Acts 26: Same Gospel, New Envelope, Zero Dilution

We walk through Acts 26 as Paul addresses King Agrippa with a defense that keeps the gospel unaltered while adapting style to the room. We trace the promise from Abraham to Jesus, confront lazy skepticism and rising antisemitism, and call our church to carry one hope in many voices.

• Paul’s adaptive rhetoric before Agrippa
• Unchanging gospel, flexible delivery
• Pharisee background redeemed for mission
• Resurrection hope at the center of faith
• Promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob fulfilled in Jesus
• Christianity as reasonable and historically rooted
• Rejecting antisemitism while honoring Jewish roots
• Coaching the church to share uniquely
• Practical call to identify people and take action

Transcript

Paul’s Speeches And Adaptive Style

Unchanging Gospel, Different Envelopes

Diversity, Denominations, And Mission

Coaching The Church To Share

Paul Before Agrippa Begins

Pharisee Roots And Reputation

Who The Pharisees Were

SPEAKER_00 0:20

All right, we are in the book of Acts. We're actually getting pretty close to uh being being done with the book of Acts. Uh we were in Acts chapter 25 for a few weeks. Again, uh if you missed those sermons, they are on Facebook. Somebody can point you that direction. I will I will point it uh point you to that direction if you really want to today. We are in Acts chapter 26. Who brought their Bible, Danielle? Yeah. I like it. I actually forgot mine. The pastor forgot his Bible this morning. Uh just letting it know. So don't feel too bad. Uh Acts chapter 26. Hopefully I don't I'm not going to do any review really from Acts chapter 25. I want to jump right into Acts chapter uh 26. And what what's about to happen is that Paul is about to launch into another one of his gospel speeches. Right? We see we've seen a couple of these through the book of Acts. Uh if you if you haven't or don't remember, go read the book of Acts. And there's four or five of these speeches where he is given the opportunity to essentially lay out the gospel. And oftentimes it comes in the form of a defense of him defending himself against somebody, and he turns it around into pointing people to the gospel. That's a different sermon for a different time. But the reality is, before we even read the speech today, which we're going to talk about for a few weeks, is that this speech that we're about to read is very similar to many of the other speeches that he's already given in the book of Acts, including the one that's most recent to this, when he, if you recall correctly, he's standing on the top of the steps of this uh fort, and he asked the guard, Hey, can you pause here and let me address this mob that's trying to kill me? And the guard's like, sure, your funeral, right? So, and then he gives the speech and he essentially lays out the gospel, uh basically following his life and his testimony, and that's what Paul does. And he's about to launch into another speech, and they're similar. They're incredibly, incredibly uh similar. They have the same content, but and this was pointed out to me as I studied the the style, the language, the technicality between these two things are they're different. They're different. And it's just it's just interesting to me that Paul adjusted the style according to the setting. He changed how he was delivering this gospel, this gospel message. Now, right, the gospel doesn't change, scripture doesn't change. Let me make myself very clear. There are a lot of churches, a lot of people out there. What they like to do, and maybe you call them seeker-sensitive, but even then, sometimes seeker-sensitive doesn't mean they're necessarily changing the gospel, just leaving a lot of good stuff out, right? To make it more palatable to people. But then there's people who, just because they they want to call themselves a Christian, it feels good to call themselves a Christian. It feels good to believe in God, but they don't like all the stuff that goes along with it. And so what they do is they pick and choose what the gospel is. And then they share that gospel, and of course it sounds good. You mean you can feel good about your sin? You can feel good about doing this and doing that and fitting in with this society and with this culture and with this world. Yeah, I want that. I want that. That's not possible. That's not what Paul does, that's not what Peter does. But they do take that unchangeable gospel and they wrap it in different envelopes to send it out to different people. The style changes, not the context. And the difference between what we're about to read and what you can read, I believe, in Acts chapter 22 is the fact that Paul is in a different environment. And so he goes from talking to a mob of people and he uses very plain, standardized language, and now he is in front of Agrippa, this royal court. He's in front of uh royal officials and people who are supposedly and purportedly intelligent. Agrippa's intelligent, he's supposed to be a very smart man. And so Paul adjusts the gospel message, not the content, but the style in a way where he adds in more classical Greek, classical, classical language and styling in his defense and presentation to this crowd. Right? We got to do that, and I'll get to this in just a second, but you guys are your own individualized speeches of the gospel. And your speech, your life, how you share the gospel and how the gospel sort of bleeds out of you is different than me. It's different than me. We're not the same. We are different. People are different out there. That's why I diversity, which I know is a word right now. I know DEI is a thing, but diversity is not bad. Right? You read scripture and we are all part of the body of Christ, and every member is different. That's called diversities, right? So don't get caught up in the politics of that word right now. Don't let the world change a word that's good to something bad. So we're not gonna do that. But diversity is good. And I'll go ahead and say this. I know a lot of people are against what's called denominationalism. That's not always bad either. Do you know why? Because somebody could walk in here and we're trying to be faithful to scripture. We're being faithful to the gospel in here, but the style in which that we present the gospel maybe doesn't fit with them. That's not sin that they don't necessarily get along with us or that they don't necessarily like the style. That's okay. Because I can guarantee you there's another faithful church out there that's different than us, and they can go there and belong there. So, you know, diversity and denominationalism, those are not bad words. They can become bad. They can, but they don't have to be. Right? And this uniqueness, this individualism that's expressed in the gospel, that's expressed in us, that God created us as uniquely made, also means that as a pastor, and this is just you guys get a little glimpse of how I view things, I am not, right? If this was a sports team, I'm not the superstar on the court. You guys are the players. You guys are the ones getting out there on the ball field or on the court, and you're the ones making things happen. I'm the coach. It is my job to train you, to help you, to help you become who God uniquely has made you to be, so that you can uniquely share the unchangeable gospel to people who will never listen to me. Right? The gospel is unchanging. We can change the envelope, though. Okay? And we see that right up front with this. Man, I'm having a good time. We've not even got to the scripture yet. I've probably, I've probably waited too long and now the battery's dead on the on the iPad. We're good? We're good. All right. All right. Acts chapter 26, verses 1 through 8. Thank you for sitting through my TED talk before the actual sermon starts. But you guys are unique. I just got I just you had just I just have to know this. You are unique. And yes, as a church together, we will reach out to the community. We'll be light to the community. But your unique gospel expression, and every one of you has a unique gospel expression in your life, is designed for people, okay? People that we can't reach. I can't reach. You, right as you are, right where you are, can make an impact for the kingdom of God. Acts chapter 26, verses 1 through 8. We'll make some pauses through this scripture so I can explain some things. So Agrippa said to Paul, You have permission to speak for yourself. And then Paul stretched out his hand and made his defense. I consider myself fortunate that it is before you, King Agrippa. I'm going to make my defense today against all the accusations of the Jews, especially because you are familiar with all the customs and controversies of the Jews. Therefore I beg you to listen to me patiently. In other words, first of all, Paul recognizes the moment. He recognizes where he is in this royal court before King Agrippa, who is this uh intelligent man who is well aware and has a good handle on uh the Jewish religion and the various sects and controversies that they deal with. It's his job to know that. He's supposed to know those things, and he does know those things. And basically, Paul is thankful that he has the opportunity. And he's basically hoping that this Agrippa will be enthralled by this defense all the way through to the very end because Paul always has a mission, and we'll talk about this next week or maybe the next week. But Paul wants this Agrippa to get saved. He doesn't want to waste a moment. So he wants him to listen and engage all the way through this defense, which turns into essentially just a gospel message. My manner of life from my youth, spent from the beginning among my own nation and in Jerusalem, is known by all the Jews. They have known for a long time. If they are willing to testify that according to the strictest party of our religion, I have lived as a Pharisee. Paul starts with an appeal to the fact that they know him. He's not some stranger. He probably has people in the room. He was probably making his defense a couple of chapters before this to people who grew up with him, who were taught by uh the same teacher that he was. And they know who he was, they know what he did, they know his testimony, they know that he has been a faithful Pharisee for the vast majority of his life. And so there is this call to basically common sense. Hey, if you want to know who I am and what I am about, talk to them. Talk to them. And if they're honest and if they're bold enough, they'll tell you, yeah. Yeah, we we essentially grew up the same exact way. Uh I think as we talk about Pharisees, we should quickly know something about them. We hear that word all the time in scripture, right? There's all kinds of various Sadducees, Pharisees, scribes, you got Ensenes and other groups. They're all Jewish. They're all uh Judaizers, right? That they all essentially believe similar things, but how that plays out is different. And for the Pharisees, they're uh they're a little unique. They are birthed out of a rich scribal tradition, meaning that they are very passionate about preserving and about keeping the Old Testament, the Pentateuch and the prophets, right? They're very passionate about that. That's where they are birthed from. Matter of fact, they're mentioned often in Scripture in conjunction with the scribes and the Pharisees. They're almost one and the same. Different, but it's one of the same because this is turns into more of almost a political party over time. They're passionate about the details of Scripture, passionate about following the very letter of the law, but they also believed, and this is interesting, that their interpretation, their interpretations of the law, the traditions that they make from their interpretations, they end up believing that those are just as important as the law itself. This is more of a later tradition, right? This happens a little after this time, but eventually out of this pharisical stuff, they come up with the uh, I can't never say it correctly, the Mishnah. The Mishnah, which is another document that Jews use even today in their teachings. And that's where it's birthed from, from the Pharisees, because they took the traditions and their sort of thinkings and interpretations of the law and turned it into another law. Which, by the way, you get a glimpse of Jesus correcting them of this in the Sermon on the Mount over and over again. We see Jesus say, hey, you've heard it said this, but this is what it really means. Or you've heard it said this, but you got it wrong. This is what it really means. And that's Jesus correcting a little bit of what the Pharisees do. But they were very popular around the first century. They were gaining uh uh uh political power, the people, the regular everyday people turned to the Pharisees oftentimes for guidance spiritually instead of going to the Sadducees or the Essenes or even the scribes or even going to the temple, they would go to the Pharisees. And they had a passion for education and for teaching. And by the way, a lot of this explains why Paul is the way he is, why he has such a handle on the Old Testament, why he is so prepared to debate and to talk, not just to Jewish people, but to the Greeks and to the Romans. It's because that's a part of his tradition. God used where he came from, and he used those tools which were being used for the wrong reasons, and God stepped into his life, flipped him on his head, and then those tools that he was using against the Christians then became tools for Christ. Isn't that interesting? Right? All of us have a testimony before God in here, and we are a lot of different things because of our parents, because of different things we have learned and gone through and experienced, and some of that happened before we were saved. Go ahead and tell you, God can redeem some of those things. God can turn some of your negative experiences into wisdom that He can use. God does that all the time, in fact. He did it with Paul. And finally, the last thing you really probably should understand about the Pharisees is that they totally and wholly believed in the resurrection of the dead. In fact, their hope, according to their interpretation of Scripture, hinged on the resurrection of the dead. Without the resurrection, we talked about this in Acts chapter 25, but the Pharisees understood that without the resurrection, this hope that they had been leaning on for so long and hoping for for generation after generation after generation didn't really matter. The Sadducees didn't believe in that. You know, it's weird when you read about the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The Sadducees are almost agnostic. They hold on to the law as cultural, but they've almost lost any touch with the spiritual, the spiritual reality of what the law is pointing to. It's just an interesting difference. All right, let's move on. Paul was a Pharisee, though, strictly. And that's that's where his beliefs came from. That's where, that's who he was as a child, teenager, and a young man. He goes on, and we'll finish with this little chunk of scripture. We don't have enough time to keep going. And now I stand here on trial because of, and pay attention to this, because of my hope in the promise made by God to our fathers. Amen. Thank you for that. He was excited about that. To which our twelve tribes hope to attain as they earnestly worship night and day, and for this hope I am accused by the Jews, O King. Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises from the dead because he's talking to people who are also Pharisees, which was one of the main things that they believed. But in other words, from Paul's perspective, why are his beliefs, why are his strict upbringing uh like he's not really changed all that much from who he was before they knew him? Before Christ, he's changed, don't get me wrong, he's changed his mindset on some things. God has had to correct and he's had to lead him to a different perspective on the Old Testament scripture. But a lot of who Paul is is still very much pharasidical. And so he's basically asking, why are all of you surprised by the fact that I believe in the resurrection and I believe I saw a resurrected Jesus, and so now I am passionate about sharing the news of the resurrection, which is this thing that we've been hoping for forever. So he's basically saying, You know who I am, you have similar beliefs to me. I saw a resurrected Christ, a resurrected Jesus. You shouldn't be surprised. You shouldn't be surprised. We'll stop there today with our scripture, like I said, but I just want to point out a couple more things here before we go. I find it very enjoyable as Paul starts this conversation in front of this group, two King Agrippa and everybody else in the room, that he does this in a reasonable and intelligent and thoughtful way. It's not random. He's not just throwing stuff out there, it's not just random belief, it's not just him babbling on or making things up. It is truly uh the logical conclusion of his phariseucal background, his worldview, the things that he believed, found their fulfillment and completion in Jesus. And everything he did worked through that. And guess what? People in the room would understand that. Agrippa would hopefully understand and know that it made sense. His views, his response, his life as he is trying to defend himself, it makes sense that he believes this way. That's why he's trying to point out. And the fact of the matter is, a lot of Jews ended up did believing, right? We talked about this. All the disciples were Jewish, most of the first Christians were Jewish, and even whenever Paul and others went outside of the realm of the Middle East and into the Mediterranean, the first Christians in a lot of those cities were Jewish. And so some did believe, but a lot didn't. But let me just draw this to relevance today. In a world of skepticism, right? Skepticism is not new, by the way. In a world of science and reason, and people want to say that science and reason are in incompatible with Christianity. Let me just say, I'm sorry, Christianity does and can still make sense. It is reasonable. It is reasonable. It is a reasonable faith. It is a logical faith. And that's a different sermon. That's a small group, that's a one-on-one kind of conversation. If you ever have doubts or questions about these connections with science and Christianity, I can promise you there are good answers. There are good answers. Also, as we look at this, I find it important to draw out something. Ah, it's not it's not negative or bad or awkward to talk about, but we seem to be living in a time, for whatever reason, of increased antisemitism. For whatever reason, again, it's all over social media. It's in the Christian world, it's in the church. This anti-Semitism. I don't know where it's coming from, I don't understand it. It's on the rise, but let me just say, as we seek to understand God, uh, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, what they did, his life, death, his resurrection, why he had to come and do that in the first place, as we seek as Christians to understand those things, you will find the deeper connections inside of Judaism. It's unavoidable. You can't separate Christianity all the way from Judaism. You can't. You can't do that. It doesn't work that way. We can't escape the deep connection that Jesus has to everything that's found in the Old Testament, uh, which is full of Jewish people, and Jewish people kept the Old Testament alive that we that we use it today. Our understanding of salvation, our understanding of grace and mercy and sacrifice and what Jesus had to do is ultimately grounded in what we find in a history of a unique and ethnic group called Jews. Jesus was a Jew, it was birthed out of Jewish people. We are here now because God did something through those people in a very real way. He spoke to them through them, and they faithfully kept the word of God alive for us today. Now, with all that being said, does that mean we gotta convert? No. No, we're not just a brand new type of Jew. That's not what that is. I'm sorry. Scripture's clear on that. Do we have to uh become some sort of experts on Jewish scholarship and Hebrew and things like that? No, there are people who do that for us, and you can rely and lean on their teachings, okay? You don't gotta know Hebrew, you don't have to do all the things Hebrew people do. Um matter of fact, we see several times in the book of Acts, even that Paul makes great connections with the gospel to a Gentile people, and those Gentile people have no idea about Judaism. And yet he converts people, right? And I will go ahead and tell you right now, people don't have to know anything about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Noah. They don't have to know anything about the Old Testament for them to get saved and become a faithful Christian, okay? Right? Matter of fact, I would say in this day and age, that's the norm.

unknown 20:27

Right?

Redeeming Our Past For God’s Work

Resurrection At The Center Of Hope

SPEAKER_00 20:28

How many people, and maybe, maybe they have some general idea that there is someone called Abraham who is loosely Jewish or something, but how many people actually know the details of the Old Testament stories, and yet we still know those people get saved and can get saved? So that's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying you can't separate the two holy. And as we seek to be faithful followers of Jesus and we we study over the years, I'm not saying you're gonna become an expert over time, but if you're listening, I'm all over the place this morning. I've not seen you guys in a while, so I'm excited. Is that okay? My dad got saved later in life. He got saved later in life. He did not grow up in church at all. I think he said he went to Sunday school two or three times growing up. That was it. And yet he got saved. And who he was, even whenever I was born, when I was born, he had only been saved five years. And so I got to live watching someone get closer to God and learn more about God over time. Your journey as a disciple is gonna, it's gonna take time. It takes time, okay? And so that being said, right, as we seek to grow closer to God, we're gonna look at the Old Testament, and it's inescapable that the Old Testament is about Jewish people. Sorry. Sorry, everybody, sorry, all the Christians out there or the the weird, I all they have all these kind of crazy terms now, I guess, for people who like Nick Fuentes or whatever his name is, crazy dude who just hates Jewish people, claims to be a Christian. Doesn't make any sense. Sorry, it's incompatible, it's not compatible, just isn't. Get over yourselves. And if you don't like that, come talk to me after service and I'll tell you gently why you're mistaken. And then you can make your own choice and decision. But intimate anti Semitism is not Christian, has no place. Sorry, it just doesn't. Right. I should probably I should probably move the sermon forward before I get myself in trouble. I'm not live streaming this, so I guess it doesn't really matter all that much. But that being said, it just it doesn't have it has no place. Has no place. Just doesn't. Alright. The story of your salvation is birthed from this hope that God gave the Jewish people in the promises from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That's what Paul's talking about here. Whenever Paul says, My hope is in the promise made by God our fathers, he's talking about these promises that were given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And we're going to read some of those, and I want to look at them very quickly and just see what we can see from some of these promises. But Paul speaks about this promise hope and their birth partially from these promises. And Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all receive various promises from God having to do with their families, their land, but most importantly for us in this room right now, a hope of salvation for the world. Genesis chapter 12, verses 1 through 3. Not going to be on the screen, so you just have to pay attention. Now the Lord said to Abraham, or Abram, this is before Abraham's name was changed. Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of earth shall be blessed. Paul saw that and understood it. Thousands of years later, he understood the significance of the promise. Genesis chapter 26, verses two through four. This is a similar promise, almost the exact same promise, made to Isaac. And the Lord appeared to him and said, Do not go down to Egypt, dwell in the land of which I shall tell you, sojourn in this land, and I will be with you and will bless you, for to you and to your offspring I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham, your father. I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and will give you your offspring all these lands, and in your offspring, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. There it is again. Now the promise to Jacob, Isaac's son, Abraham's grandson. And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham, your father, and the God of uh the God of Isaac, the land on which you lie, I will give to you and your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth. You shall spread abroad to the west, to the east, to the north, to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. There it is again. Right? And every single one of these things, it sort of ends with this, I guess, tack it on promise, this footnote at the end of the promise, that there's something else going on here. There's something else going on in this promise more than just for their families. First, let me just say this is just a small selection of the promises that God gives Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If you read through the book of Genesis, God has to remind them a couple of times. Hey, hey, remember, remember, I said this, it's still true. So he does that a couple of times. I just picked the three main ones. Secondly, these promises for Abraham, for Isaac, and for Jacob who becomes Israel, they are very personal. They're personal promises. He's talking to people, he's talking to humans, he's talking to husbands, he's talking to fathers here. And so what's contained in these promises are front-loaded with personal connection to the land, which was the ability to raise crops and to uh raise livestock and to grow grow crops. It was connected to the biological hope that their families would continue to be families and they would go on and on and on and be blessed. It's a very personal promise to them. Who wouldn't want those things? I want those things. It's very personal. And so the Jewish people can be forgiven for maybe putting and using the last part of the promise as a footnote. That from the blessings I'm giving you, the whole world will be blessed. Right? There is more to this. This specific to these promises, everyone's capped off with a glimpse of something more. There's something more going on here. Again, it was personal for the people receiving the promise, but it was recorded in a way so that we see and know that God's plan was in act, what was in action through this promise. And then we see through the story of the Old Testament that leads to the birth of Christ that it's all connected. Paul sees this, Paul knows it. Peter sees it. The other disciples see it. Jesus helps draw it out so that their eyes are open to it. And it's this promise that Paul is drawing out for King Agrippa in this moment. We have believed and hoped for all of these things for so long, and it's happened. Are you paying attention? That's what he's saying. That's what Paul's preaching about. Hope had arrived, things were changed. A promise, uh, a promise had been fulfilled, the world had changed. Jump on board. Matter of fact, if if we go, if we were to look at the this scripture, the promise that that God gave Jacob, we just read it a second ago. Right? Who's heard of Jacob's ladder before?

unknown 27:52

Right?

Reasonable Faith In A Skeptical Age

SPEAKER_00 27:52

It's based on this promise. We're basically uh uh uh uh this is not my notes, so hopefully I don't get this wrong. Don't don't crucify me if I get it a little bit wrong. I'm trying my best here. But Jacob falls asleep. For whatever reason, he's using a rock as a pillow. I don't know what what relevance that is. I I don't know. And in this dream, though, God basically starts speaking to him, and it's interesting, it's interesting, a ladder comes down from heaven to make contact with earth. This is in opposition to what we see earlier in Genesis where that the tower of Babel, the people come together, and what do they say? Let's make a tower up to heaven. Let's make a tower up to God. It's almost the same temptation that we see that Adam and Eve have in the garden when when Satan says basically, don't you don't you want to have the knowledge that God has? Don't you want to be like God? It's the same thing. But we see in the promise to Jacob this glimpse of what the plan really was is that God was going to send a ladder down to us. We can't build to him. That's not part of the promise. The promise was that God would come to us. And he did in Jesus Christ. Paul sees it, Paul knows it, Paul believes it. He's standing in front of crowds and mobs, he's going into towns and cities, he's facing conflict and problems and issues and pain and beating and jail, imprisonment, and eventually death because he believes in the resurrected Jesus and he understands the significance of that resurrection as the fulfillment of a promise that God made at the beginning of time. And my question for myself, my question for the church, and my question for you is that do we believe? Do we truly grasp and comprehend and hold on to the fact that God sent the ladder? That Jesus came for us, we couldn't make it to him, wouldn't work that way. I don't care how strict and disciplined you are, it won't be enough. Won't be enough. I'm not that strict and disciplined, so I certainly needed some help. Can I get an amen in here? I needed Jesus to come get me. I needed that ladder. And so just the question is do we believe? And if we believe, what are we doing with it? What are we doing with it? I don't know. I'm not here to guilt anybody. I'm not in here to make someone feel bad about themselves. But honestly, sometimes that's what it takes. Sometimes if we look at scripture and we feel a little less than, well, maybe that's a signal that we gotta we gotta ask God for some help. We gotta make some changes. You can't rescue yourself, you can't make salvation for yourself, but you can make choices that bring you closer to God, especially after you're saved. If you're a disciple, it takes work, it takes discipline. Do we believe it? And what are we gonna do with it? Let's pray. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for coming to us. It's all about you, it's all about what you did, it's all about your sacrifice, it's all about your resurrection. And Lord, I simply pray that that becomes embedded into who we are, and that this morning that we wouldn't necessarily feel bad, but Lord, that we would be encouraged, that we can do something with the knowledge and hope of the resurrection and who you are in our lives, God. I pray that right now that you would put people on our heart and on our mind that we know need to hear the hope of the gospel. Whether it be friends or family or people on our kids' teams or at gymnastics or karate, basketball, soccer, baseball, the library, schools, homeschool groups. Lord, I pray right now in the name of Jesus that you would, your Holy Spirit would convict us and simply place people in our heart and minds that we specifically need to go after and believe and know that Holy Spirit, you've already been working on them before we even get there. That you bring faith that lets us believe, Holy Spirit. So, Holy Spirit, go out of this place and and lead us and guide us to where you need us to go. And let us believe in your timing and let us believe in your sovereignty, and just know that there's a plan and you want to include us, God. Help us, Lord, this morning. Bless everybody in this room. Lord, bless the dads, bless the moms, bless the grandparents, bless bless all of us, Lord, to be able to be who we need to be. In Jesus' name we pray, and we all set together. Amen.