Jesus, thank you so much for uh bringing us together, for giving us such an amazing family of people to worship alongside, to live life alongside. We need one another. Mainly what we need is you. And so I pray that you give us a hunger for your word. I pray that you give us the ability to understand what we need to hear for our lives today. We are all going through different things. We are all in different seasons, but we have the same God, and we need you to show up in our lives. And so we ask this in your name, Jesus. Amen. Well, today we are going to wrap up the story of Esther. I thought we were gonna wrap up the story of Esther last week. Ken was going to wrap it up. He didn't completely wrap it up. He did more in the second service than he did in the first. And so I was I was thrown for a loop. I was already mentally on next week. That's okay. It's good to have the tables turned sometimes. But I'm actually really excited that we get to spend one more week in this story. Number one, it's an incredible story. This is one of the greatest stories that has ever been told. It's a true story, and I really want us to see how it wraps up, how beautifully and how perfectly everything comes together. Esther is all about the power of choice. Our decisions matter. And when we make wise and bold and faithful decisions, godly decisions, the results are miraculous. We might look at our lives and say, I need some miracles to happen. I need things to change, I need my tables to turn in a good way. And when we say we need a miracle, what we really mean is that we need a miraculous result because we need the change to happen. If God wants to do it by way of a miracle, awesome. If God wants to do it a different way, so be it. What we really need is the results. So often God chooses to work through our decisions. If the story of Esther were adapted for a big Hollywood movie, they would not need to hire a special effects artist. There wouldn't be any CG. There's no huge miracle in this story, but the results are miraculous, and the results come from the choices that Esther and that Mordecai make. We've looked at choices like choosing who to listen to, choosing the right time to act. We're going to look at one more choice this morning. It's really the choice. It's a huge choice. I can't wait to get into it, but we've got to make sure we all know where we are because I'm sure there's at least one of us that hasn't been here for the last six weeks or so. We're going to spend most of our time in Esther chapter 7 and Esther chapter 8. So if you have a Bible, want to turn there on your phone, whatever, that's fine. We'll have the verses up on the screens for sure. It's just always nice to have it in hand. So here's the story so far. Esther is a woman, a Jewish woman, who lives in the Persian Empire, 500 BC. So obviously, someone we can all relate to easily, okay? 500 BC, she's Jewish, but no one knows that she's Jewish. Her uncle, a man named Mordecai, has raised her as his own daughter. He is a palace guard at the fortress of Susa, where King Xerxes resides. And he has kept his nationality a secret. The Jewish people were not looked upon favorably, but they're God's people. The Persians saw them as the people who were conquered by the people they conquered. So they didn't have a lot of respect, and the Jewish people had many enemies in Persia. So Mordecai kept his identity a secret. He asked Esther to do the same. One day Esther and a number of other young women were kidnapped and brought to the fortress of Susa to be part of the king's harem. It was a sick thing, but King Xerxes was a sick man. She is now the property of the king. She belongs to him. Her whole life belongs to him. But God is with her and God favors her, and so she is chosen to be the queen. She goes from being a Jewish girl in this big empire to literally being a sex slave, to being queen of all of Persia. It's a pretty wild ride. But even as the queen, she keeps her nationality a secret. Now, there's this man named Haman that enters the story. Haman is a very powerful man. He is second only to Xerxes. He has complete authority, he's very wealthy. Haman desires for himself to be lifted up higher than anyone in the empire. He wants everyone to be beneath him. That's his life's goal. And Haman absolutely hates the Jewish people. He specifically hates Mordecai. Mordecai and Haman have kind of a run-in, and Haman decides the best way to get back at Mordecai is to have all the Jewish people killed, every single one. There were 15 million Jewish people living in Persia. Haman's not going to have to get the army to do it for him. He simply has a law put into place that says on a certain day, about a year later, it was March 7th, anyone who was an enemy of the Jews could kill them and take their belongings. He knew that that group of people had so many enemies he wouldn't have to do anything himself. He wouldn't have to employ the military. And you can imagine that after that law went into place, the enemies of God's people made themselves known. The taunts that would have happened every single day. The reminders that March 7th was coming. The Jewish people lived in fear. Mordecai finds out about this, and he knows there's only one person that can do something. That person is Esther. So he goes to the queen and he says, You've got to do something. You're in a position to make a difference. You have to take action. But Esther is reluctant. She has not been invited into the king's presence, and you do not interrupt the king. Interrupting the king without being invited was punishable by death, even to the queen. So Esther has a serious decision to make. She prays, she fasts, and then she decides to go to the king. And when she goes to King Xerxes, he does not have her executed. He looks at her and says, Tell me what you want and I'll give it to you. And Esther says, Okay, come to a banquet today and bring Haman. So Haman and King Xerxes go to this banquet. Haman is thrilled, by the way, being the third wheel for King Xerxes and Queen Esther, he loves it. He thinks this is a great honor. And at this banquet, Esther says, Will you come to another banquet tomorrow? And at that banquet, I'll tell you what I really want. So Haman gets invited to banquet number two. Not one, but two banquets, where he is the only guest of the king and the queen. He is on cloud nine. He's eating this up. But on his way home, basking in his own importance, he bumps into Mordecai and it ruins it for him. You ever had a day where like eight things go really well, but then one thing goes wrong, and you're like, I had a terrible day. Terrible. Right? That is what Haman experiences. He gets home and he just can't get over the fact that every time he sees Mordecai, it ruins his, it ruins his mood, it brings him down. But he's feeling so important right now is not only the second in command of all Persia, but as the special friend and guest of the king and queen, that he decides March 7th is too long to wait. He talks to his wife and to his friends, and they give him some really terrible advice that he takes, and he decides that he's gonna have Mordecai executed the next day. So he has a 75-foot-tall pole built in his courtyard, and the next day he's gonna have Mordecai impaled on that pole. That was the execution method of choice in Persia. The very next day he's on his way to talk to King Xerxes to get permission to impale Mordecai, but the night before King Xerxes couldn't sleep. And I guess when King Xerxes can't sleep, he likes someone to read to him and he likes to have stories about himself read to him. That's what happened the night before. And this one particular story that was shared with him was one that he had forgotten. There was a palace guard years ago that had exposed an assassination attempt on Xerxes' life. He'd exposed this plot to assassinate and kill Xerxes. And Xerxes had forgotten about this. Xerxes realized he hadn't done anything to thank the guy. This is like one of those, I should have sent a thank you note times 10 moments. And he decides that very moment, I'm gonna do something to thank this palace guard. That man's name was Mordecai. So Haman shows up to ask permission to execute Mordecai, and Xerxes says, Haman, just the man I wanted to see. What should the king do to show someone he really loves and appreciates them? And Haman, on cloud nine from these banquets and his own deluded self-importance, he says, Ah, the king's talking about me. Here's what you should do. Let this guy wear your clothes, let him ride your horse. And this is really creepy when you think about this, okay? Let him dress up like you, let him ride your horse, and let him have a parade thrown in his honor around the whole city of Susa. Have someone go in front of the parade and say, Everyone, look, look at this man. This is what the king does to those he wishes to honor. And Xerxes says, Good idea. Do that for Mordecai. And so Haman has to parade Mordecai, the man he was planning on having impaled that very day, around the city of Susa. He is humiliated. But at least he has the second banquet to look forward to. Maybe his spirits will be lifted. And Ken kind of alluded to this last week. He talked about it briefly. We're gonna focus on it a little bit more. He's gonna have a really bad day, okay? Things are not gonna get better for Haman, and we're gonna see the tables turned in a powerful way. We talked earlier about how we can look at our lives and see a need for a role reversal. Maybe we feel low, we need to be lifted up. Maybe we're underappreciated at work, and we need to be recognized. We need things to change. Things are about to change for Haman. This is a role reversal of epic proportions. Being in a role reversal situation is kind of unnerving. It's stressful, it's a little awkward. Anyone ever had to parent a parent before? Strange, right? When you find yourselves advising your parents, maybe even having to physically care for your parents. Some of us maybe have been on the other side of that equation. We've had to depend on our children, or depend on someone that used to depend on us. That's a difficult thing to navigate. Role reversals are hard. My wife and I have a very interesting role reversal that happens every single day in our marriage. If you know me very well, and you don't really have to know me that well to know this, I am a talker. I enjoy talking. Just what I do. I wake up talking, literally. I wake up, I take a shower. I'm a pastor, so I wear a wetsuit, and I get in the shower, and uh, you know, didn't want to meddle anyway. Um and in the shower, I will talk to my wife. She'll come in the bathroom and brush her teeth at six in the morning, and I'm like, hey, I had a great idea. I think we should do this at work. And oh, what if tomorrow we call those people and hey, we really need to get this checked out? And she will just say, shut up. It's six o'clock in the morning. Why are you talking? She needs like 45 minutes and a lot of coffee before she's ready for that. Every single day, that's our marriage. I just kind of think out loud, and so sometimes my wife will look at me and say, You're talking right now. I don't know if you want to have a conversation or if you're just thinking out loud. Just tell me what's going on. And I have to say, Yeah, I just, yeah, I'm just thinking out loud. But see, then we go to bed at night and everything changes. When my head hits the pillow, I am ready to go to sleep. I'm like 30 seconds away from sleep at any given moment. When my wife's head hits the pillow, everything she has thought about for the entire day comes out. Everything. Okay? It's crazy. I don't know if it's because she lays down and there's something like physiologically that just pushes out of her, but she starts talking about everything. And I'm half asleep and I'm just having a nod in my head, and she wakes up in the morning thinking, when will he shut up? I go to bed at night thinking, when will she shut up? And I'll stop her sometimes and say, Megan, do you really want to have a conversation right now? Or are you just thinking out loud, please? And then the next morning it switches. That is every day in our marriage. Role reversals are hard. The biggest role reversal I've ever experienced in my life has to do with my younger brother. I have a brother that is six years younger than me. Any big brothers in the room right now. All right, big brothers, you you understand me. So big brothers must win. Everything is a competition between brothers. Ladies, I don't care what they say, it's true. Everything is a competition between brothers. Fantasy football hinges on this. If there were not brothers in the world competing for everything, things like fantasy football would not exist. So my brother and I grew up competing, but I'm six years older, so I had the upper hand most of our lives. We actually got along really well. There weren't a lot of fights growing up. I only laid into him one time, and he will even tell you to this day that he had it coming. But I did remind him often that I was the big brother, that I was bigger, that I was stronger, and that if he pushed me too far, I could take him. My favorite place to remind him of this dynamic was in a swimming pool. If we were ever swimming, you know, at somebody's pool or something like that, it would just become me dunking my brother over and over again, picking him up and throwing him, just reminding him how much bigger and stronger I am than him. Well, now we're adults. And he is still my younger brother, but he's not my little brother. He's taller than me. He's thinner than me, and he's stronger than me. So that's like an older brother's nightmare come to life. A couple years ago, we were at a swimming pool and we were playing with my son Liam, who was about two at the time, and he was having a blast. And there's something weird about brothers, those of us that are in that relationship know what I'm talking about. When you're together, it does not matter if you're an adult, you revert back to the dynamic you had when you're children. So you'll argue like your kids, you'll push each other like your kids, and all of a sudden, my brother and I are wrestling in this pool. My son thought it was hilarious, he's enjoying it. And as we're wrestling, I decided to use this move. This was my go-to move when we were kids. Take my brother down, and it didn't work. And I realized that this move requires me to be stronger than him and bigger than him. And so I found that not only could I no longer overpower my brother, but he began to overpower me. And my son was watching. And this is a this is an emergency, right? So I sort of laughed it off, like, oh, I lifted yesterday, so I'm a little like this a little tense, you know. I, you know, my back, oh, once you get like 30 plus, you can just be like, oh, my back at any given time. And people go, okay, yeah, you're back, you know. That's fine. But I was so nervous. I've actually had a similar dynamic with him just this last few weeks. We were talking about Christmas, and my family is a little strange. We don't really value the surprise of a Christmas gift. Every single year, my mom will send me a picture of what she is getting me for Christmas and say, Would you like this if I got it for you? She did this a few days ago. I said no. And she's like, Oh, I'll return it then. Okay. So on Christmas morning at my house, there's no surprise. We unwrap the gifts and we're like, Yeah, that's what I thought. There's also no disappointment though, okay? There's no returning anything, and there's definitely none of that, like, oh no, I really like this. This is so much better than what I asked you for many times. This is great. That doesn't happen at my house. So my brother calls me up a few days ago and he says, Hey, if I got you this for Christmas, would you like it? And what he said he was planning on getting me is very nice and it's expensive, and I'm not going to return the gift. Like, I'm not gonna spend as much money on him as he's planning on spending on me. I'm just not going to, I can't. But it's a strange thing because yes, I'd love it, but you're my little brother. You're the little one. I'm supposed to win the Christmas gift giving competition every single year because I'm the brother, I'm the big one. But it's really nice. I'm so tempted to say no. Because it's just a strange dynamic. I don't feel like I deserve it, I don't feel like I can pay it back. He's my little brother. That's a weird role reversal there for him to provide more for me than I can provide for him. I'm so tempted to say no, but I'm not going to. Because, see, we've got to be above temptation. People, like we, it's just we can't live our lives subject to temptation. We've got to rise above, all right? And what he wants to get me is really nice. And it's it's made out of technology, which is like my weakness. Anything that has a power button, it has my heart. And so I'm gonna do the right thing and say yes this year. It's still hard though, it's still so awkward for me because I just want to say no. It's a role reversal. Scripture is full of role reversals, several of which actually involve younger brothers like taking over for their big brothers, Jacob and Esau, David and his brothers, Joseph, and all there's tons of those. Jesus and John the Baptist had an interesting one in Matthew chapter 3. Verse 13, it says, Jesus went from Galilee to the Jordan River to be baptized by John. But John tried to talk him out of it. I'm the one who needs to be baptized by you, he said. So why are you coming to me? But Jesus said it should be done, for we must carry out all that God requires. So John agreed to baptize him. Can you imagine that for John? Baptizing Jesus. And I don't know what they said in those days. I don't know if John was like, I baptize you in the name of the Father and yourself and the Holy Spirit. Like, that's a strange thing. What do you do? And John felt the awkwardness of that. Like, how can I, Jesus, you should be baptizing me? And Scripture is just full of those statements. Jesus said in Matthew 20, 16 that those who are last now on earth will be first then, talking about the kingdom of heaven. And those who are first will be last. So that's a role reversal. It's the people in this world, in this life, that serve and give of themselves that will be the most honored in God's kingdom. Matthew 23, 12, we've looked at this verse a few times in the last few weeks. It says, But those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. It's a roll reversal. Scripture is full of these, and Esther shows us an incredible roll reversal. I believe it's the second greatest role reversal in history. Esther 7 1. So the king and Haman went to Queen Esther's banquet. This is the second banquet. It says, on this second occasion, while they were drinking wine, then King Esther, or the king again said to Esther, Tell me what you want, Queen Esther, what is your request? And I will give it to you, even if it's half the kingdom. Queen Esther replied, If I have found favor with the king, and if it pleases the king to grant my request, I ask that my life and the lives of my people will be spared. For my people and I have been sold to those who would kill, slaughter, and annihilate us. If we had merely been sold as slaves, I could remain quiet, for that would be too trivial a matter to warrant disturbing the king. Who would do such a thing? King Esther demanded. Who would be so presumptuous as to touch you? And Esther replied, This wicked Haman is our adversary and our enemy. Haman grew pale with fright before the king and queen. And then the king jumped to his feet in a rage and went out into the palace garden. Haman, however, stayed behind to plead for his life with Queen Esther, for he knew that the king intended to kill him. In despair he fell on the couch where Queen Esther was reclining, just as the king was returning from the palace garden. The king exclaimed, Will he even assault the queen right here in the palace before my very eyes? And as soon as the king spoke, his attendants covered Haman's face, signaling his doom. Then Harbona, one of the king's eunuchs, said, Haman has set up a sharpened pole that stands seventy-five feet tall in his own courtyard. He intended to use it to impale Mordecai, the man who saved the king from assassination. Then impale Haman on it, the king ordered. So they impaled Haman on the pole he had set up for Mordecai, and the king's anger subsided. We should just stop for a second and appreciate the fact that Haman got everything he wanted. Beth Moore has an amazing Bible study on the book of Esther. She brings this up that Haman wanted to be above everyone. And he got that. Haman wanted everyone in Persia to be beneath him, to look down on them. Haman got to live that dream. Haman wanted everyone to point to him and to look and say, Hey, look, there's Haman. Haman got that. But it doesn't end there. The role reversal continues. Chapter 8, verse 1. On that same day, King Xerxes gave the property of Haman, the enemy of the Jews, to Queen Esther. And this man was extremely, extremely wealthy. And then Mordecai was brought before the king, for Esther had told the king how they were related. The king took off his signet ring, which had been taken back from Haman. That ring, by the way, gave whoever wore it the same authority as the king. And he gave it to Mordecai. And Esther appointed Mordecai to be in charge of Haman's property. It's a pretty good role reversal. Haman is impaled on the poll that he intended for Mordecai. Mordecai gets Haman's job, his finances, his wealth, he gets his authority. Everything has complete. Changed. When people make bold, wise, and godly choices, everything can change. I said that this is the second greatest role reversal in history. What I love about it, though, is it very much points to the first. The amazing thing about the Old Testament is that it just constantly points to Jesus. It's pretty crazy, actually. It's foreshadowing after foreshadowing. You look at the story of Esther, God's people are saved because a man is executed on a piece of wood. He's executed by an empire that is reigning over Israel at that time. The method of execution involves his body being pierced on a piece of wood and placed high above for everyone to see. Fast forward a few years, and all people are saved by a man being executed by the Roman government, a government that happened to occupy Israel at that time. Their method of execution involved a man's body being pierced on a piece of wood and placed high for everyone to see. Haman was executed on the 17th of Nisan. This is an ancient day in the calendars that appears often in Scripture. My friend Bill Thrasher showed me that this week. It was mind-blowing. Jesus rose from the dead on the 17th of Nisan. So this whole story, it's pointing to Jesus. There's too many similarities. It's pointing to the greatest role reversal in history, and that is the cross. And in dying, saving innocent people. But in our role reversal, it's switched. It's an innocent man. God himself, the greatest man to ever grace this earth with his presence, a man full of truth and love and honesty and compassion and power. Dying on a cross for guilty people. Taking their place, trading places with them. The greatest role reversal in history is Jesus and us. 2 Corinthians 5.21 says, For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering of our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ. Romans 3.21 says, but now God has shown us a way to be made right with Him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. I love that. For everyone has sinned. We all fall short of God's glorious standard. Yet God freely and graciously declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty of our sins, for God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he declares sinners to be made right in his sight when they believe in Jesus. That's the role reversal. It's our mistakes, our sin, our shortcomings, our failures taken upon Jesus to the cross. And it's his perfection, his righteousness, his goodness that is given to us. Anybody feel like I feel with my little brother? Hey, you don't have to. That's a nice gesture, but it's hard to accept. I don't like to be given something that I haven't earned. I don't like to be given something that I can't pay back. I don't like to be given something that I know I could never give back. But this is not Jesus saying, hey, if I did this for you, would you like it? Because Jesus has already done it. He's done. He's given his life, he's given the gift. Like it or not, deserving of it or not, it has been given to us. And our choice is simple, but still difficult in a strange way. Our choice is to accept. Galatians 3.27 says, All who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. You ever find a new shirt that just makes you look better than you know you really look? I like jackets personally. That's my thing. So putting on new clothes. See, there you go. 2,000 years ago, people still shop. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus, and now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God's promise to Abraham belongs to you. I love that phraseology. Put on Jesus. When you follow Jesus, when you give your life to Jesus, it is like you have put him on. And when God looks at you, what does he see? He sees Jesus, and Jesus looks good on you. This past week. Didn't have my best week. I was dealing with a lot of stress. My life right now just feels like I'm in uncharted water every single day. I've got a new baby and I've never had two kids before, and it's like twice as hard as having one, and uh I'm in a new role at my job, and it's it's it's awesome, but it's just a lot of new things, new dynamics I've never had to manage before. It's stressful. And when I get stressed, I tend to go very inward and I just get grumpy. I'm just grumpy when I'm stressed. And so I haven't been as sweet to my wife as I should be this week. I've just been a little bit of a grouch at home. I haven't really valued time with my children like I should. I've kind of been like, when can they go to bed so I can just deal with me? And I'm very tempted to say that I've had a bad week. I'm very tempted to own my failure this week. I don't want you to understand that I believe very much that we should definitely own our mistakes in the sense that we try to make up for them, that we try to make them right, we ask for forgiveness for those that we may have offended. That's great. But I'm talking about our dynamic with God. I'm very tempted to say, hey, God, I had a really bad week. My week was a failure, and I'm really, really sorry. But see, here's the thing, I didn't have a bad week. Because Jesus took all my bad weeks to the cross. Jesus took all my failures. He's taken all of our failures, all of our bad days, our bad weeks, our bad months, our bad years. Even if you've had a bad decade, if you know Jesus, he took that decade to the cross. So I haven't had a bad week at all because I'm not wearing Justin, I'm wearing Jesus, and Jesus had a really good week. See, that's the role reversal. Sometimes when people talk about accepting Jesus and accepting God, it's talked about as if we're being lowered in our position. There's this thought that we're free, we live our lives, how we want to live our lives, and to accept Jesus and to follow God means we have to be like put into our place. But I want you to know that God is a lifter. So when you accept Jesus, you are lifted into a new role and a new identity that you could never earn yourself. It's his righteousness, it's his perfection. You get credit for what Jesus has done. Think about that. When God looks at you, he is just as pleased, just as proud, just as happy as he is when he looks at Jesus. But it's still tempting to say no. It's too much. It's too good of a gift. I don't know if I'm comfortable with the role reversal. I've been following Jesus since I was 10. When I got saved at 10, I didn't have this great moment of like repentance. I wasn't coming to Jesus just saying, this is my life and it's a wreck, and I've done some really terrible things, so please forgive me. I I got saved because people told me about Jesus and I believed it, and I said, Okay, sounds cool. It's been after I got saved that I've had all my biggest failures. And there have been times, as a person who knows Jesus, that I have been tempted to own my own failure. It's almost like I'm tempted to go to Jesus and say, Hey, Jesus, could you just get off the cross for a second? I'll get on the cross instead. I want to own this mistake. I don't feel comfortable giving it to you. I don't feel like you should have to take it from me. So just you get off there, I'll get back on, and I'll pay the price for this one. That is not what Jesus desires. He wants it all. See, the only failures we have to deal with are those we choose to hold on to. Because Jesus looks at us and says, Give me all. So if you know Jesus, do not submit to the temptation to try to undo the role reversal. Don't try to start earning what he has already given you. And if you don't know Jesus, there's no pressure. There's no there's no guilt. And if you've ever been talked about Jesus with someone that that made it feel like a guilty thing, like a like a heavy thing. It probably meant well, but they just got it wrong, and that's okay. Because Jesus said, I have come to give you life. Jesus said, I have come to take burdens from you so that you can live a life that is free and light. Jesus is a lifter, and he wants to lift you. The choice we have is whether or not to accept. Do I want to accept the role reversal? Do I want my life to be defined by my best moments and my worst moments? Or do I want my life to be defined by his best moments? Because he didn't have any worst moments. I choose Jesus. I pray that all of us choose Jesus. Because I know that if I had to live with my bad weeks, bad months, bad seasons in life, if I had to live with all my failures, I would have no joy. I would have no peace. I wouldn't have any hope. But I know that Justin died on the cross that day. Jesus lives in me. That's the role reversal that he offers, and that's what we have to accept. We're gonna worship just a little bit more, one more song. And as we pray, I just want to encourage anyone that doesn't know Jesus to initiate the relationship. I honestly that's wrong because he initiated it completely. Like he came here, okay? So maybe open the door. If you feel a stirring in your heart, if you you feel that, that's like Jesus talking in Revelation chapter 3, and he says, I stand at the door and knock. And if you'll open the door, I will come in, and he doesn't say I'll come in and I'll mess with everything. I'll come in and I'll I mean he'll get to that later. He doesn't say I'll come in and I'm gonna turn your world upside down. He says, I will come in and we will share a meal together as friends. If you sense that, accept. Choose Jesus. Because he has chosen. Let's pray. Lord Jesus. Thank you so much. God, I know you're here. Your presence is uh is obvious in this place. We belong to you, Jesus, because you have chosen us. You have given us a gift that we may be tempted to reject because we know we're not we're not deserving. Because we know that we can't repay it back. Because we know that we can never earn what you've given us. But you've given us everything, Jesus. And all you ask of us, all you ask is for us to accept you, to believe in our hearts that you are who you say you are. We love you, Jesus. Help us live our lives this week. Not in our own strength and our own failures, but living our lives and understanding that we get the best of you. You took the worst of us. Help us be a light in our community, help us love people. Help us be like you. We love you so much, and we ask all this in your name, Jesus.