Acts: The Stoning of Stephen (Acts 6:9 - 7:60)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Thanks for joining us today as you listen to a portion of the message recorded at Line Life Church in Boulder Colorado. If you'd like to connect with us further, you can visit us online at www.finelife.com.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

By the way, a little bit up to date. Soon as we get past resembling a few weeks, we're gonna take a break. We're gonna do a we'll we're gonna do more of an advent sermon series uh through December. So we're gonna shelf Acts uh just for a little while, and then we're gonna uh as soon as we hit January, we're gonna we're gonna ramp it back up, right? Right as the gospel's going into the ends of the world, we're going to ramp it back up. So so that's happening. Uh so if you were with us last week, we started Acts chapter six. Bob took us through the first part, and it's a it's an amazing little passage. As the church is growing, things are getting a little more complicated, and uh and we read that the apostles they're presented with the problem. You see, there's all these widows that had come into their fellowship, into the community. A bunch of uh Greeks were were now growing, growing in Jerusalem, uh a Greek population, and and uh and some of them started complaining. They said, our widows aren't being taken care of. And so it left them in a little bit of a conundrum because uh they're trying to figure out how to do what God had called them to do and also take care of the ones that God called them to take care of. So there's some organizational things there, and they kind of had this revelation like, hey, um, let's do this. Let's appoint, let's let's find some of the best people we know of good repute, full of wisdom and power, full of the Spirit of God. And we're gonna appoint them to serve the widows and to serve the tables, right? And sometimes it's e it's a little hard to read this passage because there's a point that says, let's not bother ourselves with serving the tables. Let's go do, let's, let's be faithful to what we've given and not bother with serving the tables. What they weren't saying there was that serving the tables was beneath them. What was going on, and Bob talked about this a little bit last week, the apostles were saying, listen, God has called us to be faithful with the ministry of the Scripture and ministry and prayer. Let's find, let's also find those that are full of the Spirit and full of wisdom, and let's anoint them to go serve the poor as well. Do you guys know that we all have callings, we all have missions, we all have assignments in the kingdom of God? And it's important that we find out which one ours is and stay faithful to it. Come on. And uh and so I love that they didn't just find volunteers. Do you guys catch that in this passage? There was no, like, hey, raise your hands. If you kind of want to, there was no what Mike just did in just trying to convince people to volunteer for something, right? And everybody responds because they don't want him to feel bad. You know, it's like there wasn't that. They said, let's find seven men of the best reputation, completely full of the Spirit of God and wisdom and all these things. And we're gonna commission them to do this. Don't you love that? And can I just uh remind us here that I am so thankful we're part of a church down in our kids' ministry, down at coffee bar, uh in our ushers and in our different ministries that happen around here, we have men and women of good reputation full of the spirit of God that are serving well. In every room of this church, every room, every room of this building throughout the week, our ministry teams, our prayer rooms, the whole thing. We have people that are full of the Spirit of God, and I'm so thankful for that. We don't need more volunteers, we need people full of the Spirit of God, faithful to his calling. Alright, let's close in prayer. That was good right there. And so one of these guys that we find, we stumble into, one of these seven, his name is Stephen. And that goes through a whole list, but Stephen was extra full, all right? So he had the bonus package. It says this, see it 6 5. Stephen was full of faith in the Holy Spirit. We read a few verses later, it says this about Stephen. He's full of grace and power and doing great wonders and signs among the people. So here's a man, he was full of God. God was so gracious to him that he allowed him to go serve the widows. Praise God. You're so full of the Spirit of God, we're gonna send you to serve tables. And we read that Stephen, he is so anointed by God, he's so honored by God that God allows him to be the first to give his life for the Lord. He was counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name of Jesus. Doesn't it still sound weird to say it like that? But this passage, Luke, as he's writing this, he's clearly building this up. Stephen is set apart, he's anointed to give his life away. How precious is that that God calls us to lay down everything, even our very lives, to serve him. That's what we get to do. And and ultimately, Stephen is so full of the Spirit of God, it gets him killed here in just a bit. And uh and what's interesting is what actually leads to this. It builds him up a little bit here, then he gets into a little bit of trouble. And so what we're reading here, what we're gonna unpack here over the next few minutes, is we're gonna look at this moment. Stephen is accused, and then he goes in basically two-chapter monologue about what's going on. And it's so threatening, it's it's so outrageous that at the end of his talk, they can't do anything else but drag him outside of a city and throw rocks at him. Okay? And that's that's hard again for us to connect with. There's nothing I could say to you right now that would make you so mad that you would stone me. Because we live in America, right? We love free speech. Like if I said something that made you mad, you just leave the church, right? That's okay. But I don't, like, there's not much cost. There's nothing I there's literally nothing I could say to you right now that would cause you to take rocks or chairs and just start throwing them at me, hoping that I die. So, what is it that's so so hard? What's what's what's what about his approach is really so on edge and so in like so piercing that these men, it says that will start gnashing their teeth and they start hurling insults at them, and they can't do do without him being alive. So we're gonna look at Acts chapter 6, starting in verse 8 here. Says this, and Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people. Then some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the freedmen, as it was called, and of the Cyrenians and the Alexandrians, and of those from Sicily and Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen, but they could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking. Then they secretly instigated men who would who said, We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God. And they stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council, and they set up false false witnesses who said, This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place in the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us. And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw his face, and it was like the face of an angel. Isn't that wild? He's so full of the Spirit of God that they start arguing with him and they cannot withstand him. Like he's speaking with such wisdom and such spirit that they can't do anything else but just start accusing him falsely. That's all they have left. Because they were totally shut down. They're looking at him, his face is radiating like an angel. God, make it so so with us that we're so full of your spirit, God. So full of wisdom and power, of your wisdom and your power, God, that even a gaze is apparent to those around us. So these men rise up and they start instigating, they start accusing him. And the the accusations had to do with two particular things. They start accusing Stephen of basically talking smack about the temple and the law. Uh Stephen is is unraveling two of the major high icons of the Hebrew, the Jewish tradition, uh, namely the place and the customs. So the the temple and the law. The temple being the dwelling place of the manifest presence of God on earth, the place where forgiveness of sins could happen. And then the law, which is the way, the order of life given to the people through Moses. So they accuse him saying that he has no regard for these things. And so at that point, Stephen begins to respond, but it's it's it's in a way that you wouldn't think. You don't get him, he doesn't start defending himself. You don't see you don't hear Stephen, no, you guys, that's not what I said. That's not what's not. He starts telling a story, which is which is a little wild. And so what happens is uh if you if you've read this passage, and I encourage you to read it this week, Acts 6 all the way through Acts 7, um, he starts talking, and it doesn't appear immediately like he's talking about anything they're accusing him of, right? Uh because he starts telling a story. It's not unlike if you ever asked, if you ever had somebody tell you a story or a testimony of what happened in their life, and uh and their starting line was uh, well, when I was in second grade, I then like, oh wow, okay. We can do we're gonna be here a while, right? If we're starting in second grade, all right, that's fine. Uh that reframes the day, though. Like this is gonna be a this is gonna be a 45-minute conversation right here, right? Somebody's telling a story, and you go way back, you know, like, okay, that's that's what's happening, all right, let's roll with that. But that's what's happening here, and it's slightly confusing, but for for Stephen, his response was not to tell them facts, it was to tell them a story. Because for Stephen, it wasn't the thing of trying to convince them of a new set of facts, it was to remind them of a story they had forgotten. And I think that's important for us to know as well that what we're doing and who we are and the significance of our lives in Christ isn't isolated to this moment into your life, into your kids. We are being sucked up into this, we're vacuumed up into this grand narrative. And when we forget what we're a part of, our world shrinks down, and we begin designing our lives around our own preferences and our own comforts and our own ideas. And so from time to time, this is what we have to do. We have to immerse ourselves in the story of God. This is what the apostles were given to. All they did was tell the story from start to finish and retell it and tell it again. And Jesus is the point, and Jesus is the point, and he was the point here, and he was the point here, and he was the point here, and he's still the point, and he's always going to be the point. And so they didn't do a lot of work trying to convince people of facts. What's actually more true than facts are stories sometimes. And so that's what Stephen begins to do. He begins to tell this massive story, and he starts back with Abraham. And we start reading, and I can't read to you the whole thing, because again, we'd be here all day. It would just be insane. But he starts with Abraham, and he walks through the life of Abraham, a man called out of his home country, set apart by God. And why does he start with Abraham? Because he's starting at the place where God's promise and covenant came into being. God's covenant that the Jewish people knew and recognized, everything was based off of, their whole life was based off this covenant that God was doing something new, starting with Israel and to the ends of the earth. So he would start with Abraham, uh, but then he but then he quickly passes through Jacob and Joseph, and he gets to Moses, and he spends quite a bit of time talking about the whole life story of Moses. Why would he talk about the whole life story of Moses? Because Moses represents a lot of things. Moses represents the time when the people of God were liberated from great slavery by the providential hand of God. They were liberated from the Egyptians, witnesses of the faithfulness of God, just as we're singing. The sea split, the split sea. The sea split, and they walked through it. And God was leading them and providing them day after day after day. And then eventually God would give them the law, which was the code, the custom that they were to abide by. This is a new way of relating to God and relating to each other. This is what would mark them and set them apart on the face of the earth, set them apart from other nations as a people of God's own possession, a holy nation, a treasured people, a people close to the heart of God. So Moses is, so as Stephen was reframing and he starts talking about Moses, they were accusing him of throwing out the law, but he was trying to retell the story in a new way that they could hear. And what he emphasized in the retelling of this story actually got into a couple things. One of the things is God is doing something new here. And so as he retold the story of Moses, he said, yes, God did give us the law, and yes, David and Solomon did build a temple, but the story didn't end there. So your story stopped already, but God's story is continuing to unfold. And unfortunately, the story doesn't end at God being in a house built by hands. It ends after that. That wasn't God's entire intention. And so what there's what he part of what he's saying, what he starts to get into is you have to understand that in Christ, God is doing something new on earth. And if you want to stay stuck, it's not that the temple and the law are bad, it's just that the story continued after the temple and the law. So the first thing he's saying is, listen, you have to understand that you think the story stopped, the story is still continuing, and this is what's still happening in the person of the work of Jesus Christ. Okay. But the second thing that he's emphasizing in the retelling of the story is not just that God is doing something new, but you're doing something old. And he's pointing to the people and he's highlighting, listen, let me tell you what we've always done to God and his prophets. Starting with Moses, we were led through this great liberation, the exodus, the pinnacle, the moment where years of slavery, hundreds of years of slavery, you were led out by the miraculous provision of God, led through the desert, provided for, pillar of fire, pillar of, you know, a cloud by day, fire by night, manna and quail in the morning. And still, and still you get to Mount Sinai, and we'd rather have a God that we can see than a God that is working on our behalf that we cannot see. So they get all the way through the desert, and the people of God decide to fashion a golden calf because it would be better to have something that resembled what the other nations are doing and fit in, than to trust a God that's at work in unorthodox ways. So Stephen's saying, Yeah, Moses did give us the law, but remember who you are too. You rejected him then, too. We rejected him then. And you rejected him with every prophet that would come after that. And he's saying, Listen, God is doing something new, but we have to recognize that we're still doing something old. Yes, David designed the temple. Yes, Solomon built the temple, but God's desire was never to dwell in a structure made by man. His desire was to dwell in what was made with his own hands, which is the people that he loves. And so, yeah, you have your temple, which you think is the intersection of heaven and earth. And what I'm saying is that the story goes beyond your cute little temple and your customs, and it's continuing on from here. And here's how he ends this whole spiel. He goes through a couple chapters, and he's pretty soft all the way up until then. And he says this, Acts chapter 7, verse 51. He says, You stiff-necked people uncircumcised in hearts and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? As they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the righteous one, whom you have now betrayed and murdered. You have you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it. And so he's deconstructing an entire worldview in front of these people. Everything that mattered to them, everything they thought that mattered to God. And you say, Don't you see you're doing it again? You killed the righteous one. And what's interesting is you look at this pattern that he's that he's pulling out of the story. You know, going back to Moses, you know, we we look, even for us, we read the scriptures and we read how the Israelites made their way through the desert and they didn't make it all the time, they didn't quite get the Ten Commandments before they they threw it all away and decided to fashion a calf. I I always read that story and kind of chuckle a little bit, only because it's so outside of my paradigm. What trade in God for a cow?

unknown 18:12

Right?

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Like a golden cow, that was it? You you threw away all the, you walked through the Red Sea and the golden cow is what did it for you. And so it that's hard for me. I I look at that and I kind of laugh internally because it just it's just so weird to me. It just it just makes me like, I just don't quite connect with what was happening. Yet, if we are to examine our lives, if we are to examine it, take a careful examination of our lives, yeah, we don't have a lot of graven images. Probably our phones and our houses are probably the closest, maybe that gets to you know things we might be able to worship that are actual things. Um But one of the one of the things that if we're gonna be honest, if we're gonna talk about idolatry and what we trade in for the purposes of God, one of one of our friends Ben said it like this He said, Um, an idol is anything that promises to fulfill a deep human need in your life, but only if you meet its conditions. Okay? So anything that we choose to trust to meet a deep need in our life, and it's usually conditional, right? And and the thing is, idols can never actually follow through on their promises, is what is why we get disappointed. So we trust circumstances or ideas or idealized futures rather than trusting God. And the thing is these idols leave us down every time. Here's a few examples. Um, you know, once I become famous, right? Once if if I were to get, if I could just get that job opportunity, if I could just get, you know, get just get that raise, fill in the blank. And so most of the idols, we they're so subtle we don't even know they're there. But they're ideas and situations that we trust in to fulfill the deepest longings of our heart, namely provision, belonging, and significance. Okay? Here's another one. Once I get married, dot dot dot, if my husband were just more, dot dot dot, if my if my wife would just dot dot dot, right? And so we have these these things that we we we hold, these little narratives of these things that we're trying to get, we're trying to secure in our lives sometimes, and what happens is when we begin to trust those things, that if that happened, then I would be able to secure something that I need deep inside, then what happens is we begin to trade in, we begin to trade in what where God might be at work wanting to meet those things Himself for these idealized situations to meet those for us. Does that make sense? And it's so under the surface and so under the radar that most of us don't get it, but do not kid yourself. We cannot kid ourselves here. This is part of our story too. We oftentimes would rather trade in what God is doing in our lives for things that we can see and measure and feel and craft with our own hands. I confess that I do that. Sometimes I don't know it. That I would rather create a future and and and and and and make something for myself that I can then trust in that so I don't have to trust in God. I would rather be independent of God. I'd rather need God only when I need him. Right? And so we do this. And so, Stephen, this is exactly what he's getting at. He's highlighting this bigger issue that's going on. He's saying, You guys, listen, you you put so much stock in your temple in this place, as this is the pinnacle of all things, and God has already moved beyond that in the person of Jesus. And so they're just outraged because everything they've put their hope in, everything they put their trust in for God's purposes on earth, he's saying, listen, God is He's doing something new, He's expanding the story there. And so here's what they do. It says, now when they heard these things, they were enraged and they ground their teeth at him. I don't recommend that ever. I don't even know what that sounds like. Grinding their teeth at why would you even do that? But he, full of the Holy Spirit, listen to this. But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God. And Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And falling to his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. And when he said this, he fell asleep. So Stephen would become the first one, the first person after Jesus to lay down his life, to enter through the doorway of death and to find a life on the other side. And it's it's wild how this happens because he basically talks himself into his own death. And as he as he's finishing this monologue, he threw it all on the table. He knew what he was in for. He knew exactly what he was doing. But he was so convinced. He was so convinced. He was so, so, so convinced in his spirit of what was happening. This this bigger story that anybody could actually see that he just kept talking and talking. And I love I love the story of how this ends, not just with Stephen being killed, but as as stones are raining down on him, this is he has this open vision. And it's it's it's just an amazing sci-fi movie. Like there's this whole scene of people making weird sounds with their teeth and yelling at him and insulting him, and high priests and their ink, they're rushing at him. And meanwhile, something like it's almost like this mist clears, and he sees this kingdom that's at work that's establishing himself in this moment. The kingdom of God is establishing itself, and he sees so clearly while all this stuff is happening, Jesus in authority, is reigning at the right hand of God. And I I love that in this passage, see, in the New Testament, there's this there's this metaphor of Jesus being seated at the right hand of God. It's about 16 times in the New Testament. This is the only passage where Jesus is standing at the right hand of God. And there's different, you know, scholars have different takes on this. You know, there's a few different ways to go with this, but you almost get this picture of Jesus in this moment. At the edge of his seat, he stands up as Stephen is laying everything down, the first one to say, I'm gonna I'm gonna give my very life away. And Jesus himself stands up and is almost cheering him on. You almost see a cloud of witnesses. He's like, Stephen, you can do it. You can do this. Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, come on, come on, you're almost there. You're almost there. Come on in, Stephen. Come on in. And Stephen, captivated by Jesus, takes his first step into heaven. And he doesn't even know what's happening to him. He falls asleep and says, Wow! Jesus, let us be those like Stephen. So aware of what you're doing, God, that we just as we look at what's happening, God, we can see your kingdom being established even in our midst. That we're not afraid. Stephen is the first to show us that death is just a doorway. Death is not a destination for those who are in Christ. It's just a passageway. And we all get to walk through it. That's okay. Some of it, you know, we we walk through now in certain situations, others we walk through later with our physical bodies. But we get to walk through that into this reality that's superimposing itself upon our reality. And so Stephen is blessed to be the first one to join Jesus. The first of this cloud of witnesses.

unknown 26:58

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

You can just sense Stephen, his heart, his spirit in this moment, even just oh man, I just imagine sometimes these guys are just cheering, just just urging us on like it says in Hebrews. It's a cloud of witnesses that just opens up this whole thing. They're like, come on, guys, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. Don't stop, don't stop, don't stop, don't stop, don't hold back. Keep coming. You're almost there, keep coming. But we do have to, to get there, we do have to look at the places in our lives where we've made these golden calves. We've fashioned parts of our life. Because they make us feel more secure. And I'm not saying we don't work on our lives or we don't have ambitions. I'm not saying that, by the way. Be responsible, do things, you know, build your careers, all that kind of thing. But is it in submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ? Is it in obedience to what he's doing and what he's saying? Because and it's not, it's it's what happens is it becomes something we trust in other than Jesus. Well, things that we trust in other than Jesus will always disappoint us. There's a lot of us who are disappointed because things haven't happened. Maybe the church is even disappointed because the church has been an idol in your life. We trust even other Christians to do what only Jesus can do in our lives. You're waiting for your miracles. Sometimes we trust the supernatural as an idol, over and above, trusting the invisible, providential, sovereign work of Jesus in our lives. And so we get disappointed because the supernatural didn't come through for us. It disappointed us. Why? Because it it can't do that for you, anyways. Yes, Jesus breaks into our world with signs and wonders and miracles, but it's always, just like Mike talked about a few weeks, it's always for the purpose of leading us to become more dependent on Him, not just that experience. All the time. So when we find these cows, what do you do? You just go cow tipping, right? It's okay. There's it's okay. You find you we we we come across the Holy Spirit reveals, listen, that you're trusting in this. You're trusting in you're trusting in in something to happen for you so that you feel a sense of significance or belonging. He said, listen, you can do that, I'll let you do that. Tell me how it goes. But I'll be here the whole time when you're ready to come back. And that's not bad news, that's not shame. Do you understand? This is different than shame. When God exposes idols, that's not saying, oh, you shouldn't have, you ought to, how dare you? But it is a thing of like, listen, if you trust in that, you will go to destruction. I will let you trust in that if that's what you really want. He lets us get what we really want, by the way. And then over time, hopefully, we realize what we really want is Him. And then He lets us get Him. And so, gosh, that's a hard word, but hey, listen, God is good to us to expose to us the things that will eventually disappoint us, anyways. And He's He exposes to us things that we've trusted and maybe our own lives that we've fashioned with our own hand and we've invited Him into. And He said, Yeah, that's that's cool. And maybe that even works for a season. But He's always in the business of taking us further beyond that because we are in a story and God is at work and He doesn't like doing the same thing over and over again. The Spirit of God is at work. So this morning, here's here's how I'll leave it this morning. I think it would be wise for us to take a moment and invite the Holy Spirit to maybe show us things that we've trusted in. Just as Stephen is telling this whole story and reframing this whole story to the people. They had no eyes to see what God is now doing, was doing among them. Stephen, he was inviting them to evaluate what they were putting their stock in, where they were building foundations. Listen, only the Holy Spirit can show that to you. I can't tell you. I can't tell you what it is in your life. And most of the time, people, you won't get judged for it. It doesn't look like sin on the outside. When you put your trust in different relationships, and you know, even your marriage, your marriage can become idols. Even all these good things that God gives us, they can become idols, if that makes sense. So I'm gonna have Mark, I'll have Mark play. And let's um can we take the next few minutes and let's get quiet before the Lord? And this is a good thing when He meets us, and maybe one thing, one or two things just, or you get a picture in your mind or a thought comes through. It's okay. Maybe write it down. And as things come to mind, confess it and say, Jesus, help me to trust you in this place. And so, God, as we open up our hearts for a moment this morning, we know that we don't open up our hearts for you to ridicule us or to call us out. But for our good, God, you want to expose things in us that are robbing us of joy. And I pray even this morning that you would speak to us and help us to boldly respond. Each and every one of us, God. I thank you for the way that you meet us where we're at, so you can lead us to somewhere new. And this morning, God, is um as I'm trusting that your Holy Spirit is uh speaking and whispering to our hearts, God. I I pray that um that we would be responsive to those things, God. And I thank you, God, as we confess, it's not just about confessing our wrongdoing, but it's also about confessing your goodness and your grace in our lives. So we declare that you are merciful and you are gracious towards us. And you are after our joy, God. You speak these things so that our joy may be complete. I thank you that you're after completing our joy. So we thank you, God, that as you're faithful to cut our hearts, you're also faithful to mend them. That's what you do. And for each one of us here, Lord God, we're learning to trust you in new ways. I thank you for boldness and strength to be infused. I thank you for an atmosphere, a provision of courage, a provision of honesty, a provision of strength in this room, God. As we boldly go where you're going, learn to trust you and depend on you and enter into your story in brand new ways, God. We thank you for your story, Jesus. We thank you that we're caught up in this grand scheme, this huge narrative, God. It starts in a garden and ends in a city. People of every nation and tribe gathered with you in your presence and your power, Lord God, rejoicing and delighting in what you have victoriously overcome on our behalf. We thank you for the way you liberate us and you rescue us, Lord God. Help us to trust in your name this morning, God. It's in Jesus' name we pray together. Amen. Amen. Do you guys sense the presence of the Lord here? Yeah. Yeah. Hey, I'm gonna invite the ministry team forward this morning. And uh, we're gonna have some words on the screen for physical conditions, and we'd love to get a shot at praying for you. We'd love to get a shot. And guess what? If you have other physical conditions, you are not uninvited. Just so you know, so you can come forward. And listen, if the Lord's doing some work in your heart even now, you don't have to rush out of that, it's okay. Um, you don't have to pretend something else is happening, you don't have to put a smile on your face if you want. You just be who you are, it's totally okay. You can come up and talk to anybody up here. And listen, we love you guys. Um, the elders are gonna be in the back of the room again, if and they're gonna probably pull up a few circles and uh a circle, and if if you like a chance to connect with them and talk to them um about things happening at Vine Life and um anything else that's on your mind, feel free to go connect with them. And hey guys, you're awesome. Let's stand together. And as we leave, uh please don't feel free, or please don't feel free. Please don't do anything I say. Just ignore everything. No. Um find somebody, maybe somebody you don't even know. Introduce yourself, shake a hand, give a few hugs. It's okay. And uh yeah, love you guys. Go.