Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 2, 2022 | Better Together - Band of Brothers/Sisters

Transcript

January 2, 2022 | Better Together - Band of Brothers/Sisters · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Fine, thank you.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: That was so polite.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just that's great.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it's great to see you here.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I I somehow I had this vision uh as I was at the back of the room a little while ago of uh of the new heavens and new earth and and all sitting around the table to eat and then the uh apple pie being served at the end and uh Jesus coming around and giving some of us you know s dollops of ice cream on top and saying that's because that's because you went to church on January the second when nobody else did, you know, because when it was so cold.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I got text last night, yesterday afternoon, going, we're gonna have service tomorrow, can we call it off or whatever?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And and and you know, honestly, I might have done it, but we have so many Minnesotans and Canadians in in our church, and already they call us, they call me a wuss, you know, for not loving the snow, you know, and and anyway.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So so yeah, we're here and uh thanks for coming.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it's great to see you here.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: We're starting a new series today called Better Together.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's a four-week series.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Alex and I are splitting it because Connor's got a big job.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's gonna get a running start into a really, uh really uh heavy, really uh Bible-based series that he's gonna do.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'll let him tell you about that when time comes, starting January the 30th, the last Sunday of this month.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we have four weeks, and Alex and I are gonna do better together.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And um, sometimes I think better together uh when I'm driving on the highway and and I and I see that POV lane, you know, uh, you know, like when you're in big cities or whatever, and and you're looking at at these people, you know, because you have to have like two or three people, whatever, in your car.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking, yeah, it's it's better together, but I feel like that's kind of unfair.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, like whoever's designing the highway goes, you know what, for those for those people who are socially challenged and lonely and never have any friends, you know, let's just keep them slow in the slow lane, let's reward the people who have friends and her and so forth.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're driving there and you're going slow and you're watching all these people partying, you know, in the car next, you know, on the POV lane, having a good time, which is perhaps a good symbol of what I'm gonna tell you this morning, which is that if you're in a band of brothers or a band of sisters, and I'm gonna encourage you to get intentional about that, then life does go.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Life does go a lot easier.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so let's talk about that.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: It it won't be a long message, and but then we get to celebrate the Lord's table.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um everybody knows there's a need, not just because of COVID, just because of the change in our culture here in America in 1950, only nine of 100 households held just one person, but today 28 of 100 households hold just one person.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I picked up an article, New England Journal of Medicine, uh, in which it started off.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody in the ICU works in an ICU knows what it's like.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Person's brought in, not by family, but by a fire truck or something.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: They're covered with you know dirt or whatever, they're just a mess, and they're sort of half comatose and so forth, and on the form it says uh no family, uh, found in found in home.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so sad because today, commonly, you'll have someone who falls or something else happens, and for a couple of days they just they're sitting in their home.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's in some ways a picture of Western society and and where we've come as far as being isolated.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: So um uh Dr.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Zabardo, Stanford University puts it this way: of know of no more potent killer than isolation, no more destructive influence on physical and mental health than the isolation of you from me and us from them.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so we've come a long way since God put it bluntly in Genesis chapter 2 when he said, It is not good.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Lotov, meaning it is really bad for man to be alone.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this last month, uh someone gave me a book, a little just a little book, which which blew has blown my mind.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the book is called Uh Tribe by Sebastian Junger, just just written this year, on homecoming and belonging.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I discovered something this month that I had never even heard before and could not even imagine being true, but uh but but uh let me let me just read part of it.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: A surprising number, so it goes back to the to the early days of America, 1600s, pilgrims, you know, the settlers and so forth, 1700s, you know, the settlements that we had and so forth, and the contrast between English settlements and towns and Indian tribes.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: A surprising number of Americans, mostly men, wound up joining Indian society rather than staying in their own.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: This became a really, a real shock to people in the early days of our country.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as they were settling from, you know, in the east and then slowly moving to the west, and you had thousands upon thousands of miles of unsettled wilderness, and you had Indian tribes, there was savagery, there was hardship, and so forth, and then to their surprise, they would find it time and again that especially men would leave the English society, the organizing society, and go join a tribe.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: They emulated Indians, speaking of these people.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: They married them, they were adopted by them, and on some occasions even fought alongside them.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never heard this before.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the opposite almost never happened.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Indians almost never ran away to join white society.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Immigration always seemed to go from the civilized to the tribal, and it left Western thinkers flummoxed to explain such an apparent rejection of their society.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Benjamin Franklin, in a personal letter to a friend in the mid-1700s, wrote, even if an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our customs, if he goes to see his relatives and makes one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, white captives who were liberated in those days from the Indians were quick to return.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Benjamin Franklin again, though ransomed by their friends and treated with all tenderness, yet soon they became disgusted with our manner of life.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And they take the first good opportunity of escaping into the woods.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I was shocked, and I even walking from this building over to the other building, you know, this morning and thinking, why would anyone ever choose to go live in such cold, you know, where you have to have a fire out there, but otherwise you're, you know, you're wrapping up, living in a teepee or whatever.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And why would you do that rather than live in an English settlement where you have log cabins and you have fires and you can be protected from the cold?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Why, why, why would that be?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting that a Frenchman who came over, immigrated to America, a well-known, a well-known writer named Krev Kerr, Hector Krev Kerr in 1782, wrote this: Thousands of Europeans have become Indians, not even one Indian has become European.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: There must be something in their social bond uniquely captivating and far superior to anything we can boast of.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that's something I will suggest to you today is something that God refers to in Genesis 2 when he says it's not good to be for man to be alone.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: That is, that there's a band of brothers and a band of sisters that we are all meant to have, that we are meant to connect with people, and that internal thing is far more important to us.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: God's made that far more important to us in the end than the external things of amassing property and wealth.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: I just listed some of the contrasts, there are many, many others.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the issue and the issue of wealth, the Indian tribes, of course, had very little and everything was shared, whereas in the English town, you would accumulate, you would cut down logs, you would grow your place, and you would even back then get into this cycle of hard work, and then uh you'd have financial obligations, and then you'd have to work to satisfy those.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Contrast in daily life, Indian tribe full of hardships, both food and cold and so forth.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: But the English town would offer its goal was protection from hardships and comfort.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: The social priority in an Indian tribe, two things, especially courage and loyalty, be loyal to the tribe.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: That was all important.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and but in the English town is to work and to be productive.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so you as you draw that forward to today, you begin to understand if you multiply that by a thousand times, that's how when you that's how when you come up to today in the West, as versus when you go to the third world countries, where everybody's out roaming around and it's friendly and you have bands of brothers and bands of sisters in America.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you people we live in our houses and don't even oftentimes know our neighbors, don't get together with them.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: We are all about work and all about being productive and all about then our financial obligations, and as a result, our rates of depression are eight times as high as people in third world countries.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I was reading a study here recently that uh Mexicans born in Mexico but then come to America contrasted with Mexicans who have immigrated, were born in America, that nine times as many Mexicans born in America have suffered oppression as those who were born in Mexico.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, uh uh I just want to talk about this and take you to a text in Ecclesiastes chapter four, famous text, verses nine through twelve.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Share with you a little about that, uh, tell you a story or two, and then we'll take the Lord's table.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: This text is famous, you've heard of it.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: It begins two are better than one, and it ends a chord of three strands, is not quickly broken.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's an accident.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think the text deliberately, the writer deliberately has a beautiful text where he has a number at the front and number at the back.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: The number at the beginning is two, and the number at the end is three.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: It reminds you of the stair-step numbers throughout the wisdom literature.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: What he's basically saying is that two are good, but three is even better.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a rope of, you can see that a rope of three stair strands is hard.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: It would be hard to break.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: So uh let me talk to you about that.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go to that most important verse there.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: A court of three strands is not quickly broken.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: The three individuals there.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And in a war, of course, and in the military, you know, it's absolutely critical that you have people you can rely on.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, as I was talking over this first with Jim Friel, uh, who can make it today, 99 years old, it got injured landing on Iwo Jima.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you know that, World War II, one of our, one of my, just a great man in our in our congregation, he made this comment.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: He said, This court of three strands, this is the principle that makes Marines Marines, he said.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: You always have a man on your right and one on your left.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're never alone.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: A chord of three strands.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And and we know that.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: You you should have, I hope you have a couple of friends.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to recommend to you at the end that you sit down with a pen or pencil today and you write down, put your name there, and then add two people.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Where are your cords of three strands in your life?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe in your family, maybe here at church, maybe in a small group.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because those, that's what you and I need, three firefighters going together.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Here, uh Cliff Barrows and Billy Graham and George, George Beverly Shea, Billy Graham and Cliff Barrows, that team was so much stronger because they were a cord of three strands.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, I don't know if any of you, we some of our people, uh, I know because I've I've done those weddings, uh, used this as their wedding verse, right?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: And some of them use uh the cord of three strands.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've ever seen that, where you have a white rope that stands for the bride, and the uh purp the dark blue or purple, which stands, which is the husband.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have the gold strand, which is God's strand.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then at the end of the service, what happens is that the bride and the groom take this and they braid it.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: They braid it together, and you end up with that cord of three strands.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And as I say, if you have a husband and you have a wife, and you are both serving God, then in a sense, what you're saying is when our back as a couple is against the wall, we will not fear, for God is our wall, and you are a cord of three strands.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of that is based upon a principle that comes from the very heart of the universe.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: That is, before he created the universe, God is a three-in-one.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: He is a Trinity, Father is God, Son is God, Holy Spirit is God, three persons a three-in-one.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is the ultimate court of three strands, and our entire universe is based upon this three-in-one.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: So uh let me share with you um uh three things that this is saying, because it starts two are better than one, because he says they have a good return for their labor, and then he goes on to explain what is the good return, what's the advantage of being together, right?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: What's the reward for hanging together?
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the first thing he says is if either of them falls down, one can help the other up, but pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I take it that what he's saying is better, they're better together because when you fall, someone is there to help you up.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you've you've known that.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, of course, it's literal.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: When you trip and and really fall, someone is there to help you up.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: But oftentimes, of course, it's it's not literal, it's it's something, you know, it's it's it's something, you know, there's all uh all kinds of falling, all kinds of embarrassment and uh.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll explain that, I'll explain uh my embarrassment first service.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: But so um Connor, wonderful preacher, so happy.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but he he will often, or at least used to often, ask me this, Paul, after first service, can you know, any tips?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then he'd say, because he's very humble, he'd go, you know, I really blew this, you know.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: I I really like, and the thing is, and I always would try to encourage him when he would follow, I'd say, you know, it's not that bad.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: My favorite was the time, remember he had a bad slide, you know, or something like that, and he stood and he did you see that when he goes like that, he blocks it.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I just I love that.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And and so he asked me, you know, in between, he says, Wow, well, that was really that was just really awful.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And do you have any advice?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I said my advice is to do the same thing exactly again.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: That boo-boo was just priceless.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I I I assume that's why he's no longer asking my advice between services.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: But um so the funny thing was in first service, funny thing is in first service, I'm telling that story, but fully half of my slides didn't come up in first service.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're just tubed out, and I just couldn't stop laughing.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, this is this is karma, this is God just punishing me for for making fun of Connor.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, but there's all kinds of falling, right?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: And and and you know when you've really blown it, you know who's in your band of sisters or band of brothers because they come and they help you up and they get you back to where to where you want to be and where you where you need to be.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: In the Bible, of course, you have this example of uh of a daughter-in-law and a mother-in-law.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: The mother-in-law is Naomi.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: And she was not a lovable person.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, remember she got so mad, she said, don't call me Naomi, call me bitter, call me bar.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: She was a bitter woman, she was bitter at God, she was bitter at everyone else, her husband had died, her sons had died, and so forth.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: But she had a daughter-in-law.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Her daughter-in-law named Ruth was, you know, part of her band, and Ruth came there, and Ruth gave up her home in Moab and went with Naomi and lifted her up and carried her basically the rest of her life.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Naomi had Ruth.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have a band of brothers or band of sisters and you fall, someone will be there to help you up.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Second illustration is if two of them lie down, if two lie down together, they'll keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I'm reminded of the fact that, oh, this sounds so sexist.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: But isn't it true that every woman in the world and every girl has cold feet, you know, at night and needs them warmed up?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: I remember Ageil every single night, daddy, daddy.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so um there's an advantage in having more than one person because when you're cold, you'll have someone to put their arms around you and keep you warm.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then not just literally, right?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because oftentimes we're out in the cold.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: How about remember when when Saul was out in the cold, he'd he'd come to Christ, he would later be Paul, and they wouldn't accept him into the church because they're afraid of him, because he'd killed so many Christians.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it took one man, it took Barnabas, who ended up being his band of brothers, took Barnabas coming, Barnabas, the main benefactor of the early church, so everybody loved him and trusted him.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And he took Saul under his wing and he introduced him to everybody and said, Accept him as you would me.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that that's what Barnabas did for Saul, who would later be Paul.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: He warmed him, he brought him into the warmth and into the light of early Christian fellowship.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: So uh we're better together because when you're cold, someone warms you up.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: And third, though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: If someone attacks you and people are attacking us all the time, then someone comes to your aid.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if if you're one of your band of sisters or band of brothers is standing around and someone slanders you or makes fun of you behind your back, you know, they say, da-da-da, then that person, you know they're they're on your side because they'll they'll say, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold it.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's, you know, you can't call them, you can't say that.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's just not true.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's mean.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: You're being mean, you're being rude.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Stop that.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: And you need people like that who will defend you.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Moses needed people like that.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so he had, you know, when they were fighting in Exodus 17 against the Amorites, and so he had Aaron and her would lift up his arms.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: There was a cord of three strands right there.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: They'd lift up his arms and defend him.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: How about David?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: David had Jonathan, right?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Who was attacking David?
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Jonathan's father, King Saul, trying to kill him.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And Jonathan risked his own, certainly risked the throne, and by saying, Dad, stop it! Stop it, David.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: David is the Lord's anointed.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Stop trying to kill my best friend.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're better together because when you're attacked, you'll have someone to back you up.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the three really clear illustrations.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: So someone's there to back you up, someone's there to warm you up, someone's there to lift you up when you fall.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: And as a result, you're abandoned brothers.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: So let me just tell you one story every time it comes Christmas time.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Melody and I will often sit around and remind ourselves of a story that illustrates all three of these because we were, that first Christmas of our marriage, we were very, very cold.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: We were broken down, we'd failed, and and we felt, I felt attacked because the next morning I was supposed to be here at church.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: And this was early on.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: We only had one service back then, 11 o'clock.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is 1902, you know, something long, long time ago.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so we'd been down in Dallas, Melody's mother, and she's Melody was 19 years old.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: We'd been married five months.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was 27.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so the day before, Saturday, December 23rd, we started driving north.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Roads were bad, really cold, snowy.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we're driving, you know, my little my little VW bug, which was then ours, VW bug, little stick shift on the floor, and all she yells at me, I'm falling asleep in the passenger side.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: She yells at me about 15 miles this side of El Dorado, Kansas.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: She says, I've lost power, I've lost power.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Sure enough, so we drift over to the side of the road, and we have no power.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: I have no power.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what to do.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: So forth.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I get out and I hitchhike uh 15 miles to El Dorado, and I make some thank God for.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Cell phones nowadays, right?
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: We had no cell phones back then because, like I said, it was 1902.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, so I I call her dad down in Dallas, but he can't do anything.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I called, and I think there's this couple.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: We haven't been at Topeka Bible church very long, but there's this couple who've been friendly and so forth.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I call them and they jumped at it.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is on December 23rd, Saturday, 5:30 in the evening.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's getting dark already.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so they start driving south, and I hitchhike back, and you know, we're in that little car, and you know, we're sort of leaning over, trying to keep each other warm, but we're freezing, and and it's just, it's just, it's just horrible, you know, in some ways.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it's an adventure, but it was uh not a great adventure.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, they arrive and try to fix the car, you know, the husband and wife, and he tries to fix it, but we can't fix it.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Something electrical has gone, and by the time all of that happens, it's so late we end up, you know, uh going down in his car back down to El Doredo, getting a hotel room and sleeping from one till six in the morning, and you know, starting back up north to Topeka, because I got to get here in time to preach.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a Sunday school class, what I call a guy named Norm Allen, one of our missionaries, and say, would you take my Sunday school class at 9.30?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so anyway, we get up here and it's just, it's just crazy, but I'll never forget how shivering with cold, when that little pickup, uh Honda pickup, whatever, stopped by our car down there in snowy, frigid southern Kansas, getting into that little pickup where it was so warm.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then being in that warm car all the way up and feeling, you know, embraced by their affection and by their kindness, by the fact they were helping us up.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the next afternoon after preaching, he and I drove down and we uh lugged that car, the dead car, all the way back up here.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: When you fall, your band of brothers, band of sisters help you up.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: When you're cold, they warm you up.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: When you feel attacked, they back you up.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: So uh we remind ourselves of that story and we thank God for that couple.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Band of brothers, it's interesting.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've seen this, it's a wonderful sort of TV series, World War II.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Even though if you read, by the way, biography of George Washington, this phrase came from George Washington, who perhaps looking at Indian tribes, is the one who said, unlike British troops, I want all of our military men, I want all of us to be a band of brothers.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: I want us to be that close to each other.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that phrase kept on in the midst of our military for hundreds of years, hundreds of years.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: I would suggest that what God wants you to have and for me to have is to be part of bands of brothers and bands of sisters.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I would encourage you, encourage you sometime today, take pen, take pencil, take a piece of paper, or write names, put your name down first, and then put names on either side.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe inside your family, the two people who will defend you against other members of your family or who will warm you up when you're cold or help you when you get down.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe people in your Bible study, other people, perhaps in neighborhood at work.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is, I think, something that's really important.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: Really important.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: So let's pray and then we'll take the Lord's table.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, thank you for the reminder of how important connection is.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: How important it is that we have vital friends.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Help us not to be extrinsic, external people whose main concern is accumulating more and advancing and getting up higher on the ladder.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Help our main concern to be intrinsic, uh the soul, the spirit, relationships, our friends, our family.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, so that we can be more like you and the three in one that is you.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's in your son's name we pray.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.