot more into one volume, the scribes who copied down Luke's work just kept it separate and they said, "We're going to have Volume 1, the Gospel of Luke and then we will have Volume 2, the book of Acts." But they go together and they're one book and they all have a beginning in Luke chapter 1 verse 1 and we're going to read verse 1, 2, 3, and 4 this morning and talk about how Luke begins this Gospel. This is the Word of God beginning in Luke chapter 1 verse 1, "In as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning where eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time passed to write an orderly account for you, most excellent theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things that you have been taught." That's the Word of God, let's pray together. The Word we are grateful to be in your presence this morning, and Father we find hope in the promises of the Bible that you are for your people, that you sent your Son Jesus to seek and to save the lost. Because the champion of heaven has conquered and has overcome Father we have hope of doing the same through Jesus, not on our own power but through your power and through your Son. Father, we're grateful for the Bible, we're grateful for how you worked in Luke and through Luke to write this book, to write this account of the life of Jesus, and as we jump into a very long study through the Gospel of Luke this morning we pray that you would give us eyes to see the truth, you would give us hearts to receive it, and you would give us wills to obey it. We ask in Jesus' name, oh man. Four ideas I want you to see this morning from Luke chapter 1 verse 1 to 4. The first idea is this, God delights in using nobodies for His glory. God delights in using nobodies for His glory, and when I talk about nobodies I'm specifically talking about Luke, the author of this Gospel. I may surprise you to know that Luke is only mentioned by name in the Bible three times. He is never mentioned in the Gospel that he wrote by name, he is never mentioned in the book of Acts by name. He's mentioned three places in the Bible by name, and I think we have those references in your bulletin, I'm not sure if they're on the screen or not, but the references are at the end of Paul's letters, Colossians 4, 2 Timothy 4, and Philemon 1, and as Paul wraps up those letters, he just sort of mentions Luke in passing, the only three places that he's mentioned in all of the Bible. We learn from those passages that Luke was a physician, he was a doctor, we know that he was friends with the Apostle Paul, and he was a companion of Paul, he traveled around with Paul from time to time, and we know that he was a Gentile. He does not have a Jewish name, he has a Greek name, so more than likely he was not Jewish, but he was Gentile. And that's really all you can piece together about Luke from the passages that mention him by name. Then there's a few passages in Acts. They're called the "we" passages in the book of Acts. And Luke sort of very subtly inserts himself into the narrative in the book of Acts in several places and basically goes like this. He's telling the story of Peter and then Paul and the church is growing and he says, "They did this. They did this. They did this. We did this. We did this. Then they did this and they went here and they went here." And then we went here and in several places they're listed in your outline. Luke just sort of inserts himself in and says, "Look, I was traveling with Paul on his second missionary journey, his third missionary journey. I was traveling around with him." And other than that, he is never mentioned in the Bible. You say, "Well, he was a physician. How could you call a physician a nobody? Physicians are people of importance. In our culture they are, but in Jesus's time they were not. They were not highly educated as some people were. They were not highly paid for their services like they are today. In fact, many physicians in the ancient world were former slaves. We don't know if Luke was or not, but we know that many physicians were and so it's entirely possible that at one point in his life, Luke who wrote this book was owned by another human being, a slave. He was a nobody. He was not one of the twelve apostles. He was not a religious insider in Jerusalem. He wasn't even Jewish. He was a Gentile, possibly a former slave, not one of the twelve, barely mentioned in Scripture, only mentioned in passing at the end of Paul's letters. He never as far as we know received any major assignment from Paul. He was friends with Paul, but he never got any big job from Paul. For example, Paul said to his friend Titus, "Hey, I'm sending you to Crete. That's a tough place to be the pastor. They need somebody who can do it. I'm sending you to Crete. Titus, you're the man for the job." Luke wasn't sent. Paul said to Timothy, "I want you to stay in Ephesus. They need a pastor here in Ephesus and Timothy, you're the man for the job." Luke was not the man. Timothy was the man. Never received any special commission. We don't have any sermons that he preached. We don't have any statements that he uttered in Bible study or Sunday school class. We know almost nothing about him. Luke was a nobody, and yet God used him in an amazing way. He uses nobody, an outsider, to write over one fourth of the New Testament. Do you know that Luke wrote more of the New Testament than Paul did? You think about Paul, because he had thirteen letters and you say, "Well, that has to be the most." No, Luke wrote more than Paul did. You say, "Well, what about the Apostle John?" He wrote the Gospel of John in 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and the book of Revelation. No, Luke, when you add up Luke and Acts, wrote more of the New Testament than any other person. God used him in a remarkable way. And as you sit here this morning, you may say, "I am totally unremarkable. I'm a nobody. I don't have power. I don't have influence. I didn't grow up in church. I don't come from a Christian family. I'm just a fringe person. I'm just glad to be here. What is God going to use me for?" And the Gospel of Luke is a reminder right off the bat that God delights in using nobodies for his glory. Can we just be honest for a minute, and can we just say that as you look around this room, we're all a bunch of nobodies? In about a hundred years or so, will any of us be remembered by hardly anybody? No. Maybe that's a good thing. We're nobodies. And the good news is that the Bible consistently and repeatedly shows us that God delights in using nobodies to bring glory to himself. And you know why he likes to do that, because when he uses a nobody, you and I don't get any of the credit. Nobody can say, "Well, that's him or that's her." It all goes to God, and so God delights in using nobodies for his glory. And that means God wants to use you, even though you may think of yourself as a nobody. Even though in reality you are a nobody, God wants to use you for his glory. What an idea from Luke chapter one is this, God's word is true. God's word is true. We talk about this in our new member class. It's one of the first things we talk about when people join our church, and over the years people have come up with different words to describe this. The Bible is inspired by God, the Bible is inerrant in its content, the Bible contains no mistakes. You pick the word you want to use. What we believe, and what we are reminded in Luke chapter one is that God's word is true. I'll tell you a story about a man named Joseph Mulhatton. That's Joseph Mulhatton. He lived in the 1800s. He was born in Pennsylvania, spent some time in Kentucky, he ended up out in Arizona in the West. He's an interesting guy. He would write articles, and he would use the pen name Orange Blossom, and he would send these articles in to newspapers. He wasn't a journalist, he was a salesman. He sold clothing, he sold tools, he sold all kinds of stuff, and he traveled around, and when he was on his sales calls or his traveling routes, he would just sort of daydream, and he would sort of come up with fanciful stories and tall tales, and when he came up with these stories he would write them down, and wherever he was, whatever city he was in, he would send these tall tales into the local newspaper editors, and he would be writing them not as fiction, but as if they were really true, and he sort of had a game of it of trying to fool newspaper editors into publishing his stories. Here's some of the things that he came up with. 1875, the United States was about to turn 100 years old, and he came up with a story that in Washington, D.C., they were going to exhum the bodies of presidents Lincoln and Washington, and put them on public display for everyone to see in Washington, D.C., and the newspapers picked it up, and people started showing up in D.C., saying, "I want to see Lincoln, I want to see his bones, I want to see Washington, I want to see his corpse." He had everybody fooled that they were going to exhum these bodies. A few years later, this is one of my favorite stories he came up with, he came up with this story and he wrote and he sent it in that Texas had been destroyed by a meteor. He sent it in. The story got picked up by the New York Times, and they ran it in the New York Times, and the New York Times was shipped all around the world, and people were sending letters to Washington, D.C., for decades from foreign countries saying, "How are things in Texas?" We heard they got wiped out by a meteor. He had everybody fooled with this meteor story. 1888, Mulhatton heard a true story about a Kentucky man named Patrick Cunningham who had been bitten by a rattlesnake and who lived. True story, Cunningham got bit by a rattlesnake, he lived. Mulhatton takes the story and he says, "Look, Patrick Cunningham has made a secret lotion, and it kills rattlesnakes. And if you go out in the field and you put this lotion all over your legs, rattlesnakes will just fall down dead everywhere you go." Patrick Cunningham had people coming to his house until the day he died asking for the lotion. Can we have some of the rattlesnake killing lotion? People loved it. They believed it. Later in life, he convinced a group of fairly learned and studied astronomers that the star of Bethlehem was about to reappear, that it reappeared every 300 years and the time was right and the calendar and everything was just right that the star of Bethlehem was going to reappear in the sky. His nickname was America's greatest liar. If you watch certain television stations today that claim to be very historical and very scholarly, they would have you believed that the men who wrote this book were nothing more than America's greatest liars, people like Joseph Mulhatton. There are a bunch of people who had nothing better to do than to sit down and come up with a bunch of fanciful stories about a guy named Jesus or stories from the Old Testament and put them down in a book and call it God's Word. And I'm saying to you, that is not who these men were. They were not daydreamers making up stories. Matthew was an incredible Old Testament scholar. He was not a teller of tall tales. He was a Bible scholar. Mark is recognized as one of the greatest story writers, crafting a story and putting it together in the ancient world. John, who wrote the Gospel of John, is recognized as a fantastic and amazing philosopher, a great thinker in his day. And Luke, we're reminded in Luke chapter one, was an investigative reporter. Luke doesn't say, "Look, I've heard some of this stuff about Jesus and I'm just kind of making some notes here and there about things I've heard and I'm putting it all into a book." He says, "Listen, I've done my research. I know these things. I have talked to the people who knew Jesus and who saw Jesus and I've put together this orderly account. I'm not making this stuff up. I'm not daydreaming. This is scholarly, investigatory research." You know, it's funny. About the time Joseph Mulhatton lived in the 1800s, the quote unquote "best Bible scholars laughed at Luke." They read the Gospel of Luke, they read the book of Acts and they said, "This guy's making it up as he goes." He's using names of people that we have never heard of. They didn't exist. He's using titles for people that we do know exist, but he's using the wrong titles. In his geography of places and cities and regions, it's off. You can tell that he's just making this stuff up and they laughed at Luke. That was about 200 years ago. Since then, there's been an awful lot of digging around the part of the world that Luke talks about in Luke and Acts and people find new cities and they find inscriptions and they find this and they find that. You know what they say today? Luke knows what he's talking about. Luke uses titles for people that we have now confirmed and he talks about places that we know they really exist. They used to laugh at Luke and archeology now, all these many, many years later says, "You know what? Luke knows what he's talking about." He's not making this stuff up as he goes. He sat down to write an orderly account of these things. He's a scholar and he's a historian. His book covers 65 years of history from the birth of John the Baptist up until Paul is in prison. He includes stories that are not found anywhere else in the Bible. If you didn't have Luke, you wouldn't know about the birth of John the Baptist. You wouldn't have the songs of Mary and Zechariah and Simeon. You wouldn't know about the Good Samaritan. You wouldn't know about the prodigal son. You wouldn't know about the Pharisee and the publican and who went home justified and who didn't. You wouldn't know about Jesus on the road to Emmaus. You wouldn't know about some of the women who followed Jesus. Luke knows what he's talking about. He says in this opening passage, "I have written an orderly account." You remember what I told you was the theme verse of Luke, Luke 1910, "The Son of Man came to what? Seek and save the lost." You can break Luke down like this. It's not a coincidence. Chapters one to three, he comes. Chapters four to twenty one, he seeks. Chapters twenty two to twenty four, he saves. The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. Luke knows what he's talking about. Now on top of all that that I've said about Luke, let me say this, at the end of the day we don't put our hope in the truthfulness of this book because Luke was a good historian. He was a good historian. Our hope, however, is in the fact that the Holy Spirit of God worked through Luke as he studied and as he interviewed and as he talked to people and as he wrote this book and that the words in Luke's gospel are not just Luke's words, but they're God's words. Look at these two verses, 2 Timothy 3, 16, "All scripture is breathed out by God. It is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training and righteousness. It is all breathed out by God." Look what Peter says. No prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men like Luke spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Luke knows what he's talking about. He did his research, he did his homework, he wrote an orderly account and through all of that the Holy Spirit of God ensured that the words that Luke wrote down are not just Luke's words, but they're also God's words. Number three, this is a big one. Luke's gospel is an account of something that has been accomplished. He says that, Luke 1-1, "Many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us." This sets the Bible apart from every other holy book on planet earth. This makes the gospel of Luke and the story that is in this book, Genesis to Revelation different than every other "scripture" that you can find under the sun. I'll give you some examples. You can look at Hinduism and Buddhism, and they have "scriptures." They have holy writings. Nobody really agrees on what they are. You can't get on Amazon and say, "Let me buy the Buddhist Bible or let me buy the Hindu Bible." This group sort of reads this book and this group looks at this and you can find them. You can read about them and let me just tell you what they are. There are a bunch of random, discombobulated, disjointed stories about stuff that is just bizarre and about teaching, about philosophy and reality and life that just sort of makes your head want to explode. It's not about anything that's been accomplished, it's just sort of philosophical rambling. You can find the same thing in Confucianism or Taoism, Far Eastern religions. They do have scriptures. People know this is the Confucian sacred writings or this is the Taoist sacred writings, and you can read them and I've read some of them. It's not fun. It's just sort of philosophical rambling about stuff that is almost impossible to even begin to wrap your mind around. There's not about anything that's been done, it's just sort of, "This is reality and this is truth and this is how you ought to live and this is how you can be a better person." And it just sort of rambles on and rambles on. You can look at Islam, the world's second largest religion. You can look at the Quran. It's a group of surahs or chapters or writings that allegedly Allah revealed to Muhammad. And it's just sort of stuff about, "This is how you ought to live. You ought to do this. You ought to pay this much in taxes. This is how you get married. This is how you operate. This is how you do things." Just sort of teaching about life in general, not about anything that has been accomplished. And in contrast to all of that is the Bible. And Luke is saying, "Listen, this is not twelve steps to a better you. This is not how to improve your life. This is about something that has been accomplished once and for all." Can I tell you that sometimes Christians miss this idea? There's a church in our town, this last Easter, put a nice big ad in the paper and a paraphrasing, but I'm pretty close. The ad said, "Come celebrate Easter with us and find out how to be the best you you can be." That's not Christianity. Find out how to be a better you. That's Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism. That's all the other religions of the world that say, "You need to do this. You need to do this. You need to do this. You need to do this. You need to do this. You need to do this. The Bible in Christianity says, "There are some things you need to think about doing, but the first thing you need to understand is that something has been done. Something has been accomplished." That thing that has been accomplished is that the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. He's not just telling you how to be a better person, how to be nicer, how to get along with your family or your friends. He's saying, "You were lost, and I came to accomplish something. I came to seek you out and to save you." I came to die on a cross in your place, to take the punishment that should have fallen on you, not so that you can just try to be a better person, but so that you can trust in me and you can be brought back into a relationship with God. This is different than all of the religions of the world. Every other religion in their sacred book say, "This is what you need to do. This is how you ought to live. This will make things better. This is how you can be the best you possible." When Luke says, "Uh-uh, I'm not writing a self-help book, I'm writing historical fact. This has been accomplished. Jesus Christ has come to seek and to save the lost." How many of you saw the Bible miniseries that was on TV about a year, year and a half ago? Maybe you went to the movies and you saw the Son of God movie. As far as I can tell, it was basically episode three from the miniseries shown at the movie theater. There were some good things in the miniseries and there was a lot of goofy stuff, non-Bible stuff in the miniseries. There was one scene that they showed, it seemed like on all of the previews and it was the scene where Jesus met Peter. The scene I'm talking about, Jesus meets Peter and they're doing the fishing thing and Peter sort of freaks out because all these fish are in the net and Jesus says to Peter, "Peter, I don't want you to follow me. I want you to come after me." And Peter sort of gets this romantic look in his eyes and he says, "What are we going to do? If I follow, what are we going to do?" And Jesus sort of gets this serious look and he kind of looks off on the horizon and he says, "We're going to change the world." I don't think Jesus ever said that. I don't think Jesus came to change the world, I think he came to save the world. He's not saying, "Look, Jesus came, he did a lot of nice stuff," and he just kind of came to make this a better place, to make your life better, to help you be the best you you can be. He says, "I am writing a book about something that has been accomplished." Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. It's done. He came. He found them and he saved them. Luke is writing about something that has been accomplished. Last idea is this, number four. The gospel of Luke was written for our certainty, for our certainty. Luke says that to his friend Theophilus, which means "friend of God." He says to him, "I'm writing about the things that have been accomplished that you may have certainty concerning the things that you have been taught." We don't know a lot about this man. Some people think that it's not a real person. I think most Bible scholars feel like it was a real person that Luke was writing to. One thing we do know is that he's called most excellent Theophilus, and we know that in the rest of the New Testament, the only people given that designation, quote unquote, most excellent are Roman governors. So whether or not this man was a Roman governor or not, we don't know. But we know that that title, most excellent, was reserved for very, very important people. So maybe it was a friend of Luke. Maybe it was a man who used to own Luke when he was a slave. Maybe it was a man who was paying Luke and financing him writing this project. But he writes to Theophilus and he says, "I'm writing that you may have certainty concerning the things that you have been taught." You found yourself in the midst of this movement of Jesus' people, of Christians. And there's some things that are unclear to you. There's some things about Jesus that aren't certain in your mind. There's some ambiguity. There's some questions. There's some doubts. And I'm writing so that you will know what you need to know. I'm writing that you can have certainty. Does Luke answer every question we have about Jesus? No. And some quote-unquote Bible scholars like to speculate and to try to answer the things that Luke or the other gospel authors don't talk about. But what Luke is saying is, "Look, you have what you need to have to be certain." If it's not in here, you don't need to know it. What I've written down are the things that you need to know that you can have certainty about what you've been taught. You know that we live in the information age. We have information, especially in this country at our fingertips. Those of us who have been in Africa, how many times over the last two weeks did you think to yourself, "Let me just Google that real quick. Let me just get on Wikipedia and find the answer to that," and you couldn't do it. And it was frustrating to not have information right at your grasp. We have more information than we know what to do with. You can pull up more information on your smartphone right now than entire continents of people have had for thousands and thousands of years. And in all that avalanche of information, how do you sort it out? How do you know what's true? Do you listen to Wikipedia? Do you listen to the Discovery Channel? Do you listen to your favorite choice of the day on cable news? Or do you listen to one of the network news guys? Do you listen to the tabloids? Do you listen to the newspapers? Who do you listen to in all of this information? And 2,000 years later Luke is looking us in the eye and he's saying, "Look, you're going to have certainty about this. You can have certainty. You don't have to filter it. You don't have to question it. You don't have to doubt it. It's true. And I'm writing to you about the things that have been accomplished. And I'm writing so that you will know and have certainty about who Jesus is and what He's accomplished on your behalf. Because we have that kind of certainty given to us by the Word of God. 2,000 years after Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead, people like you and I still gather together and celebrate the Lord's Supper. And we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we're basically as people of God looking back and saying, "We believe that something has been accomplished." Jesus didn't just come to teach a seminar. It didn't come to be a best-selling author. It didn't come to say, "Here's ten steps to a better life." He came to accomplish something that we could never accomplish for ourselves. He came to die or death on the cross, to seek and to save the lost. When we take the Lord's Supper, understand this morning, it is not a time for you to sit back and to feel sorry about the terrible things that happened to Jesus or to try to work up emotion about how painful it must have been to experience what He experienced. Jesus is not looking for sympathy. Jesus is looking for followers. Jesus is looking for people who will say, "I believe that what you accomplished, you accomplished for me." And when we take the Lord's Supper this morning, that's what we're doing. We're saying, corporately, together, visibly, physically, we believe that Jesus died our death on the cross, that He bore our sins, that He spilled His blood to accomplish something that we could never accomplish on our own. This morning, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, and if you have obeyed His command to be baptized, we want to invite you to celebrate the Lord's Supper with us as the guys come forward. I'm going to ask you to bow, and our band is going to come up. We're going to worship while we take the Lord's Supper, and our deacons and our elders are going to make their way to the back. And once you spend just a few minutes thinking about your relationship with Jesus Christ, maybe you've made the mistake of looking for a Jesus who just tells you how to make life better, or how to make things smooth, or how to be more comfortable. And maybe this morning, for the very first time, maybe you have heard about Jesus all your life, and maybe today, for the very first time you need to trust in the Jesus who came to seek and to save the lost, who came to accomplish something. Father, we come to you this morning as sinners. Father, we are nobodies. We have nothing to offer you of value, or merit, or goodness, or talent, or ability. Father, we believe that Your Word is true. We rejoice that the Son of Man came humbly in the form of a servant as a man, that He lived a life of perfect obedience, that He sought us when we were lost and far from you. Father, we thank You that Jesus saved us, that He died our death, that He took our punishment. And Lord, as we take of the bread and as we drink of the juice, we are affirming and reaffirming our faith in what Jesus has accomplished. Father, we believe that for the joy set before Him, Jesus endured the cross and He scorned its shame. We believe that He bore our sins and His body on the tree. We believe that He has ransomed us, not with silver or gold, but with His blood. And so, Father, as we worship and as we take of the bread and as we take of the juice together in just a moment, Father, we pray that You would point us and direct us towards Jesus in what He's accomplished on our behalf. We pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen. [MUSIC]