S is for Sinai (Part 2) CASKET EMPTY Sermon Series Kenwood Baptist Church Pastor David Palmer October 8, 2017

Transcription

1 S is for Sinai (Part 2) CASKET EMPTY Sermon Series Kenwood Baptist Church Pastor David Palmer October 8, 2017 TEXT: Deuteronomy 6:1-12 and Joshua 1:1-9 We continue in our series this fall: CASKET EMPTY, tracing God's Plan of Redemption through Scripture, and this morning we look at part two of the period of SINAI. This is the movement from the mountain to the Promised Land, and we will look at two key passages: Deuteronomy 6 and Joshua 1, where we find the greatest commandment according to our Lord Jesus, and we find the life-giving priority of living by God's Word to guide us and the next generation. As I worked through these texts this week, I found within them some deep sources of encouragement. Before we dig into the Scripture, I just wanted to share one piece of real-time church history. It was an unexpected voice of encouragement to me this week. Halfway through the week, I received a picture in an from a dear friend. In the picture was a group of people also studying CASKET EMPTY. There are banners of the CASKET EMPTY time-line behind the speaker. The man who is teaching in the picture is named Nana. He is one of the leaders of the Lausanne Movement of Global Evangelization, and Nana attended a CASKET EMPTY conference in the spring in Boston. Now he has taken the material all the way to Africa and conducted a conference for 300 students. He walked them through the great redemptive story of Scripture to offer them Jesus Christ. Over 300 students that came to this conference and 150 gave their lives to Christ. We are on the winning team. The winning team, if you will, in world history is God's, and He is on the move, and His story is the true story of the world. As we look at Scripture, we find that this is our story because this is the Lord our God and we are called be His people. As we continue this morning, we move further along the great narrative of redemption, and Page 1 of 12

2 let's remind ourselves of our acronym. C is for CREATION. We begin with the world that God makes; we don't make it. That's critical, because God makes us. God's plan of redemption continues with A is for ABRAHAM. Would you believe that God calls idolatrous people with no hope and reveals to them the gift of being justified by faith? That is the heart of the story of Abraham. This morning, we look further at S is for SINAI. This is the mountain of God where God's people spend more time than any other place in the Pentateuch. Sinai is the place of God's presence. He reveals His will to us and enters into covenant. Remember that the Exodus event that we talked about last Sunday leads to this place. When Moses asked the question: Lord, how will I know You're with me? when he sees the small burning bush, which in Hebrew is called the Sineh, that is a mini-sinai, the Lord says: You will know that I'm with you when you come back to this place, except you won't be by yourself. You will be with 600,000 families at the base of the mountain. Moses returns to this mountain, the place of God's presence. The mountain is ablaze with the fire and smoke of God's presence, that same Presence that passed through the pieces in Genesis 15, that same Presence that led the people out from the house of slavery to the freedom of worshiping God. They come to the mountain, and God speaks audibly from the mountain. He speaks all of these words. The text says God spoke these words, and we refer to these words as the 10 Commandments. The 10 Commandments are spoken from the mountain in the hearing of all the people. The 10 Commandments are expressed in the second person singular. If your grammar is a little rusty this morning, let me just remind you that that's the difference between you and y'all. The second person singular means that God is addressing each one of us. Readers of the Bible noticed this in antiquity and said that God's Word comes to each one of us. It's a remarkable thing that the living God would enter into covenant with us, with an entire group of people. When we look at the 10 Commandments as they are spoken before us, we must remember that this is the point of the Exodus. The point of the Exodus is not just God's mighty power to save, not just that He is showing us that forgiveness comes through the shed blood of the Passover Lamb, but that that act of salvation brings us into a covenant relationship with Him. God reveals the vows, if you will, of this covenant in these 10 words. These 10 Commandments describe for us an exclusive relationship with God. That's language we use often, but sometimes were not sure what we mean by that to have a relationship with God. What that means is that we're in a covenant with God, that He has bound Himself to us, and we are bound to Him in return. The 10 Commandments, these 10 words, focus for us our exclusive love for God, that we are to have no other gods before Him, that we are not to represent God with the works of our hands, Page 2 of 12

3 because we are the work of His hands. We are not to take the name of God in vain or attach it to things of vanity. We are to remember the Sabbath Day, that God gives us time and space every week to worship Him, and that we are to honor our father and our mother, earthly representatives of our Heavenly Father. The first five Commandments often are described as describing our love for God, our relationship to Him, and the second five describe our relationship with humanity, those around us. We are instructed not to kill, not to murder, and oh how we need to hear this word in a violent world, a world that spinning out of control outside this covenant relationship. We are not entrusted with the power of taking life. We are instructed to be faithful in our marriages and not to commit adultery, because our God is faithful. We are instructed not to steal, because our God has committed Himself to meet all of our needs. He, Himself, has said: I will never leave you, and I will never forsake you. We are to be truth-tellers, because God is a truth- teller, and we are not to bear false witness against our neighbor. Lastly, we are warned, with a death blow to a consumerist society, that we should not covet our neighbor's goods. How often we live in pursuit of these things, and we need this regular reminder. The 10 Commandments describe our relationship vertically with God, horizontally with one another. Many churches summarize the will of God as love God and love your neighbor. The 10 Commandments move from our actions to our words, and even God gives us instruction on the motivation or intention of our heart. Isn t that amazing? There is no other example in the ancient world where God commands your intentions. God knows us. These 10 words give us a summary of the will of God, and it's a beautiful will. Sometimes we imagine these Commandments or rules as though they are external to the relationship, but I like to describe the 10 Commandments more like wedding vows. It's a promise. It s the expression of a commitment of a love that God has for us and that He seeks from us in return. Page 3 of 12

4 From the place of God's presence on Mount Sinai, the Bible lingers long on this mountain, and God's people stay there from Exodus 19 all the way to Numbers 9. The Lord speaks from the mountain and the Tabernacle is constructed. He speaks intimately to Moses and reveals the sacrificial system in Leviticus, and then He guides the people through the wilderness in the Book of Numbers, which we studied last fall. We come to the end of the period of Sinai in our study with the Book of Deuteronomy. This is where we pick up the story this morning. Deuteronomy in Greek means a second law, a second giving or repetition of it. It s here in Deuteronomy that Moses speaks to the next generation. It is a critical theme in these two passages: how does God's Word, His will, get communicated, get instilled in the next generation? Every parent wants their child to do better than they did, really. To succeed in this life according to God's Word is to live your life in conformity to it, and so Deuteronomy gives us a re-presentation of the will of God. Moses starts and rehearses God s saving actions; he restates the 10 Commandments in Deuteronomy 5. He says: These are the commandments that God gave to me on the mountain, and these tablets were written with the very finger of God. I love Rembrandt's painting of Moses receiving the tablets. The only thing that's incorrect about this painting is that the tablets are written with the Aramaic block script instead of a real Hebrew script, but that's artistic license. This painting shows us that these are God's Words. One of the reasons why we stand for the reading of the Scripture is that these are God's Words. These are not man's words, and our Heavenly Father desires us to know His will so that we can live by it. When we turn to Deuteronomy 6, the first of two critical passages, Moses is explaining or interpreting God's Word. Moses tells the people that the Lord had called him up to the mountain, and He spoke and revealed all of this instruction. When Moses comes down from the mountain, he teaches the people. Deuteronomy 6, in a sense, is the explanation or the interpretation, the application, of the initial set of the 10 Commandments. Moses comes to the people in Deuteronomy 6:1 and says: Now this is the commandment the statutes and the rules that the LORD your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it. You know that you learn something when you actually start doing it. Moses doesn t teach the people so that they can pass a Bible exam. He doesn't teach the people so that they can answer Bible trivia. Notice that Moses is commanded to teach the people to do them, which of course stands behind our Lord's Commission and the Great Commission. Remember that Jesus says Page 4 of 12

5 that all authority in heaven on earth has been given to Me and that we are to teach the people to obey everything I have commanded. You know that you know God's will, that you have learned it, when you actually are doing it. I remember when my father taught me to ride a bike. He gave me very little preliminary instruction. He just raced me down the driveway with one hand on the handlebars and one hand on the back, and then he released me into the backyard and just shouted: Pedal! Pedal! I pedaled, bumping over the grass and then fell over. I did it again and again, and then as I started getting towards the back yard fence, he thought: Okay, you're ready for the open road. You have learned enough to do it. So he took me out on the open road and released me down the street. I pedaled, thinking: This is infinitely easier than the backyard. This is a level surface! I was going, and I was loving it, and I was riding right towards the major intersection at the end of our street, and then I heard my father's voice yelling: Brakes! Brakes! He hadn't told me about how to slow the bike down, and so I did what I learned in the backyard, which is just to lean over. It was a little bit more painful the on the street! But, you learn when you actually start doing. That is the point. Remember that this is God's will for us. God's will is that we are made in His image and likeness to actually reflect Him in the earth. This is the commission in the Garden of Eden, to know our Father and reflect Him. When evil comes, to be empowered to banish it, to live and reflect His goodness, His righteousness, so that the earth would be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. Moses teaches the people that these are the commands of God. In Deuteronomy 6:3, he again reminds the people: Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey. I hope that you hear the echo of that original creation commission to hear God's Word, to do it that it would go well with us, and that the Lord would bless us and fill the earth with His Glory. The command of God is then focused down for us in Deuteronomy 6:4 in a vital summons, a confession of faith, a compressed expression that says: Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. This is Israel's confession of faith that Yahweh, the Lord, is indeed our God, and that the Lord is one. This is the first confession of monotheism in the ancient world, that there is only one true and living God. That means that the gods of the nations are phony, that there is one real God. Not only is there one real, true God, but this God is our God and we are bound to Him in covenant. This declaration for God's people to know the exclusivity, the uniqueness, of the Lord is impressed on Israel's heart forever this confession. This confession is called the Shema, the hearing of the uniqueness of God, that He is the only God, the only true God, and that He is bound to us in covenant. The Shema, that confession of faith of the uniqueness of God, becomes a centerpiece in the temple liturgy. It is repeated in synagogue prayers. In fact, devout Page 5 of 12

6 Jews pray and recite the Shema when they wake up in the morning and when they go to bed at night. It is the centerpiece of the synagogue service three times a day to hear and know that the Lord our God, He is Lord alone. The place of God's will, His Commandments, is binding to us in covenant, and our summons to hear and confess His uniqueness and power in our lives is focal in the artwork for the Sinai banner. One of our missionaries, Kit Ripley, who serves the Lord in Thailand, painted the Sinai banner for us. Kit was one of the first residents in our Sabbath House, one of the houses the church owns where people come and get refreshed for ministry. Kit heard God's call on her life and has been sent out to Thailand and works among young women who are trapped in human trafficking. Kit leads them to faith in Christ and has baptized hundreds of these young women and taught them in the ways of the Lord. We asked Kit to paint the Sinai banner and gave her very little instruction or guidance. She came back with this very moving original piece of art. It's an abstract painting, and yet there is symbolism that she explained to me. There are 10 panels within this painting which signify the 10 Commandments. The first of these looks like watery blue and echoes the fact that God's people came out of the waters to the place of covenant. These 10 sections remind us of God's will expressed concisely in these words. In the middle of the painting, you see the section of fabric which is like a tapestry woven together the dwelling place of God, and in the heart of that tapestry you see the cross, the blood of the Passover Lamb pointing us forward to our ultimate redemption. In the bottom of the painting, you see these words in Hebrew: Shema Yisrael, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Sinai is this place of covenant-making. It is where we enter into this bond with God and where our original calling will be put on display for all to see. What does the Lord require of us in response to His uniqueness and His power? Deuteronomy 6:5 tells us in response what God requires of us: You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. How can you command love? God teaches us that we are to love Him with all of our heart, soul, and might. This is our highest good; this is our greatest joy; this is a love that comes with no regrets; and this love is what our Lord Jesus says is the Greatest Commandment in the Scriptures. When Jesus was asked by one of the teachers of His day which is the greatest commandment in the Torah, our Lord said: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. The Greatest Commandment is to love God in response. The love that we have for God is to be comprehensive; it is an exclusive love. It's a love that manifests itself, not just in emotion, but a lot of that manifests itself in how we live. Wives know that when a husband loves her, she can see it, not just feel it. Right? Love is an action, and so we see in the remainder Deuteronomy 6 the actions that that express our love Page 6 of 12

7 for God. In Deuteronomy 6:6 the Lord says: And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. Our love for Him is manifested in that the words He commands to us shall be upon our heart; that God's Word should be the subject of our reflection; they should be written upon the tablets of our heart; they should be words that we internalize, words that we pay careful attention to. We live in a distracting, distracted age. Have of you established your own personal protocol for when you notice a driver that is on their phone? It seems about half of the drivers now are on their phones while driving. It is really scary when there s a semi going down the highway and you notice the semi drifting. You think, Wow, it's like a semi truck with flammable liquid and it s moving around the highway. I know why that's happening. You get around them and you see the driver looking down and concentrating on his phone. While we were walking across the street downtown near Music Hall last night, cars were being instructed by the police to go, and they weren t going. The policeman was waving his flashlight, motioning to go, go, but the driver was doing what most people do at red lights now, which is to check your or fire off a quick text. The police officer finally just shouted at the driver: Get off your phone and move! Whatever the specific shape of our distraction is, the Lord wisely calls us to say these words: My Words have got to be on your heart or you will not live well. Not only do the Words of God need to be on our heart, secondly, Deuteronomy 6:7: You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. These life-giving words of God must be something that we diligently communicate to the next generation. It's imperative that God's Words are communicated to our sons and daughters, our grandchildren. The Lord teaches us to teach others, teach them diligently, to impress them upon their hearts, to repeat them. The Lord says to talk about them in formal settings and informal: Talk when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise. Don't let your children waste their life sitting at a restaurant playing a computer game. That s not legalism. It s just practical parenting. Say: Son or daughter, this is what's important right now. It s that we re together. The last meal we shared as a family, our son asked us a question about how all the different Christian denominations fit together. It was unplanned, but it was over the meal. He then asked the question: How do we understand the secondary topics where Christians disagree? What will happen at the end? It was just a rich, spontaneous conversation. Are your conversations about the Lord? The Lord says these words shall be on your heart. Teach them to your children or grandchildren and talk about them when you're at home, when you're in route, when you lie down, when you rise. The Lord also wisely reminds us in Deuteronomy 6:8-9: Page 7 of 12

8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Put reminders of Scripture in places where you will see them. I have Scripture memory cards that I put in the car. I have set all my passwords to go online with key Scripture references. It is a simple way that I keep the Word in front of me. We need God's Word again so that we know how to live, and we need these reminders. The most tempting season to forget the Lord is actually not when things are going poorly. When things are going poorly and we are in need and we are desperate, we readily run to God. But God knows us better than we know ourselves. At the end of Deuteronomy 6, the Lord says that when the Lord brings you into the land, you are going to walk in and you are going to be amazed, really amazed, because there are cities there that you don't even have to build. There are houses that you did not have to fill, cisterns that you didn't have to dig, vineyards you didn't have to plant. You are going to walk in, and it's like walking into a house that you didn't have to build or pay for, and you are like: Hallelujah! This is awesome. Why didn t we serve God earlier? But then, you will get so distracted by the blessings that sometimes you will forget the Lord. It is actually when things are going well that we tend to forget the Lord, and the Lord says in Deuteronomy 6:12: Then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. This is the time that we must remember Him! Is the Word focal in your life? Is the confession of the uniqueness of God met in response with an exclusive, heartfelt devotion with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength? Is God's Word the first news of the day? Is God the subject of your conversation, the topic of your tweet? The importance of this for the next generation emerges in the Book of Joshua, and we will look briefly at this passage in closing. In Joshua 1, we come to the end of the period of our study that's covered under SINAI. It's that journey out of Egypt to the mountain, then to the land. God's people enter into the land with a charge to be careful, to do according to all that the Lord has commanded as God's redemptive purpose increases and fans out and more of the earth is reclaimed, fulfilling Genesis 1 step by step. When we read Joshua 1, we read of the challenge for the next generation. In Joshua 1, Moses has died after being used by God in extraordinary ways. Moses is called the servant of the Lord. I notice that Joshua had served as his apprentice or his servant along the way. He had been with Moses, and now the Lord calls Joshua to lead. He the calls to him directly in Joshua 1:2 and says: Moses My servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the people of Israel. It is an exciting and terrifying moment. It's like getting your driver s license. I remember when I first received my driver s license, and the only thing I was worried about was that any of my Page 8 of 12

9 friends might be on the road and see me and think that I was driving too slow. It was my only fear. It was misplaced. I got a speeding ticket within two weeks, and I remember the police officer not caring at all that I was driving too slow. He was concerned that I was driving too fast. You get the keys. You get the challenge, and it's like now you're in charge and where will you go? How will you live? Joshua is given this commission. It is his time, and Joshua s state of preparation is dependent on what he has seen and heard and learned from watching God's dealing with Moses. The Lord tells him in Joshua 1:3: Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, just as I promised to Moses. Joshua is challenged to go forward and lead the people, and this walking of the land recalls for us Abraham s walking of the land. It recalls to us Adam s walking in the midst of the Garden, so that the place where God puts you, you claim for the Lord. This challenge, this summons, can be applied for each of us, because where we are in redemptive history now the Word is going out and the whole earth is being reclaimed. That means where you are walking this week is ground that you claim for the Lord Jesus Christ. Maybe that ground is just the space around your dinner table, and you say, I'm claiming this space for the Lord Jesus Christ, and He will be exalted in this space. Joshua was told to walk the land, and he is reminded that where he goes, the Lord will go with him. God gives him this joyous word in Joshua 1:5: No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you. It is a huge task. We know from Scripture that there are people living in the land. Joshua was commanded to go and take possession of the land. The sin of the Amorites has now reached full measure, and they are to go in and set on display at the crossroads of all major civilizations who the Lord is and what it means to live for Him. God could not have picked a more prominent place. That's why our Lord Jesus did most of His ministry in Galilee, because it was the crossroads where people passed in innumerable multitude. Israel is stationed in the center of the earth, and the Lord says: Go there. Set up, put on display My plan of redemption. It is such a huge responsibility that the Lord repeats three times to Joshua this double imperative: Be strong and courageous! Three times he is told this. If you have to be told to be strong and be courageous, you know that Joshua s blood was coming out of his feet, that his knees were trembling at the thought of it. We don't know how old Joshua was here, but we know he's given a major responsibility, and each one of these double imperatives, be strong and be courageous, carries with it a charge, and these charges are for us this morning. The first summons in Joshua 1:6, the Lord says: Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. Page 9 of 12

10 We need to hear God's call this morning, because each one of us is given a God-appointed task. Whatever your generation, whatever your station, wherever your place of assignment, see that word in there you. We sometimes look at what God does through other people and we are often worried to hear His call to us. This call is straight to Joshua: Be strong and be courageous, and because you have a task, you have a responsibility, in the sphere of your influence that God has assigned to you, don't neglect it. Don't look at someone else's call. What has God assigned specifically to you? In Joshua 1:7, the Lord gives a second summons: Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses My servant commanded you. Be strong and be courageous, secondly, means to take up God's revealed Word and really do it. Don t hold back; don't seek the bare minimum. The Lord says in Joshua 1:7b: Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. This is the way you ll have good success by living according to God's Word. The Lord tells Joshua in Joshua 1:8: This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. You should be talking about it. You should be thinking about it. God's Word should be the first word we hear in the morning. It should be the last word we hear at night: God's Word coursing through our mind, our heart, that we might be careful to do It. Not only do we have a God-given task, we are then challenged to carried out according to God's Word. In Joshua 1:9, the Lord issues a third summons: Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go. When you see your task, when you start to meditate on God's Word, if you're honest, you will look out and you will feel overwhelmed by the difficulties. You will see there are giants in the land. You will look inside your heart and say: Lord God, I do not have the resources within me to be the kind of husband I want to be. I not have the resources to be the kind of parent I want to be. I don't have the resources to be the kind of Christian I want to be. Lord, would You help me? Lord, with trembling arms, I pick up the task You have given to me. I am pouring over your Word and seeking to live by it, and yet, Lord if I'm honest, I'm afraid, because I look at how difficult it is. When I think honestly about my role as senior pastor of this church, it is an overwhelming responsibility. How do you open the hearts of people to lay aside idols and live for God? How do you reach a society all around us that increasingly has no thought of God? Yet, Page 10 of 12

11 we are in this together, and we're looking out and saying there are giants in the land. Do you feel that? Do you feel the enormous indifference to Jesus Christ in the people around you? I do, and I cannot stay indifferent about that, and neither can you. We have a task. We are to live by God's Word, and as we get ready to move out together, it can be terrifying and frightening. And yet, the greatest source of encouragement in Joshua 1:9 is that the Lord says: Don't be afraid, because I will be with you wherever you go. These two gigantic passages have much to give us and feed us, and I want us to embrace these summons given to Joshua at the end. I you want to embrace with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, the task that God has given to you. Maybe you are a student right now, and that just means: Lord, I'm going to be diligent in learning what You have to teach me. Maybe you're at a station in life or you've finished school or grad school and you have just begun working, and you say: Lord, I am going to apply myself to the work that You have given to me. I am going to embrace my God-given assignment. Secondly, I am going to try to live out that assignment according to the pattern of Your Word. I am going to make Your Word my priority so that daily I tune my heart affections to love You and reflect You to my neighbor. I want to put on display in my life a redeemed person. That is what we are called to be. We are God's redeemed. We are united by faith in Christ. We are empowered by His Spirit to worship and to live by His Word and join His mission in the world. I want to commend to you a very dangerous set of DVDs. They are called Dispatches from the Front. They are about an hour long, and they are real-time pictures into missions today. They are wonderful documentaries about God's Kingdom growing in the world today. One that I saw just recently was describing the work of Christ in Albania, and Kosovo, and Montenegro, and seeing people called to serve the Lord and going out and living, meeting missionaries, some from the US that were just praying and trying to share Christ with people. One of the men who had come to know Christ, an Albanian man, his life was changed, and the way his faith in Christ expressed itself so visibly was in how he treated his wife. The people around him were astonished at this new life growing. Their first child was a girl, and in the Albanian culture, girls are given a second-class status. But this new Christian husband knew that men and women are made in God's image and likeness. He loved his daughter, so he gave her an honorable name. It was a powerful testimony just in how he was living. When we live by God's Word, it puts His glory on display. The Lord s summons, to Joshua, is also for us this morning. When you see the challenges, wherever you are facing them inside your heart, in your work environment, family dynamics, disappointments in this life, in prayers that are still waiting to be answered, health challenges whatever you are facing, as you hear God call, you and us together, to go forward, we need to be tapped in to these deep wells of encouragement. The way that Moses mentors Joshua challenges us to communicate our faith to the next generation so that they can be strong and courageous, ultimately because we have God's promise behind us, and we have God's Word in Page 11 of 12

12 front of us, and we have God's presence committed to us. That is why the Lord says: Don't be afraid; don't be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Let s pray. Lord God, we praise You this morning. We thank You that You have promised to be with us. We thank You that Your will is not a secret, Lord, but that You have bound Yourself to us in covenant. We thank You, Lord, that You alone are the Lord, that You are unique, that You are glorious, that You are powerful. We pray, Lord, that we would respond to Your steadfast love with an exclusive love in return, and as You called us this morning, we ask that You would give us ears to hear, that we, too, would be strong and courageous, that we would embrace the task that You have given to us, that we would live out according to Your Word, and that, Lord, we would take You at Your Word, and that You would banish fear from our hearts with Your promise that I will be with You wherever You go. Hallelujah! Amen. Page 12 of 12