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Our God will not be moved. Our God will never be shaken. We run, we run to you. We are a chosen generation. Rise up, holy nation. God, we live for you. You have called us Thou art darkness into light so glorious. God, we live for you. Thou God will not be moved. Thou God will never be shaken. Thou God will not be moved. Thou God will never be shaken. Thou God will not be moved. Thou God will never be shaken. We run to you we run. We are the chosen generation. Rise up, holy nation. God, we live for you. You have called us out of darkness into thy so glorious. God, we live for you. You are everything more than all we need. God, we live for you. God, we live for you. I found this world to be not enough for me. God, we live for you. God, we live for you. We are chosen generation. Rise up, holy nation. God, we live for you. You have called us out of darkness into light so glorious. God, we live for you. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly trust in Jesus' name. When darkness seems to hide his face, I rest on his unchanging grace. In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil. Christ the Lord. —cor the storm. We stay strong in the Savior's love. Through the storm, he is Lord, Lord of all. His oath, his covenant, his blood support me in the whelming flood. When all around my soul gives way, he then is all my hope and stay. He then is all my hope and stay. Open stand. I saw the cornerstone weak made strong through the Savior's love. Through the storm, he is Lord, Lord of all. When he shall come with trumpet sound, oh, may I then in him be found, dressed in his righteousness alone, called to stand before the throne. How deep the Father's love for us. How vast beyond all measure that he should give his only Son to make a wretched treasure. How great the pain, the searing loss The Father turns his face away, as Utrishpa, the chosen one, bringeth many sons to glory. Behold the man upon the cross, my sin upon his shoulders. Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice call down among the scars. Offered. It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished. His dying breath has brought me life. I know that it is finished. I will not boast in anything. No gifts, no power, no wisdom. But I will boast in Jesus. Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection. Why should I keep from his reward? I can't, I can't give an answer, but this I know, With all my heart. His wounds have paid my ransom.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the depth of your love for us, that you offer your Son as a sacrifice for our sins. Of our sins. And we know it's only the shedding of your blood that we can have a relationship with you. And we're just so grateful for that. That's why we offer ourselves back to you. Um, we run to you, Lord. We just want to offer our lives back to you for what you have done for us. Thank you, Lord, for, for that. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Before you sit down, please take a moment to greet each other.

Okay, our next is a scripture reading.

Uh, do we have the slide?

Okay. It's Exodus, I believe, chapter 19, verses 2 to 8. I guess, Sam, let's all sit down and read the scripture with all our respect. Please. Israel came before the mountain while Moses went up to God. The Lord called to him out of the mountain, saying, "Thus you shall say to the house 'Go to the house of Jacob and tell the people of Israel, you yourselves have seen what I do to the Egyptians and how I brought you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine. And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. So Moses came and called the elders of the people and set before them all these words in which the Lord had compared him. All the people answered together and said, "All that the Lord has spoken we will do." And Moses reported the words for the people to the Lord. And God respected. Oh, there's more. And the Lord said to Moses, "Behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud, that the people may hear what I speak with you and may also believe you forever." Thank you, Tommy, and good morning.

Good morning. So I am looking at this record where God says he wants to make a covenant with his people Israel as a marriage proposal, and I didn't make this up. But I can clearly remember the time I was in a small group. I'd been a Christian for about 25 years at the time when the man leading the fellowship said, "We need to marry God. God wants to marry us." And it was a kind of shocking surprise to me because I really had never thought of it that way. But if you've ever been to a Christian wedding, you've heard this verse. Verse read as a part of the wedding ceremony, where it says, "As the Scripture says, a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one. The mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and His Church." So the idea has always been out there, okay, yeah, Christ and His Church, they're married. But I don't know, that was too vague and abstract. Abstract for me. It wasn't personal. But we're going to see how in this record there's a similar marriage going on in the Old Testament and how God makes it personal on this occasion. We're going to dig a little bit into the details. So let's also note that there are many times in the prophets where God actually— the Scriptures use this very language. For example, in Isaiah where it says, "For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is His name." And in fact, there's a whole book called Song of Solomon. Has anybody ever read the book called Song of Solomon? And you get about a few paragraphs in and you're saying, "Wait a minute, I picked up the wrong book. It doesn't look like it belongs in the Bible." It's this kind of a love song and this courtship between a man and a woman. And it's understood both as Old Testament or Jewish scholars as well as Christian that this whole book is like an allegory of the love between God and his people, between Christ and the church. And in fact, we— this summer upcoming, this next summer, we're going to do a whole sermon series on wisdom literature, which will include Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, and, and Job. That's the other one I was looking for. So you can look forward to that next summer. But for now, we are going to be looking at this, a re— and understanding covenant as a marriage, which is a mutual exchange of promises. Like when we get married, we say a promise to take you as my spouse, to have and to hold from this day forward, right? In sickness and in health. 'til death do we part. But the language God uses here, this we just read, he says, 'I will be your God, you will be my people.' And immediately afterwards, as we'll see in a minute, he recounts the Ten Commandments. He gives them what really are the terms of the marriage contract, which we call now the Old Covenant or the Mosaic Covenant. Now, I Many of you are familiar with what happens later in the Old Testament, that people don't stay faithful to their duties as good wives. And in the prophets, it even says that Israel or Judah are adulterous— adulteresses, committed adultery. And so God divorces them by putting them out of the house into exile in Babylon. But he, at the same time, promises to to restore them back to their place and to get a new covenant, what Jeremiah calls a new covenant, which we could understand as a remarriage. And we'll get into that in a minute, but first I want to go back to the story in Sinai and how we read God proposing to the people, and the people said, yes, we will. And then I want to go back and see what happens next, because God speaks. Through thunder, directly, not to Moses, but directly to all the people that are there. And they all heard it, and it was an amazing miracle. God speaking words in Hebrew through thunder. Imagine thunder speaking English, you know, thou shalt not steal. It would just be— it would just It would be amazing, but it's also a little scary. So what we notice here is God— and you can see it here in the picture— not using any intermediaries. So he's not just marrying Moses or this abstract idea, but he's speaking to each person and giving each one of them obligations, the promise of each one of them to not steal, not commit adultery, and so on. So here is how it happened, and this is reading on from where we left off. Then the Lord told Moses, "Consecrate the people today and tomorrow, and have them wash their clothing, and on the third day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai as all the people watch. Mark off a boundary all around the mountain and warn the people, 'Do not go up on the mountain or even touch its boundaries, or you will certainly be put to death.'" So Moses consecrated them. And on the morning of the third day, thunder roared, lightning flashed, and a dense cloud came down on the mountain, and all the people trembled as they stood at the foot of the mountain. All of Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, which billowed into the sky, and the whole mountain shook violently. Then God gave the people all these instructions with the voice of thunder. He says— I, I'm not going to try to to do it, and you need a better voice actor than me. I am the Lord your God who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery. You must not have any other god but me. And he goes on to start through and read through, speak through the Ten Commandments. And this is in the next chapter, Exodus 20. And you can see from the very first command, that's very marriage-like, right? If you He's jealous. He wants you to be his wife and not anybody else's wife. So you can't have any other husbands. Having another god would be like having another husband. So he goes through that. Now, next week we have a guest speaker who is also a candidate to be our new assistant pastor here. James Pryor is his name, and he will be speaking on this very topic: what the Ten Commandments contain. So we're not going to go into the the content of the Ten Commandments. Today we're focused mostly on how this marriage got started. So that will come next week. But what I want you to see is here he's talking about spiritual adultery. So this idea of using another god or worshipping another god is similar to having another husband. And they all hear him speaking in their own language. And would you like that? Would you like to know that, okay, on next Friday night we're all going to go outside and hear the thunder and God's going to speak? Would you like that? Probably, maybe not. Because if we look at the people's reaction there, it says, "When the people heard the thunder, when they saw the flashes of lightning and the smoke billowing from the mountain, they stood at a distance. They were trembling with fear." I mean, you can imagine that, right? And they spoke to Moses and said, Don't let that happen anymore. Next time you talk to us, we just want Moses to talk to us. We don't want God to talk to us directly. Please, please, just have Moses. Otherwise, we're going to die. This is how they felt. And so you have to kind of be careful what you wish for, right? We wish God would be closer. Oh, God, please speak to me. But what if he really showed up? That would be pretty frightening. And so this is the end of this record. Moses says, "Don't be afraid," he answered them, "for God has come in this way to test you so that your fear of him will keep you from sinning," which in this case is to break the marital vows. So God is speaking directly to them, and each of them is making a promise. So each of them is being married. It's not like we are all being married. It's each of us are being married. And this is now 40 years later in the book of Deuteronomy. Moses looking back on this day, he says, "Remember that day you stood before the Lord your God at Sinai? You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain while it blazed with fire to the very heavens, with black clouds and deep darkness. Then the Lord spoke. He declared to you his covenant, the Ten Commandments, which he commanded you to follow, and then wrote them on two stone tablets." Tablets. This, this event is remembered throughout the history of Israel, even to this day among modern Jews, and they call it the Feast of Weeks, or Shavuot. Shavuot. And it's celebrated 7 weeks after the Passover. Does anyone know what that is called in the New Testament? 7 weeks after the Passover, a holiday, big Jewish holiday, Shavuot, which is celebrating the giving of the law, is called in the Book of Acts the Day of Pentecost or the Festival of Pentecost. And if you remember in Acts chapter 2, there was this gathering of Jews who had assembled from all over the known world. They had left Israel. They had learned other languages. They were now back celebrating this exact event when another miracle happened, where God, instead of speaking out of thunder, he spoke through the voices of the disciples who were assembled there. And he spoke all the different languages. So all the people, the Jews that had assembled from different parts of Greece and North Africa, they heard them speaking in their languages these messages from God. It was another amazing miracle, the miracle of Pentecost. And in order to do that, God filled the disciples with his Holy Spirit. So can you see the analog there between God speaking through the thunder, making this marriage with his Old Covenant people, and in Pentecost he's speaking through the disciples in the Holy Spirit Spirit, and he's creating this relationship in marriage with his people in the New Covenant. I don't know if I got my grammar correct on that. So that is, uh, one of the applications. And we, we can read in Acts chapter 2 how amazed they were. This time they weren't afraid, but they were amazed at what they saw. And it truly was another big miracle. And some churches, they celebrate Pentecost and make a big deal out of it, and some churches even call Pentecostal churches. We aren't, but we do believe in Pentecost and the New Covenant. So this is where I'm going. So we're reading about Old Covenant. Okay, that's nice, it's this marriage with these, these Israelites, but it's not just talking about them, it's talking about us. And the descriptions and the qualities and the structure and the, the way the Old Covenant works has a lot to show us about how the New Covenant works. And indeed, it is also a marriage, a relationship. And we hear about, oh yeah, yeah, we have a personal relationship with Jesus, but is that as close as your spouse? That's, you know, really brings it home. And as I mentioned, this guy, and his name was Dean Kim, talking about marrying God. It was like a real— it's like a whole new concept that I would have that kind of devotion for the Lord. Now, Apostle Peter then, who was there on that day in Pentecost, he describes how this Old Covenant has been translated into the new world at the time. He says, you are the chosen generation. And he's speaking both to Jews who believe Jesus and Greeks, or Gentiles, who believe Jesus. You are the chosen generation, the king's priests, the holy nation, God's own people, chosen to proclaim the wonderful acts of God, who called you out of darkness and into his own marvelous light. At one time you were not God's people, but now you are his people. So the new covenant has got some new blood in it, new people. Now I had to do a little detour here because have you ever heard of this idea that the new covenant replaced replaced the Old Covenant and Christianity replaced Judaism. And so it raises the question, you know, what is— we just read how there's this Old Covenant, New Covenant, it's even the same day. This Pentecost is like, it's all very correlated, but what's the relationship between the two? And so I just wanted to try to clarify, if possible, that in the Old Covenant, The people that God spoke to that day were assembled there because they were the children of Israel. Mostly it was by DNA, by ethnicity, that they were called together, and they were given this promise and made into God's people. So they married him— they're qualified due to their birth, essentially. If you were born in Greece like my ancestors were, you're out of luck, basically. Now, there were some conversions but very, very few. So this is how it looked, very simple. But what happened then, when I mentioned in the exile, a lot of God's people, Israel, rebelled, and they didn't keep— they were adulterers. They didn't keep the commandments, not even close. And they even subverted the heart of God. And so he put them into exile. And these were God's people who hadn't— didn't have faith. They were faithless. Unfaithful. But of course, there was still some of them, some remnant, called remnant of faithful Jews. That— remember how discouraged Elijah was, and he was gonna— ready to kill himself. He's ready to die because he thought he was the only faithful Jew left in all of Judea. But God said, no, I have 7,000 others. You're not the only one. So there was a remnant. So that— so what I wanted to show then in the New Covenant After Jesus came, he opened up the new covenant to no longer by birth. How do we qualify for the kingdom of God now? Matthew can tell us. Is it by birth? How? By faith, right? By faith. Who can have faith? Can only Greeks have faith? No, Jews could have faith too. Everybody can have faith. So there was a remnant of those Israel that kept on believing. Then there were some Jews— some Gentiles that came over, and then some went both ways. You see how they did a little switcheroo? So if we say that we replaced— the church replaced Israel, that's not quite right, because some people never left in the first place, right? The remnant. So they would use— they would say the, the church is the remarriage of Israel. Or it's called the new Israel, or it's like a reconstituted marriage for those people. Of course, for the Greeks, it's all first time around, isn't it? So I just wanted to try to clarify. If you have questions, we can talk about it later. But to say that the Church has replaced Israel isn't quite right. It's kind of re— it's twisted it a little bit, breathed new life into it. This faith covenant is got some grace in it. It's doable because when we go off, we can be forgiven. But in the Old Covenant, it didn't seem to work out very well. So that's why I pointed to the New. All right, that's— we're done with that. Now I wanted to go back then to the concept of this betrothal or this wedding that's taking place. We saw the betrothal, so we saw God asked, would you marry me? The people said, we will. Then he spoke the terms through the thunder, and these are the Ten Commandments. But they haven't actually exchanged the rings yet. So when does that happen? It's just a few chapters later, and it goes like this. Moses wrote down all the Lord's commands into a scroll, and then he sent young men to sacrifice some cattle. Then he took the Book of the Covenant, the scroll, and read it aloud to the people. So this time, not only the Ten Commandments, but all of the rest of it. And again they said, 'We will do everything the Lord has commanded. We will obey.' Then Moses took the blood in the bowls and he sprinkled it on the people. That must have taken quite a while. And then he said, 'This is the blood that seals the covenant which the Lord made with you when he gave all these commands.' So this is kind of like the the exchanging of the rings or the consummation of the marriage. But it uses this word seal. The covenant was sealed. Has we— has anyone ever seen that before somewhere in the Bible, or perhaps in the New Testament, where it talks about sealing the covenant? Okay, well, we're going to go here to Matthew 28. So in some churches, because they read different versions of the Bible, you might not hear that that exact word. In the Lord's Supper, they will often read that Jesus, on the Last Supper, he took a cup, gave thanks to God, and gave it to them, saying, "Drink it, all of you. This is my blood, which seals God's covenant, my blood poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." Other translations would read "ratifies the covenant," establishes the covenant, confirms the covenant. So I looked through like 60 different translations. There's a website that you can see those side to side, a bunch of different words for it, but it's all talking about this exchange of the rings, or excuse me, the consummation. So now I want to ask a question: how can blood seal anything? And what makes us think that blood has this quality? If it was youth group, I would just sit here in silence and make somebody guess. Now we know how blood in the Passover has a very special function, that it protects. But blood also has this— in ancient Israel, if you knew about how weddings were consummated, the couple would go to the wedding chamber after the ceremony and they would consummate the marriage, which would mean they would have their first— they would have sexual intercourse for the first time. And when they did that, if the bride was a virgin, there would be blood spilled on the sheets, and they would not wash those sheets. They would hold on to them and take them as a guarantee that the bride was indeed a virgin. And in fact, there is a law in Deuteronomy that if a man marries a young woman and later decides he doesn't want her anymore and makes up false charges accusing her of not being a virgin when they got married, if this happens, the young woman's parents are to take the bloodstained wedding sheet that proves she was a virgin and they're to show it to the court and the town leaders. But if the charge is true and there's no proof that she was a virgin, then the men of her city are to stone her to death. She has done a shameful thing among our people by having intercourse before she was married while she was still living in her father's house. So this is a very common knowledge in the, you know, ancient world, but we've kind of a little bit lost it in this world, in this day and time. So I wanted to bring that back. If you want to get married, you have to be a virgin. You have to be pure. But are Israel— God is proposing to Israel— are they pure? Is this whole nation, uh, righteous? Not close. So how can God marry a nation that's defiled, or who, who isn't even eligible to be married because they're not virgins? And the answer is what we just read, that God took these sacrificial animals and took their blood and spattered— that blood was the evidence of the purity, and that blood brought them back to innocence. So the guilty, because they weren't virgins, became made innocent again by being able to borrow the blood of the sacrificial animal. Does that make sense? So here we now see, now in the New Covenant, there's something similar going on, which is that the blood of Christ, which we know is innocent innocent blood that was spilled on our behalf qualifies us to be married to God again and to overcome all of whatever it is that we have done before. And that innocence that we are now restored with gives us the ground, the ability, or enables us to now worship God, to have— to be close to him, to hug. Because we are pure by the blood of Christ. And I feel like this, for me, this was like a kind of epiphany beyond what I learned like as a teenager. And it's like, so I wanted to share that today because I feel like it's a, a different angle to understand our relationship to God and to see how Jesus' blood, beyond just protecting us from death, also can energize our relationship to him and enable us to flourish in our, in our relationship with God. Because, you know, we're not virgins. None of us are virgins. We know that. I mean, spiritually. And so we need the blood of Christ. I think the best example of that is that— remember the two thieves that are crucified on either side of Christ? And the one just says, you know, why don't you save us? Save yourself and save us. But the The one, other one, he said, you know, we deserve it, what we're getting, but this man has done nothing deserving of death. That man on the cross knew Jesus' blood was innocent, his own was guilty. And that mere acknowledgment is what God is asking of us when he says, will we marry him? And so we see a birth of the nation in the Old Testament and again in the New Testament, where God is asking his people to become his, his wife, his spouse, his team, his kingdom of priests with whom he will have children. They are like life givers. And we've read that the people said yes. God spoke audibly through thunder. He spoke out the terms of the marriage, and then the covenant was sealed when Moses sprinkled the blood of the sacrificial animals on the people. The blood then qualified them by restoring their purity, and the people said, we will do everything you have set. And this whole picture just gives us a glimpse at the new nation formed in Pentecost, which is not occupying a certain land or a certain ethnicity and a certain language, but is everywhere the people—

God's people go.

That on the day of Pentecost, Jesus' disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the wonderful works of God. So let's end there with a prayer. Father, we are thankful that you miraculously spoke through the thunder this marriage contract. And we're thankful for historical Israel, for all their faults, which showed us the way, showed the way and revealed your character and your will through that tangible nation. On earth. We also thank you for how you changed, modified, updated, revamped the covenant to be a new covenant, not like the old covenant, where we would have stand a chance, whereby bowing down at the name of Jesus We can benefit from the blood that he spilled. And as many times as we fall short, through acknowledging and confessing, that we can count on you again and again to wash away our sin and to restore our relationship and intimacy. Allow us to be in your presence without a sense of guilt or shame. Thankful for these things and for your people. To this day, we're doing our best to follow you. Help us to understand your word, what we can do, what we can't do, and to trust you to do the rest. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Uh, let's stand together.

My hope is built on nothing less. In Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly trust in Jesus' name. When darkness seems to hide his face, I rest on his unchanging grace. In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil. Christ above For the stone weak may strong with the Savior's love. And through the storm, he is Lord, Lord of all. His oath is covenant, His blood support me in the whelming flood. When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay. He then is all my hope and stay. Rise above, core the storm, and we can be strong with the Savior's love. Through the storm, He is Lord, Lord of all. When he shall come, the trumpet sound, oh, may I then in him be found, just in his righteousness alone. Father stand before the throne.

You can be seated.

Okay, for the announcement, uh, is there any newcomers, visitors to our church today for the first time?

Okay.

Yeah, please introduce yourself. Yes.

My name is Spike, and I'm here the first time. And I used to the first floor, the Mandarin part, and I want to say I explore more things in the English part.

Great. Welcome. And In the back? Hi, I'm Olivia.

I just recently moved here for work, so I'm very happy to be here.

Thank you for having me. Where are you from? I'm from Seattle. Whoa, Seattle! Wow. Okay, so welcome, and thank you for coming to our church, and we hope to see you worship with us in the future. Okay, for the announcement, the detail will be on our website, so the church, wcc.church.com. So please view the details. First, Mom Call, uh, 6 PM on November 4th. Why we have two 8 different dates. 6 PM and 7 PM. Okay, one of them is correct. 6 PM. Okay, all right. Uh, the prayer circle is, uh, uh, so November will be online. Oh, that's great. Uh, so, uh, have anybody participated in prayer circle with— okay, we'll put the link in Okay, yeah, it happened also with the Wednesday's Chinese congregations, a prayer circle. So some of us have to choose, but all in good. All right, so our expansion project, so the platform, I believe it's outside or it's on the back. Okay, so we will use that platform to see if this is God's intention to help us to expand our church. If you have any questions, I believe there's a very beautiful model made in the front entrance. You can see what this future expanded building looks like. Christmas Eve Youth Orchestra— this is a famous event every year.. So if you are parents of any youth who play music, or you are a youth and love to play during the Christmas celebration, please register. The open link is also available online. The eyeglass collection drive will continue to collect eyeglasses, and once the box is full, I will take them to our distribution center. So now I'd like to introduce the lady, I believe, Kizzy Cobb from the department of Operation Christmas Child.

I'm not from a department or anything. Good morning, how you guys doing? Good. Good. So my name is Kizzy Cobb. I am the area coordinator for Northern Delmar for Operation Christmas Child. I got to come last year and share with you about my trip to Ecuador. I didn't get to go anywhere this year, but that's okay. But I just wanted to come share a little bit with you about what happened with OCC this year. Let's see if I know how to— okay, that's a video. Will that play now?

Do I have to push something?

It's just music, so if the music doesn't come, that's okay. Just read the screen. Yeah, we can hum. Somebody can sing. I'm not going to sing, but somebody else can sing. 31,000 children heard the gospel every 24 hours. Oh, there's really loud music.

Oh, nope. It's okay.

That's not for the video.

It needs to go back.

There you go.

¡Hola! So that right there is very exciting news from last year. Last year, almost 12 million shoeboxes were collected around the world for Operation Christmas Child. It was 11,927,439. That's a big number, I had to write it down. But you guys were part of that. And because of that, one of my most favorite statistics from that video: 8,930 children came to know Jesus every 24 hours because you guys packed a shoebox. That's exciting news. That's very exciting news. Oh no, not that way. How do I go past it? Oh, there we go. There we go. Okay. So that is what happened last year. So for Northern Delmar, we collected 8,958 shoeboxes for New Castle County and Cecil County. That is our area. Mid-Atlantic South, which is Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, we collected a little over 600,000 shoeboxes. And our goal this year is 9,405. So as an area, that's what we hope to collect, and you guys are part of that. So thank you for partnering with Operation Christmas Child and packing a shoebox. Who packed a shoebox last year? Yeah? Awesome, awesome, awesome. A couple other things to know is— there we go. Once the shoeboxes are collected, then they travel to my church eventually at Bible Fellowship, and then they go to Baltimore. In Baltimore, they go to the processing center where every single shoebox is sorted and organized and into the big brown boxes. And if you are interested in going and volunteering here and there. I have two dates. One is on Monday, November— November, oh my goodness, December 1st. It's a daytime. And the other one is Friday, December the 6th. If you're interested, I have 15 spots— not quite 15 still— but just get in touch with me and I can let you know more about that if that's something you might want to check out. It's exciting to see what happens to the shoeboxes next. And when you go, you actually know where your shoebox is going because they have a big screen screen that says, "Boxes that are being packed today are going to..." Pick a country. Okay, so you get to know that. Oh, wrong way. We don't need that one. All right. This year, I had the opportunity to meet Mary Odette. Mary Odette is an international speaker for Operation Christmas Child. She came to our Project Leader Workshop, and she actually works for Samaritan's Purse now, for Operation Christmas Child, But fun fact is, as a child, Marodette received a shoebox. And leading up to that, her heart's desire, something she talked to her mom and dad about several times, was she wanted a Barbie, something simple like a Barbie. And it was not something that their family could afford at the time. It just wasn't something that she was going to get. But then her church had an outreach event where they received shoeboxes. Take a guess what was in her shoebox. A Barbie. She got a Barbie. Okay. That made such an impact on her that it opened her heart to knowing more about Jesus. Because if God knew what her heart's desire was, something as simple as a Barbie, she wanted to know more about this Jesus. And she came to know Jesus. She went through the Greatest Journey. She graduated. She became a Christian. And as an adult, she went on to now get a job with OCC, and she's an international field representative. For Latin America. So she works in Mexico right now. And one of the focuses this year for Operation Christmas Child is reaching unreached people groups. And this picture right here of these two children, one of the unreached people groups that is a big focus is the deaf community. So in Mexico City, they partnered with several deaf organizations and trained individuals to know about sharing the gospel and presenting The Greatest Journey and all of the things that go into that. And they shared it with different deaf communities around Mexico City. This little boy, that's his sister. He went through the training because he felt that it was very important that his sister gets to learn about Jesus. He gets to go to church and learn about Jesus, and he wanted his sister to do that as well. And because he went through this training He then became convicted. He's now the translator for his church. So he is 12 years old. He stands up here every Sunday and he translates the church— translates the service and the songs so the deaf community can come to his church and hear about Jesus. That's a huge, exciting thing to do. So after knowing all that, it's time to pack a shoebox. Here's some ideas. You know, there's, there's all kinds of suggestions on the website. Soccer balls, toys, games, all kinds of things that are available to pack your shoebox. Does anybody know the one thing that is not allowed in shoeboxes this year? Starts with an S. There's no soap this year. It's okay, don't be upset about it. It's all right. Soap was holding up a lot of things in customs, plain and simple. That's why. So there's no soap this year. So lots of fun things go into your shoebox. You know, kids get excited because they got toothbrushes. It might not seem exciting to us, but if you have to share your toothbrush with someone else, you're going to be excited to get more than one toothbrush. That's happened. There's lots of stories about that. Uh, winter gloves for a child who lives in a warm climate. He was very excited to get those winter gloves because now he could use them for soccer. He was the goalie for his soccer team. I wouldn't think about that, but that's what he did. School supplies. When you put school supplies in your shoeboxes, you might allow a child to go to school for the first time or to continue to go to school. The single most important thing to put in your shoebox is prayer. Cover your shoebox in prayer. It's going to be prayed for here at this church. It's going to be prayed for at my church. It's going to be prayed for all along the way. The processing center, all the way till it goes to the receiving country. And a huge example of being covered in prayer, this gentleman right here, he is a customs agent at the Mexico border. And this past year there were 4 tractor trailers full of shoeboxes. It's about 6,000 shoeboxes in each trailer, give or take. So, you know, 24,000, 25,000 shoeboxes are now being held up at the customs border because some of the agents wanted to open every single shoebox, every single shoebox, because they wanted to know what was in them. Because let's go back to soap, holding things up at customs. And as a child, he received a shoebox and he saw the logo and he saw the boxes and he walked over there and he said, no, no, no, we do not have to open every single one up. I know what these boxes are for. I know what these boxes can do. For the children in our country, and we need to let them go. So know that God is in the details. God knows what's happening. Nothing's a surprise to him. And I just want to encourage you to pack a shoebox, and if you're not sure what to put in it, think of something fun. That list was some great ideas, and then cover it with prayer. So I thank you for supporting Operation Christmas Child and partnering with us, and if you have any questions, I will be here for the rest of the day, I think. I don't know. But— and that's it. So thank you.

Okay, so I think we have made those announcements already, so now please all rise for the do sō reishi.

You guys all know how to sing it, right? Remain standing for benediction from Psalm 23. May the Lord shepherd you and make you lie down in green pastures. May he restore your soul and lead you in paths of righteousness. May he be with you and comfort you. May he anoint your head with oil and bestow his goodness and mercy on you all the days of your life. Thank you for being here. Go in peace.