Amos 9

Amos delivered a devastating word to a prosperous people who had mistaken God's patience for His approval. Within 38 years, every word of judgment came to pass — the Northern Kingdom was scattered across the Assyrian Empire, the booth of David reduced to rubble. But Amos wasn't finished. Against all odds, God promised to raise what looked irreparably broken. Seven hundred and ninety years later, James stood up at the Jerusalem Council, quoted Amos chapter 9, and said: "This is happening right now." The resurrection of Jesus was the moment the booth of David was raised — and the nations bearing God's name were always in the plan. If you've ever wondered whether you belong in Israel's story, this chapter has your name in it.

Transcript

Josh Turansky 0:00

Let's talk about Amos 9. For the last seven weeks, we've been in the book of Amos. And as a church, you know that we like to go through books of the Bible and rotate between the Old Testament and the New Testament. And this morning we're finishing up the book of Amos. Does anybody know where we're going next? We're going to the New Testament, that's right. We're going to go to 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians. So if you want to start reading ahead, you can. 2 Corinthians is one of my favorite letters that Paul wrote. Paul the Apostle wrote it. So you can read ahead. Today we're going to finish Amos and we'll be in Amos chapter 9. So I want to just walk you through, walk you through some of what we have here. But one of the things that I've put in front of you every single week is this statement, which is that God has designed you as a blessable, image-bearing covenant partner, following Jesus according to the new covenant. And so that's our framing. We look at the book of Genesis, we see the way that God made humans is that they're blessable, they bear the image of God, and they're designed to be in a covenant partnership with God. That's how He made you. That's how He made me. And so we are praying every Sunday as we step into this new part of Amos, as we go into 2 Corinthians. God, what do you have for me as a blessable, image-bearing covenant partner? What does that look like? And I'll give you just a heads up. You're in this chapter. You and I are in Amos chapter 9. You're literally, your name's not there, but you're referenced in this chapter. So keep an eye out for that. It's going to be a lot of fun. I want to uh just read to you from the beginning. Um I want to read to you the first 10 verses so that you have a bit of context for what's going on. The chapters really has two parts. Amos 9 has has two pieces. There's the judgment piece, and then there is the rescue piece. Um we've been, as we've gone through Amos, we've seen that Amos is a shepherd from Judah, and he's also a farmer of figs, and God has sent him to the northern nation of Israel, basically his brothers and sisters, but there's two kingdoms going back to Solomon's day. This northern nation is, they've never had a good king. They've basically left and broken their the covenant with God. They're not following the covenant that God laid out through Moses. And Amos's specific indictment against the nation is twofold. One, they are abusing and mistreating the poor and vulnerable in society. So there's a societal issue that God has with this northern tribe. And then the second is just their pagan worship. So they're very religious, but they've mixed rather than just being worshipers of Yahweh, they've mixed in pagan rituals and they're worshiping not in Jerusalem where the temple's at, but they've set up their own uh amalgam or mixture religion in their own in Bethel. So the capital is Samaria, and uh they're worshiping in Bethel. And so Amos has been preaching to them, telling them, this is wrong. God is, even though right now it looks like everything's okay, you need to know that God is not okay with how you're treating people and how you're worshiping. And judgment is coming. So we've read a lot of the material around judgment, so we're gonna cover it relatively quickly this morning. I'm gonna read to you through these first ten verses and then summarize it for you. I saw the Lord standing beside the altar, and he said, Strike the capitals of the pillars, so that the thresholds shake, knock them down on the heads of the people, then I will kill the rest of them with the sword. None of those who flee will get away, none of the fugitives will escape. If they dig down to Sheol, from there my hand will take them. If they climb up to heaven, from there I will bring them down. If they hide on the top of Carmel, from there I will track them down and seize them. If they conceal themselves from my sight on the sea floor, from there I will command the sea serpent to bite them. If they are driven by their enemies into captivity, from there I will command the sword to kill them. I will not keep my eyes on them for harm, uh, and I will keep my eyes on them for harm and not for good. The Lord, the God of armies, he touches the earth, it melts, and all who dwell in it mourn. All of it rises like the Nile and subdues like the Nile of Egypt. He builds his upper chambers in the heavens, and lays the foundations of his vaults on the earth. He summons the water of the sea and pours it out over the surface of the earth. The Lord is his name. Israelites, are you not like the Kushites to me? This is the Lord's declaration. Didn't I bring Israel from the land of Egypt, the Philistines from Kaftor, and the Arameans from Kir? Look, the eyes of the Lord God are on the sinful kingdom, and I will obliterate it from the face of the earth. However, I will not totally destroy the house of Jacob. This is the Lord's declaration. For I am about to give the command, and I will shake the house of Israel amongst the nations as one who shakes a sieve, but not a pebble will fall to the ground. All the sinners among my people who say, Disaster will never overtake or confront us, will die by the sword. Man. That's heavy. That's a that's a very heavy passage. It fits well at the end of the text. Let's pray and ask the Lord to speak to us as we go through the rest of this chapter. God, we um we come before you and we're grateful that you're the God that communicates, that you haven't just made the world and left it alone, but you speak and you warn and you tell a nation ahead of time, here's what's gonna happen. Here's how you're thinking, but here's what's gonna happen. And Lord, we ask that you would be in our midst and that you would speak to us and that you'd reveal yourself. Thank you for creating us and making us these blessable image-bearing covenant partners. And we ask, Jesus, that you would be our teacher this morning. Again, teach us um how to do life, how to follow you. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. So Amos lays it out, and he basically says, There's gonna be no escape, but you do need to know that there will be a remnant. Have you ever gone to the beach and had one of those sand toys that's like a sifter? And you can take and you can kind of stick the sand in there, and the water pours over uh the sand, and the um the sand kind of goes through your sieve, but what stays in the sieve is usually some seashells or some some bigger pebbles, and that is essentially what um God is saying to the nation of Israel. I'm going to sift you. And everyone that's gonna fall through that sifter are gonna be the ones that are judged. But not everyone's gonna be judged, not everyone. You see that if you go back here, he says it's going to be um this shaking of the house of Israel. But he says that um he's gonna obliterate everyone for the face of the earth. However, I will not totally destroy the house of Jacob. This is this, all throughout the prophets, there's an ongoing teaching that there will be a remnant. There will be those who are faithful and obedient to God, and God preserves them through this. There's that 10% that just survives through all of the judgment of God to deal with their sin. And so there is going to be this remnant, but they there's all kinds of um, do you see how God's addressing their um their thoughts about judgment? So remember, these are people who they're comfortable, right? They're not worried about their finances, they're not worried about their enemies because they have a strong army, they've got a good economy, they're doing good. And so, really, to kind of like go back and read what Moses had said would have been like there is nothing at this moment necessarily provoking them to be a religious people. And and you can relate to that. Sometimes when we're doing good and everything's okay, we can feel like, well, you know, God must be happy with me, you know, I don't really need to worry about maintaining my relationship with God because everything's okay. And and God's been saying to them, you're misinterpreting your your um success, you're misinterpreting your comfort, you're you're misunderstanding what's going on. Because just because you're comfortable right now doesn't mean that what you're doing is the right thing. And we've been taking heed to that. We've been listening to that warning because God works with us just like we work with our kids. How do you work with if your kids are doing something wrong, do you just like come up and just knock them upside the head? Hopefully not. Right?

unknown 11:18

Three warnings.

Speaker 11:19

Three warnings, right? And that warning is a verbal warning, right? You're saying, you're saying you're doing the wrong thing. This happens in the workplace, right? Usually, unless you have some egregious violation, usually you just start by getting written up, right? And you're told, like, hey, this is a warning. That's how God deals with us. Like, God will warn verbally first before there's ever some major judgment that occurs. So that's what God's doing with them. And he's and he's saying, listen, there is judgment that's about to come. So he says, first of all, this judgment it's inescapable. He borrows the language of Psalm 139. Remember where um David prays, like, who can run away from your presence, right? If I go to the mountains, you're there. If I go to the depths of the sea, you're there. Well, Amos kind of rifts on that idea, but he says, if you try to run away from God's presence, to go, you run away, you know, God's judging in you, like, oh, I'm gonna flee to the mountains. Nope, God's gonna judge you there. If you say, I'm gonna swim to the depths of the sea, nope, God's gonna judge you there. If you try to cross the sea, right? Like Jonah, nope, God's gonna judge you there. So there's this language that it's comprehensive judgment. You're not gonna get away. One of the things the Bible teaches is that God is omnipresent. There's no place that you were at this week where God couldn't see you, where God wasn't there. He saw the whole thing. There was no word spoken, attitude in our heart, thought process that we had that escaped from the eyes of God this last week. And then Amos has this doxology. He says that this is all yours, God. That's five and verse five and six. And then verse seven through ten, he says, don't be presumptuous. He calls and he says, Don't think that you're some that you're special or different from these surrounding nations. We saw this in verse seven. Israelites, are you not like the Cushites, right? Didn't I bring Israel from the land of Egypt? He's like, Yeah, Israel, you're a different group of people, but you're not going to escape because you're special, right? It doesn't like you are the same, like you're going to be held to account. So he's addressing the arguments that might get thrown up. Here's what happens, just so you know. Thirty-eight years after the time of Amos, the first group of Assyrians come and they take away and attack the land. So Amos is saying, the judgment's coming. And here's a people who have 38 years to get it right. And within 38 years, God's word is proven true. The Syrian Empire, which is the most terrifying military force up to that point, comes in as a wave to this northern area. The tribes that are east of the Jordan River, Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh, they are conquered and deported over to Assyria. So in your mind, in your geography, think of Iraq. Think of even as far as Iran. The people are taken back over there in the first wave. That's 722 BC. Or that's rather that's in 732 BC. In 722 BC, there's another attack that comes from Assyria that comes even further in. They encroach further beyond the Jordan, and Samaria, the capital city, falls in 722 BC. And there's a three-year siege by a king named Shalomaneser the Fifth and then his successor, Sargon II, and they capture Samaria, and there are 27,290 Israelites that are taken captive and taken off into the Assyrian Empire. These people are called the 10 lost tribes of Israel. They just get scattered. They're not allowed to live together. They get scattered all over this Western Asia area. And some of them, even to this day, are just scattered and living as in in exile. Now you're wondering what about the um northern or the southern tribe of Judah? When does that happen? That happens another um 50, 60, 70 years later, um, the Babylonian Empire comes and attacks Jerusalem, and the southern um tribe of Judah and Benjamin, they're carried off north as well. They're the ones that are in exile for 70 years. But here's the point: God has taken, he takes a random fig farmer and shepherd, commissions him, sends him to his not his tribe, but Jewish people to warn them and say the way you're doing culture is wrong. And they get 38 years to repent, and then the judgments that are outlined by Amos, they happen. When we look through all of Scripture, the thing that you see is that God always wins. He's gonna win. And the good thing about the God who wins is that he absolutely loves you. And he loves you enough to send his only son into the world, to die on the cross, to take away your guilt, so that you don't face this kind of judgment. So he's made it possible for your and my rebellion to be taken away so that we don't have to face these kinds of judgment. Jesus himself bore this kind of judgment for our rebellion, for our guilt, so that we could be spared. And he says, Listen, I'm inviting you to follow me. I'm inviting you to be a follower of me and have your sins forgiven. But listen, I'm not going to force you, I'm not going to force you to accept that invitation. Do you ever get an invitation in the mail to a wedding, a birthday party? When you get an invitation, it's not like me who got a summons to jury duty. I'll be there tomorrow. There's a difference between an invitation and a summons. Funny story. I I went and did my jury duty two weeks ago. I showed up, because I've done jury duty a lot. If you ever need have questions, ask me. And every time I show up for jury duty, they put you there, and you gotta wait like an hour before anything starts. So I thought, well, you know what? I'm gonna just get there 10, 15 minutes after it's supposed to start. I'm in a new county, so I walk into the room and I walk in, and there's like at least as many of you just looking at me quietly. And I was terrified. And I look over to my right, and I have they have you walk in to the front of the room. And the lady's like, Are you here for jury duty? And I'm like, Yeah. And she says to everybody, You're pretty late, aren't you? I'm like, Yeah, I guess I am. She says, Well, let me take down your name. You're gonna have to come back in a couple of weeks. Because I already went over all the instructions. Like the walk of shame, right? Okay. I was out of there so fast. So I got rescheduled for tomorrow. And I got my summons in the mail after that. You need to be there. I know now, not to be late. I'm gonna call tonight to make sure I'm supposed to be there. That's a summons. Jesus gives an invitation. He says to you, here's the offer. You can have life. Right? Some of you did lessons of assurance, right? He who has the son has life. He who does not have the son of God does not have life. He wants you to have life. He wants you to have eternal life, but it's an invitation. But what you need to know is that God is going to win, and in that invitation, you're invited to the winning team. Now you can decide, look, I want to be on the losing team, which is Satan's team. You have the total freedom. You can come here, you can hang out with us for church, you can have our amazing coffee, and you can decide. You can decide. I don't want to take that invitation. But you just need to know the record of history, biblical history, is that God always wins. He is going to win, and he has invited you to be on the winning side. And you just have to decide what do you want to do. And look at the good God of the Bible says, judgment's coming. Judgment's coming. And this judgment's gonna fall, it's gonna be comprehensive, and there will be a way of escape. You can be one of those faithful that that's a part of the remnant that turns to the Lord like Rahab, like Elijah. Like the prophets in Elijah's day. You can be like one of them, but you don't have to be. So those are the first ten chapters. We've got judgment that falls. But verses 11 through 15 is what I primarily want to focus our attention on for the rest of our time. It says this in that day I will restore the fallen shelter of David. I'll repair its gaps, restore its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old. So that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations that bear my name. This is the declaration of the Lord. He will do this. Look, the days are coming. This is the Lord's declaration. When the plowman will overtake the reaper, and the one who treads grapes, the sower of seed. The mountains will drip with sweet wine and all the hills will flow with it. I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel. They will rebuild and occupy ruined cities, plant vineyards and drink their wine, make gardens and eat their produce. I will plant them on their land, and they will never again be uprooted from the land I have given them. The Lord your God has spoken. So we got the judgment, and now Amos prophesies to them about this restoration, because they're not going to be entirely wiped out. There will still be a remnant. And the promise here is this restoration of the fallen shelter. This is literally the word tent, David's tent. Now remember, who's he talking to? He's talking to people who have these beautiful buildings. Remember the citadels that were referenced in chapter one? Palaces. And he says to them, listen, what's going to be restored is the tent of David. And then he references as if there's these gaps in the wall or a wall that's broken down. It's going to be repaired. God comes in and he is going to rebuild and restore his people. This is 790 years. 790 years before Jesus comes, Amos is saying these things. And yet Jesus comes, and there is this beginning of restoration. You see, the God of the Bible is not just telling you, you're going to be judged, you're going to be destroyed. He's warning that there is judgment. It's important for us to understand that. But what God wants for you and I is this restoration. He wants to take your life and rebuild it. And we're good at messing it up. I don't know about you, right? But we're good at being an enemy of the good stuff God wants for us. Right? We suffer from our own mistakes. And yet God is the one who's saying 790 years before Jesus that he is all about restoration. He begins to bring back a remnant. So you have those who were taken into exile for 70 years and then brought back into the city, but that's only a partial restoration. We see in Ezra and Nehemiah the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the temple. But there's more restoration than just rebuilding the buildings. There's the human restoration, restoring humans back to their calling. What I want to show you is that this passage, specifically this verse, and this verse, 12 and 13, are quoted in Acts 15. And I'm going to show you this. Remember, before we went through Amos, we went through Acts 13 and 14, and that was Paul's first missionary journey. I want to show you something that happened in Acts 15, which we didn't get to. You'll recall that Paul has gone and preached the gospel all across what we would call Turkey, then at that time it was Asia Minor. A lot of people are becoming Christians who are not Jewish. Those people are Gentiles. So all across the Galilee, the Galatian region, in Cyprus, people are becoming followers of Jesus, which is exciting. And then Paul and Barnabas report back the good news to Antioch. And this diverse city that sent Paul and Barnabas out are celebrating it. But then it says that some men came from Judea, that's the area where Jerusalem is at, and they begin to teach the brothers, this would be in Antioch, saying, unless you are circumcised according to the custom prescribed by Moses, you can't be saved. Now, most of you in this room are Gentiles. And so this group would be saying, look, if you're a guy and you want to be a follower of Jesus, you have to be circumcised in order to truly be reconciled back to God. And so this is upsetting. Well, I'll show you what happens. After Paul and Barnabas had engaged them in serious argument and debate, Paul and Barnabas and some others were appointed to go up to the apostles and elders in Jerusalem about the issue. So the question is what happens when Paul goes and tells all these Gentiles about the Jewish Jesus? Do those Gentiles need to become Jewish in order to follow Jesus? And you can see how this may have been kind of confusing, although Jesus never taught this. There's a real group here that's really saying you've got to act and be Jewish in order to follow Jesus. And Paul's like, nah, that's not happening. That's not how it works. Let's go to Jerusalem. Let's get the apostles and elders together and we'll settle the matter. To verse 5. But some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees, now, this is the conversation that's happening in Jerusalem. Some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, It's necessary to circumcise them and to command them to keep the laws of Moses. Again, the debate's happening now with all the apostles. Verse 7, after there had been much debate, Peter, this is Peter, who was one of the twelve, he stood up and he says to them, Brothers, you're aware that in the early days God made a choice among you that by my mouth the Gentiles would hear the gospel message and believe. That's Acts chapter 10 and 11. He's talking about Cornelius, who became a follower of Jesus, who was a Gentile. And remember, at that time, the Gentiles in this house heard about Jesus, and the Holy Spirit came upon them just like on the day of Pentecost. They're filled with the Holy Spirit. And all the Jewish people are like, what? This is crazy. I can't believe it. The Gentiles get to have the Holy Spirit just like the Jewish people? They're totally tripping out. So Peter, Peter's all excited about this, and he's retelling the story, and he's saying, there was no circumcision that happened to Cornelius' house. There was no Torah following that happened for them to get the Holy Spirit. How did they get the Holy Spirit? They believed in Jesus. They accepted that invitation. That's how it happened. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he also did to us. So Peter is making this argument that no, you Pharisees, you should not be telling the Gentiles to be Jewish in order to be a follower of Jesus. I'm going to give you a little bit more of this story. Okay, you're tracking? You got what's going on here? Okay, let's jump over to verse 12. The whole assembly became silent, and they listened to Paul and Barnabas describe all the signs and wonders that God had done through them amongst the Gentiles. Remember, the signs and wonders that God allowed Paul and Barnabas to do amongst the Gentiles, it's confirming this is a work of God. And you don't have to go get circumcised. You don't have to follow the 613 laws of the Torah in order to see all these signs and wonders. God doesn't need you to do that in order to work in your midst. After they stop speaking, then James, man, we're hearing from everybody, James responded. And he says, brothers, listen to me. Simeon has reported, Simeon, that's Peter, has reported how God first intervened to take from the Gentiles a people for his name. Again, Acts 10 and 11. And the words of the prophets agree with this as it is written. Now, are you ready? He's gonna quote the prophet, the prophet Amos. Okay? Here's what he says: After these things, I will return and I will rebuild David's fallen tent. Do you see it? We just read it out of Amos chapter 9. I will rebuild its ruins and set it up again. So that, he's continuing, this is more Amos, so that the rest of humanity may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles who are called by my name, declares the Lord, who makes these things. So here's what's going on. James is taking the book of Amos, and he's saying, listen, God is working in the midst of the Gentiles. Amos talked about this. He talked about you and I being a follower of Jesus, being a part of this restoration. And so this idea that you and I would have to be circumcised or follow the societal laws laid out in the Torah. No, you don't need to worry about that. You don't need to be Jewish to follow Jesus. God can work signs and wonders in your midst by just having faith in him, by placing your faith in him. So he continues on and he says, this was known from long ago. Now he's gonna continue on and he's gonna say, listen, the only thing that we need to tell the Gentiles is to keep themselves from sexual immorality, have a sexual, um sexual ethic that honors marriage. Don't eat things sacrificed to idols. In other words, um don't engage in in paganism. Drain the blood from your animals before you eat it, because the life is in the blood. Um we don't typically kill our own animals to eat it, so we're not all that worried about it nowadays. But these were the things that were laid out in Leviticus 17, 18, and 19 for the stranger that would come and live in the midst, the Gentiles living in the midst of Jewish people. So James says, this is really the only thing that God requires of the Gentiles is these three or four things to take care of the poor. To take care of the poor. So that is the way that Amos is used once you get over to the new covenant. But I I want you to see this again. All the nations that bear my name, so that they may possess the remnant. So you might have noticed when we were in Acts, what you may have noticed is that the way James quotes from Amos is different because he's quoting from the Greek version of our Old Testament, what we call the Septuagint. But it's the same idea, so that they may possess the remnant of Edipt and all the nations that bear my name. This is the declaration of the Lord. This is talking about you and I. God's invitation, his anticipation is that the door is going to be open for you and I to be a follower of Jesus, to be a part of his restorative work. So, what does this mean? It means that for those of us that live as Gentiles, we are also a covenant people. You're a blessable, image-bearing covenant person. We're keeping the heart of the law by not following idols, right? Following a sexual ethic, not eating what's sour, not eating um meat that hasn't been properly drained of the blood, taking care, caring for the poor. We're living as God's covenant people, just like Amos talked about. The um the restoration um in Acts chapter 2, as Peter is preaching to the Jews who are hearing about Jesus, he talks about the this day of healing or this day of restoration that would come. It's a theme throughout all of Scripture. And what I want you to know this morning, you may feel like you can relate to some of the descriptions in Amos 9, like the walls are broken down, right? Or there's a breach in the wall, or maybe you feel like you've been sifted and there's not much left in who you are. The the God of Amos that's depicted by Amos here is is the God who comes along and he picks up the pieces and he puts it back together. Okay, and then he says that the the fruitfulness for the restored people, listen, the fruitfulness is where there's so much harvest that the the planters, the people planting, the people tending the vine, are overrunning those who are harvesting because there was such a big harvest. When you look at your life, Jesus says, Look, I picked you to be a fruitful person. That means that good stuff is coming from your life: love, peace, working hard, caring for your neighbor, being a generous person, being an honest person, giving back to society. He chose you to be that fruitful person. And the way that Amos describes the fruitfulness is this fruitfulness where like there's there's you're still doing like the harvesting and taking care of the harvest by the time it's time it's time to plant again. That is an abundance that's like mind-blowing. Well, you know, like we do harvest here in in the US, is gonna run up to like late October, and then we plant again starting in March or April if you have a farm. Maybe a little bit earlier, depending on your crop, but generally, like if you got corn, right? Imagine that you had so much corn grow in your field that from late October all the way through the winter up till March, you're just still trying to manage all of that harvest. That's the picture that he has. That's what God wants for you in your life. That there is just this super bumper blowout crop where it's just like, I can't even handle the fruitfulness that's coming. That's God's vision for you. Remember, you're a blessable, image-bearing covenant partner. You may look at your life and you're like, man, I don't know how that good fruit's gonna come about. I'm just telling you God's vision for you. I don't know how it's gonna come about either. I know you walk with him, you abide in him, you remain in him, and that's where the fruit comes from. What it's gonna look like or how it's all gonna like play out, I'm not sure. But I know John 16 tells John 15, 16 tells me he picked you to bear fruit and to bear fruit that remains. I know that Genesis chapter 1 tells me that he made you a blessable image-bearing covenant partner. I know that the Bible tells story after story after story about lives, the those who are down and out, the outcasts that are incredibly fruitful. So, what it looks like, what fruitfulness looks like, what your story is, I don't know. But I know that we can look at this passage and we can see that God has this vision for you, where the plowman overtakes the reaper. Because the reaper is still trying to handle the harvest. Um, and the one who treads the grain uh treads the grapes, the sower of the seed. Look at that. The mountains will drip with sweet wine and the hills will overflow. Man, just sit in that this week because some of you, some of you are discouraged, some of you are hurt, some of you are confused. And just know when God looks at humans, he's got vision for you. He's got vision for you. And you're like, well, how's that gonna happen in my life? How's it gonna come to pass? He's got that. He's the one, if he's got the vision, he's got the plan, right? He's got the resources, he's got everything you need to so that your life looks like it. That's his vision over you. That you would be this abundantly fruitful person. I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel. They will rebuild and occupy the ruined cities, plant vineyards and drink their wine, make gardens and eat their produce. I don't know, it's just good. I don't know how to end this sermon. Because I'm just like, what a beautiful picture. What a beautiful picture. Some of you are older and you're like, well, I don't know what more fruitfulness I have. Like I my years are numbered. I don't know how to answer all those questions. Some of you are like, Well, I wasn't really smart in school. I don't know how to answer that question either. Some of you are like, I'm on a fixed income, I have like a very limited budget. Okay, fine. I don't know. I don't know what it looks like for your life to look like this, but this is how God talks. And there's not an exception because John 15 says he chose you to be fruitful. He made every human to be this blessable, image bearing, covenant partner. And so the invitation. Be with God who's going to win. Right? Be with God who's commissioned you to bear fruit. Accept his invitation into this life of faith, this kingdom life. Lord, thank you for this beautiful picture. Lord, how you produce this fruit is kind of mysterious. But you call us to abide and remain and to live in you. And we may have way more questions and answers, but Lord, you've told us like the steps are just to be in relationship with you. And so, Lord, I pray for each person that's here that you would give them just an understanding of relationship, of talking with you in prayer, reading your word, being in community with other believers. Lord, I pray that you would put the pieces together in our life to get us to that point where we're fruitful. Lord, we love you. We love your vision that you lay out here of restoration. Pray you'd accomplish all that's in your heart for us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.