Indictment: Day 1

Hi everyone. How are you doing good to see you all this morning. Thanks for joining us online. I'm excited about our new series called indictment, and here's what we're going to do. We're going to take a walk through the last week of Jesus's life. And so for the next seven weeks, we're going to take a day. And what I, what I want us to do is think about this in terms of the church calendar. Like if you, if you have grown up practicing Lent. I never knew what Lent was growing up. My dad always used to run a joke. Anytime someone said they. And he's like, why are you giving it up for Lent? I mean, he would say that all the time, but we never practiced. We're not going to do Lent as a church, but if you do traditionally do lent, this sermon series will be really advantageous for you because it is a traditional lent series. And so we're going to explore it.

What we need to understand is that Jesus's last week is so profound in understanding God's heart and God's kingdom and what he's saying and what he's doing, all of this stuff matters. And so we're gonna explore that as we lead into Resurrection Sunday. Which, good news -- spoiler alert, the tomb is empty. I just thought I would let you know where we're headed. I know, I know you guys are like what? That's incredible. So we're going to head that direction, but I want today, we're going to kind of hone in here and talk about the triumphal entry and what's going on. Because like with most things in the Bible, there's a lot more going on here than often what we read or what we just kind of blow through when we're just reading it and trying to figure out why is this -- why Palm branches and why these verses and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Why this stuff? Why is it all going on? So we're going to wrestle with some of that today, excuse me. And it's not the, it's not the ‘Rona, I promise. And then we're going to land the plane, hopefully in a space where we can be pretty introspective. Cause I think this one has some applications for all of us, no matter how long you've been in the church, because we all have expectations of our religious experience and some of those are godly and some of them are not. And I would just offer you this truth, as we pass through this series, God is under no obligation to honor yours or my version of what we think the kingdom should be. He only upholds his own. And so our goal then is to make sure that we are lining up with his agenda rather than getting frustrated at him for not lining up with ours.

So, Luke 19, here we go. You guys ready to go to work? “After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you'll find a colt tied there.” Now, why do I need to know that it's a colt? No unimportant details.  “Which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘why are you untying it?’” Which is probably not how I would lead into that conversation if I was standing on the other side of it, right? Hey, you're stealing my donkey. What's your problem? That's probably where I would go. “Why are you untying it,’ say, ‘the Lord needs it’. Which is not an invitation or strategy to becoming a thief, right? Why are you taking that from the store? Hey, the Lord needs it, all right. The Lord needs it. Let's just get that on the table.

I want to begin by showing you a little bit of context. I know stunner, but we're going to look at some pictures. Here's a picture of the Mount of Olives. What's right in the center is the nose of the ridge that's called the Mount of Olives. And so around this backside on what we would call the right-hand side of the photo is Bethphage and Bethany are there. And then around this front side is more along the lines of what you would be looking at from temple mountain. If you look over to the left-hand side of the photo, you can see the dome of the rock, which is, that's iconic, right? That's this, this iconic identifier of the Temple Mount. So, this is the Mount of Olives in relation to the Temple Mount, which is -- and in between it is a valley known as the Kidron Valley. Jerusalem is built on three valleys, the Tyropean Valley, the Kidron Valley and the Hinnom Valley, which matters because the Hinnom Valley is the trash valley, right? That's where everybody throws their junk. And it's always, stuff is on fire there. The Hebrew word for valley is ge. And so it's known in Hebrew is Ge henna. And it's Jesus's metaphor for hell – ge henna. So that one is actually where – here, beyond it goes off to the bottom left-hand side of the photo -- all those white dots on the nose of the Mount of Olives. Those are tombs. And tombs in Israel are all above ground. And this is actually really significant because anybody who comes really from the Rift Valley, from the Jordan River this direction towards Jerusalem is ultimately going to wind up having to walk through this cemetery. And that's really, really important. It's really important because when you go to Jerusalem, if you don't live in Jerusalem, the only reason you go to Jerusalem is to be there for a festival to worship at the temple. If you touch anything dead, you are unclean, which makes it really important for you to know what is a tomb and what isn't a tomb. And they're very meticulous about this. They paint their tombs bright white and Jesus uses Is this phrase, “whitewashed tombs -- you're just whitewashed tombs.” They have a very visual frame of reference so that you can see them. So there's no question about it, right? And then they walk on the road. Now here's the interesting thing. So the road comes, if you look at that big building that's kind of in the middle of the picture. If you come straight down the nose of the ridge, there's some rows of trees. That bottom row of trees goes along a road. And that's the road that actually would have been there in the first century. Jesus would have come from Bethphage and Bethany and walked on that road around the front. And then if you look to the left-hand side of the ridge, there's a grass place there and then the road cuts down in front of that. 

So let's look at the second photo and we're going to zoom in on that space. This is standing on the temple mount, looking at the Mount of Olives. You get the teardrop church, which is a rough Russian Orthodox Church. And then down at the bottom, you've got church of nations and what's traditionally known as the garden of gethsemane is off here to your left. But this is, this is the Mount of Olives. All those tombs that we were talking about is this right hand side. And if you look along the top, that road that Jesus would have walked on, parallels along the top. Now it hits this green area and turns and goes down the hill and it goes down the hill and then it goes up onto the Temple Mount. Okay. Here's why I take the trouble to tell you, we're going to talk about what happened on that road. Here's the interesting thing. We know square inch on this one, and we don't know square inch on a lot of things. A lot of it is educated speculation, but this one, we know square inch that this is where it happened. This is the exact spot that had happened. And here's why in Israel, they have archeological inspectors. Israel is a fascinating place In that, you can literally take a shovel and just walk out into any random place and start digging and unearth civilization. You just can. It's been around that long. It's been, things have been built and destroyed that many times. So you know how we have, when you go digging in your backyard or you want to put an addition in your house, or you got to dig, you have to have people that come out and inspect and figure out where your electrical lines and your gas lines are. Right? You have that here in the United States, we have that so that you don't hit the pipes or the lines and break them and cause problems. In Israel, they have those, but they also have archeological inspectors, people that come out and they actually have to inspect where you want to make improvements because they want to make sure that there's nothing of archeological significance there. Let me give you a couple of examples of how this works, because this is fascinating to me about Israel. Right next to the temple Mount, there was this parking lot, right across the street from the dung gate. And this parking lot was there and they wanted to tear it off and resurface it and make it more accessible for tourist parking. Well, they start peeling it off. And the archeology inspectors come in and look, and they find not very far below the surface they find these carved stones. Well, they start digging around and what they find is a watchtower, but it's not just any watchtower. What they discover is the strategic turning point of the Maccabean Revolt. And so now there's no parking lot. That happens all the time in Israel. It's crazy. There's a place called Sethopolis or  bet’shaun where we, every Israel tour goes there. There's a little place that basically was the equivalent of their phone company. And they wanted to expand their offices. They had a little office building. They want it to expand. So they go out behind their office to dig for the footings for the foundation. And the bucket goes down in the dirt and hits the top of a wall. Well, they start digging out these walls and they uncover this massive arena. They didn’t know it was there. It is all underground. Like, that kind of stuff happens in Israel all the time. So they have these archeology inspectors. Well, a few years ago, they wanted to do some repair work on this road. And what happened was they started to peel back the blacktop that’s on the road now. And they bring in the archeology inspectors. On one side of the road is graves and on the other side of the road is graves, but where the road is itself, no matter how far down you go, there were no graves. This has been the road since before the time of Jesus, which is super significant for us because it's very rare that we can actually pinpoint where conversations actually happen.

So we're going to actually take a look at this picture more in a little bit, but I want you to have the visual and we're going to continue reading in Luke 19. Here we go. “Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying, the colt, its owners asked them, ‘why are you untying the colt?’  They replied, ‘the Lord needs it.’” It's the Lord's colt. “They replied, ‘the Lord needs it.’ And they brought it to Jesus.” There's a massive gap of information right here. “They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.” Okay. So, let's talk about this. First of all, we need to look at a picture of a donkey. Let's take a look at this picture. El Burro -- The donkey. This is what Jesus rode in on. And this is actually super important because in the first century world, there was this statement being made by Jesus riding in on a donkey. When a King came into an area and they wanted to interact with the King of that area, there was one of two things that they did. If they rode in on a donkey, they wanted to seek terms of peace. If they rode in on a horse, on a white stallion, let's go to the next photo. There it is. This is an act of war. So, just by what you're riding in on, you’re talking about what your intention is as the King in your kingdom. Does that make sense? You ride in on a donkey, you want terms of peace. If you ride in on a white stallion, you want to cause war to happen. And this matters because there are so many layers to what's going on with the triumphal entry. First of all, on the other side of the city, Pontious Pilot is coming in with the Roman guard. Guess what? He's riding a white stallion. Why? Because this is their kingdom -- armor gleaming in the sun, flags drums, du, du, du, du for marching horns blowing. As they enter into the city and Pontious Pilot, at the helm on a white stallion. Here, the King of the universe rides in on a donkey. And it's so interesting because Jesus, from the beginning of things has always made the kingdom about peace. The kingdom of God has never been about war. And we like that right up until we don't -- right up until the point where we want Jesus to be something that he's not intending to be. He came to bring us peace, not war. And there's so many Christians that are trying to bring about the kingdom of God with a heart of war. And until we let go of that and take on the Holy Spirit, which brings us the fruit of peace, we will never be able to understand and receive the Kingdom of God in this world.

And so, Jesus is making a statement. Now, beyond that, what we know is, many of them bring back, they have palm fronds, right? And they're taking those palm fronds and they're laying them down in the street. Now let's go back and look at that second photo again. Let me ask you a question -- two and a half million people show up in Jesus's day for one festival. And they all have palm fronds. Where'd they get them? Which by the way, is that one tree, that one palm tree down in the bottom of Kidron Valley, that is in a later addition. In the first century, there are no palm trees in Jerusalem. Where'd they get them? Well, the only option is that they brought them and the question then becomes why in the world did they bring the palm fronds? Here's why. Palm fronds, especially in the first century, were the symbol of the zealot movement. And so, they became synonymous with war and overthrow and liberating Israel from Rome through violence. The palm frond becomes synonymous with that, so much so that, when Rome comes through in 78 AD and destroys the temple, they minted a coin. The coin depicted Israel as a woman crying and over her head, a broken palm frond as a symbol that Israel's will to fight had been crushed. This is the seriousness of the palm frond. And so we look at that and go, well, what's going on here? What's happening? Well, what's happening is they see Jesus as Messiah and they see Messiah as the one who's going to lead them to war. And so they're acknowledging, it's time. We've got it, we're ready. We brought our palm fronds. We're ready to go to war. And Jesus is going to hear in just a minute. What he's going to do is he's going to weep. He's going to go, Oh my goodness. If you guys only knew what would bring you peace, this isn't it! And they're going to love Jesus as the liberator of Israel, until he actually brings his kingdom to bear. And then they're going to reject him. Maybe we ought to pay attention to that. But there's another layer that's going on with the donkey that I find really, really interesting. Remember, Jesus is the living word, everything he does and everything that he says is in the word. So when we look at that and go, remember I asked you this detail it’s a colt, why do I need to know it's a colt. Why do I need to know that he's riding a colt? Why do I need to know that? Here's why. Because it's in the text. Why does he choose to ride the Colt of a donkey? Where's he get this stuff? Zachariah 9. Here's what it says: “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, daughter Jerusalem! See, your King comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”  He says, “I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the warhorses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations.” Because his kingdom was always about peace. “His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth.”

Okay. What's Jesus doing? He's claiming himself as King and what are they doing? They're acknowledging it. But the problem is they're not connecting the dots. Which by the way, is totally different than the world we live in, where we'll acknowledge that Jesus is who he says he is right up until the point where it doesn't make sense to us and then we'll choose our own path. Like you don't get, I don't get to choose our own path when we don't like what Jesus says. We can't cherry pick the gospel. We don't get the opportunity to go. Well, I love Jesus right up until the point where I have to do something with it that I don't care for. So then I'm just going to turn it loose. I mean, Jesus didn't really mean it when he said that thing, whatever that thing is. But I want to continue reading in Luke 19. It says: “When he came near the place where the road goes down to the Mount of Olives,…” Okay, let's go back to that second photo again. Remember it comes along the top of those tombs and then it turns and comes right down by those trees. So it happens right there. We know exactly where this happened, which is cool because you can stand there and go, this, this happened, this happened here, right? “When he came to the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles that they had seen: ‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ‘Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!’ Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples! ‘I tell you’, he replied, ‘if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.’” Which, by the way, here's what we often interpret that as. Well, I haven't heard any rocks crying, so somebody is praising Jesus, right? So Western. That's not what Jesus is saying. Where's Jesus getting his stuff. This is the easiest test for you to take. It's in the text. It's always in the text. We’ll come back to it in just a second. “As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “if you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace?” Which, by the way, this is so layered and so important. In Hebrew, Jerusalem is Yarus Shalom, the city of peace. It was always supposed to be the illustration of the whole world of what peace actually looks like. It's the city of God. It's the sacred Holy city. If any looks at Jerusalem, he's like, if you, you, the city of peace, if even you had known this day, what would bring you peace? What doesn't bring you peace is what the world says – dominance, power and control and predictability. These things are what the world pushes for. And we try to work those into our relationship with Jesus. We want to understand God so we can control and predict him. Let's just be real clear about something. You cannot control and predict God, nor should we try. Because the goal isn't for me to figure out where God's headed and get ahead of him. The goal for me, as a follower of Jesus, is to understand who God is, have relationship with him and let him move me. He says, “but now it's hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you.” By the way, within 30 to 35 years of that statement, that's exactly what happens. It's exactly what happens. Why does Jesus say, if these people don't do this, if they don't praise me, then the rocks will cry out. They'll shout out. Why does he say that? Again, easiest test you will ever take. Ah, whoever said that gets a level of Torah. It's always in the text. It's always in the text. Everything that he does is in the text, Habakkuk 2, by the way, brilliant pull, Jesus. Why? Because Habakkuk is the book where God says, I'm going to send in the Babylonians to help teach you guys a lesson. What is the metaphor for Rome all the way through the New Testament and especially in the book of Revelation? Babylon -- Babylon is the archetype for all oppressors from that time forward. And it's brilliant that he pulls on it because this matters. Look at it. Habakkuk 2:9-11, it says this: “woe to him who builds his house by unjust gain.” What does that mean? Well, let's think about it. The priests, and we've talked about this before, the people who were working at the temple, don't believe in an afterlife and they're living in a theocracy. So they hold all the power and have no accountability. How's that going to go? We all have seen children that were raised with privilege without responsibility. How does that go for them? It's not good. But the issue is, I would step even further beyond that. I think a lot of American citizens sit in the same boat. We have all kinds of privilege and not enough responsibility. We don't steward the privilege that we have in a way that helps other people be better. We steward it in a way that protects and builds our own little slice of the world. It's not the kingdom of God. Not at any level. And God is under no obligation to bless that kingdom. “Woe to him who builds his house by unjust gain.” So if I'm leveraging unjust gain to get my house built, I'm doing it wrong. By the way, not just my house, but the house that I worked for. Here's the interesting thing. Temple is a Greek word. The Jews didn't call the temple, the temple. They called it the house of God. So when the priests are working in the house of God, they're trying to build that house by unjust gain. Here's what's happening, part just a small snippet of what's happening. In order, when you come in to go to the temple Mount, that's where you worship God, you worship God on the temple Mount, okay? But in order to get on the temple Mount, you have to be ceremonial clean in order to be ceremonially clean, you have to do mikvah, the ceremonial washing. And there are mikvah pools all around the temple Mount, but every single one of them costs. How much? Everybody owns a mikvah. How much are they going to charge you to use their mikvah? Whatever they want. Here's why, because if you don't use a mikvah, you're not ceremonially clean. And if you're not ceremonially clean, you can't go on the temple Mount. And if you can't go on the  Temple Mount, you don't worship God. So what are you willing to pay for the privilege of worshiping God? This is the revolution of John the Baptist. He's at the Jordan River, doing mikvah for free. What happens is who flocks to him, who flocks to him? People that would never be able to afford mikvah and people that are not willing that the people who own the mitzvahs are not willing to even let them pay money, to use it prostitutes, publicans tax collectors. And who has a problem with it? The people working at the temple. Why? Because he's cutting in on their racket. Like the revolution of John the Baptist is these people who have been ostracized by society for the first time. All of a sudden they're like, Oh, wait a minute. God wants to have a relationship with me too. God wants to have a relationship with me, too. I’ll do anything for a God that loves me like that. I think the problem is somewhere along the way, the longer we walk with God, the less we remember what it feels like to be. And then we start to think that we earned it somehow. And as soon as we do that, we step into building a kingdom that is not God's kingdom. It's not God's kingdom. 

Here's another thing they were doing. You weren't allowed to have any graven images on the temple mountain, right? No graven images and especially no images of other gods on the temple Mount. And what's interesting is all of your coins are minted. They have a picture on them. They're stamped with some sort of a picture. Coins where the internet of the first century, they were ways that they communicated information around the Roman empire. And so when something happened of significance, they would mint a coin, put a stamp on it that has a picture that represents that event and then circulate it around the Roman empire. Well, many of them had Caesar on them like Caesar himself, who claims to be God. You would never allow that on the temple Mount. You don't want any graven images, especially not have any other gods on the Temple Mount. Here's the irony. When they asked Jesus, should we pay taxes to Caesar or not? And he says, give me a coin whose pictures on it? What do they say? Caesar's guess where they're standing on the temple mountain. Oh, the hypocrisy. But what's happening is the temple has its own currency. It's just a blank coin, but it doesn't have any graven images on it. So what you do is you take your currency with the graven images and you take it to the place where you can exchange it. You go to the exchange place, which is called Shahar. That's another sermon for another day, but you go to exchange it for temple currency. Guess what the exchange rate is? It's bad. Now the double dip on that is people hated the temple for doing that, so nobody would take temple currency, not on the temple mountain, because you would never be thought of promoting a one world religion at the expense of Caesar. So, good news, you can exchange it back on your way out. Like we'll, we'll exchange it back for you. But guess what the exchange rate is? This is what's going on in God's house! They're leveraging their position to take advantage of other people. And it's terrible. “Woe to him who builds his house by unjust gain, setting his nest on high to escape the clutches of ruin! You have plotted the ruin of many peoples, shaming your own house and forfeiting your life.” You're like, why, why are you reading this to me? “The stones of the wall will cry out and the beams of the woodwork will echo it.” So why does Jesus say to them when they're like, Hey, rabbi, teacher tell your students to quit doing this. He's like, Hey, if they don't do it, the stones will cry out. Jesus has just pronounced judgment on the temple system. And every day of this week, he will follow up with that indictment.

We look at that and go, Oh, well, I haven't heard the stones cry, so somebody is praising Jesus. Right? Here's what I think. I think for many of us, when we think about following Jesus, we're not really following anybody as much as we are leveraging our relationship with God to give us the life that we want. We try to hang out on the promises of God. And we want the privileges of our relationship with God without being faithful in the grind of what it means to walk out a relationship with Jesus. Like, yeah, I want God to protect my life. I want him to protect my family. I want him to do all that stuff, but don't you dare ask me to serve him in any way. Don't ask me to get connected to God's people. That whole relationship thing, no way. Like, I love God. I want all of God, but I don't want to be connected to his people. Listen, you don't get to choose what kind of kingdom you're a part of, you’re not the King. And Jesus is going to call a religious system, that is trying to do God's things their own way, to task. And that's what this final week of his life is all about. The fascinating part about that is that, he spends three and a half years with the Pharisees, right, up in Galilee. They don't know what to do with them, but they engage him in conversation and discussion and they banter back and forth about the Bible and all that stuff. He spends one week with the temple workers and they kill him. Like, nope, don't you dare cut in on our racket. We'll just dispatch this.

I have some implications for us. Implication number one is that the final week invites us to consider the parts of our religious system that need to die so that something much better can come to life. This morning I got up and I was going to go run. And here's why, because last week I mentioned that I ran in eight below temperature and I knew that somebody would look at the snow and go, let’s see if Pastor  Aaron ran in that mess. And I was going to be like, yeah, I did. I got up and the Lord really clearly was like, mmm, we're going to hang out today. And so I didn't, I just spent a couple of hours with the Lord, which was really great. And he led me to this documentary called Sheep among Wolves, which I really recommend that you watch it's about the fastest growing church in the world. You'll never believe where it's located -- Iran. I know. We go what” They’re apostate. That's the evil devil nation. Now fastest growing church in the world. Is there a movement of Christ? There are hundreds of thousands of people giving their life to Jesus, having visions, dreaming dreams, people giving their life to Christ and having a dream of Jesus, meeting them in a certain space in the following day. And they get up and go to that space and they'll meet somebody who's ready to accept Christ. Like this is, this is a commonplace story and what's going on with them there -- it's crazy. Here's what they said. They said the problem in Iran, by the way, no buildings, zero buildings in the church in Iran, zero paid leaders. And mostly the dominant leaders are women. Maybe we have some things to learn. I don't know. What they said is this. They said the problem for Americans coming over and trying to help Iranians move the gospel forward Is that the software of the gospel doesn't work in the hardware of the American church. What we need is a new set of hardware. And I, and so I would just invite us to consider, as we move through this, as we lead into Resurrection Sunday, what parts of our religious system need to die? Now? Here's the deal. Religion's not bad. I'm not bashing religion. And I know people all, it's not about religion. It's about a relationship. Well, it's kind of about both. And here's why, because religion is simply a system that allows me to give my faith a voice. It allows me to give expression to what I believe to be true. So religion isn't evil. The problem is when we practice religion for religion sake, that's when we get sideways. And then, then it becomes lifeless and the religion becomes a thus sayeth the Lord, but it was never intended to be that. Even the parts of religion, and I'm going to really narrow that down, but the parts of religion that are, that are thus saith, the Lord, like this is how I want you to worship me. If that gets in the way of our relationship with God, he'll cut it away and start over. Because the religious system, isn't the point relationship with God is the point. So religion is valuable as long as it points that direction. But when it gets in the way of that, we've got to cut it loose. So let's invite ourselves to consider. I'm not telling you to let go of anything specific, but consider it. What parts of your religious system that you have in your life need to die so that something much better can come to life.

Implication number two, we often want right things, but we want to acquire them in the wrong way. That's what the Jews were doing. They wanted to make the temple great, but they wanted to do it by building their own world and padding their own pockets. The right thing done the wrong way becomes the wrong thing. I

Implication number three, if we are pursuing the right kingdom, using the wrong methods, then we aren't pursuing the right kingdom in the first place. Whatever label you put on it, if we're not willing to do God's things, God's way, then we're not pursuing the kingdom of God. Now it might have a lot of different labels you could put on it, but it's just not the kingdom of God. And what I love about my relationship with Jesus is that he just loves me too much to let me settle in and compromise that. He keeps lovingly jerking me out of my own nonsense.

Implication number four, what kinds of things-- it's just a question for us to consider as we move into our communion time, what kinds of things can come to life in us if we put to death our desire for worldly power and comfort? What could live if we would stop fighting so hard for worldly comfort, worldly power, what could come to life in us? And I think this is the model of communion. It's the thing that communion leads us to. This Jesus, as our teacher, as our rabbi, as our model, as our disciple maker, fundamentally invites us in this first act of obedience to lay our lives down. And so I would just ask you to wrestle with this question, what could come to life if we could let go, and what do we need to let go of? Let's take a minute and prepare our hearts for communion.

Let's pray. Lord, thank you for the mission and the purpose and the goal of bringing your kingdom crashing into this earth and for the grace that you give us, as we try to navigate how to do that. Lord, sift our hearts, help us to be able to pinpoint and identify what it is that we're holding onto that's actually getting in the way of your kingdom coming and your will being done on earth just like it is in heaven. Lord, may we be people who celebrate you for who you are and not people who twist and distort your teaching for our own advantage. Thank you God, for your grace in your name. Amen. Let's stand and sing. One more song.