2,000 years ago, the city I'm standing in Philadelphia was called Little Athens, as it was a gateway to Asia Minor.

And today, honestly, there's not a lot left because around the year 17 AD, this city got

absolutely beaten like a pinata with earthquake after earthquake after earthquake.

But in the midst of that, something amazing happened.

The Church of Jesus Christ stood firm.

This is one of two churches that receive a purely encouraging letter from the risen

Lord Jesus because in the midst of intense persecution, Jesus looked at the faithfulness of this

little church laying it all on the line for their Lord, and he actually used the imagery of these

massive, fixed pillars that are around me to say you

will be a pillar in the house of my God because when everything else around them was shaking,

they stood firm. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Well, hey, Lakemore family. Good morning. And if you guys got your Bible, let's head over to Revelation chapter three. Revelation three is going to be today. And I do just want to say this. I'm just glad anybody is here this week after the Jezebel sermon last week. Thank you. Thank you so much for it. I was like, I don't know anybody will come. We'll probably have to reduce the service. I don't know.

But thank you for being here.

And I do just want to, hey, welcome to a free t-shirt weekend.

Man, we're excited about this.

And I love this so much.

Now, I did tell you last week that we put a little extra special sauce into the shirts.

You know, when you put one of the shirts on, it automatically increases 30% muscle mass, reduces 30% you know, body fat index. And I'm not, you know, I'm not wearing one right now. But I did it. I did want to go first and at least, you know, model it really quick. So I took a picture right before the services. And, man, it's, yeah, the shirts are amazing. They're there are amazing they're there take that down take that

down I don't want to cause anybody stumble you know I don't and so those are for you and we're

excited about that I do just want to remind you while we're doing this so this whole series

letters the American church this is leading up to Easter we will do the last church title of the sermon is lukewarm and Laudicea. We're going to do the last week of the series on Easter. And it's going to be awesome. In two weeks, that's our Super Bowl. We are pulling out every stop imaginable to tell everybody everywhere about Jesus being alive and being able to save them.

And it's going to be amazing, man.

It's going to be amazing.

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