The Branch Church
Love with Compassion
All right, everybody. Let's go ahead and find your seats. All right. Well, good morning. Good to be together. My name is Stephen. I work here. I love Sundays. This is crazy. I mean, I've been at this church for five years as a member and an elder and then as a lead pastor. James is exactly right. If you just look around the room like this is a work of the award and I'm humbled every week that we come together. Just God's doing a great work and so I'm thankful just to be around and involved. So if you have your Bible, we're going to be in a couple of different places today. We're going to start in Matthew 5 and then we're going to go to Luke 10. So if you want to go ahead and as I do our little welcome and introduction, find those spots. You can go ahead and do that. If this is your first Sunday here, I just want to say welcome to you. We're thankful that you're here. We've been praying for you. If you are sitting in the back and you don't want to sit in the back, you need to get here earlier. I will say this. If you have lower lumbar support, so if your back is strong, I think you could serve some other folks who's maybe lower back is not quite so strong by choosing to sit in the bleachers. So that's not any sort of exhortation or just a suggestion. So anyways, we're currently in a three-week identity series laying out our mission, vision and values as a church, as this local body of believers. And so we're in week three. So this is the last week of this vision series. Next week we will kick off our study of Colossians by spending two weeks in the book of Acts. Why do we do that? We do that to lay a groundwork of the context of what's going on in the place that Paul's writing in the letter two. Okay? So we'll spend two weeks in Acts and then we'll jump into Colossians after that and we'll go verse by verse. Let's take us all the way through this semester. Sometime into the spring semester we'll wrap that up and then Philemon. So we're studying Paul's prison epistles is what they're called. Letters that he wrote from prison. And so that really kicks off next week. So as we start, I've read this quote each week in this series. And I do this for a few different reasons. One, I think it's important for us to be reminded of what we're doing when we come together. But just the serious commitment of what it looks like to be a part, a partner in a local church. Okay, so whether you're a college tutor, you're a young adult, or you're an older adult, you got young kids, you got old kids, you got no kids, it doesn't matter what stage of life you're in. This quote applies to all of us. And so by a guy named Mike Foster, it's going to be on the screen. And again, I think at this point some of you can probably memorize this and recite it. But it says this, "Nothing grows a Christian like a serious commitment to a single church weekend and week out for years and years, not conferences, not social media, not even personal devotions. The local churches where mature Christians are slowly forged in the fires of mundane faithfulness." And so you're probably like, "Why does he keep reading this? I won't do it again. This is the last week, okay? So get off me." But here's why. Here's why. I know that finding a church is hard because finding your people is hard, okay? So I understand when we move, we planted a church in Dallas, Texas like over ten years ago. And when we left there and moved back here, finding a church was really hard for a church guy, okay? A professional. It was hard. We weren't having any fun, okay? And we landed here, and the reason we stuck here is because we were welcomed and loved here, okay? Long before I ever stepped in to serve in any capacity. So I just say that to encourage you. I know like if you're a kind of, you know, if you're a young family, finding a church is hard. The commitment to get up every Sunday and to get your kids dressed, whether it's on Inside Out or not, doesn't really matter, just getting them out the door into the car and here is a serious commitment. So I just want to encourage you. That's why we've read this each week. But our prayer as a church is for you to plug into a healthy church. And so what does that, what does that mean? And I think it means this. Here's the definition of what a healthy church looks like. The health of a church is the unity of a body, of a people in the direction of Christ. It's not, it's not about attendance. It's not about budget. It's not about the number of programs a church happens to offer. It has to do with the unity of the body in the direction of Jesus Christ. Okay? And so here at the branch, we do think, I mean, y'all, we're reading in a gymnasium. Okay? We try to do things simple because we can get so distracted or so busy living a Christian life that we forget to actually follow Jesus. And so our prayer for you is that you get plugged in to a healthy church that you get plugged into community, walking the hard road of following Christ as Lord. So no matter what stage of life you're in, my encouragement to you is to commit to Christian community. And the way that looks like here is that sure Sundays are important and it's vibrant, just even that two minutes that we give you guys again, if you're like really introverted, I'm sorry, we just got to do that every week. It's good for you. It's good for me. Okay? To greet one another in the name of the Lord. But as we do that, this is important, but we want you to get plugged into community. So we do that through family groups and stuff like tonight at core. And so I would encourage you to jump in to participate. But if you've been coming for a while, I want to just encourage you, like, now's the time to commit to this body. Okay? As we continue to grow and as we look towards what God has for our future, we're looking for partners to help share the load of serving this church. And we've got a really exciting thing we're going to do at the end of the service today, just kind of another fruit of what the Lord's been doing in our midst. And so hang on to the edge of your seat for that. All right. But we've got to move beyond consuming church. And this isn't condemnation on this body. This is just like the American church is great about consumerism. We come, we partake, but we don't ever participate. Okay? We're looking for partners, teammates, not people just to fill a seat. And so I say that to encourage you to push you to love you because I love you. It is, I say that. Okay? So with that in mind, we do have a new member sitting right up front, speaking of wit. Gay Morales has gone through our next steps process. He's written his paper. Elders approved him. The church supports him. You're awesome. [applause] So listen, if you're, if you want to kind of follow that path that, that Gabe and others have taken, we're going to, like, I don't care if you signed up for them, you can have my lunch today. Okay? Come to the next steps class and just learn. Meet our leaders. I think it's important to meet the people who are stewarding this church. Learn more about our theology. Ask questions. If you're coming, go ahead and start working on your questions. Okay? So anyways, let's keep moving on. So today we're going to pray for the country of Jordan. All right? This country is in the Middle East. This is a country that I've been to and love. And I was able to spend about a week and a half a few years ago in Amman, Jordan. And I was just blown away by the hospitality of the people. All right? This is a Middle Eastern country, mostly Islamic, but very open country. It's a very safe country. And so what's interesting, what I found interesting because of my experience in Jordan is they don't have a whole lot of political persecution, but it's more cultural. So they're more culturally resistant to Christianity than they are politically resistant to Christianity, if that makes sense. And I think that's a harder burden to jump than political opposition when there's a cultural barrier to the gospel. And so the Joshua project has a scale one through five that kind of ranks countries on this progress scale is what they call it. Jordan is at the bottom of this ranking list. And this list measures the effectiveness and progress of church plants in an area. And so that says more about culture than it says anything about the government. So let's pray for a few things. Let's pray for a church planning movement to take root in Jordan. And let's pray that the culture would shift and soften to the gospel. And specifically, let's pray for bold leaders to rise up in Jordan, to see healthy churches planted, to see the cultural shift towards the gospel, and ultimately to make Jesus known in this amazing country. So let's pray now. And then we'll jump in to our text for the day. Father, we are thankful for our time together. We're thankful for brothers and sisters from all over the country gathering here today with one purpose. And that is to glorify and magnify the name of Jesus. So from the songs that we sing to the hands that we shake to the studying of your word, God, we pray that it would all be glorifying to you. We love you. We pray for our brothers and sisters in Jordan. I pray for the Christians who are there. I pray for a shift in the culture away from Islam and towards Christ. God, we pray for a revival. We pray for a movement of church plants, of healthy church plants. May God, I pray that you would just throughout this week, would you just remind us of the fact that you are at work in our midst and in the midst of our brothers and sisters who are in Jordan. Lord, we trust you with all things, including how the gospel reaches the ends of the earth. And so would you use us in a mighty way? We love you. We trust you. We pray in Jesus' name and all God's people said. Amen. Okay. So the vision and mission of the Branch Church can be summed up like this. Okay. So the first week is the statement of we preach Christ. Okay. So if you missed week, you can go back and listen online. I can't do them all again. I've already been told that I've been going too long the last couple of weeks on my bed. All right. It is what it is. I'm actually not sorry. Okay. Um, we'll do better. We added a song. So they took that away from me. So I think I'll be shorter today. All right. The second last week we talked about we live in community. Okay. And this is, this is at the heart of what we're, of who we're trying to be as a people on mission together. Okay. Because of the gospel. And today we're going to talk about loving to the ends of the earth with compassion. This last kind of pillar of who we are as a church is the missional one. It is the sentness one. It is the go and make one. Because if we truly love our neighbor then we're willing to share the greatest news that we've ever heard. That's the point of today. Okay. And so at the end we'll kind of wrap up with this statement that we say here all the time that we exist for those not here yet. And I'll give some context to what that means when we get towards the end. So if you have your Bible Matthew chapter five. We're going to read from verses 14 through 16. So just a little snippet here. But as we launch into this idea and this topic of loving with compassion. I think it's important for us to know what love means because I think our world thinks it means something that it doesn't actually mean. Okay. We use this word love to talk about pizza. To talk about burritos. To talk about our parents or kids. It's the same word in English. Right. And I think we need to get beyond just saying I love you like it's just a you know a salutation at the end of an email and really get into the nitty gritty of what it means to love our neighbor. And that's what we hope. That's what I hope that we'll do today. So this is Matthew chapter five. This is Jesus speaking. Okay. This is verse 14 15 and 16 says you are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket. But on a stand and it gives light to all who are in the house. Verse 16 in the same way let your light shine before others. So that we get purpose here. So that they may see your good works and then do what. This is so important. Give glory to your father who is in heaven. Now here's the world that we live in. Okay. Good works are seen as a way of self righteousness. Did you see what I did this week? Right. Or if you're in a community that likes to celebrate the efforts going to third world countries and building wells and bringing food. Those are all good things. But if they lack the gospel they ultimately aren't good. They're meeting a temporary need but Jesus is never worried about a temporary need. He heals a lot of temporary things but ultimately he's after what is eternal. Okay. So as we dig wells we should do that in Jesus name with the purpose of bringing the gospel to people who don't have clean water. Does that make sense? We should bring nutritious food to people who are hungry so that they would become lifelong followers of Jesus. That is it. Not to meet their physical need but to meet their eternal need. That's what it means to be the light of the world. Notice what it doesn't say. It does not say you are the hope of the world. Christ alone is the hope of the world. He is our only hope in life and death. Okay. We are the light of the world which means that our good work should point to someone else. My prayer, listen to this and this is me being like you can see me for the guy that I am. I don't want you to ever remember a sermon that I have preached. I want you to remember the context, the heart of the message. I want you to remember the gospel. But I don't want you to ever go around and be like man that guy can preach. You'll be lying. We know it. It's fine. I'm okay with that. I want you to get to the meat, to the heart of the message. Okay. We spend a lot of time in our staff meetings and leadership meetings and even some of the stuff that Jerry's going to be doing in pipeline talking about getting to the ultimate motivation. Peeling back what is, okay what's motivating you to do to be a college student? What's motivating you to be a lawyer? What's motivating you to be a doctor or a teacher or a mom or a dad or whatever you think that you're wanting to be? If anything is at the bottom of that motivation other than to make Jesus known, that thing that you're pursuing might be an idol in your life. To that end, you cannot be the light of the world. What I love about this passage is how simple Jesus makes it. Because where we're going to go here, he likes to get a little complicated. This is super simple. He just says, hey, listen, we're not stupid here. Sorry, I shouldn't have said that. I tell my little four-year-old, don't say that word. I'm going to pop you in the mouth. So, my bad. Don't tell her. She's not in here, okay? What I am trying to say in a very Christ-like way is we got to stop being so silly. If the church has got to stop, we need to be committed that compassionate work must be gospel-driven and that alone should be our motivation because the gospel is of first importance. Here's the distinction that we have as gospel birds. If you're in here and you're following Jesus, this is what makes you different. You were once dead and your trespasses and sins. But God sent his son to redeem you and now you are alive. That is the Christian gospel. And so, if that is true, if Jesus, if God really does make dead things, living things, shouldn't we be the light of the world, we should go into every dark place because in a dark place, light can't hide. It can't. If we were to turn off all the lights in this gym and I were to hold my flashlight up on my phone like we were at a concert that we probably shouldn't have gone to, you'll see the light. That's how light works. But in a room full of light, it's hard for you to see the darkness that's in my hand right now. It's there. I promise you. But as soon as I try to show you, it's gone. That is the power of the gospel in our lives. And listen, this generosity of literature that we talk about, this one's free, okay? It's not just about your money. Because listen, in different stages of your life, like, okay, I'll give you, I'll do my life. When I was in my twenties, money was like the most valuable resource because we didn't have any of it. We had plenty of time, no money, okay? Now we have, money's not so such a big thing, but time is. And then you get older, like some of you else, you have time and money, okay? So you need to get up and go do the work, all right? I'm just kidding. That's no judgment here, all right? But we are called to be servants, to go in love with compassion because we have received a compassionate love. All right, go to Luke Chappertim. This is our primary text and you're like, gosh, yes, that was the introduction. We'll go, we'll fly from here, okay? This is the parable of the Good Samaritan. If you've been in or around church at all in your life, you've heard this story, okay? And part of the reason that we've used the Prodigal Son, Acts chapter two, and now the Good Samaritan is because these are very known passages culturally within the church culture. And what we want to do is we want to get, okay, it doesn't matter what the culture says about them. Jesus have to say about them and what are the implications for us in our life. So let's read this. This is Luke chapter 10, verses 25, I'm going to read down through verse 37. This is the word of the Lord, okay? And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, talking to Jesus, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" And he said, Jesus said to him, "What is written in the law? How do you read it?" And he answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." And he said to him, "You've answered correctly, do this, and you will live." Verse 29, "But he, being the lawyer, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, "Well, who is my neighbor?" And Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho." And he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance, a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, he passed by on the other side. But, verse 33, "A Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day, he took out to Danari and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, "Take care of him. And whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back." Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? He said, the one who showed him mercy. And Jesus said to him, "You go and do likewise." Now this lawyer was after one thing, and it wasn't the answer that Jesus was going to give him. This lawyer wanted to justify his self-righteousness. He wanted to qualify people based on who they were, in the image of the God who created him. He wanted to judge them based on the way that they appeared or the life that they had, their living. This lawyer wanted to prove himself to be better than his neighbor. Who is my neighbor? He wasn't looking to be taught. He was looking to be right. And the question that he asked is, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Now we don't really ask it like that anymore. But what we do ask is, "What do I have to do to be saved?" We are still asking this question that the lawyer is probing Jesus with. And Jesus responds like a lawyer. No judgment on lawyers. Jesus is doing this. He answers the question with a question, and he says, "What's written in the law?" And then he gives one more question, and this is the question that I love. How do you read it? How do you read it? Now listen, if you've been around here for a while, you've heard me plea and petition, like the one thing I want for you, more than I want anything else, is for you to learn to read your Bible for yourself. That is what I want. That is what I pray for. That is what I long for. That's why everything that we're doing is to that end that you will pick up the Word of God and you will devour it. Eat this book. There's a book written by Eugene Peterson. It's fantastic. You should read it. But Jesus asked the lawyer, "How do you read it?" Now, just a quick note on how we read the Bible is just as important as that you read the Bible. Because you can't wake up every day and go read the Bible and not actually be transformed by the words that are living in this book. That you read is less important than how you are reading. Now I do believe that there are seasons of life that you have to just go read. Just full disclosure. Jesus says to the lawyer, "How do you read it?" And then the lawyer's response was right, wasn't it? Love God, love others. Love the Lord your God with all your heart around us, right? That's the right answer. Way to go. What's the problem? He didn't want to live it out. It's one thing to know it. It's another thing to do it. And so if you've been here the last three weeks and we've gone through this question every single week, and this is why we pick the text that we did for this particular series, we use the tozer quote. The most important thing about me and the most important thing about you is what we think about when we think about the second most important thing about me and the second most important thing about you then is what we do. Because it's one thing for me to stand up here week after week after week and be like, "Jesus is better. Jesus is better. Jesus is better. Then I leave here. I get in my car. I go to my house and I don't ever live my life like Jesus is better. Living your life as Jesus is better changes the way that you live. It has to. Or else you don't actually believe what you say you do. So what do we do? Love God. Love others. Jesus tells him, "You're right. Do this and you'll live." That's the answer to his questions. "How am I saved?" Love God. Love others. Do that and you'll inherit eternal life. Seems fairly simple, but knowing what to do is not sufficient. This must be lived out. So the next question then posed to Jesus, "Well, who is my neighbor?" He's continuing this ploy, right? "Who is my neighbor?" And who are the first two people that Jesus talks about? Who are they? It's okay. This is family time. A priest in a Levon. These are church people. Okay? These are religious folk, all right? And they see the man in need and they do what? They pass him by. Now, if you really pay attention, they didn't just pass him by, they straight up avoided this brother. Okay? Have you ever done this? Have you ever been somewhere and you've seen someone on the side of the road and you're like, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to go walk on this sidewalk over here because I'm scared." Or "I don't want to smell what's over there. I don't want to be touched by what's over there." Right? We're really good at doing this, especially in the world that we live in now. They didn't just pass him by, they intentionally avoided this brother who is in need. Not a third person comes by, a Samaritan, and I love the context here because Jews and Samaritans did not like each other. They weren't very friendly. Jews believed that Samaritans were perpetually unclean. Jew can't be around someone who's unclean. And this Samaritan goes to this person, this man who is in need, and what is the first thing that he does when he stops? He shows him compassion. You know what it probably looked like? This guy in this road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a pretty rocky road. It was a main thoroughfare for trade. You had to take this road, but it was kind of rough, and so robbers were always there. So you're always under threat. Does that sound familiar? Okay? No? Hello? But what compassion looked like for the Samaritan was not that he just said he gave him his jacket or he gave him his money or he put him on his animal and sent him to the hotel of Motel 6 somewhere and took care of him. Yes, it was all of those things. That is compassion, but he probably got down. He got in the ditch with the guy who was hurting. Like, sometimes that's all that it takes is just to get into the dirty with someone who needs to be loved. And here's the gospel implication. It's exactly what Jesus has done for us. He's given us everything. He met us where we were. He gave us life, and then he gave us his inheritance. The Samaritan shows compassion, and then he continues to inconvenience himself. I don't like inconvenience, personally, that's a personality flaw. That's why I have to keep coming back to the Word of God to be reminded of, "Hey, sometimes you're kind of not very nice." Or sometimes you're in such a big rush that you don't see the world around you. I know I'm not the only one, right? Anybody? You get so rushed that you forget that there are people around you. Those people are your neighbor. The Samaritan sacrifices his time and his resources to love a person that he does not know. Listen, if one of these people, right here, this is my family since over here, this is a partridge corner. So don't ever take our seats, okay? I'm just joking. It's a total joke, okay? You don't know me well, that's fine. We'll get to know each other, come meet me after the service. But if one of them is in the ditch, I'm going head first to go get them, no matter what. I don't care how they got there, I don't care what the condition they're in, I don't care what they smell like. I'm going head first, and I'm going to do everything I can to get them out. That's what the church is supposed to do. And here's what I've seen, having been in this church for five years. Some of you have been in those ditches, and the person who leads your family group and the person who's in your family group and the person who's sitting next to you or the person who brought you here today was down there with you. And they paid to send you to the end so that you could be healed and to mend and to get healthy. That's what the church does. That's what this body is going to do, or I'm going to quit, okay? Easy, y'all, let's go. But Jesus leads the lawyer with one final question. He says, "Which of these proved to be the neighbor? Which of these proved to be the neighbor?" Now, this is extra biblical, okay? They don't say anything about the context. I imagine the lawyer's response is this. It's the one who shows mercy, and I've never shown mercy. That's the lawyer's response, and then he leaves. Jesus says, "Do this and go, go and do this." That's not something the lawyer wanted to hear. The lawyer wanted to be justified for not loving his neighbor. He wanted to continue to live his life like the priest and the Levite. I can't be a Samaritan. This is long before the good Samaritan became common language, right? So then the question goes back to this. What do we do? What do we do here? If you're going to commit to this church, what are we going to do? Two weeks ago, it was go and make, right? Preach Christ, go and make disciples to the ends of the earth. Last week, what do we do? Repent, live in community, be baptized, brothers and sisters, walking in the same direction, this week, loving with compassion and showing mercy. That's what we're going to do. So forgive us if we don't have a gazillion programs for you to be a busy Christian because sometimes those programs are going to keep us from going and making. Or sometimes those programs are going to keep us from repenting and being baptized. Sometimes those things are going to keep us from showing compassion and showing mercy. Listen, I've been in the church for a long time. I'd rather have those things than to have a calendar full of events. So what are we going to do? We're going to preach Christ. We're going to live in community. We're going to love with compassion. So the last question then is why? Why would we do those things? Because we could easily program and double the size of our church. We could. That's how the world works. I don't know why. It just does. But the answer to the why is because we exist for those who aren't here yet, and we don't mean like those who don't have a seat in this room yet, although it seems like they keep coming in. But we exist for those who aren't following Christ yet, whether they come to this church or they go to a different church or they haven't come to church yet. William Tyndale said this. He says, "The church is the one institution in the world that exists for those outside of themselves." That is our existence. We exist for those who aren't here yet. Bonhoeffer, who I've quoted a few times in this sermon series, wrote in his letters from prison. He says, "The church is the church only when it exists for others. It's not dominating but helping and serving. We must tell men of every calling, of every tribe, every nation, every tongue what it means to live for Christ to exist for others." That's a guy who is handcuffed in prison about to go die. That's what he had to say about the church, not dominating, helping and serving. We are called to compel people to come to know Jesus. That is our purpose. I think that in 2024, one of the hardest things to do in the world is to share the best news you've ever heard. I don't know why that is. It's true for all of us. I'm included. Okay? I don't know why that is. If it's fear of shame, fear of judgment, fear of them not liking you, if the gospel really is the best news in the history of humanity, then it should be shouted from every mountaintop. It should be declared from every classroom, from every home, from every job, from every enemy, where you go, that is the reality with the end of making disciples. And here's what I think. I think about what we're asking people to believe when we start to share our faith with them. When we say that we exist for those who aren't here yet, the gospel calls people to come in to die. Right? Jesus says, "Take up your cross and come what?" Follow me. To follow Jesus is to die to yourself. It's hard enough in and of itself without lauding church tradition on top of people, okay? We shouldn't make a bunch of hoops for people to come be a part of the body of Christ. That's not our job. It's not. We should be welcoming people. I don't care what you've done. I don't care where you've been. I don't care what you look like. I don't care how you're dressed. You should come here and feel welcome and feel loved no matter who you are or where you come from. You don't need to make it more difficult for those who are outside the faith. So listen, as we close, the church's job is to glorify God by making disciples of all nations. That is our job. Our job is not to keep church people happy. Our job isn't to run your program. Our job is to make disciples to the glory of God in that alone. And so that is what we are going to commit to. So if you want to call the branch home, buckle up because that's what we're going to do. We're going to preach the gospel. We're going to live in biblical community. And we're going to love as hard and as well as we can, even if it's hard, it makes us feel uncomfortable. Existing for those who aren't here yet should affect everything we do. But just as equally as important, existing for those who aren't here yet should impact everything that we don't do, okay? There's no room for division. There's no room for gossip. There's no room for infighting. We are one body in one direction. That is a sign of the healthy church. And so this is not a church for perfect people. So we're going to love the loss. We're going to love the least. We're going to love the lonely and we're going to welcome them in, okay? We may have to like get some more blue chairs. That's what we're going to do. In my prayer is that you would jump in. You would participate in that. We want you here because when we're together and we're moving in the right direction, what a force we can be in the world that so desperately needs to hear that Jesus is better. We exist for those who aren't here yet because we love with compassion like Jesus loves with compassion. That's it. That is it. So as we respond today, we're going to go to the table and take communion. The band's going to come back up and lead us in a few more songs. I want to read from 1 Corinthians 10. This is verses 23 through 26, I'm sorry, 11. 1 Corinthians 11. And let this serve to set the table for us to go to the table and break the bread and dip it in the cup. It says this, "For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took the bread and we had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' In the same way also, he took the cup after supper saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.' Would you come now and proclaim the Lord's death through taking the bread which is his body broken and dipping it in the cup which is his blood spilled so that we could walk with Jesus?" Let's pray. Father, we are thankful, humbled, expectant of all that you're doing in and through the branch church. So I pray now for those who are in that process of trying to find the place where they're going to plug in and call home. I pray that you would give them a little bit of freedom and grace and help them to see and to participate in a life together with brothers and sisters following Jesus. So I pray that you would go before our church, that you would keep us solely focused on being lights in a dark world. Would you help us move us in the same direction? Would you protect us from division, protect us from gossip, protect us from infighting, protect us from the ways of the world and help us to be focused on the gospel of Jesus? So we love you. We pray now as we respond at the table that we would just make much of who you are. Would you stir our hearts, renew our minds. We love you and pray in Jesus' name, amen. [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
Love with Compassion by The Branch Church