Strong Faith Can Be Corrupted by Weak Theology

We turn to Judges chapter 11 to see a new judge that will be raised up. But this time, quite different to the way the other judges have been nominated and chosen by God. This is a man set up by human leaders rather than by God himself. And so what we see, even as this cycle is repeating again, there's a downward spiral happening. It is similar, but it's worse.

And we will start to see just how things are starting to really get frayed at the edges here. We hear the story of Jephthah. Judges 11, verse 1. Now Jephthah, the Gileadite, was a mighty warrior, but he was the son of a prostitute. Gilead was the father of Jephthah, and Gilead's wife also bore him sons.

And when his wife's sons grew up, they drove Jephthah out and said to him, you shall not have an inheritance in our father's house, for you are the son of another woman. Then Jephthah fled from his brothers and lived in the land of Tob. And worthless fellows collected around Jephthah and went out with him. After a time, the Ammonites made war against Israel. And when the Ammonites made war against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to bring Jephthah from the land of Tob.

And they said to Jephthah, come and be our leader, that we might fight against the Ammonites. But Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, did you not hate me and drive me out of my father's house? Why have you come to me now when you are in distress? And the elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, that is why we have turned to you now, that you may go with us and fight against the Ammonites and be our head over all the inhabitants of Gilead. Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, if you bring me home again to fight against the Ammonites, and the Lord gives them over to me, I will be your head.

And the elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, the Lord will be witness between us if we do not do as you say. So Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead and the people made him head and leader over them. And Jephthah spoke all his words before the Lord at Mizpah. And Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites and said, what do you have against me that you have come to me to fight against my land? And the king of the Ammonites answered the messengers of Jephthah, because Israel, on coming up from Egypt, took away my land from the Arnon to the Jabbok and to the Jordan.

Now therefore, restore it peaceably. Jephthah again sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites and said to him, thus says Jephthah, Israel did not take away the land of Moab or the land of the Ammonites. But when they came up from Egypt, Israel went through the wilderness to the Red Sea and came to Kadesh. Israel then sent messengers to the king of Edom saying, please let us pass through your land. But the king of Edom would not listen.

And they sent also to the king of Moab, but he would not consent. So Israel remained at Kadesh. Then they journeyed through the wilderness and went around the land of Edom and the land of Moab and arrived on the east side of the land of Moab and camped on the other side of the Arnon. But they did not enter the territory of Moab, for the Arnon was the boundary of Moab. Israel then sent messengers to Sihon, king of the Amorites, king of Heshbon.

And Israel said to him, please let us pass through your land to our country. But Sihon did not trust Israel to pass through his territory. So Sihon gathered all his people together, encamped at Jahaz and fought with Israel. And the Lord, the God of Israel, gave Sihon and all his people into the hand of Israel and they defeated them. So Israel took possession of all the land of the Amorites who inhabited that country. And they took possession of all the territory of the Amorites from the Arnon to the Jabbok, and from the wilderness to the Jordan.

So then, the Lord, the God of Israel, dispossessed the Amorites from before His people Israel. And are you to take possession of them? Will you not possess what Chemosh, your god, gives you to possess? And all that the Lord our God has dispossessed before us, we will possess. Now are you any better than Balak, the son of Zippor, king of Moab? Did he ever contend against Israel, or did he ever go to war with them?

Well, Israel lived in Heshbon and its villages and in Aroer and its villages, and in all the cities that are on the banks of the Arnon three hundred years. Why did you not deliver them within that time? I therefore have not sinned against you, and you did me wrong by making war on me. The Lord, the judge, decide this day between the people of Israel and the people of Ammon. But the king of the Ammonites did not listen to the words of Jephthah that he sent to him.

Then the spirit of the Lord was upon Jephthah and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh and passed on to Mizpah of Gilead, and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed on to the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord and said, if you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whatever comes out from the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites shall be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering. So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them, and the Lord gave them into his hand. And he struck them from Aroer to the neighbourhood of Mineth, twenty cities, and as far as Abel Keramim with a great blow. So the Ammonites were subdued before the people of Israel.

Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah and behold, his daughter came out to meet him with tambourines and with dances. She was his only child. Besides her, he had neither son nor daughter. And as soon as he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, alas, my daughter, you have brought me very low and you have become the cause of great trouble for me. For I have opened my mouth to the Lord and I cannot take back my vow.

And she said to him, my father, you have opened your mouth to the Lord. Do not do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, now that the Lord has avenged you on your enemies, on the Ammonites. So she said to her father, let this thing be done for me. Leave me alone two months, that I may go up and down on the mountains and weep for my virginity, I and my companions. So he said, go. Then he sent her away for two months and she departed, she and her companions, and wept for her virginity on the mountains.

And at the end of two months, she returned to her father who did with her according to his vow that he had made. She had never known a man, and it became a custom in Israel that the daughters of Israel went year by year to lament the daughter of Jephthah, the Gileadite, four days in the year. So far, our reading. Four points I want to make this morning, and we're going to do this by way of just understanding some of the intricacies of this story. But the main takeaway message for us from this is that a strong faith, the faith of a man like Jephthah, can be corrupted by a weak theology.

Strong faith can be corrupted by a weak understanding of God. The first thing we see is Jephthah and his surroundings. He reflected what time and place he grew up in. We first meet him in Judges chapter 11, verse 1. In the opening verse, we receive a summary statement of who this man was. It gives us a reason as to why he would make a good deliverer, a good rescuer for Israel.

Judges 11, verse 1. Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior, it says. But there is an ominous second half to this verse. And the introduction to his life gives us an insight that his life was hardly of a stable upbringing. It says that his father Gilead had been unfaithful to his wife, had slept with a prostitute and gotten her pregnant. Now it seems this poor lady was taken in by Gilead to look after her as she was bearing his child.

She was tolerated for a while until she gave birth to a son whom they called Jephthah. Seemingly, she was given the boot. Gilead's wife, Jephthah's stepmum, seemingly was bitter because it says she and the sons that she had born to Gilead, she turned them against Jephthah to make a concerted effort to make this boy's life a living misery. For his entire early life, abuse is what marked Jephthah's life. And up until the point where he is old enough, resourceful enough, street smart enough, when he gets to that age, he flees the house.

He leaves and he goes and lives in a town called Tob. And it says that he sets himself up as a gang leader. It says in verse 3 that a dubious group of characters join him. Verse 3 puts it in this way: worthless fellows collected around Jephthah. Now what a hard start to a life.

But we aren't surprised, are we, if we know the story of Judges? If we know the extent of their fall away from God's will, Jephthah simply reflects his surroundings. Once again, we are introduced to this generation that Jephthah grew up with, with these familiar words in the chapter before, in chapter 10, verse 6. This is the immediate context in which Jephthah grew up in.

It says verse 6 of chapter 10, the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. They served the Baals and the Ashtaroths. But notice in the same verse, there is a longer list of idols also mentioned here. Before the Asherah, the Ashtaroths and Baal have been mentioned, but now it says that they also served the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites, the gods of the Philistines. Previous generations had fallen for Baal and Asherah, the gods of the Canaanites. Now, the gods of the surrounding nations are starting to be worshipped as well.

It may be a coincidence, it may be something more significant, but the number of these false gods mentioned here totals seven. And if we know the significance of numbers in the Bible, seven means perfect. Seven means complete. Perhaps there's something to say the fall away from God was complete. Absolute corruption and idolatry.

So not only is Jephthah surrounded by idol worship, he grows up in a family that exists on a wholesale rejection of God's laws. Laws given by God to Moses that warned against sexual misconduct. You shall have one wife. Laws promoting healthy families. You shall teach your children when they get up in the morning, when they are on the road, what God has done for us in Egypt.

That there is one God and one God alone. Sadly, Jephthah is just a man of his time. And he is a victim of that time. And so it's a bit of a surprise that even as this man grows up tough and mean, grows up as this victim and victimizer of his time, he also has a faith. He has something that acknowledges Yahweh, the Lord God.

Let's see how this plays out. Jephthah is about to take back what he thinks he deserves. Years go by. Jephthah is raiding the countryside with his gang of worthless fellows. Growing up with a rough and tumble gang of thieves and robbers, Jephthah's hometown, he hears eventually, bears the brunt of God's discipline.

More enemies that will oppress them. The neighbouring nation of Ammon is starting to invade. The town elders of his local hometown meet to discuss how best to defend themselves against the Ammonites. Chapter 10, verse 17 says that the leaders of Gilead said to one another, who is the man who will begin to fight against the Ammonites? He shall be the head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.

More time passes. More pressure from the Ammonites ramps up. Eventually, someone in the tribe of Gilead remembers Jephthah, now living in a place called Tob. And one day in a meeting, they say, what about Jephthah? I hear he is a mighty warrior.

He's grown up tough. He's grown up mean. He knows how to fight. Another elder says, he's one of us? He's a Gileadite?

Okay. Well, let's ask him. And so verse 6 of chapter 11 that we read, they say to him, come, be our leader that we may fight against the Ammonites. Now Jephthah, the gang leader that he is, the self-made man that he is, he doesn't trust anyone. He says to them, why?

What's in this for me? He's grown up tough. He's grown up mean. Everything that he has, he's gotten the hard way and he's gotten it himself. After discovering and hearing just how severe the situation is, he realises an opportunity to become very powerful, very quickly.

He'll be a judge over Israel. The man who had nothing, who came from nothing, an illegitimate son, judge over Israel. Now, it's debatable just how deeply committed these elders of Gilead are, even as they are talking with one another, even as they use the Lord's name in vowing to one another that they will abide by their contractual obligations. They say to one another, may Yahweh, may the Lord be our witness to these promises. Even as the leaders of Israel call upon God, they're doing so with people living in rank, unmitigated idolatry.

What about Jephthah's motives? Having run away from his hometown, his people, having set himself up as not a godly, God-fearing man, a worthless fellow himself. What are Jephthah's motives here? I think he spots an opportunity. There's a good deal in this.

A man can become very great, very quickly. He can make a name for himself, a name that in his time meant less than dirt. He could find and establish for himself a place to belong, a people who will love him. The leaders are dodgy, the hero is dodgy and something just doesn't feel right in this story. Yet by the grace of God, the Bible says, the spirit comes upon Jephthah.

It empowers him and he saves. He delivers Israel from the Ammonites. Now, you and I might be surprised to hear this but God recognises Jephthah's faith. And again, we read the story and maybe we're not convinced. Something seems fishy and yet God sees faith.

How do I know this? Because in Hebrews 11, remember that great chapter where the heroes of faith, people like Noah and Moses, people like Abraham are mentioned, the name Jephthah comes up. Verse 32 of Hebrews 11, the author says this, what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, of Barak, of Samson, of Jephthah.

And next to Jephthah, David, the man after God's own heart, the prophet Samuel and the other prophets. Amazingly, God sees and considers Jephthah and says he is a man of faith. But it's precisely because of this strong faith that is wayward in its understanding of God that the next inexplicable thing happens. He makes a horrible vow. As he prepares to fight the Ammonites, Jephthah makes this serious promise, this solemn vow to God.

Judges 11:31. If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whatever comes out from the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites shall be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering. Now, vows as a rule were not unusual in the time of Israel. In fact, in Numbers 30, Moses gives a law that will sort of keep this safe. He gives a law for how men and women in Israel should make vows. Ecclesiastes 5, verses 4 to 5 gives this bit of wisdom to those who make vows or special promises.

It says, when you vow a vow to God, don't delay paying it for God has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you vow. It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. But Jephthah makes no ordinary vow. He explicitly pledges a burnt offering, but he refuses to specify what that will be.

He leaves the wording so ambiguous that it puts all the inhabitants in his own household at risk. Now it's possible that Jephthah could have expected a sheep or a goat to have come out of his house because in those days, it was not uncommon for people to have lived with livestock. In fact, in places in Israel that I've been to, at archaeological digs, they had two stories. The second story is where everyone lived, and underneath them was a stable for the one or two or three little sheep or goats that they had. So it's not an unusual thing for Jephthah to have hoped for or expected a little lamb to come out.

But all in all, you have to admit this is an unnecessary, unwise vow. Now from the mention of this vow, the outcome of the battle is almost mentioned in passing. It's almost taken as a given. They win. The Ammonites are pushed back.

Israel is safe again. But we hardly notice the crushing victory because we want to know what meets Jephthah at his door. And it's not good. To his horror, it was his own beloved, only daughter. Verse 34. Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah and behold, his daughter came out to meet him with tambourines and with dancing.

She was his only child. Besides her, he had neither son nor daughter. Verse 35. And as soon as he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, alas, my daughter, you have brought me very low. You have become the cause of great trouble for me. Now listen, is that a man who repents?

Or is it kind of the fault of his daughter? You have brought me very low. You have become the cause of great trouble for me. I have opened my mouth to the Lord and I cannot take back my vow. Amazingly, his daughter accepts her fate.

Simply asking for two months to mourn, to prepare and to say goodbye to her friends. And after two months, finally, Jephthah does the unthinkable, sacrifices his daughter, burns her body as some sort of hideous sacrifice to Yahweh, the faithful God of Israel. How on earth are we to make sense of this story? How on earth can we find a man of faith listed alongside the great names of Moses and David, commended by God, and end in a story with so much tragedy and horror? We have to ask the question, was God pleased with this sacrifice?

Is this maybe a good news story? Is this what God expects of His people? Is this what Jephthah needed to do according to God? The answer is no. Emphatically, no.

This is definitely not what God wanted. And so with this tension, there is only one lesson that we must learn. And that is faith needs theology. The heart needs a mind. Let me explain.

If Jephthah understood who God is, if Jephthah knew who God was through an understanding of the systematic explanation, the full counsel of the teaching of the Bible, he would have understood and he would have known the nature and the character of the God he worshipped. If Jephthah had taken the time to know this God, he would never have made that vow. All of Israel had God's law available to them. All of Israel had God's law available to them. Remember, at this time, this was three hundred years after Moses.

Remember that Moses had received and expressed God's word to Israel before they entered the promised land. One of these laws, one of these very laws expressly given to Moses in a book focused on how to worship God, how to bring sacrifices to God that are pleasing to Him, the book called Leviticus. Listen to what God says of child sacrifice specifically. Leviticus 18:21. You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech and so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.

But God doesn't just give this once in the how-to guide of worshipping Him, in that great sermon of Moses before they enter the promised land with prophetic insight. Deuteronomy chapter 12, verse 31. God gives these instructions through Moses to Israel. Take care that you do not inquire about these peoples' gods saying, how did these nations serve their gods, that I also may do the same? You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way. For every abominable thing that the Lord hates, they have done for their gods.

For they even burned their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods. How could Jephthah have thought that this would be okay? But we see once again Jephthah, now the newly man appointed judge of Israel, sinfully elected, negotiated by the leaders of Israel. We see once again that the judge of Israel reflects Israel itself. Jephthah is Israel.

Israel is Jephthah. While worshipping God, Israel continued to look over their shoulders to the other nations saying, how do they serve their gods? How do the other people live? What are they doing to be successful? Perhaps I should do those things as well.

Is that not the human heart? Is that not, at times, our own hearts? To our absolute dismay, we discovered today that this is how far the human heart can sink in pursuing the vanity of power. Jephthah wanted to have a position, to claim an ounce of respect, to have even something that we can consider noble, a sense of belonging. But in order to belong, Jephthah sacrifices his only child.

And again, when you know your Bible and you know your theology, you'll be reminded of a story in Genesis. A book again that Jephthah also would have had access to of a man named Abraham and a son named Isaac. Also an only child. Remember that? Also faced with the potential of sacrificing that son.

Abraham commanded by God to take his son, to offer him to God. Now, Abraham, as this once pagan believer, did not know God. Did not have the access that Jephthah had to this God. Abraham assumed that this is the god that required human sacrifice, like all the other gods of his day. And yet, God tests Abraham's faith and reveals Himself in a new way.

This is who I am, Abraham. At the last minute, God says to Abraham, stop. I don't mean for you to go through with this. I see this promise of this son, your only son, that you love me even more than this son. But I don't want that.

And God provides a ram as a substitute sacrifice instead. Now Jephthah is no Abraham. There's no voice from heaven to stop Jephthah with that sacrifice. There is merciless silence. Why?

Because Jephthah knew. He had everything at his disposal to know who God was. He had God's word. For three hundred years, he had teaching to rely on. That silence can be God's anger.

And so we find this strange tension that though Jephthah has genuine faith, faith that will make him fight on God's behalf, on His people's behalf, trusting that God will win. He has a theology which not only offends God, but caused incredible personal pain and suffering for him. And so I want to warn us this morning that this is so very possible for our lives. Well-intentioned faith fuelled by bad theology can send people to hell. Well-intentioned faith fuelled by bad theology can even send people to hell.

Now you see, some people argue that having an experience of God, having a personal knowledge of God is all that counts. That you encounter God at a worship service, or out in nature, or in some life-changing event. But the truth is, no matter how genuine our encounter with God is, we need to know the God who we've met. And that is why we must know our Bible. We must know our Bible.

C.S. Lewis once wrote about a Bible talk he gave to a group of RAF officers. Right in the middle of this lecture, an old RAF sergeant stood up and said, I've got no use for all this talk about God. I believe in God, mind you. I felt Him out there in the desert. And if you've experienced God, then you don't really need to talk about God.

Now, Lewis understood and he responded something like this. Just as you walk by the side of the ocean, and as you experience the spray, the wind, the smell of the salt, the calling of the seagulls, then afterwards, you go to your office and look at a map of that ocean, you and I know the map can be a letdown. But in sympathy, even as C.S. Lewis understood how significant that personal experience and knowledge of God is, he then reflected and said that as a map, something that every member of that Royal Air Force would have undeniably understood as being significant in navigating flight paths, C.S. Lewis said to them that that map is the only source of knowing the vastness, the depth, the length, the scope of this very same ocean. One walk on the beach gives you some understanding, but that map was the accumulated experiences of thousands of people that helped to explain what you have witnessed that one time on the beach. The word of God is our map.

And it's not simply plotting a course for how we are to live. It is the expression of the vastness of God. Theology means the understanding of God. How long and how deep and how wide God is and His love for the world. And so like a good sailor or a pilot, we need to study and understand and memorise as much as we possibly can about this map, so that we can know as much as we can about our God and how He wants us to worship Him.

How He wants us to live for Him. There are many, many well-groomed, well-articulated men and women out there who claim to speak on behalf of God. Be careful, dear Christians. Don't believe them. How can I say that?

How dare I say that? Because they don't preach the whole map. They might tell you of a pond. They might tell you of a dam. They might mention a beach or two, but their own selfish gain and motives that fit more closely with the motives of Jephthah than Jesus, they're willing to mislead thousands, hundreds of thousands of Christians.

And as the apostle Peter once said in the book of Acts, to someone like them, may your money die with you. If we don't know the map of the ocean, when a person with the title of Christian or pastor comes and talks about a pond or a dam, they can call it the ocean and we might believe them. That is why we, you must do the work. You cannot inherit this understanding. You must prioritise church attendance to come under the preaching of God's word.

You must do that every week. Fifty per cent strike rate is not good enough. You must prioritise Bible study. You must understand what God's will is for your life in every single situation. An Instagram post, a celebrity that lives a kind of nice life is not a valuable input into your life.

There is no easy alternative. We cannot wait for spiritual, exceptional awakenings or revivals. The heart of a Christian grows in the slow and steady rhythm of daily conversion, of daily faith. And so the story of Jephthah is a warning that it's possible to have a strong faith in God and a weak theology and the consequences are heartbreaking. Like a very well-intentioned man I once had the privilege of talking to, who wholeheartedly believed that it was God's will to cure every single illness or pain in the human body.

Wholeheartedly believed this. And we had an initial discussion on what the Bible says about all of this and I argued that God can and does heal, but not always. And sometimes, for better purposes. But in order to make this point, he asked if I had any pain in my body. Sadly for him, I did.

Chronically bad knees from years of sport. And so he asked me, can he lay hands on my knees and pray for me? Of course, that was fine. He prayed. And he asked me to squat down and then he asked me how I felt.

And I said, I'm sorry, but the pain is still there. Three times, he prayed. Three times, he asked me to squat. And three times, the situation remained unchanged. After this final third time, I said to him, is there something wrong with my faith that's caused my healing not to happen?

And in a moment, I won't forget. With anxiety and disappointment on his face, he said, no. The problem is me. I don't have enough faith. This is a good man.

This is a man who loved me. A man who wanted good things for me. A man who loved Jesus. I believe that. But his being led to believe things about God and the so-called purposes of God in this imperfect world led him to feel that his relationship with his eternal heavenly Father was contingent upon his efforts to believe.

That is not freedom. That is not freedom. That is slavery. And that is what Jephthah felt. That somehow, my extreme act, an unmitigated blank cheque to God, I will sacrifice anything that comes out of those doors.

Who was saving Israel? It was Jephthah. If only Jephthah knew his God, if only he had known his Bible, if only he knew even his recent history of how God had acted with all those judges before him. Gideon, saved in his weak faith. Deborah, Ehud, by grace, saved every single time.

And this, friends, is what we must continually be looking out for in those who speak into our lives, speak the word of God supposedly to us. Only God saves. And God saves graciously. And for God to save graciously, it must be entirely free. It must be entirely free.

It has to be free from Jephthah's bargaining. God, if you do this, I will do this. Free from what we can offer God. Free from things that manipulate God. God, if you will allow me to pass this exam, if you will allow me to get this girlfriend or this boyfriend, I will do these things.

I will stop sinning in these areas. The underpinning of the gospel according to the Bible is that God saves through the redeeming work of Christ alone. Entered into by faith alone. Given to us by grace alone. Then explained to us in scripture alone.

And all of this singularly done so that God may have the glory alone. I want to finish. For all those Jephthahs out there with broken and imperfect backgrounds. As families who offered so very little love, people who grew up tough, who knew they had to make it on their own in this hard world. To those like Jephthah who have always believed that they must earn God's love somehow, that they must earn people's love somehow. I want to tell you this beautiful truth.

You've been loved by a love that has existed long before you were around. Ephesians 1, verses 4 and 5 says, in love, God chose us before the foundations of the earth for this purpose, to be adopted to Himself as sons and as daughters through Jesus Christ. With this result, to the praise of His glorious grace. If Jephthah only knew, if he only knew that he was an adopted son of God even as he grieved for his broken home. So in love, if you will simply, this morning, receive and believe the message of Jesus Christ that He has died for you, that He has washed away every single sin, every vain, empty attempt to win God's favour.

Believe this morning that in love, God has adopted you and has welcomed you into His eternal family. And whereas Jephthah's insecurity that God could really be a God that would save by grace caused him to destroy his second chance at a family. Imagine that. The family that he could have had. We need to hear this morning that there is a sacrifice that has been made even for Jephthah in his child sacrifice.

Many years after Jephthah, there was a Father who Himself sent His only begotten Son as a sacrifice on the cross. And in a moment of grim darkness, the world itself mourned that loss. But not very long later, that grief was swallowed up in joy and glory. Jesus Christ was that Son. God is that Father.

And this is the Son that we are invited, again, to grow in our knowledge of, to firm up our faith in, and to strengthen our theological grasp on. Our heavenly Father who gave up that treasure so that you and I might become His beloved children. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the truth of your word. We thank you that it is our constant comfort and strength.

We acknowledge, Lord, that we have at times sought to manipulate you and bargain with you. At times, we have placed ourselves in higher positions over others who don't know you or who might be doing things that are very far from your will and somehow have believed the lie that we deserve your love. Thank you, Lord, for the deliverance you won. Thank you, Lord, that you delivered Israel through the very broken situation of Jephthah, an illegitimate judge born in an illegitimate way. But in your grace, your spirit came upon that man.

And in your grace, you delivered your people from their enemies. Thank you that in Jesus, we have received our deliverance. And Lord, for when we try to wink at the sin in our life, when we try to walk with one foot in the world and one foot by your side, will remind us today that we have been adopted as sons and daughters, that we live in the family of a God who loves us and cherishes us. And even as we worship this morning that by your side, there are pleasures forevermore. That the desires of our heart are fulfilled completely in you.

So God, give us an understanding of your word. Help us, drive us, move us, motivate us to know the extent of the vastness of this ocean which is God and His love for us. Protect our church, Lord, against false teaching. Protect me and my preaching against anything that is a lie. And Father, grow us, mature us, that we may be seen as children worthy of the Father who has adopted us.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.