Minority Report #2 - God’s Powerful Hand

Message Description

Dr. Kurt Bjorklund continues the message series "Minority Report" teaching from the Old Testament book of Daniel to discuss where the real power is in our lives, our communities, and our world.

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Message Transcript

Good morning. It's good to be together. We are in week two of a series that we began last week through the book of Daniel that we've called Minority Report. And here's what I would guess is true for many of us, and that is, there are times in life where you like being in the minority. The reason I say this is I had a chance two weeks after Christmas to catch up on sofa time and movie time because I was kind of sick. And I had those days where you just sit around. 

Movies have a consistent plot, and one of the consistent plots is there's a person who sees something everybody else doesn't see and they're willing to take a minority position, a position that nobody else takes to fight against corporate America who is hurting people by putting things in the water to make money. And they're going to fight it and make sure everybody finds their way to have health on the other side. Or maybe they're in a group of people and all they want to do is party. And they have to fight against the crowd in order to find true love. You know this kind of plot, right? Where people are saying, "I have to decide that I am the minority." 

So, there's a piece of us that likes this because we identify with that, we think, "I want to be that kind of person." And then there's a piece of us that doesn't like it so much. We don't like feeling alone. We don't like feeling as if we have a belief or a conviction or an idea that nobody else shares. And it's not just lonely sometimes, but it's difficult to take that track, but here's what's true. And that is, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, there's a sense in which you are in the minority, whether you like it or not. 

This is what Romans chapter 12 verse two says. It says, "Do not conform..." Speaking to followers of Jesus, "Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing and perfect will." And so, there's always a tension between being conformed to the world, the majority, and living with a renewed mind that allows you to say, "I live in this minority." Now the minority in the Bible. And we learned this last week when we began our study of Daniel, Daniel chapter one is not an anxious, angry, frustrated minority, but it's a creative minority who says, "We live as a minority in a dominant culture to bring good, to bring thriving, human flourishing to the world and to bring a sense of God's kingdom." 

Now, there are some who would say, I don't want to live in this minority. In fact, that's one of the reasons I struggle with faith, I may believe or think I believe, but one of the reasons I'm hesitant to be fully committed to this idea of faith, to this idea of living as a follower of Jesus is because I don't want it to be a minority. I don't want to have the uncomfortable piece of that. And yet what we see when we come to the book of Daniel, that those who choose to live as part of this creative minority can make a radical impact in the world. But not only that, they come to know the living and real God. 

And so, what we'll do here just for a moment is unpack a little bit of how Daniel 2 reads. And since it's so long, and you just heard a portion of it read, I'm just going to retell the story for a moment. So, I just want you to imagine with me, that some other country invades and dominates our country, wins the battle. And as they've won the battle, what they do is they take all of the people who are accomplished in any field. And they say, "We're going to take these people and the young people who are studying to be in these fields. And so, we're going to take the best of the best. And we're going to take them back to our country, assimilate them into our culture, so that all of your advances in medicine and all of your advances in economics and in handling metals and construction and whatever it is that you do, that you do well, we're going to assimilate it into our culture." And so, there's a huge outgoing of all of the kind of brainpower of our nation. 

And in that transition, you were one of the people who had to go and be among those who went away. And this king who won the battle one night has a dream. And so, he declares that those who came from those other countries and those from his own country who are part of this intellectual elite, have to tell him what his dream was and interpret it, or he'll have them all killed. Verse five, he doesn't just say, he's going to have him killed, but he's going to cut them to pieces. This probably was a literal cut them to pieces because we learned in Psalm 137, you haven't learned this yet, but I'm going to tell you right now. Now in Psalm 137, what happened was, when the Babylonians attacked Jerusalem, that they took infants and they literally smashed them on the rocks. This is Psalm 137, verse nine. In other words, this was a way of just saying, "Not only did we win this battle, but we want you to know that we can do whatever we want, that we can dominate your culture." 

This is the kind of culture we were dealing with. And not only that, but we learned also in Psalm 137, that what they did is they said, "Now we want you to sing songs to your God." This was not an invitation to worship, this was a mockery like, "Your God is so great? Sing us a little song about your God. Sing about Jesus Christ, being the living hope now." That's what they were doing. 

And so, Daniel finds himself in this situation. And in verse 13, we learned very clearly that Daniel didn't just find himself in the situation, but his life was on the line. So, he gets together with some of his friends, verse 18, and he begins to pray. And then he comes to a moment where he has a little confrontation with the powers that be. And here's what we read. 

Verse 27, 28. It says, "No wise man, enchanter, or magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he's asked about." So, Daniel says, "Look, what you're asking, it's impossible." But then he says this, "But there's a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, he's shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in the days to come. Your dream and your visions that passed through your mind as you were lying in bed are these..." And Daniel goes on to recount all of this vision back to Nebuchadnezzar the king. 

And in verses 36 through 43, we get the interpretation of this dream. And so, the dream is this. And that is basically, it's a dream of this statue, this kingdom. And so, the head is Babylon. We're told that directly, that the head of this is Nebuchadnezzar. And then you have the arms and the belly and the legs of this great statue. And its different metals, and so at one point you have gold going all the way down to iron. It's more valuable to less valuable. And at the same time, you have more and greater stability, probably pointing to the fact that the human kingdoms both progress and at the same time, find some cheapening along the way. 

Now, many commentators have read this, and they've said in essence, that the head is Babylon because we're told that in the text, I'll show you in just a moment, that the belly refers to the Greek Empire, that the legs referred to the Roman Empire and that the arms which I missed there is the second one is the Medo-Persian Empire. And so, they say, historically, you had Babylon, the Medo-Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and then you come to Jesus Christ. 

Now that's an acceptable understanding of this very common interpretation, but it's also possible that these kingdoms, this statue doesn't stand for specific kingdoms other than Babylon, but it stands for human kingdoms of all time. And the reason I say this is because you have here, the rock coming and smashing these kingdoms, and it's smashing all of them at once. 

So, let me just read a portion of this, that you heard, but let me just read and make some comments. In verse 36, "This then was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king. Your Majesty, you are the king of kings. Nebuchadnezzar, you are ultimate right now in the world. The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory in your hands. He's also placed all mankind and the beast of the field and the birds of the sky, wherever they live. He's made you ruler of them all. You are the head of gold." There it is. "Nebuchadnezzar, you're the head of gold. This statue that you see, you Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon is the head of gold." "After you, another kingdom will arise, inferior two yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze will rule over the whole earth. Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom strong as iron, the iron breaks, and smashes everything. And the iron breaks things into pieces. So, it will crush and break all the others." That's why some people see it as the Roman Empire. 

Just as you saw the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron. So, this will be a divided kingdom, yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. As the toes were partly iron partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong, partly brittle. And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay. So, the people will be a mixture and will not remain united any more than iron mixes with clay. Okay? 

So, you're getting a picture, and now he says this. Verse 44, "In the time of those kings..." Which kings? The kings of the rulers of the world, "the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever." And so, you get this image of this huge statue with all of these different parts and this rock that smashes it ultimately. And that's the dream and the interpretation that Daniel gives. 

Now, standing where we stand today, we can see that Jesus ultimately became that rock that smashed it. And that Jesus was in a sense smashed as well because of it because Jesus allowed the powers that be to crucify him. And so, it was a rock that becomes a mountain that grows, that takes all of this earthly power, all of these earthly kingdoms and demolishes them. 

So now the question is, okay, so what does that mean to you and to me today? That's the story. Well, one interpretation that people often offer when it comes to Old Testament is the goal is that we become like the Old Testament character. So, what we do is we take the Old Testament character, we make them the hero. And then we say, "Now my job is to emulate them." And so, we'll say you should become like Daniel. 

Now, if you've been around Orchard Hill, you know that that's not how I typically understand the Old Testament. I'm not saying that there isn't something that we can learn from being like Daniel, but in this case, the application would have to be, so you should all learn how to divine dreams, how to interpret dreams so that if you're ever in a place where a homicidal maniac says that they're going to kill you if you don't interpret the dream, you have the dream. Okay? Do you see why that has a little bit of a, maybe disconnect for us? Now, you could say, "Well, doesn't it mean that we stand up to power, that we're willing to stand up to power. Like Daniel was willing to stand up to power." And I know that that's better, but you still have a problem because in chapter two, he stands up very publicly and makes a very clear display of his willingness to stand up to power. Whereas in chapter one, when he was forced, he did it very quietly. So, which is it? Do you stand up to power publicly or privately? 

Now you could say, "Well, isn't the point that he had to learn how to discern and everything. So, we need to learn how to..." Yeah, you could say that. Maybe you could say, "Well, we need to have courage in the face of danger, like Daniel had so that we're able to face danger in difficult situations and be able to have courage and tact in the face of it like Daniel. And so, we need to be like Daniel." But here's the problem with all of that. Not that again, you couldn't draw some lessons, but I don't think it's ultimately what Daniel 2 is about. In other words, Daniel 2 is not given to us, so we go, "Let's try to learn from Daniel, how we can be like Daniel." It's got a part of a bigger narrative that ties into the Bible. 

So, let me show you what I think this is driving at primarily. Again, not that you couldn't draw those lessons, but this is what I think it's driving at primarily. In verse 31, it says this, "Your Majesty looked and before you stood a large statue." Now, this is the central theme of the whole thing. He has this dream about the statue, right? And then it says, "An enormous dazzling statue, awesome in appearance." Now I'm reading from the NIV. That's what we typically use here to do our teaching at Orchard Hill. The ESV, the English Standard Version says an image. And the reason that the English Standard Version uses the word image is because when you look at the word that's used, it is literally the word image. 

Just give me a moment here to kind of go down a little bit of a rabbit trail, but Daniel is written in Hebrew to start. And in chapter two, verse seven, it transitions to Aramaic. And so, the wording is a little different, Aramaic is a similar language to Hebrew. And you may say, "Well, what difference does any of this make?" Well, Aramaic was the worldwide language at the time, so it's likely that the reason Daniel was in Aramaic, a good chunk of Daniel, is that the message was intended to be universal, not just for the Jewish people of that day. And so now you come, and you have this word for image, and it's the Aramaic word tselem, which has a very close Hebrew word that's used for image. Now, if you've been around church, do you have any idea where we've seen the word image in the Bible before Daniel? 

Okay. How about this? In the beginning, God created them. He made them male and female in his image, in his tselem. Okay? So, what's that doing? It's setting up this idea that God creates people to be image-bearers, to be people who reflect his goodness and his purpose in this world. And what happens in Daniel 2 is you get this homicidal king who is so full of his own power, his own sway that he takes the tselem of God, the image of God, and he perverts it, and he takes it, and he makes it all about him. 

Sound like anything you see in our day and age? Human power being used to corrupt and pervert the things that are good. What is it that we sometimes say that absolute power corrupts absolutely? Well, what we see here is we see that when people are left to themselves, that they take the image of God and they pervert it to their own ends. Unless you think this is just an Old Testament story about some statue, let me just press into this for a moment. 

You see this happens when a group of middle school boys sitting at a lunch table, empowered by their little group that sits there, sees a girl go walking by. And one of them makes a sexually lewd comment to the little girl, the little middle school-aged girl, and the rest of the boys, kind of hoot and holler and their little power pack says, "That's okay for us to do this because we're the ones in power in this lunchroom right now." And she maybe doesn't feel strong enough to push back or to do anything or to say anything and says, "It's just the way it is in this world." Do you see? It's the tselem of God that's being corrupted in that moment. Because this isn't just a group of boys, group of girls, middle school, high school, deciding who's in, who's out based on how they dress, what they do, or how cool they are. What are they doing? They're taking their power and they're using it to pervert the image of God. The tselem of God. It happens in government, it happens with those in industry, in any job site. There's a little pecking order and somebody who has the image of themselves being primary can pervert it and use it for their own ends. And it happens with those who have money all the time. 

Now what all of this is pointing to is that our own sense and sensibility of saying, we want to make much of ourselves is in conflict with the God of the Bible. Because what we're seeing here is that God has ultimate power and all earthly power is ultimately temporary, it's ultimately limited, and it is not ultimate, but there is a God who has real power. And here's why I say this, in verse 37, you see that the statements made very directly about God being the God who has all power. It says this, "Your Majesty, the king of kings..." Speaking to Nebuchadnezzar, "The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory." It's God who's given you the power. 

One of the themes that I'm not spending a lot of time exploring in this is that God is the one who gave the power to Daniel to interpret the dream. In fact, just allow me again, just another little detour here, a little Bible geek moment. Okay? So, you can come back in two minutes if this doesn't interest you, but the word revealed, which is the word gelah in the Aramaic shows up in verse 19 verse 28, verse 29, verse 39, verse 47 twice. In other words, it was God who revealed to Daniel what was going on. The word show, which is again, the Aramaic word gelah shows up verse four, verse six, twice. Verse seven, verse nine, 10, 11, 16, 21, 27. It's actually a Hebrew word and an Aramaic word there. So, you see that. Then make known, is the Hebrew or Aramaic word yeda, verse five, verse nine, verse 23, twice, verse 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 45. 

Now, why do I say this? Because what the text is doing is it's saying, "This is clearly God's hand. This is clearly God's work. Over and over, it's saying, "It's God who showed you, God who revealed, God who made it known." And then you get this summary statement in verse 28. It says this, "But there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries." In other words, it's God that does this. God has power, not Nebuchadnezzar. 

And not only that but God, in this image of this rock, smashing this statue shows that his power is indestructible. That it's final, that it's overwhelming. Verse 44 and 45, "In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed." Think about that. This rock that grows into a mountain will never be destroyed. The least valuable seeming instrument, the most naturally occurring of gold, iron, all these other metals. The rock is the one that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. The meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, not by human hands, a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, and the silver, this is the meaning, and gold to pieces." 

In other words, the kingdom of God will never be taken away, will never be shaken. It's not made by human hands and it will continue to grow and grow. Unless you think I'm just making a jump too much to Jesus with this because you have these kingdoms and then you have Jesus who was smashed by the human powers, but in being smashed, actually smashed the human powers. 

And here's what Jesus says about this idea. He doesn't quote Daniel directly, Matthew chapter 21, verse 42, and following, "Have you never read the scripture? The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces in anyone on whom it falls will be crushed." Jesus picks up this stone imagery and basically says, "I am the cornerstone. And you will either be part of my kingdom, or you will be part of the kingdom of the world." That's what Jesus is saying. 

Now, what do we do with this story, this account in Daniel 2? Well, let me make this suggestion, and that is, I think it points to two temptations of power that we need to resist in our lives today. Whether you're a long-time person of faith or you're new to faith, exploring faith, there are two temptations of power that we see in this passage that we need to be willing to resist. The first is this and that is the temptation to be intimidated by power. Again, this could be the power of a middle school at the lunch table, of a social group when you're a young adult, of corporate America, of politics, of money, it could be any kind of power, but there is a temptation to say, "Earthly power is what's ultimate that what I need to do is I need to make sure that I'm never on the wrong side of power because earthly power has ultimacy in this world rather than God's power." 

And so, what we'll tend to do if we believe that, the majority view is we'll say, "What I need to do is I need to ingratiate myself to power, always be on the right side of power." But notice that even Nebuchadnezzar who had coercive power, the power of life and death in his hands is shown to have been crushed by this rock. And Daniel and his friends understood it because they had a knowledge of who God was. And they had a community of people who prayed together in the face of danger. 

Now, I was listening to a couple of podcasts the other day. One of the ways I get my news is I listen to podcasts. What I do personally is I tend to listen to one that's on the right and one that's on the left, so that I get kind of a balanced perspective because it's hard to find anybody that gives a balanced perspective. And just so you know, I don't listen to ones that are way on the right or way on the left. I listened to ones that are just kind of a little to the right, a little to the left. 

And the reason I say that is because I was listening to these news podcasts the other day. And here's what I heard, to the people on the right, they were basically saying, "We are living in a time where if president-elect at the time Biden becomes president, here's all the horrible, horrible things that are going to happen in our country. And you need to resist letting president-elect Biden become president because it will be devastating to our country." And then the one I listened to on the left had the same fear message, except it was if we don't deal with all of the Trump followers. And if something that doesn't change fundamentally, then our nation is going to be lost. 

Now, and the reason I point this out is not because I think it's irrelevant what you think or where you land politically. But because what happens is sometimes the very faith of people gets co-opted by political power. And we start to say, "This political power is ultimate. And if this doesn't find its way to be true, then there is no hope." And nothing could be further from the truth when you understand the Bible because what the Bible teaches us very clearly is that human power is not ultimate. Only the power of God is ultimate. And when we live believing that human power is ultimate, we live in anxiety and fear about the other side, rather than saying, "I can live in hope, because I know that God is the one who has ultimate power." Do you see the difference? 

I was reading an article by a man named David French, and I don't necessarily agree with all the things that he puts forward, but here's what he said. He said, "The problem is all too many Christians are in the grips of two sets of lies. We call them enabling lies and activating lies. Unless you are one with the enabling lies, believing them, the activating lies will constantly pollute the body politic and continue to spawn unrest." And here's what he was talking about. The enabling lie is saying, "If this thing doesn't happen, then all of these bad things are going to happen." And that's the activating lie that says, now we have to act in even greater or more significant way. 

And so, the enabling lie is buying into this idea that says, "What happens here and now is ultimate rather than the other way around. And so, what this is showing is that human power will corrupt the image of God. But those who say, "I believe in the God of heaven, his powerful hand can resist being corrupted or influenced by this power." Not again, that it doesn't matter what you believe. Not saying don't be engaged but saying do so from a position of understanding where real power is. So, don't be intimidated. 

And then secondly, the second temptation of power is the temptation to be impressed by power. And what I mean when I say this is that we can easily look at power and say, "If power is ultimate, then I should be impressed by it." Charles Colson, who was one of the chief advisors to President Nixon, a solid generation or two ago now, put it this way. And he later came to faith, but he wasn't when he worked for President Nixon, he said, "When I served under President Nixon, one of my jobs was to work with special interest groups, including religious leaders. We work and invite them to the White House, wine and dine, then take them on the presidential yacht. Ironically, few are more easily impressed than religious leaders. The very people who should have been immune to the worldly palm seemed the most vulnerable to it." 

And here's what he said he basically discovered, he says, "What I realized, when I worked in the White House, was that religious leaders would come and they would very quickly be so impressed with the power that they would abandon, maybe their core conviction. And here's how you know if you're too impressed with power. And that is if you're not willing to say a challenging thing to the group that you are in cahoots with or closest to because you don't want to be at odds with them. 

You see what we like to do is we like to pick a group and feel like we're the virtuous group and the other groups are the negative or bad groups. And therefore, we will say that the good and the right things that everyone needs to hear rather than have a broader perspective. C.S. Lewis wrote about this. He talked about the inner ring and how there's such a strong desire that so many of us have to be a part of the inner ring. In other words, we'll do whatever we can to be a part of whatever ring we think is important. 

And here's where we see this today. We see this in what I'd call the virtue-signaling moment. You know what virtue signaling is? It's where you basically say, "Okay, I'm going to have something that's on the other side. And I'm going to come out against that or speak that down." And what happens is you think, "Oh, I'm part of the minority. I'm really speaking out to power," when you do that. But do you know what you're often really doing, is you're just appealing to and impressing the people who already agree with you when you're speaking to it. And so, what you're doing, in essence, is you're just impressing another power. Now, I'm not saying there's never a time to engage in such a dialogue to ever say something difficult online or something. But what I'm saying is, it is understandable that you are thinking that you're signaling virtue, what you're doing is you're signaling to a group that you actually are trying to impress. 

And again, what Daniel 2, I believe is ultimately driving at, is it's saying, understand the human power, however, it is, whether it's soft power or hard power will pervert the image and the goodness of God. Therefore, you need to resist all temptation to be impressed by power. And instead say, "There's a power that's greater. And that's the only power I'll bend my knee to in this world." That's the message of Daniel 2. 

Now, Nebuchadnezzar was the king. And one question that I have is why did God reveal this to a king? Usually, when God reveals things, he reveals it to prophets, not to kings who don't believe. And I believe that the reason God revealed this to Nebuchadnezzar is because it shows his heart. And what I mean when I say that is God's heart is always to say, "I want you to see how futile, how temporary, all of the things that you're building your hope in, all of the things that you're saying, 'this is what matters' really are. And when you come to see that, then you can embrace what's ultimate." And this really is the whole message of the Bible, the whole message of Jesus Christ. And that is God loves us so much that he sent Jesus who abandoned power, and although Nebuchadnezzar used power to his own advantage, Jesus gave up power so that those in power could crush him on the cross so that he could make a way for all people to say, "There's a God who loves." 

We see this last verse in Colossians chapter two. Here's what we read about Jesus, verses 14 and 15, "Having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness..." Speaking about the fact that you owe, that you can't pay your way with God. You can't buy your deeds, your goodness, ever make a way, "which stood against us and condemned us. He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross." You see, he ties it here to the cross. Then he says this, "And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them all, triumphing over them. How? By the cross." 

See, we look at this and we read this story in Daniel 2, and we go, "Oh, cool. The rock's going to smash it." But you know what the rock was when it smashed it? Small, insignificant, counter-cultural. What does it become? A mountain. Jesus triumphed over them on the cross, seemingly insignificant. And we're now living in the time where that rock is growing into a mountain and one day the power and the majesty and the goodness and the glory of God will be seen completely. Even though now, sometimes it's hard to see. 

So, the question is, will you take God's invitation today, much like it was given to Nebuchadnezzar to see reality and turn toward him and say, "I'm going to use the image that you've given me, not for my own ends, but for your ends, I'm going to trust your power, not the powers that be, I won't be intimidated and impressed by the powers." Or will you say, "No, I'm going to trust the powers that I see?" Because what Daniel 2 tells us is that those powers will ultimately one day disappoint. They will leave you unsatisfied. But when you trust the power of God, that then you can be part of this creative minority in the face of whatever's going on in the world, around us, and in us today. 

When you came in, you received a cup, which contains the communion elements. And we, with the COVID restrictions and social distancing, have had to adapt how we do things. And so, you have a cup and in just a moment, I'll give you some instructions on how to take this, but if you can grab that, and if you're at home watching online, listening later, I know we want to be a community that is both in-person and online, but there are some things that are hard to replicate online. And I think communion is probably one of them. Because it's intended, if you read 1st Corinthians 11, to be done in community, together not just alone, but you online can still participate today by just quietly where you are saying, "God, I want to affirm that sometimes I take the image that you've given me and I pervert it for my own ends, that I need a savior." And then celebrating what Jesus has done. 

For those of us here in the room, we can do this by, in just a moment, peeling back, kind of the top layer. And there's a little wafer there. And then you can take it as we're singing together and say, "God, I do this because it reminds me that you were smashed in order to bring about the breaking of the powers of this world." And then you can pull back the next layer and the juices there, the wine, and you can drink it and say, "God, I believe that your blood, shed in Jesus Christ, makes it possible that you defeated these powers and that I can share in all of it because you've covered my sin." 

Maybe before you do that, you just want to pray and say, "God, I know that in these ways I've loved human power too much." And just turn from it. Maybe you're here and you say, "I'm not sure I believe." Then I would encourage you not to partake of communion because it's a ritual or a right that's reserved for those who believe. But maybe for you, you can just kind of think it through and say, "Is this reasonable? Do I believe this Jesus, being the rock that shows that human power is somehow limited?" 

Father, I thank you for just how Daniel 2 speaks to even the world that we live in. And God, I confess that sometimes I make way too much of human power. And that I've let your images be perverted in many ways in my own life and in the lives of people around me. And so today I acknowledge, we acknowledge that what Jesus Christ did for us paved the way for a different way. And it's a way I want to be a part of. And I pray it would be true for all of us who are here. And we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. So, let's stand and sing with the team. You can partake of communion as you feel the desire to do so, and the ushers will receive your cups as you leave.