← Mariners Church Weekend Messages
Mariners Church Weekend Messages
January 4 - A Loving God–yet Conquests and Genocides in the Bible? - Eric Geiger
00:38:05
Loading summary
Transcript4 lines
- [00:04]
A
Welcome to Mariners Church Weekend Message Podcast. Inspiring people to follow Jesus and fearlessly change the world. Discover your purpose and get connected by visiting MarinersChurch.org or click the link in the show notes.
- [00:24]
B
Thanks, man. So good to see you today. Happy New Year. If we haven't met, my name is Eric. I'm the senior pastor here. I'm really glad you're with us. I know that some of you began coming to our church in the fall and you've been journeying with us for the last several months. We love that you're with us. And some you came for the first time at Christmas. I think it's awesome that you came back. If you're here a while, you hear us talk about rooted. It's a 10 week discipleship journey, a small group Bible study. We'll put you with a group of people, similar stage of life to you. Oftentimes when people go through Rooted, that group becomes really close. And I would want that and hope that for you. I want to invite you to go through Rooted. It starts in the end of January. If you have not yet been, it's going to be a great experience to help you grow in your relationship with God, but also get to know our church and get into community with other people. You're making all kinds of resolutions, like things for your health. I'm going to eat clean for 60 or hard 75. And great, those are all great, do those. But your spiritual life lasts not only here, but throughout all of eternity. So going through rooted, it's 10 weeks, it would be a commitment, but this would make a major impact in your life. You can sign up on the patio after our services. All right, we're going to jump in. In 1994, in the small African country of Rwanda, the Hutu rose up against the Tutsi. There had been announcers on radio stations calling the Tutsi cockroaches. And many of the Hutu believed there needed to be ethnic cleansing. And for 100 days, the attacks were absolutely brutal. People rose up against friends, people they had shared meals with, family members. Even husbands killed their own wives who were tootsie. When the world saw the aftermath, people were just shocked at everything they had seen. There were whole churches, congregations of people that gathered together for worship, that had been attacked during their worship service and slaughtered. Children were wandering the roads. Villages were completely emptied. And people asked after the 800,000 people. Women, children and men had been slaughtered. Where was God? Where was God in this? Only evil people would say God wants this, that God is actually for the genocide of innocent people. Only evil people would say, God wanted something like this. In the 1940s in Europe, Adolf Hitler rose to power with a Nazi regime and convinced millions of people that Jewish people were subhuman, that they needed to be eradicated from the earth. And so Jewish people began to be arrested, placed in shipping containers and cars, and driven all across the continent, where they were brought to concentration camps. Many of the concentration camps names like Auschwitz, now represent the epitome of evil. When they were brought into concentration camps, they were stripped of their identity. They were given a tattoo. They were no longer a name. They were the number of the tattoo. The. The number was now their identity. In those concentration camps. They were then brought into gas chambers or they were shot, or they were burned in furnaces. And when the world saw the aftermath, pictures of people behind barbed wire in concentration camps. Their bodies completely with nothing left that just had been starred for so long. Mountains of bodies, of corpses on top of one another. The world asked, where was God? But only evil people would say, God is for this, that God wants this. Only evil people would say that God wants a genocide. A genocide is a systematic killing of a group of people for ethnic or religious reasons. Now, those of us who are Christians, perhaps we have been asked the question and people wrestle with, if your God is loving, if you gather together and you sing songs to your gracious and loving God, how do you deal with passages in the Old Testament that sound like, when you first read them, like a genocide? In fact, let me read several of these difficult passages to you. This is known throughout the scripture as the Conquest. It's called the Conquest because God's people have been rescued from Egyptian slavery. And God's promised them the promised land, which is the land of Israel. And God's going to bring them into the promised land, but he has to remove people from the land who were there currently. And so the Israelites are gonna go into the land and conquer it. It's known as the conquest. But here's how it reads. Deuteronomy, chapter 7, verse 1. When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess, and he drives out many nations before you. The Hephites, gigabytes, Amorites. I'm just seeing if you're paying attention. I'm just seeing. It's been a heavy opening. I'm just seeing if you're with me. Seven nations are listed, all of the ITEs. Seven nations more numerous and powerful than you. And when the Lord your God delivers them over to you and you defeat them. You must completely destroy them. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy. Skip down to verse five instead. This is what you are to do to them. Tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, cut down their astral poles and burn their carved images. For you are a holy people belonging to the Lord your God. You skip over several chapters to Deuteronomy, chapter 20. You see this in verse 16. However, you must not let any living thing survive among the cities of the people. The Lord your God has given you as an inheritance. You must completely destroy them. The seven nations are listed as the Lord your God has commanded you so that they won't teach you to do all the detestable acts they do for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God. Then if you skip to the next book in the Bible, the book of Joshua, this is when the conquest happens, when God's people go into the land, but there's people in the land. And so the first city they come to is the city of Jericho, and that's the first city they conquer. And you read this verse 17 of Joshua, chapter 6. But the city and everything in it are set apart to the Lord for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and everyone with her in the house will live because she hid the messengers we sent. Skip down to verse 21. They completely destroyed everything in the city with the sword. Every man and woman, both young and old, and every ox, sheep and donkey. Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist, says of these passages in the Old Testament in his book the God Delusion. He says the God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction. Jealous and proud of it. A petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak. A vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser. A misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomiacal, sadomachistic, capriciously malevolent bully. That's what he says of the passages we just read. I became a Christian going into my senior year in high school. Jesus rescued me from a lot of darkness. And so everything changed in my life when I became a follower of Jesus. I spent weekends playing cards with my parents, and I spent Tuesday nights going out with my youth pastor at the small church in the New Orleans area where I grew up going out with him. Witnessing. Now witnessing met. We walked up to total strangers and began conversations with them that would hopefully eventually lead to faith and to ultimately Jesus. And some people question the effectiveness of doing that. But for a Year I did it and I learned a lot of people's questions. I learned a lot of people's struggles and their doubts. One night I had a conversation with this middle aged woman who was really kind. I think she thought it was kind of sweet or cute that this 18 year old high school kid was walking up to her and telling her how much God loves her and God wants her. And she kindly interrupted me and she said after we'd been talking for several moments, son, I just gotta ask you, what do you think about the passages in the Old Testament where God commands the slaughter of innocent people? Clearly she had read the passages that we just read. I was a new Christian, I had not even read those passages. She continues, how do you reconcile you telling me that God loves me with passages like that? I don't want to go to heaven with a God like that. I don't want to worship a God like that. I don't want to believe in a God like that. What do you think of that, son? I had no idea what to say. Brand new in my faith. I said something like, I love you and I'll be praying for you. And walked away. I walked away. I had no idea how to answer. This weekend we start this teaching series on the table and we're putting these big questions on the table. Some of them are cultural questions like immigration. Why do Christians have different views? Some of the questions are personal. What happens 60 seconds after you die or 60 seconds after one of your loved ones has died? And some are philosophical. This one's philosophical. A loving God, yet there's genocides in the Bible. What I'm going to answer over the next couple of moments, I believe, and this will only be by God's grace at work in your life. It won't be by my intellect or my ability to persuade you this will be the work of God in your life. I believe that in the next couple of moments it's possible that you will see these challenging passages in a new light that will cause you to see them as proof that God loves you. I think you'll see this. I think you'll actually see in these passages proof that God is more gracious and kind and patient and loving than you've ever imagined. But first you have to see that the context surrounding the conquest will let you understand that this is not an ethnic cleansing, that this is not a genocide, that God is not eliminating people for their ethnicity, that this is not at all what's happening. So let me explain the context of the genocide. Quote unquote. That is not actually a genocide that people say it is in the scripture. And then get to how this actually shows you that God is kind and gracious and loving. Okay, Number one, the context of the conquest is military outpost, and the language is war rhetoric. Joshua Butler is a scholar, and in his book the Skeletons in God's Closet, he points out that the word for city that we read in the passages we read just a moment ago, such as the city of Jericho, that when the early reader would have read the word city in these passages, the reader would have understood this to be military outposts where military personnel and governmental officials lived, because the common people lived on the outskirts of town in and agricultural society that those who lived in the city center. This was not like Manhattan or downtown la. This was military personnel. And therefore the strike was very surgical on military personnel. In fact, historians tell us that the city of Jericho was six acres. That's all six acres. And about 150 military personnel lived there. Six acres is the size of Costco, including the parking lot. And there's 150 people in line right now at Costco. And the strike was really surgical on military personnel in this very small area. Surgical. A year ago, my wife and daughters and I, we were flying back from Kenya, visiting some of our partners there in Kenya. And on the way home, my wife's stomach was hurting really badly. We knew something was off. We didn't realize at the time, but we went to the doctor the next day. Her appendix had burst. Her appendix burst. And so she was in the hospital for three days. A surgeon, a physician went in and performed very precise surgery to remove the appendix and all of the fluid that had erupted from the appendix out of her body. And if you had watched the surgeon performing surgery on Kay, my wife, you would have thought he was hurting her, but he was saving her in these attacks, and they were military attacks on military outposts, God was saving his people, but he wasn't annihilating all of the people in the surrounding areas. This was not a complete annihilation. But, Eric, you just read completely destroy. Well, historians and scholars point out that that was common war rhetoric. We completely destroyed you. An example for us would be. Oftentimes when sports teams play one another, we use the same kind of rhetoric. Several weeks ago, I went to the Rams Lions game, and I was there with K and the Rams fans and the Lions fans. And the Lions fans are like rabid fans. I know we have some Lions fans even in our church. You wear the jerseys. I can tell you're Like, Lions fans are awesome. I think Lions fans are probably the most loyal husbands, the most loyal employees, the most loyal friends. I mean, you have to be awesome because you've been loyal to your team, though they've done nothing for you for all of these years. You're one of the few teams that's never made it to the Super Bowl. And you're so generous. You gave us Matthew Stafford. I mean, Lions fans are so awesome. Loyal, generous. So the lions are up 10 points against the Rams at the. At Sofi. And I'm there, and I'm surrounded by fans on both sides, and the Lions fans are talking smack. And they're like, we own you. We're killing you. We destroy you. We're your daddy. We own you. And they're talking smack. Well, then the Rams come back and win by seven. The Rams fans then go ballistic. Who's your daddy now? We own you. We destroyed you. We annihilated you. Now, in a sense, it's true, because the Rams won, but in another sense, it's. It's just rhetoric in that kind of battle. The Lions weren't acting, actually annihilated. They played again the next week. Christopher Wright points out in his book the God. I don't understand that this is exactly what happened, because we see in Joshua the language of completely destroy. But when you turn the book, you can turn the page in the Bible to the next book, the Book of Judges, you see that these people who were completely destroyed, the people groups are still in the land, and so they weren't completely destroyed. This was a surgical attack on military personnel. Okay, number two, to understand the context, the conquests were driving out evil, not destroying innocent people. Now, if you're new to studying the Bible, it's a fair question and even a wise question. Wait a second. Why is God telling Israel, this is your land, you can go into it and kick other people out of it? Well, you have to go back to the first book in the Bible, to a promise God made to a man named Abram, who became Abraham, and his family became the family in the Old Testament of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And that's the family who became Israel. God told Abram, you're going to become this family. And from your family, every nation in the world is going to be blessed. Because from the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob comes Jesus, who makes people from every tribe, tongue and nation eternally blessed and eternally happy. But when you read the promise that was given to Abram at first in Genesis chapter 15, you see the Promise of the land. Notice God's word, verse 13 through 16. The Lord said to Abram, know this for certain. Your offspring will be resident aliens for 400 years in a land that does not belong to them and will be enslaved and oppressed. That's God telling Abram, your offspring is going to be in Egyptian slavery for 400 years. And they were. However, I will judge the nations they serve, and afterward they will go out with many possessions. That's God saying, I'm going to rescue you from Egyptian slavery. And he does. But what about Abram? But you will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation, they will return here. Fourth generation, 400 years later, in the fourth generation, they will return here. For the iniquity of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. Okay, I want you to understand what God is saying. God is telling Abram, listen, this land is going to be the land that I give you, but you're not going to receive it, your offspring, for 400 years. Because the evil of the people who are living in the land has not yet reached its full measure. God was incredibly patient with these people. 400 years. Patient. Listen, we struggle to be patient at a red light for four minutes. God was patient for 400 years. This is significantly longer than the country we are in. This is God being patient with a group of people saying, this land is going to be yours. But I'm not going to discipline or judge these people until their sin reaches full measure. Until there's 400 years of them wandering away from me and worshiping everything else other than me, I'm not gonna act on them for 400 years. And when God acts, the emphasis we read in Deuteronomy 7 was driving the people out of the land. Not eliminating the people. It was driving them out. God judged them for their evil, not their ethnicity. In fact, we know this because later in the Old Testament, God judges his own people, Israel, and he uses other nations to attack Israel. He attacks them with Babylon and Assyria. God is judging evil, not ethnicity. So this is not a genocide. This is God, the righteous one, bringing judgment upon evil. But he's incredibly patient. 400 years of patience. Okay, number three of the con of the context that you need to understand the conquest. The reason this is important for you to understand. Listen, if you have not been asked this question, someone's going to ask you this question. If you're a Christian, this is like a major question that those who are not Christians wrestle with. And rightly so it's a fair question. So you want to understand 3. The Conquest destroyed idols that destroyed people. We read in the passage that God told his people to go into the land and tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, cut down their Asherah poles, and burn their carved images. The reason God was adamant about ridding the land of the idols is because the idols, the little G gods, destroyed the people, people who worship them. In fact, Psalm 115 says that you become like whatever it is that you worship. So the people who worship idols become just like the idols. Gregory Beal is an Old Testament scholar and he has said we resemble what we revere for our ruin or our restoration. So this year you're going to revere something. What we learned about worship in the Old Testament is whatever you revere, whatever it is you worship, you're going to resemble. You're going to become like what it is you revere. And that's either going to be for your ruin or your restoration. And the little G gods, the idols in the Old Testament, they brought ruin to the people. In fact, these weren't only statues carved out according to the scripture, some of these were demons that were being worshiped. We see this in Deuteronomy, chapter 32, verse 17, that the people sacrificed to demons, not God, but to little G gods. They had not known the little G gods that were in the land. We know this from history, were gods like Moloch, a little G God named Moloch who insisted that parents sacrifice their children, kill and slaughter their own kids as an offering to Molech. Asherah was worshiped, and the worship of Asherah included temple prostitution and sexual exploitation. These gods ruined the people who worshiped them. And so when God says, go into the land and get rid of the idols, it is God being jealous for the hearts of his own people. Several weeks ago, I was in Calcutta, India, and I stood in front of two buildings that are separated by a single wall. And both of these buildings are where people who are dying go. But the experience, I walked into both buildings, the experience in both buildings separated by a single wall is very different. Both buildings are famous, separated by a wall on this side, the right side of the building is Mother Teresa's famous home for the dying in Calcutta. Indy. It's the home that she started with a group of people to grab those who are dying off the streets in Calcutta and bring them in and feed them and care for them and let them die with dignity if they're going to die or nurse them back to health, and they can leave. We walked in, and the room I'd heard about, house of the dying, for years, I'd never been. We walked in. The room was much smaller than I imagined it being. There are cots all around the sides of the room and cots down the middle. And there's nuns who are feeding and loving and encouraging and showing hospitality to these people who are laying on the cots who were dying. And though it's the house of the dying, it was filled with peace and hospitality and joy. A nun comes over and talks to us, to the several people that I was with. And we asked her, how do you have such peace in the midst of despair? And without hesitation, she said, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. I have hope because Jesus is alive. So though the room was filled with despair, you would think, and death, it was filled with life and joy and peace. And then here's the wall, and on the other side of the wall is a temple, a Hindu temple to the goddess Kali. I walked into the Hindu temple, had to take off my shoes and my socks. And at the end, your feet are red at the bottom because you're walking through dry blood where goats had been sacrificed to the goddess Kalee. The Goddess Kalee is known as the goddess of the death to some. And so while some go into the house of the dying that Mother Teresa started to receive care, some go into the temple of Kali believing that she has authority and power over death. And if they can rouse her attention, that maybe they won't die. And so some have bought trinkets and rose petals, and they're walking into this temple to offer to this little G God, an untrue God. And that room was not filled with peace. It was utter chaos. Was walking through the room, and people were. I mean, it was just jammed in a line, and people are shoving and screaming. It felt so dark. We walk through the line, goes all zigzag before we're finally in front of the opening of the statue. And there's priests there who are picking up all the offerings that are thrown at the statue, and they're throwing them back in the statue. There's people standing, screaming and yelling and convulsing and shouting and pushing. There was anger and frustration and despair just on the other side of the wall. There was hope and peace and life. Be careful who you worship. You become like who you worship. You worship the Goddess of death. You will feel the sting of death. You worship the God of life, and he will bring you peace. And Life. This is why. This is why God says, go into the land and get rid of all these little G gods that are gonna destroy you. Okay, number four. I realize this is the longest introduction in human history, but hang with me. In the conquest, God is the warrior for the weak. So you misread the passage if you think that Israel is the strong powerhouse that goes in and takes advantage of all these little nations that don't have the power. In fact, no, the opposite is true. In the passage we read in Deuteronomy 7. Of all the ITEs, the scripture says that these are seven nations more numerous and powerful than you in the conquest. If you really read and pay attention to the scripture, you are not seeing Israel going in to fight for God. You are seeing God fighting for his people, Israel who are weak. In fact, when you read all throughout the narrative, this is what you see. God's the one doing the fighting for his people. His people are weak, and they can. They need. They can do nothing without Him. When they go into the land of Jericho, the city of Jericho, God tells Joshua, you're not powerful enough to take down the 150 military personnel living here. What you do is you walk around the walls of the city seven times and you shout, and I will cause the wal. I'm the one who fights for you. When you get to Gideon and he goes against the Midianites, God whittles Gideon's army down to 300 people, essentially to say you're going to go against this massive army with only 300 people, because you're not the one who's winning. I'm the victorious one who's fighting for you. You get to the Philistines. That's the story of David and Goliath, the famous story in the Old Testament. Goliath is this massive character, seven feet tall, buff, and he's tearing down everyone. None of the Israelites want to fight him. But God raises up this shepherd boy named David with a slingshot and five stones, and God wins the victory with the weak. God sides with the weak. God sides with those of us who realize we are weak before Him. If you will realize you are weak before him, he will make you strong. Here's the good news for you and how you fit into this account and this story. Those of us who trust in him, who believe that we are weak before him, he brings us into a relationship with himself according to the scripture, and he grafts us into his people. And you are now his. If you've believed in him. And he always fights for his own. He always fights for you. He's fighting for his own all of the time. God is for the weak. Those of us who realize we are weak before him and we need his grace, you then become his and he's committed to fighting for you. Richard Dawkins reads this account and says, this is fiction. And God is the most horrific character in all of this fiction. There's others who read this and say, wow. Others who weren't Christian who read this and say, wow, this is a true account of what happened. Yes, it's, it's messy and even bloody at times, but this is just honest and raw. And whoever these people's God is, is able to keep his promises. Whoever this God that these, the weak people, Israel, the small nation, whoever it is that they worshiped, that God must be real because these nations don't exist anymore. But the Jewish people still exist. So whoever it was who was over these people, we should pay attention that God must be real. In fact, there's a very famous author named Walker Percy that one of the reasons he became a Christian is because he kept meeting Jewish people. This is what he wrote. Where are the Hittites? Why does no one find it remarkable that in most world cities today there are Jews, but not one single Hittite? Even though the Hittites had a great flourishing civilization, while the Jews nearby were a weak and obscure people. When one meets a Jew in New York or New Orleans or Paris or Melbourne, it is remarkable that no one considers the event remarkable. He, he was saying, wow, this guy must be real. Because he made a promise to a people and he kept his promise. He was able to keep his promise. What you read, when you read the Conquest is you see a God who's incredibly patient and loving and keeps his promise to his own people. Which brings me to how does this actually point you to a loving God? I so wish I could have a do over conversation with that middle aged woman. I was 18, I'm 50 now. I've been walking with Jesus for 32 years. I've learned more about him. I so wish I could talk to her again. Some of you are like her though. So let me talk to your heart for a moment, son. How would you say God's loving when you read passages like this in the Bible? I would say to her, ma', am, I understand the question. I've wrestled with those passages. I think it's intellectually honest to wrestle with those. I'm not judging you for wrestling with those passages, what I've learned, but I, I want to own. I've been a Christian for a long time now. What I've learned is if there's a passage in the Bible that I don't understand, instead of assuming that something's wrong with him, I assume there's something wrong with me. And I've also learned. I've also learned that there's times I want to cut out verses from the Bible. I have, I've wanted to cut out. I've never half, I've never cut them out, but I've wanted to. But I've learned that if I would cut a verse out of the Bible, I'm cutting out God's self worth, revelation, his self disclosure of who he is. If I cut something out of the Bible, I'm actually cutting out God saying here's who I am. And so I want you to consider who is God for you that you read in these passages that you even wrestle with? Let me tell you who I believe he is for you. We see in these passages, even these passages you wrestle with, that God is pursuing. He has a pursuing love. We read about Rahab. Rahab was a prostitute in the city of Jericho. One hundred and fifty military personnel lived there. So the attack was surgical on military personnel, but a prostitute lived in a military outpost. Why? Because the men took advantage of her. These evil men abused her. They didn't love her, they didn't value her or esteem her. But she heard of Yahweh, the one true God. And she believed that this God is different than all of the little G gods that the people in that military outpost worshiped. And she believed in him and trusted in him. And God went after Rahab the prostitute, this woman with a shady past who had never believed in him, who had never trusted him. God wanted her. He wanted her so much that when you keep reading in the Bible, you get to the New Testament. It's amazing. You see the genealogy of Jesus and Rahab is listed in the genealogy of Jesus. He is a pursuing God and he pursues you. He wants you. We also see in these passages, I know these passages you wrestle with. We see his patience. He waited 400 years. Now he is just and holy and he does judge sin. But he is incredibly patient, more patient than we've ever imagined him being 400 years, he's still patient. Right now he's patient with you. He's pursuing you and he's also patient with you. He wants you according to the New Testament. He's patient with all of us, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But a time is coming when he is going to judge sin again. He's going to return and he's going to make everything right. New all evil is going to be judged. All sin is going to be judged. But those of us who believe in Jesus, who've received his forgiveness and grace, we're going to be brought into the everlasting promised land, the new heavens in the new earth. And so he's patient with you right now, but he is going to judge sin. But he's incredibly patient with you now. We see his pursuit. We see his patience. We see his jealousy. He does have a jealous love. Richard Dawkins, the atheist, who said he's jealous? He is jealous, but different than how Dawkins describes his jealousy. God is not jealous of the statues. He's not jealous of the idols. He's jealous for the hearts of the people. He's not jealous of you. Listen, God's not jealous of you. I know some of you got something awesome at Christmas. God's not looking going, dang, I wish I had me one of them. He's not jealous of anything you have. He's not jealous of anything you've accomplished. He's not looking at your resume, your LinkedIn profile, the last deal that you did, and saying, dang, I wish I could do that. He's not jealous of anything you've accomplished. But he is jealous for you, ma'. Am. He's jealous for you. He's not jealous of you, but he's jealous for you. And he knows that if you give your heart to something else other than him, at best, that little G God will disappoint you. At worst, that little G God will crush you and destroy you. And so it's actually really good for you that he's jealous for you. We also see his protective love. God adopted this group of people, Israel, promised them land and then brings them into the land because he keeps every one of his promises. But they were weak and he was the warrior who was fighting for them. He's protective. He still is. We see in this passage. I know you've wrestled with it. He's the warrior who fights for his people. He's still the warrior who fights for his people. God the Son entered this world for you to fight your sin and your shame. And when he went to the cross, his death on the cross was the death of your sin and the death of your shame. If you believe in Him. He conquered all of your sin. He conquered all of your shame. He was buried on the third day, he was resurrected from the dead and he conquered death, the enemy that none of us can defeat. But he defeated the enemy of death. And therefore, if we believe in him, his victory is now our victory. And when we die, we don't die in this life forever. No, we are brought into everlasting life with him because he is the victorious one who fights for his sons and his daughters. He fights for his own. He fights for you, And he's fighting for you now. If you believe in him right now. I know some of you feel. I felt this way before I got to be honest. There's times when the calendar shifts from one year to the next year, and all the happy new years feel trite for me because the problems I had in this last year are with me all of a sudden. In the new year. Some of you had a medical prognosis in 2025. It's there in 2026. You had relational strife in 2025. It's there in twenty twenty six. Job uncertainty in 2025, it went with you into 2026. I want you to know if you have believed in him, that your guide is with you. He's fighting for you. You are never alone. It's impossible for him to abandon you. You are his. He's never going to forget you. He's never going to forsake you. He fights for you. He fights for you. I want you, as we begin a new year, to receive prayer. If you are in one of those moments where you need to be reminded that you have a God who fights for you, I'm going to ask people from our prayer team and our shepherding elders to come forward and line the front. We do this every week. Every week, you hear me say, hey, at the end of our service, we have people who will pray for you over here. Or we have elders who will anoint you with oil and pray for healing for you in our elder prayer room. But several times a year, we take what happens at the prayer wall and in the elder prayer room and we bring it here into the worship time of worship. And I want you to be able to receive prayer. Listen, you haven't even been in here an hour yet. I know some. At the end of the service, sometimes people get a little antsy. It shouldn't even be, guys. We've been in here less than an hour. That's if you got here on time, which most of you did not. So just chill, relax. Like, rest right now. Stop being so antsy. Like, some of you, like, start to leave during this time. Don't do that. That's bad. That's bad. Don't do that. You are gonna resemble who you revere. So let's revere him. Let's worship him. And then we have people here, people of faith. These are amazing men and women who I believe in the power of their prayer over you. And some of you need to be reminded you have God fighting for you. Some of you wanna go to him in prayer for him to fight for, for, against the infertility, against the medical prognosis, for your marriage, for your wayward teenager, for this dream that you have, for this new year. We want to pray. We love you. We want to pray over you. So let's stand. Let's worship. You who want prayer, you come forward. We would love to pray. All right, Extend your hands, please, and let me pray a prayer of blessing over you as we go. Jesus, I pray you'd bless your sons and daughters this week, that you would remind them that you are gentle and approachable and that you love them. Cause your face to shine on them. I pray they will experience your mercy and your joy this new week. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Go in peace. Have a great week.
- [37:15]
A
Thanks for tuning in to the Mariners Weekend Message podcast to support the ministry of Mariners Church. You can click the link in the show notes or download the Mariners app at your favorite app store. If you've been navigating God's wisdom with us through this year's annual read and would like to hear personal reflections from pastors to in your community, check out the Gospel Every Day podcast. Imagine feeding your heart, mind and soul with the kind of practical wisdom that will change your life. If you haven't picked up the annual read yet, visit MarinersChurch.org or download the Mariners app for more information on where to find it.
- [37:59]
B
Sam.