Numbers 25:1-9 | Spiritual Subterfuge | Alex Culpepper

Today we are gonna walk through one of the most explicitly violent passages of scripture. Yeah, yeah. So buckle in. It's telling us something that actually took place, right? So this is an event in history, and if you're new to reading the Bible, you should just know this story is gonna seem shocking to you.

And so you may ask, okay, well, why, why would you even pick this? Why are you even talking about this? And I just wanna let you know, the BU preaching practice, I don't generally pick and choose what we're going to talk about. Right? We just, we, we, we land on a big chunk of scripture and we say, okay, we're just going to work our way through and be instructed by whatever God has to instruct us with, to deal with all that God has to teach in all of the Bible and not just the parts that perhaps I, in my own brokenness, might determine are useful for us.

Because 2 Timothy, chapter 3 says that all scripture is God breathed, right? It's coming from the mouth of God and is useful for teaching, for correction, for rebuke, and for training in righteousness. And so some of y' all may be a little bit up in arms about maybe some of the stuff that Netflix, like, puts out on their streaming platform. And I just want to let you know there are some stories in the Bible that put Netflix to shame. You just have to know that.

And we are going to be looking at one of those this morning. As much as we might want it to, the Bible does not sanitize history for us, but it is seeking to tell us the truth about the reality of human brokenness. So last week we talked about Balaam, this guy Balaam, how he tried to curse Israel, how he tried to curse God's Old Testament people, and that he wasn't able to accomplish that curse because God had blessed Israel. And God's blessing is stronger than any curse. The reason I point that to you is because In Matthew chapter 16, Jesus gives a similar kind of blessing to his church, right?

The people who will follow him. He says that, you know, that this is the church and that the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Right? And the implication of that is that the, the church is on the offensive, right? That's why hell has gates, right?

We're actively pressing against the gates of hell and hell is trying to resist us. And, you know, what is this thing that we're doing in the church? Well, the creator of the universe is inviting people out of sin and death and into forgiveness and new life in Jesus through the Death and resurrection of Jesus, who is our king. And hey, Jesus says the gates of hell are not going to stop this gospel mission from going forward. That's Jesus blessing.

And he said, he makes sure that they know, hey, some may hate you, some may exclude you, some may even kill you, as they did with Jesus and the apostles. But the gates of hell, meaning Satan and his demons and whatever curses they might bring against us, that they will not prevail against the church. So the point of all of that is that God's people in the Old Testament and God's people in the New Testament both have powerful blessings from God. And so because of the existence of those blessings and because of the difficulty that those blessings present to our spiritual enemy, our enemy opts for a different strategy. And the strategy is instead subterfuge.

Subterfuge is a deceitful device or, or strategy used to achieve a goal. So you might know, probably one of the most prominent examples of subterfuge that we have through mythology and through storytelling and perhaps even through history is we have the story of the Trojan horse. And you may know the story, but if not, I'm just gonna give you a summary. The Trojan horse comes in the midst of a story. There's a 10 year conflict between Greece and the city of Troy.

And the Greeks appear to admit defeat right after, at the end of this 10 year conflict, they're like tired and we're going to pull back. So they pull back their troops, they start to set their ships sailing away. And what they do is they send a massive horse that's like this supposed to be this statue to honor Troy, to say, this is our gift of surrender to you. And, and it's kind of crazy that like, you know, that Troy wouldn't just ask, okay, what's really going on here? But they didn't.

And so they send this massive horse to the gates and the Trojans accept the gift, right? They say, this looks nice. Okay, we accept your surrender. They bring the horse into their gates, inside the city, and lo and behold, inside the horse is hordes of Greek warriors. And they are going to break out of this statue and then they're able to conquer the city of Troy from the inside out.

That's subterfuge, right? That's the Trojan horse. So subterfuge looks harmless or it might even look like an enticing gift, but its end is in destruction. That's the idea that's being communicated here. So we're talking about this because we are in a series called Wanderings and warnings.

We're looking at God's people, Israel, in the Old Testament, as they go through the wilderness of the desert. And we have watched in this story, God's people fail time and time again, right? Go against his desires, go against trusting and believing in him. And even, like the leaders, even Moses and Aaron failed, right? They messed things up.

And so God's people keep missing the point, keep missing out on God's goodness and kindness, keep opting for their own sin. And we're, as a church, we're using these stories to say, lord, search us and know us and see if there be any wicked way in us. If there's anything that's out of alignment with your desires or out of alignment with what you call good, would you expose it in us? Would you draw our attention to it? Not so that we can feel ashamed and not so that we can get this, like, weight of heaviness on it, but so that we can see the goodness that Jesus is calling us to and as we, you know, clear that stuff out and make more space for him in our lives, essentially, like, make us more effective for the work that he would have us do and the things that he's calling us to.

And by the way, as the guy who's been up here preaching, I've not only been exposing, you know, the things that you might have to uncover in yourself, but I've had to uncover things in myself too. And the Lord has been having to do work inside of me. And so my prayer is that he would continue to meet us this morning. So, numbers 25, chapter one. While Israel lived in Shittim, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab.

Unfortunately, I need to draw our attention to what is perhaps the most significant and powerful word of this whole passage, which is the word whore. When Israel is accused of this, this is not just about sexual unfaithfulness or worship unfaithfulness, but this is actually one of the strongest Hebrew words that exist to describe relational unfaithfulness to God, right? That the relationship has been broken. In other words, like their covenant that they have with God, their relationship with God, it is the. The most sacred relationship in their life.

These people, Israel. I just want to. Again, as we step into this very heavy passage, culturally we are going to be prone to read this story and as we read it, put God on the judgment seat, meaning we're standing in judgment of Him. That's our tendency, right? Because we're going to say that God is out here kind of policing the pleasure that People want, want to have, right?

And he's trying to make everything difficult for people who don't know any better. But at the core of this story is actually the reverse. This story is showing us that God's desire is to fight for the holiness of his people. And he's showing them a way that looks different from their impulses. And so they keep, unfortunately rejecting his leadership time and time again.

And this is why all of this matters. Because God has said to this people, apart from any other people, you are my special people, right? I have set you apart. You belong to me. I am your God.

He rescued them from a terrible oppression of slavery in Egypt. He put all of the Egyptian gods to shame. Through the plagues, he has joined himself to them. He's like, I want you to belong to me. I want you to know what it is to be loved by me.

And so he has powerfully revealed his love to. To them. But here's the thing. When God invites people into relationship, he has standards for how those people behave. Because he calls the people who are joined to him not only to just receive something from him, but the whole point of being joined in relationship is that those who are in relationship with him would reflect his nature and character to the world around them.

That's what he wants. He wants people to reflect his values. So in every age, God's beloved people are called to reflect his values to the world. That's the calling that's on our lives. So as I put that in front of us, and we deal with this idea of Israel whoring against their God, we have to talk about something with the nations of Moab and Israel.

Both of these nations were both called to honor God with their sexuality, but they honored Moab, honored a different God than the one true God, right? They honored their gods with their sexuality, right? The Israelites worshiped Yahweh, which is his Hebrew name, right? The Lord. They worshiped him through faithfulness to their spouses, right?

Like this is the way God has said, this is the way you will honor me with your sexuality. Because God had an intention in creation. And the intention is found in Genesis 2:24. It says, Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh, right? And so this is what God has done.

God has created sex as this way of joining husband and wife together as this kind of intimacy, this way to connect intimacy. And so sex has a very physical component to it, but sex also has a very spiritual component to it. Because God Designed it as more than simply pleasure. It's like a covenant glue, a relational glue. It unites two lives.

It unites two souls and stories together. And so the way that I like to say this is that, you know, hey, when you had a wedding, if you did have a wedding, everybody gave you a wedding gift, but God gave you the best wedding gift, right? That's just the way that I like to think of this. And so that's why sex is so powerful, but at the same time, why it can be so destructive when it's used outside of his bounds. Because it binds things together that were never meant to be bound.

So you keep reading the story of Genesis, and what we learn is that humanity rebelled against God, that they did the thing that God didn't want them to do. They believed the lie that God. We believe the lie that God is king something from us. And so sin and brokenness, they expand rapidly through creation, and it kind of ripples out from that point. And things that God had created to reflect his character, including sex, become corrupted, right?

That's the story of the Bible. And so the Israelites were called to reflect the goodness of God with how they use their sexuality. But then this brokenness, that interaction into creation, brings us to the Moabites, and we have to understand how they worshiped their God through sexuality. The Moabites worshiped their God through grotesque acts, probably including multiple partners. They use their axe as an attempt to get their demon gods, Right?

Because the New Testament tells us that the gods of the Old Testament are demons, right? They use their axes and attempt to get their demon gods to do things for them. Right? So take special note here, because we also have to understand something about this specific God. The all of Peor is the Moabite God.

And evidence indicates that this God was likely one of many Canaanite gods who were also worshiped through the act of child sacrifice. So they would sacrifice their children to this God, but then they would also perform these grotesque acts. Again, like, you know, there's no sense of, like, faithfulness between husband and wife in this culture. Like, it is just rampant, the brokenness with sexuality. And so both.

Both gods had very explicit demands of their worshipers. God's demands were no other gods, right? That's one of the ten commandments. No worshiping idols. That's one of the other of the ten commandments.

And no adultery, right? So. So those were the boundaries that God had placed around his people. Or in other words, like, my boundaries are faithfulness to me and faithfulness to your. Spouses.

That's what God gave to Israel. But the demon gods essentially want their people to use sex as an opportunity to draw all sorts of different people into worship of me. Essentially, you're using your body as a tool to draw other people into worship of me. And if you get enough people drawn into worship of me, I might start doing things for you, doing whatever you desire, right? And so what do all demons know?

Because this is what the demon gods do. If you control a person's sexuality, they are your slaves and you can control their entire life. And so this is one of the keys that I want us to grasp this morning. Sexuality beyond God's boundaries is a demonic effort to mock God and enslave humans. That is not my opinion.

That is what the Bible is teaching us about sex. And if you wonder why there is a cultural obsession with sexualizing children while they're young, I just want you to know, historically, that is not a new thing. Throughout human history, that has been a common occurrence time and time again. But this is why there is a cultural obsession with it. So it goes on in verse 2 of Numbers 25, and it says these.

Now remember, these are the daughters of Moab. Israel began to whore with the daughters of Moab. These, the over sexualized daughters of Moab invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods. And the people ate and bowed down to their gods. Psalm 106, verse 28 says it this way.

It says, then they yoked themselves to BAAL of Peor and ate sacrifices offered to the dead. So what happened was that essentially imagine kind of the scene here. Israel is in the middle of a valley. The camp is kind of settled for a period of time. They've moved from one place, they've kind of conquered one area of territory as they begin to head north to come down into the land that God has promised them.

And so they've settled here for a period of time in this place called Shittim. Shittim is a valley. And around the valley are a bunch of mountains, right? So they're in the middle of a place that has a bunch of high places around it. And so they're resting in, in the midst of this valley, maybe preparing for the next thing that God is going to lead them into.

And lo and behold, on the edges of the camp, some people start to walk in. And among the camp, these women walked among the tents of Israel and they invited the Israelite men to a meal, right? And the men who ate, they knew exactly what they were being invited to. Because in this time, if you were cooking meat, there's nobody that just cooks meat. Everybody burns an offering to their God.

And these Moabite women are going around saying, hey, we've burnt offering to our God. Would you like to come and eat of the offering that we've burnt to our God? And the meal, you need to know the meal is just a first step. The meal is very likely ends up being a party, and the party ends up being something else. Like one thing leads to another.

And what we end up with is Israel's covenant unfaithfulness to their wives and to the Lord. And that's what verse three makes clear to us. So Israel yoked himself to BAAL of Peor. What this passage is telling us is that through participation in this kind of worship event where one thing led to another, and the daughters of Moab came in and they invited the men to participate. These men who participated in this worship, they abandoned, abandoned the covenant to their God, who saved them out of Israel, who blessed them, who is promising them this amazing land flowing with milk and honey.

They abandoned their covenant to Yahweh, and they joined themselves to a different God through participation with these women. Now, you might recognize this word yoke, and we do need to talk about this word yoke. It's a word from the New Testament, or what we see it used in the New Testament. The imagery here is the idea of a joining together, right? Two things that are different have now been joined together.

And in the New Testament, in the book of 1st Corinthians and in the book of 2nd Corinthians, the apostle Paul uses this word yoke, when he commands Christians not to yoke themselves with unbelievers. Right? And the idea that he's really getting at, he's getting in general about relational closeness, right? That's the idea. But he's primarily talking about the marriage relationship, Right.

Christians, if you have not yet made a marriage covenant, do not make a marriage covenant with somebody who is not following Jesus. That's what Paul is saying. Don't marry them, don't join to them. Why? Because this is your most intimate relationship.

And if you join yourself to that person, there's a few warnings with that. Number one, that relationship, as you seek to draw closer to Jesus, the intimate relationship that you have will become a source of persistent pain and heartache for you. And I know that there are many in this room who have to deal with the heartache of, like, I'm trying to follow the Lord, but I have a spouse who's not And I just want to say blessing over you. Like the Lord draw near to you. He sees you.

He knows you in the midst of that. I don't want you to feel abandoned or shamed by this. I just want to let you know that the Lord sees you, right? But there's a calling here, which is if you're before the point where you've made the marriage covenant, don't yoke yourself to somebody who's gonna draw you into that heartache. Or the other risk is that that person would draw you away from the Lord.

Because that's what happened with the Israelites, right? These women come in, and they make themselves available, and the men are just ready to, like, jump out of their covenant with Yahweh and into a covenant with this other God. And so back to this text. Through their participation in sexual sin, the Moabite women, in worship of a false God, get many Israelite men to abandon their God who had loved them and blessed them, right? So that's the sin.

That's the corruption of sexuality. That's the corruption of God's intent, right? Them joining themselves to another God in the middle of the camp that Yahweh is overseeing, abandoning their spouses and families, right? And instead of, you know, following the God who, by the way, is still over this camp that this stuff is happening in is still overseeing them and still protecting them and still in their midst and still leading them and still loving them, okay? So these men are the ones who let in the Trojan horse to the camp of Israel, right?

They open the door. And the next verses, what they do is they tell us God's response. And I'm going to move through this part quickly, both because it's rather graphic and intense and because I actually want to save some time for us to grapple with what God is teaching here and not spend so much time emphasizing the particular story. But we do have to read what the story says. So verse three says, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, right?

Because he had loved them and because he had been so faithful to them and taking care of them, and that these men abandoned him, his anger was kindled against them. And the Lord said to Moses, take all the chiefs of the people and hang them in the sun before the Lord that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel. So, so what God is telling Moses to do is he's essentially telling, go to the men who are supposed to be the chiefs of their family, right? The heads of their families who have now yoked themselves to this God, and you need to put them to death. Now, here, let me read this one first.

And Moses said to the judges of Israel, each of you kill those of his men who have yoked themselves to BAAL of Peor. Now, this should not have been surprising to the people of Israel. God already instructed them in the book of Leviticus that this is what would happen if they committed sexual immorality, right? He already gave them a warning. With sexual immorality comes the death penalty.

With the abandonment of your spouse comes the death penalty, right? And so God here is staying committed to the instruction that. That he has already given to them when he commands the people in Israel to carry out the death penalty against those who have abandoned his covenant. So the next section tells a gross story, but it illustrates to us, number one, how sexual immorality enslaves and blinds a person, right? And it makes sense, too, of God's severe judgment that takes place in this.

So what we've done, what the text is doing, is it's taking us from the broadest perspective of what's happening to the most narrow example of what's happening. So the story that we get ready to read is not the only story of its kind taking place in Israel, but it's the particular story that illustrates the enslaving that's happening in the entire camp. So verse six. Behold, one of the people of Israel came and brought a Midianite woman to his family. So the Midianites and the Moabites are kind of working together in this, right?

And so this man, who is supposed to be a son of Israel, brought a Midianite woman to his family. Meaning he brought that woman to his family's tent. He brought the cultic worship of that false God and this woman to the tent of his family. And because of this, it goes on to say, it's not only his family that's at risk in his bringing this, because in the sight. Sorry, sorry.

There's a verse in between six and seven. I haven't got that one in here, so I'm just going to read it for you. In the sight of Moses and in the sight of the whole congregation of the people of Israel while they were weeping at the entrance of the tent of meeting. So the rest of verse six, what this guy has done is what we. We learn later that he's a son of the chief of the tribe of Simeon.

The tribe of Simeon is parked right next to the tabernacle in their place of worship. What's happening is that this guy is flaunting this woman. And the people of Israel are gathered in front of the tabernacle, the faithful people of Israel who are weeping the before God because of the sin that the people have committed, right? They're weeping before God because they know what God has said and they know that the danger that they are now in for abandoning God's covenant. And so the majority of God's people recognize the problem that's happening.

And they're weeping and they're crying out to God and they're saying, lord, help us, right? And so this guy, when he's walking to his tent, he can see clearly the camp of Israel weeping and crying out to the Lord and asking the Lord to set them free and to intercede, to intervene, to help them, to prevent his judgment, to have mercy. This guy sees every part of it clearly, and he has this woman with him, and he is flaunting her on his way to his family's tent. And everybody can see it happening. They all see what takes place.

So this is where the story turns violent and it becomes really unsettling. And the point here is not to glorify violence, but to show how deadly sin becomes when it spreads unchecked. God steps in not to crush his people, but to stop the plague that's destroying them because they let the plague in when they let in the sexual immorality. So verse seven, we're there when Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, saw it. So Phinehas is one of the, like one of the leaders of the people, right, who has been called to carry out this judgment.

When he saw it, he rose and left the congregation and took a spear in his hand and went after the man of Israel into the chamber and pierced both of them, the man of Israel and the woman, through her belly. So as a result of sin, this is what happened. God sent a plague. We'll just read this real quick. Thus the plague on the people of Israel was stopped.

Nevertheless, those who died by the plague were 24,000.

So as a result of this sin, God sent a plague, commanded the death penalty to be carried out, and in Israel's obedience to killing those who had betrayed Yahweh and their wives and their families for other women and for another God, in response to Israel's obedience to that right, to listening to the command that he gave, and in response to Israel's obedience, God had mercy on Israel and stopped the plague. And so when we read this story, it feels harsh, it feels heavy, but God, what He is trying to do is he is trying to rescue an entire people from a deadly infection that will destroy every relationship that they have, including their relationship with him. Because, like, when you love someone deeply and you see them destroying themselves, you step in, you, even if it hurts. And God's anger here is not like the rage of a tyrant. It's the passion of a father who's trying to stop his children from being poisoned.

Okay, so what? So what? Number one, sexual immorality is a spiritual Trojan horse. So numbers 31 8. Actually, this is why I use the imagery of the trojan horse.

Numbers 31:8 actually tells us what took place on the mountains that surrounded Israel as they camped down in this valley. Numbers 31:8 says that the guy Balaam is back, right? The guy who tried to curse Israel, right, Who tried to use spiritual power against Israel. He's back, but he realizes now that he can't speak a curse over them. And so what he does instead is that he advises the king Balak to send the women into the camp.

Let's send a Trojan horse into the camp. Because we can't curse them with spiritual power, we'll send these women in a different way. Revelation, chapter 2, verse 14 actually tells us about this Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel so that they might eat food, sacrifice to idols, and practice sexual immorality. So the Moabite and the Midianite women were an intentional trap to lure God's people in, to steal their blessing, to destroy them from the inside out. And here's what Balaam knew.

He knew that as long as this people were faithful to their God alone, that they were unstoppable. So in order to stop them, he needed to trick them. They needed to be tricked into being unfaithful to their God. And so it's worth saying that there's no more effective or efficient way to steal a person away from their God than through their sexuality. And so First Corinthians 10:8 tells us we must not, sorry, we must not indulge in sexual immorality, as some of them did.

And 23,000 fell in a single day. Now, some of you are probably like, if you're really detail oriented, you're like, why does it say 23,000 there? And why did it say 24,000 in the previous story? The implication of that is 23,000 died in one day. And the thousand kind of died off, you know, in the preceding days after that.

And that's why Paul makes the distinction in one day. So sexuality is not just kind of this physical tool, right? There's not a physicality. There's not just a physicality to it. It's also a powerful spiritual tool.

And so, like, let's just get really clear about how sexual immorality works itself out. Pornography looks like harmless entertainment, personal expression, or even some kind of freedom, but in reality, it enslaves the mind and it distorts intimacy and it fuels shame and addiction, and it gives a spiritual bondage, right? A spiritual trap. Sexuality outside the boundaries of marriage presents sex as only, like this safe and fun thing. And it's whatever you want to do with it, but.

But what God designed for the marriage relationship, when it is taken out of bounds, takes control of lives. And so what you do is you tell yourself you're in control. And I speak to you not as a person who, like, doesn't understand the situation and stands over top of you in judgment. If I'm preaching about sexual brokenness, I am preaching as a person who has dealt with my own sexual brokenness and gone through it. This is what I did.

You tell yourself you're in control, but after not too long, you realize that you're in something that you cannot stop, that you can't even fast from it, that you're now being controlled by it. And so the same subterfuge used against Israel is being used against you, and it's being used against your children. And there you just need to know, this is what demons do. There is no tactic that they will not use in order to win, because for them, the ends justify the means. And so the call that God is giving, if you are stuck in sexual immorality, if you are following after this, the call that God is giving is repentance, right turn, change your mind, decide to do something different.

And I just want to let you know, repentance is not God saying, I'm done with you. It's God saying, would you come home before the plague kills you? Would you come home? Repentance is like how we open the gates and let the healer in. And so the second thing that I would tell you this morning is this.

And this is where I just want to, like, lift you up with some hope and some peace and some joy. Jesus offers us a pathway to healing and freedom. Jesus is proof that what God desires ultimately is close relationship with us, right? He values that close relationship so much that Jesus would allow our sexual sin and every other kind of sin to be condemned in his body on the cross, right? He allowed A spear to pierce Him.

That's what the story told us, that somebody had to be stabbed with a spear in order to stop the plague. Jesus allowed a spear to pierce him in order to stop the plague that was coming at us. Even though he was perfect, he was condemned as a sinner through the cross so that his death as God in the flesh could stand for us as a substitute in our place. So he takes the plague of our sin on Himself and then he conquers it through his resurrection, right? He doesn't die, but he raises from the dead.

And then he offers to all who lay their sin on Him. He offers to us the healing of his perfection. Now, that does not mean that we are made perfect in that moment, but that means that we stand before God the Father as those who are completely accepted by him, who are welcomed in by Him. He does all of this so that before we are ever able to effectively clean ourselves up, we look to him and faith, and we get to just simply enjoy the presence of our Christ Creator, knowing that we are connected in relationship with him, because the covenant is bound by his blood and not by our effort. Which means that our journey of repentance does not start from a place where we're trying to earn something with God.

We start our journey of repentance from the place of acceptance. So all of us, all of us, has traded God's design for something lesser at times. But the same God who confronted sin made a way to cleanse and restore those who have been caught in it. And so if you have been caught in this trap, you are exactly the person that Jesus came for, right? I've talked about the warning and the threat and the heaviness of sin, but it would be all a mistake if all we did was stop there, right?

Because without pointing you to something better, right? That we have a good and a gracious Savior who invites every broken person to come to him in the place of surrender. And know that in our surrender to him, right, there's always this question, okay, if I surrender, what's gonna happen to me? You know, what Jesus says happens to you? No.

Condemnation, acceptance and love, Right? When we come to him in surrender, that's what we get. We're given a new name, a new identity, a new welcome, a new life, right? So if you've never trusted Jesus, I would just tell you, I would call on you today. We would.

You believe in Him. Would you trust Him? If you have trusted Jesus, but you're in the place where you realize that you've let this Trojan horse into your life. I would call you today to repent and surrender to the one who wants to bring you healing. But maybe you hear these words and I recognize that there's like a third kind of person.

You hear these words and you have repented. But as I've talked this morning, you can't help but still feel some of the shame and the condemnation of your past, right? And the word that the Lord has for you this morning is, would you come and simply rest in what Jesus has done for you? Because when Jesus calls us into new lives that are holy, that holiness is not about, like, clean people versus dirty people, right? That holiness is about us honoring Jesus as people who have been forgiven and restored in relationship with him.

So, church just number one, I just want to thank you. This is a heavy sermon. Thank you for sticking with me, right? For being very easy to preach to, for loving me. As we've gone through this, we're going to just ask the Lord to now bless the rest of our time worship together.

So would you pray with me, please?

So, Father, we trust you. We look to you now in this time, Jesus. We thank you for your forgiveness.

Lord, we thank you and honor you for the ways that you have given yourself for us in order that we might not be enslaved, but that we could be set free.

And so I pray now your blessing on anyone who finds themselves trapped this morning, that they would know the beauty of what you are inviting them into when you invite them in to surrender to you God. And would you extend peace and love as we continue on in our worship. We ask this in Jesus name.