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Should I go?

Okay.

Good morning, everybody. I am doing the call to worship today, and as I was thinking about that, I thought to myself, it's not just Sunday morning that we worship. But it's a part of our whole life. But when we talk about worship, I thought, well, you can ask who, what, how, why, and when. I didn't do the normal order in English class, but you have the idea. And I've been reading a book this week, and so I thought I'd share a few thoughts about it. It's called God Has a Name. And so far, mostly it's been talking about the who, what, and the why. And the challenge to my thinking I thought would be good to share As a Call to Worship. In this book, he talks about a passage in the Old Testament that is repeated several times where it talks about the God of gods. And that kind of caught my attention. I mean, I've read it many times, but huh, who are these gods that he's talking about? God of gods. Same thing comes up— so that's from Deuteronomy 10:17. Same thing comes up in Joshua and Psalms. So, uh, when I normally think of God, I don't think the God of gods, but the Old Testament definitely brings that up, and in different places in the New Testament, you can kind of see a repeat of the same idea. Who are the gods? And you might immediately think, okay, there's these stone statues or these wooden idols that people make, but what's behind those? And you You might think, well, everybody knows it's just stone and it's just wood. But is that so? And then you have people like me who are born in the West, you know, grew up in a church talking about one God and not gods. And so, you know, I never thought of idols and idolatry. But do I have idols?

Idols?

Did I grow up with idols? Like I said, I didn't have stone and wooden things to be dealing with as idols, but did we have idols? Do you have idols? Do I still deal with idolatry?

Hmm.

So changing on you a little bit, but trying to bring it back to home here for the call to worship, we're about to sing some songs. One of the blessings that, that I get from singing on Sunday, and if a hymn comes up a second time or a third time, I finally learn it in my head, is that I have this brain— and maybe yours does the same thing— that after you hear a song, you can't get it out your head. And one of the songs recently that I've been thinking about a lot and can't get out of my head, which is in this case a good thing— there's some singing songs that were on the radio all the time that I really tried to get out of my head when I was growing up. But one of the songs that's been coming back and back, especially as I read this book, is the one that has the line, "Your name is the highest. Your name is the greatest. Your name stands above them all." And so I'm looking forward to singing. I'm looking forward to getting a little bit more of the song in my head to discussing the word. And I hope the same thing happens to you, that as we spend this time together in focused singing and then spending time in God's word, that you'll carry it into your worship life outside of the church. And so join me as I pray, and then we will all be singing and hearing from God's word, taking part in communion. And again, hopefully it will draw us away from our idols and worship the one true God. Join me. Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for the song. Thank you for the voices that you give people to sing for us, to help us sing with them. We pray that we would be able to worship you, the God above gods, and that we would abandon the idolatry that is there. It's in our heart, my heart, it's in our hearts often. And so we come before you in Jesus' name to worship you and you alone.

Amen.

Would you please rise as we begin our time of worship? This first song is Your Grace Is Enough, and I feel like that goes with this, um, thinking about idolatry and the idols that we have so well, because the chorus just simply says, your grace is enough, God, your grace is enough for me, I don't need anything else. I don't need to do anything else or add anything else. Your grace and your salvation is enough. So let's sing that.

Great is your faithfulness.

Great is your faithfulness. Wholeness, oh God. You wrestle with the sinner's restless heart. You lead us by still waters into mercy, and nothing can keep us apart.

So remember your people, remember your children, remember your promise, O God. Your grace is enough, your grace is enough, your grace is enough for me.

Great is your love and justice, God of Jacob. You use the weak to lead the strong. You lead us in the song of your salvation, and all your people sing along.

So remember Remember your people. Remember your children. Remember your promise, oh God. Your grace is enough. Your grace is enough. Your grace is enough for me.

Your grace is enough.

Your grace is enough. Your grace is enough for me. So remember your people. Remember your children. Remember your promise, O God. Your grace is enough. Your grace is enough. Your grace is enough for me. Yes, sing, your grace is enough. Heaven reaches out to us. Your grace is enough for me. God, I sing, your grace is enough. I'm covered in your love. Your grace is enough for me, for me.

Amen.

Sing worthy of every song.

Worthy of every song we could ever sing. Worthy of all the praise we could ever bring. Worthy of every breath we could ever breathe.

We live for you.

Jesus, the name above every other name. Jesus, the only one who could ever save. Worthy of every breath we could ever breathe.

We live for you. We live for you.

And holy, there is no one like you. There is none beside you. Open up my eyes in wonder and show me who you are. And fill me with your heart and lead me in your love to those around me.

Worthy of every song.

Worthy of every song we could ever sing. Worthy of all the praise we could ever bring. Worthy of every breath we could ever breathe. We live for you.

We live for you. Jesus.

Jesus, the name above every other name. Jesus, the only one who could —save. You're worthy, worthy of every breath we could ever breathe.

We live for you.

Oh, we live for you.

And holy, there is no one like you. There is none beside you. Open up my eyes in wonder and show me who Who you are and fill me with your heart and lead me in your love. Timoteo, proud me and holy. There is no one like you. There is none beside you.

Open up my eyes in wonder and show me who you are and fill me with your heart.

And lead me in your love to those around me. And I will build my life upon your love. It is a perfect love. —foundation. I will put my trust in you alone, and I will not be shaken. And I will build my life upon your love. It is a firm foundation, and I will I put my trust in you alone, and I will not be shaken. Yeah, Holy, there is no one like you. There is none beside you. Open up my eyes in wonder and show me who you are and fill me with your spirit. And lead me in your love to those around me. And Holy, there is no one like you, there is none beside you. Open up my eyes in wonder and show me who you are and fill me with your heart and lead me in your love to those around me. I will build, and I will build my life upon your love. It is a firm foundation. I will put my trust in you alone, and I will not be shaken. My I will build my life upon your love. It is a firm foundation. I will put my trust in you alone, and I will not be shaken.

Lord, we're grateful that you are worthy of every song and all of our praise, and that your grace is enough for us. So as we go throughout our day, as we go throughout this time of worship, would you just open our eyes to the grace that you've already given us, what we already have in you, all the riches of Christ that we have in you. And it's in your name that we pray. Amen. Please take a moment to greet those around you.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it was good.

Thank you. Awesome. Thanks everyone.

Did you find that rendition somewhere, or you—

or Billie Eilish?

Well, the piano rendition.

Oh, he found it.

Yeah.

Paul Condrell.

Well, good morning. Nice to see all you bright faces. I feel like I'm on the wrong end of a ship and the whole ship is going to lean that way because all the people are in the back and I'm in the front, sort of like pitched like this. Before we do the sermon, we are going to have not a responsive reading. We're doing the scripture reading. So who's doing the scripture reading today? Is that Michael? So let's go to the scripture reading.

So, I will exalt you, my God. Oh, this is a responsive reading. This is from last week, right? Sorry. This is from Ephesians, not Psalms.

Me?

Well, it said it. Okay, next slide, please.

Oh, okay.

I gotta do this. All right. Okay. Therefore, I, a prisoner serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling. For you have been called by God. Always be humble and gentle, be patient with each other, making allowance for each other's faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding our— binding yourselves together with peace. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all. However, he has given each of us a spiritual gift through the generosity of Christ until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God's Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ, —then will we, then will we no longer be immature like children. We won't be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever that they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of the body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly as each part does its own work. It helps the other parts to grow so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

Well, great. Thank you for that. And we are ready to— we just heard this amazing interesting statement by Paul about what we said a few weeks ago in the book of Ephesians is like the pinnacle or the apex of the revelation in the whole Bible, the ideals, the beautiful vision of what the church is and what it should be. But now, of course, we have to look around and, you know, wonder what is the connection between the ideal and the reality. And what we've been talking about the last few weeks is how God's already set up things spiritually and now it's kind of up to us to go the next step and make it a reality. And the way we do that is we establish an environment, a culture that is conducive to our growth. And that's what we're doing and a lot of churches are trying to do, but it's easier said than done. And the secret sauce— it was covered a little bit in the Scripture though— is that God's given each of us a special gift. Michael, you read a spiritual gift.

It's a spiritual special gift that we each have something about us that contributes to the whole. And we sometimes don't even know that you have one. So part of the message is you have something to offer. But the other part is that so does everyone else.

And so part of what we're learning to do is appreciate both what we have to offer and what other people around us do as well.

So we looked at our mission, and we have and we will again over and over, that we exist to serve God and that we want to behave cross-culturally through our transformed living and empower others. But today we're really drilling down on the cross-cultural part, to how do we behave cross-culturally.

And as we do that, we get transformed, or as we're transformed, we become more cross-cultural. Now, this group is already pretty good at it, so we're going to go beyond just the surface level to go really deep on this, and I think you will appreciate it. Now, today is a Communion Sunday, and I just wanted to start by reminding us that with all our diversity and different ways of thinking and doing, we use this one very simple symbol. To bring us all together. One loaf of bread, one cup of wine. But whose life or whose effort is this representing?

It's not you or me who have made this possible.

It's all that one Lord that's made it possible.

It's his body that was broken, it's his blood that was spilled, and it was his sealing of the New Covenant that makes it all possible.

Now, if you've— anyone recognize these actual vessels here? These are from a church called Church of Christ. And I've actually been to a Church of Christ and went there for, I don't know, 4 or 5 times.

And they're very well known for using literally one cup and one loaf.

And so this is what they start with.

And they pass it along and people will take the very cup and they will take a sip out of it and they'll pass it to the next person who takes a sip out of the very cup. And that loaf of flatbread they pass around, you'll tear off a little piece, pass it along, they take off, tear off another little piece from the same loaf. And they make a big deal out of that we're one cup, one loaf. Well, of course, at COVID it became a problem. And when I was visiting, it was a couple of years after COVID started. Now, one thing I noticed about that church, it's just the opposite of ours.

Everyone sits in the front because they want to get the cup first, right?

And so by the time you get to the back, the guy— who knows how many mouths have been on that cup. I wish I was kidding. So we're not going to use one cup on those But you'll—

if you've been here before, you'll see in a minute how we do it.

But what we see in these stories—

we're going to look at a few from the Bible of crossing cultures. But I know a lot of you have been to places like Taiwan or mainland China.

And I wanted to share my first experience with a Chinese lady that was like right off the airplane.

Because I had a tutor—

this is when I was first learning Chinese as a 22-year-old. A 20-year-old college student. And my tutor said, "Good news, my girlfriend is coming from Beijing." And I said, "Well, let's take her out. Let's do something." He said, "What do you want to do?" I said, "I know, we'll take her to 31 Flavors. What could be more American than that?" Now this is back in like 1983, so at the time they didn't have anything like this in China.

So great idea, right?

Well, my tutor and his girlfriend looked at all of those flavors for about 20 minutes. And guess what they chose? Vanilla. Who said vanilla? You are right. How did you know? That was their instinct. And I kind of laughed at them. And I told this story many times, kind of laughing at how their cultural IQ is pretty low. Because they wouldn't do it. But then just a few months later when I actually arrived in Beijing, now I was, the foot was on the other shoe or whatever you say.

I was there and I went to a banquet, they brought a lot of the foreign students to Beijing to eat something.

And they put this on the table.

And they said, I said, that looks disgusting.

And they said, "Try it, it's good." I said, "What do you call it?" They said, "A thousand-year-old eggs." I'm not going to eat a thousand-year-old eggs. "No, no, that's just the name." Well, then—

no, I was the silly one that refused to try something new, so trust me, I did not taste it.

So I want to go into the Bible now at a couple of similar cross-cultural stories so we you can see what it looks like where people are learning what I'm calling cultural humility. So in the record that Michael read for us, we know that humility is important.

Humility makes unity possible.

But what we don't know is what does that look like? So we might think somebody who's very soft-spoken is humble, or we might think about somebody who went to Harvard who instead of saying, "I went to Harvard," they'll say something like, I went to school in Boston. This is very humble, right? Because eventually you probably will find out.

So that's humility. But in the Bible, we're going to see something really unusual or very deep humility. And we're going to take it apart and see if we can learn something. So the first one I wanted to share is from the exile, where the king of Babylon came in— this is around 600 years BC, besieged Jerusalem, destroyed it all, including Solomon's Temple, and carried away the people to Babylon.

Well, among the people, he selected young men from the royal family and some noble families that were strong, healthy, and good-looking, and gifted and suitable to serve in the royal palace for special training.

And among those was Daniel, Shadrach, Mishak, and Abednego.

Now these 4 guys, here they are arriving in Babylon, you know, they're walking in and they're going, "Wow, look at this place!" They didn't have any designs like that in Israel.

And there's, you know, grand palaces and all the clothes.

It was quite a lot to behold. And they were trained in the language and all of the literature, and they're now— they're in the big city.

And it must have been interesting situation.

And the king gave them all of the best places to live, places to— things to do. And they gave them the best food, the king's ration, and wine from his own kitchen.

Now, what did David think of that?

He was really interested in all this other stuff, but he decided no, that was the last straw. It's like me and the thousand-year-old eggs. He didn't want to touch the king's meats because it wasn't kosher. And he had grown up with food that was kosher, and he decided he would not defile himself by eating this food. But he had a problem. That's all they served. And so he didn't know— he had to go about solving this problem. So what was he going to do? Now, I looked around on the internet. I didn't generate these through AI, but I found some paintings paintings or artwork that show Daniel cultural humility? Daniel and his buddies are kind of like, you know, "Something's wrong with this food. You got bad food. It's not good enough for us," and making them look like spoiled brats from Israel. Or how about this one? Is this better? Does this look like cultural humility? So artists, you know, they're just artists, so they're doing the best they can. But instead, what did Daniel do? So here's another painting where he kind of kneels down, or he— and it starts in the record, it says that Daniel asked for permission. He asked for permission to not eat these unacceptable foods.

So he has—

and so this is the first rule of cultural cross-cultural life.

Are you ready?

The first rule is: every rule can have an exception. I know you people that like to follow rules don't like this, but for me, I love this rule, which is all rules can be bent with permission. There's always an exception or a subfootnote. So he went asking, can we be the exception, please?

And what happened?

And he's asking because he has respect for the people, and he knows that the people that run the kitchens have a job to do too. So it says, "Now God had given the chief of staff both respect and affection for Daniel." And so I want to stop and say, why did Daniel have the respect and affection of the chief of staff? It wasn't because he looked like that and he was putting his hand out. He must have done something. And so we don't know what that is, but I can guess because I've lived in that environment where you have with other cultures where you don't even speak the language very well.

And one thing I'm guessing is he smiled.

If you ever go into place and like let's say they're, I don't know, Koreans, because I don't speak any Korean, and let's say, and no one's smiling and you're not smiling and they're not smiling, that doesn't give you much affection. But if they're all laughing and smiling and welcoming, that's different, right? So this is— I didn't say anything bad about Koreans just now, did I? I was just coming up with any different example, a group of people that you can't communicate with. So Daniel found a way to show his lifestyle had that air about him that made him seem friendly, that gave him affection in the eyes of this chief of staff, and perhaps the fact that he even went to ask permission was already showing respect, so he earned a mutual respect. Now, this is really interesting because the chief of staff responded very openly, very honestly, saying, "I'm afraid of my lord the king, who has ordered that you eat this food and wine. And if you become pale and thin compared to the other youths your age, I'm afraid the king will have me beheaded." So you see what's going on here. The chief of staff is revealing revealing very much information about his motivation and why he cares about this rule and why it's not so easy for him to just say, "Just forget it. Don't worry about it." He can't do that. He's stuck. So this is the second rule of cross-cultural living. First, you find out what the rule is so that you can go make an exception to it, right? Then you— or rule or standard or norm. And the second thing is you find out why. Why do you have this rule that you have to eat the meat? Well, so that you'll be strong. So that immediately opens up more possibilities, doesn't it?

So the fact that he's willing to share this is very revealing, and that's one of the things that Daniel was able to get out of him. Now, I don't want to get ahead of myself.

So Daniel spoke with the attendant. Let's see.

Yeah, that's right. So he was able to set that example and to bring that out of him. And we don't know exactly what that looked like, but I can imagine. And I was reminded as I was preparing of my son, Eber, when he—

because he grew up in China. But then when we came to the US, we suddenly threw him into these American cultural settings. Situations. And one of them was when we went on a camping trip with some Boy Scouts. And suddenly it was time to wash dishes. And I was one of the dads. And I was looking over there. It's like, he's going to not know what to do. But I was so surprised. He just jumped right in there and started washing the dishes.

And I was like, oh, he's going to be OK. And so a lot of times our demeanor will, even in a cross-cultural situation, can earn the respect of other people and they'll be more honest and we can find out why things are the way they are.

So then he—

okay, one last thing about this, sorry I keep going back and forth.

The Chief of Staff could have said none of your business.

If he said why not, he could have said none of your business.

But when somebody does tell you, so this is the third thing you need to know. The rules could be changed. Why is the rule this way? And then listen very carefully when they tell you the reason, because that's gold. That's gold. That's going to be actionable. You're going to be able to do something about it. And so finally— and here's another thing. So it says Daniel spoke with the attendant who had been appointed by the chief of staff with this idea he had. So he didn't immediately tell the chief of staff some way to work around the rule. Instead, he must have gone home to think about it, perhaps. He came up with this idea to do a test. But he didn't go back to the chief of staff and tell him about the idea. He told some inner middle manager about it, which is really interesting, and it leads to another important principle of cross-cultural living, which is— why do you think he went to the attendant? Because he's trying to tease out more information about what's going on. He's running by this idea I did a 10-day test and we just ate vegetables and we're just as strong as everybody else. Would that make a difference? And the attendant goes, "Yeah, that probably makes a difference." Well, why didn't you tell that to the Chief of Staff directly? 'Cause if the Chief of Staff says no, that's the end, right? There's no way to appeal. But by going to the attendant, he's going indirectly to get background information. By getting the background information, if it's not what he— he could still keep working on it, right? If that solution doesn't work, he'll come up with something else. Do you follow me?

If he had gone straight to the Chief of Staff, it doesn't leave that option open.

And finally, what he's doing here, he's— "Please test this for 10 days and then make your decision." He's showing he's willing to follow their decision. He just would like 10 days to "Give me 10 days, please." Buy time. Buying time is really valuable, 'cause during that time, a lot can happen. You can learn a lot more and come up with another solution. So he shows respect for the decision they make, but he also buys time, gets the 10 days. For what are they gonna do with those 10 days? They're going to collect data. So any of you that are scientists or lawyers or something, you know that testimony, data, that's really important. Uncertain. And so he's gonna use those 10 days to get common sense information that nobody can deny. So this is another really important thing for cross-cultural living is anything that's factual is potentially a bridge, whereas things that are more conceptual are more suspect— more subject to being culturally shaped.

Does that make sense?

So here we have finally this picture of Daniel. The attendant agreed. For 10 days they ate the vegetables. They looked great and it solved the problem. They were able to eat vegetables after that forever and ever. So in summary, Daniel earned the respect of the chief of staff. He asked for permission. Then he learned the whole backstory.

Why is the rule that way?

What happens if you don't follow it? What are the possible— he imagined a way around it. He asked for permission again, but this time indirectly. He appealed to the facts, and we got a win-win result.

Happy ending, right?

So I'm saying that is what cultural humility looks like. And it's tiring. As they say in Chinese.

It takes energy. And it really is humility because he has to be thinking and doing things the Babylonian way.

Now, in order to get a good contrast to this, can anyone tell me who is someone in the Bible who is the least culturally humble of all, by far? Jonah. Who said Jonah? Michael wins again. Jonah. Yeah, what did Jonah do? He did everything wrong, right? I know several of you know the answer. So yes, he ran away. Why did he run away from God's command? Because God was telling "Go overseas, go to Nineveh." Nineveh, as far as an Israeli was concerned, was like going to Sodom and Gomorrah or something. I mean, it was not a desirable place. So he said no, for good reasons.

I mean, we won't cover it today.

Maybe someday we'll do a series on Jonah for 4 weeks. He wouldn't go. Well, you know the story, how he ended up in the storm and he ended up having to be rescued. By a big fish and spit out.

Finally, he went.

So he went and he shared very briefly what's going to happen if you don't repent. Then the people of Nineveh repented, and then he's happy, right? No. And then he eats with them at a banquet. No. He goes out of the city onto this hilltop hoping that God's still going to rain down judgment on them after 40 days. He still wants them to be destroyed. That's how unculturally humble Jonah is. So that's not the example we want to follow. Now, there are two other examples that I'll share more briefly than the Daniel one, where we have, in this case, a Moabite woman traveling into Israel for the first time.

And she's experienced a new culture, and we see her version of cultural humility.

Now, there was a law in Israel that allowed poor people to pick up the grain that had fallen on the ground behind harvesters on someone else's land. And so this is the picture of Ruth picking up the grain on the fields belonging to Boaz when Boaz notices her and he gives her a little bit of special attention.

But the part that—

again, we could spend 4 weeks on Ruth as well, but for today's purposes, I just want to focus on what happens then some months later When Naomi, the mother-in-law, tells Ruth— both of them are widows at the time— whispers in her ear, "Hey, it's about time you made your move, shoot your shot," as they say in the vernacular. And she says, "Go dress up best you got, put on whatever perfume they had, comb your hair and brush it, and go find 'And Boaz, when he's sleeping by the threshing floor, when he's been working all day during the harvest time, lay down at his feet in the middle of the night when he's sleeping and uncover his feet.' Uncover his feet? Mm-hmm. Why do you think? It doesn't say why. Who can tell me why did Naomi tell her to uncover his feet? Somebody bold enough to tell me, "Why did Ruth uncover the feet of Boaz while he was sleeping?" Well, I don't know either. I'm guessing it's so that he'll wake up before too long. Not right away, but wake up before morning, because if he doesn't wake up until morning, nothing much could happen, right? So she uncovers his feet, and sure enough, after some time, it says midnight, he wakes He's like, "What is a woman doing at my feet?" And she says, "I am Ruth, your servant. Spread your wings over me, for you are a redeemer." Now, that doesn't mean much in modern English, doesn't it?

But what it— does it?

But what it means is, "I will join your household because you have the rights to my estate." It doesn't really translate very well, does it? She was basically offering to be his wife. She was proposing to him. But you're not supposed to propose, right, if you're the woman, especially not in ancient Israel. So she's strongly hinting, and this is the suggestion, of course, of her mother-in-law how to go about it, strongly hinting that she's available if he would like to marry her, and that the fact— remember, Daniel appealed to facts. The fact in this case is he is a redeemer. A redeemer is one of the relatives of the husbands that had passed away.

So Naomi's husband passed away.

The two sons passed away. They had property. So that property would be inherited. And Boaz was in a position, if he wanted to, to be a so-called redeemer and to take over the estate, and therefore to take over Ruth. So that was the cultural moment that she had to learn. That wasn't the Moabite way of doing things, but she learned that from her mother-in-law, and then she carried it out to perfection. And what I like about this, this picture is how in a culturally humble way— you can only go halfway. You can't force. You just put your hand out. It's like I've told you before that my wife and I have this this sort of code thing. We go that if I put my fingers out like this, then she puts her fingers like this and we touch them together. And that's like a very short form of saying everything's good, you know, we're on good terms. So if I feel like I want to sit down and talk or something but she doesn't have time, I don't have time, I just do this and then she does that and we're good. So this is Ruth's way of of saying, "I'm available," but she's not forcing the issue. She's waiting until Boaz gets the idea.

And so this is very important in how we get things done. We have to put ourselves in the right position, but then sometimes we have to wait until the right minute.

So you see again how Ruth, like Daniel in some ways, earns affection and respect, asks permission. At first she asked permission permission to glean in his property. She got more information about how they do things in Israel, who's the redeemer. She imagined a solution with the help of Naomi, get married to Boaz. She asked permission but indirectly. She appealed to facts like she's— he's one of the redeemers and the result was a happy ending. And even the King David, David was the great-grandson of Ruth. So she found her way into the Christ line. Amazing story. Now in a few— okay, now we have one last story that's also going to illustrate the same basic idea, and that is Queen Esther and Mordecai, both Israelites, Jews, Judeans, who were in Persia at this, at this time. And if you remember the story, Esther, who was an orphan Esther, who is a servant, is picked to enter the king's harem and ultimately is chosen to be the new queen in replace of the disobedient Vashti, former queen. And so here she is, a Jew, a Jew as a queen, but no one knew she was a Jew. Anyway, there was this big plot against all Jews, and this evil Haman is going to wipe them out some 9 months later. And so Mordecai, the uncle of Esther, of Esther springs into action and whispers to her through the window, because she's in the palace, "Go to the king and beg his favor and plead with him on behalf of our people and stop the plot to kill the Jews." But Esther, knowing the rules— there's rules, "yo guey din," as they would say— "I can't go because the rule is you can't go to visit the king unless you're invited." And the penalty is death. It was very serious. So what does Mordecai say? Well, perhaps you came into the kingdom for such a time as this. That's— maybe that's why God made you queen in the first place. And so she's— go— this takes place over a few days. Go gather all the Jews, hold a 3-day fast. I and my young women will do also. So then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish. So she had the courage, but now look what she does. She's so clever, and maybe it's during these days that she gets the idea. She knows more about the backstory. Now I know some of you know the backstory too, which is if you go into the king's presence uninvited, you die unless what? Unless the king holds out the scepter and gives you clemency or mercy right on the spot, then you're good. So if you get the mercy, it's okay, you won't be put to death. But how is she going to— so she knows there's an exception to the rule. And then what she does is really interesting. On the third day, Esther put on her royal robes, kind of like Ruth getting herself all dolled up. And she stood where? In the inner court of the king's palace, in front of the king's quarters, while the king was sitting on his royal throne inside the throne room opposite the entrance to the palace. So try to picture Esther in our front parking lot, like in— on the sidewalk, and Pastor Paul is on the stage in the sanctuary, and then the door is open, so from the sanctuary From every podium you can look through the entrance and into, or maybe into the lobby. She stands far away, just within his eyesight, but not close enough to be offensive. Do you get the picture here? So this is very important and it plays exactly into what we saw in the other two stories. She puts herself in a position to be noticed, but she's not forcing the issue. So just in case the king, like let's say he glances at her and he doesn't want her, he could just pretend he didn't see her, right? There's no harm, no foul. But if he does see her from far away, then he still has time to invite her in. Well, in this case, that's what happened. He was so shocked, I suppose, that she was even that close, that he said, "Come on in, Esther." And he extended the scepter and gave her mercy.

And so in she goes.

And when the king saw Queen Esther standing in the court, she won favor in his sight, and held out to Esther the golden scepter that was in his hand. And this so-called, the idea of finding favor in his sight, this is so common. It was for me when I was in China, to find favor in the sight of the official or the vendor or whoever we're dealing with that's giving us a hard time. Time. The landlord has given us a hard time. So how do we pray? We pray that we will find favor in the sight of the landlord. We had so many misunderstandings about this or that, and I would love to regale you with stories. Maybe we'll have a whole adult Sunday school we can devote to war— cultural war stories on the field in China, and you will have some to share as well.

Where was I going with that?

She saw— what's— find favor in his sight. Yes. So we pray to find favor in their sight. And somehow miraculously, we're just putting ourselves in the position, waiting patiently.

And people do. They respond.

Not always, but they respond very well. So Esther, again, she earned the affection of respect to the king. She prepared herself very well, very clever. She asked permission indirectly by finding out what the rules were. She appealed to the facts. When she finally got his audience, she told him about this plot to kill the Jews and that she was a Jew.

And in the end, we found a win-win result.

So in a few minutes, we are going to recreate this little bit of kingdom culture as Jesus did Paul did it with his 12 disciples that were from all— well, from several different walks of life, and bringing them together with—

under his blood, by his accomplishments, through his word and his promises.

So spiritually, we have this unity and direction if we choose to follow him and to do that together. So we will make a good go of Paul Condrell. Thank you for your audience.

And let's pray. Father, we are curious to learn more about what you've made special in each one of us. We are willing to put ourselves in a vulnerable position with each other to take a risk to look past our surface differences to the things we have in common. And Father, I just ask for your wisdom to do that well, that we can encourage and support each other with great energy and effectiveness, whether male or female or Chinese, not Chinese, first generation, second generation, some white collar, blue collar, retired, still working, some with children, some without children, some with different church backgrounds— Baptist, Catholic, Presbyterian, even Greek Orthodox. You've called us into one body, one family, under one flag, and that flag is Jesus Christ our Lord. I'm thankful that you would play that role and that you would call us to this great calling, and that in a humble way we can see that taking place in our midst today. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

Um, would you rise and sing the song of reflection with us?

I take the bread of life, broken for all my sins. Your body crucified to make me whole again. I will recall the cup poured out in sacrifice to trade this sinner's end for your Your new covenant.

Hallelujah. I'll live my life in remembrance. Hallelujah.

Your promise I won't forget. I walk salvation's road with fear and trembling. Your way born as my own as Christ is formed in me. Sing hallelujah.

Hallelujah, I live my life in remembrance. Hallelujah, your promise I won't forget. If ever I should lose my way, if ever I deny your grace, remind me of the price you paid. Hallelujah, I'll live in remembrance. You've been so, so good to me. You've been so, so good to me. Oh, to think where I would be if not for you, if not for you. You've been so, so good to me. You've been so, so good to me. Oh, to think where I would be if not If not for you.

As far as heights reach from the depths, as far as east is from the west, so far your grace has carried me. Until I see you face to face, until at last I've won my race, remind me you're not finished.

Finished yet.

Hallelujah.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. I live in remembrance.

You may be seated.

Good morning, everyone. I think while Paul was sharing his message, I was reminded of the beauty of of taking this together as a church body, that across your background, your ethnic background, your social background, whoever you are in the world, that we can all come together to this table and take it together with one another. We will take the bread and the juice together after we pass them out, but I— looking at that passage in Ephesians, I was thinking about how— well, we're all growing and maturing as believers. And if we're all coming to this knowledge of Christ, why do we need to take this over and over and over? Why not just one time? Why not one time? But the cross puts the Christian life into perspective. Everything that we do centers around the death and resurrection of Christ. For if he hasn't accomplished what he's accomplished in conquering sin and the grave for us, We have no reason to meet here. We have no reason to follow him, but he has, and so we do. And so as we receive the bread and the juice, take a moment and thank the Lord for what he has done for us. And one, bringing us all together across all the divisions that we have, that we're now united in him, but also for defeating death and sin for us. So take a moment of silence as the ushers come forward to pass out the bread and the juice.

Cheers! Thank you.

In 1 Corinthians 11, it says, on the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took some bread and gave thanks to God for it. Then he broke it in pieces and said, 'This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' Please join with me. In the same way, he took the cup of wine after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant between God and his people, an agreement confirmed with my blood. Do this in remembrance of me as often as you drink it. Please join with me. Lord, we thank you for your sacrifice and what you are doing in this church, Lord, and across the world, Lord, as you bring us all together. To this table, Lord, that we might enjoy your body and your blood together, Lord, and join your new covenant in the peace you have given us. Amen. I'm going to invite up Paul Condrell for corporate prayer.

Hello everyone. What better passage to to, uh, preach on and pray a corporate prayer over, and then the one about unity. Dear Lord, thank you for the holy meal we have just partaken in. Let it bring us together in unity, as Paul called the Ephesians, to worship one God as one people in one world. Bring unity wherever there is Disunity. Bring unity in your church between different ecclesial traditions and theological convictions. Empower faith leaders from our ministers here to the most powerful of Pope Leo and Bartholomew I of the Eastern Orthodox Church to bring unity across cultures. Bring unity in our country. Convict our political leaders to repent Repent of their divisive ways and promote civility and compassion, both in policymaking as well as in our media discourse. Bring unity in our world. Bring your justice to active conflicts across the globe, between our country and Iran, between Russia and Ukraine, between Israel and Lebanon, conflicts in Sudan and Mexico and Myanmar, and still more I don't remember. Bring aggressor Bring the aggressors to repentance through your justice and bring peace to the affected regions. Give voice to those— to church leaders in those regions to speak wisdom to power and bring about a just end to these conflicts. Show us our part in all of these things and how we can make small changes in our lives that will bring about big changes in our world. Bless us here in our corner of New Castle County as we seek to bring the peace of Christ to our community. And send us forth with the power of the Spirit into our lives. In the wonderful name of Christ, we pray.

Amen.

We have several different announcements today, so the first one, I'm going to call Richard Zhang, our chair— the chair of the Elder and Deacons— to come and give us an update update on what's going on with the discussions related to the church expansion. All right.

Good morning. And just give a little brief update on the church expansion project. And what you see here is the— it's a design team's preliminary work. And there's— of course, they take a lot of time. Multiple proposals over time. So before I going to say something, I want to recognize the design team led by Pastor Lu. And they spend— invest a lot, significant amount of time and efforts, often meeting in their spare time and also in late night, at the night, thoughtfully developing those plans. And their dedication has been truly meaningful to our church, and I hope we can all respect and appreciate work they put in. And if we're looking at a layout, please keep in mind this is not the final version. This is the work in progress, and the design team is still in the process of refining and discerning the best direction forward. And in a few days, design team will have a meeting meetings with the professional— the architect firm, you know, to specialize in church building. And they will get some professional opinions. And if you look at this map here, so we're going to have a— our proposed expansion will be in the north side of our church building, and this is the— including spaces such as the fellowship hall, gym, and also have a lounge and kitchen. And there's additional hallways. So this, you know, with this plan, we're better serving our congregation and the broader community. And the total area of space at this moment is between 16,000 to 20,000 square feet. OK, this is the area. And there will be further updates in our upcoming church retreat. So we're going to have a town hall meeting, so give you a further detailed presentation on this plan. And of course, incorporate the opinions from a professional architect firm. OK. So church truly value all the support, because First step, we meet our pledge month and announce the design works. We're going to work out the details. And also, eventually, we're going to get your opinions and the feedback. So most important, your prayers. We need your prayer. And let's work on this and continue together in this journey. And let's remain just as a prayer, as I said, united in the purpose. And as we seek God's guidance in each step ahead. So this is just give you through— this is the preliminary work. I can emphasize. And but we're going to include in the everything, including the English congregation, that the future English congregation. All right. So there we— You can see there's a stage there. Okay, so it'll be designed. We're going to work on the details, okay? This is just a status report, okay? Thank you very much.

Thank you, Richard. Next slide, please. Are there any visitors here today? If so, we have something for you. You just have to raise your hand and we'll get it to you. Okay. Okay, if not, next slide. Before I mention anything about days after today, I do need to emphasize for the adults, the adult Sunday school class will be in the, in the fellowship hall cooking. We're cooking the meal today, and so we won't be having a normal Sunday school class. There's some folks who are already there cooking this morning from the English congregation and we'll— phase 2 will go in afterwards to help them out, to continue helping. Okay, Momco will be this coming Tuesday, the Wednesday night prayer circle. The details on how to get there are in the bulletin. Next Sunday we'll be having a combined service at 11 o'clock, so don't come here at 9:30 next Sunday expecting to have a service. It'll be at 11 o'clock in the sanctuary. The the main sanctuary over there. There's a blessing for children under 12. And then if you come here the Memorial Day weekend Sunday, that would be the 24th, we won't be here either. We'll be out at Black Rock. Today is the— they would like everybody who's coming to go ahead and fill out the forms for the retreat. I did put some forms to fill out on the back table. If you're planning to come, please come to the— please come and drop drop it off at the entrance to the main building. There'll be people, people will be collecting there. I think right now after the service somebody will be there collecting. If not, it'll be right after the 11 o'clock service in the main lobby. So forms are in the back. Please fill them out and come join us out at Black Rock. Now the next slide is just to give you a little bit more details. Some of you have already seen this. You can register You can register as part-time or full-time. In other words, you can come out for one day or you can come out just for the day and not spend the night. And so there's different options. The form has a lot of options. Unfortunately, you probably look at it and say, "What am I doing? What do I want to do?" And the mailout from the— the weekly mailout also has this picture here. If you go on it, you can get to the forms. Also at Church Center, there's the forms there. So you can get to the forms multiple ways, but probably the best today is to use the ones on the back table. Now we also have a very special announcement by a special senior who's coming to talk about something next Sunday. So Joy, where are you? I don't— there, come on up.

好早上！好早上! Hi, good morning everyone. My name is Joy and I'm a senior here in our youth group and part of our SMT team. As many of you know, we have a lot of summer mission trips coming up this summer, and these include Advent Taiwan, our Kenya Mission work camp for our youth, and many more. We have a goal of reaching $8,000 by donation, and this only covers a fraction of the cost for the mission trips. So we have a fundraising event coming up on May 31st from 5:30 to 8 PM, and anyone and any— anyone and everyone is welcome and encouraged to attend. So at— for this night, our youth will be cooking a dinner, and, um, besides from dinner, there will be fun games, youth performances, mission trip sharings, desserts, and a silent auction throughout the evening. We don't have a set price for the attendance, but everything is by donation. And up here on our flyer here, we have a QR code to sign up for the registration. This is just so we can prepare enough food for everyone and have an estimate of how many people to expect. There's also a flyer on the bulletin board in the back of the chapel here and downstairs, so if can't scan this QR code right now, or if you're not sure if you can attend, there, um, you can sign up anytime until May 31st. Um, if you aren't available to come, there are other ways that you can help support our youth mission trips this summer. Um, we will be, um, having a silent auction during the dinner, and this will just be, um, like baskets that people would bid on throughout the night, and at the end, we'll um, see who has the highest bid, and they will take the baskets home. But in order to have, um, our baskets to auction, we will need, um, people to donate quality items. Or if you have a basket and you're good at assembling them, you can just donate entire basket for us. There will be baskets down in the main lobby downstairs. Or if you have items, you can give them directly to Pastor James Pryor and drop them off at his office. Um, even though it is our SMT team that is preparing and organizing this event, we will need a lot of youth volunteers to help decorate, um, this fellowship hall downstairs before the dinner, um, to serve the food, also to cook food. And even though it is our youth team that is cooking the food, we will need many or a few adult supervision as many of of us are not very good cooks. So if any parents are willing to volunteer their time and effort to help supervise our youth, please contact Mr. Don Williamson or, um, Pastor James Pryor or myself. And if anyone needs more information about how to help, please come up to me as well. Um, for our youth, I will be in charge of decorations, so even if— have your entire evening to help serve the food, we will be staying after lunch service on May 31st to help decorate. So if anyone wants to decorate, please come to me and I will assign you something to do. This will be our last bake sale, don't worry. Yeah, and also for people who can't come this entire evening, we will be serving desserts and fruits and stuff like that. So if anyone is good at baking, please let me know and prepare some dessert goods for for us that night as well. And remember, anyone who is not sure if you will be able to attend, remember that this is a great chance to take a break from cooking for a day and have our youth serve you. Um, there are many ways to help support our youth group, and we ask for your prayers as we prepare to send our youth on these mission trips. Your encouragement and support means so much to us and make a real difference. Thank you all for your time and generosity, and we hope to see you at our dinner May 31st. Thank you.

I think next slide up is the doxology. Please rise for the doxology. For the benediction, I've chosen Hebrews 12, and in And then it mentions a great cloud of witnesses. The reason I chose this is today Paul in his message gave us a lot of examples from the Old Testament saints and their cloud of witnesses where it says in Hebrews 12, "Since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith. So as you leave, please run with endurance the race that God has set before you. Go in peace.