The King Who Conquers by Carrying the Cross

I got it. Hello everybody. I like how, you know, we start with maybe like a phone or some iPads and the devices get bigger and bigger as we get older and older and our eyes get poorer and poorer. But I'm so excited to talk to you guys today. We've been in the summer in the Psalms and I asked Leon if I could speak today because a couple weeks ago, maybe a week before last, when Savannah came home from camp, I heard her asking Leon, you know, what's, what's your favorite Psalm?

And he was, I think that week he was speaking on it and he said, well, it's, you know, it's Psalm 23, right? The Lord is my shepherd, you know, surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. And I thought, man, what's my, I was like, what's my favorite Psalm? Because there's just so many good ones, so many good ones.

And immediately what came to mind was Psalm 24. So isn't that sweet? Out of all, the Psalms. Leon's favorite is 23 and mine is 24. I just feel like it's fitting and it was meant to be.

And that's why we're soulmates forever and ever and ever. I love you. You can't leave. I know it is. It is a, it is a threat and a promise.

It is a commandment with promise. There we go. But in particular, Psalm 24, verses 7 through 10, which are the verses we're going to focus on today. And those verses say, He's the King of glory. Woo!

It preaches itself. You know, you don't even have to say anything. But I was thinking about those verses and how majestic they are and just the imagery that comes along with it. But I immediately thought, as soon as I was thinking of those verses, I immediately thought of another moment in the Bible, which we'll get to in a minute. But first, have you ever, okay, as an example, 1969.

What happened then? Lots of stuff. But if you might recall, there was a moon landing, despite some folks think there wasn't. We're not here to debate that. But assuming there was one.

But assuming there was one. It was a pretty big moment for the entire world, right? And I think what most people remember about that moment was Neil Armstrong on the moon. One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. But what we don't talk about as much, and some of you may not even know.

It's what Buzz Aldrin did in the moments right before Neil stepped onto the moon. Anybody know what he did? Well, he brought with him, you know, onto the, whatever you call it, shuttle module. I am not a science person. Whatever.

The thing is, he was in. He brought a tiny communion kit. And he radioed back to NASA and said, could we have a few moments of silence? And he, in the lunar module on the moon, partook of communion, the body and the blood of Christ. And nobody knows about that because NASA was too wimpy to broadcast that to the rest of the world.

Sorry. I let something show there, didn't I? But they didn't. But that's okay because throughout history, and especially in God's story, the momentous occasions frequently happened quietly or with a whisper and not with a bang. And I actually think that's appropriate.

I like, I like how that happened. That in that small moment, Buzz Aldrin got to celebrate that just huge, huge event by, and he said later in an autobiography, I just couldn't think of anything better than, than to put my thoughts on God and give thanks to the God of the universe for what was happening right then. So, Psalm 24. Back to our verses for today. It is traditionally understood to be a song associated with King David bringing the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem.

It celebrates God's sovereignty over all of creation, particularly in relation to the temple and the covenant between the Lord and his people. It's a moment really dripping with royal imagery and glory. But, my immediate thought as I was thinking of those verses, right, I was like, who is this King of Glory? And I'm going to give the answer away at the beginning of the message. Who does that?

I do. In a shocking plot twist, the King of Glory is Jesus. Surprise! I know. I know you didn't see it coming.

No one did. No one saw that one coming. And I thought, what if the King of Glory, what happens when the King has no form or majesty that anyone would want to look at him? What happens when the King has no beauty that would attract us to him? What happens when the King comes in, not in finery and royal robes, but riding on a donkey and his only crown is one of thorns?

What happens? What happens when the King of Glory comes in really quietly and not in a way that anybody expected? And really, let's be honest, not in a way that anyone wanted. Or even a human instinct opportunity became mediated. Yet, that's not in danger.

That's right, Mr. Lane. Not what Jesus' contemporaries wanted. So I want to focus on three aspects of these verses today, verses 7 through 10, these incredibly powerful verses. And the first one I want us all to ponder together is the idea of the gates.

The gates. These gates that David is talking about anticipate a victorious king. The arrival of a victorious king. But these gates, they're physical, right? He was talking about the gates in Jerusalem.

But they weren't just physical. They were symbolic as well. What else could those gates have been referring to? Well, I mean, the symbolism's not, it's pretty on the nose. But it's us, right?

It's believers. It's our hearts. We have to open our hearts. We have to lift up the gates of our hearts and anticipate the arrival of a victorious king. Lift up your heads, O gates, that the king of glory may come in.

It's a royal scene. It's celebratory. It's majestic. But it really makes it easy to expect a type of king, one who fixes everything quickly, one who defeats all our enemies. I always think about that song, Defender, you know, and the first time I ever heard it, you know, it's these really beautiful lyrics.

Do you know that song? I mean, you know you go before I know that you've even gone to win my war. You come back with the head of my enemy. It's like record scratch. Who wrote that?

Man, they like woke up and chose violence three lines into the song. The first time I heard that, I was thinking of Clash of the Titans, you know, Perseus. And he's like holding Medusa's head. I was like, yes, this is the king of glory. He's going to smite my enemies.

But I think that's what we think of sometimes. And even if it's not that, we really hope for a king who's going to make our lives comfortable. And we're going to feel good. And we're not going to have any problems. But that's not how Jesus came into things.

Now, we all know, all four Gospels talk of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. But all four Gospels were fulfilling a prophecy made hundreds of years in the past. And that's where we're going to go today, to Zechariah. Now, Zechariah the prophet, who was also a priest, which is really important. And he began his work shortly after Haggai did.

It was a booming time for prophets. It was a great time to be a prophet over there. And this was during the reign of King Darius. I don't remember which one. There were multiples in Persia.

And Zechariah said this. He said, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming to you. Righteous and happy.

I mean, I like how these prophecies are not vague at all. Not that, you know, the Lord will enter in a humble manner. He said, no, he gonna ride in on a donkey. Not a small horse, not a pony, not a rickshaw, a donkey. And it makes you wonder how any of the Jews missed it, you know, during the time of Jesus.

This is really on the nose. But I love how we kind of stop there sometimes. But if you go to verse 10, it's really important. Zechariah says, well, the Lord says, I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the war horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off. And he, the King of glory, Jesus, shall speak peace to the nations.

And his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. It really just flipped it. It just flipped it on its head. I mean, we have this contrast in the Old Testament of God constantly showing up in a mighty way in battle. Yet the prophets were consistently and constantly saying, but this King of glory who's going to come in, he's going to come in quietly in a very humble manner, not in an exciting way, not with a lot of fanfare.

And he is going to come to bring peace. And he is going to tear up all y'all's battle weapons. Now, I know you're thinking, but I, haha, haha, haha, haha. The Bible's contradicting itself, because I've read Matthew, and I heard Jesus say, do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace but a sword.

But they stop there. They stop, right? And they don't go on to the next verse, which gives you the context of exactly what Jesus was saying. And the next verse after that one says, For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a person's enemies will be not countries, not combatants, but his own household. Because whoever loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.

And whoever loves a son or a daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it. And whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Jesus came to bring peace.

Just the king of glory did come to bring ultimate peace. But Jesus was saying the road to this peace is hard. And it's not hard because of these earthly battles. Those seem kind of far away to us a lot of the time. He's saying, no, no, no.

The road to peace is going to mean contention and difficulty and grief. Because when he told the fact that he was in the end, he's already died. And he said, yes, it's fine. He said, yes, we can't do anything. And I said, yes.

And I said, yes, I'm going to get him off. And loss in your own life, in your own homes, with your own families, your parents, your kids, your aunts, your uncles, your best friends, that's the kind of peace he was talking about, a really hard-fought one. So these verses are not in contradiction, they're talking about different things. So the question we have to ask ourselves here now, with this first section, you know, lift up your heads, O gates, that the King of glory may come in, is, where am I expecting God to show up in strength, and power, and with a bang, and with, you know, something shining in the firmament, but he's coming in a different way. He's coming in humility, in surrender, or in loss.

And here, in Virginia Beach, in a city where military is such an important part of who we are, and we have such a great respect for the military, are we sometimes more attuned to authority, to strength, to might, than humility and compassion? I know I have to ask myself that, because mercy is not my gift. It's not the first thing, I'm like, yes, lop off the head of my enemies, and hold it up, and let the blood drip down, and God's like, hang on, calm down. So the question, though, is, what is our expectation? When we anticipate a victorious king, what kind of victory are we hoping for?

What kind of victory are we praying for? Who is this King of glory? That's the question. What is the nature and character of the King of glory? I don't think he's being rhetorical.

He's saying, who is it? Do you understand who he is? Now, part two. This leads right into part two. That's the idea that this King of glory wages a different war than the one we're thinking.

Definitely different than the one the Old Testament Israelites were. Definitely, definitely different than Jesus' first century contemporaries, including his own apostles. Definitely a different war than they were thinking of. And his path to victory is not military might, but it's sacrifice. Which should go without saying.

We think about that, you know. This King of glory. Who is this King of glory? The Lord. Strong and mighty in battle.

Yes, he absolutely is. We know that. This is the God who parted the Red Sea, who rescued his people by drowning their enemies in the same waters that he parted. This is the God who brought down the walls of Jericho with worship. This is the God who made the sun stand still so that his people could finish the battle and win.

This is the God who helped David defeat the Philistines, securing the land by God's command, not David's. This is the God, I love this one, right, who limited Gideon. David RUSSELL. Gideon. To 300 men to defeat the Midianite army and show his own strength through, he showed his own strength through what?

Israel, which is his people, which is us, right? Through their weakness. He said, I'm going to make you look as weak as possible so that there is no mistaking who is winning this battle. He is strong and mighty in battle. And you know, it's funny, because they done made a whole movie about a different set of 300.

And we talk about that, I bet kids all know that 300, the Battle of Thermopylae, right? It's like, I don't know, 700, 800 years after Gideon's battle. And it's this like, man, it's this great story, sacrifice, courage. But they lost. They lost.

And we celebrate it. I'm thinking, you got a ready-made blockbuster here with Gideon. But we don't want to hear that one, because guess what? It doesn't celebrate man's might and courage and strength. It celebrates their weakness.

That is the Lord's strong and mighty, mighty in battle. But guys, those are just the earthly battles. Those are just the ones that we can see day to day. But what battle, what war, when Jesus came as the King of glory into Jerusalem, what war was he waging when he made that triumphal entry? Because you got to think about the fact that when he came in, he knew that his days were numbered.

It was the week of his crucifixion. He knew exactly what was about to come. So he's coming in on this donkey. I don't think he was probably in the brightest of moods. Now let's set the stage, right?

So 400 years or so before this, the intertestamental period, right? We had that period between the Old Testament and the New, where there's not much going on. It was just chill. But the Jews, they were living under a various succession of foreign empires. They did not rule themselves.

After Babylon and Persia, we had Alexander the Great. He brought Judea under Greek rule. And then after that, there was a period of suppression and oppression that sparked the Maccabean Revolt. You've probably heard of the Maccabees. They were real.

There was then a brief era of Jewish independence under the Hasmoneans. But by 63 BC, Rome conquered the region. And by the time of Jesus, Judea was under very heavy-handed Roman rule. They were politically subdued. They were spiritually broken down but expectant of something.

And they were really ready at this point for a Messiah to deliver them. Because at this point, it's been over a thousand years of oppression, exile, deliverance. Oppression, exile, deliverance. Not ruling themselves, being decimated. They were so ready.

And then Jesus. born and And then Jesus said, He came in and he disappointed everybody. It was such a letdown because he came in and he had a whole different set of enemies that he was thinking about. He did not come to fight Rome. He came to fight death and Satan.

That is why he came. He did not come to restore a political system or hegemony for the Jews. He came to restore the Jews and the Gentiles to his father in heaven because they were separated from him by their sin. He came for two reasons. He came to serve and to suffer.

That's why he was here. That is why he was here. To make a sacrifice way too great for us to even comprehend. And they didn't. They couldn't.

In the same way, we have to keep reminding ourselves that this is not the same enemy. Do we have any Orson Scott Card fans? I probably don't have a big enough sample to get any. That's okay. Orson Scott Card, one of my favorite authors.

He wrote Ender's Game. Anybody heard of that one? Thank you. Well, in that story, which is amazingly analogous here, there was a phrase that kept coming up. The enemy's gate is down.

And it was kind of a trigger to help Ender realize who the real enemy was in the game. It was not actually a game. It was a real war. He just didn't know he was fighting because he was a child. And in the final battle, which he thinks is a simulation, one of his, you know, little child soldier people says, Ender, remember, the enemy's gate is down.

And it reminded him of who the real enemy was and what the actual stakes in the game was. And it's what helped him win the simulation and the actual war. We actually have the opposite thing happening here, right, where we think it's a real battle. And God is saying it's a spiritual one. It's not an earthly one.

And just like Ender had to remember the enemy's gate is down, we have to remember and we have to say to ourselves as a litany, as a mantra, our enemies are not other people. Our enemies are not other people. Our enemies are not the misery we're going through in our divorce proceedings. Our war is not the generational saga that's happening in our families. It's not the unfair termination that you may be going through with your work.

Those are all hard things and the Lord is interested in them and he will come in and help you endure them and get through them in victory. But that is not our war. Those are not our enemies. Our enemies are Satan and his armies. I mean, look, God was real, real clear.

He said, you are now, because you are the elect of Christ, you're, his, you're, Foes are your foes. His battles are your battles. His war is now yours. That's your reward. Way to go.

We're Christians, yay! Now you're, you know, onward Christian soldier. You're now called to fight, what does he say, the rulers against the authorities, against the forces in this world of darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. We cannot see them. Most of the time, we cannot see them.

They are here. They are everywhere. They can come in and out of this realm, unlike us. They are not chaotic. They are structured.

They are militant. They have a plan. And those are our enemies. That is the battle that is constantly going on. We're just like chilling on the beach, or we in the pool, or we're out here drinking coffee and having a good time here and worshiping the Lord.

The demons are out and about. And they do not stop. And they will not stop. And Satan's entire mission is to destroy you. He hates you so much.

You cannot comprehend the depths of his hatred for you and his desire to destroy you. And if we can get our minds on that and not the fleshly things of this world, guys, we can make a real difference. We can do something. But we're so distracted. We're so distracted by the enemies.

We think we have that girl who said that thing about me. And that person on Facebook who made that rant, and he's so wrong. And we're so distracted by all of this that the minions are having a party. They're like, we can just chill and go take a furlough. We don't have to do anything.

Because they're just distracting themselves with all this stuff. And God's like, the enemy is death. The enemy is Satan. It's his people. It's his armies.

Now, Jesus defeated death for us, those of us who have Jesus in our hearts. But the rest of the world, uh-uh. They're headed for an eternal death, guys. So what? We go to a war and get killed?

Whoop-dee-doo. We wake up in the arms of Jesus. Yes. Come on back. But we're so distracted.

But here's the hard thing, right? Just like that battle of spiritual, so are our weapons. And do you know what it is? Pretty much the one and only thing, guys? It's prayer.

It's prayer. It's constant, intentional, vigilant prayer of a righteous man. And it is not passive. It is firepower. It is the way that we will defeat the enemy.

It will strengthen your church. And if you are praying together and you are interceding for one another and for your leaders, and if you stand firm in the Lord and resist the devil, you will advance the gospel. And we will hasten the Lord's return. He's going to come on back. In the Philippians, we're told in your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who in the very nature of God.

Did not consider equality with God to be a thing used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing. By taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Now, I had a really hard...I love this verse, right?

I love this verse because it tells us so much about the character of God. And I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out which version I wanted to use, because there's a lot of commentary on this verse on which one is correct, and there's not really a consensus, which is why we have 467 versions of the Bible out there, because nobody can agree. Yeah. Yeah, put it right back. Keep that back up.

Philippians 2. There we go. Yeah. So, the reason it was important to me is because some of the verses have the past tense, where it said, Jesus, who was in the nature of God. I like this.

This is...most of my verses today are ESV. I'm sorry. I didn't put the...that was my bad.

I didn't put most of the...translation! Translation! There we go. Up there.

Come talk to me. I'll give them to you. This one's the ESV. It says, who? Being in the very nature of God.

Because Jesus has always been God. He always will be God. He was...he didn't start. Jesus didn't have a start.

His birth was his earthly start, but Jesus has existed eternally. So, being in the very nature of God. This is the one. Did not consider equality. A lot of the...

actually, like most of the King James and the New King James, which said, he did not consider equality something either to be grasped, or he did not consider it robbery. I thought those were very interesting. But, because of the next part of the verse, I like using it to his own advantage. So, he already was God, guys. He was.

He was like, I've already been there. Done that. But, instead of it being something he held on to, he emptied himself. He poured himself into the earth as a human and made himself...it says, made himself nothing.

Made himself nothing. Because the...I know that hurts, but compared to God, we are nothing. And that's what he's saying. He's saying, I made myself nothing.

Because I love you so much that I made myself nothing. Worse than a servant. Like one of the pigs at the trough begging for scraps from the table. That's who he made himself. And he...

and Paul says, I need you to be in the same mindset as that. That's how you're going to fight this battle. We have to start there. And that's kind of hard. So, here's the questions I want us to ask ourselves when we think about Jesus' character here.

What kind of king do I want Jesus to be? Really, in my deepest heart of hearts. What kind of king do I want Jesus to be? What kind of king do I want Jesus to be? What kind of king do I want him to be?

Possibly more important, what kind of follower am I willing to be? I mean, he's already told us what to do. Am I trying to win the argument? Or am I trying to love the person? I don't like that.

This is big in Virginia Beach. This is a fit town, y'all. I don't know if you know about that, but we are like in lists for the fittest in America. Am I drawn to image, to comfort, to control? Or am I drawn to faith, to humility, to truth?

Which leads me to my last point. You're welcome, Leon. Part three. The King of Glory, Jesus. He enters through surrender.

That is how he comes through the gates. Who is he? This King of Glory, the Lord of Hosts. He is the King of Glory. Jesus was, is, and will be the Lord of Hosts, commanding the armies of heaven.

But he rode into Jerusalem unarmed and on a donkey. Now, the order of these next couple of verses is purposeful. So I want to start with John 12, 23 through 25. When Jesus said, the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Yes, it's here.

Going to be the King of Glory, right? He says, truly, truly, though, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loses his, loves of life, loses it. And whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Can you just imagine being the apostles when he says, the time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. And they're like, yes, this is it. You know, go get your swords. And then he's talking about grains and fruit. And they're like, what?

It's like several years he's doing these parables and stories. And they're like, Jesus, just tell us. And he says, it has to die. It's got to die. That's what's going to happen.

Listen, he was telling us that the cross was not a detour on his path to glory. The cross was the glory. It is the glory. Paul said, Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel. And not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. That's what Paul understood. He said, this thing, the cross is going to look so silly and foolish to the. But make no mistake, it is the glory.

It is the endgame. It is the most incredible thing that could ever happen. And Jesus said in Luke 9 verse 23, If anyone would come after me, you have to deny yourself, but let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. Well, that begs the question, what does it mean to take up your cross? Well, we have to back up one verse to find out.

Right before that, Jesus said, The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed. And on the third day, be raised. Once again, he was hiding nothing, telling everyone, I wish I could have been a fly on the wall. And then skip ahead a verse in 24. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.

But that is how you take up your cross. Now, Jesus, I think this is my thesis. He was not interested in a once-in-a-generation military coup. That wasn't what he came for. That's what his apostles thought he came for.

He was on a rescue mission. He came to achieve once-and-for-all victory over sin and death. A once-and-for-all redemption for all sinners through his own sacrifice. A once-and-for-all act of surrender that would secure triumph, not just then, but from everlasting to everlasting. So to take up your cross, we have to have the mind of Paul when he said, Philippians 2, verse 17, But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and I rejoice with all of you.

We have to be willing to pour ourselves out, empty ourselves out, like Christ, to take up our cross. I was just thinking last night, I was remembering a song that my little brother and I used to sing. I think Leon's heard it, because I think we sang it at Parkway years ago. But it was a kind of more contemporary gospel song. I can't remember who wrote it, but Allison Durham sang it.

And the second verse says, I'm so glad he was willing to drink that bitter cup. Although he prayed, Father, let it pass from me. And I'm so glad he never called down heaven's angels from my hands, pull the nails that torment me. A couple years ago, I don't know if you all know this, but I lost a thumbnail. Yeah, I had some acrylic nails.

And one of them got shoved out, like halfway out. And I had to have it removed. And let me tell you something. The next day, because like... The nurse put a regular Band-Aid on it.

That is not what you do. You're just to put one of those non-sticky things around it. Well, the next day when I had to remove it to clean it, because I had no nail, it was all gone, just a nail bed. I think my soul momentarily left my body. Like it, you know what?

You, if this ever happens to you, I will expect you to come back and say she was right. I think my soul left and the Lord said, you are a wuss. Go back home. And he sent me back. I thought I was going to glory.

I was not. It came back in. And I remember thinking right then, I am not made for torture and pain. I mean, I had one thumbnail. So, can you just, sometimes if you just really sit and think about what Christ endured on that tree, and he could have at any moment called down legions of angels to take him down.

And that's not even counting the spiritual suffering that he was enduring and the pain and the rejection, not to mention all his people ran away. It's unfathomable, but he didn't. So, if he can do that, can we just take up our cross in really tiny ways? And I started thinking, what, how about this? This is, I like this term, cross-shaped living.

Let's just, you know, if you get ready to take up the whole thing and drag it, splinters. What about just like a cross shape? It might be like within your family, maybe you do a lot and you feel like nobody sees it. And nobody talks about it. And you just feel like you're just doing stuff and doing stuff and nobody, nobody really thanks you.

Maybe that's what it looks like. You serve without being seen, because that's what Jesus did. When you're in conflict on Facebook, maybe you choose humility over vindication. Maybe you choose to say, I don't need to win because our enemies are not other people. This is not my war.

Maybe in leadership, and a lot of you are in leadership, that means telling the truth and walking the right path even when it costs you. And it may cost you everything. Because, I mean, the reality is, yes, having like an affair publicized in a Coldplay concert can cost you everything. That's one way. But you know what?

You can be the CEO who does everything right and above board and still lose it all. Yes, this stuff happened to him because he was dumb. I don't feel bad. I mean, what a fool. I mean, but guess what?

It could have been a God-fearing man and totally lost everything. I think he could have lost everything. A whole nother way. Are we prepared for that? Psalm 24, such a gorgeous psalm.

We could sing it all day long. It really builds like a coronation, but the gospel flips it on its head. That expectation that we have. Jesus, the King of Glory, He did not come to ascend a throne. He came to ascend a cross.

But make no mistake, He's gonna come again, and He's gonna come again in power. The gates will lift, all the gates this time, the literal ones, the physical ones, the metaphysical ones, and every knee will bow. But until then, we have to live in this tension of glory hidden in surrender, of power revealed through submission. Ooh, we hate that word. So don't miss the real Jesus, because He doesn't come the way you expected it.

Don't delay opening up the gates of your heart. Because, you know, until life gets easier. Or until your faith gets stronger. Like, my faith's just not there yet. It's not ever gonna.

Instead, just open up your mouth and pray. Why don't we just pray this together? Oh, Lord, the earth is yours, and the fullness therein, and all the world and those who dwell in it. Lord, we lift up our heads and our hearts so that you, O King of Glory, may come in. We invite you, Lord, to come into this moment right now, today, into our pain, into our weakness, into our unbelief.

Help us to turn away from all of these distractions so that we are able to put our faith fully into you. We pray that you will save and sanctify this city through the bold testimony of this church, and that you do a mighty work in us. Help us to resist the evil one and to stand firm. Help us. Because it is for your eternal glory that we pray this, Father, and we do it in the name of your Son, Jesus, and by the power of your Holy Spirit that indwells every saint.

Amen and amen.