David Stockton 5/30/21 David Stockton 5/30/21

Lust and Shame

You guys know what today is? It’s Pentecost Sunday! Woo! It’s the day that we remember when the Spirit of God was poured out upon the Church and everything changed. So, when David asked me to speak on my anger story, I thought, How am I going to tie that into Pentecost Sunday? I will do it! One of the things I want to say is…

Series: The Sermon on the Mount
May 30, 2021 - Alec Seekins

We’re just going to dive right into things. I’m kind of hoping that you guys will be willing to follow me to a place that will be pretty uncomfortable but ends someplace pretty awesome. I’m kind of hoping that, at some point of time during the service or during the course of your day, that each of us will allow ourselves and our heart to kind of sink into a place where we’re willing to feel some of the weight of our sin and our shame, whether present or past.

Please don’t be confused. What I don’t mean is that we would camp out there. I don’t think that Jesus wants us to live in a place where we’re rolling around in our sin and shame. I absolutely don’t mean that I think Jesus wants us to go back to something that he’s already set us free from. But I suspect that there is probably quite a few of us that think we’ve really dealt with our sin, but all we’ve done is managed our shame effectively.

Jesus doesn’t want us to just manage our shame. He wants us to actually move past that. He wants us to end up in a place of transformation. I think that, in order to end up in a place of transformation, we have to experience it at his feet, by his blood. I think in order to do that, we have to be moved to repentance. I think in order to be moved to repentance, for many of us it can be really helpful to feel some of the weight of our sin and our shame. To allow ourselves to be re-sensitized to that, so that again we would repent and let the Lord actually deal with the root of the shame, which is our sin. Because he is absolutely able to do that.

Without Jesus, I don’t think we have hope in this area. But with Jesus wee have hope to get through this on our knees, by his blood. I’m not asking you to follow me into this difficult and painful place to find hopelessness. I’m asking you to follow me there so we can follow Jesus out of there for good.

A lot of you guys know, because I got to share this a few months ago, that last year my wife and I spent the year in southeast Asia, working with an anti-trafficking ministry. When we had been there for a little while, I was asked if I could teach English for these two women who not too long ago had left their lives as prostitutes. They had subsequently come to Jesus and now they were engaged in this year-long discipleship program. So me and a woman from our team would teach that class twice a week for a couple of hours each class and we would just go over English stuff.

Before too long, we decided, you know, why don’t we kill two birds with one stone, because these women are brand new in their faith, they’ve never really been exposed to very much of the Bible, let’s kill two birds with one stone and start reading through stories in the book of Genesis.

What I was thinking of when we made that decision was like how the book of Genesis is all these cute, fun little children’s stories that are so great for learning English, right? Like Noah and the fluffy animals and Joseph and his really cool coat and all that kind of stuff. But if you’ve ever read that book as an adult —I don’t know why this didn’t click for me because I’ve read it many times as an adult — you realize really quickly this is not fluffy animals and cool, colorful coat. This book is full of scandal and sexual brokenness. It’s rated TV-MA if it was going to be on Netflix, for sure. It’s not PG, I promise you.

So we started reading these stories. And every time we would read one of these stories that had to do with sexual brokenness and depravity and this wickedness, I would start to feel super awkward. I’m the only guy in the room. Two of the women in the room, not too long ago were prostitutes. I am profoundly and acutely aware of the fact that my very presence might make them feel threatened. And now we’re reading stories like, you know, Noah passed out naked and drunk. Abraham’s got tons of them, right? Multiple occasions Abraham takes his wife and passes her on to another man and says, “Nah, she’s not my wife. Go for it.”

Then some years down the road in his relationship with Sarah, his wife, they’re having a hard time getting pregnant, so Sarah comes up with a brilliant idea and says, “Why don’t you take my servant, Hagar, and why don’t you sleep with her and she’ll get pregnant and she’ll have a kid and the kid will kind of be our kid a little bit.”

And then they do that. Then, surprise, surprise. Sarah ends up really angry and frustrated and bitter and jealous of Hagar. So she goes to her husband and says, “Why don’t you take the servant, the slave woman and her son and dump them in the desert?”

And he does that. Father Abraham had many sons, and one of them he left in the desert. It’s kind of messed up. And it continues from there. It doesn’t stop. It goes on and on and on. We look at Lot and his daughters and Judah and his daughter-in-law. And it just continues from there. And it’s usually at the hands of the protagonists, or the man characters or the heroes of the faith that this wickedness is being done.

I had these moments when we would read these stories. It kind of felt like, if you remember being a teenager and you’d watch a raunchy comedy with your friends, and you think it’s so funny because you’re all teenagers. And, gosh, it’s so funny how gross that is. Then a few months later you go to Blockbuster if you’re old enough, or whatever, and you rent the DVD and then you bring it home. And what you don’t think about is how raunchy that comedy was. It was so funny, but now you’re watching the movie and Mom or Grandma are in the room. And Will Ferrell’s not so funny anymore, is he?

And we have these experiences where we’re reading these children’s stories and they don’t really feel like children’s stories. And I’m acutely aware of that. And as we would read these, I started to get concerned that my friends, who were so new in their faith, that they might hear the stories of the depravity of the heroes of the faith and it might confuse them. And they might think, Do I really want to follow a God whose holy book is full of these broken people?

So every time we would get to the end of one of these stories, I would start explaining it away. I’d say, “Before we move on to talk about grammar, let me just talk about this a little bit. Just because the main characters are doing this, doesn’t mean that God or the Bible wants us to emulate what they’re doing. They’re not the cartoons that we grew up watching, where the main character, the protagonist ends up in a moral quandary and they wrestle with it a little bit, but ultimately they end up deciding to the right thing and if we emulate their behavior then we’re doing pretty good too. That’s not how the Old Testament is written. It’s very different from that.

So I would explain this away out of fear that my friends would see themselves in the shoes of the victims of the heroes of the faith. And one of these times, maybe the fourth or fifth time I had done this, I think we were talking about how Abraham had abandoned Hagar and her son in the desert place at the tail end of tons of wickedness. And I’m explaining it away, one of my friends stops me and says, “Alec, I don’t think you understand what the story means to us.” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “Well, it’s really good news for me that Abraham did this.” I said, “What?” She said, “Yeah, because God still used him, right?” I said, “Yeah.” And she said, “So, he’ll still use me, won’t he?” And I said, “Yeah, he will. He absolutely will.”

That was the beginning for her of realizing how far Jesus was going to take her. That Abraham was so messed up and God still used him. Because, for her, the shame of the things that she had done and the shame of the things that had been done to her, in her heart they were inextricably interwoven. You couldn’t pull them apart. It didn’t really matter to her if Jesus was going to pull the things apart and define them and put them in their own nice, neat, tidy little boxes before he took her sin along with her shame and cast it as far from her as the east is from the west. For her, all that mattered is that Jesus was going to get her clean, and that Jesus used horrible people like Abraham, and that we look back and call them righteous. And that God was going to use a person who had done the things that she had done and that we could look back and certainly God could, and call her righteous.

A few weeks later this same woman came to me and said, “I’ve been going on this treasure hunt through the Old Testament to find all the stories of the women who have been sexually broken and have done some sexual breaking of their own. And it’s a pretty good treasure hunt.”

The moment she said that, I don’t think I was able to see the Bible the same way and I don’t think I ever will be, after realizing all of a sudden that, yeah, this thing is full of these stories. The tip of the iceberg is pointing out the fact that there are at least two women in the line of King David, and ultimately Jesus, who played the prostitute. That holy lineage that we trace painstakingly throughout the Bible. There’s even an entire book that’s all about a man pursuing a woman who was a prostitute and setting her free. And then her coming and finding some freedom and then abandoning him and leaving, and then him going back and chasing after her again. And God wants us to know that we are that woman.

I started to wonder. Man, was this book written primarily for an audience of prostitutes? That’s confusing for me. Because I know so many people who have never been prostitutes who have experienced so much freedom in these words, who have encountered the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit through the words of the Bible. And they weren’t prostitutes. So how could that be?

And as I’ve chewed on this question for about a year now, where I’m starting to land is I think perhaps the Bible was really not necessarily exclusively written for prostitutes, but the Bible was written for people who are willing to sit in the same seat that prostitutes do when they look at themselves. For people who are willing to look at themselves from the same perspective that a prostitute was when they compared themselves to everyone else in the room.

See, for my friends the gospel was so obvious and so powerful and so clear, that they saw it in the story of Abraham abandoning the woman that he had abused. Because, for them, the story of the gospel was, “I am filthy. Jesus makes me clean. Then he sets me free. Then we move forward from there, as he makes me holy.” It was that simple and that powerful, that they can see it in the most broken stories of the Bible.

But for you and me, I think we lack this advantage of a prostitute when it comes to looking at the gospel. I think we lack perhaps what Jesus was pointing to a few verses before the ones we’ll read today, where he said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Because for you and me, we get so stuck on step one. We start to complicate and convolute the gospel when we say, not “I’m filthy.” But we say, “I’m okay and I’m not the worst person in the room. I’m a pretty decent human being. Yeah, there are people that are better than me, but I’m not the worst.”

So we have to do all these weird aerobics and gymnastics and strange things as we contort ourselves to fit into the gospel. Why? Because we’ve deceived ourselves into thinking that we are somewhere where we’re not. We’ve deceived ourselves into thinking that God is grading holiness on a curve. And that’s not how it works. And Jesus wants to make it clear to us, “No, actually, if you want the gospel to come alive, you’re going to have to realize that you don’t live up here in this better space than everyone else, than anyone else.” Jesus is saying, “I want you to come down here.” Because the people who are going to get this message understand that they cannot look around the room and say, “I’m any better than anyone else.”

My friends didn’t need to hear this message. When Jesus clarifies to a group of people that they’re probably guilty of adultery even if they don’t think so. Why? Because there were mornings when my friends would wake up and they would eat breakfast with the money they had made committing adultery the night before. You and I have these useless veils that enable us to pretend that we’re not guilty and full of sin and shame without Jesus.

So Jesus wants to make that point clear and so in Matthew chapter 5:27-28, he says this:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

And then he’ll go on to talk about how, if your eye is causing you to sin, cut it out. If your hand is causing you to sin, chop it off. It’s better that you would do that than that you would be cast into hell. There’s something more serious that you don’t understand about the depths and the weight of your sin and of your shame. And you may be able to tell yourself, “I have never cheated on my spouse, therefore I’m not an adulterer.” And Jesus is saying, “No, you missed it. If there’s lust in your heart, it’s that serious.”

Righteousness is not graded on the curve. It’s pass/fail and chances are most of us, if not all of us in the room, have failed. Why does Jesus want me to feel so bad? I think because he wants us to understand the good news.

For me, the place in my life that I can look back to and say, “Yeah, that was complete and total failure,” that’s the place in my life where I began to be able to sit down next to my friends that I didn’t know yet, that I wouldn’t know for years to come, where I could sit down with them and say, “I’m absolutely the same as you. It’s good news to me that Abraham would do those things.”

That time of life for me was when I was nine years old. I started looking at pornography and I entered into a season of four or five years of my life where my heart and my mind were completely wrapped up and intertwined with lust and brokenness. Where I couldn’t even look at my friends without being ashamed of the things that were happening in my mind and in my heart.

In that season of life I began to become really acquainted with some of the different strategies that we can employ to manage our shame. I want to walk you through three of those today. Then there’s a fourth one that’s very different from the first three.

The first of those strategies that I started to encounter, what I would consider the most base of those strategies, the most primitive of them. It’s what I would call self-pity. Or a better way to put it maybe is just wallowing in your shame. And that’s the most base because it’s just what you do. You feel shame and what are you going to do? You’re going to feel the shame so you roll around in it and you stick with it and you carry it with you in the back of your mind and the back of your heart and you don’t know what to do with it. And you try to figure out What can I do with this shame? Then, all of a sudden, you slip back into the same sin that precipitated the shame in the first place. And you find a little bit of relief from the shame. It changes your mood and you feel better for just a little bit.

For me, in that season of life, it was pornography. But I think that’s probably a good example, because it’s really good at conjuring up shame for us. But you could probably plug in any different sin that you want to. Right? So you go back to the sin and you find some relief from your shame and it feels good for a little bit, for a few seconds, a few moments, or at best until the next morning. But then the shame snaps back stronger than it ever was before. So you carry it again until the next private moment when you fall into this sin again and find some momentary relief. But every time you do this, the relief you get is not as strong, and the shame becomes stronger.

Those of us who use this as our primary strategy of shame management, the same thing happens by two different avenues. We continue to walk deeper and deeper into more and more and darker and darker sins, because lust will fill any space you give it. And once it’s filled that space it will begin to fill the next spaces. We find ourselves needing to do more sin, more frequent and more dark sin, just to find the same amount of relief that we got int he beginning, like any other addiction.

At the same time that’s happening, we’re starting to actually grow an addiction, not just to the sin, but to the shame itself. We start to like that feeling. We start to love what we do. We start to love that we hate ourselves. Eventually, people who stick with this long enough, they’ll need to hop into a whole different kind of sin that’s probably more public. Because they need the thoughts and words and condemnations of other people to magnify their own shame, because they love to hate themselves. Because we love to hate ourselves when we’re wrapped up in this self-pity strategy of shame management.

For me, this wasn’t good enough. I didn’t like the feeling. I didn’t want to revel in my shame very long. So, before too long, I had to move on to another strategy. Had to move on to what I’m going to call self-justification. Convincing myself that what I was doing wasn’t wrong. I think for most of us this strategy begins with the very same question that greased the wheels to for sin to enter the world in the first place. “Did God really say? Did he really say that that was wrong?” And I would start to ask myself, “Could this really be wrong? I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to be hurting anyone. It doesn’t seem to be unhealthy. Everything seems to be find. What could be wrong with this?”

For those of us who stick in this strategy, we start to convince ourselves of that, and eventually maybe it’s not good enough. Maybe we need to move past, “Did God really say” and we start saying, “Does God really even have the authority to say…” Right? “Does God even have any moral authority or claim over my life?” Or “Does God even exist at all?”

If we’re honest with ourselves, we’re doing this why? Because we’re managing our shame. We’re tired of feeling ashamed and feeling like someone gets to tell that what we’re doing is wrong. So we start to convince ourselves that it’s not. This is very dangerous because this is perhaps the most effective of these strategies of shame management. Because with this strategy you can turn down the volume on your shame. And I think you can effectively mute it. Once you figure out you can mute it with one sin and the following shame, you realize you can do that to any sin and the shame that comes.

Then, at some point in time in the process, you’ll start to buttress up your opinions and your beliefs that, no, this isn’t wrong, by gathering other people around you that you can convince no, that’s not wrong. And help you convince yourself that, no, this isn’t wrong. And eventually you’ll have a little community, a little bubble of men and women who are just yes men and yes women. Eventually that can grow into a philosophy, a theology, into an ideology, even into a religion of people who are simply saying, “You do you. Do whatever makes you happy, as long as it feels good.”

I would ask you to pause just for a second right there, because I think there are some people here who are like me, who are already hearing this and starting to take it and use it to do strategy number three, self-righteousness. I think we’re hearing this and thinking, “Yeah, that’s what that person does. I don’t do that. Yeah, that’s what that group of people, that’s where that ideology, that’s where that thought process came from. And I don’t do that.” And I don’t think that’s the most fruitful use of this classification. I think the most fruitful us of this information is for us to look and say, “Am I doing this? Have I been convincing myself that, no, this isn’t wrong because it helps me dampen the volume on my shame.”

Again, for me, this strategy didn’t work for too long because I couldn’t convince myself that God was saying that what I was falling into was okay. It was clear to me in verses like the one we just read that God was saying, “No, this is wrong.” Then I wasn’t willing to abandon Jesus, to walk away from him, to throw out his word in my journey to mute my shame. So I had to move on to a new strategy that I will call self-righteousness. Really self-righteousness is just a sub-strategy under hiding.

There are so many different ways to hide, but some of us literally will go into this little corner and we’ll hide in that corner where “No one can see me, where no one can find me. I stopped going to church because I feel so bad about what I’m doing and I don’t want to talk to anybody and I don’t want anybody to know what I’m doing.”

Some people stop having friends, they stop engaging. Some people just really stay very quiet so that no one can see their shame. I couldn’t do that for very long, because I’m way too extroverted for that. So I needed to find another strategy, another way of getting out into the open where I could hide. I realized that I had these very convenient personality traits that were true of me, that I could hide behind in front of everybody else. Yeah, I was someone who really usually does follow the rules. I was someone who really did have a relationship with Jesus. I was someone who really was plugging into church and into youth group. I could hide behind those things and a little bit of vulnerability, a little bit of transparency, and no one would ever know. No one would ever suspect. No one would ever ask me if there was anything below the surface.

Growing up I was a really bad liar. So I knew that if I was going to get away with anything with my parents, I had to hide any suspicion from them. Because the moment they asked me a question, I was either going to accidentally straight up just going to tell them truth before I had the opportunity to decide to lie; or I was going to muster up the courage to lie and they were going to see right through it immediately.

So, the result of that, of me revelling in really what was my favorite, probably still is my favorite strategy of shame management, is that I hid my shame and my sin so much that, even though it started at nine years old, I was fourteen years old and almost on the other side of it before either of my parents — who are good parents, who cared about these things, who talked about these things with me — before either of them ever asked me directly, “Have you ever looked at pornography?” And the answer that I was honestly able to give my mom when she asked me that question was, “Yes, I have. But I’m not really doing it anymore.” I hid it so well. I even hid it when I was finding freedom from it.

This is the strategy that is so deadly because it grows and festers when we keep it in the darkness. Right? This is the strategy that leads to headlines: Pastor. Clergyman. Politician. Celebrity. Secret affair. Secret substance abuse. Money laundering. Insert the blank. Right?

As I’ve been prepping for this message I’ve been thinking, I doubt that those men and women start off thinking My life is going to be a scam. That’s where I’m going. I think they start off as kids who have something they really want to hide and they can just never figure out how to bring it out. And in that process, you begin to kind of split into two different people. There’s this public person, this person that everyone else sees that is righteous, that is better, that is successful, that is honest. And then there’s this other person that carries all the shame in private. This person grows and grows and grows the more this person looks better and better and better.

At some point in time, I just couldn’t deal with the fact that I felt so two-faced. I felt there were two different human beings growing inside of me. And one of them was so disgusting and the other one just felt like such a lie, even there was some truth to him. So I started going to my youth pastors, to David Stockton, to Mike Phifer, and I said, “This is what’s happening in secret.” And they gave me a lot of really good, practical advise. We could give a whole message on practical advice, trying to get over this, trying to conquer it, trying to access the freedom that Jesus is offering you.

But the best advice that they both gave me was “Repent. Go from this place of feeling the weight of your sin and shame to Jesus and lay it down at his feet and acknowledge how wrong this is, and repent and let him restore you and make you clean. Begin the years long process of allowing him to renew your mind, to transform you by the renewal of your mind, rather than being conformed to the patterns of the world.”

That’s what I did and that’s where I landed. That Jesus really transformed me to the place where I felt comfortable with my own mind and heart. Where Jesus didn’t just manage my shame. The moment I stopped managing my shame, I let him manage my sin and cast it away from me, and slowly heal and renew me to the point where none of that baggage that I was so terrified was going to follow me the rest of my life, none of that baggage really followed me into my marriage.

One of my primary love languages is words of affirmation. My wife knows this about me. Her primary love language is gifts. This last Valentine’s Day, we were kind of between jobs and spaces and really between life, and we didn’t know what to do. She wanted to give me a good gift. So she sat down to make a gift and she ended up making the best gift she’s ever given me. She sat down for an hour or two and wrote down like a hundred and one or even more really kind things to me on little pieces of paper that she hole-punched and tied together with a ribbon and gave it to me. It looked like something your kids might take home from Sunday school today.

She thought I was going to open it up and tear through it read everything she wrote. But instead, I decided that I was going to savor it and just flip it every so often to the next page and read it. Last week, when I was starting to get ready to prep for this message, I flipped the page on my nightstand and I saw a page that said, “I trust you fully.” There’s no one in this world who knows my heart better than my wife, outside of the Lord.

And this is words written from a woman who’s had her own struggle with insecurity. Words written to a husband who, at nine years old, couldn’t walk in public without feeling the shame of his brokenness and the weight of adultery in my heart. And this is on the tail end of a year spending time in brothels and red light districts and befriending prostitutes, when all the work that the Lord had done was really put to the est. And she looks at me and she says, “I trust you fully.” And she writes it down.

Because the hope that Jesus has for you this morning — as you stop managing your shame and you let him manage your sin — it’s not just hope. I mean, hope is a beautiful and a great thing. But it’s not just hope it’s tangible. Right? It’s a real thing that you actually have access to.

I don’t just hope that I’m going to have a bowl of ice cream tonight. I know that there’s ice cream in my freezer. And I’m going to go home and I’m going to eat the ice cream. And I expect it, and I’m excited for it, and I have evidence of it.

In the same way, we don’t just hope for what the Lord can do with us. Expect it. Know that it’s there, sitting in the fridge, waiting for you. Jesus can take you and heal you. It comes through repentance.

David’s going to come up and wrap us up as we just do some business with the Lord along these lines.

DAVID:

Thanks, Alec. One of the things we wanted to make sure we did as we were going through this stuff, and especially the intensity of it, is we figure out how to move from a classroom to a hospital as a church. So we wanted to make sure there wasn’t just like a message that kind of had some good thoughts and we could all think a little better, but that we’d leave room for the Spirit of God to do the next part. Let this stuff work into our heart and actually maybe bring some transformation.

So that’s what we’re going to do now. I didn’t do a lot of sermon prep this Sunday, obviously. But I did a lot of prayer prep. I’m going to read some things that I feel like the Spirit was saying about today. Some of these might connect with you. If they do, then you can trust it’s for you, and you and the Lord can talk about that and figure out where to go from there.

We have this number that we’ll put up and we’ll put it up at the end of the service, too. If you want to text anonymously, or you can put your name, whatever, and get in contact with a pastor that can help you navigate some of what you might be going through. A safe space for all of that, so that will pop up at the end of the service and you can text that number. We’ll also close and have some people up here that would love to pray for you. If you can muster the courage to come and do that, it would be wonderful. You’ll leave feeling lighter, I’ll tell you that much.

But we also know that some of those things are hard. So I just want to share some things that the Lord was saying and see if these land.

I really felt as I was praying that the Lord was saying that, because of this message and because of some of the people hearing this message today, they were going to understand the dangers of lust and they were not ever going to fall prey to addiction to porn or anything else because of this message. I was very excited about that. Because by God’s grace that’s been my story.

Early on, for whatever reason, I felt like the Lord helped me build the walls. So anytime something was like, Woosh, I’ve just good wall reflex. Walls up. I feel like the Lord’s wanting to do that for some people here. So, young people, please hear this message and trust the Lord. Trust the Lord.

Then I felt like there was a message for some people who are overcome with lust. You don’t think you could ever get free. Maybe you’ve even tried and you’re still stuck. I felt like there were some people that the Lord was actually wanting to give one of those miracles, one of those supernatural manifestations of his Spirit, that come from time to time and completely set you free instantaneously.

If you feel some of that stirring in your heart, whether you’re online or here, he really does want to set you free. He really can set you free. Brand new neuro-pathways and everything, the whole package. And if you feel the Lord stirring that in you, I would respond. If he’s knocking in that way, I would open the door and let him come in. Get some prayer.

Then there’s some who have gotten really good at all of those shame management strategies, sin management strategies, and today, though, you’ve been found out. Pride would keep you from doing this. Deception would keep you from doing this. Some of you, the intensity of it is very different than a nine to fourteen year old and the ramifications that that would bring. Because you are married. You do have a family. You are older and the stakes seem too big. And though that might be true, Jesus is telling you, he’s telling you he can set you free. That’s why you’re here hearing this message. It’s not so you can go further away, or feel more condemned or ashamed. It’s because he really does have a plan purchased by his blood and empowered by his Spirit to get you to a place of wholeness and freedom.

I didn’t say this last service, but I felt like the Lord told me while I was sitting there. Some of you need to do this because, if you can do this now, your kids won’t have to deal with this like you’ve had to deal with it. You can break this in your family. But you can’t do it alone and you can’t do it with hiding. You’ve got to tell somebody.

Then, the last one is the person whose heart is bitterly, bitterly broken, not because of their own lust, but because of a loved one or maybe a spouse’s lust. And even hearing this today is like drinking a whole glass of bitterness. You have your own shame, not because of your lust, but because of the person you’re connected to’s lust. I fell like what Jesus wanted me to tell you was it’s not always going to be this way. That he really is going to come back and he’s going to do away with the sinful nature forevermore. It might seem very far away, but it’s not.

Also, he wants you to know that you’re not supposed to carry this alone either. You kind of feel like you carrying it is honoring the person or something like that, but actually you’re hiding your shame too. It’s super-scary but he wants you tell someone. Now tell someone that you can trust, and even try and tell someone that you think the loved one can trust. But you’re not supposed to carry this alone. It’s too heavy. But it is time for you to invite someone in to walk with you, because you need to be able to discern.

I’m going to say this and please, please be very careful with this. Please email me before you do anything crazy. Because, in the Scriptures, there are caveats in the marriage relationship that can help in times of real, real pain and agony. I mean, the Bible says at times there is an okay reality of divorce with sexual immorality. Now, again, I’m saying don’t unpack that on your own. We have people that would really love to help you, that have been through this, that can help you with that discernment. But you have some really good options that you might not be aware of that are totally in line with the scriptures.

Now, again, nobody get divorced between now and next Sunday. Next Sunday that’s what we’re talking about. Please come back next Sunday, because we’re going to have some ladies speak to us in a way that’s going to be really, really powerful and beautiful. And it’s going to allow the Spirit of God to come in way more fully than right now because of the work that will be done next week.

That’s ultimately what all this is. Jesus is trying to get some of the junk out so more fullness of the Spirit can come in.

And so we’re going to have a little time of prayer. I’ve said these things. If one of those lands or one of those struck your heart, this is your time to be silent before the Lord or confess to the Lord or cry out to the Lord. But we do want to make sure we don’t move on too fast from this.

They’re going to start playing a song and all of that a, and that’s fine, but this is for you and the Lord.

Father, we do just ask that you’ll be with us in this moment, that your Spirit would be so close and so present and so powerful that it would overcome our fears, our pride, our confusion and we’d receive what you have for us this morning.

602-932-1520

Watch

Unless otherwise marked, scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.The "NIV" and "New International Version" trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica. Use of either trademark requires the permission of Biblica.

Guest User 10/27/19 Guest User 10/27/19

Mephibosheth Around the Table

David is a very famous figure in the Bible, in the Old Testment, he’s very famous in the New Testament, as well. He is an Israelite. He was king at this point. He was the guy who killed Goliath when he was young. Right after he killed Goliath, he began to be a part of Saul’s household in a way. Saul was the first king of Israel.

David Stockton
Series: Church Around the Table

Living Streams! I was just in Belize for a week and had a great time down there. I’m pretty much fully recovered. We had about six fifteen-hours days in a row, which was long. But it was good. And we also had a basketball tournament one night, where we had to represent America against the Belizeans. And the basketball tournament started about midnight. We won every game, but my ankle lost one game real bad at the end. But other than, doing good.

It’s good to be with you guys. We have a lot of good things going on around here, I keep reading all of these articles and getting all these emails and hearing all these stories about how the church is in decline, and how millennials aren’t coming to church anymore, and whatever the after-millennials call themselves (not quite sure yet), and I just go, “Oh? Interesting.” I’m not saying it’s not true, but it’s just not what we’re experiencing here. We’re experiencing people being added to the church like every week and more every year for sure, getting discipled and plugged in. Were seeing a lot of millennials and those after-millennial people joining up all the time. It’s a really neat season. I’m thankful for what’s going on.

We have a lot of things that, if you are still on the periphery a little bit, I would encourage you to jump in. We have this Explore Express class. If you’re newer to Living Streams, it’s a great place to get to know people, and get to know what’s “behind the curtain” at Living Streams; and we also have Life Groups going on, Polemeo. The Life Group thing, we keep hearing great reports about people getting together, sharing a meal together, sharing some time together outside of this context, getting to know each other. We’ve got that raw authenticity, relentless encouragement. We need relentless encouragement. It’s tough sledding in this life. We’ve got biblical counsel and genuine friendship happening in a lot of ways.

If you’re not plugged into one of those, there are a few slots available even now. But in January, we’ll get some more going. I’m excited because the end goal for Life Groups is not just to get everybody in our church into a group, but everyone in the world into a group. I really mean that because right now we’re trying to establish these communities where the love of God is manifest, it’s just there, it’s easy, it flows. And then those Life Groups would hopefully eventually start inviting people who don’t know the love of Christ, or don’t have a table to go to where they feel the love of Christ, and they can come into our homes and our tables and it’s already there, it’s already present. So next year we’re going to really be trying to make sure that’s a part of Life Groups as well. You guys are doing well. Thank you so much. I know it’s hard. I know it’s so hard following Jesus in this world. But you’re here! You made it.

2 Samuel Chapter 9 is where we’re going to be today. We’re finishing up our Church Around the Table series. That’s the concept where we’ve been spending a lot of time looking at the table that Jesus set up for his disciples, the Last Supper, and really what he was trying to impart. I’ve been teaching the Bible for—how old am I now?—for twenty-five years. Literally, Sundays and Wednesdays, I’ve been teaching the Bible for twenty-five years. I’ve been going to church for a long time, been following Jesus for a long time, and I have felt like God has taught me so much in this last little series. I feel like it’s reshaping my heart. I feel like my heart is being reshaped in a brand new way after all these years, and I’m so thankful.

If you haven’t been tracking with us, everything we have is online. You can go to livingstreams.org. You can watch services live. You can watch them not live. We also have some supplemental material as well that can further your study and hopefully deepen your walk with Jesus.

That said, we’re going to do Church Around the Table today. We’re going to look at another table, an Old Testament table, a table of King David. Let’s read in Chapter 9, Verse 1:

David [who was king of Israel] asked, “Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?”

Now I know most of you are Old Testament scholars and all of this brings so much context to you, just this one verse and these names. But just in case you’re not sure, we’ll go ahead and recap a little bit of this.

Now God had chosen this people, Israel, to demonstrate how he feels about everybody by having this one example. He took these people out of slavery in Egypt and he led them across the Red Sea. Moses, prince of Egypt, we’re all there. And he’s going across the wilderness, and he’s forming them into a nation. He’s giving them laws. He’s giving them judges for those laws. He’s giving them the way that he wants to go. He’s delivering them from the oppression of those around them. And then he leads them into the Promised Land to establish them as a nation with land.

So they’re in this place, and God has done so much for them. And they say, “God, it’s a little weird for us, having you be our king. Can you give us a man to be king? We want to be like all the other nations around us that have a man as king.”

And God said, “If I give you a man to be king, he’ll steal everything good from you.”

And they demanded it. They said, “God, we want a king.”

So he did. He gave them a king. And his name was Saul, the first king of Israel. And there it is, Saul’s family. Saul became a king and it seemed like everything was going good at first. He did seem to follow in God’s way and lead in God’s way. But as power came to him, he started to change a little bit. Ever seen that in human history before? Power began to corrupt. Power began to change the way he viewed things. He now was so afraid of losing power that he started to do things that were very unlike what God would want him to do. He became someone that, for the people of Israel, was rejected. He even at one point became demon- possessed, that we know of. He was visiting witches to try to figure out what was supposed to happen instead of listening to the prophets of God. He became a very wicked king in a lot of ways. Very confusing. Very harmful for the people of Israel. And he really became someone that, when we look back, we think Saul represents shame, represents the flesh, represents sinfulness, represents defeat. The people began to see Saul that way toward the end of his kingship.

Saul had a son named Jonathan. Jonathan was awesome. He’s probably my favorite Old Testament character. I really think that Jonathan was the person that gave David the courage to fight Goliath, because Jonathan had done something just as cool a few chapters before. Jonathan was King Saul’s son, so Jonathan lived with this not being king, his family being not known at all, then his dad becomes king and, all of a sudden, they’re thrust to the front of Israel’s vision. And now they are the royal family and treated as such, and known as such. Yet, Jonathan maybe experienced all this and thought “This is great.” Jonathan had some great exploits. People knew Jonathan and loved Jonathan. But then Jonathan also got to watch as the whole tide of the nation began to shift from loving and honoring them to really being embarrassed and ashamed of the family of Saul, of the kingship of Saul. You see this difference that’s taking place? That’s what Jonathan grew up with.

But along the way, as David killed Goliath and Saul brought him in, hoping that the fame of David would kind of rekindle the love for Saul, Jonathan and David became best friends. Like serious best friends. And they loved each other. And one day David said to Jonathan, “I think your dad has turned on me. I feel like your dad hates me. In fact, I think your dad is trying to kill me.”

And Jonathan was like, “Well, how do you know he’s trying to kill you? You’re crazy.”

“Well, he was throwing spears at me the other day.”

And still, they weren’t sure. “Well, I don’t know.” And they came up with this plan to find out, Is Saul really trying to kill David? Has Saul’s jealousy and shame so gripped him that he would try and kill David, Jonathan’s best friend?

So they came up with a plan. Jonathan found out that Saul was trying to kill him and they had to part. They had to break up their friendship, and David basically went and lived as an outcast, outside the nation of Israel, living in caves, trying to just stay alive as Saul hunted to try to kill him.

This is what’s taking place in the context of this one verse. And now David has become king because Saul and Jonathan went to war and they died on the same day. Then for the next six years or so there was this battle over who would be the next king. A couple of Saul’s sons stood forward and said, “I’ll be king.” And there was some battling between them. All of the people’s hearts went with David, and they wanted David to be king. But instead of making David king of all of Israel, David became king of a place called Gibea on the outskirts of Israel.

He was king there for six years while all of this fighting and turmoil was going on. Then, finally, after all that time, David was thirty-seven years old and he becomes king of all of Israel, unites all twelve tribes under his leadership. And he followed God as one who seeks God’s own heart, loves God’s heart, wants to do what’s in God’s heart. He became a great king in Israel.

One of the things he did after he was established after all this craziness, he sat one day and he said, “Is there no one left of the house of Saul that I can bless for Jonathan’s sake?”

This is what was in his heart. This is what stirred in his heart as king. It says:

2 Now there was a servant of Saul’s household named Ziba. They summoned him to appear before David, and the king said to him, “Are you Ziba?”
“At your service,” he replied.
3 The king asked, “Is there no one still alive from the house of Saul to whom I can show God’s kindness?”
Ziba answered the king, “There is still a son of Jonathan; he is lame in both feet.”
4 “Where is he?” the king asked.
Ziba answered, “He is at the house of Makir son of Ammiel in Lo Debar.”

So Lo Debar is an important name, as well. Lo Debar basically means “without pasture; desolate.” Lo Debar is also a place outside of Israel, across the Jordan river, on the wrong side. A place that we find out was where all of Saul’s family that was alive after all of that in-fighting, they fled for their lives in fear of the other sons of Saul coming to kill them because they weren’t part of that lineage—fear of David coming to kill them, because that was common that a conquering king would come and destroy everybody that was a threat to the throne.

And in 2 Samuel Chapter 4, we actually find out what happened to this son of Jonathan. As the people were fleeing, one of the servants of Saul picked up this young boy named Mephibosheth, who was five years old, and as he was fleeing, he was dropped and it broke his legs and he became crippled for the rest of his life. Not only was this boy crippled, but he was taken to go live in a desolate place, hiding for fear, totally overshadowed by the shame of Saul’s name, in a place that was desolate and without pasture.

So David says to Ziba, who tells him where he is:

5 So King David had him brought from Lo Debar, from the house of Makir son of Ammiel.
6 When Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, he bowed down to pay him honor.
David said, “Mephibosheth!”
“At your service,” he replied.
7 “Don’t be afraid,” David said to him, “for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan”

And the reason David says this, all of this is so pertinent and powerful. The fact that he says, “Mephibosheth” and they put an exclamation point there, and there’s a reason. And the fact that he says, “Don’t be afraid,” it’s important because, for all Mephibosheth knows, David could have summoned him to Jerusalem to kill him, to get rid of him. Because the power could have now corrupted David like it corrupted Saul and he wants to eliminate any threat at all.

But when Mephibosheth comes in the room and bows himself down to David, David cries out, “Mephibosheth!” And there’s so much meaning behind that name. Mephibosheth means, “the end of shame.”

Track with me here. The end of shame is what his name means. That name first came to him from Jonathan and his wife. And Jonathan and his wife had Mephibosheth toward the latter years of their life and Saul’s kingship. So here, Jonathan has watched the tide of favor, the tide of grace and glory and strength, completely shift to one of total shame, as his father has done these horrible things as king. So what was once an honor to be the son of Saul has now become a total shame. The people have rejected them.

And Jonathan, when he has a son, with his heart broken at what his dad has done to the nation, heart broken at what his dad has done to his best friend, David—he and his wife agree to name their son Mephibosheth, the end of shame.

I don’t know if God spoke to them and inspired them. We don’t get all of that. But we know that it meant something for these two people to name their son Mephibosheth; because they were wrestling with the shame. They felt it every day. And their hope in this child was that he might be born and grow up and, they might have thought, become a great king that will turn the nation of Israel back toward God and end and remove the shame of the name of Saul.

But right after he was born, just a few years in, Jonathan is killed. Saul is killed. And in the hurry and stress of all of that, Mephibosheth, the one who will end all shame, is broken as he’s fleeing for his life. The one who was to be king and end all shame is now crippled in both feet and can’t walk. And shame remains and another layer is piled on.

Then he’s taken as a young boy to a place where there is no pasture. And there he is living basically disabled, unable to do much, unable to be fruitful, unable to produce anything of value, and every day people say, “Hey, Mephibosheth.” “Come here, Mephibosheth.” And the irony just tortures him. As he is called to be the one who ends all shame, and all he’s ever known is layer upon layer of shame.

Then one day he gets called to go to be with King David, and he walks in and he bows himself to the ground. David, the king that maybe took his place, I don’t know what he’s thinking, but the king is looking at him and what does he say to him? “The One Who Will End All Shame, welcome! Do not be afraid.” And then he goes on to say this:

… I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.”
8 Mephibosheth bowed down and said, “What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?”

Now, please. We know people all the time who fake humility to try to procure more favor. They say things like, “Oh I could never do that.” And they know they’re better than everybody. And you’re just like, “Blah, blah, blah.” In your mind. You don’t say it out loud. But that’s not what’s taking place here. Mephibosheth is really shocked and confused. He can’t even see the potential goodness because the shame is so thick on the lenses of his life.

When he says to David, “Why are you taking notice of me, a dead dog?”—in a lot of ways he’s saying, “David, please don’t call me Mephibosheth anymore. I’ve changed my name to Dead Dog.”

Out of the heart, the mouth speaks. And shame had won the day. The one who was named To End All Shame has become one who is just gripped by shame. He sees no good thing in him at all. And yet David restores to him all of the land that Saul had owned. That might be even more land than David had. And not only was it land, but Saul who had been king did just like God said. He took all of the best of the land. So now, the one who had only known no pasture, Lo Debar, now has the most fruitful parts of Israel as his. And one more thing. David said, “And you will sit and eat at my table.”

Let’s go on:

9 Then the king summoned Ziba, Saul’s steward, and said to him, “I have given your master’s grandson everything that belonged to Saul and his family. 10 You and your sons and your servants are to farm the land for him and bring in the crops, so that your master’s grandson may be provided for. And Mephibosheth, grandson of your master, will always eat at my table.” (Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty servants.)

That plays into something later.

11 Then Ziba said to the king, “Your servant will do whatever my lord the king commands his servant to do.” So Mephibosheth ate at David’s table like one of the king’s sons.
12 Mephibosheth had a young son named Mika, and all the members of Ziba’s household were servants of Mephibosheth. 13 And Mephibosheth lived in Jerusalem, because he always ate at the king’s table; he was lame in both feet.

So there’s this recounting in the library of Scripture, of this guy Mephibosheth. Sure enough, just like most of his life he thought was just wasting away, shame had won the day, now in this moment’s notice, he’s called by the king to come into his presence. There, in his presence, he is restored. All of his inheritance and destiny is restored in a moment. He now has the ability to do exactly what his name and calling is for him to do. He has all of Saul’s resources and he can use them differently than Saul did. He’s given all of Saul’s resources and it’s the most fruitful land.

The guy who grew up in Lo Debar, no pasture, is now having to have servants care for all of the produce that his lands produce. And then it says that he is invited to David’s table. Mephibosheth Around the Table. And when he comes up to that table, so many things take place, you guys. The crippled “Dead Dog” comes to the table. I’m sure on the first day it felt really weird for him. But as he’s sitting there at the table, the only thing people see is who he really is. They don’t see his crippled feet.

I talked to my daughter about that last night. I was like, “You like sitting at the table?” (She’s in a wheelchair.)

She said, “I love it because we’re all the same here.”

She knows what it feels like.

And here, Mephibosheth, however he gets to the table, he’s sitting there. And he really is just like one of the king’s sons. And there, at that first day, I’m sure he felt very unsure and like, “Uh, this is weird. Everybody knows I don’t belong.”

But think about as the years go by, year after year after year, he becomes so familiar there, maybe even tells some great jokes from time to time. Maybe even gives a little counsel. Maybe welcomes another one of David’s sons to the table because he’s been there a lot longer. All of a sudden he’s just there. And the shame, his past, they don’t know him like that. All they know is this person who sits at the king’s table, this person who has fruitful fields.

And day after day, as he comes to that table, year after year, as he comes to that table, his shame dissipates. His shame fades. His shame no longer has authority in his life, no longer grips his heart, no longer is the most powerful voice in his life. But now he’s known as Mephibosheth, the one who ends the shame for himself and for his family.

And this is the call of God to you and me. We are called to be like David. This whole Church Around the Table is trying to inspire us to be more like David. So sit before our kingdoms, whatever they might be; whatever resource you have, whether it’s a car or a house or a table or a good park bench; whatever you have to assess the vastness of your kingdom and say, “What can I do today to show kindness, to show the love of God to someone who might not know it?” And invite them in. That’s what this whole thing is about. We’re trying to inspire that and be that.

And some of you guys are doing a great job of that. You’re having people come across the threshold of your house that you never would have before. People that are so shameful you were afraid of them before. And now you’re inviting them all the way to sit at your table. And you’re not even afraid of their shame getting on you because you know Jesus’ love is too powerful. You’re having people come sit at your table that have done shameful things. And they’re feeling so free at your table to even confess some of those things so that they can be washed and cleansed. And there is so much more to come.

But the really important thing that we’ve got to notice here is that we’re aspiring to be David, but the truth is that David is a picture of Jesus and we’re a picture of Mephibosheth—people who have a destiny to end shame, to remove shame, to set ourselves and our family and others free of the shame of this sinful world, and our sinful mistakes.

Yet, we find ourselves crippled in Lo Debar most days. But can you hear Jesus calling? Can you hear the King summoning you to come? All Jesus wants you to do is to come and sit at his table. He doesn’t care what you bring. That’ll take care of itself. He’s saying, “Come. Come to my table. I have died on a cross. I had my body broken, my blood spilled to provide for this.”

And if you will come to his table every day, year after year, you will find yourself being someone who can’t really remember how shameful you used to feel. You will come to his table, and all of a sudden you will find your destiny, your true name. And it might feel so weird at first. Some of you are here for the first time at church and you’re like, “Whaaaa. This is so weird!”

But as you continue to come into the presence of Jesus, what happens is your shame gets washed away. And it sometimes happens in big, heaping, cleansing waves. Sometimes it’s just a little scrub. Sometimes it takes a few scrubs because that shame is sticky. But if we will keep coming to the table, if we will keep coming into his house, coming into his presence, pretty soon we won’t be known for all of our crippled-ness, all of our past. We’ll be known by our true name.

When we went to Belize, I got to spend some time fasting the day before. All the guys that went, we fasted on the day we were headed to Belize. We knew we were going to go there and we want to tune in. “Okay, God. I don’t want to think about anything worldly. I want to think about spiritually what you’re doing.”

So I was journaling on the plane from Houston to Belize. I was just writing my prayers down and then, I’ve learned over time that praying should be more listening than talking. It’s really hard to remember that. But I was remembering and I was like, “Okay, Lord. Speak to me. What do you want to tell me? What am I looking for? What do you want to do in this time?”

So I started to write some things down. I ended up writing down about four different scenarios that I felt God was speaking to me about. It was interesting because, then it was like I was kind of on a treasure hunt.

One of the scenarios I wrote was that there was a guy that I would meet down in Belize. We were going to do men’s ministry. There was a guy that I was going to meet. And he was a guy that really felt like his soul was dark, that the things he had done in life had broken his soul or had brought so much shame to his soul that it could never be lifted. And he just walked around with this heavy darkness in his soul. And that darkness came because he had really hurt a lot of people, actually physically hurt people. And I was like, “I don’t know if I want to meet this guy.” Then I felt the Lord told me that this was someone that has even murdered someone. Now it got real. And I thought, “Okay. That sounds too specific.” And how do you do that in a conversation? “Hey, have you killed someone?” “Okay, cool. Sorry.”

I didn’t know how this worked. But the very first night we were there, we created these moments of church around hot dogs and taekwondo. And we had all these guys there. And there were a couple of guys I didn’t know. Toward the end of the night I walked over to them and I said, “Hey, you guys. I’m looking for a couple of people. Can you help me out?”

And they were like, “Yeah. For sure.”

So I read the first scenario. I said, “Do you guys know anybody like this?”

And one of the guys said, “I think that’s me.”

I didn’t read the part about killing anybody. I was too scared to do that. And he was like, “That sounds like me.”

And I said, “What does that mean? Do you feel that darkness?”

He said, “All the time.”

And I said, “Have you had a rough past where you’ve hurt people?”

He said, “I used to be in gangs, so I hurt people all the time.”

Then I was like, “Well, I also wrote down here that this person had murdered somebody.” I said, “Is that true?”

He said, “Well, I had a lot of past in gangs. And there is one thing that is really heavy on my soul right now. That’s me and my girlfriend just kind of broke up sort of. It’s complicated.”

I said, “Yeah, it always is.”

He said, “But she was pregnant with our son and she just had him aborted. And it’s been killing me. It’s been torturing me.”

This is where I had a little turmoil in my own heart as I was thinking, can I just say, “Hey, you’re forgiven.” That seems like, “No, you need to say these prayers. You need to show up at church a hundred times.” There’s got to be something to it. But then I remembered that when Jesus walked around here he would walk up to people and say, “Hey, I don’t condemn you. Go your way and sin no more.”

He said to a guy that got dropped through the ceiling, “Your sins are forgiven.” He didn’t know this guy.

And then, in Hebrews 12, we talked about it two weeks ago, that the blood of Jesus Christ, one word and one word only, and that word is forgiveness. And I thought, “I don’t know how else to process this moment; but instead to say to you, ‘I think Jesus has sent me here to pronounce you can be forgiven, and because of the confession you’ve made right now, you are forgiven. You are washed. You are clean. Jesus is going to put brightness and light in your soul. And he’s going to take those sinful desires and he’s going to give you new desires.’”

I was like, “Can we pray for you?”

And the guy was like, “Yeah. For sure.”

And we all gathered around him and we had this holy moment.

This was just a week ago, so I can’t tell you, “And now he’s the president…” I’m going to follow up on him as best I can. But I can tell you it was a really big deal because, that was a Tuesday night, and then we were gone the rest of the time and then we came back Sunday. I was really hoping he would show up. He came to church on Sunday morning in Belize City for the first time as an adult. I think he really believed that maybe, just maybe, there was a spot for him at the table. And he came and we had another time together and prayed. I hope he showed again today because, Jesus does a work the first time. But it takes a lot of showing up at the table before shame can not be the loudest voice in your life. But that’s what the table of Jesus is all about. For you to go and get your shame removed, but also for you to invite others who are full of shame to come and hear about the forgiveness and cleansing that Jesus can bring.

Let’s pray:

Jesus, we do thank you so much for your table that you invite us to; that we can come and sit at your table and we can be sons and daughters of God, full inheritance, free from shame both now and forevermore. And, Lord, it’s a marvel, it’s wild, it’s scandalous, but our hearts resonate with the truth of it. And, Lord, I just want to pray for those right now that are full of shame, that know their soul is dark and their feet are crippled, that they would just be so stirred by your Spirit and that they would come to your table, come into your presence, even right now in this moment. They would say to you, “Jesus, I need you. Jesus, I’m here, wanting to be with you.”

Let’s just take a moment in silence and allow the Spirit of the Lord to speak. If you need to confess, just whisper it. If you need to just rejoice and praise him for his grace, whisper it.

Thank you, Lord.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

Watch