Though God May Seem Silent, He's Never Inactive

guys all right at this time we'll go ahead and dismiss all of our three to five and six and seven-year-olds to the little district and uh we'll just continue to pray for their arts that the lord would call them to himself and the leaders would be able to teach the gospel well my name is josh i'm one of the lead pastors here at the district church thank you for coming and worshiping with us this morning if you have your bibles go ahead and open to luke chapter one we're going to be continuing in our luke series that we kicked off last week if you were

not here what dwayne was able to go over was who luke was as an author and who he is writing to the great theophilus but also talking about this book is also written for us as believers in christ for us to have luke would end the last part of his verse in verse 4 where he says for us to have certainty concerning the things that you have been taught and if you think about who luke is writing to his most excellent theophilus and what he could have certainty about in the things that he would be taught would be the old testament scriptures the the the

the narratives and the stories of god's faithfulness to his people and his covenant that he has made and who god says he is in the scriptures we as believers in christ can have certainty in this as luke tells us that we know and trust that this god is who he says he is and that he is faithful to his people and his covenant and so the next couple of weeks what we're going to be taking a look at is god just doing just that being faithful to his people being faithful to his covenant and he does this in starting off with these birth narratives we'll

notice in the next coming weeks that these birth narratives aren't just normal stories of children being born but this is where luke shows us that god is a supernatural god and acts in supernatural ways and he's doing this by introducing us to two of the most least likely characters that you would think would be a part of ushering in this fulfillment a barren woman who is too old to have children and a virgin birth that we'll look at next week and so this is god showing us that he is a supernatural god who is committed to his people and committed to his covenant and this

is why we can have certainty in this god and now some of you may be familiar with some of these stories and i am grateful for that but what i hope that we can do this morning and next week as we look at the virgin birth is that we don't look over these stories in our familiar understanding of them but these stories this narrative is designed to draw us into the life and tension and emotions and feelings of these men and women these are real people who go through real struggles just like you and i and i hope that we can look at their lives

and go hey that that is me i i feel this way or i have felt this way but i can see the goodness and mercy of god in this story and i can have certainty that he is who he says who he says he is so let's go ahead and pray and then we'll jump into the story of zechariah and elizabeth lord you are good and as we sang earlier we have seen evidence of all of your goodness around us yet we are prone to wander we are so prone to leave the god we love because we are finite and at times there are different

seasons in our lives that cause us to struggle with doubt whether it be unanswered prayers what seems like silence deep disappointment all of this can cause us to doubt your goodness lord forgive us of this help us in our unbelief and remind us through your word and through your people that you are the greatest good and our only joy in this life give us eyes to see this morning and ears to hear this reality these wonderful truths that you've given to us as your servant this morning speak through me lord let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to

you my rock and my redeemer it's for your glory and our joy that we praise you this morning in jesus name amen how many of us like a silence people awesome parents in here right you guys know what good silence looks like kids are asleep you're sitting on the couch you just don't want to do anything but relax silence is good but what about bad silence when you're a parent your kids are playing and you're like wait a minute it's too quiet and i need to go and check on them for those of you who don't know me i grew up in a family with

six kids i'm the oldest of six and there were four girls after me and then my brother was born 15 years later so he's actually not a part of this story but when we would eat dinner you could automatically assume that it was probably very loud my parents would often get frustrated that we weren't eating much like some of the younger kids that i've watched in this church they don't eat at dinner and so we're talking playing and my mom in her exhaustion i love her to death but in her exhaustion yelled stop eating and start playing and all of our kids all of us

as kids were like what did she just say we knew what she wanted to say she wanted us to stop playing and start eating because she wanted some silence she wanted some peace and quiet and for us to eat our food but now it's a ongoing joke that i got to text her this week about hey mom do you remember yelling this to us but silence even extended into relationships right can be a good thing when you're in a loving caring trusting relationship silence can show that there is care for one another there's comfort in that relationship and as weird as it sounds sometimes there's

even conversations through silence i've noticed that there are couples who've been married mostly more than seven years who can talk to one another without even actually talking to one another super weird but it happens but sometimes in relationships there can be silence that feels like torture right the silent treatment i'm upset at her i'm upset at him i'm not going to talk to them and i'm going to use this silence as a way in which i can show my frustration silence in relationships can be good and can be bad what about silence when it comes from god that can be tough it can even cause

us to doubt god i've been praying for this for so long and yet you feel silent how many of us have been here how many of us are here right now praying for a child of our own and it feels like god is silent some of you may have your own children or even siblings that have been praying you've been praying for that god would bring them home and it feels like he's silent some of you in here are praying for a spouse you've gone on dates you've longed for that intimacy and it feels like god is silent some of us have a spouse and

we're disappointed in the marriage that we have and we've been praying for god to bring change and yet it seems like he's silent some of us it might be financial that it's taken so long for us to break through in our careers but every single time we seem to get ahead or make promise we get hit with another financial burden and it feels like god is silent some of us it may be our health our bodies continue to deteriorate we go to the doctor and get treatments and and medical advice and yet nothing is working and we keep praying and praying and praying and it

feels like god is silent some of us in here are just weary and tired watching our loved ones go through these health issues and longing for them to be healed and it feels like god is silent brothers and sisters this morning i know that some of you in here fall into one or maybe all of these categories and i want to encourage you this morning from god's word and from the life of a priest and a barren wife that though god may seem silent in your life he is never inactive i want you to hear that this morning i want you to hold on to

this truth that though god may seem silent he is never inactive it's easy to let life circumstances eat away at our faith but as believers do we believe that our heavenly father has our best interest at heart even when he seems silent so let's read about this couple and see how god is active in their lives starting in verse 5. luke writes in the days of herod king of judea there was a priest named zachariah of the division of abijah and he had a wife from the daughters of aaron and her name was elizabeth and they were both righteous before god walking blamelessly in all

the commandments and statues of the lord but they had no child because elizabeth was barren and both were advanced in years here's one of the things i love about god's word and i touched on this earlier is that these are real men and women walking through real situations that we ourselves can see our own lives entering into we have a advanced in years couple who is barren have been trying for kids their whole lives you can clearly see and know that these people would be praying and it would feel like god is silent especially the way that luke describes them right they are blameless before

the lord he is a priest elizabeth comes from a line of priests so these you would think are people that god would favor and bless and during that time people would think that should be them because of the line in which they come from and yet they feel the sting of being childless they feel the sting of being childless both socially and economically you see to be childless during this time was more than just a disappointment it was a tragedy it was a tragedy because it meant that in their old age no one would be able to take care of them and in their old

age they would have no legacy left for them if you remember the story of ruth when we walked through that book this is one of the cries that naomi had as she came back to bethlehem is that my husband has died my sons have died call me mara because i am bitter the lord has taken away my blessings my children to take care of me i would rather just be called bitter for what the lord has given me but not only would there be an economic tragedy there's also a social tragedy that both zechariah and elizabeth would feel elizabeth feels the reproach among the jewish

people because she has no children she has no legacy the position in which she stands is a part of the despised she's looked at as helpless she's looked at as poor like a widow zechariah was not without his own pain to not be able to provide children meant that he was perceived as a spiritual failure now think about this for a moment he is a priest who a part of his duties is to intercede on behalf of israel and a part of the prayer that would have been given for israel is that they would be fruitful and multiply and so zechariah is praying for israel

to grow through children and god is blessing this nation with children while seemingly being silent towards his own personal prayer having to pray for that nation watching other people receive the blessing when he himself has not received a child and sadly for both of them being childless would have been considered a result of son some unrepentant sin as the reason in which they did not have children and what i love about luke is he's very intricate about the details of the people's lives in and throughout this book and we see early on this understanding that zechariah and elizabeth were in fact blameless they were righteous

before the lord so it was not some unrepentant sin that they needed to find and dig up in order for the lord to bless them with a child and i love that because that is often the case with us as well it is not some unrepentant sin that we need to dig up in order for god to bless us and yet with elizabeth and zachariah even though it may seem that god was silent in their life we're going to see that he is not inactive he is actively working to fulfill his promise of redemption for israel and as we'll see the pr a promised child

as well but elizabeth and zechariah aren't the only ones who are feeling the weight of god's silence if you understand the time in which this letter is written israel had been under roman oppression as luke tells us in the days of king herod he's trying to tell us that israel is in a dark and weary place and not only are they in a dark and weary place but god has also been silent for 400 years since the end of malachi until now god has not been speaking through the prophets he's not been speaking through his people and so israel under roman oppression not hearing the

word of god is also in this state of silence it was a terrible time for god's people and no doubt for those who even remained faithful to god's word 400 years 400 years we have not heard god's word spoken to us we've gone through nation after nation after nation oppressing us keeping us captive now we are under a roman rule and under king herod who if you remember from matthew 2 was the same king herod who had all the children under 2 years old put to death because he was paranoid that one of them would become king right it is said about herod by augustus

the roman emperor in this time that it was better to be herod's pig than his son because he was so paranoid that somebody would take over his rule luke is intending to show us that the nation of israel themselves were in a deep dark and weary place and can you imagine the prayers of god's people lord where are you we haven't heard from you for 400 years we see through your scriptures that you have been faithful to your people that you have helped deliver them lord where are you you helped deliver our ancestors from egypt and from slavery and the bondage there how have you

not helped us why are you silent and yet as this birth narrative begins to show us the tide begins to change and ultimately the layers are peeled back and we are able to see that god is not in fact inactive in the life of israel even though he may seem silent his plan of redemption for his people is being fulfilled now let's take a look at zechariah and his duties as a priest that luke shows us here in this passage now while he was serving as priest before god when his division was on duty according to the custom of his priesthood he was chosen by

lot to enter the temple of the lord and burn incense and while the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour at that hour of incense so what i want you to see here is a couple of things kind of brings some tension but also real reveals some of god's activity here you see zechariah is serving as a priest as well as being chosen by lot is god working behind the scenes in the life of zechariah to bring about this redemptive plan you see at that time there would have been over 20 000 priests to do the duties that were required in

the temple but there were only 24 different houses selected in order to do this work and so what you found is that there were a lot of priests and very small work to do and so what would happen is priests would only work twice a year now what a great gig that would be right getting paid to only work twice a year but there were so many priests that what they had to do was cast lots on who would actually do the work during that week and so the percentage was very low that any priest would be chosen to do this task of burning incense

now this burning of incense also meant that the priest would be going and praying and interceding on behalf of israel and this was a task that really would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in fact if you read more into this burning of incense and the lots being casted for these priests this would actually mean that the priest would retire after this work because of the infrequency of being able to do this task now while zechariah may not have had any idea what was going on on the lot that had fell on him as a priest he should have been familiar with the scriptures he should have

been familiar with what proverbs 16 33 tells us that the lot is casted into the lap but it's of every decision that is from the lord and what we see in zechariah being chosen as a priest to go and burn incense here this once in a lifetime opportunity god has been working behind the scenes in order for zechariah to be brought in to this encounter that we're going to see zechariah wasn't just being called to this once in a lifetime opportunity to burn incense there was something greater that god was calling him to and allowing them to be a part of in this scenario in

this casting of lots so let's take a look at what he encounters as he comes into the temple to pray for the people of israel and there appeared to him an angel of the lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense and zechariah was troubled when he saw him and fear fell upon him but the angel said to him do not be afraid zachariah for your prayer has been heard and your wife elizabeth will bear you a son and you shall call his name john and you will have joy and gladness and many will rejoice at his birth for he will be

great before the lord and he must not drink wine or strong drink and he will be filled with the holy spirit even from his mother's womb and he will turn many of the children of israel to the lord their god and he will go before him in the spirit and power of elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just and to make ready for the lord a people prepared you see what's happening here a prayer has been heard and answered and not just a prayer of child but a prayer that israel would be

redeemed see god is answering john and john's prayer god is answering zechariah's prayer with a answer that a messiah would be coming but also you will be receiving a son and you will name him john see to understand what's going on here and that zachariah is going and praying for his people is to go back to how he's described as righteous and blameless no doubt he would have been praying for israel and the nation to be redeemed and rescued from their current state he wouldn't have gone to it'd be very weird for him as a priest to go and pray specifically for himself to be

a good priest meant that he would have put aside his own personal prayers and prayed for the people of god and so god comes through this angel and answers his prayer for the nation of israel to receive her messiah king to say i know that you have been silent or i've been silent for 400 years that you haven't heard from me that it feels like i'm not working but here i am your answers to your prayers are coming but also god answers his prayer with more than just the nation of israel's messiah is coming god also answers his prayer that your son will help be

the forerunner to this messiah that even though you are in old age and advanced in years i am going to bless you with the thing that you have been longing for your entire marriage god answers his prayers with more than he could have ever imagined because not only does his child to be get to be the forerunner of this messiah he also is able to receive a son and the son is a as as we see in verses 14 through 7 this son is the one who will be a great prophet and lead the nation of israel to repentance and prepare the way for jesus

and his ministry god answers zechariah's prayer in an even more substantial way than he could have ever imagined isn't that the case with us as well we think about all of god's answered prayers isn't that the same way he does this for us that he answers in a more substantial way than we could ever imagine growing up there was three ways in which i i learned god answered prayer yes no and wait i i hated weight i still hate weight i would rather get a no but there is not one answered prayer that i can remember that wasn't answered in a greater way than i

could have ever imagined and brothers and sisters this morning i want you to think back and remember all the answered prayers yes and no and even weight that god has given to you and i assure you that if you truly think about what you asked you can come to the same conclusion that all of our answered prayers are greater than we could have ever imagined even the nose one of my favorite quotes from c.s lewis when it comes to nose in in god answering his prayers is this if god had granted all of the silly prayers i've made in my life where should i be

now brothers and sisters it's not that our prayers for a child or a spouse or financial progress or silly or that they don't matter to god but in comparison to how he answers them in his timing and his wisdom they always turn out greater than we can imagine yet sometimes and i would say more often than not we are like zechariah because we are finite sometimes we don't see that immediately sometimes we're not able to see that god's answers are greater than we could ever imagine in the moment that's why i love again the scriptures that's why i love the people that god chooses to

use and show us in this narrative so let's look at zechariah's response verse 18 zechariah said to the angel how shall i know this for i am a man of old age and my wife is advanced in years now before we get to actually before we try to throw zachariah under the bus i want us to put our cells in his shoes how do you think you would have responded do you think you would have responded with finally or or just blanket trust and faith it is how we are supposed to respond but how often do we respond in that way i read something this

week that really resonated with me when it comes to the promises of god we either respond with faith or with hopelessness and bitterness faith says god you confuse me you frustrate me i i don't know what's going on but i know that you are good i know that you are real i know that you have the best interest in mind and in heart even though i don't understand and we'll actually see this response in mary next week when the angel comes and tells her that you will have a son she responds in faith but the other response is hopelessness and bitterness where we doubt god's

character we doubt his love we doubt his wisdom we doubt his grace and sometimes we even doubt his existence responses and faith may bring confusion but there's a a foundation of trust trust in god's character but responses and hopelessness and bitterness come from a lack of trust and they often bring on doubt and even self-pity because this is this is zechariah's response right it's self-pity i'm too old and then i i can't believe that he actually said this but he actually says his wife is older than him like if elizabeth's standing there with him he's probably not making it out of the temple and i'm

sure that if she's reading this she's like you actually said that and now it's recorded forever but they're self-pity i'm too old my wife is too old how will you do this which is ironic because he's a priest which means he should have known all the stories in which god has done the impossible of making women who are seemingly barren in old age have children he's done it throughout the story of israel and yet zechariah's response is i'm too old but there's also an implication here that zechariah demands a response or not a response a sign and that's really what gets him in trouble is

that he is saying i need a sign greater than an angel of the lord standing in front of me this is not how you think a blameless and righteous priest would respond in such an answer to such an answered prayer right but it should give us hope that even old saints who are considered righteous and blameless doubt the promises of god and it's important for us to look at god's response to zechariah's doubt because here we see god's goodness but also god's discipline in order to bring about zechariah's greater joy even though he doesn't see it in the moment so let's look at how god

responds through the angel gabriel and the angel answered him i am gabriel i stand in the presence of god and i was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news and behold you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place because you did not believe my words which were which will be fulfilled in their time it's funny zechariah demanded a response or a sign and he did get a sign in in the fact that he got muted so there's your sign zechariah you won't speak but the so keep going and the people were waiting

for zechariah and they were wondering at his delay in in the temple and when he came out he was unable to speak to them and they realized that he had seen a vision in the temple and he kept making signs to them and remaining mute and when his time of service had ended he went home so zechariah in his demand of a sign gets one and we know that in verse 62 as we'll read in a moment he wasn't just made mute he was also made deaf so all he could do was watch all he could do was watch jd greer actually calls this the

first recorded timeout in the bible you wanna you wanna sign you wanna have some self-pity go to the corner to throw on top of this new disability what zachariah had to do and what he did was he stayed and fulfilled his priestly duties before he went home so for the next week he had to continue to intercede on behalf of the people of god while he was mute and deaf now you may be asking and i hope you are asking why would he receive this newfound disability why would he be muted why would he be turned deaf why couldn't god just give him a sign

a greater sign than an angel right in front of him but that's beside the point why couldn't god just give him a sign especially when he's done it in the past right gideon abraham hezekiah they've all asked for signs and god in his grace gave them signs and i thought about this a lot this week and really tried to wrestle with it and it wasn't until the end of the week that i remembered one of my favorite stories in the horse and his boy from the chronicles of narnia you see at the end of this book shasta meets the great lion aslan it's the first

time he meets him and he thinks that he had had bad luck his entire life because he had seen multiple lions in multiple different areas and then aslan reveals that it was only him that he had seen and it was only one lion that had been taking care of him and helping him where he needed to go including reaching king loon before disaster struck actually the the whole point of this part of the book actually fits very well we we don't often know what god is doing right where he can seem silent but he is active we see this in in aslan as he pursues

shasta in this book but after revealing that he was the lion that helped him throughout his life shasta then realized this it was you that wounded erevis and aslan responds yes it was i and shasta says to aslan but why did you do that why did you wound her and this is the line that has stuck with me throughout this sermon as well as reading that book aslan says child i am telling you your story not hers i tell you no one any story but his own i tell no one any story but his own you see aslan had wounded erevis for a reason while

they were running to reach king loon and what this draws out for us and how i will try to tie it together for you is that like aslan or to give a better picture for nobody really has read this book in chronic scenario like a good surgeon god wounds us in order to grow us in our delight and joy of him and to sanctify us to be more like christ that's what a good surgeon does for those of you who know i'm a cancer survivor when they found the tumor they didn't just leave it in right a good surgeon came in wounded me in order

to heal me he didn't come in guns blazing just trying to shoot me up in order to to find this tumor no in his gracious wisdom as a surgeon he came in he cut the tumor out and i'm here today because of it and in the same way god will wound us and discipline us in order to heal us and grow us and bring about great joy in our lives and i want to show you that's exactly what god did in zechariah's life through these nine months where he watched his what he thought was baron wife have a child or conceive a child and this

child grow in her body turn over with me to verse 57 in chapter one i want you to see zechariah's response after waiting nine months as muted and death verse 57 says now the time came for elizabeth to give birth and she bore a son and her neighbors and relatives heard that the lord had shown great mercy to her and they rejoiced with her and on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child and they would have called him zachariah after his father but his mother answered no he shall be called john and they said to her none of your relatives is called by

this name and they made signs to his father inquiring what he wanted him to be called and he asked for a writing tablet and wrote his name is john and they all wondered and immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue was loosed and he spoke blessing god and as we'll go into in the next couple of weeks we'll see how he blessed god through his prophecy but what we see in zechariah's response as he has been waiting muted in death for the last nine months is that he responds with obedience and praise so much praise towards jesus and we'll see that in his prophecy

see zechariah being made mute and death was not a punishment of wrath but it was discipline a loving discipline of the lord because we know from the scriptures that god disciplines those he loves god was disciplining him in order that he may view god with more awe and reverence and have joy in what god was doing in the life of israel and through the life of his son and we know this to be true as well even if it's hard for us to understand that the things that we go through in life that feel like hardship and trials it feels like god is silent there

are times where god does discipline us in order to grow our joy romans reminds us of this and it when paul writes in chapter 5 but god shows his love for us that while we were still sinners christ died for us since therefore we have now been justified by his blood much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of god i want you to understand this morning that when we walk through seasons where it feels like god's wrath is being poured out on us in fact it is not his wrath because his wrath has been poured out on christ and because of

that because we are now sons and daughters of god because we have been covered by the blood of christ it's not wrath it's discipline in fact if we really think about how the scriptures talk about love and wrath if god were really pouring out wrath he'd allow us to walk in our sin instead of calling us out and disciplining us in order that we would put to death the things that are killing us is the greatest lesson that zechariah would learn that he would quit looking to himself and quit looking to his self-pity quit looking to how old he was and fix his eyes on

the promises and power of god and that's the greatest lesson that we can learn from his discipline as well is to look to god when he seems silent look to him when we are weary and tired and we keep praying and praying and praying and it seems like god this distant look to him when we have unfulfilled dreams look to him we have to get our eyes off of ourselves off of our circumstances and on to god in faith and hope now i want to close out with this last couple of verses and seeing elizabeth's reproach being removed from her because i think this will

also help us when we're thinking about the fact that yes zechariah was disciplined yes he walked through this nine months of trial and he persevered but they got what they were praying for that reality has not dawned on me as i've walked through this passage this week is zechariah and elizabeth got what they were praying for and yet there are unanswered prayers in my own life there are unanswered prayers in the life of you all so what do we do so so elizabeth responds like this after these days his wife elizabeth conceived and for five months she kept herself hidden saying thus the lord has

done for me in the days when he looked on me to take away my reproach among the people the answer to the silence that we feel and to remember that god is not inactive in our lives is that last part of the verse that elizabeth gives that god has taken away her reproach and while elizabeth's reproach was physically taken away by the birth of her son john that son would point to the one who would come to take away the reproach that you and i have and desperately need to have removed it is our only hope in this life and john is the forerunner of

the one to come in christ because jesus is our only hope in life and death he is the only one that could take away the reproach of our sin he is the only one that can restore a right relationship he's the only one that can give us his righteousness as he takes on our sin and for those of us who trust in him we have received this status as sons and daughters of god and our sin has been forgiven this is the greatest gift that we could ever receive is god himself the one who takes away the sins of the world it's not the things

that we receive but as the gift giver himself that gives himself to us to restore us and to reconcile us and to give us life and hope and joy even when we feel like god is silent i want to ask this question this morning do you believe this do you believe that though god may seem silent in your life that he is never inactive do you believe that your heavenly father has your best interests at heart even when he seems silent so what do we do what if we do if your answer right now is no if your answer is not i i'm thankful for

your honesty and to be honest with you there are times where i i say no as well because it's hard it's hard when god feels silent but i want to encourage us with three things that we can do when we we doubt the goodness of god when we feel like he's silent the first thing is to rest in the promises that he's given when he feels silent we need to remember and rest in that he in fact is still speaking he's speaking through nature as david would tell us in psalm 19 the heavens declare the glory of god he's speaking through his word are there

verses that you've memorized to remind yourself of these beautiful truths romans 8 there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in christ jesus romans 8 28-30 and we know that all things work together for good for those who love god and are called according to his purpose for those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son philippians 1 6 he who began a good work in us will be faithful to complete it zechariah 3 17 he delights over his children psalm 37 he is near to the brokenhearted do you have these verses memorized that you can

constantly go back to to hear god speaking to you when he feels silent and ultimately we rest that jesus is god's final word and we rest in what he has done for us hebrews 1 reminds us of this truth long ago at many times and in many ways god spoke to our fathers by the prophets but in these last days as he spoke to us by his son whom he appointed the heir of all things through whom he has also created the world we look to jesus we look to jesus the author and perfecter of our faith the next thing that we do in remembering

his promises is that we set up things in our lives that can point us back to the faithfulness of god that's why i'm excited that our next worship night is called a night of ebenezer because it is a time in which we are going to actively bring ourselves to a place where we're remembering god's faithfulness through song through scripture through one another telling us and talking to us about hey i've seen god's goodness in your life even when you don't see it so be there 26th be here really the 26th 6 30 we will remember god's goodness and celebrate the night of ebenezer the next

thing you can do when you feel like god is silent is continue to run to him in prayer even though it may seem tough even though you don't want to do it what we learned from zechariah as a priest as a faithful priest is even though his prayer had not been answered he continued to run to the lord in prayer what a friend we have in jesus all our griefs and shame he bears what a privilege it is to carry all our prayers to him run to him in prayer and finally as we'll close out we remember the goodness of god through the means of

grace in taking communion with one another one of the tangible ways each week that we try to remember the promises of god and that your reproach that my reproach has been taken off of us that the sin that has separated you from god has been removed and forgiven by the blood of christ is by taking communion that jesus lived the life that we could never live die to sinner's death we so rightly deserved and resurrected three days later sealing our adoption as sons and daughters of god so if you don't have the elements with you i would invite you to go grab some we're going

to close out our service and worship by taking this communion by remembering in a tangible way the goodness of god in our lives that his body was broken for us and his blood was poured out to cover our sins so that when we take this communion we remember how god looks upon us because of christ's work in our lives and because of christ's work on the cross he no longer sees our sins he no longer sees our shame he sees christ so if you have the elements and i'll give you some instruction and then i'll read from first corinthians and we'll go ahead and continue

to worship for those of you who are believers we take this time of communion as a time to examine our own lives if there is sin to confess if there's things that we need to to go to the lord about before taking this i would encourage you to do so scriptures also talk about communion being a time where we celebrate with one another and so if there are broken relationships or there are conflicts i would pray and encourage you to resolve those before taking communion and finally for those of you who have not trusted and hoped or placed your hope in christ this morning i

would encourage you to refrain from communion because this is a time for us as believers to celebrate what christ has done and if you haven't trusted in that i would love to talk to you about what that looks like in your life and to share the hope of the gospel with you so let me read first corinthians 11 and we'll continue to celebrate in communion together what god has done for us in christ paul writes for i've received from the lord what i also deliver to you that the lord jesus christ on the night when he was betrayed took bread and when he had given

thanks he broke it and said this is my body which is for you do this in remembrance of me and in the same way also he took the cup after supper saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood do this as often as you drink in remembrance of me for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the lord's death until he comes let's proclaim and worship together as i close in prayer lord thank you for your grace thank you that we can see through your word that even though you seem silence you are never inactive in the

life of your children or help us to remember that help us to hold on to that truth because lord we know that doubt can creep in that circumstances in life continue to eat at what we believe in the faith that we hold on to but help us as your word says to not be deceived it is easy to be deceived in these seasons lord help us to look to you thank you for the grace and mercy you've shown to us in christ i pray as we go out through this week we would continue to fix our eyes on him for we know that he is

the author and perfecter of our faith and it's in his name we pray amen