Propitiation/Expiation - From Wrath to Resurrection - Sermons - JT English - 9.20.26

JT English (0:03)

Amen, man, how fun was that? Did you get to be here last week? Holy cow, I've been in ministry about 20 years, and I've never experienced a Sunday like we experienced last Sunday. I hope you had the chance to be here, but man, it was just such, such, such a great moment in the life of our church, in the life of our community, and for many of you, 102 people walking into the waters of baptism declaring the faithless of King Jesus. Amen. I also want to just say thanks to all of you who helped it come together. I mean, that's an all hands on deck, not just day, but like week. And so thanks to all of you who served in a number of different ways. That's just the church being a church. And man, I'm just just so thankful. If I haven't had a chance to meet you yet, let me just say hi. My name is JT. I do work here. I've not been here for the last 12 weeks. I've been on sabbatical. But man, I just want to tell you a couple of things before we jump in. And by the way, if you have a Bible, I want you to open to Romans 3 as you're turning there. Let me just give you some announcements. I've been on a 12 week little sabbatical that our elders give me every six years to just spend some time away, to be with the Lord, to be with my family. And I just want to tell you how thankful I am for elders who love me and love our church, love my kids, love my wife. And just, we are so thankful. We didn't have, at our member meeting here in a few weeks, I'll share a bit more about some of the things I felt like God taught me during my sabbatical. That's not for us to do right now. I just want to say thank you for the gift of time. To get time with my son, he's in here right now, so I can't look at him because I'll start crying. And my wife's in here. It was just a gift. Like it wasn't, we didn't have like a spiritual high or a mountaintop experience. It was just time together. A gift of being like an Arvada, Uber dad. Like I just drove my kids everywhere to sports practices and games and just got some really, really, really sweet time together that you can't capture. You can't manufacture time. So just want to say thank you for keeping me healthy, my family healthy, my wife healthy. It was really, really a big gift. And I know that that doesn't just come as something like you receive. It comes at a cost for people. That came at a cost for our staff, having to pick up the slack in some specific ways. I specifically want to say thanks to the men who faithfully preached God's word this summer. Didn't they just do a great job? Josh, Colin, Matt, Lake and others. Just so, so thankful. One of the things I prayed when I came here six years ago to be your pastor is just, I love preaching. I feel called to preach. And if you guys will let me keep doing it, I'm glad I keep doing it. But like I also love other men doing it. I want to have a really, really deep bench at Storyline of men who can faithfully proclaim the word of God to us. And so we know that it's the word of God that does the power, not any, any specific man. And so I think that was on display this summer, which I'm so thankful for. I also want to just say thanks to the church family for being awesome. Like you guys are just like, I missed you guys so much. This is when you say it back. No, I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. I just missed y'all. It's just we planned to not be here a lot. We went to a few other churches, other gospel center churches up and down the front range. You just had a delight being there. But each week we felt like we were absent from our church family. So thanks for being our church family and loving us. I delight in being a member here more than I delight in being the pastor here. If I just lived in Arvada and wasn't in ministry, this is where I would happily be a member and joyfully just be a brother in ministry with you. So just want to say thanks for that. I also want to highlight, I know that there was a big transition for our team. One of my first hires when I got here was Matt Powell. Weren't Matt and Courtney just such a gift to our church family, and I want to celebrate them. They were a real gift. Matt let me know before I went on sabbatical that this was a possibility, and so we kind of walked through some of those details. But even just being here, man, I miss them. They did such a great job. But I also want to highlight for us, how awesome is it to have a team that's been cultivated of volunteers leading us in worship? This is men and women who have jobs, who are their moms or dads, some of them grandparents. I'm like, they just love leading us in worship. And so I just want to celebrate, like that's what the church is. This isn't just paid vocational staff members. It's just, as Paul would use us in the New Testament, it's a body of believers gathering together to use their gifts. So I just want to say thanks to a team for stepping into some spaces where we had some real need and showing us who King Jesus is. Amen? Amen. So yeah, let's celebrate that.