We've been in a series. I actually made, like, a whole sermon companion guide called It's All About Jesus. And we divided it up into multiple units. We're on the. I think it's.

What is it? Unit six. It's about the suffering and resurrection of Jesus. I know if you're just kind of visiting with us today, you're kind of plopped right down into the middle of something that we've been going through as a congregation for a long time. But I want to just catch you up just a little bit about where we were just the last couple weeks.

Jesus, we marched through what happened on the last meal that he shared with his disciples, the meal that we call the Last Supper. They were celebrating the commemoration of the Passover, which remembered the time when the people of Israel had been enslaved by the Egyptians and God had raised up Moses. Which, by the way, he. He was a very unwilling participant. I'm not saying God forced him to do it, but he just kind of edged him out where he had no other options.

He's like, you know what? Fine, I'll do it. I mean, that was pretty much like kicking and screaming is how Moses went into ministry. He told God every objection he could think of. And finally, when he had no other objections, he just said, send someone else who's been there.

Send someone else. And God still is like, no, I've chosen you for a reason. I don't know what that reason is, why God's chosen you to do what you have to do. You might not even recognize yet that God has called you to do something, and you're thinking, like, why? Why did he do this?

I'll tell you what. As unqualified as you may feel for whatever task God has laid on your life and on your heart to do, He. He doesn't already call those who are already qualified, but he qualifies them. He raises up people and he trains people for the job that he's given them. He's given you a task, a work in this world, a ministry and a mission.

Well, Moses, even though he had. Even though he had kind of fought God on it, finally he answers the call, he stands up, he goes to. He goes to Pharaoh, and he says, let my people go. And there's this long thing, the 10 plagues, all that stuff, you can go back into the book of Exodus and kind of read through all that. But as he goes through, as they lead through all that stuff, as you look at it, Moses, on the last night that they are in Egypt, Pharaoh has been fighting against them saying, I'm not going to let them go.

And finally God says, after this, you will. And on that night, God said, I want you guys to prepare a meal. I want you to prepare a lamb and take the blood of the lamb and put it on the doorposts and. Is it me? Oh, buddy, I promise I won't preach too long.

Not like your grandfather does.

That's an inside joke anyway. So.

God hasn't put the blood on the door for us. Thank you. I can count on you? Okay. Thank you.

Keep me on track. I do this a lot. You're not, you don't know. But anyway, I do. So they put the blood on the doorpost and God says, I'm going to slaughter all the firstborn sons in the whole land, animals and men alike.

But if the blood is on the doorpost, then I will pass over that house and they will be saved. And so Jesus, he says for all the years that the Israelites had been remembering and commemorating that meal, he says, I'm going to change the meaning of this meal. It's not the blood of that lamb that saves you, it's the blood of me, the Lamb of God, as John the Baptist pointed out, he says, look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, it's the blood of the lamb, Jesus Christ, that was shed for you. And it's his blood that we commemorate, saying that is the perfect offering that satisfies our need for redemption and redeems us from slavery to sin, rather than slavery to the Egyptians. So Jesus, in our study, as we looked at this the last couple weeks, he died.

I mean, like there was no doubt about it that he was actually physically dead. There was no possibility of him being like just kind of almost dead. And they put him in a cool tomb and he revived a few days later and his disciples brought him out. He was absolutely dead. I've been looking into the Shroud of Turin.

I, I think I talked about this last week and I wanted to talk about it this week. And I'm not going to talk too much, but I'm telling you, this thing is amazing. They had originally done this radiocarbon dating in 1988, and they took these little fabric samples from the edges of it and they said, oh, it's from the 15th century, it's from the Middle Ages, it's not an authentic shroud from a burial of somebody in the first century ad. The problem was it had survived a fire. Some well meaning nuns had rewoven the fabric together and as they did that.

That was the fabric sample that had been checked out. So in recent years, scientists have been digging back into it and they've been looking into this and they've taken other samples and not only have they dated the fabric back to, they've actually done chemical like just fiber analysis that matches it to woven linen cloths from not just the first century, but from the land of Israel. And then there's markings on it, things that go along with the story of the crucifixion. Whereas Jesus, after he's been beaten, a crown of thorns put on his head, all this has happened. Then he's marching, they make him carry the cross beam to his own cross and he stumbles under the weight of it, falls on his knees and actually on his face.

They believe there's evidence imprinted into the Shroud of Turin that shows that this man had a broken nose, that his face had hit the ground, that his knees had gotten marked up as he had landed on the pavement. They actually find samples of dust from the lime rock that is there, that is in that geographic location. And it transferred to Jesus body and then to the shroud. This shroud is what they buried him in. You can't say anything that will convince me otherwise.

The Shroud of Turin is the burial shroud of Jesus Christ. There's a whole lot more geeky stuff about it. I'm going to send you guys a link for those of you who have given us your cell phone number and if you haven't, if you want to put it on the card, I'll send it out to you. We send devotions out every Monday through Friday, every morning that go along with the sermon. They're kind of a companion to it.

And I'm going to send you a link to a video that I just watched recently about this. It's really amazing. Some of the, the things that they have found, some of the scientific discoveries that they found that absolutely incontrovertibly prove that Jesus was buried in this and that everything that the scriptures tell us about how he was crucified and what happened to him is actually evidenced in this one 14 foot long piece of cloth because they would lay him on it, wrap it all the way over the top and lay it back down. Okay, you guys are clearly not as nerdy as me about that stuff, so I'm going to move on. The point is Jesus is dead.

We have so many evidences of that, including even this old piece of linen cloth. And as he died, it was beginning to be evening time and it Was going to be the Sabbath. And the Sabbath starts for the Jewish people in the evening. Their day begins then. And so they didn't have time.

The women that had been at the foot of the cross, weeping, Jesus disciples had all fled and left him. Peter had denied him. Judas had betrayed him. As they had all left him there. The women were there, and they were weeping.

Even his own mother was there, watching all this happen. But there was no time to prepare his body for burial in the traditional way that they would. And so they had to wait until three days had passed. And so as they're waiting, there was a rich man named Joseph of Arimathea. And he got together with a buddy of his named Nicodemus.

You remember him from John chapter three, where we have that famous line, for God so loved the world that he gave his only beginning son, right? That was a conversation with Nicodemus. And Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and Joseph of Arimathea was on the council, the Sanhedrin. And these two men hadn't been outspoken about their faith. But now, after Jesus has died, now they're ready to step forward.

Joseph goes boldly to Pilate, to the Roman governor, and he says, can I have the body of Jesus? He said, he's already dead. It normally took even days, perhaps, for a crucifixion to draw out. And so he says, sure, you can have him. So they.

They take his body off the cross, wrap him in the shroud, and place him in Joseph's tomb, the tomb of a rich man.

Jesus followers, the women, his mother, they don't know what's going to happen now. They're in a sense of agony over not just their loved one, not just the mother, Mary, the mother of Jesus, losing her son. But now you have Jesus, the one they had begun to put their hope in, the one that had called them to do something. He went to Peter and some of the other guys and said, you guys are fishing, catching fish. I'm going to teach you how to catch people.

Be fishers of men. I'm going to teach you how to go and share the hope of Christ with other people, the hope of the Messiah. And they put their faith in him. Peter had made the confession of faith. When Jesus asked him, who do you guys say that I am?

He says, you're the Messiah. You guys know, in our world today, there's a lot of people that have different opinions about Jesus. In this room, there's people with different opinions about Jesus. Some of you might say, jesus, I believe he was a Good man. You're right in saying that.

But don't stop there. You might say, Jesus, he changed the world. And there's no denying that followers of Jesus have had their hands in artwork over the centuries in science and astronomy. Expansion of the known knowledge of those realms has come largely from Christians. The most well known colleges, even the Ivy League schools, started as Christian schools.

Christians started colleges and universities. All of these things are influenced in a good way by Christianity. And Christianity has been part of the spread of every good thing in every civilization. Yeah, there's times where we've gotten stuff wrong. And there's also times where we've righted some of those wrongs and worked to make it better.

Christianity makes the world a better place. I saw a comment on Facebook yesterday on the churches thing. We post these video clips and somebody said, Christianity, or I think it's a conservative Christianity is a cancer on modern society. I don't even know what he means by that. But the point is, like, I think you're wrong, brother.

Like, I believe there are some churches that probably are a little bit toxic. Okay. I actually say there's times when this congregation, not you all, but group of people that were here at different times probably had some toxic things that were going on that were a bit damaging to people at times. Praise God for you all. Praise God that you guys are here.

As I look around this room, there's not one of you that I would trade. I wouldn't say, yeah, you can have this one and I'll take somebody better. I wouldn't do it. I love you guys. I'm so glad that you're here and part of this church.

You guys are what makes this church awesome. You guys are what makes this church valuable to our neighborhood. It's been said before, if your church up and disappeared overnight, would your neighbors miss it? Would your community feel the loss because that church is gone? That's the kind of church to strive to be, is that if it just up and disappeared and we had no buildings, no people, no services, not a single thing going on, there was no more first church of the Nazarene after 80 years.

I would hope that people would weep and mourn because of the loss of the impact for good and for heaven on this community. Amen.

Jesus followers, they've been called to do great things and now their savior is dead. They don't see a way around that. They don't see a way beyond their current circumstances. We find ourselves there sometimes too, and we wait, we pray, we ask God, could you do Something about this. Could you change my circumstances and change my life?

And sometimes we don't get an answer from him. Sometimes we don't get the answer we want or at the speed in which we want it. And that waiting is agonizing. And as we wait, as we're stuck there, as we're in that situation, we're saying, lord, what are you going to do? When are you going to work?

In my situation, we haven't even touched a little bit of the agony that the followers of Jesus, his mother, the women that had attended to his needs on this earth. None of those. We don't have even a little bit of the agony that any of those people were experiencing in that moment. All of their hopes were crushed. Every plan that they had, every dream that Christ had instilled in them, they felt was over.

And they were just there. They had no idea what even to do next. They waited out the Sabbath day. They waited it out. And then when they wake up on Sunday morning, the women go to the tomb.

They wanted to prepare his body for burial.

Have you ever thought, I'm going to go do this, It'll be a good thing. I'm going to serve Jesus this way. And then you find out he's not even there. Like, that's not what he's about right now. Let me explain.

You think you know what? Here's what Jesus needs me to do. Has anybody ever done that? Jesus needs me to do this. You get the idea that this is what Jesus needs you to do.

You didn't spend time in prayer. You didn't read it in the word of God and say, holy Spirit, I hear you speaking to me. No, you just woke up one morning, you thought, jesus wants me to do this. I promise you, I've done it more than you as a pastor, I've had so many ideas that it's. Later I'm like, was that me or God?

You know, Like, I don't know whose idea that was anymore. And so you have these times where you're like, okay, Lord, I'm doing this and I'm doing it for you. And he's like, no, you're not. Like, you might do it, but you're not doing it for me. You're doing that for your own ego, your own glory, your own fame, your own ideas.

You're doing it for your own plans. And so the women were going to the tomb to take care of Jesus body. It was the last honor they were going to pay him. And they find out he's not even there. And you know what's so funny?

Who remembers the movie the Sixth Sense? Like, we watched this whole movie. I'm kind of stealing this from comedian Nate Bargazzi. But we watch this whole movie and we see, like, this guy and. And, like, his wife's mad at him and won't talk about.

Talk to him and all this stuff for the whole movie. And Nate says, like, yeah, that's what marriage is like, isn't it? Rough day, buddy. You know, and you go through this whole movie and then find out later, like, he was dead the whole time, and the little kid could see him, and it's like, wait a minute. He was dead the whole time?

He's like, yeah. It literally starts out. We see him getting shot in the beginning of the movie, and we don't think, like, maybe he was dead the whole time. You know, Jesus had told them, I'm going to die three days later. I'm going to rise again.

It's like it just went over their heads, couldn't comprehend it.

How many times has God had something so excellent, so big, so great planned for you, for your family, for your community, for. For your loved ones that are dying and on a road to hell and don't know him, and they seem so far from Christ? How many times has God had a plan that you just, like, refused to even see, no matter how clearly he shared it with you? Will you admit that?

And Jesus, he shared it with these women. He shared it with his followers. And finally they say, okay, he's not here. It took an angel to show up and talk to the women and say, he told you this would happen. He rose again.

They're like, what do you mean, rose again? What are you talking about? Like, life. Like, he's alive. Like his life has come back.

I want to read to you something that Peter said about him. Peter, his closest disciple. We're Gonna read in 1st Peter 3, about five verses. In 1st Peter 3, verses 18 through 22. This is a passage of scripture that I'll tell you right now.

Most pastors skip when they go to preach through the Book of Peter.

I mean, they might read the first couple verses. There's a part where they won't read. We're going to dig into it. It's fun because Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, to bring you to God by being put to death in the flesh, but by being made alive in the spirit in it. He went and preached to the spirits in prison after they were disobedient.

Long ago, when God patiently waited in the days of Noah as an ark was being constructed. In the ark, a few, that is eight souls were delivered through water. This prefigured baptism, which now saves you. Not the washing off of physical dirt, but the pledge of a good conscience to God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who went into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels and authorities and powers subject to Him.

I want to talk first about that last little bit when where he says that Jesus Christ, after his resurrection, he is ascended to the right hand of the Father. I'll tell you, for anybody that's like a skeptic today that only believes in the stuff you can hear and feel and see and touch, this is a tough one for you. We're talking about resurrection is now ascending into heaven. If you're not there already. It's a leap of faith, but hang with me on this.

Even if you don't believe yet fully in Jesus Christ as Messiah, as Lord and Savior, keep coming. You're welcome to be here. This is a place to explore faith. This is a place to explore the things of God, the things that he has for you in your life, because I believe that he has them.

Jesus has ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father. And as he sits there, he has dominion. He has his reign. And his rule extends to all things, not just to those of us who are here on this earth that call him our Lord, our Master, our Savior, but also to what the Scriptures call powers and principalities. I don't think I have to tell you that there's a war going on, but I'm going to remind you of it.

There's a war that you can't see. I'm not talking about the one you can't see that's overseas in the Middle east right now. Whatever your opinions are on all that mess, my opinion is I don't like killing people. I wish we wouldn't, period. There's probably more to it than that.

I know there is. I'm not stupid. I'm playing dumb here. But that's how I feel. That's what I would love to see.

Why? Because in the end, that's the picture of heaven that Christ has given us. There will be a day when there's no more wars. No more fighting, no more tears, no more crying. And so I long for that day.

I also recognize that there's wars that will continue. People that will continue fighting each other, people that will continue being enraged with one another as they're driving down the road, the Lord has been healing me of that. I'm not quite there, but I'm getting better, y'. All. I'm in remission.

Okay. Like, it's still in me, but I'm in remission.

I just do a lot of thumbs downs. I give people a thumbs down when they do something terrible or selfish. If somebody does, like, the third car through, like, after their left turn arrow has turned red, I point at them and then do a thumbs down out my window. It's great. It's fun.

You should try it sometime. For those of you that have that old salute method, you know, do the thumbs down. It's so much more like, holy, and you don't have to repent. And it's more satisfying because I really think they would be like, oh, I did a bad job. You know, I didn't get a gold star.

Where was I? Oh, no, before that part. Oh, you don't remember?

Yeah. Why did I talk about wars, though? You don't know?

Yeah. Jesus. Jesus is working to bring.

Working to bring peace. And he's in the wars you can't see. Thank you, Joseph. So that's where I was rewinding my way back to that. So the wars that you can't see is that there's a war going on in the spiritual realm.

And a lot of times we think that the spiritual realm is something like, well, like, there's angels, and we believe there's demons because we've seen some people that we're pretty sure, like, they're demon possessed. And maybe it's not, like, the most outrageous behavior. But you're like, I know some folks where I'm like, that's either drugs or demons or a mixture of both. And I don't know where one starts and one stops, you know, but, like, we see this going on. We see it, my friend Tim back here.

Like, you've been in some places overseas where I believe you've seen people relieved of demonic possession and oppression in a big way. There's people that go overseas that do work over there as missionaries, and they're like, we see the dead raised. We've seen people missing parts of their legs, and it grows back. Like, just all kinds of stuff. Like, God is in the business of miracles.

But what we see is that there is a realm around us of things that are going on that we don't see, and yet we feel the effects of that. Peter's telling us here in this last verse that I read, that Jesus has all those things in subjection to Him. Now it feels like there's a time where they're running rampant because they are given a bit of time, a bit of rain, to do the things that they're doing, but their fate is sealed. And here's how we know that. That verse that most pastors would gladly skip over, we're going to talk about it, says that Jesus went and preached to the spirits in prison after they were disobedient long ago.

And then he talks about the flood, and it's like, what is. What is going on? Why does he bring Noah into all of this? You know, there's a book that Peter was familiar with. There's a book that Jude, the brother of Jesus, was familiar with.

Most of them were probably pretty familiar with this book because it was in wide circulation amongst the Jewish people at the time of Christ. It's the Book of Enoch. It's specifically first Enoch. It's not scripture. It wasn't hidden from you.

There's people who's heard at least of the Book of Enoch, okay, a third to half of you. Now, I want to tell you right now because I have a lot of people that ask about this. They're like, oh, why was that hidden from us for so long? Oh, it wasn't. It wasn't hidden.

However, it was never considered part of scripture, not by some church council or a pope or anything like that. It was never considered as scripture by the Jews in the time of Christ or before or after. It was never considered as scripture by the Christian church. It wasn't considered scriptural by anyone. And yet it was considered very valuable.

It was considered worth reading, worth understanding, worth studying. And so Peter exhibits, and Jude also exhibits that they were familiar with it. They actually quote it. There's actually many parts of it that actually reference some of the other things in Scripture. Like, it's very.

The. They're very interconnected, and yet it's not held to the high esteem as being part of one of the books of the Bible. But it is really telling of what was going on. And to understand it, to read the Book of Enoch, it helps us to see what Peter was talking about. Now, we talked a few months ago now in Genesis 6 about this group that was on the earth in the days of the flood, named the Nephilim.

And it gets real confusing. I'm not going to dig into all of this. Like, some of you guys want me to go real deep into this because I love that stuff. Some of you are like, why are we talking about this? And you're like, I Just, I want to stick to the real, like, the real plain, easy to handle stuff.

So let me thread through the middle of that here. There was this group that Enoch called the Watchers. They were these spirit beings that were sent to Earth and they were to watch over what was going on. But they decided that they wanted to actually rule over the Earth, that they wanted to take on some type of a body and actually make a race of people with the human women. And that's what they did.

And God needed to put an end to that, which was part of what he accomplished when he sent the flood on the Earth, was it got rid of them. And those spirits that were behind the Watchers, that were part of them, were imprisoned at that time. This is according to what Enoch says. Now, I could be way off base on this. I don't think so.

If you want to know a whole lot more about it, there is a great Christian man. He died just a couple years back, but his name is Michael S. Heiser. H E I S E R. He's got lots of books on this. There's an excellent podcast that he did, and you can dig into it a little bit more with him. Wesley Huff talks a lot about the Book of Enoch.

He's a great Bible scholar, excellent guy. If you want to dig into any of the resources from either Wes Huff with Apologetics Canada or Dr. Michael Heiser, I would commend them to you. I promise you won't be bored. So the spirits that were imprisoned, they've been stuck there now, in the Book of Enoch, they appeared to him in a dream somehow and said, enoch, God loves you. Could you go on our behalf and talk to God and ask him to let us out of here?

And so Enoch does. And then he says, God said, no, sorry, you're staying here. When Jesus died, he shows up, and you know what they thought? Our comrades, our brothers that are still fighting the battle on Earth, they got him. Satan won.

Jesus is dead. We killed God's messiah. Can you imagine the triumphant moment they had for a second until Jesus says, oh, no, you guys got it wrong. You're still stuck here, first of all, because of your rebellion against God. And second of all, I'm gonna rise again.

I'm gonna rise again to show that I have won the battle over death, that you guys don't have any power in this earth, that the power that you do have is limited. And it's for a small period of time, you're on a leash, and that's a short leash. You guys aren't excited enough about the victory that Jesus has won. Can you imagine, like, he does a victory lap in hell. Okay, how about that?

That's Jesus. Just for the love of the game, I guess. I don't know. But anyway, that's what he did. And then Peter talks about baptism.

And what we understand about baptism through the language of Peter here is that when you're baptized, not only is it a sign for you, all of the person that is saying, like, I'm a Christian, I'm a believer. Jesus Christ has saved me, you're also proclaiming over and over again to all of the evil forces on this world that Jesus is in charge. Amen. Now, we're going to be talking about it for a couple weeks, but after Easter sometime, maybe the week or two after that, we're going to be looking at holding baptisms for anybody that hasn't been baptized but has become a believer, or you've been a believer for a while, but you just never step through on that, on that level of faith, that faithful step. And you want to be baptized.

We're going to do that. We have a Baptistry that's back here in the back. And we'll fill it up and it'll be your moment to show that God reigns both in your life and on this world and in eternity. Amen.

For 80 years in this congregation, we've been busy for 80 years. We've done a lot of stuff. Later we're going to have our lunch down in the gymnasium. And there's a. At one point, there will be a 10 minute video.

This isn't just a lunch to hang out. Like, we actually have a bit of a program to it. We're going to let you eat and then we're going to talk and present a few people to you and present a few things about the future of this congregation. But I would like for you, if you can, to stay not only for the lunch, but through the whole thing. We won't take forever, about an hour.

And I'd like for you to stick through that in the meantime. In between that, there's the building between here and the gymnasium. It's pink. Now. It used to be this.

It was supposed to be like a schoolhouse. Red and it was orange. Whoever picked that color should have bought the paint samples first. He promises he won't do that again. Yeah, got one of these.

Got the thumbs down. And so it was time for a new coat of paint. And we went to looking through all these old pictures of the history of this congregation. And we're looking through all this stuff, and we kept finding pictures of when that building was completed. And it was pink.

I don't know if you recognize it. This building is pink, too. So it's like. It's okay. It was kind of a common theme, I guess.

And we said, you know what? That building needs to be repainted. Let's go retro on it. Let's put some landscaping back across the front of it like it used to have. Actually, I think better.

It was just all greenery. This stuff has colors. There's flowers, there's bushes, there's azaleas. It's gonna be beautiful. So what we're gonna do in a few minutes, when I'm finally done talking, is we're gonna go.

We're gonna exit when you're ready to. You can stay and talk with each other a little bit. But we're gonna go down the sidewalk. That building will be open, and I want you to just walk through it. Keep in mind, we're still painting.

Like, we're still working on it. Just recently, it was a daycare, and our daycare closed down. And God gave us a bit of a vision for what it would be in the future. And we're going to talk about that a little bit later. But I want you to just kind of go in and walk around.

You can kind of go see everything that's in there. There's a few different rooms that are part of it, and a couple of them are kind of filled up with some furniture, and some of them are yet to be moved into, but that's forthcoming. We've had a crew of people volunteering to work on it, and I want to thank them. I'm not going to call you guys out by name, but you know who you are. Some of you feel like you haven't even left for a while.

You've just been working sometimes around the clock. And I thank you guys for all of that. I thank you for the people that have been able to give an hour or two, whether it was on the grounds outside, whether it was inside, whatever it is that you've been able to do. I thank you guys for that. Because we don't have money to pay people to do stuff.

You know, we can't afford contractors. We're a volunteer crew. I almost wanted to see if I could go up to the transfer station and see if they would sell me paint, you know? But fortunately, some people gave money. We had paint.

So, like, new paint, like, we didn't have to mix all the colors together. Like My grandfather once did, and it turned into a pukey green, you know. So, yeah, our goal, my goal, and I'm transferring it to you guys, I'll just let you know. Our goal for First Church of the Nazarene is not just to look at 80 years and say, okay, this is what we did in the heyday. This is what the good times were and the challenging times were.

Our goal is to look over every square foot of property, every square foot of buildings, and to say, lord, how can we use this for the glory of your kingdom, for the increase of the kingdom of heaven on this earth? How can we use every bit of this space to be faithful to what God has designed us to do and have an impact on our community and the world? That's what we're working to do. And so I invite you in a few minutes when we leave here, after you've chit chatted in this building for a little bit, just to filter your way through there. And then after that, you can go into the gymnasium, pick a table and sit there.

We have some hors d' oeuvres that'll be ready. The meal will be served at noon. And so that's why I'm saying you can take a little bit of time. We've got some wonderful barbecue that's catered in, and so you'll get to enjoy that. And so that's a little bit of instruction for you there.

I didn't want to close with that. I just wanted to give you that direction for what we're doing next. Then I want to point out a couple things. It feels sometimes in a church like you're waiting for the next thing. Like you're waiting.

Like, what's the next big thing we're going to do? What's the next movement, the next exciting thing, the next ministry opportunity. What's the next building renovation project? Please, not another one. For a long time, like what comes next and how long until that happens.

I know whatever we feel in those times isn't even close to what they were feeling while they were waiting to find out what's next when Jesus had died. But I recognize that even though they didn't know Jesus was on the move, that he was coming back and that he was proclaiming his victory over those spirits. They didn't know that that was coming, and yet they were waiting for it without even knowing. There's something that God has in store for this congregation that you and I both don't know what it is. We've been in preparation for it.

We've been working towards it. We've opened ourselves up to God and said, use us. Use me for. For whatever you want. And in the meantime, we wait with expectancy to say, okay, God, what do you want us to do next?

What impact do you want us to have for the good of your kingdom and the good of our community? And so as we're waiting, we're not in agony, but it does feel a bit tiring at times. We're like, I'm just ready to see the glory of God manifested on this earth in those times of waiting. One of the things that the apostles did, the followers of Jesus, his disciples, was they just stayed together. They gathered together.

We see that when the women had gone to the tomb and they see the angels in the empty tomb and they come back, some of the apostles were already just hanging out together. They spent time together because as you're in a group together waiting on the Lord, you strengthen one another, you encourage one another, and you're ready for service when God calls.

What we want to do, the leadership of this church, me, myself, whatever it is, what we want to do is we want to equip you for whatever growth you have in your knowledge of Christ, in your service to Christ, and in your love for God and others. We want to help with that. We want to help. We call that in a church word, in a biblical word, we call that discipleship. Jesus gave us one central command as he was about to ascend into heaven.

He said, I want you to go and make disciples. Like, as you're going, wherever you're going, I want you to make disciples. He told them you'd go to Jerusalem, which they were already in Judea, the kind of surrounding area, Samaria, the people that they hated. You don't hate anyone, right? I know, but for the ones that you might hate, you know, like, if you were gonna admit a little bit, you're like, yeah, there's some people I don't like a little.

You know, you're going to go to those people, and then you're going to go to the very ends of the earth. You're going to go to everyone and you're going to share the gospel with them. Jesus says, go and make disciples. A disciple is simply a learner and a follower of Jesus. So that's what we want to do.

And I want to help equip you with that. We're going to be doing a lot of different things concerning opportunities for that. And I'm wrapping up right now, by the way. We want to help you find your kingdom purpose by using a resource called Shape. We want to help you figure out what it is that God has given you the ability to do, what he's blessed you with, the talents to do, what calling he's put on your life.

Some of you might replace me someday. Praise God for that. My goal is to work myself out of a job. I want to see the calling that God has placed on your life. I want to invest into your journey to a point where you are able to do whatever, whatever jobs it is in and out of the church to say, okay, if that's what God's calling me to do, I'm going to do it.

And I want to say, I don't know what I've got to do anymore except continue pouring into more people's lives. I mean, I love preaching. I want to keep doing that, but I am happy to share it. If God has called you to preach, Amen. Whatever it is God has called you, it might not be something preaching.

He might have called you to some kind of ministry that nobody ever sees. But we know that it got done because somebody was faithful to the call. Whatever the calling is, God has called you to make a difference for the sake of eternity. Will you answer that calling? We're not in agony.

As we await his return, he returns triumphant and we celebrate that and we look forward to that day. Amen. It.