Good morning, good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you are here with your dad today, good for you. You're a good kid. And if you're a dad and your kids are here, man, that's so great, especially if your adult kids still want to hang out with you. That's the dream, right? That's all we're trying to do with John and Lily. Just when we release them to the wild, we want to make sure they come back. I do want to offer a prayer here at the beginning of the sermon for fathers and for Father's Day because it's a day of mixed emotions. In our house, we've lost Jen's dad. And so she wants to celebrate me, but it's also a sad day. And sometimes days like this are wonderful because they allow us to celebrate wonderful people, but we also know that for different reasons, Father's Day can be difficult. And so I just wanted to offer a prayer here as we begin, and then I'm going to go into a message that has nothing to do with fathers or even manhood at all. So let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for being our good father. For those of us who have been blessed and lucky to have good dads, we're so grateful for that blessing. We're so grateful for dads who point the way to you, who are fallible and who mess up, but who love us and love you, and they show us how to do that. So thank you for them. And if we have those, God, help us to be like them. God, for those for whom today is painful, maybe it conjures up loss or hurt or any other things that days like this can stir. I just pray that you would be with them, that they would be reminded that you are the good father and that your love today would fill in the spots that are left behind by hurts or hardships or blind spots. So God, be a good father for us today. Let your children feel your presence. Thank you for the good dads. Give us grace for the not as good dads and help us be good dads too. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, we are in the third part of our series called 27. We'll be doing it this summer and next summer, going through the 27 books in the New Testament. In the month of June, we've been going through the Gospels. So in the first week, we looked at Matthew, and we said that Matthew was written to the Jews and depicts Jesus as the king. Last week, we looked at Mark. We said Mark was written to the Romans and depicts Jesus as the king. Last week we looked at Mark. We said Mark was written to the Romans and depicts Jesus as a servant. And this week we're looking at the book of Luke. And Luke, the gospel of Luke, was written to the Greeks and it depicts Jesus as a human or as a man. So Luke was written to a Greek audience. There's a guy named Theophilus. It's addressed to, oh, blessed Theophilus. And Luke and the book of Acts are really two parts of the same book, the same letter that was written to Theophilus so that he might understand everything that happened in the life of Christ and then the things that happened immediately following the life of Christ. And so Luke was written to a Greek audience to depict Jesus as a human, as a man, because to the Greek mind and in Greek culture and thinking and philosophy, man is the apex of creation. We are the culmination of all the things. And so to depict Jesus as the greatest man to have ever lived, as the greatest philosopher to have ever lived, would be appealing and capturing and captivating to the Greek mind. But as I thought about us and how to preach that and how to apply that to us and how that should stir us, I was really focusing on the humanity of Christ and kind of asking myself all week long. I started thinking about it last week and just kind of chipping away at what does it mean to be human? What does it mean that Jesus was a human? Why is this important? And I was trying to figure this out. Whenever I write my sermons, I don't know how you guys write your sermons, but when I write my sermons, I try to just like, I think of it as the attack angle. Like, how am I going to approach this? What am I going to talk about? What's interesting about this? What's helpful about this? And I was having a really hard time with it. And so when I have a hard time, I talk to people. And our worship pastor, Aaron Gibson, happened to be around. He's the only person around. I would have loved to talk to someone else. It was just him. So we ended up talking about it. And he actually made this point. I thought it was a great point. So I included in my sermon. Aaron has done at least one useful thing today. But he reminded me that Jesus' favorite title for himself was Son of Man. Jesus' favorite title for himself was Son of Man. And in all honesty, we have such a good staff. I can go talk to any of them and be like, I've got writer's block. I don't know what to do. I can just throw out the sermon. And every time they get me unstuck and they are wonderful. And when he said this, I kind of do a thing when I'm trying to figure a sermon out or something out. And I ask you about it and you say something. Once you say the one useful thing, I'm like, that's it. I got it. You keep talking. I'm not there anymore. I'm thinking about son of man. And he said this, and I was like, that's it. So I dove into some research on that. Why did Jesus call himself that? What did it mean? And what I learned is it very much is Jesus's favorite term for himself. It shows up 32 times in the gospel of Matthew, 15 times in the gospel of Mark, and 26 times in the Gospel of Luke. And every single one of those times, it's Jesus himself using that term to refer to himself. The only time it's used 12 times in John, and two of those times it's someone else calling him that mockingly. But all the other times, this is how Jesus refers to himself as son of man. So why did he like that term? Why did he refer to himself as son of man? Well, first, the phrase son of man would have meant in the ancient world what human being means to us. It's just a way to say that I'm mortal. It's a way to say I'm a human. I'm part of the human race. So Jesus, every time he says it, is declaring his humanity. He's dropping a little hint. I'm a human. I'm a son of man. And we know that Jesus is both man and divine. The fancy theological word for Jesus being 100% human and 100% divine is called the hypostatic union. So Jesus is highlighting the hypostatic union every time he says son of man, because he's declaring his humanity, but he's also referring back to this famous prophecy in Daniel chapter seven, this famous messianic prophecy. And I'm going to read it to you this morning and it'll be up on the screen because it just sounds cool. As I went back and I read it, I was like, this sounds like one of those good ancient prophecies and I want you guys to hear it because sometimes they say cool things in the Bible and this is one of them. Daniel has a vision in chapter 7. I saw in the night visions and behold with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man comes like the Son of Man, and he is presented to the Ancient of Days. The Son of Man is Jesus. Ancient of Days is God the Father. And so this is a messianic prediction about Jesus ascending to the throne and being the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. So when he says in the New Testament, Thy am the Son of Man, the Son of man has no place to lay his head. When he refers to himself like that, he is referring to Daniel seven. He is declaring his divinity while at the same time he's declaring his humanity. And I think that's a really interesting name and choice for Jesus to make to constantly declare his humanity. And I think it's even more interesting that Luke decided that this needed to be a theme of his gospel. There's other themes within the gospel. We spent the spring in the book of Luke, and we talked about it being the hospitality gospel, that throughout the book of Luke, Jesus is either going to, attending, or coming from a meal. It's the hospitality gospel. There's around the table. But another theme of Luke, another thing that he weaves throughout the gospel is the humanity of Christ. Which brings us back to our question for the week. Why did Luke craft an entire gospel with the intent of displaying Jesus' humanity? Why did Luke craft an entire gospel with the intent of displaying Jesus' humanity? What is so important about that? Why should it matter so much that Jesus is a human? Why did he himself choose a name that would highlight his humanity the entire time? Why did Luke, one of the gospel writers, decide to craft an entire gospel to display that aspect of our Christ? Why is this so important? This is an important question that I've been wrestling with all week. And the more I wrestled with it, the more aspects of it that I thought about, even kind of diving into what does it mean for us to be human? What makes us human? And going down that rabbit trail and all the things, what I realized is that there's a story in Luke, in Luke chapter 4, the temptation of Christ, that probably more dramatically and openly and honestly and overtly displays the humanity of Christ more than any other story in the Bible, save maybe the stories around his crucifixion. Jesus is utterly human in this story. And as I went through the story, I realized that the temptations that Jesus has are that Satan offers Jesus and the responses that Jesus offers Satan. I realized that those things actually highlight all of the reasons why it's so important for us to understand that Jesus is a human, that Jesus is man, that he's 100% man and 100% God. And it helps us understand why that's so important. And hopefully, as we move through this, if I do it right, what we'll find is ultimately Jesus' humanity is comforting and inspiring and even an opportunity to experience a little bit of heaven on earth. So let's look at the temptation of Jesus in Luke chapter four and look at the aspects of Jesus's humanity that are on full display for us to see that kind of answer some of our questions. Now, for those of you who are not familiar with the temptation of Christ or need a refresher, at the beginning of Jesus's ministry, he was 30 years old and then he was about to start calling disciples and declaring the gospel and start that process of public ministry. Before he started his public ministry, it took 40 days and he went out in the desert to pray and to fast and to prepare his body and his mind and his spirit for what he needed to do. And this isn't the point of the sermon at all, but it's so interesting to me that Jesus, the Savior of the world, the most capable minister that's ever existed, which is so gross an understatement it is stupid to say out loud. Jesus was good at ministry. Yeah. Okay, let's pray. Go home. That's the best point I got today. Before, he's perfectly capable of the ministry. Before he began it, he went and he prayed and he fasted for 40 days. My volunteers in the room, folks who had stepped into kids ministry, into committees, to being on an elder board, who volunteer with students, who volunteer with the ministry downtown. Those of you who have brought children into the world and started that ministry. Me, as I took over the church. What period of preparation and prayer and fasting do we give ourselves for the task at hand before we just launch right into it thinking ourselves capable? And if Jesus doesn't do that, if Jesus doesn't launch into things without stopping and pausing and praying, then why do we think we can? So maybe there's a season for us where that's what we need to do as we enter into ministry. But he goes to fast and pray, And at the end of the 40 days, Satan comes to him to tempt him. And we see these three temptations that he has. The first one is found in chapter 4, verses 3 and 4. The devil said to him, if you are the son of God, command this stone to become bread. And Jesus answered him, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone. So Satan comes to him, he's maximum hungry. I don't think it's humanly possible to be more hungry than you would be after 40 days. And Satan says when he's maximum hungry, maximum weak, if you are the son of God, this whole time Satan's trying to get him to prove that he is who he says he is. If you're the son of God, then turn this stone into bread and eat it and everybody will believe you. And Jesus says, quotes back scripture, man shall not live by bread alone., how is the humanity displayed in this verse? What we see in Jesus' response is that he's hungry. He's tempted, but he says, I don't need that right now. So what we see is that Jesus feels what we feel. Jesus feels and experiences what we feel and experience. And that's such a short and cheap sentence that if we don't stop, we're going to miss what that means and how profound that actually is. Originally, as I started writing the sermon, I was going to spend the whole morning here because I think it's unbelievable. First of all, Jesus condescended. He was in heavenly form. I don't know what heavenly form is, but it's better than this. And he took on this when he didn't have to and limited himself when he didn't have to. He became a human. It's the ultimate act of humility. I've known a lot of people over the years who want to help the impoverished in other countries. I've not known very many of them to move into that neighborhood. Jesus moved into the neighborhood. He took on human form and he began to feel what we feel. He experienced hunger like we experience hunger. You think God gets hungry? You think God the Father is looking forward to a steak on Father's Day? He doesn't care. He doesn't need food to sustain him. He took on hunger. Jesus was maximum hungry. He lived in a country and in a society that was not wealthy. He said the son of man has no place to lay his head. He wandered around as a vagabond for most of his adult ministry. If you've ever been hungry, people who have ever known hunger, they have a Jesus who can empathize with that hunger because he was hungry. He feels what we feel. I bet Jesus, because he's human, growing up, had insecurities. There was probably some cool kids that didn't like him, and it was hard. I'd be willing to bet that Jesus liked a girl that didn't like him back. I'd be willing to bet that Jesus saw his parents fight. I'd be willing to bet that he was embarrassed, that he was proud. Can you imagine the pride that you would have to fight back if you found out you were the savior of the world? Jesus has experienced all the human emotions that we have experienced. He experienced temptation. He experienced loss. We don't know where or how, but somewhere in between Luke chapter 3, or 2 rather, and Luke 3, Joseph disappears from the narrative. Joseph, his earthly father, who I'm just going to refer to as his father for ease of language, but I know that God's the father. He lost his dad at some point. We're not really given much indication if it was by death or by divorce, but we know that he fades away from the narrative and he's lost in the fog of history. So what we can be sure of is that Jesus understood either what it was to be in a broken home or what it was to lose a father early. Jesus, and I don't say this lightly to make a cheap joke. Jesus had father issues. I've always, I would be very interested to see how Jesus treated older men as he was growing up in his ministry. Because people with father issues tend to revere older men in ways that are different than folks without father issues. And I don't think that we stop to think enough about what it means for Jesus to be a human and to have experienced humanity. Because I started thinking about that too and what is it to be human? And I was reminded of back in the summer of 2020, I started to see a therapist or a counselor. I never know the right word. The one to help me identify and unpack all of my childhood issues. And there was no compelling event that took me there. There was no pressing thing. I just heard from enough people that it was a good practice to see a therapist. And so I thought if it's worked for other people, if it's been a good practice for them, I need to go try it too. And I found it to be an amazing experience. He told me all the things and I fixed it all within about nine months. I'm good now. Never need it again. It's probably time for a checkup, really. But in therapy, as he walked me through things, and I was just telling him about what's going on in my life and different things, and he'd ask me about my past, and it's not all just like childhood and parents, but you do talk about all that stuff in there. He showed this to me about myself. There's things about me that I don't like. There's things about me that if I could wave a wand, I would fix them. If I could wave a wand and give myself more patience, I would. If I could wave a wand and give myself more discernment in conversation, to not be such a dummy all the time, and for the joke that you don't need to go for, I would waive it. There's rough edges of my character that if you gave me the option to get rid of them, I would. I just don't know how. And you start to talk to your therapist about things like that. And what he helped me see is, yeah, those things are a part of you, but they're a part of you because of how you were brought up, the environment you were raised in, the things that happened around you. Those things are a part of you because of so much that was so outside of your control that you really can't even be blamed for those things being in your life. Now, it doesn't mean that as adults we shouldn't deal with those things and cope with those things and try to work them out of our life, but their very existence in our life is not our fault. And I started to learn, because I always thought that when somebody messes up, when somebody does something that they shouldn't do, that that's their fault. And if someone's living a life of bad choices and they're throwing their life away, that's their fault. They need to get their head out of their rear end, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and do the right thing. And I thought that about myself, too, that anything that existed within me that was bad and wrong and displeasing to God and displeasing to myself, I needed to figure it out and white-knuckle it and just walk my way to health. And what I learned in therapy is that that's not how that goes. The things that are a part of me that I didn't want, I didn't put there. Life did. It's just humanity. And learning that about myself gave me a deep empathy for the people around me. I know that it's difficult to tell at times, but it's deeper now than it used to be. It helped me understand if I didn't choose my brokenness, then they didn't either. And the bad habits and the bad behaviors and the bad attitudes and all of those things that exist in their life were not chosen by them because they want them. They are products of the environment that they were brought up in. Those are things that happened to them, not things that they chose. And then those things cause behaviors that are unattractive, but they don't like those behaviors either. It gave me a deep empathy for others. It helped me understand that when I meet a grown man who wants to tell me his 40 time or is proud of how loud his car is or something, that he's not just a jerk. He is a jerk because nobody cares about that stuff. But he's also just saying in an undeveloped way, will you please like me? Will you just tell me that I'm enough? Will someone give me some approval? It helped me realize we're all just bags of insecurities and coping mechanisms. And some of us just learn to do it better than others. But it gave me a deep empathy for humans. And I say all that to say that Jesus was a human too. Jesus carried those things. Jesus had to work through his brokenness and his loss and his disappointment. Jesus watched that happen in the people around him. He saw that too. This is why I honestly believe that when we sin and we mess up and we make life choices and involve ourselves in patterns and habits that Jesus wouldn't choose for us, that when he sees us do those things, I truly don't think that his primary response to us is frustration or anger. I think it's pity and hurt and love and empathy. I think he sees our hurt driving us into places of deeper hurt, and he's just waiting and begging for the day that we come back to him and allow him to heal us. I think it's that song we sing, Reckless Love. There's no mountain that he won't climb up. There's no wall he won't kick down. Like he's coming after us. He sees you hurting and hurting yourself and he's relentlessly pursuing you. And listen, I don't think he's mad at you for your sins. I think he watches your sins and it hurts him that you continue to hurt yourself in that way because he's a human and he knows why you're doing it and he has deep empathy for it and he wants you to stop. It matters so much that Jesus feels what we feel. The other aspect of his humanity that we see in the temptation of Christ is that the second temptation. Your notes say verse 7. I'm going to start and their glory he's offering in the kingdoms of the world. For it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you then will worship me, it will all be yours. And Jesus answered him, it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. So Satan takes him to where he can see the kingdoms of the world and he says, they've been given to me. If you want them, I'll give them to you. All you have to do is worship me. And Jesus' response is, I am only allowed to worship God the Father. And so what this reveals is Jesus serves who we serve. Jesus serves who we serve. He's subject to the same laws and edicts that we are. He doesn't say, I only can worship myself. He says, no, I can only worship God the Father, no one else, which means that Jesus was subject to the same laws that we were. He followed the Ten Commandments perfectly. He followed the law of the Old Testament perfectly. He was a human who was tempted to break the law, but he didn't. He still followed God's laws like we do. He didn't think that he was too good for them. Last night I was watching Bluey with Lily, my daughter. And if you are a parent of, I don't know what the age range would be, of a kid under 10 and you don't know what Bluey is, you're not a good parent. It's amazing. We're watching it, and in this particular episode, there's two little kids. Their little dog's Bluey, and Bingo is the little sister, and Bluey is the older sister, and then they've got a cousin named Muffin. All this is important, okay? Don't forget these details. And Muffin's coming. She's riding with Uncle Scout or whoever over to Bluey and Bingo's house. And Muffin asks her dad if she's special. And dad says, yes, you're very special. And then dad says, you're the most special kid on the planet. And I'm watching it thinking, that is not smart. That's not smart. Your kid is not the most special kid on the planet. No kid is. And they get to Bluey's house, and they start to play. The three kids start to play, and they're playing a game, I think, called Library. And you've got to check out the book, and you can only check out three. And Muffin is doing whatever Muffin wants to do. Muffin doesn't want to check out three. Muffin doesn't want to be quiet. Muffin's not following any of the rules of the game. And so Bluey and Bingo go complain to Uncle and Mom, hey, Muffin's not playing right. And they're like, just let Muffin play however Muffin wants. Like, okay. So they go back, and Muffin's behavior is ruining the game because Muffin believes that she is the most special child to ever exist and doesn't have to follow any of the rules. And so finally it comes to this point where Dad's got to get involved. So he goes and grabs Muffin and says, why aren't you playing right? And Muffin says, well, because I'm the most special child, I don't have to follow the rules that anybody else follows. And he says what a good dad would say. I'm sorry, I was wrong. You were not the most special child. You're the most special child to me and your mom. You're not more special than them. Okay. I say all that to say that Jesus did not go through life as God's special little boy, okay? He didn't just declare, I'm Jesus, I can do whatever I want, none of the rules apply to me. He lived with the same humanity, the same restraints, the same limitations that you do. He did not go through life thinking that he was special and some sort of exception. So the challenges that you face with being Christ-like, being godly, trying to follow the rules and do what the Bible says, trying to learn the Bible and apply it to your own life, Jesus faced those too. Jesus serves who we serve. He follows the laws that we're told we're following when we love God and love others. He was challenged just like you were. The last one is of particular interest to me. We see it down at the end of the story, verses 12 and 13. Satan has just told Jesus, he's taken him up to the top of the temple and he says, if you're really God, if you're really who you say you are, then fling yourself off the temple and God will send his angels to capture you. And this is Jesus' response. And Jesus answered him, it is said, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time. Before we unpack what's there in the temptation in Jesus' response, I included that last verse. Satan departed from him to return to him at a more opportune time. It's not as if Jesus had this one encounter with Satan and then was not tempted for the rest of his life. I have a note in my Bible that I wrote years ago that Jesus had moments of weakness too. Satan would prey on him at opportune times. So this resisting of temptation, this humanity that he experienced wasn't just a one and done deal here at the beginning of his ministry and now you're good. This is a persistent, pervasive thing. But in this response, it's fling yourself off and surely God will catch you. Jesus says, it is not right to put the Lord your God to the test. Now this is interesting because Jesus is God. And Jesus later says to Pilate, when Pilate's trying to ask if he was the king, he says, dude, if I wanted to get out of here, I could call the angels and they would get me. So we know that Jesus can call on the angels if he wants to. He doesn't need God the father to do it. He could have done this, called on the angels himself, not been in violation of any laws or any rules, I'm in perfectly fine. But he says, no, I can't do that. It's not right to put the Lord your God to the test. Because if angels are going to come rescue him, it's not going to be because he insisted on it. It's going to be because God acted for him. And so what we see is that Jesus relies how we rely. Jesus relies how we rely. Jesus relies on God the same way that we rely on God. And the phrasing there is a little funny because I wanted it to fit in with the other notes because that's what good pastors do. But I'll explain it a little bit. I think of it this way. When Jesus went through life and was performing miracles and was preaching and teaching and was directing people and doing what he does, he didn't do all that with his Jesus powers. He did that with his Holy Spirit powers. He didn't perform miracles because he was Jesus from his Jesus powers. I don't know how to talk about it as if he's not in the Marvel universe, but that's how I think about it. He didn't use his Jesus powers. He prayed, and through the Holy Spirit, he healed. He prayed, and through the empowering of the Holy Spirit, he cast out demons. He prayed, and through the Holy Spirit, he was guided in wisdom. He prayed, and through the Holy Spirit, he was strengthened for obedience. He relied on the Holy Spirit the same way you rely on the Holy Spirit. He did not skate through life being Jesus, finding it within himself to do Jesus' things. He relies on the same God that you rely on. When he hurt, he ran to God for strength and for comfort. We see him do this. We see his humanity on full display in the Garden of Gethsemane where he falls on his face praying the night of his arrest and eventual crucifixion, God, please don't make me do this. Yet not my will, but your will be done. He did it God's way. He relied on God during his ministry when he would perform miracles. Not only is he praying to the Spirit to bring about this miracle, but then when he's done, he says, don't tell anybody I did this. It is not yet the proper time. He's sensitive to God's timing. He's reliant upon God for direction on the timing of when he should be crucified. Jesus relies on who we rely on. He prays like we pray. He needs the Spirit to move and to comfort and to cajole and to convict in the same way that we do. And so in all these different ways, we see on full display in the temptation of Christ, the humanity of Christ. And we see that he feels what we feel, that he serves who he serves, that he relies how we rely. And this makes him different than any other God in the pantheon of gods that we've invented or created or thought about on this earth. There's no other God that condescends to take on human form and offers his very presence to us, to understand us, to walk with us, to feel what we feel. And there's no other God that can offer this. And this is, my wife pointed this out to me. This is why she's my number one sermon counselor. But she pointed out this, and this is what the humanity of Jesus is driving to, that Jesus offers empathy over sympathy. Jesus offers empathy over sympathy. When we see somebody hurt, before we had a miscarriage, Jen and I, and somebody would miscarriage, I could offer them my sympathy. I'm so sorry that happened to you. That must be difficult. But when it happened to us, he gave us the gift of empathy. And the gift of empathy, there's a couple at the church who miscarried recently. And it had recently happened and I had not called them and I saw them in church during worship. And I was able to just walk up to them and give them both a big tear-filled hug. And none of us said a word. And we all knew exactly what I meant. That's what empathy does. You know when you're going through something and you want to talk to somebody about it. You want to talk to somebody who's gone through it too. When Jen lost her dad, she wasn't super interested in people comforting her that had not walked through that. There's just something to knowing that the person you're talking to has that shared experience. Jesus has shared our experience. When we pray, we pray towards empathy, not sympathy, not a condescending God who doesn't understand the human experience and the human existence. We pray to a God who literally whispers into the ear of the Father as we pray. It says Jesus, Romans 8 tells us Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father interceding on our behalf. Going, I know what they're going through. I've been there. I get that. I understand it. Father, here's what they need. Do you realize that when you pray, you pray to empathy and how powerful that is? in this way, praying to a God that empathizes, understanding that Jesus is human, that Jesus offers us his presence. We can run to him with anything, and he is there with us, and he is present with us. This is why he leaves his spirit and says, it's better than me. I will be with you through my spirit. This is why I think Luke chose to highlight this in his gospel. This is why I think Jesus declared his humanity over and over and over again, and why it's on full display in all the gospels, particularly Luke. Because he wants you to know that you serve a God who feels what you feel, who serves the way you serve, who has to rely on God the way that you rely on God, and ultimately, who offers you his empathy and his comfort, not just his sympathy. And I think that's a pretty powerful thing that draws us to him. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We need you. And we are grateful that you are here for us. Thank you for the way that you love us, for the way that you care about us. Thank you for a Savior who condescended and took on human form, who became one of us so that he might know us and experience us and love us well. Thank you that you empathize with our hurts and our hangups and our habits. We thank you that you are a God who's experienced loss, hurt, frustration, disillusionment, and disappointment. And God, I pray that you would be with us in those things and in those ways. In Jesus' name, amen. Normally, I step off the stage right now, and I let Aaron do his thing. But I was thinking, as we were singing the first first three songs and I was listening to them sing, I'm always moved when people who are gifted with their voice declare it and let their heavenly father who made them that way hear it. I'm always moved when God made musicians on purpose use it to turn people to praise to him because God made them this way on purpose so that they would do this. But it also occurs to me that your heavenly father gave you a voice too. If you're like me, it's average at best. But what better Father's Day gift could we give to our heavenly father than to let him hear the voice that he gave you and declare praise back to him? So as we sing this last song, let's let it go. Let's let God hear us. Let's offer a Father's Day present to him as we allow him to hear the voices of his children declaring his praises.