Our God Has the Power - Pastor Tom Loghry
In Acts 20:1-12, Paul leaves the Ephesians and travels back to visit many of the churches that he started. At the end of his time in Troas, he gathers with the Christians there and performs a miracle by the power of God.
Transcript:
The reading is from Acts chapter 20 verses seven through 12. On the first day of the week, we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead. Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. Don't be alarmed, he said. He is alive! Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left. The people took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted.
Let us pray as we come before God's word. Dear Father, we pray that as we consider the testimony that you've given here in Acts 20, that you would use it to inspire our faith, our trust in you as our all powerful, awesome God. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen. You may be seated.
We enjoyed some beautiful weather this week, didn't we? Yeah. Everyone liked that. Good to go. Yeah. Yeah, I know, right? I'd like to have that back. Another, another couple months. I, I want you to imagine that on one of those sunny days, you took an opportunity to go to a restaurant that offered some outside dining. The sun is shining, a light breeze is blowing, and the waiter asks if you want to sit inside or out, and you eagerly say outside among the tables. And there's some of these tables that have umbrellas and some that don't, do not. And you decide that you'd like to sit at a table that doesn't have an umbrella 'cause you just wanna soak up that sun. Now, I want you to imagine that after you've put in your order that the waiter comes out with your food and sets your plate before you, and that just as you're about to begin eating that delicious meal that's been prepared, a seagull flies overhead and poops in your meal. Your dinner is ruined. Who can make it right now?
It wasn't the fault of the waiter that the bird pooped in your meal, you chose the seat without the umbrella. And yet we can feel some sympathy for ourselves here. It's not entirely your fault, you couldn't have foreseen that this would happen. I mean, that's like some extreme misfortune right there. You paid for the meal that you have but it's been ruined. In one sense, it's not really the responsibility of the restaurant owner. He could expect that you would have to just order a new meal.
But of course that's not what we hope the owner would do. We are at the mercy of the owner. We, you can't prepare a new meal for yourself, nor can your waiter, but the owner, and let's suppose he's also the chef, can make you a new meal. He can make things right even when he's not beholden to do so. Even when the general rule, as far as it goes when you're going to a restaurant, is that you pay for every meal that you receive. He can make things right when you cannot, and so he prepares you a new dish because he has the power to do so.
Today's passage that we're looking at in acts gives us a fairly simple account that's easy to understand on its face, but I want us to take, I wanna take us deeper to contemplate the significance of the power that's revealed and to reckon whether or not we actually believe the power of God to perform the miraculous. So we turn to Acts 20, and we're first going to begin in verses one through six. Luke tells us, when the uproar had ended, in Ephesus, as you'll recall, Paul sent for the disciples and, after encouraging them, said goodbye and set out for Macedonia. He traveled through that area, speaking many words of encouragement to the people, and finally arrived in Greece, where he stayed three months. Because some Jews had plotted against him just as he was about to sail for Syria, he decided to go back through Macedonia. He was accompanied by Sopater son of Pyrrhus from Berea, Aristarchus and Secundus from Thessalonica Gaius from Derbe, Timothy also, and Tychicus and Trophimus from the province of Asia. These men went on ahead and waited for us at Troas. But we sailed from Philipi after the festival of Unleavened Bread, and five days later joined the others at Troas, where we stayed seven days.
So Paul is leaving Ephesus. He spent a little over two years there, and he's returning back to the churches that he previously established, so we can see the course that he's gonna take here. You have Ephesus here on the east coast of modern day Turkey. He's gonna go up and he's gonna go around and then he's gonna bounce back around and we're gonna ultimately end up in Troas there, you see that marked in red. And the reason why he goes over land on the way back is because he's again facing some persecution from some of the Jews that are living in Greece, who don't like the message that he's preaching.
Now, important to recall that, if, if you haven't been following with us, that Paul himself is a Jew. He's, he's as Jewish as they come. The reason why the Jews in Greece are opposing him is because he's saying that God is not only the God of the Jews, but he's in fact the God of all people and is inviting all people to himself in Jesus Christ without the stipulations of the Jewish law. He's preaching a message that we are saved by grace, not by our, not by our works. He's, he's faced opposition all the, all the way along. And here again, he faces some, some opposition. Now what what's really interesting is that his team that he has with him is drawn from all these areas, is from, from this general area here. And so you, you, you have a really great snapshot of the church in his own team as they're going back around ministering to these areas. Now as he's going, he's bringing words of encouragement to them, and it's a great reminder to us of the relationship that Paul has with the churches, and it's a great example to us of how we should think about our relationship with one another as we seek to grow in the faith together. It's not as though Paul just gives them a message, Hey, believe in Jesus, and then takes off and says, I'm never seeing you again, and we're not gonna worry about how you're gonna grow, you, you believed in the message and that's it. No, he's interested in them growing up into the fullness of Christ.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer has written a book, he was a German pastor who lived in the era of World War II and was ultimately executed by the Nazis. He wrote a little book called Life Together, which really contemplates the significance of the community of the church. And he says this, he says, Christians need other Christians who speak God's word to them. They need them again and again when they become uncertain and disheartened because, living by their own resources, they cannot help themselves without cheating themselves out of the truth. They need other Christians as bearers and proclaimers of the divine word of salvation. They need them solely for the sake of Jesus Christ. The Christ in one's own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of another Christian. The heart in one's heart is uncertain, the Word is sure. At the same time, this also clarifies that the goal of all Christian community is to encounter one another as bringers of this message of salvation.
And so as we think about what Paul is doing, he's, he's, he is creating kind of this gospel reaction again and again. That again and again the people are hearing the word of grace, the word of Christ. Apart from that, when we try to live the faith on our own, we can begin to kind of wither on the vine. We need the reminders of the truth that we each give to each other as we gather together as the body of Christ.
So Paul is traveling through here in the area of Macedonia and Greece, and he spends the Festival of Unleavened Bread in Philippi. Now this is, if you're not familiar with the feast, this is a feast that corresponds with the celebration of, of Passover, and so you have to imagine that they're also celebrating the resurrection of of Christ. That would mark, that would be a marker of that occasion. It also kind of places us in this time of year generally too. So it's interesting, we're reading this passage in, around the same ballpark as when a lot of these things are going on. And so after spending that, the festival in Philippi, he then goes on to Troas and Luke gives us an account of Paul's time there, which has already been read, but which I'll read again here in verses seven through 12. On the first day of the week, we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead. Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. Don't be alarmed, he said. He's alive. Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left. The people took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted.
So we see Paul together with the believers in Troas, and he is trying to max out his time with them. At this point, it's Sunday. It's the first day of the week. We have some hint here that perhaps this was a, a regular gathering. There's some debate about that amongst scholars, but it would be a really early sign of the fact that the Christians regularly gathered on the first day of the week as the Lord's Day, the day on which Christ was resurrected from the dead.
In this case, though, it doesn't appear that he's meeting with them in the morning, as we might expect, but rather in the evening. And because he is trying to max out his time with them, he is speaking long into the night. Now, part of their gathering included the breaking of bread. So they shared in communion and it was paired with teaching, and that's what we do on, on Sundays also.
And so he was going on and on and on. And even today when people hear preaching, sometimes they can fall, fall asleep. There's a book I think that's been written along the lines of Saving Eutychus, trying to get, help preachers make sure their, their folks don't fall asleep, they keep the people engaged. But he was going long into the night and, the situation was that they were in a building that was quite a large building. It was basically an apartment building that would've been known as an insula. And we have a picture here of the first couple floors of one that is in the city of Ostia. Now, I don't know about you, but when I think about the ancient world, I don't think of like multi-story buildings usually. But it was in fact something that occurred. So this is what this building would've looked like. It would've had a couple of more floors above it. On the lower levels you would've had the solid brick. Obviously, as you get higher up to add that much weight can put some architectural stress on the building. And so what they would sometimes do is they would do, they call this waft, wattle work, which is, you're taking sticks and then you're kind of taking a, a stucco and applying it to that so that you have some light construction on top of that.
The trouble is, is that, you know, it's obviously not very sturdy. It's also very susceptible to fire. So these buildings would've been limited to around 70 feet. They wouldn't have gone much higher than that. In some cases we don't have great records of, of their presence in some cities, just because given their construction they could just be completely destroyed. And so this is an indication that Troas was a pretty large city, and, and records seem to indicate that it would've, they would've had a population between 69,000 and around 111,000, and these buildings would've been able to hold up to about 380 individuals.
Now, if you're rich, you would be on the lower floor of the building. If you were poor, you had to go further up. And the people that were further up didn't have access to plumbing or bathrooms or, or anything like that. So it wasn't, it wasn't the highest form of living. And that just indicates to us that the Christian community wasn't necessarily a rich community, they weren't of, of great means. And for the purposes of that we're considering here, these details are important because it explains how it is Eutychus came to die. They were so high up that he was, in our terms, one commentator was saying that a third floor for them was probably our fourth floor. There's actually, I never thought about this, but in Europe they don't count the first floor, and so, so the, it's the second floor that they count as the first floor, and they count from there. So for us, it would've been the fourth floor actually. So he is, he's falling from the fourth floor down, which is plenty high enough to die from such a fall.
So you think Paul's been trying to make the most of his time here, and now it seems like it's gonna really end on a very sour note. He's been probably talking to them about the good news of the gospel, reminding them of their hope and the resurrection. We can assume that he's talking about these kinds of things and then boom, you have a tragedy strike. A young, a young man has died and, and died when trying to be gathered together with the church.
And what follows is a profound miracle. Paul rushes down to the young man and he takes him up in his arm. And you can almost imagine just Paul's emotion and the love that he is expressing and doing. He takes him up in his arm, arms, and miraculously Eutychus's life is restored to him. He's not dead. Now, there's precedent for this in the scriptures, of people being raised from the dead. We find it in the Old Testament, and the fact that Paul is performing the sort of miracle puts him in kind of the, the neighborhood of these sorts of fellows. You think about Elijah and Elisha, both, both of these Old Testament prophets in First Kings, and in Second Kings raise young boys from the dead.
We go, go to the New Testament and we think about how Jesus raised people from the dead. You think about Lazarus, but there was also a little girl that Jesus raises from the dead in Matthew nine verses 23 through 25, and then earlier in Acts, in Acts nine versus 37 through 40 we have an account of how Peter raised a woman named Dorcas, or alternatively Tabitha, from the dead. So we've seen that the power of God can raise the dead before Christ, and we see that the power of God continues to be displayed, we can say all the more, after Christ, because Christ is the one who has ultimately conquered death. 'cause all these people that were raised from the dead, they ended up dying again. Christ was raised with a body that does not die. Again, that's what sets his resurrection apart. That's the resurrection that we're going to share in the end when he, when when Christ returns. But we have a foretaste of these things, of that final resurrection in these miracles that occur where people are restored from the dead.
And so this is just another affirmation of the power of God and also Paul's status as an apostle, that God is working this miracle through him. Now, as we think about the significance of this, this miracle that's been performed, as we think about the whole scenario that plays out here, we can almost draw a metaphor of a reminder of how as we as Christians need to be watchful. And this isn't a critique of, of Eutychus. He's, it was a late night, smoky room with the lamps that they had, but he fell asleep, and he fell and he died. And we think about Jesus' disciples on the night that he was betrayed in the Garden of Gethsemane and he asked them to watch and pray with me and they, they kept falling, falling asleep and Jesus warns them in Matthew 26: 41, he says, watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And so once again, this isn't an actual critique of Eutychus, but we can kind of see here a picture of the importance of maintaining a, a watchfulness as Christians. That would be kind of a secondary theme we could kind of pick out here, but the primary thing that we see here obviously is the power of Christ, the power of the kingdom of God that is not overcome by tragedy, by, it's not overcome by accidents. The power of Jesus is greater than these things. It's greater than death. He is, this is another revelation that Jesus is in fact king, and we have reasons by word of Christ to expect that these things would continue.
Jesus, in John 14 verses 12 through 14, tells his disciples this, very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they'll, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. So what is Jesus telling his disciples there? He's saying that I'm doing some miraculous works. Jesus had a reputation for that, not only for his teaching, but for healing, for raising people from the dead. And Jesus is telling his disciples, you're gonna do the same thing.
And what do we see? We see that they're doing the same thing, and there's actually instruction given to the church that we should expect that God is going to continue to do miraculous things, that our God continues to heal into the present. In James five, verses 14 through 15, these instructions are given. It says, if any, is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven.
Now the place of oil here in, in this prayer, it's not, the oil has no magical qualities about it.
Oil is a traditional symbol in the scriptures of consecrating a person to the Lord. We're, we're saying, we're God, we're put, we're putting this person in your hands completely, and we want, we're, we're lifting them up in order that you might heal them. Now as we think about that, we are given this invitation to come before the Lord seeking that he might give that sort of miracle. It raises the question, do we ask for those kinds of miracles or do we not even bother? Are we, are we skeptical? Now, James in the earlier chapter in his book, in James four verses one through three, says, what causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet, but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. So one of the things that James is saying here is that part of the reason why we might not receive miracles or healing is like, are we even praying? You know, I was saying earlier in the announcements, we wanna cultivate a culture of prayer. Are we people praying, expecting that God can do incredible things?
And then he also adds the caveat here is, you know, the things that you are praying for, are you asking them in the right, with the right motive in mind? That's something that we have to be concerned about. But of course, asking God doesn't always result in a yes. It's not as though God always gives healings to those that ask for them. Paul, and Paul himself, the guy that just raised someone from the dead, experienced this in his own life. It's interesting, this came up in our sermon circle discussion last Sunday, second Corinthians 12, verses seven through nine. Paul had this incredible experience of revelation that he had received from God of entering into the heavenly sphere, seeing things that were just profound, and he says that as a result, he suffered an affliction. He says, therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.
So what Paul is testifying to here is that he had prayed to God that he would relieve him of some thorn in the flesh, some sort of affliction that he was going through, and God said no, because in God's sovereign wisdom, it was better that he continued to suffer that. And that, in fact, that he trust in the grace of God. What does he say there? My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Sometimes God is preparing to do profound things through you, through your life, in your weakness, not, not when you're at your strongest, in your best, so that the glory of God might be revealed, that it's not your strength, it's his strength working through you.
Now we also see in 2 Timothy four 20 that one of Paul's ministry partners, Trophimus, got sick in Miletus and it says that he was, that Trophimus was left in Miletus, so apparently he wasn't healed. He had to under, he had to just recover naturally. So we, we don't necessarily expect that healings are just gonna be distributed out left and, and right, which is it, it raises the point that we have to keep in mind, which is this, our relation to God is not a relationship of natural laws as though I pray and then God just automatically does a healing or does some supernatural work. It's a personal relationship that we have with him. And it, and it's an incredible relationship because it's a relationship between us who are finite and he who is infinite, who sees all things and, and knows all things as a relation of knowledge.
He shared certain things with us. He invites us to come to him, but we don't know all the things that God knows. It's a relationship of trusting in God's providence, believing that he can provide what we need. Making that appeal to him, but also ultimately submitting to his good plan and purpose. And so, you know, I opened this sermon with the analogy of, you know, someone at a restaurant and hoping that the chef might make you a new meal. And we would think actually a good chef would make, a good chef. A good owner would make a person the meal every time. But that's a very simple sort of analogy. Another analogy, which is simple, but I think is better and it adds a sort of nuance that we need to think about in our relationship with God is the relationship between a parent and a child.
While a parent does provide many things for their children without asking, just as God provides many things for us without asking, there are some things which parents expect their children to ask for before it is given, and yet it's not the case that just because a child asks for something that they will necessarily get it. A child who asks for a shot of whiskey will not receive it from a responsible parent even if he says please. He might receive a piece of chocolate from his parent if he asks nicely. He might receive a piece of chocolate if he asks for it at noon, but he might not receive it at bedtime, even if he asks very nicely. Perhaps he's not gonna receive a piece of chocolate under any circumstances because the parent has something better in store for him. Maybe a slice of chocolate cake or a pie or, or something. Something like that. We all understand these sorts of nuances naturally in our relationships between parents and children.
Now, the child may protest and say, no, I want the chocolate, it's good, I feel like I should have it now, because he thinks, she thinks that she knows best. And when we see children kind of throwing fits about these things, we say, well, you're being childish. And sometimes we can be that, that way in our relationship with God. Now, obviously we go through much more serious things than not getting a piece of chocolate. Though, for some of you, maybe that'd be a serious thing, but we go through serious things, but we have to trust that we are in that same position of knowing, that we are in the position of a child, whereas he is in the position of, as our father, who knows what is truly good for us. And so we are called to be like children, children of God, but children in the sense of turning to him with a childlike trust.
Now you might hear all of this and say that, you know, we're just explaining away unanswered prayers. You might reject the notion of a good and omnipotent all powerful God. But if that's the case, if prayer, answered prayer is an illusion, if we in fact, don't have a God who can intervene on our behalf, then we are left with the plate that we have been served. We are the victims of random circumstance, condemned to the meaningless chaos that envelops us.
But I wanna tell you that we have good reason to believe that God can and does intervene in these sorts of ways. Anecdotally, into the present, we have verifiable testimonies of people who have been miraculously healed. There's a story of Duane Miller, and you can look up all these things on YouTube, Duane Miller. He was a man, a pastor, who was diagnosed with a rare condition that made it extremely painful for him to speak just at the volume of a whisper. Many doctors wanted to see him, not 'cause he was an important person, but because this condition was so rare that they wanna see what's up with this guy. They couldn't figure out a solution. And yet he, he, he loved to preach so much that he would try anyways when, whenever he was given an invitation. And so there was one Sunday that, where he was painfully managing to preach, had a microphone right in front of his mouth. And his voice is not easy to listen to, you can hear the audio of it because there's audio. What, what happens is, is there's audio recording of his voice being restored to him as he's preaching on Psalm 1 0 3 verses two through four, and, and it's the combination there that makes it just incredible, 'cause the passage he was preaching on reads this, it reads this way. The psalmist says, praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, and he stopped at that word pit as he was preaching. 'cause all of a sudden his voice, his throat had been previously tight and he could feel it release, and then you can hear his voice return to a, a normal voice, and crowns you with love and compassion. Like I said, you can go listen to this yourself on YouTube.
There's also the story of James Drain. A man who had become mostly blind due to his work in an environment that had toxic chemicals in it. But on the day that he was baptized, as he came out of the water and looked out at the congregation, all of a sudden he could see, he could see flags in detail that were at the back of the sanctuary. He found that his sight had been restored. And again, we have video. They actually have video of his baptism, which this takes place, and he's just looking around like, what just, what just happened?
In my own life, I think about the testimony of my, my grandfather, who as a teenager had a heart condition, discovered when he went to go visit a chiropractor who found that he had extremely high blood pressure, over 200. He was very limited in his physical activity, couldn't do much, and this is back in the forties, and they didn't have much medical solutions that he could get access to. His family wasn't of much means, and so he just kind of languished in this condition as a young man. He was not feeling any better until he met with an elder in his church, a man in his eighties named Ira Wilson. And on the day that he met with Ira, Ira asked my grandfather, James, how are you feeling? And my grandfather indicated he wasn't feeling any better, and Ira repeated this question again and again until my grandpa asked Why? Why do you keep asking me this? And Ira told him that he had been praying and fasting that God would heal my grandfather. Now my grandfather left Ira, and after leaving Ira, he, he said that he started to feel much better and he felt that he was able to be active and, and, and do things. And, and so out of caution, his parents said, well, we're gonna take you to the hospital. Just to get checked out. They took him to San Francisco and the doctors verified that there was no issues with his heart at all. And so to this day, my grandfather's, I think he's turning 93 this year. My grandfather believes that he was healed, and so if he wasn't healed, there's good reason to think that I wouldn't be standing before you right now.
God is the author of the universe. He spoke it into existence. God didn't have to have any building materials. He just spoke it into existence, the greatest miracle ever performed. Anything else we might imagine is no more difficult for him than a, than a master chef preparing a new dish. We can't do it, but he can. The laws of nature tell us what usually happens under normal circumstances, and Christians heartily affirm that. We give God thanks for such laws. When we're talking about miracles, we're not talking about normal circumstances, we're talking about exceptional occurrence. We shouldn't expect miracles left and right any more than we should expect a chef preparing free meals all the time. That's not how a restaurant functions, and that's not how our universe usually works. Not because we have to earn miracles or anything like that, but because God is not only all powerful, he is also all wise, he has a plan and purpose, which outstrips our understanding and our perspective of the situation. God has established a predictable order of things so we can live our lives. Imagine if we didn't know if we could count on the law of gravity or not. Imagine sometimes you'd step out your door and you'd be able to walk down the lane, and other times you'd step out the door and you'd fly up into the sky. You couldn't live life like that. We need order in order to live our lives, and God has instituted that order. But in his providence, God is also able to strum the laws of nature to tunes that we have not yet heard because he is the creator.
We have no hope within the natural frame, the universe is wearing down. We ourselves, we, we are born into this world, we live, we die. And naturally speaking, that would be it. But a new order has broken into our universe in Jesus Christ. He is the one who has conquered death. And even in this present age, which is still pockmarked with brokenness, we see signs of the coming kingdom of God. We see even the dead raised to life. This reminds us of God's ultimate power and that the same promise awaits us, that God shall give us an even better resurrection on the day of Christ's return.
Until that day, we wait with hope and we receive with gratitude God's gracious acts of intervention when they appear in anticipation of that day.
I have no power in myself. Just as Paul had no power within himself in accordance with scripture. All the power is found in Christ. But just as the Apostle James said in his book saying, if you're sick, come to the elders, let them pray for you, let them anoint you with oil, I want you to know I'm completely ready to do that, to pray with anyone who would like to seek, heal, healing from the Lord. I, it may be that in God's perfect wisdom, he will withhold healing at this time; I have prayed for healing in my own life that has not been given. But it's also clear that he desires that we ask, that we come to him in faith expecting that God can answer our prayers in that kind of way, and we will not know his answer unless we ask. And whatever the outcome may be, we will grow in trusting him.
Let us pray.
Dear Father, we thank you for the testimony of your word this morning.
A simple testimony, but which reveals your great power, of a tragedy which occurred. A young man who fell from a window and died, a tragedy which you used as an occasion to remind us of your greater power by raising him from the dead. Father, we pray that you would stir up within us faith to seek you for our healing.
Not just with bodily conditions, father, those sorts of things, but true and complete healing. Father, we need to be healed of the disease of sin, which has corrupted our life. We, we need a moral and spiritual healing, father. And father, we, we need a healing which will last. Because whether it's your healing that you've give in this time, father, or whether there are healings that are brought about by your providence through medical doctors, everyone ultimately dies again.
Father, we are looking forward to that final healing which has been revealed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which you have promised we will share in. And so Father, we pray that the testimony of Eutychus, the testimonies that we see around us today would be reminders to us that we should not put our hope in our power because we are powerless.
We cannot defeat death, but you can and you have in Jesus Christ. So Father, we pray that you lead us to put our trust and faith in Him. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from the Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us in person or virtually this Sunday as we worship God and hear the preaching of his word. It's our joy to welcome you into our community
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)