1 Corinthians 2:6-13 “We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.”

The earth is flat and the moon is made of green cheese. Autumn leaves turn colors because little fairies come out at night and paint them orange and yellow while we are sleeping. Breaking a mirror will give you seven years of bad luck. If I told you that I believe all these things, you would probably think that I was making a joke. If I insisted, you might think that I had finally cracked. If everything else about me seemed normal, you might consider me a fool.

I don’t believe that the earth is flat, the moon is made of green cheese, fairies paint the leaves, or breaking mirrors negatively affects your future. But I know that some of the Bible truths we believe sound just about as strange to much of the world around us. Christian faith leads some to wonder if we have taken leave of our senses.

God’s wisdom and the world’s wisdom often part ways with each other because God’s wisdom is hidden from this age in which we now live. The difference between these two kinds of “wisdom” is not a simple matter of two alternative paths. Jesus Christ–the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the narrow door and the narrow path–is the only way to the Father and eternal life. That is God’s wisdom. The general equality of all world religions is the world’s wisdom, or worse, the generic, empty “spirituality” more and more people are adopting. These lead neither to God nor to life. To quote Paul’s words here, “they are coming to nothing.”

But they are packaged and marketed to you and me in a way that make them hard to resist. They keep wearing away at our resistance. The spin is that if you adopt the world’s wisdom, you will be more popular, you will have more fun, you must be more intelligent, you are more just or fair. If you reject the world’s wisdom in favor of God’s, you are an extremist, intolerant, someone who thinks you are better than others, or just plain ignorant. It’s a great marketing campaign, maybe the best that ever was. You feel its tug, don’t you.

In contrast, Paul’s “message of wisdom” is talking about the gospel, God’s “secret wisdom.” The Lord of glory was crucified for us. Look at the facts of Jesus’ life. If God didn’t intervene in human history, who would have known about this person named Jesus who lived and died in the obscurity of Roman occupied Israel? When Jesus was born, who would have known unless God sent angels to tell the shepherds, “Today in the city of David a Savior has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord.” When Jesus died on the cross, who really believed they were crucifying the “Lord of glory”? Even his disciples seemed to have given up on the idea. When Jesus rose again, it took the intervention of angels again to convince the women that the body was alive, not stolen. And the disciples didn’t believe until Jesus began appearing to them himself. Without God’s own intervention, this all would have remained God’s little secret.

More than these historical facts, God’s secret wisdom includes the meaning of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. His secret wisdom is the thing God was doing for us. God entered our world as one of us, paid for all our sins by his own death, freely forgave every sin and set us free from them, made life and immortality our own as his gift. Who would have guessed that? Grace is the operative word for our relationship with God. It is our confidence of his love, our hope that we will live with him. It is not “obedience,” or “purpose,” or “effort,” or “sincerity,” or “passion.” It is grace, God’s gift-love, that has been hidden from the ages, including our own.

One commentator has noted, “No heathen people ever conceived a god who would actually take care of those who placed their reliance on him.” They live in fear, not faith. They have to work their magic and pay their dues to keep their gods happy and themselves safe. A God who freely loves them as a Father, and freely forgives? That’s our message, Paul says. That’s God’s wisdom. By giving us the gospel and leading you to faith, God has let you in on this secret.

It’s not a secret that he wants us to keep.

2 Peter 1:19“And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”

Someone once asked me whether or not I believed the age of miracles was over. In the Bible, accounts of miracles tend to be bunched together around a few historical characters: Moses, Elijah, Jesus, and the Apostles. But I don’t know if there ever was an “age of miracles.” God’s power has always been at work in the lives of his people. From time to time he still works in our world in ways that can’t be explained naturally.

The miraculous is an indispensable part of Christianity. Just think about how much of the Christmas account describes things miraculous, or what would be left of it without them. But our faith does not depend on being eye witnesses of miracles. We have something better in the word. We have “the word of the prophets made more certain.” All by itself, God’s word has always been 100 percent reliable. There has never been a problem with God’s word.

But there has been a problem with me. You and I might not be like those who consider the Bible a collection of myths. We don’t dismiss miraculous events as fantasies. But we still have subtle ways of showing our lack of trust. Even Christians mistrust God’s law. The Bible clearly forbids sex outside of marriage. That didn’t prevent unmarried Christians I know from claiming they prayed to God about it, and insisting that in their case God was making an exception. Jesus equates hatred with murder. Yet many Christians try to justify hateful feelings because they believe their situation is somehow unique or exceptional. I have heard adult Christians propose that “he started it” was a valid reason to treat someone else unkindly.

Sometimes we just don’t think God’s word is sufficient for our faith, or enough to convert someone else, and we yearn for a visible demonstration of God’s power. But what does Jesus say about that sort of thing? “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign.” In such ways we demonstrate our own lack of trust in God’s word.

Peter shores up our flagging faith when he promises, “We have the word of the prophets made more certain.” Is it just a coincidence that the events surrounding Jesus’ birth, and life, and death, and resurrection fulfill so many prophecies made hundreds and even thousands of years before he lived? We read the prophecies of Moses, or David, or Isaiah. We find that these are not vague generalities like your horoscope that might fit the lives of dozens of people you know. They describe exactly the specific places and events and circumstances in Jesus’ life. They demonstrate a reliability which has never failed.

It’s no wonder that Peter encourages, “…you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” Why listen to the Word’s witness? The words of Scripture are so much more than just “God’s Little Instruction Book” or “Chicken Soup for the Soul.” A simple message like, “Jesus so loves you that he died for your every sin. Dear Child of God, your sins are all forgiven,” are filled with the miraculous power of God. When people hear them, a little miracle takes place in human hearts. A bright beacon of faith, and hope, and love begins to shine where there was only uncertainty, and despair, and loneliness before.

We don’t need to see the events of the first Christmas, or Jesus’ death and resurrection, or his shining in all his glory on the mountain (the event Peter is referencing in this context). When we listen to the Word’s witness, Jesus himself lives and shines in our hearts. By faith he is closer to us than he ever was to those who saw his physical body but never put their faith in him. His word makes me so sure that he loves me, so sure that he forgives me, so sure that now I belong just to him, that my hearts is filled with faith.

That is all the miracle we will ever need.

Galatians 2:15-16 “We who are Jews by birth and not ‘Gentile sinners’ know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.”

Peter had come to visit Paul and Barnabas in the city of Antioch. This was the first city where the Gospel was reaching not only Jews, but also Gentiles, and in large numbers. When Peter first arrived, everything was fine. He associated with the Gentile members freely. He even ate their food, some of which had been considered unclean in the law of Moses.

That was no small matter for a Jew. Not only had they learned to regard such food as sinful, they often saw such foods as simply distasteful. You might compare their reaction to the revulsion most of us would have to eating live caterpillars. Nonetheless, Peter practiced his Gospel freedom in Christ. The ceremonial law no longer applied since Jesus fulfilled it. Peter was well aware, and he ate with his Gentile friends.

Then other Jews visited from Jerusalem. All Peter’s Gospel freedom flew out the window. He was afraid of what they might think of him, so he stopped eating with the Gentiles. He shunned their food, even shunned their company.

Peter’s actions were wrong for a couple of reasons. First, what he did was motivated by fear, not love. When fear is our motivation, we are falling back on work-righteous ideas. God’s punishment or man’s disapproval drive our actions. When fear of consequences governs what we do, we are being legalistic and self-righteous.

Second, Peter was putting the gospel message in jeopardy. His behavior was affecting everyone around him. He was leading both Jews and Gentiles to believe that faith in Jesus was not enough. This threatened the eternal salvation of souls.

Sometimes we act out of fear, too. We want others to consider us good, but we are not acting out of love. We may not have hang-ups with Old Testament ceremonial law anymore, but something similar is going on when we apply the word “must” to some long-held “tradition.” This can be true whether we are insisting the tradition continue or end. Either way, we are adding to the gospel.

Even godly morals can become a device for denying the sufficiency of God’s grace. Fear or hope of reward deny that Jesus’ death on the cross was enough. We may not say that we are trying to pay for our own sins out loud, but any action that comes from fear instead of love comes from the same legalistic root.

God’s law is not the answer for our sins. It exposes them. Paul tells us that through the law we become conscious of sin. But it can’t provide a solution, and it is powerless to give us the faith which can. “The law brings wrath,” Paul says in Romans. It even makes sin spring to life. It cannot give us spiritual life.

Instead, we are justified by faith in Jesus Christ. He lived the life the law demanded as our substitute. He died the death the law demands for our sins. For that reason, God declares that we are not guilty. He forgives us.

When we hear this, the point is not: “God says I am not guilty, but I really am.” This is the same God who said, “Let there be light” and light appeared. When he says something, it is real and true. If he says I am not guilty, then I am not.

This answer for sin is ours by faith. It is not a one-time experience from the past. It forms an ongoing relationship of trust and confidence established by God himself. By this same faith he applies forgiveness to us every day. If Jesus’ life and death are ours, we are not guilty. Ever.

1 John 5:1 “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his children as well.”

Christians are people of faith. By ‘faith’ we don’t mean ‘optimistic wishfulness,’ or ‘the anticipation of possible success,’ or even ‘educated guesses,’ or ‘informed opinions.’ Christian faith is about certainties. The things which we believe are things of which we have become convinced, no less than I am convinced that I am alive, or that this chair in which I am sitting is made of wood, or that the grass outside is green.

This makes us… odd. To some who don’t share our faith we will seem backwards and naive because the things we believe are things we have never “seen” and cannot prove in the ordinary way. To some we will seem arrogant, because in being so certain about the teachings of our faith, we are discounting and denying the things that they believe.

One of these certainties we have by faith is the fact that we are God’s children, spiritually born into God’s own family. How do we know? What makes us so sure? I can think of  reasons that might give us doubts. Usually children resemble their parents in some way. If you looked at my four children, and you knew only my wife, you might think of the old Sesame Street song: “One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong. Can you tell which thing is not like the others, by the time I finish my song?” One of my children gets his looks more from me, I believe. I leave it to those who know our family to decide which is which.

If we are born of God, do we look like him? Does our behavior suggest a family resemblance? Does it distinguish us from everyone else? We have to admit that many times it is hard to tell any difference based on how we act.

We worry about money, health, and safety just like people who don’t know God as their kind and loving Father in heaven. We don’t live every moment in absolute peace about the way in which he will provide and protect. Our lifestyles can be just as self-indulgent as those who don’t believe Jesus is anything special.

So how do we know? How do we know that God has given us birth, that we are his children? John says, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” It doesn’t start with behavior. It starts with faith. We believe that Jesus is the Christ. For us he is not merely “Interesting Historical Figure,” “Founder of a Famous Religion,” “First-Century Philosopher,” “Mesmerizing Middle-Eastern Mystic.” Jesus is the Christ, our God and Savior. Everything we celebrate about Jesus’ death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead, we believe. We believe it as something far more than a sad and tragic miscarriage of justice followed by a miraculous return to life. This death is God’s own payment for our sins. We are forgiven, freed from guilt, liberated from the debt in which we were trapped. This living and glorified God-man, this empty grave, is a preview of our own bright future. Like Jesus our bodies are going to be revived and glorified. We will leave our tombs behind us, and live and walk with God in a land where there is no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the old order of things has passed away, and God has made everything new.

This message, this promise, is the womb in which our faith is formed, the means by which the miracle of spiritual birth takes place. It is the power by which we believe that Jesus is the Christ. Person after person has fallen under its spell–sinners and skeptics, doubters and deniers: fully armed and ready to debunk the Christian story, but in the end, won by his love, and confessing Jesus Christ as Lord. That faith, born of those truths, is how we know that God has given us birth, that we are the children of God.

Hebrews 13:5b “God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’”

This promise covers everything. If you would remember nothing but this promise of God, you would be equipped for anything you might face in life. The words are the words of God himself. In the whole history of the world, from creation until this day, he has never been known to break a promise. Not one. You can be certain that every day of your lives this promise he gives will still be valid. Any other gifts you might receive will wear out or lose their luster with time, but not this one. This gift from your Savior will be there until the day you die.

What he promises is nothing less than to be your helper in any and every situation. He will never leave you. When it looks like your ship is sinking, your dreams have been dashed, your fortune lost, your life and health ebbing away, he will always be with you to hold you up and give you care. He will never forsake you.

Even at times when our hearts have been cold and hard, and we have turned to follow our own ways instead of his ways, he doesn’t abandon us. He patiently calls us back to himself. He forgives us no matter how great the guilt. He takes care of us, no matter how great the problem.

Think for a moment about how all-encompassing this promise truly is. When God first spoke these words, it wasn’t here in the book of Hebrews. He used Moses to speak them to the children of Israel before they entered the Promised Land. There he was assuring them that, even though war and bloodshed were staring them in the face, he would never leave or forsake them. They could trust him when their very lives and the lives of those they loved were in such danger.

Here this promise is applied to our daily needs. Even when it looks like we have come to the end of our resources, the cupboard is bare, the well is dry, the purse is empty, God promises to uphold you and to provide. His resources never run out, and we can trust him for our daily bread.

Today you can claim this promise for yourself. Life can be a roller coaster ride as we balance the competing demands of family, work, church, and community. But whatever the future holds, God’s promise still stands: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

Hebrews 13:5a “Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have.

We don’t usually think of a warning as a blessing. But when a warning comes to us in love, it really is a blessing, isn’t it? If someone warns you that the water on the road up ahead is too deep to drive through, it could even save your life.

God is showing you such love when he warns, “Keep your lives free from the love of money.” There is nothing wrong with money itself. Like everything else, it is a good creation of God. He is the one who provides us with it.

But God never made our money or any of our valuables to be loved. He only gave them to us for their use. Ultimately, he wants us to use them to serve him, to use them to show our love for him and for others.

Sometimes we are tempted to turn this around. Money, wealth, possessions can become even more important to us even than the people around us, even than God himself. It seems as if we are in a relationship of love with our things, and that we use people to serve them instead.

But you can’t really have a relationship with your things or your money. You can give your affection, your attention, and your devotion to them, but they can never give it back. They are cold, emotionless, and unloving. That is not because they are bad. It is because the Lord made them only to be used.

When we try to build such a relationship with our money or possessions, our relationships with everyone else, including our Lord, tend to suffer. Those who keep track of such statistics will tell you that more marriages break up today because of arguments over the money than for any other reason. God gives you this warning, then, to be a blessing, so that worldly wealth will never come between us, and others, and our Lord.

He has given us something to love, after all. He has given us himself with a giving and a loving no money could pay for. His love is so great that he gave his life in love in payment for our sins. He has cleansed us from our greed and every other selfishness. Let his warning be a blessing, then: Keep your lives free from the love of money.

Luke 14:21-24 ‘Go out into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’ ‘Sir,’ the servant said, ‘what you ordered has been done, but there still is room.’ Then the master told his servant, ‘Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full. I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.’”

Jesus originally told this parable to a house full of Pharisees. You might think these men would have been the first to embrace Jesus. In a sense, God’s invitation had come to them first. They had spent their lives listening to God’s word and studying it. Most of them grew up in homes where parents were active in their synagogues. Their lives were morally straight and free of public scandal.

It turns out they weren’t so interested in a religion about the forgiveness of sins. Seeing their own spiritual sickness and deformities, humbly admitting their own shortcomings, receiving the medicine of God’s grace did not sound appetizing. They wanted God’s love based on their own worthiness. They did not want his pity on their need and incompetence. So they ignored the invitation.

I don’t know anyone who finds admitting their guilt and spiritual incompetence appealing. But these are the prerequisites for finding and receiving forgiveness. For some people, life and circumstances make their great spiritual need for grace easier to see, harder to hide. They have made a moral mess of their lives. They live every day with the consequences of their sinful choices. Then they start to hunger for the Master’s invitation to the banquet.

These are just people who answered Jesus’ call. He found the prostitutes, the tax collectors, and public sinners. They were “the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame” in Jesus’ parable.

Don’t misunderstand the picture. They did not continue to defend and embrace their sins and remain outside the banquet of grace, hungry. They repented. They were forgiven. They went in.

Now, don’t misjudge the guests. Sometimes Christians seem to be surprised at the shortcomings of their fellow guests at God’s banquet. People in the church can be mean, crude, selfish, off-color, inappropriate, morally weak. No one is defending bad behavior. But what did we think–we were going to be seated in a room full of prim and proper aristocrats with perfect manners?

Jesus invited the spiritually poor, and sometimes they still come up a few bucks short. He called the morally crippled and lame, and sometimes they still walk with a limp. He sought out the blind, and they still struggle with spiritual near-sightedness. That doesn’t mean there is not a place for them at God’s banquet.

And don’t misjudge who has potential to become such guests. In the parable the servant is sent to the roads and country lanes to bring those in who were far away. Two thousand years later on the opposite side of the planet, Jesus is still using us to bring people in. Don’t be surprised if the words Paul once wrote to the Corinthians apply to the kind of people we find: “Brothers, remember what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” (1 Cor. 1:26-27).

It is not impressive pedigree, spiritual or otherwise, that Jesus’ seeks. If the person has a pulse and a pile of sins, that’s a candidate. They are qualified to be guests at God’s banquet.

Finally, don’t misjudge the guests that you and I are. We are the same as everyone else. We are no better. We struggle with the same temptations. We have failed our Lord in the same ways. But we, too have been invited. Jesus specifically sought us, forgave us, and brought us in. Only his invitation qualifies us to be his guests.

Luke 14:16-21 “A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, ‘I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.’ Another said, ‘I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I’m on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.’ Still another said, ‘I just got married, so I can’t come.’ The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry…”

I have been involved in hosting two grand-sized banquets in my lifetime. At each we fed about 150 people. We rented rooms almost as big as my whole house. The food was catered. We had music and dancing. Guests came from all across the country, some from more than a thousand miles away. People stayed and ate and laughed and danced past midnight. One of them was the reception at my own wedding. The second one was the reception at my daughter’s wedding.

We laid out more money for these events than our family brought home in a month, maybe even two. We printed formal invitations and sweated over the guest lists. Who would or would not be able to come? Who would be offended if they didn’t receive an invitation? How many people can we actually afford to feed?

But what if no one had come? I have had to send my regrets when invited to a wedding before. What if there were a perfect storm of bad scheduling and no one could make it? What if we just didn’t rate that high in the priorities of our guests?

There are a number of reasons people decline an invitation. The people in the parable seem to have reasonable excuses. What is wrong with their choices? Why does the host of the banquet get so angry?

There are a number of things that go into the value we place on an invitation. What is being offered? The banquet in the parable is the feast of salvation. This banquet is the forgiveness of our sins, peace with God, the comfort and power that come with faith, life after death, the resurrection of our bodies, and all the eternal joys of heaven. This isn’t some chintzy appetizer plate or cheap slop. It’s all you can eat and gourmet all the way. Compared to eternal freedom from guilt, and pleasures that never end, what are a few farm animals or acres of land?

But we understand the temptation to misjudge the value of the banquet, don’t we? We are tempted to decline God’s invitation to grace and life for much less–a few extra hours of sleep each Sunday, a few fleeting moments of pleasure in someone else’s arms, a few more rounds of golf or casts for fish at the lake, a few more hours at work to make a few more dollars on the next paycheck, a few more sunburns sitting in the bleachers watching the kids show off their athletic ability. There’s nothing wrong with most of these things in and of themselves, any more than there is anything wrong with fields or oxen–until they get in the way of God’s invitation to come home for the feast that never ends.

The Lord put no small amount of effort into preparing that feast. My two family wedding receptions cost thousands of dollars. The Lord sacrificed the life of his one and only Son, he let him die for the sins of the guests he invited to his banquet, to make that banquet happen. Don’t misjudge the value of what is being offered.

And it’s not just about the spread, what the host puts on the table. It’s about the host himself. People didn’t come to our wedding receptions for the culinary experience, or because the entertainment was so good. Believe me, you did not miss that much. They came because they loved us. We invited them, because we loved them, too.

The host in the parable is the God who made you, and everyone and everything you love. He is your Savior. He paid the ultimate price to rescue you, to rescue us, from the most horrible fate you can imagine. Yes, he deserves a spot, he has earned a spot, on our list of priorities, in the treasures of our hearts, even above our sweethearts, our children, or our parents. It’s not prideful or arrogant for him to claim such a place, or expect us to recognize it, when he offers us a place at his banquet.

Deuteronomy 5:12-14 “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work…”

We don’t hear as much about this commandment as some of the others. With so much attention given to what God says about sex or what God says about the taking of life, the third commandment doesn’t get much press. It is worth noting, however, that before the Lord gave us those commandments that govern our relationship with each other, he gave us three commandments that deal with our relationship with him. “Remember the Sabbath Day” is one of them. If more attention were given to keeping this one, then breaking those others wouldn’t be so much of a problem. Let’s take a closer look at just what he is prescribing for us.

Understanding what God was asking of his Old Testament people here is easy. Six days of the week could be spent climbing the corporate ladder, or ploughing the back forty, or doing whatever else it took to pay the bills and put food on the table. But one day a week the work had to stop, and that was Saturday, the seventh day, the Sabbath day. The word Sabbath itself means rest or stopping, and that is exactly what happened on that day. The people rested, just as God prescribed.

That rest wasn’t relief for spinning heads and aching backs alone. This was a day of rest for the soul. The Lord wanted the day to be kept holy. This was a day to be a Sabbath to the Lord. On Saturday ancient Israelites were to direct their attention to God and his gracious gifts for them.

It’s no secret that New Testament Christians don’t use Saturdays the same way today. When Jesus came he fulfilled the Sabbath law for us. The Saturday part of the Sabbath law, the seventh day command, was part of God’s ceremonial law. It was in the same class with commands God gave forbidding people to eat pork or shellfish, or requiring people to offer doves and lambs as sacrifices. The Apostle Paul makes that clear when he says in Colossians 2, “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.” All these things guided the lives of God’s people for a while. They helped prepare them for the coming Savior. They helped them look forward to Jesus’ day.

But once Jesus arrived, they had served their purpose. People were not to be judged by whether they observed these laws, these shadows. The important thing is believing in the One to whom they were all pointing: Jesus Christ. God no longer requires that we make the seventh day our day of rest.

That does not mean that the Lord threw out the whole concept behind the Sabbath Day. Jesus once reminded his disciples and the Pharisees, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” The Sabbath served people. It made sure they paid attention to their Lord, and that was something they needed.

Your God still prescribes plenty of rest for you today, plenty of time spent with him. It isn’t limited to a single day. Jesus invites us, “Come unto me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” He says in another place, in John 6, “Whoever comes to me I will never drive away.” We still find relief from the sickness of sin, from consciences aching with guilt, in the spiritual rest only the Lord can provide.

Jesus gives you the freedom, and the opportunity, to find that rest in his word any time you open your Bible and begin to read. But there remains no better place to find this rest than gathered with God’s people to hear God’s grace preached, and to taste and touch it in Jesus’ Supper. Find your holy day, your “holiday,” of rest at church this week.