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Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Our scripture this morning comes from the book of Mark chapter 10 verses 1 through 12. Listen closely for this is the word of the Lord. And he, Jesus, left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them. And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?
Matt Francisco:He answered them, what did Moses command you?' They said, 'Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away. And Jesus said to them, because of your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the 2 shall become 1 flesh. So they are no longer 2, but 1 flesh.
Matt Francisco:What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. And in the house, the disciples asked him again about this matter. And he said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. This is the word of the lord.
Matt Francisco:Thanks be to god. Father, we come before you this morning saying, this is a hard word. Who can understand it? I readily acknowledge that I don't have a single thing to offer the people that you have brought here this morning, but you brought them here because you want them to hear from you. So I pray that by the power of your holy spirit, you would speak to them according to your word.
Matt Francisco:That Jesus, you who are the good shepherd who laid down his very life for his sheep, would tend to your sheep and would feed them. Because we are here to hear from you, because your name and your renown, those are the desires of our hearts. We pray these things in the name of the father, son, and holy spirit. Amen. Before we really dive in this morning, I have a confession to make.
Matt Francisco:I have been anxious about preaching this particular sermon for months, ever since Joel assigned me this passage, wink. I've been anxious because I know that the pain and the misery of divorce, they're not theoretical topics for so many of you. Either you personally have been impacted by the pain and misery of divorce or you have loved someone who has. I can imagine some of you showing up this morning, maybe knowing or even not knowing that this is the passage that we're going to be spending time in, and having a sense of fear or shame or grief or anger well up in your heart. And I've been anxious because I couldn't bear the thought of you showing up to a place like this on a morning like this, feeling what you feel, and then leaving feeling like you've been unseen.
Matt Francisco:And I have to say upfront that I cannot possibly say everything that needs to be said this morning. I can't see you and your specific circumstance, but your God sees you. He knows you and he loves you and he longs to speak tenderly to you the words that you heard in our opening scripture this morning. Fear not, for you will not be ashamed. You will not be disgraced for your maker is your husband.
Matt Francisco:The Lord of hosts is his name. With everlasting love, your Lord and your God, he has and he will continue to have compassion upon you. And because your lives and your stories, they are infinitely precious to your savior, I want you to know that they are precious to us too. Your home group leaders, your elders, our care team, our staff, we want to know your stories. We want to walk with you through your sorrows and your griefs and your questions.
Matt Francisco:Our lives and our marriages, they can be incredibly messy. And it is not our church's intention this morning to make your burdens any heavier, but lighter. And it would be a privilege for us to walk alongside you wherever you're coming from. And ultimately this morning, I won't be able to say everything that needs to be said about marriage and divorce because Jesus himself isn't trying to do that in our passage. Jesus doesn't intend for his comments about marriage and divorce here to be exhaustive, but that doesn't mean that they are any less true or impactful.
Matt Francisco:While each of us are probably coming in this morning with our own questions and our own fears, Jesus is giving the Pharisees an answer disciples' understanding of who he is as the Christ and what it means to follow him. That Jesus is a king, but he's a king headed to a cross. And if we are going to follow after him, we too must take up our crosses and go and die. As we look at this passage together this morning, we'll see that Jesus will give us a window into, first, the end of a marriage. 2nd, the ends of marriage.
Matt Francisco:And finally, the end of marriage. So first, the end of a marriage. Look back with me at verses 1 and 2. And he, Jesus, left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them.
Matt Francisco:And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? See, as was his custom, Jesus is teaching the crowd and Mark tells us that the Pharisees, they come up to Jesus and in order to test him, ask him this question. Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? But their question is not genuine. Their question is meant to be a trap.
Matt Francisco:Like later questions, Jesus is going to be asked about paying taxes to Caesar or who will be married after the resurrection. So what's the trap here? You see, at this time, most Jewish leaders agreed that divorce was permissible in some cases, but there were 2 main schools of thought. The conservative minority opinion was that divorce was permissible in the case of a wife being unfaithful to her husband. However, the majority view, the one directly referenced in Matthew's retelling of this story in Matthew 19, was that a man could divorce his wife for any and every reason, including, and this is true, because he disliked his wife's cooking or because he found someone that he thought was more attractive.
Matt Francisco:Women, on the other hand, in this culture, they could not legally initiate divorce for any reason. And since divorce was incredibly common in this culture, that left women often incredibly vulnerable. So this question, although it's not genuine, has important far reaching implications. But the Pharisees, they don't actually care how Jesus answers. They just want Jesus to answer.
Matt Francisco:Because you see, if Jesus, if he sides with the more liberal majority opinion, then you can only imagine that the Pharisees are more than willing to play the part of the outraged conservative. You see Jesus, he doesn't really care about Moses and his law. He can't be trusted. If on the other hand, Jesus were to side with the conservative school, you can imagine that the Pharisees would then play the part of the outraged liberal upset about how little Jesus seems to understand or care about his people. Either way, his divide his followers would be divided.
Matt Francisco:The trap is brilliantly set. In this background, it helps us understand why Jesus says what he says and why he doesn't say what he doesn't say. Once again, he is not trying to give us a complete theology of marriage and divorce here because he knows why the Pharisees are asking him this question. He spots this trap from a mile away and he lays one of his own instead. He asks them, what did Moses command you?
Matt Francisco:You see, Moses never commanded divorce and the Pharisees who know the law backwards and forwards, they certainly know this, but because they're not looking for an answer because they're not really interested in what God's word has to say and what it would mean for them to obey it, they try to avoid Jesus's question. And in their avoidance, their hearts are revealed. So instead of correcting Jesus, they say, verse 4, Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away. And Jesus said to them, because of your hardness of heart, he wrote this commandment. Jesus is saying that divorce only exists because sin exists.
Matt Francisco:It is one of God's heartbreaking concessions to a hard hearted people, to a fallen people living in a fallen world. Moses' words in Deuteronomy 24, they were never meant to encourage divorce in any way or to be read as a series of escape clauses. They were primarily to protect the vulnerable, namely women, and to keep men like the Pharisees from sinning however they pleased. You see to the Pharisees, marriage was essentially a contract, one that a man could dispose of whenever a better deal seemed to come along. And the Pharisees, they misunderstood the nature of divorce because they miss understood God's desire and design for marriage.
Matt Francisco:And they misunderstood that because they misunderstood the very heart of God. They viewed marriage primarily as about them, their happiness, their desires, and we too can fall into a similar trap. The therapist Esther Perel, commenting on modern relationships has said, marriage was once an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things. But in addition, I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover.
Matt Francisco:So we come to 1 person and we are basically asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide. Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort. Give me edge. Give me novelty.
Matt Francisco:Give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise. And I think we can take it one step further. Today, we are not merely looking for 1 person to give us what a community used to provide. We may be looking for 1 person to give us what only God himself can provide.
Matt Francisco:We may enter a relationship not merely looking for companionship, but for salvation. We come into a relationship with our own brokenness looking for someone to make us whole. We come into a relationship feeling like we're not fully known and not fully loved and desiring deeply for someone to fully know us and fully love us. To show us that we are worthy, that our existence is not in vain. And so we can place all of our hopes and all of our fears into this relationship.
Matt Francisco:And the problem is, is that no matter how amazing you might be, how incredible this other person might be, or how wonderfully this relationship may start off, no relationship can ever bear up under that weight because it was never intended to. You see the Pharisees, like many of us, can look at marriage primarily as a way to benefit themselves. And when the Pharisees were no longer getting what they desired from their spouse, they looked for a way out. They looked for the end of a marriage. But rather than commenting on reasons why a marriage might end, Jesus deftly navigates the Pharisees' trap.
Matt Francisco:And then he points us secondly to the ends of marriage. Jesus says, verse 6, But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife. And the 2 shall become 1 flesh. So they are no longer 2, but 1 flesh.
Matt Francisco:What, therefore, God has joined together, let not man separate. Here, Jesus reminds his listeners that God himself created marriage in the beginning. And if we want to understand his design and desire for marriage, we have to understand the intent of the creator. God desires and designed marriage to be both a partnership and a picture. 1 man with 1 woman for one life for the glory of God and the good of the whole creation.
Matt Francisco:While the Pharisees were caught up on reasons why a marriage might end, Jesus is reminding us that in the beginning, God desired that no marriage would ever come to an end. Adam and Eve, they were designed to partner together in God's kingdom work, to bring order out of chaos, imagining the rule and the character of God himself to the ends of the earth. By pointing his followers back to creation, Jesus is reminding each of us that he saw himself to be this long awaited king. The Christ who had come to redeem and restore all things back to God's original intention. So all of Christ followers, both married and single, are called to partner together like Adam and Eve, bringing order out of chaos, imaging the rule and the character of God, bringing the good news of who our God is and what he has done to the ends of the earth, helping one another to become the people that God has created and redeemed us to be.
Matt Francisco:And Christian marriages in particular are meant to be a picture, a picture of Christ's love for his church. The mysterious, unfathomable, unbreakable love that Christ has for his bride. The essence of marriage, Jesus is telling us here, is that mysterious, unbreakable bond where 2 people, in a very real and yet mystical way, become 1. That a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife. This idea of holding fast is the idea of a covenant.
Matt Francisco:Unlike the contractual marriages of the Pharisees, a covenant is meant to be a permanent, unconditional public promise. If there's one thing that the God of the Bible demonstrates about love, is that love is not primarily a feeling or an emotion, as important as feelings and emotions may be, that love is primarily a commitment to be with someone and for someone no matter what comes or who they become. That is why Christian marriage vows are not meant to be declarations of how much you love one another today, but promises about the future that husband and wife will comfort one another, will honor and keep one another in sickness and in health and forsake all others for as long as they both shall live no matter what. And look back at what Jesus says to his disciples in verses 10 through 12, What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. And in the house, the disciples asked Him again about this matter.
Matt Francisco:And He said to them, 'Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. Matthew tells us that the disciples, their jaws are basically on the floor after Jesus says this. They say, if such is the case of a man with his wife, it's better not to marry. You know what Jesus doesn't say?
Matt Francisco:He doesn't say, oh, I don't think you guys understand. Hold on. Let me try to explain it another way. He says, not everyone can receive this saying. Basically, yeah.
Matt Francisco:You're starting to get it. Marriage is impossibly hard and impossibly costly. And in light of what Jesus is saying here, I want to pause for just a moment to say a word to my single brothers and sisters here. And I want to apologize to you on behalf of myself and the church Because I think far too often, we treat or we talk about marriage like it's the pinnacle of the Christian life. Or it's something that God has in store for you if you just reach this level.
Matt Francisco:And that is a lie from the pit of hell. And, I am sorry for when I or when others have said something similar or acted like it was true. Because the apostle Paul, he says, I wish more of you were like me. That's not the way that the Bible talks about marriage and singleness. Marriage is absolutely not necessary for our holiness, for our holiness, for our wholeness or our happiness.
Matt Francisco:And if you need an example, you can look at Jesus himself. However, as the book of Genesis clearly says, it is not good for man to be alone, which is why Jesus commands the church not merely to call itself a family, but to actually be a new family where our bonds are not primarily those of blood, but reconstituted by Jesus' blood. And I am sorry and we are sorry when we have failed to live like that. Let's go back to verse 9. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.
Matt Francisco:In my best man's wedding, I remember the preacher right before the couple said their vows, saying the vows that you're taking today, they're they're not really for today. It should be pretty easy for you to tell one another how much you love one another today. But there's going to come a day, and it may be a week, month, or a decade from now, where you're gonna think I've made a huge mistake. You're gonna look at the other person in bed and think you are the one thing that is keeping me from happiness. The vows that you're taking today, they're not for today, they're for that day.
Matt Francisco:And I remember thinking, it's a little dark. Little dark for a wedding. Maybe this guy's a little burned out. Needs some time off. But I can also tell you exactly when that day came for me.
Matt Francisco:It was almost 10 years ago now, and our marriage had been so hard for so long, I lost hope that it was ever gonna get better. And I don't know if I remember those words then, if I remember them later, but I'm so grateful for the friends that I could share with, for the friends who reminded me of the truth, and for the friends who helped me walk through it. I could stand 10 years later, great joy and delight in what the lord has done. And just for the record, in case you wanna ask her, my wife will say that she's never felt that before. She's a better person than me.
Matt Francisco:As Jeff Heine has written, the only hope that will sustain you on those darkest of days will not be the strength of your character, the strength of your resolve, or even the strength of your love. The only thing that will sustain you on that day is the strength, love, and faithfulness of the one before whom you made your covenant vows. The life of your marriage does not depend upon you, it depends upon the God who is unchanging, who knows all things and loves you more than you could imagine. And some of you this morning, I need to acknowledge, I need to just say that it's okay for you to mourn. Because the marriage covenant, it isn't actually unbreakable.
Matt Francisco:There are marriages that in this fallen world, they will not last. And while Jesus doesn't mention concessions here in this passage, that doesn't mean that there aren't any. Jesus's words are meant to be taken in the context of the whole Bible. Jesus himself says in Matthew 19 that sexual immorality is, makes divorce permissible. In 1st Corinthians 7, Paul adds that if an unbeliever abandons his or her spouse, they are free.
Matt Francisco:And in exodus 22, Moses highlights neglect and abuse as legitimate grounds for divorce. This means that sometimes vows are broken. Jesus doesn't say that no man can separate what God has joined. Instead, he says, what therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. This tearing of flesh, it should not happen, but it can and it does and it is worth mourning and grieving the loss of something so precious and irreplaceable.
Matt Francisco:I was recently talking with a dear friend and I told him that I was preaching on this passage. He started talking with me through his own divorce. He said it felt like a death There was no funeral. There was no grave that he could go back and visit to, but his family died that day. And what he needed most was people who would stand with him and mourn with him, to remind him that God mourns with those who mourn.
Matt Francisco:That God was not gonna leave him or forsake him and neither would they. And if that's you this morning, I want you to know that on behalf of this church, we want to be there to mourn with you, to walk with you, to be a physical remind you that reminder that God will not leave you nor forsake you. That we want to care for you and your children regardless of whether you were the perpetrator or the victim or somewhere in between. And if you are here this morning and you are in the middle of an abusive relationship, I urge you to flee to a place of safety as quickly as you can. Call the police.
Matt Francisco:Let the church step in and provide shelter and care and support. Your marriage vows, they did not commit you to endure abuse without recourse. In fact, it would be the opposite of loving to allow someone to continue in their sin. If you are struggling this morning, if you are wrestling with questions, I beg you to tell a trusted brother or sister to tell your home group leader, reach out to our care team because we are meant to look at divorce like we would look at an amputation. This is our very last resort when all other options have been exhausted.
Matt Francisco:And just like we would never make a decision to divorce in isolation, we should never make I think I said that wrong. Just like we would never make a decision to amputate in isolation, we should never make a decision to divorce in isolation. Reach out because none of us can see the full truth of our circumstances while we are in the middle of them. If you are a church member here, then that means that you and I, we made covenant vows to each other. That each of us would engage in accountability and discipline from the leadership of redeemer.
Matt Francisco:That we would invite the leadership of and restoration and restoration. And this accountability is not meant for us to police one another. It's merely an acknowledgment that we need one another, that we were created and redeemed to need one another. But some of you this morning, it grieves me to say what you need to hear most of all, is that the greatest obstacle to your marriage becoming all that God intends for it to be is you? And maybe it's your picture of what you think an ideal marriage or an ideal spouse should look like.
Matt Francisco:Maybe the Lord is calling you to put to death your selfishness or your anger or your unkindness that is poisoning your marriage. Maybe you haven't legally yet divorced, but maybe you have emotionally or spiritually or even physically checked out. But love love is patient. It is kind. It does not boast.
Matt Francisco:It does not envy. It does not insist on its own way. Instead, it bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things and most of all, it never ends. And others of you, this morning, you need to come out of hiding. You have been hiding in sin maybe for a long time and it has been slowly killing you and your marriage, but the Lord knows and the Lord sees.
Matt Francisco:And as Jonathan Haas once reminded us, I want to remind you once again, there is only light and life on the other side of confession. Come out into freedom. Others of you this morning, you need to believe. Remember the words of Jesus in John chapter 8 when the woman was caught in adultery. He said to her, has no one else condemned you?
Matt Francisco:Then neither do I. Brothers and sisters, you are not your past sins nor are you your future or present sins. There is no sin that cannot be washed in Jesus's blood no matter what they are. The old is gone and the new has come because God loves you more than you could possibly imagine. Amen.
Matt Francisco:And some of you, you need to forgive. You have been greatly sinned against and to say anything otherwise would be unkind and untrue. But if we are trying to make someone else earn our forgiveness as merely revenge masquerading as virtue, it is not love and it is not forgiveness. Jesus teaches us that if we will not forgive someone else, it's only because we don't actually understand how much he has forgiven us. And forgiveness, it doesn't mean enduring abuse.
Matt Francisco:It does not mean letting adultery continue. It does not mean removing the consequences of sin or immediately trusting someone who does not deserve to be trusted. But that doesn't make forgiveness any less costly. It is incredibly costly. Forgiveness was incredibly costly for Jesus.
Matt Francisco:So we should expect that forgiveness would be costly to us. Lastly, some of you need to hope. Some of you are considering divorce right now. Maybe you have been for a while. Maybe you've even looked up the names of a couple attorneys in town, And you need to know that though the sorrow may last for the night, and this night may have been unbearably long and painful, scripture promises us that joy comes with the morning.
Matt Francisco:Whenever you are ready to give up a difficult marriage or a difficult spouse, remember Jesus has never given up on you and he never will. Our God is the God who brings beauty out of ashes, who brings life out of dry bones. We just think for a moment of all of the miracles that we have seen in the book of Mark up to this point. He has made the deaf hear. He has made the blind see.
Matt Francisco:He has fed 5,000. He cast a legion of demons out of a man. There's never been a moment in human history more awful, more hopeless than when the very son of God lay lifeless in a tomb. But our God is in the business of resurrecting the dead. If Jesus can be resurrected from the dead, he can resurrect your marriage.
Matt Francisco:Before that glorious Easter morning, Jesus endured the cross of Calvary. Yes. Jesus is the promised king. He is the one who would come to restore humanity to God's ideal, to God's desire and design. But first, he is a king who is headed to a cross, and anyone who wants to follow after him must likewise take up theirs.
Matt Francisco:And suddenly, this seeming aside in Mark chapter 10 about marriage and divorce is no longer an aside. It's sandwiched in these series of stories about the cost of following Jesus. And this is just another picture about how following Jesus is both more simple to understand and more costly than we imagine. Remember the disciples' words. Like marriage, following Jesus is an all or nothing commitment.
Matt Francisco:You can't be kind of a Christian any more than you can be kind of married. It demands all of you and it will cost you absolutely everything. But Jesus' marriage, winning his bride's heart, it cost him infinitely more. You see the best of human marriages are beautiful partnerships, but more than that, they are dim pictures, dim shadows of the love, the faithfulness, the loyalty, the affection, and the intimacy with which Jesus, our bridegroom, loves us. And if we are to look beyond the ends of marriage this morning to the end of marriage, we'll have to see Jesus first walk alone to the altar.
Matt Francisco:There's a story in John chapter 2, one of my favorite stories in the Bible, where Jesus is with his disciples at a wedding feast in Cana, And Mary comes up to him and she says, they've run out of wine. And Jesus says these really cryptic words. He says, woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come. But then after seemingly refusing Mary's request, Jesus turns water into the most incredible wine that any of these people had ever tasted.
Matt Francisco:So what's going on in this story? You see, Jesus is physically present at this wedding, but it seems like his mind is elsewhere. As we heard in our opening scripture this morning throughout the old testament, God desires us to understand his love and affection for us like a husband for his wife. For your maker is your husband. Isaiah 54 Isaiah 62 as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.
Matt Francisco:So Jesus is here at this wedding, but his mind is elsewhere. I think it's on his own wedding day, But it's not just a wedding that is on Jesus's mind. You see, in the book of John, Jesus's hour, it always and only refers to his death. Jesus hears Mary ask him to help with the wine and Jesus starts thinking about what it's going to cost him to provide wine at his own wedding feast. You remember back verse 1, the beginning of Mark chapter 10, where Mark told us that Jesus left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan and crowds gathered again to him.
Matt Francisco:That's supposed to remind us of something and someone. Who used to preach down by the Jordan in the wilderness? John the Baptist. Way to go. Thank you.
Matt Francisco:John the Baptist. And what happened to him? He was killed. He reached out and he preached against Herod Antipas' divorce and remarriage to his brother's wife. And they killed him for it.
Matt Francisco:So maybe, just maybe, this question, this test from the Pharisees isn't innocent at all. Maybe, just maybe, they're asking this specific question to this specific man in the hopes that Jesus will, too, open his mouth and say something that will get him killed. But Jesus says emphatically, no one takes my life from me, but he lays it down willingly. You see, Jesus didn't have to travel this way. If he is moving between Judea and across the Jordan, he's doing it on purpose because his face is set to Jerusalem.
Matt Francisco:He's headed to Jerusalem because his hour is fast approaching, where he, the Christ, the promised king, will not ascend to an earthly throne, but to a cross. The altar where he will die. The righteous for the unrighteous so that we might be brought to God. That Christ might give himself up for us, the church, while we were yet sinners at just the right time, out of his unfathomable love and mercy, Jesus came. Though each and every one of us would be unfaithful to him and choose absolutely everything other than him under the sun.
Matt Francisco:Jesus will always be faithful to us. He will never abandon his covenant vows. He will never leave us, never forsake us, never fail to work for our absolute good. And because he embraced death on our behalf, we can rest and rejoice knowing that death itself can't even part us from his love. And he rose again that we might know that every single word of love that Jesus ever spoke is going to one day come true.
Matt Francisco:That on that glorious day at the end of everything, you and I will be invited to the glorious marriage supper of the lamb, where we will be dressed in Christ's own perfect righteousness as our wedding gown. Faultless to stand before the throne because of what Jesus has done. And on that day, there will be no more divorce. There will be no more loneliness or sadness or grief or sin. There will be no more singleness or marriage either.
Matt Francisco:It will be the end of marriage, for the former things will have passed away. And on that day, we will know our bridegroom, our maker, our husband, our savior, and our friend, even as we are known. And we will live with him in perfect joy and peace forever and ever and ever. Brothers and sisters, if you long for that day, listen to the voice of your bridegroom calling, telling you that He rejoices over you with singing, He could not possibly love you any more than he does. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, just before his hour had come, Jesus took bread and he broke it.
Matt Francisco:He said, this is my body. It's broken for you. The same way he took the cup, he said, this cup is the new covenant of my blood, just poured out for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sins. The apostle Paul would later tell us, as often as we eat of this bread and drink from this cup, we proclaim the Lord's death until He comes again and He will surely come again. And in the present, as often as we eat of this bread and drink from this cup, We look back in faith in what Jesus has done.
Matt Francisco:But the price that Jesus paid on the cross for us, it was enough to cover all of our sins. So that if you are willing to admit that you are a sinner in need of a savior, you may come to this table, partake in Jesus, the bread of life who gave his life for you. That no matter what your present is, no matter what flood you may be drowning in the middle of, Jesus will then be your hope in your stay. Very solid rock that you can stand upon. As we look forward in faith and in hope, to that glorious wedding feast where we will celebrate with God and all of his people forever and ever, proclaiming, Worthy is the lamb who was slain.
Matt Francisco:Amen? This is how we're going to celebrate communion together this morning. We're gonna start with the balcony, and then we're gonna make our way from the back to the front, and make your way down these center aisles and then return the outside. You break off a piece of bread and dip it in the cup and you will hear these words. This is the body of Christ which is given for you.
Matt Francisco:This is the blood of Christ which is poured out for you. I'm gonna pray for us and if our servers will come forward. Father, you know the hearts of every single person here in this room And I pray that if I said anything foolish or that wasn't from you, you would, by your grace and mercy, give them the grace to forget it. I pray that you would silence the lies of the enemy, whatever they may be, to my brothers and sisters here. I pray that whatever was from you, that it would ring in their ears and in their hearts until they follow you and trust in obedience.
Matt Francisco:God, and for anyone here who does not know you, Jesus, I pray that they would see that your arms are open unimaginably wide to them, welcoming them in love, and may they run and embrace you. We love you. Pray these things in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.