Hi, and welcome to the Willow Ridge Church weekly podcast.
This is where you can find audio for our current and past sermons.
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Thanks for listening.
How about those puppets, right?
My mind is always blown by what we clap for, you know, it's just fantastic.
So, hey, but we appreciate you guys letting us think outside of the box and be a part
of that, and I know that our team that did that had a blast.
So, I'm not going to tell you who's in the videos, but as you figure it out through their
voices, I want to make sure that you give Joel Van Ham a thumbs up and encourage him and Alexis
as they work through these.
But, hey, just love the fact of what we're doing and what God's given us the opportunity
to do.
If you've got your Bible, open up to Judges chapter 3 as we continue on in our series that
we started last week.
And so, last week we looked at Judges 1 and Judges 2, and Judges 1 and Judges 2 is a preview,
but it's a preview not in just telling you what had happened amongst Israel, but it's also
going to give us a kind of theme of what it's going to be like throughout the book of Judges.
And so, I want you to picture Judges 1 and Judges 2 from last week, it's like you're going
to the movies.
And so, you're sitting down, right, you've got your popcorn, you've got your drink, and
the advertisements go away, and now the previews come on.
And right, so the previews kind of give you some details about what is going to happen in
the other movies that you're not yet to sit down and to watch.
And that's what Judges 1 and Judges 2 were all about.
And so, we got to see this baseline of rebellion that exists within God's people.
And so, now what we're going to look at from Judges 3 on are the judges that God sends to
both to redeem, to point in the right direction, to save, and to remind His people of who He
is and who He's called them to be.
And this is kind of the same, but a little bit different than what God's people are used
to, right?
God sent them Moses, God sent them Joshua, but then instead of there being one individual
that will mark a season of time or a book of the Bible, it's going to be this group known
as the Judges.
And we're going to read about some crazy stories.
We're going to see some really amazing things that happen and that take place.
And as we read through them, every single week, there's pieces that I want us to begin
to think through.
You know, oftentimes when we read the Old Testament, we kind of view the Old Testament
as the list of stories, right?
It's what we most commonly find in like children's storybook Bibles, and we think of the things
that happened with that.
And then when we get to the New Testament, we're like, all right, cool, now we're at Jesus.
Now we get the Gospels.
Now we really see the things that we're to take in and to use and to apply our life.
But the truth is with Scripture is that's the truth from the Old Testament all the way
through the New Testament.
That as we look at these, we don't want to view them as stories, but we want to see the
Gospel that comes out in them.
Even though chronologically, since this happened before Jesus, there's so much truth of God
as He points us to the Gospel, as He points us to Christ, and the power and the work of the
Gospel in this.
So as we read about these Judges, as we see all that is taking place, don't separate your
mind, don't separate your heart from the Gospel narrative that is unfolding through the book
of Judges.
So each and every week, that's what I want to point out.
That's what we're going to be looking at.
It's not simply understanding Old Testament stories, Old Testament culture, Old Testament
law, but understanding the truth about who Jesus is, understanding how the Gospel impacts
our life and how we can apply it.
And so let's start reading in Judges chapter 3, verse 7.
It says,
And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.
They forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asheroth.
Therefore, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and He sold them into the land
of Cushan Rishatham, king of Mesopotamia.
And the people of Israel served Cushan Rishatham.
So what we see here is a reminder of what we read last week, that the people of Israel,
they're doing evil.
And they're doing evil in the eyes of the Lord.
But what God does is He doesn't just tell us that they're doing evil.
God defines evil in this.
And it's very important that we see and begin to understand, okay, what is evil?
Like, we look out into our culture, there are behaviors, there are characteristics, there are
people who we can define as doing evil.
And that can look different based off of your perspective or my perspective.
But God looks in this in Judges and He establishes, this is what it means that my people have done
evil in my sight.
In verse 7, it says, they forgot the Lord and they served the Baals and the Asheroth.
You know, the theme that is going to continue on in the evil that Israel partakes in is first,
it's the evil or the sin of forgetting God.
And we talked a little bit about this last week.
That doesn't mean that they had completely forgot something, like I've forgotten, my kids
are doing the online school, right, on Wednesdays and Thursdays in the virtual, and they're starting
pre-algebra.
And so if they have questions about their pre-algebra, there's certain things that they come
to me and I say, oh, I remember how to do that.
And then there are other things that they come to me and I'm like, hey, I do not remember how
to do that, but there's this wonderful thing called Google, right, that we can check out
and figure out how we're to do this, right?
Which I also find out, parents, like you can enter in the equation and get the answer.
I'm just saying.
So make you look way smarter than you really are.
Kids, you didn't hear that at all, all right?
Got to show your work.
And so it's not like they forgot that, like all of a sudden one day they woke up and go,
huh?
No, I don't remember that.
When it says that they forgot the Lord their God, what that meant was to know God as the
depth of intimacy and to know his heart and to know his person of who he is, to know and
desire for his mind and his will.
And then out of response of that in knowing them is to obey them.
And so husbands and wives, I want you to think about that a little bit, right?
It's like in the course of your marriage, the more that you know each other, the more
that you intimately know their mind and their heart and everything about who they are, right?
It doesn't become a list of rules of, I need to obey my wife, but it does begin to resonate
within the heart of, no, no, no, I want to do the things that obey her because I want to
please her, right?
And that's what we see the Israelites have moved away from.
They knew, but they didn't obey.
They hadn't forgotten what God had done at the Red Sea.
They hadn't forgotten what God had done at Jericho.
They hadn't forgotten about any of these, but there ceased to be a lack of intimacy with God.
So they forgot him, so they didn't obey him.
But they also fell in what was evil as to a sin of false gods.
So again, they knew, but they didn't serve.
Again, they knew, but they didn't surrender.
So they had taken, they had looked at the culture, they had looked at everything that had surrounded
them, and they said, then these are the things that are more important than him.
And so instead of pursuing my life after who he is and after what he has done, now I'll pursue
my life for these things and what they can do for me.
And so as we read through Judges and as we hear time and time again, and we will, that they did
what was evil in the sight of the Lord, these are the patterns that they fall into.
So what does God do here?
What does God do in Judges 3 as they forget who he is, as they fall into the sin of forgetting
him, the sin of false God, God sells them into slavery.
Now that's a harsh thing for us to think about.
We think of the cruelty of slavery, historically speaking, taking a man or woman or child and
saying, you have no worth other than being an object which I will possess.
But this is what God does to his people.
And when we begin to try to wrap our mind around that, right, that's a difficult part for us
to understand with God.
Then God's anger was kindled against Israel and he sold them into the hands of the oppressors.
So the question for us who have a hard time wrapping our mind around that is why would God do that?
Why would a God who is supposed to love his people, why would he sell them into slavery?
And what we're going to see, what we're going to understand time and time again is that God
is working to a greater good as he calls their hearts back.
And what God is doing in the heart of his people, what God is doing in this nation that he has chosen
for himself, is God is going to bring revival from suffering.
Now that's a hard part for us to really think about.
Revival from suffering.
Now I grew up, I don't know if very many of you did, but I grew up in a church and once a year,
right, we had revival.
Maybe some of you that are watching at home, maybe you had that.
Quick, quick question, quick poll for those of you who are joining us today.
How many of you grew up at a church, right, that had revivals?
Go ahead and raise your hand.
Yeah.
So we had revivals growing up.
And revivals, I can remember they were kind of surrounded by two things.
Our church, Calvary Baptist Church, we typically ate together every night for revival.
So everybody could get out of school, get out of work, and then we'd come to church, and
then we'd eat, and then we would go in and have a worship service together.
And it started on Sunday for us, and it ended on Friday.
So Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, we had church every single night as
we came for revival.
And what we would have within there, it was a time for us to be reminded of who God is,
of what God had done, and it was a calling back to Him.
It was a time where we would begin to get our priorities in order.
It was a time to refocus and to eliminate the things that had distracted us.
And it was a moment and an opportunity as the revivalist, right, the outside pastor came in
and preached for us.
And that's what revival looked like.
But God's going to do a different type of revival for His people.
And the means by which He's going to bring revival for them is going to begin in suffering.
And so as we begin to wrap our minds around that, we have to begin to understand that God
graciously, right, God lovingly allows in your life and in mine moments, times, or maybe
even seasons of suffering for a reason, to point us to Him and to navigate our hearts into a posture
and position of obedience.
And so God looks at His people who are in rebellion from Him.
They're pursuing all that they want.
And God goes, fine, if that's what you want to pursue, then have at it.
You see, they were already enslaved.
They were enslaved to the culture.
They were enslaved to the false gods.
They were enslaved to the disobedience.
Physically, I'm sorry, spiritually speaking, that's where their hearts were.
And so God says, if that's spiritually where you're going to be, or if that's physically where
you're going to be, then that's spiritually where you're going to be as well.
And so God turns them over to what their hearts were already pursuing.
And He allows this to happen.
And so God's people enter into a season of pain.
God's people enter into a season of difficulty.
They enter into a season of slavery, of suffering.
And what's going to come out of this is going to be a revival.
Let's keep reading verse 9.
But when the people of Israel cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for
the people of Israel who saved them.
Othniel, son of Canaz, Caleb's younger brother.
And the spirit of the Lord was upon him, and he judged Israel.
So what we see is God hears them, and then God delivers them.
And He delivers them through the judge.
So not only do we see that revival comes through suffering, but we begin to understand that revival
comes from repentance.
That God's people, the Bible says, they cried out to Him.
All right, we're going to ask for a moment of us being vulnerable here in the room.
And if you're watching online, hopefully you're watching with someone, maybe you can be vulnerable
there for just a second.
How many of you can remember the last time that you had a really good cry?
Raise your hand.
You remember the last time.
Now I'm going to define a good cry, all right?
Now, I appreciate that.
I see some guys raising their hands with me, right?
More ladies than not.
So guys, we're going to work through this together, okay?
All right.
Here's what I mean by a really good cry.
I mean ugly cry, right?
Like not a tear that comes down, but like where you make the face like, ooh, right?
I'm talking about where you're crying so hard that your belly, if you got one like mine,
it just kind of jiggles like Santa Claus, right?
Like you got that going on.
I'm talking like big tears, snot bubble cry.
When we hear that they cried out to God, this is the picture of what was there.
For me, I remember one of the times, which I've had many of these moments, but I remember
one of the times that I had this level of crying.
Aaron and I, we were living in Sumter at the time and talk about some things that kids,
I don't know if y'all are aware of, but before, like we couldn't just turn on the TV and stream
movies, right?
In fact, check this out.
At our house, we didn't even have the internet, right?
I know that is unbelievable.
We had a phone called a Razor.
We didn't have the internet.
And so what we would do is we would go down to a movie store and we'd have to rent movies.
Now, we were a little bit more modern, so we had DVDs at this time, but we would go get
a DVD.
And on one side of the movie store, there was the discount movies.
And I always liked to go to the discount movies because they were 99 cents, right?
And you could usually keep them for a little bit longer.
Well, I go down.
Aaron is pregnant with Emma and Grayson.
So she sends me to the store to rent a movie.
And I go to the discount section and I look and there's this movie called Father of the Bride.
It was the Steve Martin version of Father of the Bride.
And it was 99 cents.
So I rented that.
My wife, who's on bed rest at the time, like I know that she will absolutely love this movie.
So we come home, we got our little 19-inch tube TV with the DVD player built into it sitting
there on the top of our dresser.
And I put that movie in and we began to watch this family romantic comedy, I guess, of this
movie called Father of the Bride.
And toward the end, I started to get a little emotional, right?
It was the wedding scene.
And Steve Martin, the father of the bride, is having this moment where he is going to walk
his little girl down the aisle and give her away to some guy, right?
And Aaron says,
Are you okay?
No?
What's wrong?
Just thinking about this movie and I've got a little girl that's on the way and one of these
days I'm going to have to do that too.
And I had to get up and walk out.
Like I couldn't handle it anymore.
And here's what happened.
In that moment, right?
I think we were about two months away from Emma and Grayson being born.
In that moment, I'll never forget this.
In that moment, my reality changed.
And I fell in love with a little girl that I'd never met.
You know, I was excited to be a dad.
I was excited to get a son and a daughter.
But in that moment, as I sat there, reality became real.
Okay?
Reality became real.
That one of these days, I'm going to be that dad standing in the back of a church and my daughter's
going to come out in her dress and I've got to walk her down the aisle and give her away.
And reality became real.
When you cry out to God.
When you cry out to God, your reality becomes real.
Right?
Whether it's because of the depth of the sin that you're in, your reality becomes real.
Whether it's because you're experiencing his grace for the first time, your reality becomes real.
Whether it's because for the first time in your life, you've always felt unloved and rejected and not valued.
And you understand that he loves you and accepts you and values you above all of creation.
Right?
Your reality becomes real.
And that's when revival begins to happen for God's people.
In that moment, they see their brokenness.
They see their sin.
They see God's faithfulness.
And they begin to cry out to God.
They would never have done it if not for the suffering.
But God in his grace brought them into captivity so that they could have a reality moment and cry out to him.
We also see, though, that not only does revival come through suffering, not only does revival come through repentance,
but that revival comes from the Spirit.
It comes from the Spirit.
Oathnil brought freedom.
It's important.
Because the Spirit of God was with him.
That's how.
Because it's the work of God.
It's not a structure or a scheme of man.
It's not freedom that is found in what we can create.
But it was found because the Spirit of God rested on him.
And so we see God's people set free.
And in verse 11,
So the land had rest for 40 years.
Then Oathnil, son of Canaz, died.
And so we see this spiritual and practical peace that happens.
That God hears their cries.
That God sends his Spirit.
That God saves his people.
But that his people obeyed.
That his people listened.
That his people repented.
It's the beautiful aspect of what happens in the practical nature of the aspects of our life.
And the spiritual nature and connection of God.
So you think they get it right.
They've understood.
They're never going to do this again.
They're going to make sure generation after generation after generation obeys the Lord.
But then let's keep reading in verse 12.
And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.
And the Lord strengthened Eglon, the king of Moab, against Israel.
For they had done what was evil in the sight of the Lord.
He gathered to himself the Ammonites and the Malachites and went and defeated Israel.
And they took possession of the city of Palms.
And the people of Israel served Eglon, the king of Moab, 18 years.
Then the people of Israel cried out to the Lord.
And the Lord raised up for them a deliverer, Ehud, the son of Gera, the Benjamite, the left-handed man.
All right.
How many left-handed people do we have in the room?
I'm not.
We got a handful.
All right.
I know I've got some good friends that are left-handed.
And if you ask any of these left-handed people that are here, is it easy being left-handed, right?
The answer is no.
We live in a right-handed world.
Everything is geared toward and pointed toward right-handed people.
I was arguing with a guy one time about that.
And I said, no, no, no.
I don't think you're right.
I think it's equal.
I think it's fair.
Like, how is the world more difficult for left-handed people than right-handed people?
And he simply said, go to Walmart and buy a notebook.
And it clicked with me, right?
Like, you've got a right on things there.
We're moving left to right in this.
Well, in this time, as difficult as it is for many of us today, being left-handed was difficult then as well.
And so God is going to call, God is going to appoint a judge, and this is very important, that he is left-handed.
You see, for him in the culture, being left-handed was considered a weakness, right?
Like, he would have been viewed as being less than, that he was not capable of doing things because he was left-hand dominant.
Now, that's crazy, right?
But also, when we read through this, we understand that Ehud, that it wasn't just simply his natural bent to use his left hand because his right hand was fine,
but actually that his right hand was almost withered and incapable of doing things.
And so Ehud, not only was he left-handed, but he would have had a disability.
Now, in this time, not only would he have been looked down on because he was left-hand dominant,
not only would he be considered a weakness and not capable of doing what right-handed people were capable of doing,
now there's a spiritual peace that's cast onto him, right, that God is punishing him because he has a disability
for either the sins of his parents or his sins.
So we get this guy that is now going to be the leader, and he's in culture and time for them,
just not a very impressive leader, not who you would have picked out.
Let's keep reading in verse 15.
The people of Israel sent tribute by him to Eglon, the king of Moab.
And Ehud made for himself a sword with two edges, a cubit in length,
and he bound it on his right thigh under his clothes.
And he presented the tribute to Eglon, king of Moab.
Now, Eglon was a very fat man.
And when Ehud had finished presenting the tribute, he sent away the people who carried the tribute,
but he himself turned back at the idols near Gilgal and said,
I have a secret message for you, O king.
And he commanded silence, and all his attendants went out from his presence.
So Ehud, being a left-handed man, he knows that he has to attack and fight the king.
And so what he does is he gets a sword, and he puts the sword on his left hip.
Now, here's the depth of them not believing what this man can do.
In order to be in the presence of the king, they had to search you to make sure you didn't have any weapons.
But if you think about it, if you've ever had to or seen someone draw a sword, right,
a right-handed person will reach to the left to pull their sword out.
But left-handed people would have to reach to their right to pull their sword out.
But left-handed people were weak.
Left-handed people weren't capable of doing anything.
So when you came before the king, they only patted down the right side.
And so Ehud was able to come in.
He was not seen as a threat.
Even to the point when Ehud announces to the king, hey, I've got something to tell you.
The king sends his guards away.
And so let's start reading verse 20.
And Ehud came to him as he was sitting alone in this cool roof chamber.
And Ehud said, I have a message from God for you.
And he arose from his seat, and Ehud reached with his left hand, took the sword from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly.
And the hilt also went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade, for he did not pull the sword out of his belly.
And the dung came out.
Then Ehud went out onto the porch, and closed the doors of the roof chamber behind him, and locked them.
When he had gone, the servants came.
And when they saw that the doors on the roof chamber were locked, they thought,
Surely he is relieving himself in the closet of the cool chamber.
And they waited till they were embarrassed.
But when he still did not open the doors of the roof chamber, they took the key and opened them.
And there laid their lord dead on the floor.
Ehud escaped while they delayed, and he passed beyond the idols and escaped to Sirah.
When he arrived, he sounded the trumpet in the hill country of Ephraim.
Then the people of Israel went down with him from the hill country, and he was their leader.
And he said to them, Follow after me, for the Lord has given your enemies, the Moabites, into your hand.
So they went down after him and seized the fords of the Jordan against the Moabites, and did not allow anyone to pass over.
And they killed at that time about 10,000 of the Moabites, all strong, able-bodied men.
Not a man escaped.
So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel, and the land had rest for 80 years.
So here's Ehud.
Thought less of.
Not capable of doing.
Unable to perform what everyone would think would need to be done.
And let's be honest.
When you would look out over all of those that God could have selected, that God could have chosen, Ehud was the unlikely choice.
Disability.
Not able to lead well.
Never been a person of someone to fear or to even respect.
He was looked at so little that when the king of the oppressing country had him in his presence, he said, Nah, guards, you just go away.
I got this.
He can't do anything to me.
The unlikely choice.
So could there have been a better choice?
Absolutely.
Look at verse 31.
And after him was Shamgar, the son of Anath, who killed 600 of the Philistines with an ox goad, and he also saved Israel.
So sometime later, there's this guy named Shamgar, who was such a skilled warrior, was such skilled at battle, that when it came time to fight the Philistines, he alone defeated, killed 600 of them with a farming tool.
It was a rod that was about eight feet high, and at the very end had a small hook with a point on it, and that he was able to do that.
So why didn't God choose someone like that?
Why did God choose Ehud?
And I think the point all through for us as we look at the narrative of coming through the gospel of what God is calling you and I to surrender our lives to is not always going to be found in the likely.
But it's going to be found in the unlikely.
Because when we look at and we understand who Jesus was and who Jesus is, Jesus was unlikely.
When we think about the time in which he was born, can you imagine the story of the narrative that he would share?
The people in his community that would see him and understand and know where he came from.
Oh, oh, pay no attention.
Don't hang out with that kid.
That's Jesus.
Right?
His mom claims that his dad is God, virgin, when he was born.
He was adopted by a simple carpenter.
Not a mayor, not a king, not a person of influence.
He was from a poor, uneducated city.
Jesus would have come from the part of town that you stayed away from.
The people that he would have associated with at that time is who we would often tell our kids,
I don't know if you should be over there with them.
When people use the phrase, oftentimes, hey, don't get around those people.
All right?
That's where Jesus came from.
But this is what scripture points us to.
Isaiah 53, starting in verse 2.
For he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no form or majesty that we should look at him and no beauty that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not.
If we were living in the time of Christ, right?
And there would have been a group of people that were there.
And if you're the person that sits back and you like to people watch, right?
It's not hard to notice the person in the crowd that exudes confidence.
It's not hard to look at the person in the crowd who people are just naturally drawn to.
Scripture tells us that wasn't Jesus.
Scripture even tells us, right?
Like you didn't look at him and see beauty that flowed from him.
You didn't look at him and see leadership that was there.
In fact, he was so common in his appearance.
He was so common in his leadership that he would have been despised and rejected.
Oh, he is not capable of doing any of these things.
And then Jesus, the unlikely, begins to surround himself.
And let's get something clear.
Jesus surrounds himself with the losers and the failures of society.
Jesus surrounds himself with that crowd.
He says, no, no, no.
Come and walk with me.
The outcasts that no one wanted.
Philippians 2 says that in this, in this unlikely Savior, he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant.
Being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form.
He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death.
Even death on a cross.
You see, Jesus didn't come as the king coming to take over.
Not yet.
Jesus didn't come as the warrior to break the chains and set the captives free.
Not yet.
Jesus didn't come as the intellectual looking to blow the minds of the religious elite.
Not yet.
But Scripture tells us that he came.
Not as a king, not as a warrior, not as an intellectual.
But that he came as a servant, and more specifically, a suffering servant.
From the least likely.
From the foolish.
From the no.
No, not us.
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1.
He said, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.
God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.
God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.
So that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
And because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
So that, as it is written, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.
You know, Ehud, he came as the unlikely.
He came as the one that, nah, he can, no need to worry about him.
He came as the one that we wouldn't want to follow.
He came as the one that there would be questions around him.
But God chose him, and in that, he set his people free.
And it points us to something else.
You see, God's people chose the likely.
They chose the earthly king and the earthly kingdom.
They chose the earthly gods, and they chose the earthly rules and the earthly standards.
They chose the likely time and time again.
This is what you should do, and this is who you should be.
But in this, what we see is God tells us to stop chasing the likely and instead to surrender to the unlikely.
To surrender to Jesus.
You know, when we surrender to him, it doesn't look like what the world points us to.
When we surrender to him, it's not what's going to make sense to everyone.
But when we surrender to him, it's what God has called us to do and who God has called us to be.
Would you pray with me?
Lord, we come to you.
Lord, we thank you for these judges.
We thank you that time and time again, what we see, Lord, is you working in their life for a purpose and a reason.
Lord, we thank you, Lord, to bring you to set your people free, to bring them back to you, to call them to a depth of love and obedience because of who you are.
Lord, we thank you, Lord, that even though everything, every religion points to something different, Lord, a relationship with you is a little bit with the unlikely.
So, Lord, I pray for us today that wherever we find ourselves physically, whether we find ourselves at our home or here in the auditorium,
that spiritually speaking, if we find ourselves on the mountaintop or in the valley,
that eternity speaking, if we find ourselves positioned in your hand, or, Lord, far from you.
Lord, you're a God who loves us, God who cares for us, God who calls us.
That is not found in our works.
It's not found in what we can do.
It's found in Jesus and Jesus alone.
That every head bowed, every eye closed.
Most people thought that the cross was the defeat of Jesus, the victory of sin.
But it was just a part of the narrative.
Because the victory would not be found in the people who mourned the loss of Jesus.
But the victory would be found in that three days later, the tomb would be empty.
And in that we find freedom.
Now, God doesn't have to send a Moses to save you, a Joshua to save you, a judge to save you.
But he sends Jesus to save you.
And maybe today, your whole life, you've chased after the likely.
The likely God, the likely religion, the likely culture.
Maybe God today is calling on your heart to have a break, to cry out from him, from the likely,
and instead to surrender to the unlikely.
The adopted son, a carpenter, born of a virgin, to die for the sins of the world.
But just as he was raised in newness of life, so too can we.
Jesus, we love you.
We praise you.
It's your name we pray.
Amen.
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