In this sermon, based out of Mark 3:1- 6, we look at what Jesus teaches us about the difference between being a rule-follower and a follower of the One who rules.
In this sermon, based out of Mark 3:1- 6, we look at what Jesus teaches us about the difference between being a rule-follower and a follower of the One who rules.
If you have served in our country's armed forces, would you stand and let us thank you? Would you please stand if you're a veteran?
:(Applause)
Dan Werthman:We thank you for your service, and even more, we thank our great God, who gave us this nation and the freedoms that we enjoy. If you have your Bibles this morning, I encourage you to open to the Gospel of Mark. We start chapter 3 today. If you're visiting, we're working our way through the Gospel of Mark. What are we doing? I was just thinking about, as we were singing that last song, the beautiful name, the wonderful name, the powerful name of Jesus. We're looking at what is in that name? Who is this one who reveals himself, that we know as Jesus, who reveals himself as God, by his Holy Spirit, works through John Mark to describe a little bit, a little glimpse of his life and ministry. So we pick it up in chapter 3 today, beginning at the first verse. This morning I'm reading from the New American Standard, and I'm going to dive right in."And he--" that's Jesus--"entered again into a synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand." Now let me pause there. That word"again" is significant. What does Mark want us to see? Something has begun previous in chapter 2 that now Mark wants us to see is part of a pattern that's actually going to build and build. He's entering into the synagogue on the Sabbath. This is-- if you missed it last week, we talked about one of the ways that Jesus got in trouble, so to speak, with the religious rulers of his day was what we call controversy about the Sabbath. We kind of unpacked that last week. And so right after last week's text, what do we see this week? Again, he's initiating what will be a Sabbath encounter, a Sabbath controversy. He is intentionally initiating this. He is walking, really, into what we could consider another trap laid by the religious leaders using the Sabbath and the synagogue, and this man who was there. There's some speculation that this man with a withered hand may have even been intentionally brought in by these religious leaders to the synagogue to set Jesus up for this. I can't prove that, but that makes a lot of sense to me. The man was there. I want you to notice the man, as we go through this text, he does not initiate anything with Jesus. We see other people coming to Jesus for healing. We see other people going through great lengths. Remember the men, the friends who removed the part of the ceiling to lower their friend down before Jesus? But here, this man is just sitting there in the group, in the synagogue on the Sabbath. Jesus initiates this encounter. And this is a man with a withered hand. That term that Mark uses, that Greek term, we can't get real specific. All we really know is it describes a condition of paralysis or deformity that could have been the result of an accident, could have been from disease, it could have been a birth defect of some kind. Verse 2:"And they--" that is the Pharisees. You see that from verse 6, if you look ahead there--"they--" the Pharisees, the religious rulers--"were watching him--" Jesus--"to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath, in order that they might accuse him." They were watching him. And that's an imperfect, which, you know, normally I don't make much of the verb usage here, but that means this is an ongoing activity. This is not a one-time thing. This is a campaign. They've been doing this day in and day out. They are watching him carefully. Why? They're not impartial observers. They're not just interested people. They are looking for a way to accuse him, to bring legal charges against him. So at this point already, just two chapters in, the religious leaders have already made up their minds about Jesus. They don't see his name as beautiful, as wonderful, as powerful. They see his name as a threat to them. They see him as a challenge to the influence and control that they have over the people. They want to bring him down. They want him taken out like John the Baptist. John the Baptist, just by being faithful to the Lord, of course, was taken into Roman custody by Herod Antipas and executed, his head cut off, and that's what, already, these religious leaders want to see happen to Jesus. We've seen this growing opposition to Jesus developing over the last two chapters. We saw it all the way back in chapter 1, verse 22:"The crowds and the people were amazed at Jesus' teaching." Why? Because he taught them as one having authority, not as the scribes. So the religious leaders who had the titles of authority, they had the positions of authority, the people heard nothing out of their mouths or saw nothing in their actions that communicated the authority of God to them. But Jesus, but these people heard something. They intuited something in Jesus's teaching that communicated the very authority of God. And maybe they couldn't put their finger on what it was, but they knew it was different, and they were drawn to Jesus, which is away from the influence and control of these religious leaders, so the opposition starts all the way back in chapter 1. They begin looking for grounds to accuse him in chapter two, verse six: the scribes are sitting there when he forgives a man of his sins before healing him, and what are they thinking?"He's blaspheming!""So maybe," they think,"we can accuse him and we can get them taken out by accusing of blasphemy." And then we go forward in chapter 2, to verse 16, and they are following him again, watching him in this ongoing activity. And what do they see? They see that he's keeping company with sinners and tax collectors, and it occurs to them,"Maybe we can accuse him of immorality. Maybe we can make a case that he's doing what these sinners do, that he has the kind of flawed character that these tax collectors do. Maybe we can take them out that way." And then last week, we saw in chapter 2:24 the beginning of a new angle: to take him out by violating the Sabbath law. The Pharisees were saying to him,"Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?" And if you weren't here last week, I encourage you to listen to that sermon online. You get a lot of background of where Sabbath law developed extra-biblically, outside of the Bible, and how how burdensome it had become, but that's their grounds now. That's one of many grounds they're seeking to develop, but that's the grounds, as we come back to mark chapter 3, verse 2. What are they looking for on this occasion? They are looking to see if Jesus would heal this man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. Then, just a real quick recap of last week, the fourth commandment:"Remember the sabbath and keep it holy.""Remember the Sabbath." It's a day of rest, not of work. And then the Mosaic law, the first five books of the Old Testament, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, explaining that out further. But they had built a whole system of extra-biblical laws, of rabbinic tradition, getting down to the tiniest detail about what you could and couldn't do on the Sabbath. And really, where it comes to play in this incident today, is the general principle,"Well, what happens on the Sabbath if somebody needs medical treatment?" Here's the general principle. And this, by the way, this is within the rabbinic law, not the biblical law, the rabbinic law at that time, and it still exists today among Jews who practice the Sabbath law. Here's the general principle when it comes to healing, when it comes to medical treatment: when treating a patient who is critically ill or when dealing with a patient whose life is in danger, one is commanded to violate the Sabbath. So it sounds good so far, right? You can save life on the Sabbath. Sabbath rules can be overridden when life is in danger, but that is a pretty high standard for the Jews both then and now, and let me just give you a few illustrations of how high that standard is. So here are restrictions. Yes, you can save life on the Sabbath if somebody is dying, if somebody is perishing, and if they don't get medical care, they're going to die, but here's a few sample restrictions that existed then and still exist today. One: it is forbidden to set a dislocated hand or foot on the Sabbath. Again, that's not in the Bible, but that's out of rabbinic tradition. You find that in the Mishnah or the Talmud, the recordings of rabbinic tradition. I don't know if any of you have ever had a dislocated hand or a dislocated foot. I dislocated a finger playing football, and that was pain enough that I wanted it treated that day. So what's the restriction here? You can't get treated on the Sabbath if all you have is a dislocated hand or foot. That is not life-endangering. Here's another one: any medical procedure which is necessary to perform for the patient, but it is clear that it is not at all needed to be performed on the Sabbath, should be delayed until after the Sabbath. So think that out. You need to have surgery. Something's wrong. Something's causing you pain. You need the surgery to correct that and relieve the pain, but it's not going to kill you in 24 hours. You have to wait. You can't have that surgery on the Sabbath. That's the restrictions. It does not rise to the level of being life-endangering. Here's one more: imagine, you know, not hard to imagine in Israel, but anywhere, imagine an earthquake and buildings coming down in an earthquake. Here is the restriction. If a building falls down on the Sabbath, enough rubble can be removed to discover if any victims are dead or alive, and if alive, the victims can be rescued. But if dead, the corpses must be left until after the Sabbath. Not life-endangering to a corpse, is it? And we hear that, and we feel the coldness in that, but that's the kind of rabbinic tradition that had developed just in this area of medical care, of healing, of saving lives. And so you can see, you can infer from these conditions, or from these restrictions, how the religious leaders were viewing what was going on there that day in the synagogue. This man only has a withered hand. That withered hand isn't going to kill him. He's had that withered hand probably a long time, maybe from birth. And even if Jesus can do something about it, you don't have to do anything about it today, on the Sabbath. It can wait'til a weekday. It's not life-threatening. So according to their rules, their extra-biblical restrictions, if this man wants to be healed, he must wait for a weekday, and really, they couldn't have cared about this man less. Really, they were callous toward this man. Whether they set this man up, bringing him in to trap Jesus, or whether they just took advantage of the fact that he was there, the effect is the same. They are using him as a tool to try and trap Jesus. Jesus, by contrast, see, something totally different: yes, it's the Sabbath, but he sees this man sitting there in his suffering and in his shame. This man is suffering. He's probably disabled. Imagine having one of your hands paralyzed where you cannot use it. Imagine the impact it would have on your life. There is a degree of suffering in that. Imagine the shame, especially if it had a very obvious appearance of deformity, of how how you as a man or a woman, for that matter, would feel, walking around with people seeing your deformed hand. Jesus sees this man in his suffering and his shame, and he's moved with compassion toward this man. So verse 3:"He said to the man with the withered hand,'Rise. Stand up. Come forward.'" Again, the man does not initiate the encounter. Jesus initiates the encounter. The man's sitting there silently, and Jesus calls to him and then notice how Jesus does it. Could Jesus have healed that man right where he was sitting, without even having him stand up? Of course he could have. But Jesus has him stand. Jesus has him stand up where everybody can see him, and if that's not enough, Jesus has him come forward to the center of the synagogue. These are commands that he speaks:"Rise and come forward." What is he doing? He's not only going to heal this man; he's going to focus everybody's attention in the synagogue on really what the main issue is: not just the attention of the religious leaders, but everybody's attention. Here's the real question that Jesus wants to bring into focus for them, and by the way, for us:"Does Jesus have the authority that he claims?" For them,"Does he have the authority over the Sabbath?""Does he have the authority to really explain and even enlighten us about God's purpose for the Sabbath and how God wants us to live out the Sabbath principle?" But it goes much beyond that. For you and me today, does Jesus have authority over us? That's the question he's forcing everyone to consider, then and today. It's a real, valid question. Why? Because we live in a culture, particularly today, where many people would think of themselves as Christians, many people would claim to have some kind of connection, some kind of relationship with Jesus, many people look back to perhaps a prayer that they prayed at some point in life or some kind of experience, particularly an emotional experience, and yet, and this was true of me for many years, and yet they live their life, not under Jesus's authority; they live their life under their own authority. They call their own shots in life. Jesus may be savior, but Jesus isn't Lord, having authority over their lives. So Jesus pushes that question then. Jesus pushes that question. That's part of the reason the Holy Spirit has brought you here this morning, is he wants you to consider where you stand in relationship to what he's revealing to you through his word about Jesus. Well, in verse 4, Jesus challenges the Pharisees."Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save a life or to kill?" I love how he starts this."Is it lawful?" What is he doing there? He's referring to:"Where's your source? Not in your rabbinic tradition. Where's your source in God's word? Where's your source in the Mosaic law?" Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy."Where is your source for saying that, out of compassion and out of mercy, a man cannot be healed on the Sabbath?"Show me your source in God's word, not in your own opinions." It reminds me: the denomination that I grew up in after I was saved and the one I'm ordained in, the Evangelical Free Church, there's this traditional saying and it's simply this:"Where stands it written?" And what does that mean? It means that there's this understanding in our denomination that you can have your preferences, and on secondary issues you can have your opinions, but before you impress your preferences or your secondary opinions on someone else, show me where that is in God's word. Show me, respectfully, lovingly, show me how you support that with what God says. And if you can't, if you can't support it in God's word, don't impress it upon other people, even if it's a preference that's very dear to you, even if it's an opinion on a secondary matter that you feel very strongly about, if you cannot support it in God's word definitively, do not make it a barrier between us."Where stands it written?" That'd be a very good practice for all of us as followers of Jesus Christ, and that's what he's saying here when he says,"Is it lawful?" Well, more specifically, Jesus is challenging them to show him where God in his word has spoken to the issue of doing good or doing harm. Think of the stance of these religious leaders. They're willing to ignore the pitiful condition, the suffering, of this man, even to use that suffering to entrap Jesus on the Sabbath. And Jesus is implying,"Is that doing good, or is that actually doing evil?" Jesus, by contrast, reveals the heart of God in how he responds."What does God say is good, on the Sabbath or any day?" Well, much scripture speaks to that, but I think particularly in one of my favorite scriptures, Micah 6:8. This is God speaking through the prophet Micah to his people."He has showed you, O man, what is good." Here it is. Here's what God says is good."And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." God does want us to do good on the Sabbath. And he defines what is good here in a similar passage: to do good on the Sabbath or any day is to act justly. To do what is right toward the people that he brings into our lives. To do good on the Sabbath or any day is to love mercy, to show compassion toward hurting people that we encounter, whatever day of the week it is. So Jesus is proclaiming to them, and he's teaching us this morning, that not only is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath, but that God actually requires that we do good on the Sabbath. He calls us to respond mercifully to people who are hurting and needy that he brings across our path. Let me just make that very real: consider within the walls of this building, when we come on Sunday mornings. Again, referring to last week's sermon, Sunday is not the Christian Sabbath, but Sunday is the day that for many of us, we seek to live out the principle of the Sabbath, to rest and be refreshed. And part of that is we come and we're together and we worship together and we fellowship together. So you come on Sundays, and you know, you have things that you want to do on Sunday mornings. You need to get to your connect group, or after service, you need to get to lunch. But what happens, you know, when you have an agenda, where you need to go and what you need to do, what happens when you encounter a person and you give the standard greeting?"How are you doing?" And they may answer,"I'm fine." And your radar, your intuition or your spiritual discernment, picks up that is not the case, that that person may be saying those words, but that person is burdened. There's something further going on there. We have a choice at that moment. Are we going to be merciful? Are we going to do what is good? Might I have to divert my plans to get to the restaurant that I want to go to in time to get a table? Might I have to divert my plans to probe deeper, to actually spend some time with that person, to pray with that person? Maybe that's going to lead to a need to minister to that person. Am I willing to do that? That's the kind of decision-- I'm not going to tell you what the right answer is in any specific situation, but that is the kind of decision that God puts before us and asks,"What are you going to do?"Are you going to do it as good? Are you going to show mercy to that hurting person?" Or let me take it beyond the walls of church on a Sunday. You are, like my family when we had kids still in the home, you are rushed on a Sunday morning and getting everybody dressed and in the car, and on the way to church, you're probably already late like we typically were, and you notice your neighbor in some kind of clear distress. Maybe she's a single mom. Maybe it's the guy across the street who is a widower, and you see what's happening. You see the events, the circumstances, that they're in the midst of, and they're in real crisis. What do you do? You're already late for church, for your Sabbath. What do you do? What do you do? What does it mean to show mercy, to do what is good in those situations? God calls us to do good, to be merciful on the Sabbath. That often requires us to sacrificially extend ourselves, but I digress. Let me come back to the text. Jesus continues to challenge them at the end of verse 4:"Is it lawful to save a life or to kill?" And here, he is probing beyond this man. Now he's probing at what's in their heart. I think he knows their motives at this point, and he's challenging their intentions to try and get him arrested and eventually executed. He's pointing out the hypocrisy of them criticizing him while they're actually plotting in their hearts and their minds to have him killed. You see, the bigger issue that Mark wants us to see, not just in this this situation, but throughout his Gospel, is what Jesus claimed about himself. We saw that at the end of chapter 2, verse 28: Jesus claimed to be Lord of the Sabbath. He claimed to be Lord. William Willimon puts it this way:"The clash with authority here in this situation, it's not over the rules over what can and can't be done on the Sabbath; it's over who rules." And that was true of them, and that's true of us. It's not really, under the surface, about the rules. It is about whether he rules over our lives. And that is true for them. That is true for us. Does Jesus, as the Son of Man, does he have God's authority to determine what can be done on the sabbath? What fits with God's purpose for the Sabbath? And broader than that, does Jesus, does he have authority over everything, over everything in our lives? That is the decision. That is the question that he calls every one of us to make a response to. And what's the response that we see of the religious rulers here at the end of verse 4? They kept silent. They kept silent because they can't answer this. They kept silent because they cannot respond to the power and the wisdom of what he said, and their silence actually is evidence that religion for them, it's not what's in their heart. Religion for them has become a checkoff list of whether they're keeping the rules. Religion for them is a list of works that they can perform, they can go through the motions on, without surrendering their hearts to the authority of Jesus. You know what? You and I are pulled with those same temptations to go through the motions of the Christian life just with a list of rules that we check off. We go through the motions of trying to do these actions just without any real surrender of our heart. We experience the same temptation as these religious rulers. Verse 5:"After looking around at them with anger, grieved at the hardness of heart, he said to the man,'Stretch out your hand.' And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored." I'm struck by what Jesus shows us here: we see anger in Jesus. And by the way, this is the first time in the Gospel of Mark, but this is not the last time we will see Jesus angry. I don't know what that does to you, but you know, I have this uneasiness with anger, both because of what anger has done in my life by my expression of sinful anger, and what has happened in my life by others' expression of sinful anger toward me. And so I'm both drawn to this and I'm unsettled by this, that Jesus is modeling anger for us. I mean, we know both Old Testament and New Testament, Proverbs 4, Ephesians 4, say basically the same thing:"Be angry and yet do not sin." In other words, the Bible acknowledges we're made in the image of God. There are things that make us angry because God becomes angry about things, and yet there's a way to sin in our anger, which is usually what happens, but apparently there's a way to not sin, to have righteous anger. And here, that's what Jesus is displaying: righteous anger. He is angry here at something that could not be tolerated by his holy moral nature. And yet his anger here, it's not polluted by sin. His anger here is not sinfully expressed. So what do we see in this? What does he model for us about what it means to be angry and yet do not sin? I love this definition of righteous anger by a pastoral counselor by the name of David Powlison, and this is one that I've had to chew on for a while but has been very helpful to me personally in my own struggles with anger. Powlison says,"Anger--" and I think he's talking about righteous anger here--"is active displeasure toward something that's important enough to care about. It is an active stance that you take to oppose something that you assess as both important and wrong." There is a righteous form of anger. In fact, it would be wrong, it would be sinful not to care about things that are important, things that God cares about. But the problem is often, usually, in our flesh. When we take a stance, we do it in the flesh, and so we become angry about things that aren't important to God, or we fail to become angry about things that are important to God that we should care about, or in the expression of our anger, we do so sinfully and in the flesh. But Jesus here, his anger fits this definition. He displays anger that is perfectly righteous. He cares about what is important. He cares about the callousness of these men. He cares about God's purposes for the Sabbath. He experiences active displeasure toward their perversion of God's purposes and their disregard of this man's suffering and shame, and he takes an active stance to oppose what he assesses as important and wrong. He models righteous anger. How does his anger remain righteous? How does he become angry without sinning? Again, what usually happens to me, I suspect it's what happens to you as well, is again, I become angry about the wrong things, things I shouldn't become angry about. The things that I should care about and become angered about often pass right by me, and often, in my expression of anger, I'm pulled into fleshly responses: bitterness, rage, abusive speech, quarreling, and fighting, and many others that the Bible marks as works of the flesh. And I imagine that's your experience, too. Jesus displays a righteous response to what angers him. We see it in verse 5, and it's only a little slice of what righteous anger looks like. There's much more that we find in scripture, but it's an important slice."He was," notice what the text says,"grieved at the hardness of their heart." I'll come back to him being grieved in a moment here, but let's consider this concept of their hardness of heart. The Bible calls us to be tenderhearted. When God saves us, Jeremiah says, he gives us a new heart, a tender heart, a heart made of flesh, a heart that the holy spirit can get through to, a heart that truth can take root in, a heart that is pliable to the Holy Spirit and responsive to the Holy Spirit. That's a tender heart. But hardness of heart is the opposite of being tenderhearted. Hardness of heart is the condition of, even when truth is presented to us, we're unwilling to understand it, we're unresponsive to it, and this is such a common spiritual condition, hardness of heart. There's over 40 different references to it throughout the Bible, Old Testament and New Testament. And it's not just unbelievers. Unbelievers, of course, we see plenty of examples in scripture of being hardened in heart, but believers, we see in scripture, can develop that clogging of the spiritual arteries, that spiritual hardness of heart that becomes resistant to God's truth, unresponsive to God's truth. What is Jesus's response to seeing their hardness of heart that's displayed in their response? He is grieved by it. He's not angered by it. He doesn't respond with abusive speech. He doesn't engage them in quarrels. He doesn't rage at them. He's grieved by it, and the word really means to be deeply grieved. The idea I think, there, is that you see that the effect that this is having upon their own souls, as well as other people, is poisonous, is toxic, and this kind of righteous response of anger, it doesn't focus hatred on the person. It focuses hatred on the enemy who's behind that person, influencing that person, taking advantage of the situation. It sees that person as the spiritual equivalent of a prisoner of war being used by the enemy, and he's grieved by it. He's grieved by the effect it's having on this man with a withered hand, the people in the synagogue, he's grieved by the effect it's having on these men and their souls. That is a righteous response of anger to hardness of heart. Jesus then calls the man,"Stretch out your hand," and when the man obeys, his hand was restored. You know, I think it's really worth noting here: Jesus doesn't do anything to heal this man. He simply speaks. And this man, Jesus does not command him to do anything. He just simply extends his hand. Do you get that? Jesus does not violate even their extra-biblical Sabbath regulations to heal this man. This healing occurred without any violation of their Sabbath regulations. So do you think they responded with,"Oh, okay, you did it without violating the Sabbath rules. Blessings upon you." No. Verse 6:"The Pharisees went out, and they immediately held council with the Herodians against him as to how they might destroy him." Evidence of their hardheartedness. They didn't care whether or not Jesus had actually violated their Sabbath rules. In their hardheartedness, they did not care about what God's true purpose and intention for the Sabbath is. In their hardheartedness, they refuse to even consider that if Jesus wasn't from God, if he wasn't really the one with the authority that he claimed to have, this healing would have not even occurred, but it did occur. They didn't care. Their hardheartedness moves them to actually violate their own Sabbath rules by beginning to plot the premeditated murder of Jesus. So let me bring it forward to us today. When we think about rules, not just Sabbath rules, but our rules, let me just leave you with three questions for you to wrestle through this morning. First of all, are you a rule breaker? What do I mean by that? There is a moral order to the universe that God has established, because God has ultimate authority, and I know we live in a culture that rejects that and rejects that there are any rules, any moral order. And so many people, certainly I was there once, maybe you're there as you come here today, you reject any boundaries of moral authority over your lives. And you are, just putting it very simply, like I once was: a rule breaker. And God says,"Whether you acknowledge it or not, there is a moral order. I am the moral authority, and if you violate my rules without turning to the provision of the way to be saved from your violation that I've made possible through Jesus Christ, you will perish, and you will suffer eternally in hell." And you're here this morning, and you're a rule breaker, and you have not turned to God's provision through Christ, that is what God has for you. Maybe you're here this morning and you're not a rule breaker. You are what I would call a rule follower. Maybe you think of yourself as a Christian. Maybe you think of yourself as a good person, but somehow, you got like I kind of got for a while growing up in the church, you got this misguided picture that following Jesus, that being a Christian is really about whether you can check off all the rules, you know, the rules of what you should be doing, and the rules of what you should avoid. And if religion for you is really about a list of rules that you have some peace-- I don't even know how you get that peace, because I never found it-- by keeping the rules, or religion is about a list of works that you can perform without really surrendering your heart to the authority of Jesus, you are a rule follower, and you'll suffer the same fate apart from Jesus that rule breakers follow. Where Jesus wants to bring you is really the third question: are you a follower of the One who rules? Are you a follower of the One who has ultimate authority, who reveals himself in Jesus Christ? The one, by the way, who perfectly kept all the rules, something you or I can't do, even if that was a way to be saved, the one who fully kept all the rules and then went to the cross in our place and died for our rule breaking and for our twisted around rule following and the one who imputes the righteousness of his perfect rule-following to you and to me when we put our faith in him. So when Jesus looks at us, he sees us perfectly righteous. Jesus wants to be not just a name to you; he wants to be your savior. He wants to be your Lord. He wants to be the One who rules over your life, over my life. How do you respond to him today? Today is yet one more invitation that he gives to you. Don't be a rule breaker. Don't be a rule follower. Be a follower of the One who rules. Let's pray. What a beautiful name, Jesus. What a wonderful name. What a powerful name, Jesus. Reveal yourself to us, Lord, wherever we are. Only you know the thoughts, the mind, the heart of every man or woman, every young man or young woman who you have brought here today. You know where each of us stand before you. Lord, move rule breakers and rule followers to respond to you and become followers of you, the One who rules. We worship you as savior. We worship you as Lord. Amen.