Christ the King Sermons

Christ the King Sermons is a ministry of Christ the King Presbyterian Church located in Raleigh, North Carolina. CTK is a community rooted in the depth of the gospel, refined by hard conversations, fueled by meaningful relationships, and committed to redemptive work in Raleigh.

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Good morning. You may have a seat. Welcome again to Christ the King. My name is Paul Deschamps. If we haven't met, I'm one of the pastors here. And as we prepare to turn our attention to God's word, I'm excited to invite Robbie Hinton who's going to be preaching for us this morning.

By way of brief introduction for Robbie, I think of all of his accolades, his most significant is that he is the husband to Ann Mara. Robbie's got a great, deep history of ministry and leading people to Jesus. He spent time with RUF staff, was a church planter and pastor. Currently, he is leading as the headmaster at Cary Christian School, and he is also one of our elders here at CTK. So we're very thankful for Robbie and all of his many capacities, and really thankful for you to come and preach this morning. So welcome.

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Alright, if you'd stand with me now and let's read together God's word from John chapter two.

On the third day, there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee. And the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the marriage with his disciples. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine." And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come." His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."

Now six stone jars were standing there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding 20 or 30 gallons. Jesus said to them, "Fill the jars with water," and they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, "Now draw some out and take it." So they took it.

When the steward of the feast tasted the water now become wine and did not know where it came from—though the servants who had drawn the water knew—the steward of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, "Every man serves the good wine first, and when men have drunk freely, then the poor wine. You have kept the good wine until now."

This is the first of his signs Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested his glory, and his disciples believed in him. After this, he went down to Capernaum with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and there they stayed for a few days. — John 2:1-12

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Let us pray together. Oh Lord our God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the beauty of being able to come together to worship you and to hear from your word. Lord, we do pray that we will hear more than the babbling of a man, but Lord, we pray this morning that we will hear your Holy Spirit and that you will speak to us and apply these words to our heart. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

You may be seated.

John's Gospel and the Larger Story

This is an interesting passage. And to prepare for it, let's go through a few points of interest with the gospel of John as a whole. I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but there are lots of parallels with John and the book of Genesis and the book of Revelation.

First of all, in the book of Genesis, it begins where? "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." And then in John chapter one, where does John begin? He begins with creation.

Second, as Paul talked about last week, John goes to the calling of the disciples where he calls individual men unto him, which goes back to Genesis where God creates the one man and calls him to him in fellowship.

Third, back in the book of Genesis, God takes that man and he gives him to a woman in marriage, and then he takes them to a feast. And then we come to the gospel of John where God takes the men that he has called to know him, and he takes them to a wedding where a man is being given to a woman, and then they all feast together.

And of course, there are parallels with this in the book of Revelation where we have the new heavens and the new earth coming down. And then we have us going to our redeemer and meeting him and seeing him and becoming like him. And then we have this idea that we're brought to a wedding—the church's wedding with the savior, with Christ—and we become his and his alone. And then finally, we go to the great feast where all creation culminates at the marriage feast in heaven.

This is the idea. If you're looking up this idea theologically, people might talk about this as covenant theology. They might talk about this as the creation ordinances and how they play out throughout scripture. I would recommend you think of the idea that it's like this picture of a smaller story that, when we have these small moments in life like marriage and feasting, there's this idea that there's a larger story going on.

In this passage right here in John chapter two at the marriage feast, we're getting this picture that there's this larger story of redemption. This idea of God creating his people, God giving his people life here on Earth, redeeming His people, and then ultimately culminating with Him taking us up into heaven into our great redemption in the end. It's this idea of the smaller story in light of the larger story.

So with that in mind, let's take a look at John chapter two. First, we come to our first point: this idea of the marriage. Why does Jesus go to a wedding?

Now to get this, we look at this comment, this strange comment that Jesus has with his mother. We don't have many encounters with Jesus and his mother in the Bible. And of course, it is Mother's Day, so we probably ought to bring out a little bit about Jesus and his mother here.

First of all, she comes to him with a statement: "Hey, they've run out of wine." It feels a little gossipy, feels a little casual. Maybe she's just saying—who knows why she's saying this—but she brings this up to Jesus: they're about to run out of wine. Things are about to get bad around here.

And then Jesus says something you never say to your mother. He goes, "Oh, woman." You know, it's Mother's Day. Maybe you should look at your mother right now for the young people in here and go, "Oh, woman. What do you have to do with me?" Don't do that. Unless, of course, you were going to prepare the feast afterwards like Jesus did, and then maybe you'll get away with it.

But this is a strange statement for Jesus to look at his mother. It's strange today. It was strange then. And so he gives us this strange statement, and then he says, "This is not my time."

And then the very next thing she does is this: she leaves him, goes to the servants, and says, "Whatever he says, do it."

Now this is a beautiful aspect. I think that's all that's said in the story. I know the book The Chosen or the movie The Chosen adds a lot more to it, but I think it's that small because I have a mother, and I know she reads my mind. I know how mothers and sons interact. That's all it was. She says a casual comment. He says this abrupt statement, and she gets exactly what he's saying.

So what's he saying when he says to her, "This is not my time?"

I think we have this picture that when she comes to him, she realizes he's at this wedding, but he's really not there. His mind is somewhere else. His mind is in this other place because he can't help but be in this other place when he's at this wedding. He's at his wedding. He's at the time when it's gonna be his time—when all creation ends, when all of life ends at this culminating moment in Revelation where the bride is brought to him, and he meets his beloved, the church, and they become one in heaven.

I think there's this idea: when he's thinking about his time, he's thinking about the larger story when he's in the middle of the smaller story. And the moment he says that, she gets it. And she realizes that he is not gonna let this moment go to waste. That this moment, he's gonna draw out and pull us up to the larger story.

Why a Wedding?

Now again, why is it that he looks at a wedding and says, "This is the place where I'm gonna teach you the first place I'm gonna teach the world about the larger story"?

I think that's because, again, that's what God has always been doing. This is the creation ordinance. When God comes into the world, the first thing he did after he created the man and came to know the man—as Paul talked to us about last week when we became known by God—he then takes us and gives us to another in marriage. All of creation.

And here's the point I think he's making in this idea of going to a wedding, turning water into wine at the wedding, and making this his first public miracle: I think what he's saying is that marriage is at the center of all culture. Or maybe more than that, intimacy is at the center of all culture.

Now what's it mean that intimacy or marriage is at the center of all culture? I think to understand this, we have to go back to Song of Solomon. You don't hear that mentioned a whole lot in church—Song of Solomon. And you think about the early chapters of Song of Solomon where you have the bride and groom giving all these weird accolades to one another, and they're saying how sweet they are and he's comparing her to a goat, comparing her body parts to deer and her teeth to weird objects.

And I love when sometimes preachers will take this and will say, "Well, you know, in ancient Near Eastern cultures, those would have actually been words of praise." That's not true. Never would that have been a word of praise.

You see, if you want to understand what's going on in Song of Solomon, what we need is—I bet you here in the congregation right here, we have an engaged couple. We have people who are about to get married. They're in love. They're waiting for their wedding day, and they're thinking about that. If one of our engaged couples would stand up and read the text that they send to each other late at night when they're not together—and, of course, you wouldn't do that. Why? Because it'd be embarrassing because you send weird text to each other. This is what you know, this is the idea we learned in Bambi when you get Twitter pated—you do weird things, and you do silly things because intimacy is so disturbing. It takes a wise, calm man, and it makes a fool out of him.

And so if your buddies—you know, Solomon's buddies would have saw the things he was saying to his beloved, they would have went, "Dude, you've lost your mind. That is just weird." And the same thing if they saw any young couples' intimate words back to one another, they'd say, "This is crazy. You've lost your mind."

Now, of course, what we see if we carry on in Song of Solomon, it actually gets worse after they're married and after they experience intimacy of marriage. You go to Song of Solomon chapter five. There is this bizarre scene where the bridegroom is coming back to the bride. He comes in, he anxiously knocks on her door to see her again, wanting to be in the room with her. And she doesn't come running to the door. Every man comes home at night thinking his wife's gonna come running to the door. He knocks on the door, and she doesn't come. So he goes away and leaves.

Now, of course, when we hear her side of the story, we hear what she's doing. He knocks on the door, and what does she realize? "I've been laying in bed. My hair's messed up. I don't smell as good as I should." So she gets up instead of running to the door. She runs to get ready, and she's fixing her hair, and she's getting all beautiful and ready, and she's at myrrh owner—and I don't know what that means—but she goes to the door and for some reason she can't work the door handle. And by the time she gets it open, she realizes he's gone.

Now this is the first argument in marriage. And if you've ever done marriage counseling with a young early married couple, you realize their arguments are ridiculous. They're weird. They're just bizarre. And why are they bizarre? Because they're struggling with intimacy, and intimacy makes fools of us all.

Why God Places Marriage at the Center

Now why do we need to know this? Because in Song of Solomon chapter five, something else happens. As soon as she realizes he's gone—he's gone off sulking in his shame, feeling unloved and feeling unwanted. And she, at this moment, could have went back and started sulking in her shame. She could have went back and been upset. "Why did he leave? He must not have really wanted to be here." But instead, she walks out of the bedroom, she runs into the city, and she starts chanting, "Where are you? Where are you?"

Those very same words that God says when he comes into the garden.

Where are you? — Genesis 3

Every man enters into the world longing for someone who's looking for him, who's gonna cry out to him, "Where are you?" Every woman enters into the world longing for someone who's looking for them, who's gonna cry out to them, "Where are you?"

Now so when God comes to a wedding, and in this way, both at creation and in the introduction to the gospel and in redemption when we get to Revelation—when he places marriage at the center of all three of these great acts, he's placing it at the center of culture. What I think he's doing is he's placing intimacy at the center of culture.

And so therefore, if we're gonna understand what God wants us to understand, we have to come to understand intimacy. And intimacy is hard. It's brutal. It's embarrassing. You know, Paul last week talked to us about the beauty of being known by God and us knowing God. And it culminated in this beautiful story he talked about—when he was a teenager, when it was the first time he came to know God, and he knew that he was known by God. That was a beautiful story.

Well, then what God does is he takes us to a wedding where a man is gonna become known by a woman, and a woman's gonna be known by a man, and they're gonna know each other. Two sinners, two fallen creatures are gonna come to know each other and become intimate with one another. Intimacy is an embarrassing moment of vulnerability that we get to live our whole lives. And every moment, we're gonna be tempted to run from the other and hide. But the most beautiful part of marriage is not the idea that we're strong enough to stay and face intimacy, but is it—someone's coming and looking for us and saying, "Where are you?" and trying to bring us back?

Here's my advice on marriage real quick before we go on to point number two.

It's a couple of bits of advice. First of all, don't ever try to get used to intimacy. You never will. You can't. Marriage is too beautiful. Intimacy is too great. It's too wonderful. You're getting to know another image bearer physically. You're getting to know them spiritually. You're getting to know them emotionally. Don't ever think you're gonna get used to it. It's too wonderful, but it's also too vulnerable and too sad.

I mean, yes, first they get to know all your warts, all your blemishes, and then they get to know how you spend money. They get to know how you waste money, how you blow money. They get to know how frugal you are and how ridiculous you are on every penny that you're going to spend or not spend. They get to know how poor you are at making money and how bad it is. And that whole vow made about "in richer and poorer," it becomes an embarrassing reality as you have to look at your wife and say there's more month than money. Or you have to look at your spouse and say, "Can't make it work this month."

And then as you get older, you think struggling with money—how about struggling with old age together? When you're in sickness and in health, there's nothing more embarrassing than, you know, the older man and your body is failing. You're no longer the guy that she fell in love with in college, the one she first saw. But she gets to be there and he gets to be there as even your health fails. There's that moment of vulnerability and weakness when we understand the beauty of marriage.

You will either choose to become numb to it and not see the beauty of it and ignore it. You will choose to run and hide from it, or you'll become accustomed to it. And what are you becoming accustomed to? Not just this knowing someone else, not just this becoming known by them, but this idea that someone, when you run and hide, when you find yourself in your shame, they're gonna come after you and start looking for you. And they're gonna be crying out like the lady in Song of Solomon does, "Where are you now? Why are you hiding from me?" And they bring you out of whatever shame you're dealing with, whatever frustration you're dealing with, and they bring you back into the intimacy of the beauty of marriage.

Why a Feast?

Now more on this in a minute, but we'll go to our second point here. So we had why a marriage, but now why a feast? Why does Jesus turn water into wine? To get this, we look at the comment from the steward. And the steward looks up and he says, "You've saved the best wine for last." Most people choose—they start off with great wine. When everybody's a little tipsy, they bring out the weaker wine. But you did this in opposite.

You know, this is the idea. If you invite me and one of our elders, Tom Shoup, to come to your wedding or your house, I'm gonna bring—I'm just gonna be honest with you. It's coming from Trader Joe's, and that's what it's gonna be. Tom is gonna come, and if you don't know Tom, you should invite him over and ask him to bring the wine. He's gonna bring it from Italy with a story of how he traveled to Italy and chose that wine specifically for you. And you're gonna taste and go, "Yeah, this is different than that Trader Joe's wine Robbie brought over and grabbed as he was coming."

And so this is this moment where what Jesus is doing is he's reversing this and he's giving them really good wine. Why? Because again, this is what God always does. Think about this. Every time God shows up in the Bible, what does he do? He creates a feast.

I mean, when he meets Adam and Eve in the garden, what's he do? He puts them in the garden and says, "Eat all you want. Eat and eat and eat all the fruit except this one fruit, but the rest of it, eat it. Eat as much as you want."

When he shows up to Noah after the flood and he's destroyed all of creation, now he's about to restore and rebuild creation and he gives Noah the Noaic covenant and all the new rules of the Noaic covenant, all the new blessings of the Noaic covenant. And then he says to him, "What does he say to Noah? Now you can eat meat." He said steak, filet mignon. That's yours now and you can enjoy it.

Think about this. When God comes in the book of Exodus and he confirms the covenant with the Israelites and they're sitting up on the mountain, he calls the elders up to him. And what does he do with them? He literally, in some kind of pre-incarnate form, physical form, sits down at the table with them and eats a meal with them.

Now think about this. After the Holy Spirit comes in the book of Acts and Peter has his revelation explaining to him what it means that the Holy Spirit has come, and now we're in this new age after the coming of Christ, and what does he get in that vision?

He gets this idea that not only are we going into the uttermost parts of the world—that's very important there, to world missions—but he also gets in this vision that now he can eat bacon. I mean, this is a Jewish man. What is he told? He can come out and he can enjoy pork. He can feast upon your smoked Boston butt. He can eat ribs. He can eat bacon. This is a beautiful thing that he can feast.

So every time God shows up, we have a feast, and the food is rich and the wine keeps pouring, and it never stops. Why is this? Well, if you don't know, then you need to come to my mother's house. I wish I was there, to be honest, on Mother's Day.

If you've ever come and she would serve you a meal, I promise you, it's better than your mom's meal. And here's the beauty of who my mom is. She was raised by a mom who's a great cook—she had to cook country: turnip greens, collard greens, sweet tea, all of that. And it may not sound good to you, but you're wrong—it's very good.

Then she married a young man from Baton Rouge and she learned how to cook Cajun food. And then they moved to Chicago and Memphis, and they learned how to cook in those places. Then San Francisco, and the food when she was in San Francisco, that's when it took on a whole new element. And then when they came to retire, they went back to the small town—this collard green and sweet tea town that she grew up in—and she started making meals for my family.

It was this unbelievable moment where I can remember my grandfather, who's now passed. He would come to the table and he would always be like, "Deb, you didn't need to do this. Collard greens and turnip greens, cornbread and sweet tea, that's all we ever needed." And grandma, she would let him have it. She'd go, "Why did you use so much butter? Margarine would have just been fine. You wasted way too much money on this meal."

And my uncle Kevin, he would always go, "You know, Dad, peanut butter and jelly would have been just fine with me." And that was always funny until one day, one meal, she made this beautiful prime rib. She'd been practicing all year on how to make the prime rib just perfect. And we were all getting ready to eat that, and she placed the peanut butter and jelly sandwich in front of Kevin. And he didn't know if he was actually going to get the prime rib.

But this is his idea—if you've never gotten this, this is what feasting is all about. This is why Christianity is this idea that when God shows up, a meal comes out, and the food is rich, and the wine keeps flowing, and it never stops. It's this idea—this beautiful feast that we're invited in to share in, this intimacy that God has brought into the world.

What It Means to Be Invited to a Feast

So what's this mean that we're invited to a feast? Well, I think it has something to do with church. We have good bread here, and I love the fact that we have good bread from the farm that we serve at our church. And we have good wine that we get to enjoy together. And the idea is it's supposed to be a feast.

We've got Danny up here. He's an extraordinary worship leader. He leads us. I noticed he finally gave up on the idea that we would respond to the organ and start singing. This morning, he finally just stopped and says, "Okay. Stand and sing." For a long time, he was just going to start playing the organ, and he thought we would stop talking and start singing, and we didn't do it. But Danny is so gifted and amazing.

And then you've got Jeff, who is, in my opinion, the best preacher here in town. And when you first come to this church, I know what you thought. You thought what I thought: "Why are they here?" And you look around at the people, you look around at us, and you're like, "Don't they know there's better congregations than these people? Don't they know that they could do better than us?"

And you just look at it and you go, "This doesn't seem to fit. You've got this great feast, and you've got these ordinary people. What's going on here?"

And of course, the epitome of all of this is James Sutton. You know, when he stands up and tells his jokes. Right? The first time you heard his joke, I bet you did just what I did. You went, "Why in the world do they let this guy up in front of people?"

And then this is why Jeff will tell you—if he was here, if you're visiting today, you need to come six times. Because what's going to happen the second time you hear one of James' jokes is you're going to hear the joke and you're going to think that was bad. But then you're going to hear that everyone else is laughing. You're going to go, "They think that's funny."

And then the third time you hear one of his jokes when you come back, you realize you thought it was funny. And by the fourth time, you can't help but laugh out loud. And the fifth time, if he doesn't make a joke, you're like, did I even go to church? Did this even happen? Maybe we didn't worship God today. I didn't hear a joke.

This is the idea: our church, we're like if you're used to these happy shiny people churches where people go and everybody looks pretty and they've got everything figured out, that's not us. We're kind of like the George Costanza church. The first time you meet us, you're like, no. No. No. No. No. But about the sixth time, you're gonna be like, I can be one of these people.

Why is that? Because the beauty of this church is this is a church who knows how to feast together. We know how to worship together. We're not perfect, and we don't pretend to be worshiped. This is what I love about each of you, and I thank you for this: this is not a place where people pretend. This is a place where we're very comfortable with what's going on in a smaller story, and even we can see the larger story in light of this.

If you're having a hard time coming to church, you're having a hard time loving the people that are around you. We were studying this morning in Sunday school why people are walking out of the church. I think they're walking out the church for two reasons. I think one of the reasons is churches stop being church. They stop being intimate places for broken people to come together, and they started being places where people could pretend to be perfect. They stopped being places of intimacy. They started being political houses where we could learn how to gain power, how to gain riches in this world, and they stopped being this place where broken people can become known by other broken people, and they could come to know other broken people.

And the beauty of church is not when someone comes up to you and applauds you and tells you how great you are. The beauty of church is when somebody comes up and says, hey, where are you? Where have you been? Why are you hiding? And the moment you know the beauty of that question, you'll understand the beauty of what church is about.

Why Glory?

Our third point: the idea of why marriage, why a feast. Now the third point, why glory? When the disciples walk away from this wedding, they have a strange comment. You expect them to say after seeing the first miracle, wow, they're amazed with the power of Christ. That's not what they say. Because we expected the Messiah to come and set them free from the Romans. We expect Christ to come and set us free from the crazy culture we're in or whatever, but they don't walk away and say they're amazed with God's power. What do they say? They're amazed with his glory.

Now why does a moment of intimacy, why does a moment of feasting bring them to see God's glory? Why is it once they understand that all of creation is centered around or all of life is centered around this idea of marriage and feasting or intimacy together with other people, why does that show them God's glory?

Well, think about it like this. In a congregation this size, there's at least one or two of you that are very troubled by this passage. Because some of you would say if creation centers around marriage, if all of redemption centers around marriage, that hurts. And if it centers around feasting with wine, that's painful. Because I can assure you, if there's at least one person in this congregation that if we offered them a drink, they would say something like, you know, I haven't had a drink since January '95.

And let me tell you, if that's your story, if there was a certain date in your life and you never stopped drinking, if you wanna know what we're thinking, if you told us that, we'd be amazed. That something had you in its grips and you walked away from it for twenty years. Now the same question we're gonna ask is, what happened on January 15th?

I actually asked a man one time who was an alcoholic, and I asked him, what happened on the day when he stopped drinking? And all he said is this: somebody asked me about that one time in front of my wife. And I looked at her and said, you know, it's really no story. It's not that big of a deal. And his wife—she was this little lady, very petite—she erupted in a fury and said, it was hell. Every moment up to the last drink was hell. It was a hellacious experience. And he said, I'll just give you that. It was hell and then it wasn't.

There's someone in this room that when we talk about the intimacy of marriage, somebody has sought intimacy in a very tragic way, a traumatic way with you. There's someone in this room I know that intimacy has scars upon you. And therefore, when we talk about intimacy, either because somebody harmed you or because maybe no one ever pursued you as a spouse, a bride, or a groom—it seems like something painful even to mention. We don't want creation to center around this.

Now when you start thinking about this, what I want to say is you're about to get the point of what the whole passage is about. The smaller stories of marriage and of feasting are very important, but they're not the point. The larger story is what the point is. It's when we take the joys of intimacy and the joys of feasting, and through those, we start to see the larger story—that we get the point.

So if you're one of those people who in the past either alcohol has gotten the best of you, or intimacy has caused great pain upon your life, the fact that you're here, that you're still worshiping God and finding joy at this table gives us joy. Because what you're revealing to us is how God can overcome our own little stories and bring us into the larger story. You're the proof we're all looking for, that God who did miracles in Cana on that day still does miracles. Because you may have been in that hell at one point, but I can assure you in a congregation this size, in a room this size, there's someone here who is still in that hell and needs to know that they can get out of it. And you're the proof they need. They need your story. They need to know you, and they need to know what God has done in your life.

The End of All Things

Secondly, to look at this from another perspective is to understand maybe the point of what I think Christ is doing when he places marriage and feasting at the center of culture—he's reminding us of how all of life ends. Because all of us can look at the intimacies of marriage and the intimacies of feasting and know that they're coming to an end. At some point, all mom's meals come to an end and you have to walk away. And you have to leave the meal, and you have to leave home, and you go to another place. The feast comes to an end. And even in our wedding vows, what is it we say? Death will do you part.

Here's the idea, and this is the last point I want you to grasp: all sorrows, all joys in this life, all intimacies in this life are leading towards sorrows, and we have to understand that. The joys that you're experiencing in this life is leading towards sorrows.

So you have two responses you can do to that. You can become numb to joys, numb to intimacy. You could become a denier that those things ever exist. Or you can change the way you experience joys, feasting, and intimacy. I recommend this: become accustomed to this idea that someone is calling out and searching for you.

When you take in a joy of an intimacy or you take in the joy of a feast, don't think of it as just something for this moment. Think about it as you're taking a little piece of heaven and you're experiencing it at that moment. The joy, the feasting, the intimacy that we will have in heaven with the whole church and with Christ himself—that we have for a moment in time, we get to experience that and to enjoy that right here in the midst of a fallen world.

And then we get to this idea that we are acquiring a taste for heaven. In other words, what's happening is you're actually acquiring a taste for heaven. And God—have you ever heard somebody say, "Well, if heaven's like that, I don't want to be there"? You're like, "Well, okay. That's a person who hasn't acquired a taste for heaven."

So what's happening when we experience a joy, when we experience an intimacy, what I hope you're doing is you're acquiring a taste for all the joys, all the intimacies that we will have one day in heaven. And then we stop seeing life as, "Hey, one day this is all gonna turn to misery." We start thinking that we're a bride being prepared for our wedding day. All of us are slowly being given our tastes—our tastes are being acquired for heaven. And slowly but surely, we're gaining where more of our soul is in heaven than is left here on earth.

I remember when Anne's grandmother was elderly and she was getting ready to die. There was this interesting thing about her: she stopped really caring about the people that were around her—her daughter, and she liked her granddaughter, of course. But there was this interesting thing. Whenever she would be alone, she would always be like she was talking to her husband who had died about ten years prior. And I caught her on three or four occasions talking to him, and she came to me and said, "Well, you know, I'm not crazy."

He never talks back. And, you know, her grandkids would always say he never got a word in when he was alive, so that didn't really matter. But she would say that on three occasions, she looked at me and said, "I just miss him so much."

I had the privilege of doing her funeral, and I remember thinking as I was doing that funeral, now she's back with her beloved. This was a lady who over her life, all of her joys had been stored up in heaven. All of her intimacies were in heaven, and there was more there with Christ than there was here on this earth.

Let's pray together. Oh, Lord our God, we thank you for the joy of our salvation. We thank you for the beauty of who you are. We thank you for all the foretaste of heaven that we get to have here on this earth. And may we take and may we drink deeply from them. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.