YouTube Content

Good morning everyone to the Sunday service here at Wilmington Community Evangelical Church. Today is the first day of a very special week. What, what big event is happening next week? That's right, Thanksgiving. And it's a day when we gather together with our family, friends, just to celebrate the things that we're thankful for. It's a big event, lots of food, lots of friendship, lots of fellowship together. And that's something that's celebrated throughout the country. What else is happening next week just here for our church? The what? The Mounties? Yeah, on Friday night on the 28th we'll have our own kind of Thanksgiving dinner here and gathering here at the church for our church family. So those are two big events that are happening within the next upcoming week. Now typically also around this time there's something else that occurs. Well, Black Friday, okay, alright. So I wasn't gonna call on that one.

What?

Somebody said something else, but no, I was thinking, and typically when I would look out there, I would think that I would have seen some, but I don't. But typically this is the week that we see a lot of our returning college students. And while you might not see them right now, at least I'm hoping, On Friday and next Sunday you probably will. And so one of the things that we are thankful for is the fact that they are going off to school, but we're also thankful that when they come back. And so when I was thinking about a Thanksgiving call to worship, I was thinking kind of like, you know, what does it mean for us as a church congregation, but also what does it mean for those young adults that have gone away and now are coming back? And since we have— I don't think we have one college student in the audience at all, which is surprising. Usually we have Oh, Ben's back there. Ben, you're hiding behind your dad and I couldn't see you. So we have Ben back. So Ben, Ben Effinger, this message is entirely for you since you're the only one. So it's kind of a blessing in a way. But this comes out of the book of Philippians chapter 4, verses 4 through 9. So let's all rise for the reading of God's word. And now this first sentence is, you know, as Paul writes this, kind of a— he writes it and it ends in a— the first sentence ends in a powerful way. He says, he writes, "Rejoice in the Lord always. I'll say it again, rejoice! The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving present your requests to God." And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me or seen in me, put into practice, and the God of peace will be with you. Thank you. You can be seated. So as we enter into this week of Thanksgiving, we just remember all the blessings that God has bestowed upon us, and we're thankful for those. We're also thankful for all the blessings that He will provide us that we're not even aware of. So let's all gather for a time of prayer, and then we'll go into corporate worship. Let's pray. Father God, we're thankful to be in Your house today. We're thankful that You are a loving God. We're thankful that You are a God that is personal and wants to interact with us. And we're thankful that we could— do have the opportunity to come and gather together in Your house, Father God. And as we learn more about what that means to come into a personal relationship to You as we read through the scriptures later on and listen to the sermon. We're thankful for our time together, and we just ask that You be with us. We ask that the Holy Spirit come upon us. And most of all, we ask this in Your precious Son Jesus' name. Amen.

Let's stand together again and again give thanks to God for what He has done for us.

I will enter his gates with thanksgiving in my heart. I will enter his courts with praise. I will say, "This is the day that the Lord hath made." I will rejoice, for he has made me glad. He has made me glad, he has made me glad. I will rejoice, for he has made me glad. He has made me glad, he has made me glad. I will rejoice, for he has made me glad. I will enter his gates with thanksgiving in my heart. I will enter enter his courts with praise. I will say, this is the day that the Lord hath made. I will rejoice, for he has made me glad. He has made me glad. He has made me glad. I will rejoice, for he has made me glad. He has made me How lovely is your dwelling. Place, O Lord Almighty. My soul longs and even faints for you. For hear my heart, Is satisfied. Within your presence, I sing beneath the shadow of your wings. —better is one day in your courts than 1,000 elsewhere! Better is one day in your house better than 1 day in your court than 1,000 elsewhere! One thing I ask that I would see, to see your beauty, to find you in the place you're for we dwell. One thing I ask, then I would sing, to see your beauty, to find you in your may your glory dwell. Better is one day in your courts, better is one day in your house, better is one day in your courts than thousands elsewhere. Better is one day in your courts Better is one day in your house, better is one day in your courts, thousands elsewhere. My heart and flesh cry out for you, the living God. Your spirit's water to my soul. Wasted, and I sing. Come once again to me. I will draw near to you. I will draw near to you.

To you.

Better is one day in your courts than thousands elsewhere! Better is one day in your house better than 1,000 days anywhere else! Your grace is enough, more than my— At your word, I will believe. I wait for you. Draw near again. Let your Spirit make me new, and I will follow. I will fall at your feet. I will fall at your feet, and I will worship you here. Your presence in me, Jesus, light the way. By the power of your word, I am restored. I am redeemed. By your Spirit, I am And I will fall at your feet. I will fall at your feet. And I will worship you here. Freedom, you gave it all for us. Surrender your life upon that cross. Great is the love you pour out for all. This is our God. Lifted on high from death to life. Forever our God is glorified. Servant and King, rescue the world. This is our God. And I will fall at your feet. I will fall at your feet. And I will worship you here. And I will fall at your feet. I will fall at your feet, and I will worship You gave it all for us, surrender your life upon that cross. Great is the love you pour out for all. This is our God, lifted on high from death to life. Forever our God is glorified. Servant and King, rescue the world. This is our God.

Let's pray. Uh, Lord, we are just privileged to stand before you in your presence. It is only what Christ has done, what Jesus um, did on that cross for us, that we can come before you. We just thank you for the blood he shed for us and the life that he lived, a perfect life that was sacrificed for our sins. And that's why we're so thankful for, um, for this grace that you've given to us and this mercy and the salvation. And without what Christ has done, we cannot come before you, and we just again thank you for that. And in Jesus' name, pray. Amen. Uh, before you sit down, please take a moment to just greet each other and welcome each other.

I can start the— no, God is— hello, can you hear me? Good morning, family, family of God. Praise be to God. Thank you, God. A little story. He asked if I would do that this morning, do this this morning, so I'm here. I just asked you 10 minutes ago. Give or take. I just want to thank God Almighty. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, now and forever. Amen. The more we realize what's out there, the more we know we need God. We know we need Jesus. It is only by his grace, his love that saved me and so many of you as Well, and what does that cause us to do? How passionate are we? How does he lead us? How does he guide us? He is inside us. Father God, help us all. Help us to love like you love. I— that's sometimes hard, but when we walk in the spirit, we do not Live by the flesh. Oh, that flesh. That flesh. I have 3 minutes and 6 seconds. When I was around 5 years old, I drank booze. I almost died of alcohol poisoning. What that did to this, not sure. But it is what it is. I am what I am. He will use me, sometimes confuse me, but He'll still use me. Many times, many times I was definitely a bad sheep, little lamb. But I'm thankful for the blood of Christ. I studied with BSF, as some people know, um, for like 13, 14 years, something like that. Every year I was blessed with that in my life. There's so much I still need to learn. I'm thankful for my husband and my daughters. I'm thankful for the friends I've created even in here, and that's by you and the love that you have that you show me. I did a lot of little things, served in the military 3 years, did hairdressing, was it cosmetology, all little things just because my attention span could only handle so much, and then I was done, finished. Where now, Lord? Okay, I've got a little bit of this, got a little bit of that. So I can understand different people different ways, I guess. Maybe that's why. Not quite sure, but here we go. Here I am. I love the music. I love the people who come on stage. I was bullied learning how to play the guitar, and I said I was never going to touch an instrument. So this is my instrument today. It's not so good. I'm really clogged up. I'm trying to sing and I'm like, uh, hope I don't have to sing. Lord, you're gonna make me sing. Please don't make me sing, I'm not good right now. But I'm thankful for the wonderful people who really, really, really put in the effort, because I know it's a lot. But you guys are so gifted, so blessed, so divine on many ways. I pray that you can walk and do God's will. And know that he loves you and he wants you to serve him. 16 seconds. One thing he gave me was a gift. I broke my ankle. I had to use crutches and a cane. And one day, when I was in my self-pity, I started thinking of a little ditty he gave me. And I use that wherever I go at different times. Someone has a cane or someone has a crutch, and I see I see this look on their face or I'm just gravitated toward them. And I see them and I say, "Are you a believer? Do you know the story of Cain and Abel?" My mom— my dad would be at the dining room table with his dad and he used to tell me the stories that he would say, "If you didn't have a Cain, there wouldn't be an Abel." So then I was like, "Oh!" So when I would see someone with a cane, I'd say that to them. And then I'd go, the Lord gave me this little Diddy. If I didn't have a cane, I wouldn't be able. Thank you, God. If I didn't have a crutch, I couldn't walk so much. And then it was like, God, people create these things. There are so many people who are gifted. I don't take that crutch away or the crutches or anything really. The more I'm aware of His presence the more I am in awe. And the beauty of each one of you. You're beautiful! God created you! You're one of a kind. Better than a snowflake. You can talk and walk and sing and bring the good news to others. What a gift! What a gift! What a gift! What a gift! Thank you, God. I'm done.

Thank you, Kathy. That was very inspirational. It's like a little mini-sermon. Alright, so let's go on with the scripture reading in Exodus chapter 25, verses 8 through 22. So please rise for the reading of God's Word. Let's read it together. I'll try to keep pace with everybody. So, have the people of Israel 'Build me a holy sanctuary so I can live among them. You must build this tabernacle and its furnishings exactly according to the pattern I will show you. Have the people make an ark of acacia wood, a sacred chest 45 inches long, 27 inches wide, and 27 inches high. Overlay it inside and outside with pure gold.' When the Ark is finished, place inside it the stone tablets inscribed with the terms of the covenant. Then make the Ark's cover, the place of atonement, from pure gold. It must be 45 inches long and 27 inches wide. Then make two cherubim from hammered gold and place them on the two ends of the atonement cover. Then put the atonement cover on on top of the ark. I will meet with you there and talk to you from above the atonement cover between the gold cherubim that hover over the Ark of the Covenant. All right, please be seated. Pastor Paul.

Thank you, Kathy. You are better than the snowflake. We're all better than the snow Next slide. In Massachusetts, 1995, true story, there were twins born prematurely, twin girls. And they put one in one incubator and another in the other incubator. And one of the twins did well. She was getting better and growing stronger, but the other twin grew worse. Her breathing was labored and she actually turned literally purple and color. The doctors were worried, but the nurse had an idea to put the two babies in the same incubator, which was not something they used to do at that time. And the nurse said, "Brielle's breathing stabilized, her oxygen saturation rose, and against all odds, her little body came back to life." So Brielle was not dying for lack of of heat in that incubator. She was dying and getting worse because she had no hope, no love, no contact with another person. And with that skin on skin, she revived. Life on life gave her the hope to have the will to live. Now, this is partly related to the pandemic perhaps, But there were several studies put out, one by the Surgeon General, another by a Harvard journal about this so-called epidemic of loneliness and isolation. It shows that many grown-ups had the same problem like those— the one infant, that in isolation they're not doing too well. Even though we have all of the nutrients, we have enough to eat and a place to live and a warm home, and yet we don't— something's not quite right. Now, this is nothing new under the sun, right? God tells us way back at the very beginning of the Bible in chapter 2, and God is thinking to himself and speaking out loud, he says, "It is not good for man to be alone." This is right after he's created Adam, but before Eve was around. Now there's really two dimensions I want to be talking about today of what is loneliness or isolation. One dimension, of course, is this so-called horizontal or isolation of one man from another or one woman from another. But there's another dimension which we could call vertical, which is isolation of man from God. Without another human, as we saw in the incubators, we may not have will to live. Live, but without God, it also is a major game changer. So what was the solution that God had for Adam's loneliness? Get a pet, right? How about a dog? Oh, you like cats? Or how about all these other animals? So one at a time, he paraded all the animals that he created in front of Adam, but Adam wasn't satisfied with any of them. Until finally God brought him bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. Remember Eve? And she, yes, was the perfect helper. And through her presence, that changed everything, and he wasn't alone anymore. Now, what— that was on this man-to-man dimension, but what was going on in the vertical dimension at the same time? That God was also present in the garden. And we know, of course, from later in Scripture, he gives Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our connection with God on a vertical level. So this is the solution. And he says, "I will make a helper who is just right for him." And then he says, "A man is joined to his wife and the two are united." as one. And so here we see the physical touch, but also with that marriage there is a social or a joining of their lives together. And really that, you could say, represents all people, brothers and sisters, not just husband and wife, being able to be united in this community. And what's so great about it, they're not only— their physical needs are met because they had enough to eat, right, enough to drink, They could just get the fruit off of the trees. They had the tree of life there. They could go on living for a long, long time. And what was nice is they not only were physically taken care of, they were emotionally thriving. There's that song by James, "I Feel Good." What's the name of it? James Brown, right? "I feel good." You know that song? That's how they felt every day. This is literally paradise, and that's why it's called the Garden of Eden. They had nothing to hide. But what was wrong? Nothing was wrong, but Adam and Eve got the idea from a serpent that they shouldn't have any limits at all, that they would eat whatever they wanted to eat and not worry about what God said were the consequences. And so they ate of that fruit that was forbidden. Now, that was probably the easiest rule. Like, a lot of us don't like to follow rules, right? But this was probably the easiest rule. All they had to do was avoid one tree. How many trees were in the garden? And they— yet they just had to break that rule. And what did they do immediately after? They felt shame. And they hid themselves. See, God did not impose isolation on them. They imposed it on themselves. They went and hid. They covered up with leaves because of their shame. So they couldn't blame God for the separation. They did it to themselves. So God called out, "Where are you?" They were hiding. And the consequences were that they were kicked out of the garden, paradise was lost, and eternal life was lost. And God stationed these cherubim at the gate to keep or guard the separation and to guard the garden from the outside. But in the same day, God promised, He said, "You'll be back. I will bring you back. There is going to be the seed of the woman." who will crush that serpent and restore the relationship, bring you back. And it took a long time, as we just read about the tabernacle, a long time from Adam and Eve to the tabernacle, which we're going to summarize in two quick slides here, which is that part of God's plan to restore humans and himself, he spoke to Abraham. From the sky saying, "These stars will be like your descendants. I will make a covenant with you and through your family you'll become a nation and through your nation all nations will be blessed." So He laid out this grand vision, but then again it took generations for things to get a little bit more detailed until finally just a few weeks ago God came down from the sky to They can't handle it. The heat is too great or the energy is too strong. Only Moses could go up. And then God did something even more interesting shortly after. He came down from the mountain and He's going to live right in the camp. So He's sky, mountaintop, and now in the camp. Of course, He's covered it with curtains and coverings and He's got— Make sure you go past through your sacrifices first, get washed first. He's got His protection, this layer between Him and the people, but still He's dwelling among them. And in the middle of it all, in the very holiest— no, we'll start with the Holy Place. When you go in the tent into that part that's covered, what is called the Holy Place, only the priests could go in. And you can see it's sparsely furnished. We'll talk about those pieces of furniture in a moment. But you see a curtain at the far end. That curtain is separating an even more unusual— a holiest place, they call it. The holiest, or holy of holies, and in that place is a box. And anyone who's watched Raiders of the Lost Ark knows all about this one. Remember in Raiders of the Lost Ark, at least the first one, they actually open the box when they find it and it's like this big universe of crazy stuff going on there swallowing up this big energy force. No one— we don't know what that would be like or even where the Ark is now. The movie thinks they know where it is, somewhere in the U.S. government warehouses, right? In the holiest place, God says. I will meet with you there. I will talk to you. And so this is— God's come all the way back. They were separated so much, and now they're just almost— they're in the same room. But here again, you see the cherubim are guarding. The same cherubim that were guarding the garden, they're now guarding the box because you can't go in there empty-handed. What do you do when you go in? You bring blood. You have to bring in blood and smear it and sprinkle it or smear it on the horns of the ark there. And then with great preparation, and the priests had to wear certain kind of clothes, and they could only go in a certain time of year, they bring the blood. And what do they say when they get in there? I'm sorry. I'm sorry for Adam and Eve and for every one of us since then that has put ourselves in isolation. Will you take us back? Will you take this blood, restore our relationship? And then he says yes, and they touch. They have that life on life, just like the twins in the incubator. Now, this all seems far away because ancient Israel and the Tabernacle. We don't have those things anymore. So what do we understand? This picture, by the way, is a cutaway of underneath the tent. You can kind of see the pieces of furniture and the holiest place there. But in the book of Hebrews in chapter 9, it gives us a very succinct summary of how we can understand this passage that we read from Exodus. And I'll read from it now. Now. The first covenant between God and Israel had regulations for worship and a place of worship here on earth. There were two rooms in the tabernacle. The priests regularly entered the first room as they performed their religious duties, but only the high priest ever entered the Most Holy Place, and only once a year. By these regulations, the Holy Spirit revealed that the entrance to the Most Holy Place was not freely open as long as the tabernacle and the system it represented were still in use. This is an illustration pointing to the present time. For that old system deals only with physical regulations that were in effect only until a better system could be established. So there was a physical system. What's a better system? The invisible. We would say spiritual, but whenever you see the word spiritual, I like to think what— that's like invisible. Spiritual means invisible. So there were physical representations of God's presence, physical representations of the blood and the forgiveness and the mercy seat and so on, but now we have spiritual representations of them, so we understand it A better system means it could go everywhere. It doesn't have to— we don't have to all pack up and go to Jerusalem in order to be forgiven or to be cleansed. So going on, it says Christ has now become the high priest over all the good things that have come. So when we— in a couple of weeks, we'll talk about the priesthood and we'll learn a little bit more about what that looks like. But we can see that Jesus himself was the high priest. None of us would have been worthy to approach into the Holy of Holies, but Jesus was, is worthy. He has entered that greater, more perfect tabernacle in heaven. Now, when you see the word heaven, sometimes you're thinking about, you know, where we go when we die, but heaven is today. It's the spiritual places. This tabernacle is the spiritual sanctuary which was not made with human hands and is not part of the created world. With his own blood, not the blood of goats and calves, he entered the Most Holy Place once and for all time and secured our redemption forever. So here, this temporary— this tabernacle that they would move around has been replaced or made obsolete because what Jesus did, which was illustrated in the tabernacle, he did permanently, once and for all. No need to keep repeating it. And he was the worthy one to be our high priest. So that's, that's great. So that's like the end. We understand now from this very short summary in Hebrews how we can understand the tabernacle. But we wanting to find out how how this is going to help us overcome this. Man is not alone. And so I want to look at a part of Jesus' story as he's being the high priest, which we don't maybe think about that often. And that is Jesus bearing our loneliness. We say he bore our sin, right? But he also was alone a lot. He didn't have some really great peers, you know, guys that he could yuk it up with. And he had some moments of acute solitude, and one being in the wilderness where he was for 40 days, illustrated in this painting. So he was well acquainted with being alone. And then later, even more acutely, when he had 3 of his hand-picked disciples with him in the middle of the night in the Garden of Gethsemane at his most— time of greatest temptation. So he's got people around him, but they're not really there, are they? They're asleep. So if all your comrades are asleep, you might as well be alone, right? And so there he is. Making this decision to give himself up, to accept— he knew that he would be put on the cross and killed all alone. And then finally, of course, in this moment, Jesus cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And theologians have discussed this. Endlessly. And he appears to be quoting from Psalm 22, but he appears to be experiencing the separation from God. So not just vertical— horizontal, but vertical separation. And he then took on our loneliness so that we wouldn't have to be. And shortly after this, he— when he passes away, It says, "He cried out with a loud voice and yielded up His spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom, and the earth shook." Now, people watching Him be crucified wouldn't have seen what happened in the temple, but the people in the temple said, "What's going on here?" earthquake caused a rupture in the veil that was separating the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place. Remember, only one person could go behind that curtain every year, once. But having opened it, that was showing that, hey, something new is coming. The Spirit is blasting out. It's gone from the sky to the mountaintop to the temple the tent, now it was just in one room, and now it's breaking out of that one room. And only about 50 days later, on the day of Pentecost, it says, "When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit." No more cherubim guarding the way. The restoration is complete. The Spirit now lives in those of us who believe. We are like the tabernacle. We are— everywhere we go, wherever we gather is where God's presence is today. We've received forgiveness and now we are free to share it. We have vertical solution to our loneliness. Now we can overflow into into our horizontal. There's one small problem, and that is you cannot see the Holy Spirit. Like, they could see it that day. It says there was flames like fire that stood on them or hovered them. They spoke languages they hadn't learned. They could see something then. But we don't see the Holy Spirit in that way. It's not visible. We don't feel it. So directly, and yet it's real. And if you've lived long enough, like I have, in the Church, you would say, "Yes, I've seen it. I felt it, but it's not really tangible. It's feeling this invisible force." So, okay, what do we learn from the tabernacle? Paul mentions the tabernacle as well. He says that Moses' law was our schoolmaster until the Messiah came. There's like lessons. It's like the Israelites are all adolescents or they're like growing up, and now we in the Christian era are adults, but we still need to learn from everything in the Old Testament. Now, for better or for worse, there's a lot of great details there, but they're more like somewhat like poetry. They're images. They don't read like a textbook. And so we can look at some of these pieces of furniture, for example, and we can be enlightened by some of the details. So for example, when they're coming into the courtyard of the tabernacle, the first thing they come up to is this altar of sacrifice. And you know, in order to have blood to reconcile your relationship, you have to kill an animal. They would kill the animal and they would burn it. Sometimes they would burn it all the way through. Burnt offering. Sometimes they would just cook it and the priests would eat that for dinner. But the key is nobody would come farther than the altar without a sacrifice. So if you're not in this posture of, okay, we need— like Kathy was saying, we need, we need— if you know we need, okay, that's like the first step. So you'll be willing to accept the sacrifice. We need somebody else's blood. Our blood isn't pure enough. Now, fortunately, you didn't see one of these on the way into church this morning, did you? We have them in the back. We don't do this anymore. We could. I mean, we could for fun. We could do one. We could do a sacrifice and see what it would be like. I think we could learn something. We could just take a lamb out there and take a knife and Cut it and the animal would go, "Aah!" The animals don't want to die. And we could feel its pain. But we don't. But what do we sacrifice? We have plenty we can't— well, things that we have. We have time. So we sacrifice our time, our attention, some of our resources, all for God's house. The next thing you come to after the altar is This basin, bronze laver, is the tabernacle version. When they get to build the temple, which is like an upgrade from the tabernacle, it's this big bronze sea, they call it, this massive, almost like a small swimming pool. You wash. Now, what does water represent? And you could have— it's kind of like art. You know, if you ever go to an art gallery and you look at this piece of art and everyone's looking at it, you know, and has different things to say about it because it strikes us in different ways. And the same thing is true— we know you wash your physical dirt off yourself, that's easy, but it may represent more. For example, with baptism, we know that baptism is a very simple act, but it represents a lot more. We know that in Garden of Eden, in paradise, there was a river flowing out of it, and then we know in the New Jerusalem there will be a river flowing right down Main Street. I don't know about you, but for me, when I think of water, what's so great about water, I think about a hot shower. For me, a hot shower is about the greatest luxury, isn't it? I mean, the only thing bad about hot shower is our hot water heater has a limit on how much. If you stay too long, it's not hot anymore. To me, that's where all, you know, all my troubles and just kind of melt away. So that is the water. What would life be like without it? When you go into the Holy Place, the first thing you notice is the golden lampstand. The Jews call it Menorah. Now, one thing you'll see, they actually have a replica. This picture is taken from Jerusalem in one of the squares in the Old City. They've built a golden lampstand that's supposedly they're going to use if they ever rebuild the temple. And it stands up like this high. Like, I don't know how the priests could even light it. They needed some kind of sticks to be able to keep those lights lit. And if you look at it, it's art. It's like sculpture. And so what does it represent? I mean, you can read if you look up on the internet, and you get 10 people with all kinds of thoughts about it. But they seem to agree, even though it doesn't say directly, that this is an echo of the Tree of Life. They'll say, "This looks like the Tree of Life." Well, that doesn't say that it looks like Tree of Life, but what do you think? And it has these almond blossoms on it, and so they say it could be a tree. So it's more than just light. It's also something symbolic, and that is in— just like Eden and in the— Book of Revelation, it also talks about the Tree of Life will be there. So then on the right side, you notice there is a table, just one table with bread on it, 12 loaves, 6 loaves in this stack and 6 loaves in that stack, baked fresh every week. And evidently they used the fine flour that wouldn't go bad in one week because at the end of the one week, they would put new bread on it, and the old bread, the priests would eat it, the showbread. And it shows that God provides their bread. And just like in Eden, He provided enough to eat, right, the fruit. And here He provides bread. And this table is called the Table of Presence. And the last piece of furniture in the Holy Place, that is the main larger room, is is this thing called the altar of incense. And in the— I just want to talk a little bit about the incense, and I've actually brought an incense burner. And if you were— I grew up in the Greek Orthodox Church, and they actually burn incense in the sanctuary every service, and they hang it on these chains, and the priest will go around. Sometimes they'll even walk all the way around and go, shaking the aroma all over the church. And I thought to myself, wouldn't it be great to do that here this morning? Of course, I hadn't told Michael in advance, so I dare not. It would be the only time we ever had incense in the church, and that could cause a ruckus. But the real reason I didn't do it was because it takes like 5 minutes of warming up the coals, and then you gotta— I was afraid it would just take too much away from the remarks. So what I'm going to do is, if you'll stay after and go down to the lounge, If Dwight doesn't kick me out, I'm going to burn a little incense and so you can see how it's done and smell it. It said, "Every morning when Aaron maintains the lamps, he must burn fragrant incense on the altar, and each evening when he lights the lamps, he must again burn it in the Lord's presence." Now, the— what is incense? What's incense for? Well, in one sense, it's an aroma. And if you're looking for it, if you go through the Bible, it talks a lot in the Old Testament about aroma, pleasing aromas. And you'll know that aromas or smells can bring back certain memories. And so there was something about the incense that gave up this cloud and it was showing God's presence and would help remind us that God's in the room, right? Because you smell that incense. Indeed, if you go to a Greek Orthodox church today anywhere in the world, you walk in and you know, "Ooh, I'm in church." It hits you with all of your senses. When the wise men came to Jesus, what did they bring? Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Well, what good is gold? We all know. But what good is frankincense and myrrh? Well, you burn them on an incense burner. So someday WCC will have to research, not every Sunday, but maybe like once a year or something, we'll have our incense day. And if you look at in the Psalms, David writes about how incense for him was related to his prayers. It was like the rising of a prayer up to God is symbolized in the way incense will rise up in billows of smoke. And while I was thinking about how prayer really is a great antidote to loneliness, because when you pray, like with my wife, let's say we're having a conversation and we're talking. When you talk, you may not be totally letting down your guard, right? But let's say we pray together. If you pray together, you can't really fake it anymore, can you? You have to be more honest. So prayer defeats loneliness. By giving us a chance to just be honest, to talk things out, to reveal our hearts. And this is something like what the censer looks like. And the high priest would take on that once a year when he went into the Holy of Holies, he would burn— he would take— it says he would fill a burner with coals, then he would take a bunch of the incense and powder it so that it would burn more quickly. And he would actually go in behind the curtain and he would get a big bunch of smoke. So usually you'll just try to get it to burn slowly so it's this little wisp of smoke. But what he wanted to create was this whole cloud. So he would powder the incense, put the coals there, and then throw it on in one big go and you get this big cloud that would kind of represent the Holy Spirit covering the Ark. If he follows these instructions, he will not die. This was serious stuff. Now, I feel like these symbols for some that are in Western worldview or maybe you guys are— we have a lot of STEM experts, right? Some computer programmers, chemical engineers, mechanical engineers. And for us, we call those left brain. All of these artsy stuff isn't so— it's hard to hold on to, right? So I want to share with you how you can take like a photograph of this butterfly's wing and break it into 4 colors. This is how modern printing works. And when you get all the colors, it doesn't look like much, any single color, but when you put it all together, you get something special. To try to say that all of these symbols or— Things that we see in the poetry or the imagery of the Old Testament, we should hold on to. And over time, we'll be able to get a clearer picture of what's going on to try to better understand what is the kingdom of God all about. Now, I want to end with a story of my son Abraham, who is coming home from college for this week. He's unfortunately not in the room right now. When he was about 10 or 11, we lived near a college in Chicago, Wheaton College, and the college kids were playing this game called HVZ. I will not go into too many details, but the college kids let my 10-year-old and 12-year-old boys, let them play. And for this, this is, they're homeschooled kids, and to be able to play with college students, it was like, this was like so much fun. And the game is two teams, and one team has Nerf guns, and the other team has green bandanas, and you try to escape from the guns. So you got people shooting, and you have the people running away. If you run away, but if you tag the guy with the gun, then you kill him. So one people's weapons are guns, and the other people are taggers. So Abraham, my older son, Ebert, he wanted one of those guns. Guns, so he got on the team with the guns. So poor younger son was stuck without the gun with the other team with the green bandanas. So it's about 5 on 5. So suddenly, you know, shh, whistle goes, "Okay, start!" And Abraham goes running off, he's so happy, and he's running off with his green bandana, you know, in that direction. That he just made up by himself. And the other kids on his team, the Kallashas, said, Abraham, get back here! And he's like, what? It's not safe to go out by yourself. We can only win if we stay together like a pack and we overwhelm the guys with the guns and we tag them. And he was like, oh. Well, duh, he didn't know because he was 10 and nobody had explained the strategy to him. And so I kind of thought this would be a little reminiscent of how Adam and Eve sort of broke off on their own. They're having a great time, right? They broke off on their own. They didn't realize that they were just making things bad for themselves. They had imposed this isolation on themselves, just like Abraham was running off and imposing— he was dead meat. He would have been shot by the guns, and he wouldn't— no way he could have tag them before they— he got shot. And so the safest place for him was to stick together. And why am I sharing this? Is because where we are right now is today's portal through which we can revive or relive or experience or bring back to life God's intent for his garden. His sanctuary where His people can thrive, that we can feel not physically naked, but emotionally naked. We can bare our souls to each other, take off our masks, and not be afraid and not be ashamed. And so the message is, just like it was to Abraham, don't go off on your own. It's not safe. We need each other, come on, stick together. That's going to work much better. Does anybody remember The Lego Movie? It had this really silly song called Everything Is Awesome. And when I first heard that, I thought, "Ah, this is a terrible song. Everything's not awesome!" But the song goes, "Everything is awesome." Everything is awesome. Everything is cool when you're part of a team, right? Everything is awesome when you're living the dream. And so here is God's dream for his people, and we get to live it, and I think that's pretty awesome. We had a Chinese church in— when we were in China, we had— I won't even tell the story. We got our David choir out here. Let's wait until the lounge. I will share that one. So this is the picture I want to leave you with, and let's— let us pray, and we'll hear from the choir. Lord, we are thankful that you are well prepared for us to grow up and to thrive in your world among your people, that we can experience you in your sanctuary and each other. But we know it's not easy and full of risks, and we know that some of us have even more challenges. Some of us have lost family members. You say that we should especially be mindful of the fatherless and the widows in their distress. So I, Father, just pray that we will watch out for each other, that we'll have each other's back. Thank you for your provision of your word and all of its marvelous imagery. I pray little by little we can accumulate a knowledge of you that we can store in our hearts and that you will reveal yourself to us both individually and collectively through this church. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Come on in.

It's a solo. My heart is filled with thankfulness. All right, are you guys ready? Uh, all right, let's start with a Bible verse reading.

Wow, that was nice, huh? Any visitors here today? If so, we have a gift for you. And Don, the— there you go. Don, if you keep your hands raised, he'll get you your gift. And—

This is my neighbor. Can we let her in?

Yes, she's— yes, if you would like to introduce yourself, Cece, Cecilia.

Yes, I am. My name is Cecilia Grant. Everybody calls me Cece. My house is adjacent to the Auster Paul Condrell Paul's Farm, and Nina is one of my neighbors.

Great. Thank you. Anybody else? OK. All right, if you go with the next slide. The bulletins, as you may or may not know, are online. You can get them at wcc.churchcenter.com. And there's also an app that you can download and Culture Center if you want to use that to get to your announcements in the bulletin if you want more details. We also send them out by messages during the week on WhatsApp. So next slide. Lots of opportunities, as Don had indicated. This coming Black Friday, we have this Love Feast, and also we have a lot of youth, a lot of youth members that attend, but also we have a lot of youth alumni that will always be in town. Town and often are in town and come. And so this time we will try to facilitate some of the youth alumni getting together and sharing old times. And so we call it a youth group alumni reunion, but also giving thanks for those of us who have been here for a long time. So that's starting at 6 o'clock in the lounge downstairs with food, with dinner, and then the time sharing. The urgent food drive continues until the 23rd. Also Operation Christmas Child drop-off is till the 23rd. That's today— tomorrow, right? Today's the 22nd, or today— today is the 23rd. Today, sorry, time is flying. And then also on the 7th of December, we have the congregational vote for James Pryor, who's been nominated as a candidate for the assistant pastor for the English congregation. If you're not going to be here that day and you're a member, we have proxy forms. So if you'll fill out a proxy, somebody can vote for you that day. And I— we have them here right now, and I'll put them on the table in the back. And next slide. The EM prayer circle will continue to meet. We'll be meeting this Wednesday at 7 7:30. The blood drive goes on till the 13th, and the expansion project, we're continuing to collect pledges until the end of the year. We're up to $600,000, so we're pretty close. They have $1,500 downstairs in the lobby, but the, the actual goal is to at least get to $1 million. So that's it for announcements. Please rise for the doxology.

The benediction is from Exodus 40. When Moses completed the work, the cloud, the glory of the Lord, filled the tabernacle. And for the first time since Eden, God lived among his people. May the glory of the Lord, his presence and his blessing, fill and live in our modern-day tabernacle, the church, in the name of Jesus Christ. And may the Holy Spirit fill our homes, our places of work and play, and may it empower us to share with each other day by day his life-sustaining touch, the love of God. Thank you for being here. You are dismissed.