God Drafts the Foolish, Weak, and Despised - 1 Corinthians 1:26-31

Good morning, church. It is a great time of year. We have officially started football season, my favorite time of year. As football kicked off college, this week, it sent me to thinking about when the NFL draft was here in Kansas City. How many of you remember that? How many of you went down, actually, to the drafts like? This is amazing thing as all the NFL teams come together to pick the best coming out of college and all the analytics that go into it, all the computer science that goes into who do we need to get each round, just to have the best players are on our team, so we we can have the best team. Thinking about that got me thinking back to middle school How many of you remember the kickball draft? Did any of you have to go through that? Some of you remember that, Red Bear remembers back. They kickball draft was a little different, not a lot of analytics, not a lot of computers involved. They just usually pick the two best athletes, and then they pick the best athletes running down the line, and you're sitting there going, "Well, I was kind of of mid, Josh. That was what I was at. I wasn't the worst, I wasn't the best So you just want which team you going to be on? But they're just picking who are the best as they pick through. Now,'re not most of us aren't middle school any anymore, so you're not worried about the middle school draft, and we're not kind of high enough in the NFL world to be a part of the NFL draft, and so all of us people like that have created fantasy football job. draft. So raise your hand if you've gone through your fantasy football draft already this season. had more than the first service. The 8:00 a.m. service was way more end of fantasy football. We had one guy who had three teams. He was an owner of three fantasy football teams, and he had worked through the draft. I don't know how fantasy football drafts work, but I guess you're picking based on, like, I need to get the best player so my team can win. In all of the drafts, the object is I need to find the best people to ensure that my team will win. We've been working through the Book of 1 Corinthians, and today we're going to see how God does his draft, and he does his a little differently. In fact, Paul's going to talk to the Corinthians and say that God isn't picking the ones who the world would say, "Well, make sure that he can win. He's in fact, picking nobody.od. The main idea I want you to take from this message today is this, God drafts the nobodies, so no one is confused that Jesus is the MVP. Again, God drafts the nobodies, so that no one is confused that Jesus is the MVP. If you have your Bibles, again, we'll be in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, starting in verse 26. A little background. Last week, we began a 3 part series as we were in our first Corinthian series. The Corinthians, as Paul was writing to them, had been dividing over different people and it feels like if you read the whole letter, there had been a lot of Roman Roman and Greek philosophy that had begun to work in, more than likely, we're not sure, because Paul doesn't say it exactly. Some people in the community who had known the believers, these Corinthians who would be become Christians, were probably shaming them, saying, "You're following a guy who died on a cross, this Jewish guy. And even the guy who came and told you about this, this guy named Paul, he was not that impressive. He didn't speak well. He just didn't seem impressive to us based on the standards that the Corinthian city, the philosophers of the city, the elite of the city, had established. He said, "Th don't seem impressive at all." And so the Corinthians were now struggling a little bit, thinking, "I wonder if this is true. I mean, we don't seem as polished, as sophisticated, as elite, as as the power brokers in Corinth. And they're telling us that this is how you know who the winners are, the ones who are winning. And Paul's going to tell them, no, in fact the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are parassing. That was last week. He just said, "The cross is foolishness that a guy that God became human and dies on the Roman torture device, and then he rises from the dead? That's ridiculous. to them." He said, "But you accepted that. So don't be swayed by these philosophers who are shaming you now that the message you accepted was a foolish message in their eyes, and today, he's going to say, "Even the people God's drafting that he's choosing are foolish, and then next week, we're going to see Paul say that even Paul himself is foolish." So if you have your Bibles, look with me in 1 Corinthians 1, 1, 26 through 288. And we want to see first, God's nobody's draft selection. So who is he actually picking when he's calling people? Paul says this, "For consider your calling Brothers, not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame. the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are. Paul starts with this, in his second of two points about the foolishness of the cross, he says, you know, the cross is foolish. The very message is foolish, that a man died and rose again, and that's how the world is saved. He says, "But consider your own calling brothers and sisters." So he points them back to when God had reached out to them with the gospel. Paul shows up in Corinth, and he preaches this foolish message that a man died and rose again, and that's how God's saving the world. And the people that said, yes, Paul's writing to them, says, "Consider your own calling." Now, in Scripture, when we hear the word calling, Paul uses it in several ways. One way is the fact that God calls us that God makes the initiativeative. We're not out, we' running around a human, seeking God all the time. What we seek is God's that we've made. If you are here last week, it's the build of God workshop. We like to make our own gods, and then hang out with that God. We're not seeking the the one true God. He seeks us. He comes to us. He's constantly on the move towards us, and then we're reacting to that. So he's calling us and that's one way that Paul uses calling.. Another way is here, he says, "For consider your calling, he's saying, "What will you like when you got called? Who were you when you got called?" He says, "Consider what you were like." And then he points out what what they were like. So if they were confused about how good they were, he tells them Not many of you were wise, powerful, or of noble birth." Now, this is important to note, he says, not many of you were. Wise, powerful, or a noble birth, and wise according to worldly standards. That idea of worldly standards, Paul uses the word that he uses elsewhere that gets translated flesh This word Paul uses can mean our body, like this "My body is flesh," but it can also mean the human nature that's seeking to justify itself to make sure that I'm okay. I've made myself right.. I'm good enough. I'm smart enough. I'm wise enough. My flesh is wanting to justify me before God, so I can earn my salvation. And so Paul uses flesh in that way. The fact that the way the world is and its fallness, how it seeks to justify itself and think about how the world should work that's why the ESV translates that same word here, according to worldly standards." He says, not many of you are these things. He says, "Not many words." This is important, 'cause we could, if we read Paul, kind of loosely and not carefully enough, think, God chooses kind of the foolish, the powerless, the weak, the outcast, and he doesn't ever choose those who who have money or wealth or wisdom. He leaves them out. He says, "Not many of you. We know from Paul's letters and a book of Acts that a guy named Crispus, who was a synagogue leader, accepted Christ, Stephanus Gaius. These were city officials. So there were some people from the elite ranks of society that said yes to Jesus but not many in Corinth did that, some did. God was calling all of them. God's call goes out to everybody, all types of people, young, old, rich, poor, smart, not intelligent, all types the gospel goes to. Paululing, not many of you, the majority of you who said yes, were not wise, according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful, you didn't have positions in the city where where you could pull the levers of power and make change or get things the way you want them to be. You were just normal people going about your day. Not many were noble birth. We don't have noble birth in our country. We don't don't think of nobility, that I was born, so I have this position guaranteed. We do understand the concept of being born with a silver spoon in your mouth, though, right? That some people are just born. They go,If you're born to parents who have a whole lot of money, you automatically have some access to things that other people don't have to the halls of power, to those types of things in Paul saying, "Not many of you had that. Not many of you were born to a noble birth." Look what he says, but God chose, and you'll hear that refrain over and over, "God chose, God chose, God chose. It's God's draft He's the one who's leading things. He's the one who's making the move that we then respond to in relief. God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world world, to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not to bring to nothing things that are This language of God chose what is foolish, to shame. That word shame, in our context in English, it could be taken wrong, because we can think of shame as, I did something wrong, and now I'm ashamed of it. I feel shame that I feel bad about the thing I did, and it becomes this emotional response, and we think of shame that way. The way Paul's using it here isn't necessarily the emotional feeling that you did something wrong. It's this idea that God defeated these things. They lost in the contest, and now they should be shamed or put to shame because of the position they held. Once they had lost, as I was writing this sermon, the illustration that came to my mind, I was listening to all the commentators getting ready for Saturday for football, as they were saying, "Who's going to win? Who's going to lose?" All the pundits pontificating about point spreads and all that. And I was thinking in my head around Tuesday What's a good illustration of shame?" It's when all the pundits pick the wrong team, and the team that no one thought would win wins, and then they have to come on the next day and admit, we lost, we had it wrong." Then I watched my team, the Alabama Crimson Tide, get get beat on Saturday, and I'm just going to God, you don't have to make these illustrations so personal for me. I got it. It was already there. I didn't need it, 'cause this morning, all the pundits are going, "We had this horribly wrong." It was a 13 and a half point underdog that beat us, and they are now shamed, because they shouldn't have lost. They said, "I should have picked the right team." It's an objective reality, what Paula is saying here. He's chosen the we and the palace to shame, not make them feel subjectively like they did something wrong, but to show them that they have lost in the way they're trying to pursue righteousness. He says he's put them to shame. He also says, "Part of the ones that God chose is what is low and despised in the world. That translation is really hard in English'cause we don't have words that would match. The word for noble birth in the original language, and the word for low and despised is the exact same word, except with like a negation in front of it. So you could have like, defeated as a word and undefeated. That's what's going on.. We just don't have English that captures that. So there's noble birth and like the non noble bir is what it would be if we translated it. He said, "Even things that are not. When he says not here, he's not talking about things that don't exist. He's just talking about nobodies. He says, he's choosing nobodies to shame those who think they're somebody. He said, "This is God's draft selection. That's who he selected. This isn't a new idea for Paul, by the way. He didn't make this up. This isn't new for God, like he hasn't done this before. If you go all the way back to Deuteronomy chapter 7, when God's talking to the nation of Israel, after he brought them out of Israel and he's talking about, why did he choose him? Look what it says in verse 7 and 8, "It is not because you are more in number than any other people that the Lord said is love on you and chose you, but you are not you are the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you, and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt." So Moses, talking to the Israelite, says, "God didn't choose you because you are wonderful, amazing, great, going to be highly useful, have the best skill set to do what he needs to do." He said, "You, in fact, were the fewest, you are the least likely to be chosen, and God chose you for that reason, because he's going to show to the world that he is the one that brings salvation. That's who he has been choosing. Now, what is his strategy in making that choice? Why is he making the choiceoice of nobody? So let's look at versus 29 to 31 at God's nobody's draft selection strategy. So, again, the fantasy football draft what's having. I've never done that. I've kind of every yet thought about itcause I have a lot of friends who do it, but then, I don't have time, I don't have the energy So I just went on CGPT this week to say,Is there any sort of strategy to choosing your fantasy football? Cause I know what I would do. I would just say, who are the players I like the most? I don't know if they're any good or not. I'm just going to go with the ones I like the most. For those of you who play fantasy football, do you have a strategy, like an official strategy that you use, anybody? Don't be ashamed if you do't. You do. What's your strategy? wide receivers. Wide receivers first. So it was I think it was running back first for John Inman in the first service. So I looked on chat GBD, I said,What are some strategygies for choosing your fantasy Football League? Why would you choose a certain way?" They had best player available, stud running back, zero running back, hero running back, Robust running back, Zero wide receiver, late round QB, early QB, early tight end. Balance the prose position and runs awareness, stacking, handcuffing, upside chasing, whatever that is, and then safe floor strategy. All these strategies for like, people who are saying, why are we choosing the way we choose? What is our goal in choosing this way? What is God's goal in choosing the way that he choose? Here's why, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God And because of him, you are in Christ Jesus who came to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption. So that, as it is written, let the one who boast, boast in the Lord. Why is God choosing this way, so that no one can boast in themselves that can only boast in the presence of God? Paul gets this directly from Jeremiah. So again, Paul's not like sitting at home going, I'm making up new stuff. The Corinthians were thinking, we're going to start following worldly wisdom. We think we need that more. That validates us. And Paul's saying, "No, God's never worked this way." And he goes back to Jeremiah 9, which Winstone read earlier, it says this, "Thus says the Lord, "Lend not the wise man boast in his wisdom, not in how smart he is.Let not the mighty man boast in his might, not how much power he has, not how many soldiers he can command, not how many employees he has.Let not the rich man boast in his riches, not looking at bank accounts, not saying, "This is why I'm amazing, but let him who boast boasts in this, that he understands and knows knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, declares the Lord. Why is God choosing this way? He says, he's taking the world's system and he says, "We'm going to show you that that system is broken and flawed and rebellious." And he does that. He says, "I'm choosing the low and despised in the weak to put to shame that system, to shame that system so that no one can boast. No one who is elite in the work and go, ", God's gonna choose me, he needs me." No one in this room, no one in the world world can say, "God needs me." And if he would just, if he'd picked me on his team, then we could do great things together. In fact, he's gonna pick me because he needs me. I'm just that good. That's the world's system. that if you're good enough, you're gonna be successful, and successful, not just like you make some money, but like you're good in a moral sense. Like, you have what it takes, and God's throwing all of that in their face and saying, "No, that is not how he is working." And we get that on a broad scale. I think, as Christians, we all think, " yeah, that makes sense, that no one's righteous and no one's going to get to heaven." I do think think, those as Christians, at times we can get caught up in thinking that if God would save certain people, then the Christian faith would advance, or we would be validated. This came home this a couple weeks ago. What the supposedly highest IQ man in the world put out tweet on X. His name is Yung Hung Kim, IQQ supposedly of 276, if you know anything about IQs, yeah, so yeah, that's up there. He put this out, you can see this tweet on the screen.As the world's highest IQ record holder, I believe that Jesus Christ is God, the way and the truth, and the life." And we're like, "Wow, man." So, yeah, there you go." And we get excited about that. Here's the problem with what he said.A relevant magazine, a relevant magazine is the magazine. It's a Christian magazine, put out a story about this. And at the end of the story, here's what the writer said. He said, "So if anyone has ever said, "Faith in Jesus, it's just for the simple minded, Maybe it's time for them to readthink their position, or you know, raise their IQ by about 150 points and try again." And we go, "Yeah, high IQ guy said, our faith is valid.". Paul says, the simple minded guy who said yes to Jesus proves that our faith is valid. I don't need the highest IQ guy. I'm glad that he accepted Christ but even his tweet says, as the world's highest IQ record holder., meaning that I'm smart enough to say this is true. Paul's point is, no one is smart enough to say the cross is true. That doesn't mean our faith is foolish. Paul's going to talk later about how we speak wisdom, among Christians, so that our faith, we can anchor in history and all sorts of things. But if you think my IQ has to be high enough to accept Jesus then you're misunderstanding Paul, which he said, God's choosing people, who's like, you isn't 276. That's everyone in this room, by the way. That's all of us, way below 276. He says, "I'm choosing those people. It's not because this man who's so smart accepted Christ that his message is valid. It will never be wise in the world's eyes. It simply never will. And if we as Christians go, "Ah, he validates me, or we know this, if someone famous accepts Christ, we go, Oh, this famous person said,Yes, maybe the culture will like us now." Maybe the culture will say yes to us now." No, they won't. And if they are, they're not saying yes to the gospel. They're just saying, "The person I really like said yes, so I'm going to follow them in the same way. That Paul's whole point is, famous people saying yes to Jesus doesn't make his message true. Intelligent people saying yes to Jesus, does it? make his message true. Powerful people, wealthy people, saying yes to Jesus doesn't make the message true. What makes the message true is Jesus Christ, his death, and resurrection. That's his selection strategy. What's the selection strategy results, though? So we know this in the NFL, if you draft someone, they think they've done their work that maybe this guy will work out. And then he does it. They don't develop him well. Or you find someone we, "I don't know if this guy's gonna be any good." The rest of the league thought, "He's probably a dud. We have that going on here in Kansas City, by the way, when Mahomes got drafted. They were like, "He's kind of a dud, and they developed him really well, and now he's outstanding. When God drafts people what does he do with them? God's draft selections always, always get developed. Those who believe in Christ get developed into the image of Christ. Look what Paul says. H in verse 29. He says, "And because of him, that's God, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, right righteousness, and sanctification and redemption." He says, "Because God has chose us, and we have believed, you became in Christ, Christ became wisdom when we are in him. This in Christ language is important. Paul uses it all the time. What does he mean by in Christ? He's talking about being incorporated into who Jesus is. an analogy. It's not perfect, but it works as you are now on Team Jesus. So you went from being on Team world, Team worldly wisdom, Team worldly power, Team worldly. birthrights to Team Jesus. And when you're on Team Jesus, you get everything he gets. You get his death, which takes the place of your physical death, so that your death doesn't end an eternal death. You get his resurrection because he physically came back from the dead and defeated death. You get that. You get his victory when you are in Christ. And so Paul says, when you get drafted into God's team because of Jesus, he becomes to us wisdom from God. So if you want to know what true wisdom is in the world, Paul's saying, In Christ, you find what true wisdom is, how God actually does things. not how the world does things, but how God does things. That's why we pick up our scriptures, and we're constantly trying to say, "God, show me what you're like. Help me to understand who you are, how I should then interact in the world, how I should respond to all the situations that happen in our life, to say, God, "How would you respond?" Not how the world would respond butut how would you respond, God, so that I can be like you? And so he becomes to us wisdom from God, the way things work. He also becomes righteousness for us. Righteousness is a word word in scripture. The underlying Greek word means to declare innocent or declare righteous, so it's not like something that we become. I don't earn my righteousness. If I behave long enough, I've then earned righteousness. It's a declaration that's made about me. If you go to court, and the judge declares you not guilty, that's the declaration, and you're not guilty. When God says you're not guilty in Christ, you're righteous. It's a declaration that he makes because of who Jesus is. So when we're in Christ, we get that declaration. He says, "We are also sananctified. We have become sanctification in Christ." What does that word mean? That's a fancy word, a lot of syllables. It means to be set apart initially, in the Old Testament, they would set apart things that that were holy for God's use. That could be people or instruments, so forks and plates, the tabernacle made of coth, all that was set apart, it was sanctified for God's use. That's a positional thing, that if you are followingollower of Christ, you have been sanctified, set apart for his use, you're on Team Jesus You're in that position, right? That's who you are. You get to put the jersey on, get the ball cap on, to show that you've been drafted by him. That's who you are in Christ. You are set apart for him. Because you're set apart, he's then going to develop you to look more and more like his son. That's where sanctification as ethical living or moral living, comes in. We are being sanctified throughout our life as a follower of Christ, as Christ trains us to be more and more like Him. So we read His W. He puts us in situations where we have to make decisions. And as we make a wrong decision, he corrects us, as we make the right decisions, he encourages us. And more and more, he shapes us into the person he wants us to be That's found in Christ, and in Christ, we find redemption, which is that we are set free from the old way of life that was leading to death, that had us trapped, and we' set free to live in the new way of life, and and be sanctified by Christ. When God drafts you, if you put your faith in Christ you are set apart by him immediately. You are on his team, and then he sanctifies you throughout you. your life. And you find His victory, His wisdom, His redemption, and it's all because Christ, through the Spirit, is doing that in you. God has drafted the weak things the foolish things, the powerless things of the world to shame, to show the defeat of the world's wisdom, the world's power, and the world's wealth. Again, the main point I wanted you to get as we talk about what we can take away from Paul's message today. God drafts the nobodies so no one is confused that Jesus is the MVP. And that's my first takeaway from this message. Jesus is God's's first round draft selection. In fact, he's his only draft selection. God doesn't choose anyone else to save the world. He chose Jesus Two verses you can look at to see that. Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthians, says this, "For all the promises of God, find their yes in him. Thathat him is Jesus. That is why it is through him that we utter are amen to God for his glory. Every promise of God about how he's going to fix the world and redeem the world and make things new and rid the world of sin and death is found in Jesus and Jesus alone Jesus is God's first first round draft selection. His only draft selection, when Jesus was on the mountain of Transfiguration, right before his crucifixion, God, the Father, came down and said these words in Matthew 12, "Behold, my servant whom I have chososen, my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased, I will put my spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles." We are here today because God chose Jesus He's the one he picked. We simply accept Christ, and then we get to be a part of that. But we have to come to Christ. We don't get to come to God on our own as if we're worthy. And that's my second point. We should thank God that He does does not draft us based on our abilities. We should leave today going, "God, I'm so glad that you don't need me." Because if it was up to me, I wouldn't make it. If God's drafting me because of how good I am, or how righteous I am, or how much I can do for him, I'm not getting drafted. I'm gonna go undrafted because there's nothing in me that's worthy of God's holinessiness, of him saying, "Oh, you've worked your way up the ladder. Outwardly right, we all know this. Over time, we can through conditioning behave pretty well. You can find people say,Th' a citen, he's a good citizen. She's a good citizen." That's a good person But no one knows are of thoughts except us. And we don't even know our own inner thoughts. The Bible is really clear that our hearts are deceitfully wicked, that we don't know, like, what's really deep in us, that if we got squeezed enough, if the world got hard enough and enough things were done to us, that were unjust, what would we do? Would we respond as Jesus did, Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing? Or would we respond in a different way? You know, you can go for a while and think, "Man, I think I'm doing pretty good. My sanctification is progressing. I'm responding in ways that are appropriate as a Christian. This is what God wants. And then your team starts losing a game on a Saturday that they shouldn't have lost, and luckily, there's not many people in the room, and you'll realize, "Okay, I'm not as sanctified as I thought I was. I'm not behaving in the way Christ would want me to behave, given that this is just a football game. That's not a lot of pressure, and you realize, if God's really looking to us to earn our salvation, we're in big trouble. None of us are five star recruits, we're not even one star recruits. We have nothing to offer, and we should thank God that he's not asking for that.Cause if he was,, we're doomed. Any religion that says, "Work your way to heaven is going to leave you not getting in,'cause you're not good enough, or is going to leave you with a God who is not holy and not righteous, and not pure whose cool with, come on in, and let's just keep doing what we've been doing in a fallen world in the next age. God's not going to do that, which leads to our final point. God does not need you to win. Our victory is found in Jesus. God doesn't need us to win. He's already won. The victory over sin and death was won by Jesus on the cross. He doesn't need you. He doesn't't need me. He doesn't need Northland Church. He chooses to let us be apart. We don't contribute anything to God's victory. We just get to celebrate with him. Now, we all know how this works, right? At least if you're a sports fan, you may get this analogy. Yesterday, my team wasn't winning. Alabama Crimson Tide. I'm a big fan. We were all down in the basement celebrating, the first drive, and then we started losing, halftime came, and I went upstairs, and I said, "I got to put on a new shirt. The shirt I'm wearing is't working. Have any of you ever changed clothes'cause your team wasn't winning? Don't lie, don't lie. Yeah. Or if you're a baseball fan your hat got turned a funny way,'cause say, we're down, but we're maybe rally, you put on that rally hat, and you think, "This is gonna make the difference." I got a Facebook post that I found from way back in 2020, I think, that exemplifies this. It happened in 2020, the Facebook post was from December 21st of 2024. I'll throw it up here. You may recognize this person. Underneath that mask is one of our pastors. And he posted this in 2024, but on January 12th of 2020, he was at the Chiefs game, and they were losing pretty bad, down 24 to nothing in the second quarter. Him and Austin Hale, a friend of his put on their Chiefs mass that he had gotten while he was on vacation, and the Chiefs come back to win 51 to 31 on the way to their first Super Bowl in., how many other years. And so now, the mask, the chief's mask that Matt Mars wears, if the chiefs are down, he puts it on. He's sitting at his house, and he puts the mask on, right? And you just hey, trust me, if the Chiefs start losing a game, just go on Facebook and wait. There'll be a post. Matt'll put his mask on, and there'll be all these things saying, "Oh, we're going to win, we're going to win." We all know, right, that putting a mask on, if you're up here in the Northwind, isn't changing anything happening on the field. It's not like Mahomes goes, "Oh, the mask is on. Now I can play amazingly." We've contributed. Me changing a shirt doesn't change anything in that game. It just makes my brain feel better, like, "Okay, I'm trying." We offer nothing to Christ's salvation. It's like putting a mask on in your house, and now the chiefs are gonna win. No, we offer nothing. But God does let us enjoy His victory. He says, "Put the mask on, have fun. You're not doing anything to earn this, "but I want you to be a fan. I want you to be a part of what's happening. I want you to celebrate with me the victory that my son has. I want you to enjoy it. Jump up in the stands and celebrate. That does nothing to win the game. That's on Jesus, and he's already won. He's the one that God drafted. He offers that to everyone who would come to him. Everyone who says yes, God says, I'm calling you, if you will but, put away your own wisdom, your own power, your own intellect, your own thoughts that you can save yourself, and accept Christ's victory. It says, then you'll find true wisdom true holiness, true redemption. That's where it's found. When God drafts nobodies like you and me and everyone in the world, from the highest IQ man to the wealthiest man, to the most simple minded man, to the poorest man, God says, all of you are nobodies and I love you. and I want you to come home and be a part of me, and my son has won the victory on the cross so that you can come home. As our worship team comes comes up to lead us in a final song,If you're here and you don't know Christ, and you want to know this man, this God, who died for you, who loves you, I'm going to be in the back corner. You can come talk to me. You can fill out the connect card. I would love to talk about following Jesus. I'll reach out to you today in whatever form you give me to contact you. I mean, this week. And we'll sit down and talk. I' love to talk to you about what it means to be a follower of Christ into accept Him and to follow Him. Will you join me in prayer. Father, we love you. and we thank you that you don't ask us to save ourselves, to rely our own our own holiness, our own power, our own might, but that your son, who defeated death and the devil and rose from the dead, that he sets us free, and we can solve celebrate his victory, and we can celebrate his overcoming of darkness. Well, I pray if someone doesn't know you, that they would put their trust in you today and believe in you in and find this hope that you offer us. And for those of us who are your followers that we wouldn't rely on ourselves, that just trust in you, lean on you, and let you shape us into the the men and women you would have us be in images of your Son. It's in His name we pray. Amen.