Summary
Pastor David preaches out of Luke 17:1–3, where Jesus warns His disciples that stumbling blocks are inevitable, but woe to the one through whom they come. Jesus calls His followers to self-examination and vigilance, urging them not to hinder the “little ones” from entering the kingdom but to reflect His mercy through humility and gospel-shaped hospitality.
Transcript
Good morning to Soli please open your Bibles to Luke chapter 17 to the gospel of Luke and to the 17th chapter. I want to confess from the very beginning this morning that this passage which comes from the lips of our Lord Himself comes with a serrated edge. Plan to be cut. Just plan to bleed a bit because the words of Jesus are bladed today. And so necessary humility as we come to this passage. But remember we've already gone through the absolution. You have hope. There is hope already for us all. We're surrounded by the gospel and the service. But nevertheless these are strong words. Luke chapter 17 we're just going to look at verses one, two through three, A this morning. Hear the word of God. Now He said to His disciples, "It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come." I'm using the LSB which I think is closer to the Greek. "But woe to Him through whom they come." It would be better for Him if a millstone were hung around His neck and He were thrown into the sea than that He would cause one of these little ones to stumble. Be on your guard. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven as we come to these words spoken on earth by our Lord to the disciples. We confess that they are strong words indeed. And that they come to us and they lead us to our knees. They lead us, Lord, to a place where we need to find ourselves there and to look up and not down. We need not look in but up and out as we come before these words to find our hope in Christ, but also Lord to find the Spirit of God enabling us to walk away from these things, to live differently, to not be these people who cause the little ones to stumble. And so I pray today that we would find both grace to help but strength to live. In Jesus' name we pray. And Amen. Jesus is speaking if you look in verse 1 directly to the disciples. He began speaking directly to the disciples if you look back in chapter 16 and verse 1. Chapter 16 verse 1 says, "Now He was also saying to the disciples." And so He begins to direct Himself to the disciples specifically in 16-1, but the Pharisees get Him off track a little bit. And if you look at verses 14 and 15, Jesus moves from speaking to the disciples to the Pharisees. Now the Pharisees who were lovers of money were listening to all these things and were scoffing at Jesus and then Jesus said to them and He continues to address the Pharisees for the rest of chapter 16. And now He returns specifically to addressing His disciples after He has addressed the Pharisees straight on. And look at what Jesus says. Now He said to His disciples, "It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come." Jesus looks squarely in the eyes of His disciples and He says, "What I am about to tell you is inevitable." The ESV has, "It is sure to come." And so what Jesus is speaking of here is not a maybe, it's not a possibility, it's not even a probability. What Jesus is speaking about here is something that is going to regularly happen. The disciples are to expect that this will regularly happen in the life together that is the church. A regular part of our life together is that stumbling blocks will come. And for the disciples here, they're already actually happening. They're not simply in the future, they are in the present as we will see. But what is it that is inevitable? Okay, Jesus says in verse 1, "It is inevitable that stumbling blocks will come." The reason I chose the LSB is because for some reason the ESV has temptations to sin and sin there in verses 1 and 2, but it has stumbling blocks and stumbling the footnotes. And that's what it should be because the word here that Jesus uses in the Greek is not from the world of sin. That's ha-marte. He starts that in verse 3 if your brother sins ha-marte ha-martia. Those are the Greek words that have to do with sin. The word that Jesus uses here for stumbling block is the word "scandalon" from which we get our English word "scandal". Okay? And so Jesus is saying that it is inevitable that stumbling blocks or "scandalon" will come. And so what is this "scandalon" that Jesus is talking about? Well, in the Bible, this word "scandalon" can be used either positively or negatively. It's not a word that's always negative. Paul himself, as he's writing 1 Corinthians, talks about the gospel as a scandal to the unbelieving world. It's scandalous to the unbelieving world. And so whether or not scandal is being used positively or whether or not scandal is being used negatively, the context is what is determined. The gospel being a scandal is a good thing. But that's not how Jesus is using it here. Jesus is not using it here in a positive way at all. We know that because he ties a woe to it and a millstone, a woe and a drowning. So Jesus is clearly not using this scandal on as a scandal on that you or I or we want to be known for. So if you look at it, Jesus says it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come, but woe to him through whom they come. And then the last word in verse two is one of these little ones to stumble, to be scandalized. You see, it's used twice in these two verses. And so by having this stumbling block linked to the woe, having it linked to these millstone, clearly if we connect those to the other woes in Luke's gospel, as well as the context here, Jesus is speaking directly of the scribes and the Pharisees themselves as the ones who are causing the stumbling blocks and who are themselves the ones who scandalize the kingdom that Jesus himself is bringing. And it's important, the scribes and the Pharisees are the chumps here. They are the ones that Jesus is addressing for the disciples to understand. There's been this movement back and forth between disciples and Pharisees and scribes, disciples and Pharisees and scribes, and Jesus wants his disciples to actually see what is actually happening. With these scribes and Pharisees in their midst and the danger that they pose. The danger that they pose for those entering the kingdom of God. But what is a stumbling block or a scandal on it? It is an obstacle to entering the kingdom of God. It is something that hinders someone from coming in to the kingdom of God. It is something that would keep someone from coming in to the Jesus way and following Jesus. So in the one sense, a stumbling block is something that blocks the way in. On the other side, the scandal on or the stumbling block would be to miss the kingdom in the name of the kingdom, which confused the little ones of the kingdom. Let me say that again, because this is important. You miss the kingdom in the name of the kingdom, and therefore you cause the little ones to stumble. You see, that was the colossal issue with the Pharisees is that they misunderstood the kingdom. They misunderstood the upside down character of the kingdom that Jesus himself was bringing. The Jesus way and the Jesus kingdom was different than the Pharisee way and the Pharisee kingdom, but different not in the sense of chocolate and vanilla. Different in the way of medicine and poison. Different in the way of life and death, not which gelato were choosing. You see, the way of the Pharisees and the scribes was devil, was demonic, was death. And that's why there's an attachment to it that we're going to see in a moment that is the worst form of word you can find in the Bible for God's judgment, woe. You don't pronounce woe on somebody who likes a different kind of pizza than you. You don't pronounce a woe on someone who likes a different kind of ice cream than you do. You don't use the picture of tying a millstone around someone's neck and throwing them into the lake so that they drown and die. And it would be better for that to happen than for you to become a stumbling block to the kingdom. You simply don't use that type of picture and that type of judgment on simply things that don't matter, things that are trivial, things that are relative. You only use a woe when eternal things are at stake, you see. And so here, the eternal thing that is at stake is the little ones and the kingdom. That which would keep the little ones from entering the kingdom or staying in the kingdom and participating in the kingdom. Because we can not only hinder them from coming in, we can give them a false message of what the kingdom actually is and have them turn away from it because they want no part of it, right? One of the things that you learn in a, Pastor John, I'm going to say the word apologetics from the pulpit here. And apologetics, when you're talking to an atheist is this. When an atheist says, "I don't believe in God," you should say this, "What God is it that you don't believe in?" Because you and I might not believe in that God. I might not believe in that God either. There's a possibility that you have a view of God that I also don't have a view of. We can share our atheism about that view of God, okay? Like, "Oh, that's your understanding of God? Well, that's, I'm with you. I don't believe in that God either. I actually believe in this God." Okay? The same thing is true when it comes to the kingdom of God. Oftentimes, when it comes to the kingdom of God in the Jesus way, what turns off generations of people is not the actual kingdom of Jesus. It's what people do in the name of the kingdom of Jesus that is a scandal, you see? Not the kingdom itself. But if they come to equate the kingdom that we give them, that we say is the kingdom with the kingdom of Jesus, they are not actually throwing off the kingdom of Jesus, right? Maybe they're throwing off a different understanding of the kingdom that's not even true to the kingdom of God at all, right? Or, as my brother, Nate, always likes to say, "When youth grow up, they leave the church." Well, no, they don't. They don't leave the church because they've never been in church, right? They've had to be in church to leave the church. What they leave is juvenile church, which didn't answer the deep issues of their soul, which is why they walk away from the Lord. We have to get down here what we're talking about here. And so it's not that everybody always, people abandon the kingdom. They abandon a certain version of the kingdom that's wrapped in something else besides the Jesus way, which is exactly what was the problem with the Pharisees. And so let's go look at some of those woes that were stumbling blocks that we can see that would either keep little ones from the kingdom or give them a misrepresentation of the kingdom itself. Turn back to chapter 11 with me when Jesus is laying out his woes to the scribes and the Pharisees. I believe these things are tied together. The stumbling blocks that receive a woe go back to the woes that Jesus already gave, that he already identified as a stumbling block. Luke chapter 11. And first, let's look at verse 52. Verse 52. Jesus simply makes it very clear here in Luke 11. 52. He says this, woe to you. So there's your woe. Okay. Woe to you scholars of the law. In other words, Bible thumping scribes. Well, why would Jesus give to the class of people the set aside Bible interpreters, the Bible academia of the day? Why would Jesus set aside the Bible professors of the day and attach a woe to them when all of their business is about expositing and teaching the scriptures to God's people? Why does Jesus attach the condemnation and judgment of woe to them? Here's why, because they hinder from coming, they hinder little ones from coming to the kingdom. Look at the rest of the verse 52. For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You yourselves did not enter and you hindered those who are entering. Their very use of the Bible rather than lead people into the kingdom. Their use of the Bible was driving people from the kingdom. Here's what you're going to find. The scandal on words here tied with the woes are not ever going to be related to people who struggle with sin. It is not struggling with sin that hinders people from coming into the kingdom and struggling with sin that hinders and misrepresent the kingdom because the kingdom of God is for sinners who repent and who come to Jesus. You want to know what keeps people from the kingdom? Self-righteousness. Bible thumping hypocrisy that expects and requires of others what you refuse to do yourself. And you use, I'm not saying you, but I'm just saying I'm preaching so it's you and me. We use the scriptures in such a way that we think are upholding righteousness, but they're actually misrepresenting righteousness and someone looks at that and says, "Well, if that's what righteousness is, I want no part of it." Because we misuse the Bible for our own pets. We have our own bonsai trees with our Bibles, and we cut them into the shapes that we want them to be in, and that's the tree that we give people, and oftentimes those trees don't look like the tree of God's word or God's kingdom at all. And Jesus is confronting the scholars of the day and saying, "You've taken away the key of knowledge. You guys haven't entered, and you've hindered those who were entering." Now look at verse 46. Same thing, the Bible scholars. But he said to them, "Woe to you scholars of the law as well, for what? You weigh men down with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves will not even touch the burdens with one of your fingers." You have an understanding of the way in which people ought to live from your handling of the Scriptures. You lay that on people and require it of them, but in actuality you don't require that of yourself at all. "Woe to you." You see, that keeps people from the kingdom. It gives them a misunderstanding of what the kingdom is when we use the Bible to put things on people while we ourselves free ourselves from that same call of the Bible. You see. This is all tied to misusing the Bible. This is where the scandal is. Keeping people from the kingdom, the little ones from the kingdom, are all tied to misusing the Bible and misusing the ways of God and twisting them beyond configuration of the way that Jesus himself has them. Look at verse 42 of chapter 11. "But woe to you Pharisees, for you pay the tithe of mint and rue and every kind of garden herb, and yet you disregard justice and the love of God." But these things you should have done without neglecting the others. So this is the thing. You pick the trivial parts. You pick the parts of the law that are there, and yes, they're there to be fulfilled and they have their role, but you take the smaller things and you amplify them beyond recognition and you take the bigger things of the law because you don't want to be a part of them and you shrink them down. In other words, you just take and mold the scriptures according to the way in which you see the world, the way you perform the world, and then you expect that of others. And then when they see that, they're like, "I don't want any part of that kingdom. I'm not going to go into that kingdom." That kingdom has everything upside down. That kingdom has everything wrong, you see. And this just goes to show us that we can get it wrong. We can have Bibles in our hands and we can get it wrong. We can get the kingdom wrong. We can get Jesus wrong. We can get our understanding of what's important wrong. We can take things that are of lesser importance and make them way too important and take things that should have the weight of importance like justice and the love of God and we can shrink those in proportion. Why? Our performance, our control, our way, you see. And then Kingdom of Blindness in verse 43, "Woe to you Pharisees, for you love the best seat in the synagogues and the respectful greetings in the marketplaces." You just love being first. You just have to be first. You have to be respected. You have to be honored. Everything has to bend its way to you, you see. These are the things that are scandal. These are the things that are inevitable. These are the things that we should expect. And then the last one we've already seen, and that's the scandal of trying to serve God and mammon. You can't do it. You can't do it. The Pharisees were lovers of money and they scoffed at Jesus for telling them that they could not serve God and wealth. And so church, listen, all of these things are inevitable. There will always be these dangers in the church of blocking people and hindering people and providing obstacles of people with respect to the kingdom of God because of a certain kind of righteousness that flips things, that is blind to things, that crushes people under the weight of things, and that absolutely just takes away what is the gospel and puts the five steps for this and nine steps for that in the place of the righteousness of Jesus Christ received through faith alone that then unites us to the Lord Jesus Christ so that we humbly walk behind Him for the rest of our days. And that danger will be among us. That danger will be in my own heart. Okay, it is inevitable that stumbling blocks will come, Jesus says. But don't be the one that, expect them, but don't be the one that traffics them. Jesus says, look at what He says. It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come but woe to Him through whom they come. We cannot be surprised at them as a church. We cannot go, oh, I can't believe that's happening. I can't believe so and so said that I can't believe I said we, it's inevitable. It's going to happen. But let it not be you. Let it not be you. That's why in 3A it says be on your guard. Be on your guard. The ESV is pay attention to yourselves. This danger is not something that's simply going to be over there. It's easy for you to go around the room and point the finger at people who you might think, oh, yeah, that person does that. Oh, that, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You start in the mirror. You start as that me. Is my understanding of the kingdom and my understanding of the gospel a scandal for people to enter because it's misrepresenting what we've been learning here about the upside down kingdom. You see, be on your guard. Pay attention to yourselves. And this is something that we've seen before throughout the gospel of Luke. Jesus warns his disciples to be on guard about these things. Just look with me at two verses in chapter 12. Go back to chapter 12. This is not something that Jesus is warning them about now, right? And so you young people that are in this room and you children that are in this room and you sometimes think that us old people when we warn you, right? You know, too many times of certain things were just following Jesus because sometimes you need to hear the repetition. Okay. Chapter 12 and verse one, at that time, after so many thousands of the crowd had gathered together that they were trampling on one another, he began saying to his disciples first, look at it first, direct thousands of people around him. He grabs his disciples, he looks directly at them and he says this, be on your guard for the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Okay. Be on your guard. Be on your guard because this leaven gets into things. Okay. It gets into groups. It gets into cliques. It gets into friendships. It gets into communities. It gets into churches. You see. It gets in. It's leaven. And when it gets in, it's leaven, then the whole lump that rises is leavened with this type of hypocrisy. The hypocrisy that we've already been looking about. And Jesus says, be on your guard for the leaven. And he's telling his disciples this, that this is the thing you have to be aware of. It's not, you don't have to be aware of the leper. You don't have to be aware of the prostitute. You don't have to be aware of the tax collector. He never says beware of the sinner. He never says beware of the sinner. The sinners are the ones you're welcoming. The ones that are fleeing to Christ. The ones that are coming in because they know they're broken and they have a knee. But these fellows, their hypocrisy, their leaven is something you ought to be on guard against. Because they have no place for sinners. They have no place for sinners. And then look at verse 15. He said, watch out. This is a double shot. Watch out and be on your guard against every form of greed. For not even when one has an abundance does his life consist in his possessions. It's the two things we've been learning about. We've been learning about mammon. And we've been learning about self-righteousness and Phariseeism. That's what we've been learning about for months in this church. Both those. And those both come with a beware. They both come with a be on guard. And Jesus is, because they are the stumbling blocks. Self-righteousness and hypocrisy and a refusal to yourself to acknowledge your own need of Christ and to lay on others what you and yourself won't do. To have a certain view of the kingdom that's bent a certain way and not the way of Jesus. Jesus lays a woe on that. Okay? And so be on your guard. Watch yourself, Jesus says. It is inevitable that stumbling blocks will come be on your guard. So we can never let up. We always have to be on guard against these things. We can never let down. It's easy for us to slide into them, which is why the warning is repeated over and over again. Over again in Luke's gospel. Well, what's at stake here? What's at stake here in verse one is eternal condemnation. This is no small thing according to Jesus, but woe to him through whom they come. I want you to think about that. It's inevitable that stumbling blocks will come, but you don't want to be him and you don't want to be her. And you don't want to be him and you don't want to be her because God already has pronounced a judgment on the person through whom these stumbling blocks come. Woe is a word we see all throughout the Old Testament of God's judgment on persons. Woe is a word that we see throughout the gospel, God's judgment on persons. This is the word that is used throughout the scriptures to say that this is where God's judgment lands. It lands on these people through whom these kind of stumbling blocks would come. And this highlights the seriousness of this, the seriousness of keeping the little ones from the kingdom and of misrepresenting the kingdom that the little ones should be coming into. And then Jesus, if the woe of judgment doesn't get you, Jesus gives us a picture, a graphic picture of just how dangerous this is and the picture that Jesus gives is extraordinarily, again, strong medicine. So not only does he say, "But woe to him through whom they come," but verse two says this. And I don't know, again, this is just strong stuff. It would be better for him, for that person to whom the woe comes through. It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea than that he would cause one of these little ones to stumble. You know what a millstone is? A millstone is this picture like a cement wheel that's about a foot to two feet wide and about a foot to two feet around as your necklace. And then you're thrown into the sea. You ain't coming back up. It's a violent drowning. It's a violent drowning. And Jesus says it would be better for you to go through that kind of a death than to hinder a little one from coming into the kingdom or to misrepresent the kingdom that they're coming into. It's unbelievably powerful what Jesus says here. The question is then, who are the little ones here? Who are these little ones that could be kept from the kingdom because we put obstacles in the way, hindrances in the way, or misrepresent the kingdom to them? Well, there's a number of different ways in which this can be understood. In Luke chapter 10, Jesus says this of the disciples coming back from their mission. He says at that very time, Jesus rejoiced greatly. He jumped for joy. It's the only time we see that in the scriptures where Jesus jumps for joy. At that time, he jumped for joy in the Holy Spirit and said, "I praise you, O Father." This is what the Trinity does. The Son jumps because he's got a body. In the Holy Spirit, he jumps because he's full of the Spirit and he speaks to the Father. This is what gets the Trinity going. If you want to know something that fires up the triune God, that gets the triune God overflowing with joy and gladness, it's when little ones are brought into the kingdom. That's what it is. This is the only time in which we're shown the inside of the Trinity and they're all bubbling with joy in the Bible. This is the one time we see it. And here's what it says, "I praise you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent, and you have revealed them to babes, infants, or little ones. Yes, Father, for this way was well pleasing in your sight." What gets the Trinity full of joy and excitement is that the little ones come in. The little ones come in. And here, the word is used as infants and it's used here metaphorically. I will admit that not every... You all know where I stand baptismally, but I'm not one of those guys who sees biopically. And every time an infant is found, it has to be a literal infant. I recognize the use of metaphor in the scriptures. And this is metaphor when the disciples went out, they were going out to the highways and the byways. They were going out to the marginalized. They were going out to the weak and to the poor that nobody else would go to. And those were the infants. Those were the little ones. And here, the wise ones and the intelligent ones are clearly scribes and Pharisees. These are the little ones. The little ones are the ones we would never look at as qualify for the kingdom. The ones we leave out, the ones that were attracted to Jesus, the sinners and the tax collectors and the prostitutes and the ones who needed forgiveness. These are the little ones who are coming into the kingdom. In chapter 12 and verse 32, Jesus says this in chapter 12 and verse 32. Jesus says, "Do not fear little flock, for your father is pleased to give you the kingdom." He was talking to his disciples there in the midst of this big Roman machine and this scribe and Pharisee cult that they are surrounded by. Jesus looks at his disciples and says, "You're the little flock, but yours is the kingdom." He's just said that after he has promised them that he would provide daily bread for them. And so we know then that the little ones who were not to hinder from the kingdom are those who, on the margins, those ones who flocked to Jesus and the disciples themselves made up those little ones because that's where they started. But it also includes the little ones that are actually known as children and infants as well. In Luke chapter 18, this is what the Bible says. And notice it uses the hinder language. In Luke chapter 18, verses 15 through 17, "And they were bringing even their babies to him so that he would touch them. But when the disciples saw it, they were rebuking them. But Jesus called for them saying, 'Permit the little children to come to me and do not hinder them for the kingdom belongs to such as these. Don't keep the children from me and don't keep me from the children,' Jesus says. Don't do that. Don't hinder them. Truly I say to you also, by the way, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God, like a child will never enter it. So the only people ever entering the kingdom of God are either the children or the people who are like children, you see. So why do we tell our children that in order to enter the kingdom, you have to become like an adult when Jesus says for anybody to enter the kingdom, including the little ones, you have to become like a little one? Why have we flipped the script? Why have we said, 'I'm not sure you're mature enough. I'm not sure your faith five-year-old is enough.' Why have we done the opposite of what Jesus has done? Why have we looked at the children of the covenant and why have we looked at babies outside people who don't know anything about Jesus at all? And why are we layering on them adult faith when Jesus tells us that everybody who comes in comes in with an infant faith? We are hindering entire generations of people coming in because they don't think their faith is enough. Because they're being told, 'No, you've got to be mature first. You've got to be wise first. You've got to jump through these hoops first.' Rather than covenant in Christ and faith alone, the faith of a mustard seed, the faith that comes from the Holy Spirit that begins just small and then grows ebbs and flows throughout time. You see, we're guilty of this. We layer extra things on top of what Jesus layers. We're guilty of that with actual children and we're guilty of that with the children of the world. And so who are the little ones? Yes. Yes, they are the children and they are the marginalized. They are those who are the ones we would never expect to be. And so Jesus says, now he said to his disciples, 'It's inevitable that suddenly blocks would come, but woe to him through whom they come.' Would it be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea then, he would cause one of these little ones to stumble, 'Be on your guard.' And we're just left there. Jesus moves into something else as we're going to see in two weeks on our anniversary sermon about forgiveness. So how does that ferret itself? What do we look to in the Gospel of Luke to find out how Jesus provided the answer for this? Church, listen. What do we look to in the Gospel of Luke to find out how Jesus provided the answer for this? Well, the Gospel of Luke is what? Structured around 10 meals. 10 meals. And if you remember, it's the hospitality of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke that is so scandalous to those who are this scandal. It's the table fellowship of Jesus. It's the hospitality of Jesus. Jesus is always eating and drinking with the wrong people in the Gospel of Luke, you see. And so it's the table ethic of Jesus, the hospitality habit of Jesus that continually put on display how it is that we ourselves are not this type of scandal. We are not this kind of scandal. And I find it interesting that in 1 Corinthians, chapter 10, 11, the very thing that they were doing at the Lord's table was exactly the thing that Jesus said was not to happen at the table. The table is the place. Our habits of hospitality at the table reveal whether or not we are these stumbling blocks or reveal whether or not we ourselves get the kingdom right. Because the kingdom in the Gospel of Luke always centered on the table. And here's what Jesus said through Paul to the church at Corinth. 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, "For do you not have houses in which to eat and drink, or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I will not praise you." You see, it was the divisions at the table in Corinth that were the same thing as the stumbling blocks in Luke 17. They were divided amongst themselves and they were pushing the poor and the weak and the needy. Those who have nothing were being shamed at the table of the Lord, which is where the kingdom itself finds its full enactment, is right here by us welcoming all who belong to the kingdom to the table and passing the peace with one another where everybody in the church gets a face. Listen to what Jesus said in 1 Corinthians, chapter 12, and I bring this to a close, 1 Corinthians 12, 13, "For by one spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, we were all made to drink of one spirit." So what does that mean? Here's what it means. On the contrary, how much more is it that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary? And those members of the body which we think is less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our less presentable members become much more presentable, whereas our more presentable members have no such need. But God has so composed the body, listen, giving more abundant honor to the member which lacked so there'd be no division in the body, you see. Right? So what do we do? We grab our children who are baptized, we grab a person that we don't know that might be by themselves, we grab a person that might be marginalized, a person whose name we don't know, and every Sunday at this church, we enact the kingdom in such a way that it's attractive to our children, and it's attractive to our visitors, and it's attractive to the weak. It's attractive to those who go nameless and faceless all week long, but here we will not hinder them. Here we will not be an obstacle to them. At Soli, those who are the neediest will be most welcome. We will let them come first. We will give them the bread that they want and the wine that they need here at Soli, because we don't want the serrated edge coming our way, because we already know that we have nothing in our hands to bring, simply to the cross we cling, naked look to thee for dress, we look helplessly for hope to Jesus alone, and our weekly enactment of the table does not allow us to escape that, and because we know who we are before Jesus, we welcome those who He welcomes into His kingdom, and we don't find ourselves being like this and hindering people from coming to the kingdom. Amen? Let's pray. Lord Jesus, seal unto us a weak effort at a sermon, but nevertheless I pray as faithful to your word. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. [Music]