Den of Robbers

In this message Pastor Aaron shares about Jesus walking into the temple in Jerusalem and turning over the tables in the temple.  Are there common theme's that we still do today?  Listen in to this message.

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We're in the third week of our series Genuine. And, you know, we drop this word authentic a lot, and it almost becomes kind of cliche after a bit, you know, this idea of being authentic. But the whole point is that I want to see real faith, right? I want to see it displayed in people. I I want to know that the word of God is planted in the hearts of people and it is being demonstrated from a true place. Because so often we can see counterfeit, can't we? You can spot it. And it's it's but it can be hard to spot. Check this out. When your idea of faith is something that has been demonstrated all your life, and next thing you know, you're reading the word of God and you're like, I've never heard that before. Or that's new to me, or that's contrary to the way I was raised, and there's something inside us that says that doesn't line up. But let me tell you something else that regularly takes place is that slowly we let things into our life that aren't biblical, but we just give kind of that fleshly approval of it. And so what I have to do regularly in my life is I have to recalibrate. I have to do a reset in my life, recognizing things that are in me that are not of God. Who knows we can let those things creep in from time to time? And if it if it remains unchecked, it just gets worse and worse and worse. And I don't, I don't want those things to remain unchecked in my life. And we have an ability to make a mess of God's plan. Who's seen it? I've seen it far too many times. When I was a young pastor, I was I was 32 years old, and I felt the call of God to go to this town called Waterloo. And it was to a church that had absolutely just been devastated by their former pastor was dismissed for moral issues, and that pastor started another church in town, took half the church with him, and the other half that stayed there, they wanted to be a challenge too. There is a joke in there somewhere. Pastor Morris caught it. And so they invite me up, and you know, I'm told about all the potential. And the if you've ever been to Waterloo, it's right downtown. Waterloo is 218, goes up. There's a there's a there's a bridge there and it goes through downtown. The church sits right there to the right hand side. It's it's right there beside 218. And I go there and try out. And in a tryout, like I made it clear, I was already pastoring another church in Illinois. I don't I don't have to be there. I feel God leading me to be there. And so they set up this whole weekend where you go in, they have an interview and a dinner Saturday night, and then you go and you preach the next day, which honestly, I hate the whole process. It's so stupid. But it is. It's just a terrible process because you can't you can't measure the value of a ministry and what's going to take place in just a single weekend. You can't do it. And just like just like if you're checking out churches, you can't figure out what a church is like in a single weekend. That's that's just absolutely impossible. And so I go there and I'm getting ready to try out, and service hasn't even started yet. And before I even get up to preach, I don't know these people. They're telling me, all these people in the church are telling me how bad things are in the church. And I'm sitting there thinking, you guys aren't really selling me on anything, you know? Like, and then, but but at the same time, I'm seeing the hearts and attitudes of the people, and I'm thinking, you guys are all pointing the finger at each other, and you should be looking in the mirror. Like it's your own attitude that stinks, right? And so I remember getting up there to preach, and the whole time I'm just living at all these people that came up to me because they don't recognize you might be the problem. Weird segue. Jesus dealt with that, and it's it's amazing what we can make church when we let the flesh get involved. And we're gonna be reading today from Matthew chapter 21, it's verses 12 through 17, and what we're seeing is this is a story that it Jesus just had the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and as as he is going in and he's going to the temple, the thing is Passover is occurring right at that time, and so there's there's tons of visitors from all these other areas and all these other countries, and so it was an opportunity for people to make money because of all the visitors coming, right? And God has this clear design of the temple and how he wants it to operate, and and he declared early on that it's to be a house of prayer where people meet him, they find healing, they give him glory, and oftentimes we find ourselves guilty of turning the church into other things. And so, what we're gonna see in our text today is that Jesus comes and he has to cleanse the temple, he has to restore it to its true purpose and receive praise that belongs to him alone. And so just imagine as we get ready to dive into this, imagine that you are walking into church on a Sunday, you want a quiet time of prayer, you want to worship him, you want to, you want to read the scriptures, you want to hear the scriptures read, and you're expecting quiet. Maybe you're going in, and in this case, in the temple, they were burning incense. In our case, it's glade plug-ins, you know, everything smells real fresh and nice. And instead, you walk in the door and you hear clanging of counting money, haggling over prices. There's vendor tables set up everywhere as you're just coming in to try and worship God, and you hear animals bleeding, and it stinks to high heaven for the animal sacrifices, and merchants are shouting across the way that's reminiscent of maybe the Des Moines farmers market downtown, who knows? And every definition of irreverent that you could possibly imagine. And that's exactly what Jesus walked to in the temple. We're gonna pick that up, Matthew chapter 21, verses 12 through 17. Says, Jesus entered the temple and began to drive out all the people buying and selling animals for sacrifice. He knocked over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves. He said to them, The scriptures declare, my temple will be called a house of prayer, but you have turned it into a den of thieves. The blind and the lame came to him in the temple and he healed them. The leading priests and the teachers of the religious law saw these wonderful miracles and heard even the children in the temple shouting, Praise God for the Son of David. But the leaders were indignant. They asked Jesus, Do you hear what these children are saying? Yes, Jesus replied, Haven't you ever read the scriptures? For they say, You have taught children and infants to give you praise. Then he returned to Bethany where he stayed overnight. Let's pray. Father God, we just thank you for your word. And Lord, you know, there's there's one verse we often get caught up in when we read this section of scripture. But Lord, I I pray that we see the bigger picture. And we understand the part that we play in this. And God, so I pray that you will open up our spiritual eyes today in Jesus' name, and everyone said, Amen, amen. If we want to go back to the very beginning of the temple, this is God's intent, that it's to be a house of prayer. Who declares that over their church today? That God's intent is that this be a house of prayer. That's a long-established standard. In Isaiah 56, 7. Listen to this. He says, I will bring them to my holy mountain of Jerusalem and will fill them with joy in my house of prayer. I will accept their burnt offerings and sacrifices because my temple will be called a house of prayer for all nations. God established that a long time ago. That phrase, a house of prayer for all nations. And so God is saying, anyone who seeks it, anyone who comes to my temple, this is a place to meet me and bring your genuine sacrifice. And the problem is, it was never about just providing a sacrifice, it was about people bringing their best. And when you think about this, it's not a sacrifice to the Lord if it doesn't come at a meaningful cost. And I realize that we're talking in the terms in the Old Testament of these animal sacrifices, but what God is displaying is I don't, I don't want cheap, I don't want what's convenient, I don't want your second best offering, I want your best. And so he wanted people at the time in the Old Testament, I want you to bring from your own flock. From that firstborn, I want you to bring without defect. In fact, the prophet Malachi, he delivered a strong word from the Lord where people were offering stolen animals. It's very meaningless to us. Listen to what Malachi said. Malachi 1, 13 through 14. It says, You say it's too hard to serve the Lord, and you turn up your noses at my commands, says the Lord of heaven's armies. Think of it. Animals that are stolen and crippled and sick are being presented as offerings. Should I accept from you such offerings as these, says the Lord? David captured the heart of the matter quite perfectly in 2 Samuel 24, 24. He says, I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing. It's got to come at a cost. And I I've learned that over the course of my life, that there has to be this personal cost. That if if you if you come into, if if you if you give the Lord praise, if you are truly giving your life over, if we say, I'm choosing to believe in Jesus, then you need to give the best from your life because that's what makes a genuine sacrifice. The reason the temple was there, the temple was there to facilitate this heart posture. And it was it was so obvious at the time that their hearts are far from God when they leave here. So we're going to set up a place where they can all get together and where that they can declare that I am the Lord and God's presence resided there. I want you to think about this way. Imagine at your house, you want it to be a place where the family comes together for dinner, you want it to be a refuge, you want them to feel welcome there every time they come. But unbeknownst to you, it got turned into an Amazon warehouse. And you you walk in the door, and everywhere you sit, there's Amazon boxes piled up, and there's people coming and getting their orders fulfilled and taking their boxes home with them. And you say to your kids, I'm sorry, I don't know how this happened. It turned into an Amazon shipping facility, and you got to schedule time if you want to come here. Maybe, maybe buy something off of Amazon and you can come over. Eventually, you'd get sick of it, probably the moment you walked in the door, I'd guess, and say, This isn't what this is for. This isn't what my home is for. And church, I think this is important for you to embrace the temple isn't a building. It's not a building. And you and I, in our minds, we create this barrier where we relegate religious behavior to a location. You walk in the door and you're like, oh, I gotta get my act together. Don't want the lightning to strike me. Or I have to present myself in a certain way. And what happens is in our lives, we we separate the religious or the spiritual from these worldly desires, and we don't realize it, but we become a chameleon. We're shifting and changing colors wherever we go. And the apostle Paul makes it clear. Listen to First Corinthians chapter 3, verses 16 through 17. It says, Don't you realize that all of you together are the temple of God? All of you together are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God lives in you. God will destroy anyone who destroys this temple. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple. Listen to that again. You are God's temple. Who says amen to that? And so it should be all-encompassing, it should envelop your life. Because so many of us, we have prescribed to this idea of what we think church is, and we think church is, man, it's this place for maybe great musicians or gatherings or seeing friends, but is it a place for a desperate hunger for God? That's that's the true question. And so the goal of walking through the doors here is that people meet God here who don't know God. And that we can come together unified, and we know that we are stronger together than we are apart. And so we encourage each other, we lift each other up, we connect each other to God, we allow that iron to sharpen iron. And churches also, it's not exclusive, but it's it's for all people from all backgrounds. Who says amen to that? And so when when someone, check this out, when someone walks through the doors that you don't align with, you say, I don't really vibe with that person. Or maybe they're on the wrong side of the tracks, and you're like, man, they don't belong here. I have to ask you, can you demonstrate they are as deserving to connect with God as you are? When people walk in, do they sense they need to clean up to be here and buy what you're selling? Or are you just focused on you bringing your best? To me, the intent of God is clear. Prayer, sacrificing our best, his presence in this place, amongst his people. And so when you and I, when we get involved, what tends to happen is we bring our flaws, we bring our issues, we bring our problems, and it's easy to turn this place into something else. It's so easy. Because, guys, we're so corrupt, we're so corrupt, and we can turn it into a den of robbers so easily. Because God intends this to be a house of prayer, but it got turned into a den of robbers. Jesus called it out. He was quoting Isaiah 56, and then he followed it up with Jeremiah 7.11, saying that they're they they they become a den of robbers. And he's looking at these people, he's like, You're not innocent. You are far from innocent. And in fact, did you notice what it said? He didn't just kick out the people selling, he kicked out the people buying. He's like, Go. You've turned it into something that it's not. Because these pilgrims, they traveled for days, and so they needed temple currency and they needed approved animals. So that's why the money changers were there, because they came from different lands. And basically, all these priests, all these religious leaders, they had this monopoly going on and they jacked up the prices because all these visitors were coming into town. So all of a sudden, what God said should be a personal offering of your best became a profitable business. So the relieved the religious leaders, they what what they'd do is they'd allow these people in, they'd take their cut and then they'd look the other way. We're just gonna let it go on. And so Jesus is quoting Jeremiah 7:11. Listen to this. It says in Jeremiah, don't you yourselves admit that this temple which bears my name has become a den of thieves? Surely I see all the evil going on there. I the Lord have spoken. And I wanted context because I really want to understand what were they dealing with in that day, and then we see it repeated again in Jesus' day that the nation of Judah they had gone through major reforms under a king named Josiah. It's who my oldest son is named after, and the temple was cleaned and cleansed outwardly. But here's what happened: the people kept on sinning. They just kept on sinning. And so what the what the temple became, it was this get out of jail free card where we we play this game to go through the motions of life. I can honor God there, and yet I can still go out, I can still steal, I can still oppress the poor, I can still be an idolater, I can still be a murderer, an adulterer, you name it, all those things. But they'd show up to the temple with all these things in their lives, and they'd still say, The Lord is here. This is a temple of the Lord. And other people are going, now wait a second. Didn't I see you out there doing that thing that doesn't belong here? And God's warning, it's so blunt. He said, if you read the scriptures, if you read that section of Isaiah or Jeremiah chapter 7, he says that you'll become like the temple of Shiloh, which at the time was an old area of worship that God destroyed because of Israel's sin. Back to my church in Waterloo. As I've shared before, it was a pretty challenging eight years. We had some great times and we had some really difficult times. And I had this pastor in the church that was from another country in Southeast Asia, and he would he would regularly donate large sums of money to televangelists that said, if you just spend so much money, I'm going to send you this prayer shawl. And what's going to happen is when you have this prayer shawl, it's going to bring you many blessings in your life. And he'd come into the church and he'd have have this shawl that he just he just gave lots of money to this televangelist. And he'd say, Will you pray over it, Pastor? I'm like, I'll pray over you. I'm not praying over that, but I'll pray over you. But he was convinced that just with this seed of faith, I'm going to be blessed. And and they say it like it's a guarantee. And what happens is so many innocent people, they trust the claim, but they're being duped by modern day money changers. Because there's a greed and there's a desire for money behind it, and it's gross. First Timothy 6 10, it says, For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And what I've learned is we can be guilty of the same things, but in different forms. Today's Waterloo Illustration Day, I guess. First couple years I was there, there was this couple, they'd stop by every Monday. I never saw them in church once. They'd stop by every Monday. Every Monday. And they'd give me a $500 check and say, This is this is to go to the church. And at the time, it's like we were barely getting by as a church. So it's like, well, thank you for that. But here's the thing I'd rather you be here than have your money. And I I just I felt gross the whole time. But they believed, check this out, and this is this is what's so wrong with our minds. They believed that if I just give this, even if I don't make it the church, even if I'm not living my life for God on a day-to-day basis, if I give this money, then everything in my life is gonna be blessed. And so giving often becomes this metric of God's blessing instead of prayer and life transformation. And so the moment that we make this about anything other than our relationship with God. The byproducts that go with everything beyond that. If it's about anything else, we've corrupted it. Ultimately, church, God is He's crushed by a half-hearted approach. And that's really what we're talking about here. Not giving God our best, but just saying, you know what, I you know I've got things to do. I've got things I want to do in life. You know, I hear God's expecting this of me, but you know, I I've I've got my own desires. You know, I go to Bible college, and everyone expects that if you go to Bible college, that you're gonna reach some spiritual high. And it's almost the exact opposite. And I I'm married, we're both full-time students, we're both full-time employees, we're we're trying to get as many hours as we can. I'd pick up all the overtime I possibly could. And the last two years I had of Bible college, Wendy and I took Greek together. And as we took Greek, and as I said, I was trying to get as many hours as we could, she'd do all the homework and I'd do all the copying, you know? And then to add insult to injury, we'd we'd take the test and I'd do amazing on the test, and it'd just make her absolutely mad. But here's the thing that I've learned from that. Don't ask me anything about Greek right now. I'm gonna say, I don't know. I don't know. Like some things stick, some things don't. I can say the alphabet, that's about it, you know. And the reality was I took this half-hearted effort because I wanted to reach a goal. I wanted that diploma. And so many people are in churches. If I just make it to eternity by the skin of my teeth, at least I'm there. God's saying that's not it. That's not it. You've missed it. That's not what it's about at all. And you know, the apostle Paul, he talks about the effort we should put in. Listen to this. It's one of my favorite sections of scripture, 1 Corinthians 9, 24 through 26. He says, Don't you realize that in a race everyone runs? But only one person gets the prize. So run to win. All athletes are disciplined in their training, they do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So run with purpose in every step. I'm not just shadow boxing. He's like, I'm actually in it. I'm in the fight, and I'm gonna try my best to get there. I'm gonna fight with everything I have to get there. And so our hearts really need to be examined, church. They really do. Am I here out of religious obligation? Am I here to punch my ticket to eternity? Am I here to seek an earthly blessing? And yet, the only one who can truly purify us and bring us out of that corruption that we listen. So many of us fall into it. The only one who can purify us is Jesus Christ. That's it. And so, what we need to do, and we saw it here this morning, we need Jesus' restoration in our lives, and we need Jesus to be a part and all-encompassing of everything that we do because it is Jesus who cleanses, heals, and restores everything to God's glory. Do you know there is nothing in you that can give God glory? There is nothing in you but Christ. And so, Jesus, when he comes in, you know, we see this story, and we we all like to say, wow, Jesus got really angry and he flipped over tables, and man, there's times that I'd like to go in there and I'd like to do that, and you miss the point entirely of the story. Because Jesus doesn't just tear down, he restores to God's intent. And he doesn't immediately. There's only one verse where Jesus has his moment, and then he immediately has a different moment because all of a sudden the tables are cleared and the focus completely shifts. Listen to verse 14. It says the blind and the lame came to him in the temple and he healed them. So all of a sudden, Jesus went from clearing everything out in the temple and saying, Okay, now it's time to bring its original purpose to life, and I am here to bring healing, I am here to bring restoration. And the children see this, and this is why I love having so many kids present. The children see this and they shouted praise. Church, don't you want to hear the kids in this church praising Jesus? I want to. And Jesus, he quotes Psalm 8, too. He says, You have taught children and infants to tell of your strength, silencing your enemies and all who oppose you. All of a sudden, these same hands that flip the tables are the same hands that is administering healing to people. And Jesus is now seeing broken people restored and brought back to life. And so what he's doing is Jesus takes this den of robbers and he returns it back to a house of prayer and of power. And then what what we see that Jesus, you know, you know, we just got done with Easter and he dies and he's brought back to life, and he's he's in the presence of his disciples and around these guys for for about 40 days before he ascends into heaven. And then they wait, and the outpouring of the Spirit we see in Acts chapter 4, and this is after Jesus ascended, and in Acts 4 it says they preached the word of God with boldness. And so what happens is Jesus restores, the healing breaks out, generosity breaks out, and the church can begin to operate in genuine faith. See that true faith can only be claimed in Christ. We've lost. So the steps that we need to take is to repent of our wicked ways, our performance. And listen, if you're saying, man, the pastor's calling me wicked, I'm saying I'm looking in a mirror when I'm saying that. And I want you to embrace that too. I'm looking in a mirror. There are times when I read the word of God and I read it as a mirror. And then after that application, what I'm doing is I'm using it as a lens for how I view the world. And I'm telling you, if you learn true surrender, repenting, seeking the face of God, you're gonna see God break out in power in your life and amazing stories. You're gonna see God bring healing to our communities, and you'll see addicts set free who says amen to that. You're gonna see marriages restored, you're gonna see the young and the old coming to Jesus, and I want to see it. And I argue we begin to see it. We have begun, excuse me. And so Jesus, and it's talking about the temple, and we said earlier, we said you are the temple. And what I'm about to say next is gonna seem confusing, but it's not. We're gonna explain it. Jesus is the true temple. Listen to John 2, 19 through 21. It says, All right, Jesus replied, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. What? They exclaimed, it has taken 46 years to build this temple, and you can rebuild it in three days. They were talking about the physical building. But when Jesus said this temple, he meant his own body. And so what we're learning is God's presence is no longer confined to a specific location, but in Jesus, the fulfillment of God was the fullness of God, excuse me, was pleased to dwell. That's Colossians 1.19. And so what happens is that Jesus is here with his disciples, as I said, an additional 40 days, and then there's the release of the Holy Spirit. And when you claim Christ, you in turn become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 2, 21 through 22. It says, We are carefully joined together in Him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord. Through Him, you Gentiles are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by His Spirit. And I see so many people, they're trying so many different means to clear the corruption out of their lives. I've heard of people going to counseling, I've heard of people going to some kind of uh addiction anonymous group. And the only way we can truly clear out the corruption of our hearts is to allow Jesus to restore this temple and be prepared. Be prepared, check this out, for him to start overturning some tables. He might overturn some tables in your life. And I know it's uncomfortable, but Jesus is in the business of cleansing his church. And he makes us cleansed people and he makes us a praying church, and he's gonna turn you into a different person. You need to be okay with that. You can't come to Jesus and expect not to change. Listen to Hebrews 10, 19 through 22. I know it's a lot of scripture, but we're wrapping up here. It says, and so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven's most holy place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death, Jesus opened up a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the most holy place. And since we have a great high priest, that's Jesus, who rules over God's house, let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts, fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ's blood to make us clean. And our bodies have been washed with pure water. Check this out, church, because of Jesus Christ, you no longer have to bring that best of your flock. Thank God I'm not a sheep farmer, right? You no longer have to bring the best of your flock where you're saying, okay, I gotta go in there and I gotta get my hands dirty and I gotta sacrifice this thing unto the Lord so that so that he can be pleased with my life and I can be blessed. Instead, all we have to do, we have to claim that perfect sacrifice, Jesus Christ, claim that over our lives and understand that is when the blessing comes in, and that is when we're completely restored. And you and I have the opportunity. We can claim that every day. And so, what happens is when you claim Jesus in turn, the sacrifice you now bring to the church that best you bring is yourself. You get to come into God's holy temple, and instead of bringing those animals, God, I offer all of me. Listen to Romans 12:1. It says, and so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice, the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. God gave his best for you. He gave his best in his son to be that sacrifice to take your place, and there is nothing you and I can do to repay it. There's nothing. But that indebtedness that asks for your best. Just keep giving him your best. You know, my wife and I got married pretty young. And when you get married at the age of 19, there's a lot of disciplines that you haven't set yet. Hey, they said I didn't have a fully functional brain still at the age of 19, and uh my wife can probably attest to that. And uh we got ourselves in a significant amount of debt. And there were these cycles where we'd try and get our act together, and then we'd find ourselves back in debt, and it was just a repeated cycle over and over and over again. And eventually we realized the debt wasn't the problem, it was the way we thought. And so what happened is we had to change, literally change the way we thought about things we wanted, things that we already had, and what we could spend on and what we couldn't spend on. And so there were behaviors that had to strongly change. And we I find in scripture to go to eternity, it really requires changing the way you think. It's not this get out of jail free card that so many of us hope that it is, but a changed pattern of behavior. Listen to Romans 12, 2. It says, don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. Church, this transformation, it begins with the heart cleanse. It's not you saying, Man, I gotta clean up in order to, in order to bring Jesus into my life. No, that's not it. No, there's no amount of soap that's gonna get rid of all that sin, right? There's not. The blood of Jesus Christ. And so it's you declaring, I need him to restore me. I need him to cleanse me, I need him to make me new, and that's the only way I can get new. And that's and it's by him that I can worship God. It is by him that I can go into my life where I am complete, where I am healed, where I am free. And so many people try and make church something it's not. And in my church, you have nothing to prove but Jesus. You have nothing to prove. And so, whatever you've brought in from the outside, first and foremost, take care of that with God and know that nothing you've done out there separates you from anyone else in here. Because my God declares it all sin, and my God declares it all washed under the blood of Jesus Christ. And so I ask you to bow your heads. I'm gonna share with you a story. Even in the faith, we get blind spots. And we can turn this so often into something that it's not. I alluded to that at the beginning of the message. What happens is you see so many key senior ministry leaders, some prominent names that fall away later in life, and it's because they had a blind spot in their life, and they just let it develop, and eventually it led to some kind of moral failure or them questioning their own faith. And it's so easy to do. We see leaders do it all the time. And there's not a single one of us that's impervious to sin. And recently I found myself, God saying, I don't like your attitude. And I'm like, God, this is just me dealing with what life has to throw at me right now. What do you mean you don't like my attitude? He said, I'm you're not giving me your best. You're giving your best to everyone else but me. And then God spoke over my life, and he's telling me, listen, you could gain the whole world and you can still lose your soul. And so the the issue right now is not who else comes to mind in your life. You're like, boy, they're far from God right now. I need to pray for them. No, this is about you and the Lord. Because I believe that each and every one of us, we can develop these blind spots, we can develop these things that come in between us and God. So whether you've never known Jesus before or you're here in this room, we can find ourselves very far from God. And what we have to do, the only way to escape it is to say, I choose Jesus to come into my life and cleanse it and make me new. It's not going to be by anything you do. But being restored to God's true original purpose, Christ in you, and Christ in you every day. Whether or not you uh have been following a life out after Jesus, or whether you have, and sometimes we can just get off the path a bit. But both of us need restored. God created you with purpose. It's time to embrace that purpose in Jesus Christ. And if you're here today to say, Pastor, I just I recognize where I'm at in life, and I just say, I need Jesus. I need Jesus. What I want you to do, I want you to just come up here and kneel down at this altar. A life fully surrendered to God. So we're all gonna stand, we're gonna worship, but I encourage you, if you're here today and you're feeling broken, you're feeling, you're feeling like things are pretty messy, and you're just saying, I need Jesus to come in, I need him to cleanse, I need him to make me new, I need to embrace purpose, now's your chance. So could everyone in here stand? And if that's you and you say, I just need prayer, I just need to plead the blood of Jesus Christ over my life. I encourage you while we worship, calm down. We want to pray with you. We're trusting and believing. God is the difference. Claim Jesus Christ over your life. That is the difference. Let's pray. Father God, I just thank you for each and every person in this room. And God, the work that you can do is a supernatural work that cannot be obtained by any other source on this earth. It is just through you, and it is freely given, and all we have to do is freely receive it. So, God, I just pray right now that, Lord, we can learn what it means to just open up our hands, surrender control, and say, God, I need you. God, I pray your Holy Spirit come in right now and you reveal in us the things that are not of you so that, Lord, we can repent and we can allow your son to just restore us, Father. Let us see things the way you see them. God, may we be quick to repent. And Lord, may we dedicate our lives so that we're following out after you each and every day. And so, God, we want to declare in our lives right now I am covered by the blood of Jesus Christ. We thank you, God. In Jesus' name.