Full Sermon Transcript
Can we give our two readers a hand this morning? I Want to welcome you to Shepherds Gate. Those of you that are here in person, those of you that are streaming in online, or maybe you’re watching later on demand. My name is Tim. I get the privilege of being one of the pastors here. And, we are in a series of messages that we’ve been in the last, actually two and a half years out of the book of Genesis. and today, believe it or not, is sermon number 53, which means we only have seven sermons left. And everyone said, good. Somebody said, Amen at the first service, and we told them not to come back. No we didn’t, but anyways, it is still seven sermons left. And if you are new, let me just explain what just happened in that moment. we are so committed to the Word of God here. We believe that that the Bible is not like any other book on the planet. It is the very words of God. And so when we read it, or we hear it being read, that that is what has the power to change and transform our lives. And so as we have been going through Genesis, we have committed to reading every single word, whether that’s the preacher’s responsibility, if it’s a shorter chapter to read it to you during the sermon, or it’s a video reading, or as you heard this morning, a live reading from our readers.
And so, if you want to get involved in this, the best way to do it is actually to download our app. Every week. We have new people downloading our app. It has everything in there. As we encourage you to read the Word of God throughout the week. As well, and to see the way that it actually impacts your life. Our app also has everything else you could possibly need to learn about our church, from our kids, to our students, to our adults, to our care. Even all those incredible mission opportunities that you heard that people are doing here at Shepherd’s Gate, because we believe as a church that every single day is a mission trip. And every single day God gives us an opportunity to go out and to be his hands and feet. Amen. So if you haven’t been here, don’t worry if this is your first time here, Ben and I, actually, we would love to meet you after the service will be out there in the west lobby. And if you didn’t hear it in the video announcements. today is our 45th birthday. Shepherd’s gates been around for for 45 years.
We are 45 years young. Can we give God praise for that? And what an opportunity for us as we have cupcakes from our hospitality team after the service, hopefully you can stick around, grab a cup of coffee and, just let us know a little bit more about you and connect with you. today. So the last couple of weeks, we’ve been looking at Joseph, who’s really the main character, in the finale, you could say, of Genesis. And, God is really giving him this incredible supernatural ability to interpret dreams. And so he’s interpreted the dreams of Pharaoh’s cup baker or cupbearer and baker. He’s interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams. and now, because he was able to interpret the dream of the guy who’s the ruler over this time period and over all the people, in this particular place of the world, he actually gets promoted to being second in command. And the Bible, sometimes, as we read chapter by chapter, it really does. Sometimes go really quickly. And so last week, seven years went by like one chapter, seven years, they got to experience seven years of plenty. So God bless them. And this was part of the dream that that Joseph interpreted for Pharaoh. And so now they are in the first year of famine, in fact, the way that it ended last week in Genesis chapter 41 was this all the world? So at that time, the known world to them, as far as the sun rose and set was the known world came to Egypt. Everybody is coming to Egypt because that’s where the food’s at. And Joseph is the one who gets to be responsible for distributing it, because he was the one that came up with the plan on how to store it so that people’s lives would be saved.
So God used him miraculously to do that. And now we’re in the first year of the of the famine. So if you have your Bibles, we encourage you to bring your Bibles. If you want to grab those, we’re going to start in chapter 42, which began to this way, is that when Jacob learned that there was grain in Egypt. So pause there for a moment. Jacob is Joseph’s father. He’s far, far away from Egypt. He actually thinks Joseph is dead. He learns that there’s grain in Egypt. And so he looks at his other sons and he says, why do you keep looking at each other? Isn’t that such a dad thing to say when when people are starving and at this time, the sons, you know, they’re all married, they all have kids of their own. They’re out of food. Jacob becomes is becoming more and more an old man. He’s like grandpa status now. And he’s looking at his kids going, why aren’t you figuring this out? Why don’t you have a plan to make sure that we all don’t die of starvation? And so part of it is they just didn’t know. But the other part of it is in the back of their mind, there’s this possibility that this brother that they have Joseph, that they sold into slavery may be alive. They’re not sure, but there’s this idea that he may be alive. And if he’s alive, is it possible that they may run into him in Egypt? And so Jacob continues, I have heard that there’s grain in Egypt. Go, get out of here. Go buy us some so that we won’t die. And again, I made this point last week, but it’s important to make it again. Desperate people do desperate things regardless of their social or economic status. We saw this last week with Pharaoh. He has a dream that’s troubling him. He’s willing to do whatever it takes in order to have his dream interpreted. Now we see Jacob. He’s desperate. They’re starving. He needs to come up with a plan. And so what does he do?
He tells ten of his kids, of his boys to go to Egypt, but he keeps one back. Benjamin, why does he keep Benjamin back for good? So those of you that have been with us, you remember we’ve been looking at this chart a lot. So Jacob actually has four baby mamas. Okay. He’s got two wives, Leah and Rachel. They each have servants, Leah and Rachel, the ones that convinced Jacob to also sleep with them and produce children. And so you can see here on our chart, you can see Joseph in his coat of many colors. That is no more because, his coat was destroyed by his brothers and he was, you know, fed a lie and was told that that he was devoured by an animal. That’s what his dad thinks. And so you can see here Rachel produces two children, Joseph and Benjamin. Benjamin, this isn’t the birth order, by the way. Benjamin being the youngest of the 12. Now, Scripture also tells us that Jacob’s favorite wife is Rachel. Rachel is dead. She died a few chapters ago. Okay, so he thinks Joseph’s dead, so he can’t have Joseph be his favored anymore. So who’s his next favorite? Benjamin. All right, now keep that in mind. And then also remember the two on the far left, Reuben and Simeon. Because you’re going to see them come up in this chapter. So the brothers load up their donkeys, they make the trip to Egypt, they arrive. And what’s the first thing they do? They bow down to Joseph, to their faces, to the ground.
This is really important. As soon as Joseph saw his brothers coming, he recognized them. But he pretended to be a stranger because he realized that they didn’t recognize him, and he actually spoke harshly to them. How many you think he had every right to do this? If you were Joseph? Now think of this. This is 20 years later, 20 plus years later. He was 17 when he was sold into slavery. And now 20 plus years later, he is now face to face, eyeball to eyeball, with his own flesh and blood. A dad that he shares with all of these men. And this is his opportunity. And what’s so fascinating about this is the only reason they’re bowing down to him is not because they know who he is, it’s because they’re desperate. It’s because they’re hungry. It’s because without Joseph intervening, they are not going to be fed. Now, some of you have asked those of you that been with us all along, has Joseph kind of in the back of his head, always remembered the dreams that God gave him when he was 17? And the scriptures up to this point have not told us whether or not he remembered those dreams. Maybe that’s what sustained him when he was in Potter’s house, or when he was in jail, or all the circumstances that he’s gone through. We don’t know until you get to chapter 42, where it actually tells us that Joseph remembered his dreams about his brothers. So as he’s recalling the dreams that God gives him, he’s also accusing them of being spies and trying to throw them off. If you flashback to chapter 37, that’s when we get Joseph’s two dreams again. He’s 17 years old. The first dream he has is that the sheaves, which are just crops, were gathered together. So his brothers crops were gathered around his crop and they bowed down to Joseph. The second dream is is equally as bizarre because he tells it to his brothers again, and he says, the sun and the moon.
And look at what it says. How many stars? 11 stars were bowing down to him and his dad. Jacob actually interprets this dream when he hears about it as the sun being himself, the moon being one of his wives and the 11 stars being the other 11 boys. That was his interpretation of Joseph’s stream. So now all of a sudden, you’re seeing part of this fulfilled, because now ten out of the 11 brothers are there. Dad’s not there yet. One of the wives aren’t there yet, but you’re starting to see the fulfillment all of these years later. And so as Joseph is questioning them, as he’s saying, okay, well, who are you? Where are you from? What’s the makeup of your family? They reply, we’re 12 brothers, the sons of one man. So they admit their family church a little wonky. And not that this would ever happen in our day and age, we don’t know of anybody that would have children with multiple women. None of you read the news last week. I’ll let you read it today. This is what it says. The sons of one man. So they’re admitting one dad. Lots of moms who lives in the land of Canaan. The youngest is with our father. Benjamin’s with our father. And look at what it says. And one is no more. So, yeah, put yourself in Joseph’s shoes very. Telling him the story he already knows. And he realizes that in this moment they refer to him as no more. Now, if you were here last week, we talked about this human emotion, about how difficult it can be when it feels that people forget us. Like when we’re in a time of crisis, or we just need someone to come put a shoulder or, you know, put it put an arm around our shoulder or, or to bear a burden with us. And, and we have a friend who lets us down, or a family member who’s not there during a critical time in our lives or, or a family member that seems more obsessed about themselves and even about what we’re going through. And I even said sometimes that happens in the church, like sometimes people expect the church to respond a certain way.
And when we don’t respond a certain way, not because we’re we’re trying to not respond. We just something fell through the cracks. It can hurt us deeply. It can have an impact on our human nature. And here you have in the text, almost the next level, because it’s one thing to be forgotten. It’s another whole level to be erased from a family, isn’t it? And some of you in here have experienced this pain. Some of you in here maybe have even caused this level of pain in your family. When you started here at Shepherds Gate, I worked in student ministry. I was single at the time. I was very new into the years of ministry that God has blessed me with, and I was meeting with a couple who had two teenage children, one who did everything right and one who did everything, and that child got into a lot of trouble, constant trouble. And so we were meeting to try to figure out a way for the church to come alongside this family and to help pour into these kids. And, and maybe a youth group was going to do it, or our youth programing our retreats. And as time went on, as as the years went on, as the kids got older and older into high school, it became apparent that the one that kept being an issue continued to do the wrong thing and go down the wrong path. And I remember meeting with this particular couple and the frustration and the heaviness of trying to figure out their own kids. But I’ll never forget what one of the parents looked me in the eyes and said to me and, and uttered these words, that child of ours is dead to us. And I didn’t have the maturity back then to deal with it like I would now.
I didn’t have the word. I was just in shock that someone you could have a kid that God has placed under your care, and you could get to the point where you completely eradicate them out of your life. And yet again, this happens all the time if you do the digging. Some of us, if we’re honest, we’ve written people off, we’ve removed people from our lives. And and there is a balance to this, because sometimes there is a reason to do that, and there’s a healthy reason to do that. And you have to have the proper boundaries in place. But there’s also plenty of times when someone gets their feelings hurt or someone refuses to work through the process of reconciliation. And we hold on to these feelings of bitterness and resentment, even though God does not want that for us, or even command us to live that way as followers of his. So again, you’re Joseph. You’re listening to all of this transpire before your very eyes. He looks at them and says, listen, you are not leaving this place unless you bring the youngest brother, Benjamin, here, my only biological brother from both my mom and my dad. You can send one of the ten of you back home the rest of you are going into prison. So figure out which one of the ten is going to make the journey by himself back home. And then you can. And then you can bring Benjamin back, and then we’ll figure out a way to maybe if I’m nice to you, give you some food so that you don’t die. And so what does he do? He throws him in jail for three days.
Imagine those ten guys. Imagine the conversations that they’re having trying to sort this out. Did they pick straws? I mean, how in the world were they going to pick one? Who was the one that was going to go and be able to go back and confront dad or tell dad that this was what they were ordered to do? It’s interesting because on the third day, Joseph pulls him out of jail, looks him in the eyes and said, do this and you will live. And then he gives this very interesting little nugget in here, for I fear God. Which in some regards you think would be a nod to the brothers to say, wait, what did you just say? Wait, can you just repeat what you said? Or hey, what did he just say? Did he just say he fears God? I mean, this is a pagan society and he’s second in command of Pharaoh. There’s no reason that they would believe that he actually has faith in the one true God. And here he literally says to them, I fear God. And yet it never crosses their mind that maybe there’s something different about the person that’s standing in front of them. He decides he’s going to change the plan. He says, okay, here’s the plan. Now let one of your brothers stay here in prison, and the rest of you can go back with the grain so that you can feed your households.
Wait, what? They just spent three days coming up with a plan of who the one person was. I was going to go back. Now he completely flips it and says, all of you are going to go back. Nine of you are going back and one of you are staying here. And so what did the brothers do? This is what brothers do. So family members do. They circle up again and they recognize, man, we’re being punished. But the source of our punishment, the reason for our punishment, goes all the way back because of the way that we treated Joseph. And this is so intriguing because it says we saw how distressed Joseph was when he was pleading with us for his life. Now, when we first find out that he’s sold into slavery, it doesn’t tell us this. We get no narrative. We get no details about the conversation between Joseph and his brothers. All it does is say they threw him in a pit. They took his coat of many colors, and they threw animals blood on it. They created this whole narrative, this whole lie, and then sold them and off to Egypt Joseph went, and now we find out that he was actually distressed. So this was very emotionally and mentally draining on Joseph, as we would expect it to be, not only so that he just didn’t stand there in silence and become a slave. He’s pleading with his own brothers for his life. They’re retelling this, and Joseph is standing on the sideline listening to this. He’s listening to them retell his own story, and they’re saying, we’re at fault.
We’re the ones that screwed up. We wouldn’t listen. And because we didn’t listen and because we did this terrible, awful thing and because we’ve been living with this line, our father still thinks that he’s dead. Now, 20 plus years later, we’re now dealing with the result of our sin. Finally, the oldest brother steps up and he looks at the other brothers and says, did I not tell you not to sin against this boy? You might remember Reuben, the oldest one actually tried saving Joseph. You wouldn’t listen. You must give an account for his blood. A couple things here. Imagine this. He did try to save him. And when he went to come up with a different plan, that’s when the other brothers came up with the ultimate decision to sell Joseph. And we can look at this and say, oh, here comes Reuben, being the oldest, the most responsible. Again, speaking into the situation. But he’s not innocent. He’s an accomplice because he has been, lying to his father along with his brothers. He has never come clean. He knows what they did, and he’s never gone to his dad. And relieved his dad’s conscious of the fact that Joseph may just, in fact, still be alive. So much dysfunction, so many lies to keep track of. They’re still holding on to their secret sin. Now imagine Joseph, he’s human. He’s listening to this conversation that’s taking place. He knows the immense amount of power that he has over his brothers. And in the next response, he turns away from them. He leaves the situation and it says he weeps.
All that anger that you would expect him to have, all that animosity, all of the unforgiveness that you would just assume that would be built up into his heart. And here now, all of a sudden, he is overcome with emotion. He has to remove himself from their presence. Why is he weeping? What is it that’s going on in his heart? Remember, he loves God. He’s followed God. He’s always submitted to the Lord. Always recognize him as the one that’s doing everything in and through and for him. Interesting. When you think of Jesus that when Jesus overlooked the city of Jerusalem, the scriptures tell us that he wept. He wept bitterly because he so desperately wanted people to know that he was the Savior of the world. When Jesus showed up to a funeral and Martha was upset with them, what did he do? He put his arms around Martha and he wept with Martha. Something that shows you here the heart of every human being. But it shows you the heart of our God. Because I would submit to you today that every heart of every human there is a desire, every single human has a desire to belong, whether you realize it or not. Go all the way back to the beginning of Genesis.
I know it was a long time ago, two and a half years ago, when we started this journey. In Adam’s in a garden, and he’s having the time of his life. He’s naked. All the animals are getting along. He doesn’t have to hunt for food. And God Almighty looks at Adam in this perfect state. And God is the one that says it is not good for what, but for a man to be alone? He didn’t ask man’s opinion. Man was fine. It is not good for him to be alone. I will make a, helper suitable for him, and for this reason a man will use father mother to unite his wife. The two become one flesh and. Boom! There you go. The first relationship ever recorded in human history. We were never designed because it was never our option. God never asked us our opinion on this. To go through life alone. And yet we live in a world, and we live in a society that tells us that exact lie. You should go alone. You don’t need anybody else. You shouldn’t need anybody else to rely on. You do it by yourself. I mean, just think of how wonky the world has been in the last five years, and even now, it’s so interesting to see what’s going on in our country with this whole like debate on remote workers versus in-person workers. And CEOs are starting to mess with their companies, and we know what’s going on with the federal government and all of these things, because certainly the best thing for us is to never leave our houses. Amen. And if you work the best thing is to only be at home and to work at home and just be on zoom calls, because those are the most those are the most important relationships you can have in life is over a screen.
Amen. In fact, you should never go to the grocery store. Just have your groceries delivered. Sell your car because you don’t ever need to go anywhere. Stop going to a restaurant. Just use Uber Eats. Don’t come to church, just streaming in online. It’s the same thing. If you get a big enough television, it’ll look like I’m in your living room anyways. That’s what society tells us. I don’t need friends. I don’t need a church. That’s not what God says over and over and over again. In Scripture. We are relational beings. God puts us in marriages. God puts us in families. And yes, are they highly dysfunctional big men across the room? We’re all dysfunctional. Thanks be to God. He’s the one that somehow helps us and gives us the ability to navigate this life. Now Joseph does something that I don’t think I can do, just being honest with you, if I got these guys in my sight, I know what they’ve done to me. I’ve waited 20 years for my moment. This is not what I’m going to do. He fills his brother’s bags with grain, fills him to the to the to the top. He wants to make sure that those that are back in his hometown, with his with his dad and his other wives and his nieces and nephews, he’s never met, they’re going to have grain. He puts each brother silver that they brought to buy the grain back in the sack. So he’s not going to even let them pay for the food that he’s about to give them. Look at this. Then he gives them food for the journey back so they don’t have to dip into the food. That’s for the people back home. And then ultimately, he has his servants load up their donkeys. What are you doing? Why are you rolling out the red carpet for them? Why are you making this so accommodating? And remember, they don’t even know that he put the silver back in their bags until they get halfway home.
When they finally arrive home, they come to their father and they circle up the wagons and they have a family meeting. Imagine how exciting this must have been to tell Jacob everything that they experienced. And those of you that were with us for Genesis part four, where our main character was Jacob, and we’ve seen over and over again his pattern. How do you think he responded to what he is hearing, and that one of his sons is still left back in Egypt? This is what it says. He listens to their stories. He hears every detail about their interaction with Joseph, even though they don’t know Joseph. And he says to them, you have deprived me of my children. That doesn’t even make sense as children are in front of him. Joseph is no more. Remember, Joseph is his favorite. Joseph continues to be his favorite. Even though Joseph is dead now, Simeon is no more. So he’s just convinced that Egypt’s going to kill him. And now you want. Now you want to take Benjamin from me. Everything is against me. This guy is a terrible dad. This was the exact opposite of the way that you want to raise your family and lead your family. This guy is a narcissist, and he is completely utter, utterly beyond human understanding. And the way that he shows favoritism at a level that that is just unprecedented. Do you know, this is the same response he had when they brought the coat of many colors, Joseph’s jacket after they tore it and threw animals blood on it so they could trick their dad into thinking an animal devoured him. A similar response oh my goodness, Joseph’s dead. What am I going to do? There’s no reason for me to live any more. Just kill me now. Well, put yourself in the shoes of the other sons. Having to listen to your dad say this over and over again. The pain that this must have inflicted on the other guys. There and now here again.
We thought we got rid of Joseph. We thought, dad, maybe you level the playing field. Maybe you would stop having favorites. Now. In fact, this is the last verse this morning. My son will not go down there with you. Not giving up Benjamin. Simeon can die. Who cares? His brother is dead. Let me remind you again, Joseph. My favorite gone. He. Benjamin is the only one left. What a dagger to the heart. This is why we slow scripture down here at Shepherds Gate. This is why we intentionally read every word that’s in the pages found in our Bibles. It’s terrible. This is awful. By the way, if any harm comes to Benjamin on the journey you are taking, you will bring my gray head down to the grave in sorrow. And that’s it. That’s the end of our passage for today. Thank you for coming. Let’s pray you can all go get a cupcake. Mind numbing, isn’t it? When you slow down long enough. When you. When you really dig into this and just soak in Scripture, the levels and depths of pain. And some of you that are in here just like they just like some of you at the first service that were here for the first service, know how difficult this can be because you’ve experienced it firsthand. Someone’s betrayed you. Someone has forgotten you. Someone has written you off, or there’s some people in here. That’s your attitude. And you think you can just write people off. You think you have a right to just cut people out of your life, and you say that you’re done with them, and you think that you wear it as some kind of badge of honor.
Can I just tell you that’s not the heart of our God? Do you know in this story we’re not Joseph? We don’t get it right. All of us in here, we’re the brothers. We’re the betrayers. We’re the sinners. We’re the ones on our hands and knees, bowing down to God, asking for his grace and for his mercy. And thanks be to God. We have a heavenly Father that doesn’t look at any of us, no matter our stupidity, our pride, our selfishness, our arrogance and say, you’re dead to me. Instead, we have a God that looks at us and says, I love you, even if you keep screwing up, even if you keep sinning over and over again. And I have never stopped pursuing you. And I will never stop bringing you to myself. And and wrapping my loving arms around you, even if you’re kicking and screaming because you’re selfish and you can’t get over your prideful arrogance. I will never stop pursuing you and trying to break your heart a stone. That’s what you see in Joseph, and that’s what you see in the heart of our God through His Son Jesus Christ. Think about chapter 42 just for a moment. What are the absolute most important things to both Joseph and Jacob? Think of this for a moment. Joseph has everything. He’s second in command. He’s got gold chains. He’s got, you know, incredible wardrobe. He’s got a wife with two kids. Everything that he wants is at his disposal. He’s got servants. I mean, literally, there’s nothing this guy needs. And yet deep down, there’s one thing he doesn’t have. Jacob, by the way, is prosperous. We’ve been over this. God blessed him. So God gave him all of those kids. And God gave him an abundance. So he has all sorts of livestock and things. Even going through the famine. He was always a wealthy man. And yet deep down, there’s one thing that Jacob knew he couldn’t have this side of eternity. And for both of these two guys, it comes down to this. Relationships. That what they wanted, what they craved most. Joseph just wanted Benjamin. Jacob just wanted Joseph. And he wasn’t going to let Benjamin leave. He wasn’t going to have it happen again to him.
He was going to guard his heart. And he was thinking about this. Imagine the life that we live. Imagine all that we do for our places of work and for others around us, in the schedules we keep and and the things that we have to manage. What if this what if our relationships actually are the most important thing we have to cherish in this life? What if every morning we woke up with that in mind, instead of it being about another email, another project, another sale, another this, another that, another task. God, who today? Am I going to cross paths with? If you’re married is going to be your wife. That’s first person hopefully you see in the morning because you’re sharing a bed with them. If not, you need to fix that up. Hopefully it means you’re seeing your kids. If you got kids in the house. If you live alone, hopefully means you’re you’re coming here during the week, you’re in a Bible study, you’re coming here to church. Keep doing it. Don’t stop coming to church rubbing shoulders with other people, hugging other people, shaking hands with people and allowing them mercy and the grace of our God to keep his church and to hold his church together in right relationships. What does it look like to flip this whole narrative of what we’re constantly fed, and instead to cherish most the relationships that we have here and now?
Can I ask you something? What do you think we’re going to be doing when we get to heaven? Anybody thought about this? You think we’ll be scrolling social media? I think we’ll be trading Bitcoin. Think we’ll be obsessed with the stock market and our financial portfolios. Think we’ll be obsessed with our kids travel, sports or dance schedules. Whether or not our kids get to play certain teams or at certain times. I mean, it’s amazing when you sit down long enough and you process long enough, the things that actually are the most important things and how those are the things that kind of bubble up to the surface, and God and His grace and his mercy. And even this morning, through this text, are reminding us, and guess what? I’m most important. In fact, over and over again, when Jesus walked the earth, they asked him, what should we focus on? If you could narrow it down to like 1 or 2 things? Jesus, what are the most important things and what does he say? Love me with all your soul and your heart and your mind. Which, by the way, is completely impossible for any of us this side of heaven. Why does he give us this command? Because he’s an angry God with a finger or a fist out, and he wants to pound us into the ground or is it because he’s a loving, gracious God and he so desires relationship with us? The living God wants to have a personal relationship with you and each and every day. He wants to pour his mercy and his grace into you. You will never fix another human relationship on this earth. If you still. If you don’t understand your relationship with our Heavenly Father, and until you understand the forgiveness and the grace that he gives you, and you receive that into your heart, into your life, then that is what helps you and motivates you and encourages you and gives you the courage and the strength.
Then to go and repair the relationships that you have with others. This morning we’re going to end by singing this song and the worship teams coming up at this time. And as we sing this song, here’s my encouragement for you. Let this song be a confession of your heart to God. If God is speaking to you this morning and you realize you’re far from God, you’ve been running from God. You’re angry at God. Maybe God’s not answering your prayers. Whatever the situation is. Pour your heart out to him and realize that as you sing these words that we’re running to the father, that God is running toward you even more than your running toward him. God is the one opening up his arms, wanting to embrace you and hold you even if you’re kicking and screaming. He is not going to let go of you. He will never abandon you. And as we sing these words, may it be a testament of who he is, and the love and the grace and the forgiveness and the mercy he gives us through His Son, Jesus Christ, who is our Lord. So will you please stand with me this morning, and let’s respond to the message by singing these words out.