Josh Turansky 0:00

We get to start a new series this morning in Amos. We're going to spend seven weeks. Originally I had said nine weeks. We're going to spend seven weeks in the book of Amos. We're going to look at the first two chapters this morning. What I want you to remember as we go through the book of Amos is what we've talked about before, that God has created you to be a blessable, image-bearing, covenant partner with God. You're blessable. In Genesis chapter one, God created the humans, but then he blessed them. You're a blessable, image-bearing covenant partner with God. And now we're invited, not forced, but invited to follow Jesus according to his new covenant, and we are following Jesus as his kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven. And so when we step into any part of the Bible, we're stepping into the Bible as those blessable, image-bearing covenant partners. Where we're wanting to learn how do we follow Jesus from the book of Amos? Right? So this is an obscure book. It's in your Old Testament. It may be a book that you've never read before. And it's not on many people's like top five books of the Bible. But that's okay. You're going to be Amos experts by the time we're done. Seven weeks in the book of Amos. As I plan out like the preaching schedule for the church, we like to go through books of the Bible generally. I don't do many series. We just finished up Paul's first missionary journey from Acts 13 and 14. Now we're doing Acts. And I like to jump from both from the New Testament to the Old Testament back to the New Testament. So when we're done with Amos, we're going to 2 Corinthians. Now some people have a negative view or perspective on the Old Testament. If you're new to the Bible and you have a physical Bible in front of you, the bigger chunk on the left-hand side is the Old Testament. And sometimes people don't like the Old Testament because they're like, well, where's the story of Jesus? Like I'm just learning to read the Bible, but Jesus doesn't show up anywhere in Genesis or Exodus or Leviticus, Numbers. Where's Jesus? Other people have a negative view of the Old Testament because it's long. And sometimes it feels like you're bogged down in the history of the nation of Israel. Some people may feel like, man, I don't like the Old Testament because it's got these outdated social codes of how society is supposed to work. I hear that talking in the back there. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta, like, so we can all hear. Exactly, exactly. Thank you. You're jumping ahead in my notes. From the beginning. But I I'm still in my negative list here. You're jumping ahead, you're you're jumping into the positive part. That's right. So the other issue that people have with the Old Testament is that it's like um not your culture, right? It's referencing all these things about culture where it's like a covenant's made by splitting an animal in half, right? Or there's things about garments or um uh monetary systems and and kingdoms, and um, and so there's this just this gap, right? All of those are these gaps that can be felt as you're learning about what the Bible is saying. But this is the thing that you've got to understand, kind of like what Felicia's saying, but I think the most important thing to understand when you look at your Old Testament, you need to know that that was Jesus' Bible. There was no New Testament yet. So when Jesus talked about God's word, he was talking about your Old Testament. And it was also the proof text that the apostles would use as they're explaining Jesus to new converts, they're saying, listen, you've got to understand Jesus in the light of the Old Testament. Now, the church has made mistakes over the last 2,000 years where they've gotten away and they've said, like, well, the Old Testament is not for today, but man, spend some time. First of all, just obviously it's Jesus' Bible, it was used by the apostles, but you start looking at it, you start like one of my favorite resources is like the Bible project. And one of the things that they do is they help you see the design patterns. The first, just the first nine chapters of the Bible. The design and the design patterns of Genesis 1 through 9 are unparalleled literature. The repetition, the inversion, the irony, what's going on in your Old Testament. I've got this book I just randomly was looking at my books yesterday, and it's called uh the serpent in Samuel. Some guy went and he found all of the ways in which Genesis 3, where you've got the serpent tempting Eve, he went and found all the times where the serpent without being named is being um the motif is being surfaced in the books of 1st and 2nd Samuel. I mean, your Old Testament is beautiful. What is there? What's like the coded language where it's kind of like you're supposed to see the hyperlinks between stuff? It's just incredible, incredible. So as a church, we spend time in both the Old and the New Testament, and we're gonna do that for the next seven weeks. Let me read to you Amos one and two. Amos one and two, it says this the words of Amos, who was one of the sheep breeders from Tekoah, what he saw regarding Israel in the days of King Uzziah of Judah and Jeroboam, son of Jehoash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. He said, The Lord reigns from Zion and makes his voice heard from Jerusalem, the pastures of the shepherds mourn, and the summit of Carmel withers. In a minute we're going to pray, settle our hearts before the Lord. But before we do that, I just want to briefly introduce to you this character, Amos. Here we see that he is a shepherd. We'll see in a later chapter that he's also a sycamore fig dresser. Or in other words, he would take care of sycamore trees and harvest sycamore figs. He's from Tekoa, the southern tribe of Judah, and he was called by God to preach to the wealthier nation of the kingdom of Israel in the days of Jeroboam the Second. He was a prophet. And what it's important to understand is that prophets are not primarily people who guess the future. They are God's covenant attorneys who explain what is wrong right now and what God's covenant, sorry, what is wrong right now and what God is about to do about it. So a prophet is one who oftentimes, we use this metaphor to call the kettle black, who just speaks truth in that very moment. Now there are times where they jump over and the Spirit of God is giving them predictions about the future that come true. But primarily these prophets are these bold men or women that stand in the middle of their culture and speak on God's behalf, saying, This is what God thinks about this moment. And with that, let's bow our heads and pray. Lord, we ask that as we listen to the words of Amos the prophet and we look at how you guided his prophetic speech, God, we pray that you'd speak into our lives individually. We give you permission to speak to us, and we give you permission to speak into our church as a whole. God, where there are things that are wrong, where we need correction. Lord, you have permission. We know that you love us, and you only point out the things that are wrong because you love, you desperately love humans, and you want them to get it right. And so, God, we we just receive from you. We we bow our hearts before you. We come in humility before you with an attitude where we're ready to say, yes, and amen. We're gonna take what you say, God. We're gonna obey you. Lord, we want to obey you this week. We say these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Let me show you a map so just you have a little context. Where again, we're talking about Israel, the nation of Israel, but broken into two pieces. You'll remember in the story of Israel, they had three kings before the nation broke into two parts. Who was the first king? Saul, that's right. Who was the second king? David, that's right. And who was the third king? Solomon, that's right. Solomon was the third king. Now, Solomon committed a grave error. He allowed his hundreds of wives to draw his heart away from the Lord, and he became an idol worshiper. He would worship Yahweh, the God of Israel, and he would worship these pagan gods. And a prophet came to Solomon and said, Because you have erred in this way, and you have a divided heart, God is going to divide the nation. And so as history unfolded, you ended up with a northern kingdom of Israel and a southern kingdom of Judah. I know the map's hard to see. And I'm as we're working on the website, one of the things that I'm hoping to do is make this so that you can see my notes on your phone in front of you as well as on the screen. But for this morning, we have the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. And this guy, Amos, he is from Judah, the southern tribe, but his message is going to be primarily for the northern nation, the northern tribes that are called Israel proper. So you have north and south, is really the division. Now, if you imagine this northern kingdom of Israel in Amos' day, think of like a booming stock market, strong borders, busy churches, and God uses Amos to say to this very strong nation, something is terribly wrong. Something is terribly wrong. So the nation itself is in a season of prosperity. They're doing really well, they're really strong, they're confident, and yet God sends this prophet Amos to say, there is a disease in this nation. There are things that are not right in God's eyes. Remember, you're supposed to be a covenant people, and you are, at a societal level, violating your covenant with God. Amos's central burden is that the covenant God who cares about justice as an expression of true worship. God cares. The covenant-making God cares about justice in society as an expression of worship. Later in the book, he's going to cry out, let justice roll down like waters that uh Martin Luther King Jr. quoted from Amos in his speech. But chapters one and two are this dramatic setup for this prophetic message. This morning we're going to look at all the way through up until the end of chapter two. And what you need to know is that verses three, Amos one, three through two, five, they function as a geographical trap or rhetorical encirclement. Here's what I mean. There are seven oracles, seven prophetic messages that Amos aims against the surrounding nations: Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Amon, Moab, and Judah. And they each begin with a pattern. There's actually a pattern way that these messages go. Here's another map. And you'll see on this map as well as the last that you have these surroundings. Here we have the southern nation of Judah, northern nation of Israel, but we have these surrounding regions. So here's Gaza, right? Gaza. Up here you have Tyre. You have Damascus over there. We have Ammon, Moab, Edom. And basically the message of Amos is it draws a circle around the nation of Israel, including Judah. He has this indictment that God speaks through Amos against these surrounding seven nations. And then after he's done with that, the center of the bullseye, or the bullseye that's at the center, is the nation of Israel. So Amos goes through this exercise and God speaks through Amos to say, all of you have something that's wrong. And God is going to deal with you for those things. So there's a template. If you look in verse 3, you'll see. You'll see that it always starts. For each one of these nations, it's the Lord says, then he says, God says, I will not relent from punishing you. I'm not going to hold back my punishment. I'm not going to stop. I'm not going to relent. You are going to be punished. And then there's this repeated phrase, for three crimes, even four. In our culture, we talk about three strikes, you're out. For them, it's basically four strikes, you're out. It's you've done these three things, but because of this fourth, you've crossed a line. God's been merciful to you in these three things, but with this fourth, it tipped the scale where God has to deal with you. And then he says, because they. So there's always a description of what exactly they're doing wrong. And they're doing different things wrong. And then the next part of the pattern is that God says, I, therefore, I will send fire. And it's always fire against the citadels, or your version might be fire against your palaces. It's always this like it's always that God's going to send fire against them. And so he covers Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and Judah. We're going to just take one. We're going to look at Tyre, and I just want to show you this example played out in verses 9 and 10. The Lord says, right? Each one starts with that. The Lord says, I will not relent from punishing Tyre for three crimes, even four, because they handed over a whole community of exiles to Edom and broke a treaty of brotherhood. So do you see here we have God speaking, he's not going to relent. There's three crimes, even four, and then he's going to give them. It's because here's what you've done. And in Tyre's instance, they've gone and they've handed over, they've taken a community that was amongst them of exiles, and they handed them over to Edom and broke a treaty of brotherhood. One of the themes that comes up in the book of Amos is this word transgression. In Hebrew, it's pasha. We use the word uh transgression almost synonymous with sin, violation, um, iniquity. But in Hebrew, these Greek words for sin, or in Hebrew, these Hebrew words for sin, they mean different things. Transgression refers to a violation of a relationship. And here we see treachery by those people of Tyre, that they're taking exiles and handing over. We don't know why they handed them over, at least the text here doesn't tell us. But God looks at that and he says, That right there crossed a line, and that's why I'm gonna deal with you. And here's how he's gonna deal with them. Therefore, I will send fire against the walls of Tyre, and it will consume the citadels. And that's it. That's all that Amos has to say to Tyre. This is what's gonna happen to you. So he does this again with Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and Judah in a circumference around the nation of Israel. We read through this. We read through each of these accounts. You can look at it this afternoon if you want. And the inclination in our hearts is to say, yes, Lord, judge those war crimes, those traffickers, those who profit from the sufferings of others. We want a God who takes these things seriously, especially if we're the victim. If God looked at genocide, trafficking, and violence, and he said, ah, it's no big deal, you're not my chosen people, we would not call him loving. We would call him a monster. And so when we come through, so so you read through this and it's like, man, that's yucky. What am I gonna do with that in my morning devotions? You know, it's like he's sending fire on Tyre, fire on Damascus, fire on Amos. But you need to know that the God of the Bible sees not just Israel, but he sees the whole picture. He knows who's violated you, he knows who's wronged you, he knows your station in life, and it doesn't get past him. The reality, the theological reality that comes forward is that God is omniscient. He knows everything. He knows exactly what's going on in Tyre. He knows that these exiles that were there in Tyre were vulnerable. And when Tyre said, ah, we're sending you off to Edom, he knew that individuals, families, kids were hurt. And God says, when you did that, you crossed the line. It wasn't just three things, that was your fourth thing that you did, and I'm gonna send fire against you. And that's the God that we want to follow. We want a God who cares deeply about injustice. Well, we're gonna turn to Israel, and we're gonna begin to focus in on um what Amos had to say to Israel because. Each of these surrounding nations, they just got one or two verses. But Israel's going to get the whole 10, 11 verses here at the back half of chapter 2. It says, The Lord says, I will not relent from punishing Israel for three crimes, even four. Notice the same pattern, the same treatment that God does with the surrounding nations is the same pattern for Israel. It's because they sell a righteous person for silver and a needy person for a pair of sandals. Here's what you need to know. If you are well off, if you're well off, you and I, we have a moral obligation for those who are powerless, vulnerable, and poor. You do not, at least the picture that comes forward in the book of Amos is that you don't live in isolation. As much as you may want to say, oh, that's over there, that's a different city, that's a different geography. No, the Bible says that if you are a position, if you're a person of means and power, you have a moral obligation towards those in your community who are powerless, vulnerable, and poor. God's chosen people in this text get a treatment, get a focused treatment from God while it follows the same pattern. What comes forward is that you're my people, so I'm gonna, I've got some special words for you. It's kind of like parenting, right? Like you might go on a field trip with a bunch of kids, and your kids are on the field trip, and you might give a little bit of structure and tell some kids like, hey, shut up, you know, you're in the in the bus, you gotta calm down, kids. But man, when it's your kid that's speaking up, you got some special words for them, right? You got a different relationship with them. Yeah. And that that's how it is for God as he's working with um with the nation of Israel. And so he says to them that he has there's three crimes, even four, and then he's gonna begin to name them. And we're gonna go through a couple verses here where there's specific things that Israel is doing wrong. First of all, they sell a righteous person for silver and a needy person for a pair of sandals. Do you see that? Because they sell a righteous person, they sell a righteous person for silver and a needy person for a pair of sandals. This likely refers to perverting justice for a bribe or even using debt slavery to sell people into servitude. The point is not the footwear, but the triviality that a poor person is sold or handed over for an absurdly small amount. It just trifles in terms of the value of a human life. We have wealthy people, powerful people making decisions about individuals and families as if they're a pair of crocs. You have a pair of crocs? Got a phone. Grab that phone. And so God cares. Who is God defending here? The needy person, right? The righteous person who may be righteous but powerless. And God's saying, look, as a society, those of you that have means and have power, you're treating other humans, poor people, as if they're worth a pair of crocs. Isn't that crazy? A few years ago, in in 2018, uh Baltimore City decided that Perkins homes needed to be torn down and redeveloped. If you're new to the city, that's a housing development that's less than a mile from here. There were 605 or 604 apartment buildings. There's Section 8 housing. So the poor lived there. Some of you live there, right? You got an you got a stipend to be able to live there. And those of you that live there, you know that the city came, they had meetings with the neighborhood, and they said, listen, we're gonna do this in a gentle way. We're gonna move you out just one apartment at a time, and and we're gonna move you out, we're gonna help you find housing, and um, but we're not gonna move your neighbors out because we're just gonna do it one building at a time. Once we move you out, we'll tear down that building, we'll build a new one, and you can come move back in, and then we'll we'll tear your neighbor's building down, and um, we'll do it in a phased way. Meetings and meetings and you know, neighborhood council meetings. How do we how do we be gentle? How do we care for this neighborhood of the most vulnerable? They got approval, they got the city approved the thing, they wanted a grant of I think $35 million from the federal government to do the project, got greenlit, got approved, and I think it was in October 2018. I started hearing, oh no, they're moving everybody out in 30 days, 60 days. Everybody's gotta go. They said the infrastructure is were you there? Yeah. They said, oh, it's the infrastructure. The infrastructure we we can't do it how we said. Everybody's gotta go. It was just this violent process. And I attended as an as uh representing the church and representing uh the neighborhood, and I looked at this and it was just like that is wrong. That is that is like a violation of the poor, that it was more convenient to just be like, yep, whoop, we're wiping the whole thing out. That's the kind of thing where God is watching that happen. People of power who decide, you know what, we're in power, we can make this decision, and nobody's gonna be able to to um nobody's gonna be able to like oppose us. There's nobody has the power. Who's gonna oppose? They will complain, but but there's nobody that's just gonna be like stand up and say that's that's wrong and have any influence. And that's the type of thing that God's looking at in Israel, the northern tribe of Israel, the kingdom of Israel, and he's saying, This stuff is wrong. Verse 7 says this they trample the heads of the poor on the dust of the ground, and they obstruct the path of the needy. A man and his father have sexual relations with the same girl, profaning my holy name. So they trample. It's a this vivid picture of crushing the poor. Imagine someone's face just being pressed into the dirt. It covers both the physical and legal oppression, grinding the poor down. Taxes, rent, interests, harsh labor until they cannot lift their heads. God cares. God cares if you're a person of means and a person of influence, he cares how you operate in society. If you are that poor person, he cares for you deeply. He sees your head being tread down and being pressed down. He talks, he goes on, and he says, he talks about the obstruction of the path of the needy. The way, like the way that you're gonna go, right? You've got you've got a path that you want to go in life. They block, there's these people of power who are blocking the afflicted from getting justice and moving forward in life. Now, listen, listen, if you're a person of means, it is very easy to be like, well, it's not my problem. It's not my problem, right? It's very easy to put yourself in a position where you just kind of be like, well, tough, man. You know, you you you made your bed, you got to lie in it, right? You're poor, and maybe you're poor because you made bad decisions. It's it's easy if you're a person of means to just kind of like shrug your shoulders and not realize that maybe you're obstructing the path of the person who is needy. Then he goes on, and he talks about this man and his father having sex with the same girl. This is likely a cultic, um, like a cult prostitute at a temple. And they're having some kind of sexual, there's some kind of sexual exploitation. And this would be like analogous to our human trafficking that would happen today. It's not like these girls were like, oh yeah, I want to be a temple prostitute. No, they would be forced into this horrible position, and they're being taken advantage of both by this father and son. It's a picture of generational corruption. Hold on. It's sin passing from the father to the son and normalizing abuse. And so we have this idea: the poor are under their boots, and the vulnerable women are in their beds, and God says, profaning my name, that's what you're doing. You are giving me a bad name. Did you see that at the end there? He says, You're profaning my holy name. You see, as much as Israel as a kingdom had rebelled against God and they were worshiping idols, they were still God's covenant people. They still were the they were Yahweh's people. And they represented to those surrounding nations Yahweh. And this is how they're acting. And God's saying, you're making me look bad to those surrounding nations. Now, I know Christians don't ever do that. Like we don't ever make God look bad in society. Right? That's the idea here. That's the idea here is that these, the behavior of these people in society was profaning God's name. And so the the the um the indictments continue. Remember, Amos is acting like a covenant lawyer, an attorney that's indicting this northern kingdom. And he says this they stretch out beside every altar on garments taken as collateral, in the house of their God, they drink wine obtained through fines. It's the picture of wealthy worshippers lounging by altars, likely on shrines and shrine feasts, and they're relaxed, they're satisfied. But notice he says this you're stretched out beside every altar on garments that are taken as collateral. One of the interesting things that comes up in the first five books of Moses, the Torah, is that God allowed for a person's cloak to be used as the asset backing a loan, right? When you go to get a loan, they look at what assets do you have that can be used as collateral or to back your loan. Well, God said in the Torah through Moses that a person's cloak can be used like a pawn shop, right? You can use the cloak at the pawn shop. But in in Deuteronomy, it said that the cloak, whether the loan was repaid or not, the cloak had to be returned at the end of the night. Because that was the only way to warm yourself through the night. That was your only protection through the desert chill that they would face. And yet these people in the northern kingdom of Israel, they were using that garment as a cushion as they're worshiping their pagan altar, at their pagan altars, their pagan idols. The cushion is under their elbows. It's while it's supposed to be the only coat of some poor person out there. And then they're drinking wine. They're drinking wine in the house of their God that was obtained through fines. So they're going to their church essentially, having communion in their church setting to modernize it. But it was obtained through these like gross fines, these societally endorsed fines. Anybody ever park in like a bus stop? Yeah, that's a fine, right? One time I challenged a ticket from Fells Point like eight years ago, um, and I went to traffic court, and it was a great learning excuse. Everybody should go to traffic court because you learn a lot in traffic court if you have like a half a day to waste. And um the judge sits there and he listens to different people who've gotten fined, and they have really good excuses. Like one lady, she was a nurse, and she had come to pick up, she was uh like a caretaker for somebody who was um handicapped. So she parked in the handicapped parking spot in front of the house to get her patient. But she didn't have the handicapped stickers, she got the $502 fine for parking there. And so that judge, the judge listened to the case and he was willing to knock down the fine to like $25 or something like that. But there's all these different scenarios that happen in society where fines are given out, and in this society, there's fines being given out, probably to the poor, the needy, and then that revenue is being used to go and worship in the house of their gods. How perverted is that? Like, how messed up is that? They brought their injustice to church with them. The very coat they took from the poor became the cushion in worship. The wine they wrung out of the venerable became their communion cup. It's a serious, serious indictment. And so God says, Listen, we got some history here. You ever did that with your kids? Say, look, look, we got we got some history. Like you didn't just come into my life today. We got some history. And God goes through their history with them. He says to them, Yet I destroyed the Amorites as Israel advanced. This goes back to the story of being in the wilderness for 40 years, and God's wiping out Israel's enemies as they're going into the land. He destroyed the Amorites. And he describes the Amorites, their height was like the cedars. He was as sturdy as the oaks. So you had these nations and these tribes that were compared to sturdy trees. And God wiped those sturdy trees out on Israel's behalf. I destroyed his fruit above and his roots beneath. And I brought you out of the land of Egypt. I led you 40 years in the wilderness in order to possess the land of the Amorites. I raised up some of your sons as prophets, and some of your young men as Nazarites. In other words, I gifted to you as a nation godly people, consecrated people. Is this not the case, Israelite? This is the Lord's declaration. It's posed as a question. Do you remember your history? Do you remember what God has done for you? But then look at verse 12. But you made the Nazarite drink wine. One of the things that a Nazarite was was their life, their whole life was just different. Kind of like a John the Baptist. They're consecrated to God and they couldn't drink wine. And so these people are taking their Nazarites and they're making them drink wine. And then they're commanding the prophets, that's God's gift to them as a nation. They're saying, don't prophesy. They're turning their back on God's, God gifts this work to them as a nation, and they're rejecting God's work. We often do exactly this by pressuring serious Christians around us, devoted Christians around us. We say, hey, just relax. You know, get off your get off your high horse. Chill out, right? And yet God's gifting you, gifting to your life somebody that's willing to speak into your life. Maybe it's a counselor, maybe it's a parent, maybe, maybe nobody else would tell you the thing that that person's willing to tell you, but you know it's true. But instead of responding to it, it's like, no, stop it. Stop it. Get away. Get away from my life. He goes on in verse 13. And God says, Look, I am about to crush you in your place as a wagon crushes when full of grain. So he's going to go into the indictment here. He's going to describe, look at the description. Escape will fail the swift, the strong one will not maintain his strength, and the warrior will not save his life. The archer will not stand his ground, the one who is swift of foot will not save himself, and the one riding a horse will not save his life. Even the most courageous of the warriors will flee naked on that day. This is the Lord's declaration. It's a poetic piling up of military images. And he's saying there's not going to be an escape. The swift are not going to escape. The courageous are not going to escape. Everything that you would maybe place your confidence in with your military, God's going to obliterate it. He says, This look, I am about to crush you in your place as a wagon crushes when full of grain. Have you ever seen those pictures or gone to a third world country where it's like a rickety car, or even it is a wagon, and it's just like piled up like two stories high? And you're like, how does that thing not fall over? That's kind of the image here. And God says, like, my judgment upon you is you're the wagon. You're gonna just be crushed. But this is what you need to know for those of us living today is that Jesus stood in your place. Jesus was the wagon that was crushed. He was loaded up with your sin on the cross so that all your guilt could be taken away. And so God can look at your life and my life in an unvarnished way and say, that attitude is wrong. The way you're treating that person is wrong. That language is wrong. But we're able to look at those things and we're saying, yeah, God, you're right. But there's nothing that we can do to put away our guilt. Our response is that we turn and we say, Jesus, forgive my sin. You went to the cross, you paid for my sin on the cross. Please, please forgive me. And you know what the Father says? It's finished. It's finished. That cart was loaded up with your sin and he's put it away. He's put it away. And so our response as we go through this is we're comforted knowing that God sees when we're wronged, and God is able. In his love to now speak to us and say, that's wrong, that's wrong, and that's wrong. And I've given you the Holy Spirit to help you grow. In my love, I've endowed you with the power of the Holy Spirit to live a life of obedience, to no longer wrong your neighbor, to no longer mistreat the poor and the vulnerable. Now you can be contributing within society. You can flourish within your society. You can be a good neighbor because I have given you the power of the Holy Spirit. That's what he wants to teach us. That's how he wants to work in us. We have a Savior who was crushed in our place so that we could be forgiven. We're going to take communion together. I'm going to pray. And after I'm done praying, I'm going to ask you, those of you that are followers, if you're not a follower of Jesus yet, don't take communion. This is for believers. Okay? And if you're not a believer yet in Jesus, what I want you to do is I want you to pray and begin to talk to God. I want you to begin your relationship with Him. If you have questions about that, if you don't know how to have a relationship with Jesus, talk to me. Talk to one of our other leaders, and we'll help you. But for those of us that are believers, I want you to come and get the communion elements and we'll take communion together.