Episode Transcript
And it's time to turn to 2 Kings 17, verse 32.
2 Kings 17, verse 32.
"Now that our text has described how the Samaritans from different Gentile nations put their gods in high places and sacrifice their children in the fire," verse 32, starts with a conclusive statement.
We read it last week, but I'd like to read it again.
"So they feared the Lord and made unto themselves, of the lowest of them, priests of the high places which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places.
" The beginning of that verse might have thrown you a curveball when you saw it.
How could they fear the Lord and do these other things listed in the verse that are not associated with people who fear the Lord, who obey the Lord?
So we began looking at the use of the word fear in the Bible, starting in the Old Testament, and saw that it was widely used.
It describes terror.
It also describes reverence or great respect.
In Genesis chapter 3 and verse 10, which I read to you at the end of last week's lesson, what Adam said to God after Adam sinned and Adam was hiding, he said, "I heard thy voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.
" And that word afraid is the same as fear.
And so we also saw in Leviticus the same use of the word, the same Hebrew word, and it was more about reverence.
That was Leviticus 19.
20.
Again, we read this last week.
It taught us that the word fear describes a feeling of great reverence and respect, not just one of terror and dread.
Where it said, "The Lord commanded them, 'Ye shall keep my Sabbath and reverence my sanctuary.
I am the Lord.
'" And so the word reverence is the word fear in our text.
Now the Samaritans fear of the Lord, and we use this word Samaritans because the Bible did.
It consists of the Gentile strangers, the occupiers of Samaria.
It is not referred to the Samarians or the children of Israel who lived in the cities of Samaria before they were taken to Assyria.
Maybe that'll help you to remember that.
The Samaritans fear of the Lord was obviously not the reverence that is described in the Leviticus passage that we read.
It was a fear of the Lord based upon what the lions did to some of those Samaritans when they first moved to the area.
It was more like Adam's fear after he had sinned in the garden.
And for these Samaritans, rather than forsaking their false religion and trusting in the Lord, instead they feared the Lord's wrath, but they did not reverence his sanctuary.
They were like this, "We don't want any more lions.
No more lions.
We're afraid the God of the land is going to send lions.
" That was the limitation of their fear.
Now listen, everyone who believes in God, whether they're a Christian or not, everyone who believes in God fears the Lord's wrath.
They do.
But not all of them reverence his sanctuary.
No one wants to go to hell.
When hell is described to a person and you ask them, "Would you like to go there for all eternity?
" And then into the lake of fire, of course, which is where death and hell will be delivered, they would all say, "No.
" Even the most arrogant ones who say, "Yeah, my brothers and I are going to party in hell.
No, you're not.
You're not going to do anything, but gnaw your tongue in pain and be separated from the Lord in its eternal darkness.
" Even the atheist and the agnostic, remember we discussed the difference, the atheist says there is no God.
The agnostic said, "I can't say whether there is or isn't.
" But even those two groups of unbelievers, at some point, must have that fear cross their mind.
Perhaps they lay their head down on their pillow and wonder, "If I died, is what I believe really what would happen to me?
I'd just go into the ground.
" Or for the agnostic who says, "Well, what if there is a God?
" Because the agnostic admits that he doesn't know.
So what if there is a God for the agnostic?
He must have this same fear cross his mind at some point.
Because whether they be agnostic, atheist, or believer, people were created to know God even though most deny Him.
You were created to know God.
James 2, verses 18 through 19.
James 2, verses 18 through 19.
"Yea, a man may say, 'Thou hast faith and I have works.
Show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works.
'" Now listen to this.
"Thou believeth that there is one God.
Thou doest well.
The devils also believe in tremble.
" Now that word "tremble" is from a Greek word because it's in the New Testament.
And it means to be struck with sudden fear or to bristle.
And the devils, the demons, fear the Lord in that respect.
But they don't have a reverence for the Lord like His people do, like His holy angels do.
And those devils are not saved just like the Samaritans in our text are not saved.
So just because somebody says, "I fear the Lord, I'm afraid of the Lord," doesn't make them a Christian.
Now in Luke chapter 8, a story is told about Jesus casting out the devils of a man in Gedera.
Sometimes he's referred to as the Maniac of Gedera.
And here's the conversation between Jesus and those devils He cast out of this man.
It's found in Luke chapter 8 verses 31 through 32.
"And they besought him," that is, these devils make Jesus through 32, "that he would not command them to go out.
" And they besought in that is these devils make Jesus through 30 there.
"And there was a man who saw a herd of many swine feeding on the mountain.
And they besought him that he would suffer them to enter into them.
And he suffered them.
" There's no doubt that these devils were afraid that Jesus, when He cast them out of that man, would immediately cast them into the deep, or the abyss, which is also called the bottomless pit several times in the book of Revelation.
They feared the judgment of the Lord.
Those devils did.
And they knew that Jesus had the power to command them to go wherever He wanted them to.
They recognized that He was in charge of their destiny.
But they weren't saved.
So being afraid of going to hell and being afraid of the lake of fire is not enough for a person to be saved.
And in the case of the devils in these passages, and in the case of the Samaritans in our text, they all had fear, but they didn't have faith.
And fear without faith is simply unbelief.
And that's the best way I know to explain the first part of verse 32 when it comes to how the Samaritans could fear the Lord on one hand and yet make priests and worship false gods on the other hand.
Now let's continue here at verse 32.
We've looked at the verse as a whole.
Now I want to take apart a couple of places in here and look at first the selection of these priests.
The selection of these priests.
And first we see the words, look in verse 32.
"So they feared the Lord and made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests.
" They made unto themselves.
And without yet going into the characteristics of these priests, let's look at this phrase a little more closely.
Let's see what God's word says about how a priest becomes a priest.
First of all in Exodus chapter 28 verse 1, Exodus 28 verse 1, God said this to Moses, "And take thou unto thee Aaron thy brother and his sons with him from among the children of Israel, that he may minister unto me in the priest's office, even Aaron and then his sons Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, Aaron's sons.
" So God didn't say make unto yourself priests.
He named him, he said you take Aaron and his sons and you make them priests.
They will minister to me in the priest's office.
God told Moses who the priest would be.
He didn't say, I'll tell you what Moses, you pick a priest.
Anybody, it doesn't matter to me and I'll just rubber stamp it.
No, he didn't do that.
He didn't say let the people decide.
Put it up for a vote.
He didn't call the board of deacons to select a priest.
You know before our pastor came here, he'd been helping several different churches and going and being an interim pastor for a while and trying to get them up to speed on the gospel and hopefully release that ministry to a pastor.
But he would be asked questions before he would take those positions, those interim positions.
And he was ready to answer questions about what his belief was concerning the Bible.
And that's not what he'd get asked.
He'd get asked all sorts of things.
And it appeared for some of those churches that it wasn't nearly as important what he believed about the Scriptures or that the Scriptures said this is how you do that.
Then their preferences appeared to trump all of that.
And so God doesn't ask what our preference is.
He tells us this is how the priests were selected.
Hebrews chapter 5 verses 1 through 4.
Hebrews 5 verses 1 through 4.
And this is a commentary on what we read in Exodus.
"For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.
" So that was the purpose of the priest, the high priest.
"Who can have compassion on the ignorant and on them that are out of the way?
For that he himself also is compassed with infirmity.
" He's still talking about the high priest.
"And by reason hereof he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins.
" And it says, "And no man taketh this honor unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.
" So in other words, what the Samaritans did making themselves high priests, God said, "No man takes this honor to himself.
" You don't get to pick that.
You don't get to make that decision about who this high priest was.
And we're going to see why it was so important.
The Exodus passage that I read you made it apparent that God selected the priest and his seed to continue that priesthood.
Remember he said, "Take Aaron thy brother.
" Now if God were selecting only the high priest one time, and then that was going to be it, he'd just say, "Aaron will be the high priest till he dies.
" But he said his sons, because one day Aaron was going to die.
So keep that in mind.
Now this is good right here.
"Aaron the high priest represented God to the people, and then represented the people to God.
" He was a mediator both ways.
God would speak to his people through a mediator.
And God's people could come to him only through a mediator.
And if you've been with us long, or perhaps if you have gone through the creation to Christ, or Genesis to Jesus class, or any of those, perhaps you've learned that Aaron was a type of Jesus Christ, being the high priest.
And going back to that Hebrews chapter 5 text, I'll continue reading verses 5 through 6.
I read you the first four verses, verses 5 through 6.
"So also Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest, but he that said unto him," that's God, "Thou art my son today, have I begotten thee, as he saith also in another place, thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
" Isn't that something?
That Jesus as a man did not say, "I pick myself as high priest.
" He submitted himself to his father.
And his father said, "Thou art a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
" So God made Jesus Christ the high priest.
And he did not descend from the line of Aaron, but after the order of Melchizedek.
And that's a whole other study.
"The earthly priesthood began with Aaron and would continue through his offspring.
" But that would one day come to an end, wouldn't it?
Aaron's priesthood comes to an end when he dies.
We're talking about his earthly priesthood.
And then his son, Eleazar, would be the next high priest and his time would come to an end when he died.
So every high priest had to have a son to be the high priest, to be the high priest and so forth.
That's a pretty shaky foundation on which to base your faith if you don't see what God was doing through those high priests.
That's one of the reasons a person can't come to God through Aaron or through any of the priests who descended from the line of Aaron.
When the priest dies, his priesthood is taken up by another.
And one day there will be no more priests.
In fact, it should have already been that way.
And if salvation were by keeping the law and going to the earthly priest and bringing your animal sacrifices, then that salvation would come to an end because your mediator would die one day.
Now the good news here is that God made Jesus Christ as that passage said, a priest forever.
So there's not any passing it down in the way that Aaron had to do.
And the believers are in Jesus by faith, so we are one with him.
And if we're one with him, we're priests with him.
First Peter chapter 2 verse 5.
First Peter 2 verse 5.
Peter said to the believers, "Ye also as lively stones are built up a spiritual house, unholy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Christ Jesus.
" Taking some key words out of there.
"Ye are unholy priesthood.
" Now in Aaron's day, the priesthood could only descend from those who were of the seed of Aaron, his son, his offspring, the fruit of his loins.
The priesthood is made of priests.
And in fact all of the priests, including the high priest, came from the Lion of Levi, one of the 12 tribes of the Children of Israel.
But the priesthood of Jesus Christ, we were just told that he is a priest forever.
The priesthood of Jesus Christ also consists of offspring of the high priest.
Now Jesus as a man, never married, never had wife, never had children, but as God, he has many children.
In fact, ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus, in the regulations 3.
26.
That's good stuff because if we're the children of the high priest, then that qualifies us to be members of the royal priesthood that Peter is talking about.
The difference is that this Aaronic priesthood, as we call the priesthood named after Aaron, and all of the Levites will come to an end on this earth, but the royal priesthood of the believers in Christ will never come to an end.
And that's why that Old Testament priesthood pointed to Jesus.
It didn't point to itself.
Now some of the priests who came after Aaron pointed to themselves and pointed to all kinds of things other than the cross.
But the intent that God had that's clearly demonstrated if you study your Bible is that that Old Testament priesthood and all of those sacrifices and all of the furnishings in the tabernacle and everything about that Old Testament set of laws pointed us to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Even the law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.
Revelation chapter 1 verses 5 through 6.
Revelation 1 verses 5 through 6.
And from Christ Jesus who is the faithful witness and the first begotten of the dead and the prince of the kings of the earth, unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.
Amen.
Is there any doubt in your mind that in Christ we are an eternal priesthood?
All right, now I didn't go off the rails here.
I wanted to show you that because knowing all this we see what an egregious error it was that the Samaritans instituted this defective priesthood.
It didn't look anything like what God said the priesthood would look like for two reasons.
One, they made their own priests.
God did not appoint them to be priests.
And two, the Samaritan's priesthood was ineligible and incapable of representing them to God representing God to them.
That priesthood was not a type of the high priesthood of Jesus Christ and it did not point to the eternal high priesthood of Jesus Christ.
So it was defective.
Now let's look at verse 32 at how these man-appointed priests were described.
It said, "And made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests.
" Now let's camp out there for a moment.
These priests were described as the lowest of them.
That is the lowest of the Samaritans.
The word lowest has the idea of being on the edge.
It's also translated as the word end, uttermost part, and edges.
And there was also, or this was also one of the things that Jeroboam did when he ruled over Israel.
That's where this all, I won't say it all started, it started with Satan.
But when it came to Israel and after the countries were divided, Jeroboam was the major offender.
And in 1 Kings 12, verse 31, he did the same thing that the Samaritans are doing here.
Listen what it says.
"And he made an house of high places and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi.
" So the priests, the Samaritans appointed were Gentiles and they were the lowest of the Gentiles.
They were the fringe.
The priest Jeroboam appointed were Israelites, but they weren't Levites.
And that's what made them the lowest.
So the fact that the Samaritans appointed neither Levites nor Israelites meant that those whom they did appoint as priests were the lowest of the lowest.
And the Samaritans not only did not put Levites in the office of the priesthood, but they put Gentiles there.
Now you think, well, what's the difference?
Well, again, when you consider that the high priest was a type of Jesus Christ, and the Levites were priests who were types of the royal priesthood, the believers.
In fact, all of Israel was supposed to be a picture of the Lord's church, which consists of every believer of every nation from every time, not just Jews.
So in scraping the bottom of the barrel for the priesthood, the Samaritans showed their despite for God's high priest and for the Lord Jesus Christ to whom he appointed, because they made of themselves the lowest.
Listen to how specific the requirements were for the office of the high priest in Israel.
Leviticus 21, verses 21 through 23.
Now there's a lot more to it than these verses that I'm reading, but this is just an example.
Leviticus 21, verses 21 through 23.
"No man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the Lord made by fire.
He hath a blemish.
He shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God.
He shall eat the bread of his God, both of the most holy and of the holy.
Only he shall not go in unto the veil," that's in the temple, the tabernacle, "nor come nigh unto the altar, because he hath a blemish, that he profane not my sanctuaries, for I the Lord do sanctify them.
" Now think about what the Samaritans were doing with their priests, with their high places, with their idols.
They were trampling upon everything that God said in his commandments to Israel concerning their religious practices, their priests, and more importantly, the one to whom they all appointed.
You may ask yourself, does God not use people who have blemishes?
Of course he does.
He never said the high priest had to be sinless in order to be a high priest, for nobody would have been qualified on this earth.
After all, the high priest had to enter into the most holy place, the Holy of Holies inside the tabernacle, once a year.
And the Bible tells us he first offered blood for his own sin and then for the sins of the people.
But because the sons of Aaron, the high priestly line, were types of Jesus Christ, these physical imperfections were not allowed.
And what that pointed to is not that people need to be physically perfect to be accepted by the Lord.
You've missed it if you think that's it.
It was only for this priest, and it pointed toward the fact that Christ was perfect in every way and eternally so.
There was no blemish found in him.
That's why the Passover lamb had to be a male.
14 days taken from among the family or goat, and it could not be blemished.
Couldn't have mange or a bad leg or a heart condition or anything like that.
It had to be without blemish.
Jesus offered his sinless blood one time, after which there was no more need for that Levitical priesthood, for that Aaronic high priesthood.
So in our text, the only thing the Samaritans got right is that they ought to fear the judgment of God.
And even in that, they greatly erred.
What did these Samaritan priests do?
Look back in verse 32.
"Made the lowest of them priests of the high places which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places.
" Those priests who were the lowest of the Samaritans offered sacrifices to dead, deaf, and dumb idols on behalf of spiritually dead, deaf, and dumb people.
It's foolishness, isn't it?
Think about the confusion in this religion.
By offering sacrifices, there was an admission on the part of these people that God required sacrifice.
By appointing priests to represent them to God, there was an admission on the part of the Samaritans that they needed someone to represent them to God.
And by having the high priests offer sacrifices for them, there was an admission by the Samaritans that they were not qualified to offer their sacrifices to God.
Isn't it chilling that the very religions that are on the broad way that leads to destruction are almost mirrors of the one true religion that is on the narrow way that leads to life?
You look at them and you say, "How do these people on the broad way not see that what they're trying to copy doesn't need to be copied, they just need to do it, they need to believe it, jump from the broad way to the narrow way?
How do they think that their religion, a copy of the real thing with all its heresies and errors, is going to lead them to life when the Bible says it leads them to death?
" That's called spiritual blindness.
That's how you can preach the gospel to somebody over and over, answer all of their questions, and they still walk away saying, "Well, I don't believe that, I don't think that's true.
" And you shake your head.
Well, you keep praying for them, but what did Jesus tell his disciples to do?
Shake the dust off your feet and go to the next house.
Don't spend all of your time trying to convince someone with your own persuasive powers that the gospel is true.
Tell it to them, explain it to them, have them watch one of the videos we have, something, and if they still reject the gospel, you pray for them.
Don't ever stop doing that.
I've got people I'm still praying for, some of them are on their deathbed and they're unbelievers.
And I'm not going to stop praying to them, praying for them, excuse me.
By the way, when you put a Facebook comment down that says I'm sending prayers to you, don't do that.
You're not praying to people.
I know it's kind of a fad to say sending prayers your way or I'm sending prayers to you.
You're praying to God for them.
So I know you may think it's a grammatical thing, but it actually means something.
Tell somebody I'm praying for you.
Now that's good stuff.
But it is chilling that these false religions are trying to mirror the one true religion.
And that's not by accident, by the way.
It's not because they just happen to get a couple things wrong.
Satan is the great counterfeiter.
And he has orchestrated all of this deception.
So if you're ever wondering, why is this happening?
Why do so many people go to so many of these churches and still don't believe the gospel?
It's deception.
And as the Apostle Paul wrote, "The man of sin also called that wicked," which is with a capital W, "whose coming is after the working of Satan is going to be a counterfeit himself.
" That man of sin.
He's talked about in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 verses 1 through 4.
If you don't know how to spell Thessalonians, just put TH, period.
That'll work.
2 Thessalonians 2 verses 1 through 4, he wrote, "Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus, and by our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled, neither by spirit nor by word nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.
Let no man deceive you by any means, for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first.
And that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped, so that he as God," now here's the deception, here's the counterfeit, "he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.
Now we know there's only one God and Father of all, and everyone else is a counterfeit.
And the revealing of this man of sin will come when there is a falling away.
" Said there's first going to come a falling away.
He's going to oppose God.
He will exalt himself as God, and he'll sit in the temple of God and proclaim that he is God.
And because there will be people who will be deceived, many are going to believe that he is God.
And the Samaritans in our text, and those who carry on like them today, will be the very type of people who will fall for this deception.
The reason is that these deceived people will not have held fast to God's Word.
The minute you put the Bible away, whether you do it literally or figuratively, you stop teaching from it, you stop believing it, you stop holding it up is the most important thing that we do here, teach God's Word, then you're setting yourself up to fall for a deception because you won't know whether something's true or not.
You'll say, "Boy, it sounds good.
That sounds good.
He sounds like he cares.
" And these deceived people will not have tested every word and every person by the words of the Bible.
But they'll do it by comparing what was said with how they feel about it.
And what they think about it.
And what the man of sin does and what he says will look acceptable to them.
What he says will sound good to them.
And we're warned about this wickedness by the Apostle John in 1 John 4, verses 1-3.
1 John 4, verses 1-3.
"Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world, hereby know ye the Spirit of God.
Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.
And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God.
And this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come, and even now already is it in the world.
" So the spirit of antichrist is not just a future event.
It was present in John's day.
And there's not just one antichrist.
There are many.
Now they all come from the same one, but there are many.
And it was also present.
In the time we're reading about.
You may say, "Well, Jesus hadn't come yet.
" Well, He was still.
.
.
He's God then, wouldn't He?
He's God now.
And if what God taught those Old Testament Jews, and anybody else who'd listen, is that all of this is pointing to the one who's coming.
He began prophesying about Jesus Christ in the book of Genesis.
He didn't wait until He gave the law.
The Pharisees deny Jesus Christ who came in the flesh.
They deny He was of God.
Even though their very own forefathers had written the Scriptures that proved otherwise.
And how egregious it was for the Samaritans to go about establishing their false religion after hearing from that one priest how they ought to fear the Lord.
Verse 33.
"They feared the Lord and served their own gods after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence.
" They feared the Lord and served their own gods.
On the one hand, they fear God in the way they think He should be feared.
On the other hand, they serve their own gods.
And how is this possible?
Well, we dealt with that some in the prior verse.
But it's not possible when God is feared as He commanded rather than as man imagines God should be feared.
Matthew 6, verse 24.
Jesus said, "No man can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or else he will hold to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God in mammon.
" So there's plain truth for us right there.
And notice in our text, it said, "They feared the Lord, but they served their own gods.
" It did not say they served God.
Said they feared the Lord, served their own God.
And again, this goes back to knowing which type of fear they had toward God.
Their fear of God was a terror based upon the God of the land sending lions to destroy some of them.
The Apostle Paul, on the other hand, describes how the right kind of fear is part of serving the Lord.
Listen to Ephesians chapter 6, verse 5.
Ephesians 6, verse 5.
Paul uses the example of a servant and his master.
And that's the relationship we have with the Lord Jesus Christ.
He is our master.
We are his servants.
Servants be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling in singleness of heart as unto Christ.
So he said, "This relationship that the earthly master and servant have is to be a picture of the relationship you have with Christ.
You serve him with singleness of heart, with fear and trembling.
" It all goes together.
Now to serve a master of any kind, that servant must have singleness of heart.
And that singleness of heart is coupled with fear and trembling.
The singleness of heart means that you're loyal to your master.
You say, "He's my one and only.
This is my boss.
" And the fear and trembling part of it keeps the servant from submitting to another master.
And with Christ, singleness of heart means that we see him as our one and only master, our one and only Lord.
And fear and trembling keeps us from seeking another master because the Bible says we can't have it both ways.
And if we can't have it both ways, then neither can the Samaritans.
And their fear was not a godly sort as we learned from the Apostle Paul.
Because if they had a singleness of heart toward the Lord whom it says they feared, they could not have served their other gods.
Jesus said, "No man can serve two masters.
" So if they had singleness of heart toward the Lord, if they viewed him as their only master, it would have been scripturally impossible for them to serve those other gods.
They would have not recognized them.
They would have said, "I'm not.
.
.
They're not my gods.
" I fear the Lord with singleness of heart.
I love him with singleness of heart.
I have fear and trembling before him.
I would never serve another master.
When people say, and I'll close with this, when people say, "I used to believe in God.
I used to be a Christian, but now I'm not.
" They were never Christians in the first place.
Don't ever take a statement like that from someone and think, "Wow, it looks like you can lose your salvation.
" They weren't ever Christians in the first place.
That would be like me saying, "I used to be the son of Kenny Mac Shepard, but now I'm not anymore.
" That's foolish.
If I'm his son, which I am, I always will be.
And if I was never his son, what a liar I would be to claim that I ever was his son.
And that's what people are.
When they say, "I used to be a Christian, but I'm not anymore.
" We're going to stop right there and we'll pick up with the remainder of verse 33 next week.
Let's pray.
Father, you're so good to teach us your truth.
Thank you for the Spirit of God who can take the frail presentation that a man makes when he attempts to teach your word.
And in spite of that frailty and that weakness in the flesh, Lord, you can pass truth to the hearts of those people who are hungry for it and help them to understand it.
And I pray they believe it and that it would be evident in our lives that we've sat at the feet of Jesus this morning.
It's in his name we pray.
Amen.
