Where does God live

00:02 This message is kind of a combination message of a continuation of our seru uh messages on the person and work of the Holy Spirit, and also uh combined with a uh dedication message this morning because we do want to have a time of dedication for our facility here this morning. For those of you that are guests with us, we welcome you. 00:24 And this is about not quite a month that we've been meeting in this newly remodeled sanctuary here. And so we have dedicated this morning for a dedication also of the facility for the glory of God. And so kind of a number of thoughts kind of coming together this morning and weaving together in this message. 00:46 And I'd invite you to turn in your copies of the Scriptures to John chapter 14. And we will do a more thorough exposition of this passage in the future. But I want you to think about this morning, verses 16 and 17, when Jesus indicated to His disciples that He was going to go away, 01:07 that He would be leaving them. He said, "In a little bit you will not see Me, and then you will see Me." And speaking of His resurrection, and then He said, "And I'm going to leave you for a while, and I'm going to send another like Me, another Comforter, and a Counselor, a Helper. 01:26 And He will abide with you forever." And so our text this morning is in John 14, verse 16, "And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper or Comforter or Counselor." The word Helper there means one called alongside to help us in our weakness. And so Jesus said, 01:47 "I have been your Helper." This word another means that there's going to be this Helper is going to be like Him, like Jesus, and continue the work of Christ in the lives of His people, and that He may abide with you forever. 02:03 The Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I want you to pay special attention to those prepositions this morning. Now, this is not an English lesson, but we'll use an English illustration. 02:25 How many of you know have heard of a prepositional phrase? Yeah, well, we know what those are. And I was trying to teach our children prepositional phrases in homeschooling and what a preposition is. And somebody hit on the illustration that a preposition shows the relationships between two objects. 02:44 And so anything that you could use the word box with, that's kind of how they learned this. You put something in the box, that's a preposition. It shows the relationship between the box and whatever you're putting in it. You can put something over the box, under the box, around the box, 03:04 away from the box, just all kinds of words that would be describing the proximity, the relationship between the box and whatever it is that it's relating to. Well, I want you to pay attention to these two prepositions this morning because this is what this message is going to be built on, where it says that the Spirit, 03:24 this Helper, this Spirit of truth, which the world cannot receive because they're only into the physical. They don't know anything about the spiritual things of life, especially the spiritual things of God. And they don't see Him. They don't know Him. 03:40 But you know Him, for He shall be with you and will be in you. He shall be with you, or He dwells with you in New King James. He dwells with you and will be in you, speaking of Pentecost coming. And so I want to have you think with me this morning about the question, 04:00 where does God live? Where does God live? And of course, we automatically know He lives in us. He lives in us. But I want to do a little salvation history this morning, taking us all the way back to the Garden of Eden. And of course, we know that in the Garden of Eden, man was with God and God was with man in a very special way. 04:22 Adam in his pre-fallen condition, we've not seen the likes of that since except in the person of Jesus Christ who was in His unfallen. But even the body of Jesus Christ was subject to death. They put Him to death and so on. 04:41 But in the life of Adam, there was a special relationship between Adam and God. You see, there was a fellowship that was unbroken. There was a relationship there where God came to Adam and fashioned him and formed him and breathed into him the breath of life and so on. 05:02 And so God was with Adam when He fashioned him. And God was with Adam when He blew into him the breath of life. God was with Adam when Adam stood up and took his first breath and looked around wondering at where He, what this was and who He was and where He had come from, 05:22 and immediately recognizing His life as an act of creation by a loving Creator. God was with Adam in the cool of the evenings, in the cool of the day, the Bible says. And Adam had that perfect walking and talking and fellowship and harmonious relationship with the God of the universe. 05:42 And so we could say that 05:45 in Eden, in the Garden of Eden, God was with man. He was with man. Of course, that was a disaster waiting to happen, one that Adam plunged all of us, including the entire world, into sin and became alienated from God. 06:05 And so God withdrew Himself from Adam and actually expelled Adam from His presence. You see, Adam was expelled from the garden. And this set in motion the plan of God for the ages. And man, of course, you know, became carnally minded. 06:25 He was at enmity against God. The book of Romans says to be carnally minded is to be at enmity against God. The Bible says that the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God. The Bible says that we are strangers now. We're strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 06:44 I'm talking about the human condition. He says, "Now for us who are saved, we have been brought near." So this is no longer the case. But man in his fallen condition is a stranger from God. He is dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past, ye walked according to the course of this world, 07:03 according to the prince of the power of the air, the Spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others." Ephesians chapter 2. 07:22 And so man in his fallen state became alienated with God, and he was against God. He was away from God. He was contrary to God. He was at enmity with God. He was an enemy of God. 07:35 And yet God, in His desire for relationship with mankind, set about to move toward us. It's significant that man moved away from God. Man hid from God. And God, in His mercy and grace and kindness, began to move toward us, even though we were alienated from one another. 07:57 And so we go to the next period where we see in the early chapters of the book of Genesis how that God begins to move towards man in calling the patriarchs. And so we have the patriarchs, God coming to man. And the Bible says that Enoch walked with God. 08:17 And it says that Noah, that he walked with God. He had grace, found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And God said to Noah. And God remembered Noah. And God blessed Noah. But it was a relationship where God was attempting to come closer to man and to bring us into fellowship with Himself. 08:37 Now, if you have your Bibles open, why don't you turn to the book of Genesis? I want to just show you a few things here about God to man. In Genesis chapter 12, verse 7, "The Lord appeared to Abraham." The Lord appeared to Abraham. You see, God's coming to man. 08:57 And God remembered... Excuse me. That's going back to Noah there. And God appeared to Abraham in chapter 15, verse 1. "Now after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, 'Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceeding great reward.'" Chapter 17, 09:17 "When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him..." In chapter 18, verse 1, "The Lord appeared to him by the terebinth trees of Mamre as he was sitting in the tent door in the heat of the day." And so we have these occasions when God would appear to people. 09:38 He would appear to Abraham in what we call a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ, of God to someone in the Old Testament. And we go to Abraham. He promised the land and the nations to Abraham. 09:59 He came to Abram in a vision. He came as a burning torch. He came and spoke face to face in chapter 18, verse 22. 10:09 The men turned away from there and went towards Sodom. But Abraham stood before the Lord. He stood before the Lord. There was a coming together between God and man. This continues in the life of Isaac in chapter 21... Excuse me. Chapter 26, verse 2. 10:29 Chapter 26, verse 2, "Then the Lord appeared to him, to Isaac, and said, 'Do not go down to Egypt.'" In chapter 20, verse 26, verse 24, "The Lord appeared to him in the same night and said, 'I am the God of your father Abraham.'" And so we have God coming to man. 10:49 You have it again in the life of Jacob in chapter 35, verse 1, "Then God said to Jacob, 'Arise up to Bethel, go up to Bethel and dwell there and make an altar there to God who appeared to you when you fled from the face of Esau, your brother.'" God appeared to him in a dream. 11:09 And then God appeared to him in verse 7 because there God appeared to him when he fled from the face of his brother in chapter 28, going back to 28:13. We also have God appearing to him. "And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, 11:28 'I am the God of Abraham, your father, and the God of Isaac, the land in which you dwell, in which Eliel will give to you and your descendants.'" God appearing. God appearing in chapter 32, verse 30, "As the angel of the Lord wrestling, wrestling with Jacob, coming to Jacob, touching his thigh, wounding him deeply, 11:48 causing him to see his inadequacy and calling him into relationship with himself." Moses, if we had time this morning, we'd look at how Moses saw God in that burning bush, a manifestation of God, God coming to Moses. In chapter 33, verse 18, Moses wanted another glimpse of God. 12:09 And so God appeared to him. He said, "Show me your glory." And so he hid him in the cleft of the rock and covered him with his hand. And then as God passed by... We don't understand these appearances, how it could be. But it was. And God passed by and revealed His backside and, of course, the glorious presence of God on Moses' face. 12:31 And then that leads us to the next period of salvation history where God called Israel into existence as a people and set a tabernacle among them. And this could be called God among man. 12:47 And what you want to understand about God among man in the people of Israel is how that layout was configured with the tabernacle in the middle. Tabernacle in the middle. And if you read the way they were to travel and the way they were to camp, there were three tribes on the north, three tribes on the south, 13:07 three tribes on the west, and three tribes on the east. And God was right in the middle. He was right there in the midst. God was among them with the shining brightness of His glory, the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day. And when they completed that tabernacle, 13:26 how that the glory of God descended upon that tabernacle insomuch that it was so strong and so weighty that they could not perform the duties for a period of time. And what we have here is the light and the bright shining glory of God among man, shining in His brightness. 13:48 The Bible says about Paul, this Shekhinah glory. Did a little study on the word Shekhinah. Shekhinah is not used in the scriptures, but it was used by some of the Jewish writers after the scriptures, commentators, and so on to describe the dwelling of God and is associated with the bright light of the glory of His presence, 14:10 the light associated with Jehovah's presence as it was revealed then and reflected on the face of Moses. And so we have Eden, God with man, the patriarchs, God to man, Israel, God among man. But there came a period of time when the glory of God left the temple and the tabernacle. 14:31 That glorious experience was repeated when the temple was dedicated. And yet because of their sin, there came a time when the glory departed. And you really read about it in the book of Ezekiel, how that the glory moved from the Holy of Holies to the threshold and then from the threshold to the mountains and then from the mountains out of the city. 14:52 And God began to speak through man, through man. And so you have God with man, God to man, God among man, and God through man. He now begins to speak prophetically through holy men of God as they spoke being moved by the Holy Spirit. 15:14 What a blessing it would be to have God to us. Yes. To have God to us. To have God appear to us. Wouldn't that be a blessing? That would be quite an honor for God to appear to us. But you see, we're on the other side of Pentecost, and we have a greater honor that we're just about to get to. And wouldn't it be wonderful that God encamped among us? 15:36 But did you realize He is among us? He's here this morning by the presence and person of His Holy Spirit, monitoring, blessing, counseling, helping us in our worship, helping us in our prayers, helping us in our service for God, making the presence of Christ real to us. God is among us. 15:56 And God working through man. What a blessing to be able to share the word of God. What a blessing to be able to teach the word of God. 16:04 What a blessing to be able to quote the word of God, to admonish one another with the word of God, and God speaking through us to accomplish His blessings to others and His illumination by His Spirit to help us understand and share the scriptures. But even that was not close enough. 16:24 God is moving closer. And so we come to the time when Christ came on the scene with the subject God as man, God as man. John the Baptist said, "Prepare the way of the Lord." He's coming. He's showing up. He's here. Then finally, 16:44 John said, "He's here." From the heavens to the manger to the cross to the tomb and to the skies, God walked among us. The Bible says that the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory. "And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together," Isaiah prophesied. 17:06 What a blessing to walk with Jesus as as as the disciples walked with Him and as He talked with them. It was a bit of Eden restored to be able to have God, the God-man, walking with them on the dusty roads of of of of Israel, of Judea. But that's not close enough. 17:27 That's not close enough. God wanted to come closer. God wanted to come closer. He wants to come so close that He would literally be in us as well as with us. 17:41 And so we come to our text again this morning, that He dwells with you and will be in you. Oh, it'd be great to have a visitation from God. It'd be great to be able to share God's word with someone. It is great to have God among us. 18:00 It is great to have God as man in the person of Christ. But what could be greater? What could be closer? What could be more intimate than to have God in man? So the Bible makes it clear that the Holy Spirit came into the saints, occupied their... 18:22 Came into their personality, into their minds, into their will, into their emotions, into their spirit. And those who were dead in trespasses and sins were made alive by the renewing power of the Holy Spirit, taking the salvation which had been purchased in Christ and applying that to our lives. 18:42 Jesus said, "Tarry in Jerusalem until you be endued with power, until this statement is fulfilled that He will be in you." Future tense. He will be in you. "Christ in you, the hope of glory." "That the love," John 17 says, 19:01 "with which you loved Me," Jesus praying to His Father, "may be in them and I in them. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. 19:12 If any man will hear My voice and will open the door, I will come into him and dine with him and he with Me." You can't get any closer than that. You can't get any more intimate than that. Oh, yes, it's intimate to have God with us, 19:31 among us, through us, and to us. But there's nothing more intimate than God in us. Amen. And that's the beauty of Pentecost. That's the beauty of Christ coming, dying, rising, ascending, 19:53 sending forth His Spirit so that the person of Christ literally lives within us. So where does God live? Where does God live? Well, of course, we know He lives in the heavens. He lives in the heavens. 20:07 Isaiah 40:22 says, "It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers that stretcheth out the curtain, the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in." He sits in the heavens. The earth is His footstool. 20:26 The stars and the moon and the sky and the galaxies are His domain. But He wants to be closer. So He came in the tabernacle, and He lived in the tabernacle. Then the cloud covered the tabernacle in meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And when the tabernacle switched over to the temple, 20:46 a permanent dwelling place in Jerusalem, it says this about Solomon: "When Solomon had finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offerings and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. 21:03 And the priests could not enter into the house of the Lord because the glory of the Lord had filled the Lord's house. 21:09 When all the children of Israel saw how the fire came down and the glory of the Lord on the temple, they bowed their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and praised the Lord, saying, 'For He is good, for His mercy endures forever.'" Psalm 135:21 says, 21:27 "Blessed is the Lord out of Zion who dwelleth at Jerusalem." But God doesn't live there today any more than He lives anywhere else. He lives in His Son. There came a time, as we mentioned, that God withdrew from the temple, and many years they worshiped in vain. But when Jesus came, 21:46 it was very clear that God lived in the person of Christ. Colossians 1:19, "For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell, for in Him dwelled all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." The Bible says in Hebrews that He is the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, 22:08 Christ, the shining glory of God. But there's one other place that God lives. Of course, He lives in the individual. We've mentioned that. God in us. But scripture also makes it clear that God lives in the church. He lives in the church, 22:29 corporate. And I think we ought to just take a moment and stand up, stretch. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. It's okay. You may be seated, those of you that were sleeping and are now awake. Ephesians 2:19-22 says, 22:48 "Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord, 23:07 in whom also ye are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit." What makes a building like this significant is not the structure, 23:21 but is the fact that God dwells among and with and in His people as a body. And so wherever God's people assemble, that place becomes holy. We've kind of assembled in different places through the years. 23:43 Living Water is in its 20th year. Not too many of us. Maybe a half or a third of us were at that initial service. Some weren't even born yet. Next September, it'll be 20 years. We're in our 20th year. That's right. Meeting at the school, 24:04 I kind of tongue-in-cheek said, "This is our tabernacle because we set it up, tear it down, set it up, tear it down, set it up, tear it down." Always putting up chairs, taking them down, putting up chairs, taking them down. It was a temporary dwelling place. Then we moved to Greencroft for what, I don't know, two and a half, three years. I don't have the dates memorized. 24:24 Two and a half, three years, that seemed a little bit more permanent. But there was nothing holy about the school until we got there. Amen. There was nothing holy about the Greencroft until we got there or whatever church would get there where God dwells. And then God gave us a building. 24:45 A lot of hard work, a lot of money to put this structure up. And we felt now we have a home. We can worship here. We don't have to worry about where we're going to go midweek when the other building's filled with other activities, and we got to find another place. 25:04 And now we can use it. We can come and go, and we can have more flexibility. And then, of course, about two years ago, I guess it probably was when we got to talking about what to do with maybe making a permanent sanctuary here. There's nothing holy about this building except the fact that when God's people show up, 25:26 it gets holy. Amen. 25:30 There's something that happens when the people of God come together to worship. John said it like this: "Hereby or no man has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwells in us." Some people say, "Well, God dwells in me. 25:49 That's all I need. I don't need any relationships with anybody else. I'll just be a lone ranger Christian, just free-wheeling for Jesus. 25:57 The only person that I'm in love with is myself." Where love gets tested is in the context of committed relationships where things get messy and where things get tense and where things get uptight at times and where you have to work with relationships to come to understand one another. 26:17 That's where love is tested. That's where love flourishes. That's where love abounds. So he says, "God, if we love one another, God dwells in us, and His love is perfected in us. Hereby know that we... Know we... Know we that we dwell in Him and He in us because He hath given us of His Spirit. 26:37 And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in Him. God is all over. He's in us. 26:57 He's among us. He's to us. He's through us. He's in you. He's in me. 27:00 He's in us together as a body representing Jesus Christ in a way that none of us can fully represent Him by ourselves." So what's the big deal about a building? 27:15 A building is where we meet to do business with God, to have significant spiritual worship experiences and fellowship experiences, making decisions for Christ, making commitments to Christ, hearing the word expounded, responding to the word, 27:35 giving our all to God, making significant life choices and decisions in church. It becomes a holy place. And why do we want to honor a holy place? And now I think there's two ditches. One ditch is to say, 27:54 "Well, the place is completely insignificant." And the other ditch is to say that the place is where we have to be in order to experience God. In fact, the phrase "sacred space" kept coming to my mind. 28:10 So I Googled "sacred space." And I didn't realize that sacred space is a New Age term. You start looking at sacred space on the internet, and you find out that they're talking about sacred space where you burn candles and incense and and and have your idol and your little your little hut and your little this or that. 28:31 It's the place where you go to experience God. So I Googled "holy place" instead of "sacred space." "Holy place." That's a more biblical term. 28:49 What makes a place holy is because we're here making God meeting us here. When we leave, it's just another building. But I like to suggest to you kind of a middle ground because I think we lose something when we lose a sense of a holy place that becomes holy when God's people meet. 29:10 Let me give you an illustration. How many of you, if you found the Ark of the Covenant... Now we recognize God doesn't live there in the Ark of the Covenant anymore. But if you found the Ark of the Covenant, how many of you would grind it up into powder, melt it down, whatever, and sell it for bullion, gold bullion? 29:34 It would be a whole lot worth a whole lot more if you just kept it the way it is. I'm not talking about monetary things. How many of you would do that? Or would you say, "Huh, we found the Ark of the Covenant. Recognize God doesn't live there anymore, but He did. And it was a holy experience." And so we're going to honor, 29:53 not worship, but honor that Ark of the Covenant. In fact, man tends then to worship those things. I think that's one of the reasons that God hasn't allowed people to find it because He knew if we did, we'd start worshiping it. But if you did find it, would it not be appropriate just to honor it? A little bit like our bodies. 30:14 God lives in our body. He lives in our personality. 30:17 And the body dies, and yet we still honor the body. Why do you honor the body? Because it was a dwelling place of God. God says, "It's significant. I met you there. 30:29 I lived in it." And so we would consider it inappropriate to desecrate the body and cut off the hand and bury it in one place and cut off the arm and bury it somewhere else and cut off the foot and bury it somewhere else or hang it up for a display or whatever and desecrate. We call that desecrating the body. Why would it be wrong to desecrate the body? 30:48 I mean, nobody living there anymore. It's just a tent. Well, the two ditches. One says, "It's just a tent. It's worthless." The other says, "Oh, we got to worship that body, and we got to entomb that body and put it in a glass case and mummify it so that several thousand years somebody could find it and worship it some more." No. 31:07 Somewhere between those two ditches is honor and respect. I would suggest that that's what we do with a church building. You use it. You meet there. It fully functions for the fellowship and the operation of a local congregation. 31:28 It's not holy, but it is worthy of respect. Can I get an amen? 31:36 It's worthy of respect. Why? Because it represents something. It represents a place where people meet God. It represents a place where significant interaction with God happens. 31:49 It represents a place where God shows up in fellowship with different people who are filled with His Spirit to do the mundane, the messy, and the mighty functions of church. Yeah. Church can be mundane at times. 32:10 Somebody's got to clean the bathrooms, show up, sweep the carpet, keep order in the kitchen, make sure that the mailboxes get filled every week. Kind of mundane. And church is even messy sometimes. Yeah. Broken relationships that need to be mended and healed, 32:29 misunderstandings that need to be talked through, sin that needs to be processed and dealt with, repented of, and sometimes disciplined can get messy. And then sometimes it's mighty when you just... When you're worshiping and you just see God moving and God is... 32:48 And your people are responding to the Word of God and heaven comes down and glory fills our soul. That's worthy of honor, I believe. And so we want to dedicate this place this morning. 33:01 I'm going to ask the ministry team to come forward. They didn't know I was going to do this. But come on up. 33:12 And we have a reading this morning that we're going to stand and do together because it's not the preachers dedicating the house. It's the people dedicating the house. 33:32 And so you'll see on the screen... I hope this all works okay because this is the first time we've used these screens, right? You're going to see on the screen several lines that one of us is going to read. And I think we'll just go right down the line. Step up to the platform or the podium, Lynn, and read that first part. 33:52 And why don't you all stand? And you're going to recite the bold italicized, "We dedicate this house." And say it with gusto. Amen? Don't say it halfheartedly. God doesn't want to live in a halfhearted house. 34:09 God wants to live in a house where people are serious and intense and intent on doing God's business and connecting with God. So Brother Lynn, you read the first slide and you all respond. And then Trevor, you step up, read the next slide and think about what we're reading. 34:30 Let's read it slow and meditative and think about what's being said. For the ministry of the Word, for the worship of your holy name, for giving and receiving mutual counsel, for participation in the ordinances of the church. 34:51 We dedicate this house. 34:56 For warning the world of sin and its consequences, for calling many to salvation, for proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ, for preaching the whole counsel of God. 35:10 We dedicate this house. For comfort to those who mourn, for help to those who are tempted, for strength to those who are weak, for celebration with those who are joyful. 35:26 We dedicate this house. For studying the Holy Scriptures, for discerning together the will of God, for mutual admonition in the ways of the Spirit, for transmitting the faith to succeeding generations. 35:41 We dedicate this house. 35:45 For encouraging one another to compassion and good works, for planning and performing deeds of love, for commissioning members to Christian service, for support of gospel workers around the world. 36:02 We dedicate this house. 36:07 Yes, for prayer and song, for praise and witness, and for all the activities prompted by your Spirit, we dedicate this house. And altogether, but not only do we dedicate this building with its furnishings and grounds, we also rededicate ourselves. 36:29 For your cleansing and forgiveness, for your indwelling and empowering, for your guidance, and for your service, knowing that it is in us you have chosen to dwell and to build your temple. Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 36:52 Let's pray. And I'm going to read a prayer of dedication this morning. I'm not really into red prayers, but I think on a solemn occasion like this is appropriate. Almighty and everlasting God, through your Son, the true cornerstone, you gather all believers into one house. 37:15 You are preparing for yourself a spiritual temple of living stones. Let your favor and blessing rest on this meeting house now and in the coming years. As we worship, enable us to remember your name, to give you honor, and to be a praying people. 37:36 Accept this structure as your own. Enter it when we enter. Be present to those who gather here regularly so that their work and worship may be blessed. Hear our prayers and the prayers of all who shall worship here. 37:54 Give them and us grace to serve you with reverence and godly fear. Help those who commit their lives to you in holy baptism to prove themselves faithful. May all who worship here finally come to your heavenly eternal kingdom through Jesus Christ, our Lord. 38:15 As we commune and celebrate the supper of our Lord, may we come with faith, love, and true repentance. Pour out your grace to our eternal comfort that we may obtain the benefits of the cross, forgiveness, hope, and inspiration for true fellowship. 38:34 May our worship inspire us to faithful witness and service for our Lord Jesus Christ. May our service be guided by your Word and Spirit. May the life of our congregation be a healing and reconciling presence in this community. 38:52 May both leaders and members and children and friends be clothed with righteousness and salvation. May we all grow into a holy temple in the Lord. Receive us at last into the glorious temple above, the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 39:14 Again, to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be glory and praise world without end. Amen. You may be seated. 39:29 We do want to just 39:33 give a bit of recognition to those who have labored faithfully in helping to coordinate and accomplish this facility, the committee. We want to thank them, Bob and Rod and Tim and Ryan. 39:52 And we do have a gift for them from the church that we'll give to them after the service. But as you have opportunity to thank them, please do. And for all who have contributed to this project, it's a joint effort. Much money has been given, much time, concern invested. I think of those who faithfully, 40:13 week after week, set up the chairs in the tabernacle, putting them up, putting them down, putting them up, putting them down. And thank you to each one. God, I believe, is honored when the body works together and functions well. So let's stand for prayer. 40:37 It has been my privilege to meet, after talking with him on the phone, Brother Merle Yoder from Lincoln, 40:48 Missouri. And he is a deacon at the Gospel Light congregation. And I'm going to ask Merle if you would come and lead us in a closing prayer. Make any comments you would like to. I like putting people on the spot. So if I ever come to your church, when I come in February, you can do that to me too. 41:08 Yeah. I appreciate what we've heard here today. It's been inspiring to me, and I want to take that to heart, grow from what we've heard. And I trust you will do the same. So let's close with prayer at this time. Lord, we pause before you this noon hour. We thank you, 41:27 Lord, for guiding our hearts this day. Thank you for what has been shared this morning through thy Word, through thy Spirit. Just help us, Lord, to be open to thy leading as we go from day to day. May thy will be done in our lives. 41:46 May we be able to reach out with thy help and touch lives that we come in contact with from day to day. Bless the congregation here, also the congregation at home. Watch over them, Lord, and be near and dear to each one. Lead, guide, and direct us. 42:07 Use us for thy honor and thy glory. We pray in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen.