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September 23, 2026 | The episode explores how to love one's neighbor by examining Jesus' example of servant love demonstrated in John 13 through washing the disciples' feet. It emphasizes loving neighbors with service, humility, forgiveness, and intention, highlighting that loving others flows from experiencing God's love.
Bellevue Baptist Church Middle School Ministry
All right, middle school. Hey, can we thank the band? Can we thank our worship leaders? So good. I'm really thankful for them leading us in worship every single week. And so, hey, I need to tell you guys tonight, obviously you know that we've been in this series about neighboring, right? And so two weeks ago, Sam started us off in this series by answering the question, who is our neighbor? Does anybody remember the answer to that question? Who is my neighbor? Y'all remember? Somebody said it. Everyone, yes. The answer to that question, who is my neighbor, is everyone. And y'all remember Ben Taylor was with us last week, our missions pastor, and he asked the question, why should I love my neighbor? Do y'all remember that answer? Why should we love our neighbor? Yes, because God loved us. Give him a little snap. Give him a little snap for that one. Because God first loved us. And so today, we're gonna be answering another question about neighboring. If you didn't get a talk sheet, there's one, that table, round table right there, you can get, if you didn't get a pen, they're coming around. The question that we are answering tonight is how do I love my neighbor? So we've talked about, okay, if our neighbor is everyone, and we've talked about, well, why should we love our neighbor because God first loved us, then the question next is how do I love my neighbor? And so while y'all are still getting your pens and things, I want to just give you a fun activity to begin, okay? In your seat, you should have had this little half sheet of paper. Y'all have that? If you got it, hold it up for me. Let me see, y'all got this little half sheet of paper? Not your talk sheet, it's something different. Okay, y'all got this half sheet of paper? At the top, it says, what is my love language? Okay, so I want you to get that piece of paper out. I'm gonna grab one for myself right here. And here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna do a little activity to figure out how you most feel loved, okay? By the people around you, by the people that care for you, we're gonna do an activity, okay? So I'm not gonna go through every question, but I do want to set it up. What you're doing is you're gonna read the question, one through five, and then you're gonna circle which one would make me most feel loved, okay? So let's go to number one. When I have a stressful week at school, I feel best when? So you've got five options right there, A through E. So you're gonna circle. You feel best when this happens, when you've had a stressful week at school. Are you really encouraged when someone tells you, I'm really proud of how hard you're working? Are you really feel loved when someone helps you finish a chore or a school project so it takes it off your plate? Which one of those is you? Just go with your gut, okay? Number two, you're answering this one. On my birthday, the most important part to me is, okay? So you got five options again. Pick which one is the most important to you. Bless you. Number three is this. If a friend wants to show they appreciate my friendship, I prefer they blank. So fill in the blank. Which one of those five would be how you would prefer that they show you they appreciate your friendship? Y'all are working hard, I feel it. Okay, number four is this. I feel closest to my family when they blank. When do you feel the closest to your family? If they bring home something special just for you, or if they clean your room, if they do something for you, or if they notice when you do something well, they compliment you, what is the answer to that one? Okay, number five, here we go. If I'm having a bad day, the fastest way to cheer me up is, you're gonna answer one through five on that. Circle which one would make you feel the most encouraged? Okay, it doesn't take you a long time, so what I'm gonna do now is once you have your answers, here's what I want you to do. I want you to count the number of each letter that you have, okay? So if you have like, if you circled A for the first one, you circled B for the second one, you know how that works, okay? So count up the number of times you circled each letter and determine which one is the highest for you. So did you have mostly A's, did you have mostly B's, C's, D's, or E's for your answers? Okay, I'm gonna give you 10 seconds, then we're gonna go over a little bit of what it means. Okay, y'all got it, or you need more time? You need more time? I'll give you 10 seconds, 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Okay, perfect, all right. By now, you should have the letter that you have the most of. I want you to write that at the top of your paper. So which letter was the most, that could have been only two, which letter was the most one that you picked? Okay, I'm gonna ask you, I'm gonna ask you in just a second. So on the bottom, it says this, how to find your score. So if you have mostly A's, I wanna see your hand. If you have mostly A's, you're a words of affirmation person, okay? You love to be affirmed, okay? Now everybody look at them and say, you guys are great. One, two, three. You guys are great. Perfect, okay, they're feeling really loved right now. All right, how many of you guys have mostly B's? You love quality time. Hey, you guys are my people. Okay, let's hang out. I love quality time, I love it. Okay, how many of you guys have mostly C's? You love gifts. All right, there's a few of them in there, but if you're their friend, you know, birthdays are a big deal, all right? Receiving gifts. Does anybody have mostly D's? Mostly D's that they circled? Not a few of you. Okay, you're acts of service people, which means that you love when people do things for you. You really appreciate that. And then how many of you guys, you picked E for the most? Okay, yes, you guys love hugs, okay? Nobody else in this room wants a hug except for all of these people right here. You love physical touch. You wanna feel loved by people giving you a high five, giving you a hug, putting their arm around you, whatever. Okay? It's not a pass. If your friend did not say physical touch, this is not a pass to force them to give you a hug, okay? So, all right, everybody hold up your paper for me. Let me see. This is called your love language. Everybody say love language. Love language. All right, perfect. All right, shh. I wanna tell you the point of why we did this, shh. The point of why we did this activity is to show you that everyone receives love in a different way. I love quality time. There's nothing more than if my husband Jordan in the back says, hey, let's just go spend some time together. Let's just go on a walk. I feel so loved when he does something like that. So the point, shh, is that everyone receives love differently. You may love getting gifts. Your friend may love to just spend time with you. So tonight, we're answering the question, how do I love my neighbor? And if we are to answer this biblically, and we know from what Ben taught last week, it is with the kind of love, shh, it is with the kind of love that God has for us, a self-sacrificing love, then there's only one person in the Bible that I can think to look to. Do y'all know who that person is? Jesus, exactly. If you had the church answer, great. If you did actually know it, great, applause for you. So the best place that we can go to look for this is the example of Jesus. So if you have your Bibles, hold them up for me. Let me see. Y'all know we've been doing this all semester. If you got your Bible, let me see. Okay, love it. Hey, we want you to bring your Bible every week, okay? You can see what's in God's word, shh. If you don't have it, no worries. Our verses are gonna be on the screen for us, okay? So let me do this. You guys open to John chapter 13, okay? Open to John chapter 13. If you don't know where it is, it's in the New Testament. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the first four books of the New Testament. So tonight, we're gonna be looking at the story of Jesus washing the disciples' feet. Shh, hey guys over here. I need y'all to pay attention, okay? Thank you. So we're gonna be looking at the story of Jesus washing the disciples' feet, and I'm gonna do something a little bit different with us tonight. Instead of giving you all these practical to-do lists of how you can love your neighbor, what I'm gonna do instead is tell you the attitude in which Jesus had when he loved his neighbor. Because the reality is, if we can have and adopt this attitude.
of Christ, then all the other things which we do will flow from that. Does that make sense? Yeah, y'all with me? So instead of giving you a to-do list, I'm gonna actually just show you the attitude that Christ has as he's washing the disciples' feet. If you're in John 13, say, I'm there. Okay, that's enough of you for us to keep moving. Okay, John chapter 13. So let me paint a picture of what's going on, okay? Let me give you the context, because it's important to know what's going on around these verses so we can understand what these verses are saying to us, okay? So let me paint a picture for you. Jesus, at this point, was at the end of his life on earth in his earthly ministry, okay? So he had performed miracles, he had healed people, he rebuked the religious leaders, he taught multitudes of people, he fed them, he invested in his disciples and in so many people. And now we come to this place that is the end of his life in ministry, and in this passage, this is the picture of what we often call the last supper. And so it is the last meal that Jesus will have with his disciples before he is crucified and before he dies on the cross. And so I need you to know this, because this is how Jesus chose to spend his last hours on earth. This is how. He had told the disciples, hey, this is about to happen, I'm about to be doing this, and you won't understand, but you will, and the disciples still aren't getting it. And so the Bible allows us into a glimpse of what is happening at this dinner, how Jesus is spending his last hours on earth, okay? So let's look at John 13, verses one through five, okay? It says, before the Passover festival, Jesus knew his hour had come to depart from this world to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. We're gonna pause here for just a second, because as we know, if our neighbor is everyone, if God calls us to love everyone, I don't want us to get confused about what these verses mean. And so what this is saying is Jesus loved his own, meaning the disciples, meaning the 12 men that were sitting among him that had spent their life following him and learning from him. So although it is saying, yes, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end, which means two things. First, he loved them till the end of his earthly life. That's pretty self-explanatory, right? And to the end, people also say that this means to the fullest extent. And so this verse is giving us a picture that these disciples who had walked and talked and lived their life with Jesus, they had experienced Jesus's love and care to the fullest extent that anybody ever did on earth, was the disciples. And so let me ask you a question. Do you think that this means that Jesus's love was exclusive for the disciples, yes or no? No, right? Not a true question, no. So I don't want us to get confused, which is why I stopped here for just a second, because there are multiple times in scripture that we see Jesus love not only his disciples, the people that loved and followed him, but Jesus also loved the people that didn't follow him, that didn't believe him, that weren't a part of his life. And so Ben talked about these two groups of people loving the believers, so the people that share the same faith as you if you profess Christ as your savior, and two, the unbelievers, the people that don't profess that as their faith. So we know, now that we know it's not just the disciples that he showed this kind of love for, let's keep reading, because this is about the disciples. Verse two, now when it was time for supper, the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Simon Iscariot's son to betray him. Jesus knew that the father had given everything into his hands and that he had come from God and that he was going back to God. Verse four, so he got up from supper, laid aside his outer clothing, took a towel, and tied it around himself. Next, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet and to dry them with the towel he tied around him. And so what we see happening in this passage is that Jesus is humbly serving his disciples by washing their feet. And so I wanna park here for just a second and tell you a little bit about this because you may read this and be like, ew, gross, washing the feet? I know Jason hates feet, okay? He's like, I hate feet too. So you may be reading this and be like, ew, gross. But you may not be thinking that it's a little bit deeper than that, but let me tell you that it is. Let me tell you why that is. So in this culture, what we see is that washing feet, this act of service was such a lowly job for someone that it mostly was reserved for people that were non-Jewish and for people that were slaves. And so the only people that washed feet really in this time were first, if they were a non-Jewish slave and they were forced to do this and this was their job, or two, if you were the host of some kind of dinner or event and you were doing it to honor the people that were coming, to let them know I am honoring you above myself. Guys in the back, I need your eyes, okay? And so what this means is that Jesus was taking the place of a lowly servant to wash the disciples' feet. And so people, let me just tell you, they did not have hokas, nice shoes. They didn't have pedicures, you know what I mean, to cover their feet, to protect them, to make them look nice and pretty and clean, okay? These were people that were walking miles and miles to get to where they needed to go. They were people that were wearing sandals all the time. And so yes, although we can say, okay, yeah, it was probably gross, you know? Jesus washing the disciples' feet was not just that he was washing the grime and the dirt and all of that off of their feet. The point is that this position that was reserved for people in society that were the lowest of the low, Jesus put himself in that position for his disciples. He is the last person at the table that should have been washing their feet. So I wanna ask you a question to kind of illustrate this. Who do you think is the most important person in the world? I wanna hear you. Jesus, God, okay, your father, all right? Like people that live on this earth right now, who do you think is the most important person? President, kings? Maybe. Okay, yeah, LeBron? Wow, you guys are amazing. LeBron? Wow, you guys think a lot of LeBron, okay? What about his son, though? All right, shh, I heard you, I heard you. Okay, I want you to think, shh, I want you to think in your head now who the most important person you think in the world is, okay, shh, in your head. And I want you to think of them doing such a lowly job for you. So I want you to think, what is the worst job that they could ever do to serve me? Who's the most important person in this world? What is the worst job that they would ever do to serve me? I gotta keep moving, so I'm gonna show you. This is what I thought of when I was thinking of this example. Anybody know who this is? This is Prince Harry, okay? Y'all may not know, this is Prince Harry, okay? He's not the Prince of the USA, okay? He's the Prince, I don't know, of England, I guess? The UK, I don't really know. This is Prince Harry, and this is a picture of him cleaning a bathroom, okay? So I wanna just paint a picture for you that is such a just small piece of how it can make us understand. This is like Prince Harry in his royalty with his crown, with his robe, all the things, and he's saying, and he's coming in, and he's saying, J.J., where's your bathroom? I wanna scrub your toilet. Like, I wanna do that for you, you know? It's silly, y'all can laugh, it's silly. It's like Prince Harry coming in and saying, hey, what can I do for you, J.J.? Scrub the toilet, that's a pretty lowly job. You don't wanna do it, I'll do it for you, all right? And so I definitely don't know if Prince Harry's the most important person in the world. Probably not, but he's definitely more important than me, okay, on this earth. And I just wanna give you this silly illustration to let you know what I'm trying to say, is that nobody in their right mind expects Prince Harry to be cleaning toilets, okay? Especially at J.J.'s house, all right? Nothing against J.J., I'm just saying. Prince Harry ain't coming in here and cleaning J.J.'s toilet, all right? And so what I want you to see is that Prince Harry has people cleaning his toilets, and we don't expect him at all in this earth to come in and do that for one of us. And so I wanna connect it for us here, because the disciples did not expect at all for Jesus to be the one washing their feet. He was the last person at the dinner, like I said, that they felt like should be doing that job. However, Jesus put his own position aside to serve them in a moment where he could have easily been served. He's the King of Kings, he's their Lord, he's the Messiah, he's the Son of God, and he was stooping down to wash their dirty, grimy feet, showing them that love is serving someone else, putting them above himself. And so your first point is this, it just kind of goes with Jesus loved his neighbors, number one, with service and humility, with service and humility. And so this point goes beyond just meeting a need for the disciples, because this was really an honoring thing for them to experience. So I want us to read Philippians 2, 3 on the screen to give us just a little bit even more of a picture. Do we have that, Philippians 2?
Verse three, perfect. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. And so the application to you is that loving our neighbor should look like living our life in a way that searches for opportunities to bless those around us. Jesus did this all his life. So if you have a talk sheet, my question for you is this. Are you living your life in a way that looks to serve others? Are you living your life in a way that looks to serve others? This was not a one-time thing for Jesus. He spent his life serving those around him. Bless you. Thank you guys. Hey, you guys are looking for opportunity to bless. I love it, okay? Already applying it. Number two is this. So I need you to write it on your talk sheet or in your notes with forgiveness. So Jesus loved his neighbors with forgiveness. Let's read verses six through 11. He came to Simon Peter who asked him, Lord, are you going to wash my feet? And Jesus answered him, what I'm doing, you don't realize now, but afterward you will understand. You will never wash my feet, Peter said. Jesus replied, if I don't wash your feet, you have no part with me. Simon Peter said to him, Lord, not only my feet, but also my hands and my head. One who has bathed, Jesus told him, doesn't need to wash anything except his feet, but he is completely clean. You are clean, but not all of you. For he knew who would betray him. And this is why he said, not all of you are clean. There are two people in this passage that this focuses on apart from Jesus. That is number one, Judas. Everybody say Judas. Okay, number two, everybody say Peter. Right, so let's focus on Peter for just a second because these verses really talk, like they really show us the conversation between Jesus and Peter. So the whole conversation is saying, Jesus and Peter basically saying, Peter's like, Lord, no, you are greater than me. You are not gonna wash my feet. I am your lowly follower and disciple, and this is not right. This is not the right order. I won't let you do it. Jesus says, well, if I don't, Peter, then you have no part with me. And then Peter, look, he flips the script and he's like, okay, Lord, then yes, I will take my hands and my head, every part of me, I'm with you. Jesus goes on then to not only address Peter individually, but he addresses the broader checkpoint of where his disciples were. So not only Peter, but Judas as well. And so let me ask you, what do you guys know about Peter when Jesus is arrested? What was the big thing that he did that Jesus predicted? Yes, what do you think, Ken? He betrayed him. How did he betray him? Denied him. Yes, yes, he denied him three times. I want you to go to verses 36 and 37 and 38 in this chapter. So John 13, just flip over one page for me if you need to. And you'll see there that in this same chapter that Peter denies Jesus three times in fear for his life, even though he said, Lord, I'll follow you, I will lay down my life for you, in the midst of Peter's denial, in the midst of Jesus knowing about Peter's denial, Jesus washed his feet, chose to serve him in that way. The second person that we're gonna talk about is Judas. I wanna ask you a question. Has someone ever betrayed you? Ken said it right. Peter betrayed him. We also see very directly it says Judas betrayed him. You don't have to raise your hand. I'm just rhetorical question. Have you ever felt betrayed by someone? Maybe you told someone something in confidence and they went and told other people. Maybe they embarrassed you in front of your friends or in front of someone that you liked. Maybe you had a best friend and then they got another best friend. And so now you're on your lonesome, you know? If you understand what I'm saying because you have all felt betrayed before to some degree. I need to keep going. So I wanna tell you a story. I think about a time in high school for me. I was a senior in high school. This was high school Morgan and I had this friend who I had grown up with all my life. Like we were friends from the time we were in preschool until the time like now we're still friends. And for the sake of the story, we'll call her Meg. And Meg and I were in class together and we had this project that we had to do. Not together, everybody had their own project they had to do and so it was a big deal. It was a big part of our grade and so we had to turn it in by the end of the semester. Mind you, we were about to graduate. So this was like second semester senior year. We were about to graduate and one day I turned my project in and Meg texted me and she was like, hey, would you mind sending me your project? I just wanna see what you did and I just wanna make sure I'm doing it right. And so Meg and I had been friends for a long time and I said, no problem, yeah, for sure. Now in hindsight, you know. So I sent her my project and I said, here you go. And I don't remember if it was a couple of days or a couple of weeks later, I see that I get a zero on my project. And I was like, what? Like I looked at the rubric, I followed all the directions. Like I don't really realize what I did wrong. And before I had a chance to talk to my teacher about it, Meg came to me and she said, Morgan, can I talk to you? I was like, yeah. And she was like, please don't hate me. And I thought, oh no. And Meg proceeded to tell me that she had copied my entire project and submitted it as her own. And so my teacher gave us both zeros and it not only jeopardized my grade for the class, it jeopardized my ability to graduate high school and it jeopardized my future college plans and potentially my future career if that would have stayed on my record, right? And so Meg, in that moment, I felt so betrayed by her because I trusted her and I trusted that she had nothing but good intentions. She just needed to see that for her own project. But instead she broke my trust and she turned that in, really jeopardizing both of us. And so I'm thankful to say that we have forgiven each other. We made up, the teacher knows everything. She gave me the right grade. We both got to graduate all the things. But I'm telling you this because you know what it feels like to be betrayed. And that is such a small, small glimpse of what Jesus walked through with Judas and with Peter. Jesus experienced the worst betrayal you could have ever imagined. This wasn't that a friend said something behind his back. The gravity is so much deeper than that. This was a person who was as close as a brother to Jesus, a man that he had spent time investing in, providing for, sharing life with, caring for. He traded Jesus's own life for silver coins, for a couple of silver coins. He had outed Jesus' location to the people that wanted to kill him to have some change in his pocket. I don't know about you, but I've never experienced that kind of betrayal before. Judas, even doing that, had the audacity to come to this dinner, knowing that Jesus knows what he has done and to act like everything's okay, to act like nothing has happened. And so all the while, Jesus knows. We don't only know that from verse 11 when he says, not all of you are clean. So we know that he knows both about Judas and about Peter and their betrayals towards him. Peter and Judas did not deserve the acts of kindness or care that Jesus gave them. They did not deserve to be served by Jesus who had done nothing but good for them. But what Jesus shows us in his attitude towards them is forgiveness, that loving our neighbor means forgiving them for wrongdoing. Matthew 5, 23 through 24, I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but I am just gonna say, it gives us a picture of how important forgiveness is. And it says, before you come, if you're coming to the altar to worship and you have something against a brother, then go ahead and put that down and go reconcile and then come back and you can worship the Lord. Then you can bring your offering. And so this is not to say that we have to fix ourselves or do something before we come to God, but this is to say that forgiveness is so important. To love someone is to forgive them even if they have done you wrongly. And I just don't want us to get twisted in this story. I don't want us to come away thinking, oh, then, you know, Peter and Judas, they're too far gone. What were they thinking? Because we too are not Jesus in this story. We are Peter and we are Judas. Every time that we choose our own way and every time that we decide to sin, we are betraying Jesus. Ben mentioned last week that we should love our neighbor because God first loved us. And the same is true of forgiveness that we see in the Bible. We forgive because God forgave us through Jesus Christ. So my question for you is this, is there someone you are withholding forgiveness from? So you have your notes, write that down. Is there someone you are withholding forgiveness from? Second question, on the other side of that, is there someone you need to ask for forgiveness? And Ben kind of talked about this last week, but I thought it was important that we reemphasize that because we are all, first of all, in need of forgiveness from our Savior, from God, through Jesus Christ. And we are also in need of forgiveness from other people when we do them wrong. And so I'm gonna ask you to think about that. Is there someone you're withholding forgiveness from? Is there someone you need to ask for forgiveness? The third point, is there someone you're withholding forgiveness from? Is there someone you need to ask for forgiveness?
this, Jesus loved his neighbors with intention. We're gonna read verses 12 through 15. When Jesus had washed their feet and put on his outer clothing, he reclined again and said to them, do you know what I have done for you? You call me teacher and Lord and you are speaking rightly, since that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you have also, you have also ought to wash one another's feet, for I have given you an example that you also should do as I have done for you. So this account from John finishes with Jesus really addressing what he had done for them. He says, you're right. You say that I'm your teacher and your Lord and you are correct. I am your teacher and your Lord. And so he re-emphasizes, so if I, if he, being in that position with them would be willing to put himself beneath them in priority, excuse me, to wash their feet, how much more should they be willing to care for each other and wash each other's feet? And so I want to tell you this is a little more significant than even maybe we read because Luke tells us in his account of this that the disciples were arguing about who was the greatest among them. And so in the presence of Jesus, they were arguing about who is the greatest disciple, me or you? Well it's me because XYZ. This is silly. It's a silly argument and Luke tells us that in his account of this. Jesus takes this opportunity to refocus them and in one of his last encouragements on earth to them is to serve one another because not one of them is greater than another. And so here's what we can assume about Jesus from how he addresses this. Jesus was not haphazardly just giving compliments away and saying like, oh you look cool, I like that shirt bro, hey cool shoes, you know what I'm saying. He was not giving them just whoever he was throwing around compliments like that. He was not doing random acts of kindness for random people for no reason. We know that to be true of Jesus because we know of his character without thought or care. He wasn't doing that. Jesus was intentionally living his life to point others to God and how they should respond to God. Does anybody know Matthew 5 16? Have y'all read that verse before? It's about shining your light, okay, that might jog your memory a little bit. Shine your light that others may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven is what it says. And so I want to go back to verse 3 for just a second of this passage because I got to wrap up but what I want to tell you is Jesus was able to serve the disciples from this place that we're about to read. Jesus knew that the Father had given everything into his hands, that he had come from God and that he was going back to God. Now I want to put us back to this verse because it sets up all of the scene of Jesus washing the disciples feet and the argument between him and Peter and all of that. It sets it up. Why is this important? Well it tells us that Jesus knew who he was and it tells us that Jesus knew his purpose on earth. Everybody say his purpose. Everybody say his identity. Jesus' purpose was to point others back to God because Jesus was confident in this. He was able to wash the disciples feet, to serve them even though they had betrayed him with no hesitation at all. Because of his relationship with God and his confidence in that he was able to serve, not from anything else. And so I'll give you the same charge that Ben gave you last week. The reality is your ability to love your neighbor is a direct reflection of your response to God and your relationship with him. If you have not experienced the love of God you cannot love your neighbor effectively. And that's just true. You cannot love your neighbor with the purest of intentions, you cannot love them fully, you cannot love them to the end like it says that Jesus did with his disciples. So my last question for you is this, have you experienced God's love? If so, are you loving others by pointing them to God? That was Jesus' life and mission, wasn't just to do good things for the sake of good things. His life's mission was to serve others, to love his neighbors, believing and unbelieving, to point them to God, to point them to himself which would be the Savior of the world that they may have relationship with God. And so in this moment I'm going to give you a chance to respond and I just want to take a second to kind of explain this because I think often at the mix we think of responses like, oh well if I don't need to give my life to Christ, if I've already done that then I don't have anything to respond to. And I'll just be honest with you, that's not the reality. Anytime God's Word is taught you have an opportunity and a responsibility to respond to what is being taught. Not because of anything that I've said but because of what the Word is saying to you. God speaks through his Word. And so what is God doing in your heart? There are three things that I think you should consider in your response tonight, okay? Everybody has one. Your response is either one of these things or it's to walk away and not care about this or it's to be upset about this. You have a response to the teaching of God's Word. And so my encouragement would be that it's these four things, one of these. Number one is prayer. And you use a time of response as a moment to pray to the Lord. Telling him about what you've learned, confessing to him, praising him for what he's done. Number two is confess. A response of confession is so right to the reading of God's Word. If you want someone to pray with you, if you have something you need to confess, you just want to talk about with someone, maybe it's that unforgiveness towards someone, use this time to talk to Connor, to talk to a leader, to talk to me. That's your second.