Truths from a Neglected Book

Good evening. It's a blessing to be here. As I was sitting there, I was thinking about how many years I've known folks from Shepherdsburg, and it's well over 20, 22, 34 years, and so it feels a little bit like being at home coming over here. So I want to thank everybody. It's been a blessing on my life for all these years.

So I have a question for you. Which books of the Bible would you guess might be some of the ones that we generally pay the least amount of attention to?

Probably, yeah, some of those.

Go ahead and say it. I mean, some of them are boring, so that's the one I wanted to, so. And I'm speaking for myself here because I don't know when the last time was that I've read Leviticus, but it's been probably longer than the 20 years that I've known people from here. But anyway, because of an assignment I had this past week, I spent some time reading through the book and thinking about it. And so we're going to talk about truths from a neglected book.

And I thought about this too. What are some of the reasons why we really don't give a lot of priority to a book like Leviticus? There's some good reasons.

Why don't we read it more often, or why isn't it at the top of our list?

What's it about? It's about the Law of Moses. Does the Law of Moses apply to believers in Jesus? Not really. So from that, I mean, I think that's true, but I think from that we make the false inference that there's not a lot to learn there.

There are some things to learn.

Any other reasons why we might not read Leviticus every other night for devotions?

Yeah. Legal material, which Leviticus is law. And people don't really sit around reading law. I don't care what kind of law it is. Legal material just ain't that interesting. And the laws that apply can get interesting, but laws that don't apply to us are really not interesting. A lot of Leviticus is commands. You must do so-and-so. You must not do so-and-so. And then there's case law. If this happens, then that has to be done.

A lot of Leviticus is about the sacrificial system. Do we offer sacrifices today? No, we don't.

It's kind of annoying because it interrupts the story. Genesis, Exodus. Leviticus is just in the way. Then the story goes on in Numbers. It interrupts the narrative of the Scripture. There's a little bit of narrative in Leviticus, but not much.

Here's another reason that I thought of, and see what you think of this.

Is there lots of interest today in discovering who God is through the law in the Old Testament? I don't think too much. I think that the trends in mainstream Christianity, anyway, are generally towards discovering God through His mercy, grace, and His love.

The hard lines that are drawn in a book like Leviticus just aren't very attractive to us. We know it doesn't apply to us. But beyond that, maybe we don't even really like to think about some of the lingering things that Leviticus implies about God and His holiness and His righteousness and what He thinks about sin. A shorter version of that is the book of Leviticus, or maybe even the God of Leviticus, ain't cool.

It's not fun to think about God as He expressed Himself in the book of Leviticus. And the book of Leviticus is God talking almost from beginning to the end. And you read it and you discover all kinds of things that God said that I don't like to think of God in that way.

I don't like to think of God that He would flash fire down from heaven and burn somebody alive on the spot because they got the coals of fire from here instead of over there. Don't like to think about God that way.

It even has a really uninteresting title. Leviticus comes from the Septuagint, which means pertaining to the Levites. Genesis and Exodus get the exciting titles.

But Leviticus gets stuff about the Levites. It's kind of like if you were going to publish an important book, would you call it about the Smiths? No, you'd really want to sell the book. You'd want to title it something different, so. But all of that said, when you open the cover of Leviticus, like is the case with all the other writings of the Bible, you always see that the content is truly what Paul told Timothy, inspired by God, and it's profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness. And also the title of the book is a little misleading. And of course, we know those titles weren't part of that revelation of God.

It was put there by people, in many cases, long after the text was written, because the book of Leviticus actually isn't all about the Levites. There's a couple of sections, Chapters 6 through 10 and 21 and 22, where it's specifically talking about Aaron and his sons. But the rest of the book is really addressing a much broader audience. So Leviticus isn't really just about the Levites. It's broader than that. So my goal with this message is to crack open the cover of the book of Leviticus and find some of that inspiration, some of that profitable teaching material, some of those corrections that might help to fix our faults and misconceptions, and to train us in righteousness.

So I'm going to focus on a short list of what I consider to be some of those timeless truths in Leviticus that will stand out to us just from reviewing the book. And I'm just going to hit a few of them. So here are some lessons from Leviticus for followers of Jesus.

So you can't miss in Leviticus this topic. We have a very, very detailed and careful development of the concept of sacrifice. What is sacrifice? It's the forfeiting of something of great value to us, to God, as part of practicing a relationship with God.

I never thought as much of sacrifice as being a reciprocal thing until I read and studied Leviticus again the last couple of days. So chapter after chapter, God details the various important kinds of sacrifices. And all through your life, if you were a Jew, the sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice that you would offer would drill something into you. And that would be that the idea of mankind giving of its best things to God is a key part of practicing a relationship with God.

We know Christ is the Passover Lamb who was sacrificed for us. And we know that so Christ is a sacrifice. We know that we are to give our lives as a living sacrifice to God also. And the model for those ideas that we have are rooted in the sacrificial system of the Old Covenant. That's long since passed away in favor of the New Covenant. But those Old Covenant pictures are there to inspire us to offer our spiritual sacrifices, where they offered literal, we offer spiritual.

They could experience if you offered a sacrifice and you gave something that was painfully expensive to you because of a wrong that you had done, or they weren't all sin offerings. There were other kinds of offerings. Once you gave that, I imagine you could experience some joy, some freedom, some peace with God to a certain extent. We have yet a fuller measure of that by experiencing the blessing of Christ's sacrifice for us and also by offering ourselves as a living sacrifice to God. Colossians 3:3 says, "For you have died, and your life is hidden with the Messiah in God."

So Leviticus contains ritual, formula, ceremony, but it's not about pagan, animist religion where the worshipers legalistically fulfill their duties to a silent and distant deity. That's not what God wanted at all. Leviticus is strongly about a reciprocal relationship with God who is present with His people.

We have the phrase today, a personal relationship with God. I think God wanted to relate with His people back then. We normally think about Leviticus as, "Do this, don't do that," list of laws and rules. How often do we think about what God was saying He was going to do for them? And these statements are out of Chapter 26. God promised, "I will give you rain. You will have plenty of food to eat. I will make you fruitful and multiply you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. I will remember my covenant. I will remember the land," and on and on. And to me, that shows that Leviticus was about a reciprocal relationship that God desired with His people, that the sacrificial system wasn't supposed to be just a one-way street.

God wanted to bless them. He wanted to reach out to them. And when they sacrificed, it unlocked His ability to do that, in a sense.

It was intended to be a restorative way of atonement that unlocked the beautiful promises of God for the Jews. And as followers of Jesus, we can see the same concept in the way that Jesus gave Himself as a sacrifice. Why? To unlock the further plan of God so that the world could be blessed. And we can also see that same thing in the way that when we lay down our lives and die to self, we in turn find eternal life.

So the concept of sacrifice is there in Leviticus. And here's another one, and this is a very strong one, the concept of holiness. Holy means to be set apart for a special purpose, set apart, marked off, that which is different. The word is found 87 times in Leviticus. So first of all, God is holy. God is set apart. He's different. He's other than everything else. Nothing is like God. The Holy One of Israel is one of the common titles for God in the Old Testament. So in Leviticus, you had people who were holy, places that were holy, and things that were holy.

That means they were set apart for special purpose. And it was extremely crucial to treat those places and those things in the prescribed way. Well, is that something that's just a dead, old concept in Leviticus? No. It's very, very important to us today. We understand, as followers of Jesus, what Peter says, "But as He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation, because it is written, 'Be ye holy, for I am holy.'" The Bible calls the angels holy, and the Spirit of God is the Holy Spirit. Followers of Jesus are urged to present their bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, set apart, different, different from other bodies, different from other people.

Holy means set apart. We were chosen by God from the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. The Church of Jesus was designed to be something that would grow into a holy sanctuary in the Lord. And Jesus gave Himself for the Church in order to make the Church holy, to make it set apart, to make it different. And all of this we see pictured ahead of time, a long time ahead of time, in the book of Leviticus, as God stressed so carefully to Moses to treat the priesthood, the sacred places, and the sacred things with great care.

As followers of Jesus, do we care half as strenuously about keeping ourselves, our families, and our churches holy and set apart as Moses cared about following God's law? How much do you think that Aaron's other sons cared about careful holiness after they saw two of their brothers burned alive when they trespassed God's law right in front of their eyes? Well, I could tell you, if you'd see something like that, holiness would matter to you after that.

Judgment isn't always that severe or that instant, but maybe once or twice in our life, we do get to see a really dramatic statement of God's judgment against something that's really flagrantly desecrating His clear command.

God still cares about holiness. Another concept that's shown in Leviticus that stood out to me is the special and the sobering accountability of leaders. In Leviticus Chapter 4, it details the different kinds of sacrifices needed depending on the standing of the person or persons who sinned. If you want to turn there, you can. It's verses one and two in Chapter 4. Read, "Then the Lord spoke to Moses, 'Tell the Israelites, when someone sins unintentionally against any of the Lord's commands and does anything prohibited by them,' and then that's followed by four sets of specific instructions for these certain groups of people. Number one, if the person who sinned is an anointed priest, there's a certain sacrifice they must offer.

Number two, if it's an entire community that sinned, then they have a certain sacrifice they have to offer. Number three, a leader—it doesn't specify what kind of a leader, but a leader sins—he has to offer a certain sacrifice. And number four, a common person, it calls them. And it's very interesting to look at the differences between these offerings.

There's a lot of interesting things in that chapter and in that concept here. The first one is obvious. Nobody but nobody is exempt from the potential for sin and failure, and no one is exempt from the need for atonement and reconciliation with God, even an entire community. And I thought about that one for a little while. An entire community can sin as a group and be culpable before God for that failure.

And the penalties given were commensurate with what God considered to be the seriousness of the offense due to the standing of the offender. So if an anointed priest had to offer a sin offering, he had to offer a young, unblemished male bull. We probably don't have a good way of knowing how large of a sacrifice this was for a person. I have a feeling that a bull was a lot larger percentage of the value of a person's possessions than it would be for a farmer today.

And I thought of a priest. I don't know what a priest did for a living and how the resources that they personally would have had. But if they personally sinned, they had to find a young, unblemished bull. I mean, it had to be one of the more expensive things you could own in those days. The severity of the loss of having to sacrifice a bull would be something that you wouldn't soon forget. You wouldn't get over it right away. A very significant offering must be made for the sin of a person in the position of a priest, one who helped other people make their reconciliation with God. When he sinned, the penalty was more severe, quite a bit more severe than another person.

Paul told Timothy to publicly rebuke elders who sin so that others may fear. I think probably not too many things damage the kingdom of God as much as when a facilitator of the gospel falls into sin. It does tremendous damage. I mean, you probably know the story of Robbie Zacharias, a person I sort of respected. I read some of his books and listened to his sermons. And the news that turned up after he passed away about his personal life destroyed the value, much of the value of what he did.

Tremendous damage.

And then when an entire community fell into sin, the offering was also a young bull, and the elders were to take the lead in acknowledging the failure of the community by laying their hands on the bull's head as it was slaughtered before the Lord. And that idea of a whole community acknowledging and repenting of sin is found other places in the Scripture. I thought of Ezra 9, where Ezra and the elders of Israel came to realize that lots of Israelites had married wives into heathen nations around them and that it needed to be dealt with. And that chapter would be an example where a few people confessed the sin of the people and repented before God.

So I've thought recently, my wife and I often say, as people can't see themselves, you often don't see yourself. But I think also whole communities of people can be not very self-aware. They don't realize how they actually are, how they actually look. And I think as communities, we should think about the fact that even though we're all agreed on something, it doesn't guarantee that we're not all seeing it wrong.

And then the third group, which is leaders of the people, doesn't specify what capacity. His offering was to bring an unblemished male goat as a sin offering for himself. And the fourth group says about the common person, they bring an unblemished female goat or else a lamb.

So in the New Testament, Paul's instructions for leaders show that there are higher standards for leaders in the Church. They need to give an account. And I think there is something here in this principle for followers of Jesus.

The leaders and the servants of the Church are not only not exempt from the possibility of sin and the need for reconciliation with God when that happens, they have an increased level of accountability. It's a sobering idea to consider.

So here's another idea I found in Leviticus, just maybe an insignificant one, but it's one that caught my attention and I think it's worth thinking about. And that is the crucial need for a witness to speak out. Check out Chapter 5, verse 1, "When someone sins in any of these ways, if he has seen, heard, or known about something he has witnessed and did not respond to a public call to testify, he is responsible for his sin."

There's plenty of people who, when they know something or have seen something, don't have the gift of keeping quiet about it when they should be quiet about it. Those people have their own unique temptations to sin. But there's also a sin on the other side and a temptation on the other side, and that is when you see something, when you know something, that is to be silent, fail to speak out at the right time about what you know to be true.

Why would a person do that? Why would a person not speak out when there's a need for someone to step forward and speak the truth, when there's a moral responsibility? There's times when a lot of damage is done because a person who knows the truth does not step forward and present it.

Sometimes I've heard stories of crimes going unsolved for decades, 20, 30, 40 years, because people who, not the perpetrators of the crime, but someone who knew what happened, did not step forward and tell the right person. And so that crime went unpunished. Justice was not served for many years. And I'm sure there's some that never get any justice done because someone in this position did not speak out about it.

Why would you do that? Well, sometimes you just don't want to be that person. Sometimes it's a message that's painful or hard, or it may embarrass someone. It may hurt a relationship that you have with someone. And so for selfish reasons, it's sometimes easier to not come forward and fulfill your responsibility. And I find it fascinating that God singled this sin, this out as a sin in Leviticus. James 4:17 says, "So it is a sin for the person who knows to do what is good and doesn't do it."

Another little idea that inspired me in Leviticus is this truth. And this is that God lovingly understands the varying abilities and resources of people and doesn't expect more from a person than what he can give. I don't know how you summarize that in a couple of words. But we saw that in Chapter 4, God required heavier sacrifices, more weighty, more expensive sacrifices from people with responsibility. But the reverse is also true. God adjusts His requirements the other direction out of understanding for a person's limitations.

Chapter 5, verse 7 says, and this is talking about someone who needs to make a sacrifice, "But if he cannot afford an animal from the flock, then he may bring to the Lord two turtle doves or two young pigeons as restitution for his sin." And it says what he needs to do with them. But then a few verses later, in verse 11, it says, "But if he can't afford the two turtle doves or two young pigeons, he may bring two quarts of fine flour as an offering for his sin." So there's some similarity here with Jesus' parable of the talents. To whom much is given, much is required. God's calling is commensurate with His gifts.

There's no reason to feel like you don't have much to offer God or that your sacrifice is insufficient, because God will gladly take what you have. When a person sees what others have given or what others have achieved, he or she can feel inadequate. But one person's two quarts of fine flour accomplishes the same thing as another person's beautiful lamb that they have, expensive piece of livestock. The widow's might has as much value to God as the millions of the wealthy.

And what I liked about this is this is a very clear indicator of what God was after with this whole sacrificial system. It wasn't about the gift. It wasn't about all those bulls and goats. And then somebody said that in the Old Testament, "God doesn't even want your bulls and goats." It wasn't about what you were giving up. It was what God wanted to have happen in the heart and the mind of the person who was offering the sacrifice. It was actually about love. God wanted to show His love to them. He wanted them to show His love for Him. He wanted change to happen in their hearts. Likewise, God is not after the most talent, the largest amount of money, or anything else that we think we might have to give.

Like someone in the Old Testament who thought God might want the biggest and the best piece of livestock, God doesn't want that. That wasn't the point. It's missing the point. God desires a relationship with His children. He desires a broken heart, a humble and contrite spirit. And any person can give that to God. Everyone can do that.

God, in His love and mercy, knows who we are, and He requires no more of us than what we can give. Now, isn't that a neat truth to find in Leviticus, this boring book of dos and don'ts?

And Leviticus paints one of the more vivid biblical images of the idea of divine judgment. We have already talked about it. This is the severe instant punishment of Nadab and Abihu in Chapter 10.

The concept of God's judgment is strong in Leviticus, but it's very clear here. And they offered incense using fire. It's not real clear from some other place than the altar of the sanctuary, where they were supposed to get it. And I understand that that fire was maintained constantly. It never went out. And that was supposed to be the source of starting other fires, something like that. And somehow they didn't do that correctly. Why didn't they do that? Why did they mess this up?

Was it an omission of a proper step in a procedure? And they were just too lazy to do it and thought, "It's just small details. God doesn't care."

They might have been doing something extra that wasn't commanded, because the text says, "They presented unauthorized fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them to do." I don't know what they thought they were doing. But when they did this, fire came from God in a flash, and it burned them alive right in the view of all the people.

And the first thing that happened was Moses looked over at Aaron and said, "This is what the Lord meant when He said, 'I will show My holiness to those who are near Me, and I will reveal My glory before all the people'." So I don't know what these men had done wrong, but whatever they did was a challenge to God's holiness and His glory.

Either they violated the clear command of God, or they were doing something that took some glory to themselves somehow, not sure.

The laws that they were supposed to follow were all about the complete otherness of God. God is something completely separate and different and holy and set apart. Nobody's like Him. Somehow they crossed the line.

Somehow it messed with God's glory. God only wanted to receive glory. And somehow they were messing in there and maybe receiving some glory for themselves. Somehow what they did put them into the scene in such a way as to deflect the attention away from God's perfect holiness and His glory.

Surely Nadab and Abihu are not some special class of bad guys. Surely they were no different than people are today. And surely we, as followers of Jesus, have a similar class of temptations somehow.

Today, Christians must understand just as much as these people did that God is a holy God and that God wants all the glory, all of it. And I think those facts should be really sobering to us. How did those observers feel after observing that fire from God? So we live in a day of pretty easy Christianity.

It's not too often that fear of God and careful holiness are key teachings in the Church. But thinking about these subjects, I concluded that maybe some of that fear and all would do us good. We're followers of the Shepherd Jesus.

We have to be aware that deviating from the path of Jesus can be fatal for us. God still has lines of holiness and righteousness, which if we cross, will bring judgment. God still cares about His glory.

The one verse I referenced earlier about rebuking elders says that the purpose is so that others may fear. Revelation 15:4 says, "Lord, who will not fear and glorify Your name, because You alone are holy? For all the nations will come and worship before You, because Your righteous acts have been revealed."

That statement could have very well been made by somebody who was there when Aaron's sons received the divine judgment. "Lord, who will not fear and glorify Your name?" And I assume that was made in context of Revelation of some of the fearful things that were happening there.

But a healthy fear of God, the need to glorify God and God only, and the awareness of judgment, these are ideas that run from the early part of the Bible, including Leviticus, clear through the end to Revelation. That's not an Old Testament defunct concept at all, the concept of judgment.

As followers of Jesus, we must keep our grasp on these basic requirements of God for His people that have not changed over time.

Another strong concept in Leviticus that follows through the Scriptures that same way, still has meaning for us as followers of Jesus, is the need for proper treatment of the body. Leviticus has lengthy sections of instructions on sexual purity, on diet, and on disease, and on dealing with routine bodily functions. God cared about how people treated their bodies.

In His law, He detailed things that were proper, things that were not proper. He told the Jews how to take care of their bodies through diet and proper sanitation. We do not, as followers of Jesus, live under these specific laws.

And we don't fully understand the reasons for many of them. Some of them are a little obvious. Over time, we see that, yeah, it was to avoid the spreading of germs. We could see for some of them. But very early on, the Christian Church understood that the laws of Moses were not to be applied to believers in Jesus. However, did God stop caring about what people did with their bodies? Well, absolutely not. The New Testament is full of commands on how to keep our bodies pure. As followers of Jesus, our bodies are the temple, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. Our bodies actually don't belong to us, but to God, and they must bring honor to God.

And as God's temple, our bodies are now sacred. They are to be offered to God as a living sacrifice. That's a New Testament concept, not an Old Testament concept. Eating and drinking are to be done to the glory of God. That's a statement in the New Testament. We have clear rules on human sexuality. The body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body, 1 Corinthians 6:13. How we treat our bodies still matters. God never stopped caring about our physical bodies, which He created after all.

And then another very clear concept in Leviticus is just simply that of loving others. And this is where Jesus got His quote when He said that the second greatest commandment is, "Love your neighbor as yourself." That is from Leviticus 19:18. Here's that command in context. Leviticus 19:17, "You must not harbor hatred against your brother. Rebuke your neighbor directly, and you will not incur guilt because of him. Do not take revenge or bear a grudge against members of your community, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am Yahweh."

Jesus' teachings on the kingdom of God are foreshadowed in Leviticus. The radical concept of Jubilee is here in Leviticus, that idea where at a certain time, everything goes back to zero. Everybody goes back to the land that they had, whether they lost it in the meantime, whether they gained more in the meantime. Everything goes back to equal. That concept is here in Leviticus.

The idea of caring for various groups of people, a lot of statements about loving your fellow brothers. In Leviticus, there you won't find loving your enemy, but there's a lot about loving your brother, your fellow Jews. It talks about how to treat the poor, how to treat slaves, and how to treat foreigners. The Israelites had just been slaves, and it mentions that in Leviticus. Remember, when you were slaves in Egypt, and remember that when you have slaves or when you interact with slaves, remember what it was like then, and treat them with respect.

We have teachings of justice, equity, fairness, honesty, and love. There's many, many other concepts in Leviticus, all of which can be traced through the Scriptures. They're not strictly Old Testament teachings. And they still have their place for followers of Jesus living in God's kingdom, just to list a few of them. The idea of the presence of God among His people. And Leviticus was basically instructions that Moses received at Sinai, and how they were supposed to operate the tabernacle or the tent of meeting, where they were going to meet God.

And the camp was organized around the tent of meeting, where God's presence would rest going forward. We have the presence of God in the Church. We should think about that. We should realize that it's not just a club here this evening and when we gather. It's not just a support group. It's not just a nice community. This is the temple of God, and God's presence is here by His Holy Spirit. It's a real presence, and God is here by His Holy Spirit. That idea is in Leviticus, and it follows through the whole Scriptures.

In Leviticus, we have the idea of ordination or commissioning, Aaron and his sons. We have the concept of atonement, which is just the need for things to be made right between man and God. Yes, we don't sacrifice. Yes, we don't follow the dietary laws. Yes, we don't follow the rituals. But things aren't right still between man and God. And there must be atonement made, and Christ has made that atonement. And so the need for things to be made right between man and God, that concept in Leviticus is still valid for us today.

We even have the concept of, don't like the word, excommunication, being cut off from God's people. There were things you could do that meant you had to be put outside of God's people. The concept of Sabbath rest, which is a sort of tithe of one's time to God.

And also we have the perfect reliability of God's promises. We have the reality of cause and effect in God's economy, where if you do so and so, this will follow. That's not only an Old Testament concept. It's in the New Testament also. Whatever a man sows, that will he also reap.

I think a lot of people don't see the cause and effect in Christ's kingdom. It's there. Blessing and curse formulas. Also the idea of each person contributing his part in the building of God's dwelling place on the earth.

The whole idea of all the people with their different gifts and their different materials they could contribute to build the tabernacle. That's essentially what the kingdom of God is today. People with many different gifts and abilities and talents working together to build God's dwelling place on the earth, which is the Church. And there's many more.

So in conclusion, Leviticus reflects the seriousness of our relationship with God from God's perspective. Remember, Leviticus is not Moses talking. It's God talking whole way through. It's God talking. And it shows us His characteristics of love and mercy coupled tightly together with His holiness and His righteousness. It shows us that God deeply desires the good of His people, where a lot of the commands, He did not tell them specifically how and why they were for their good, but looking back, we could see how many of them were.

Leviticus shows us the importance of our worship, the importance of our daily life, the importance of how we treat our fellow man. And in Leviticus, we can see the vague outlines of the coming kingdom of God, Jesus' ethical teachings, and His personal sacrifice for the world are foreshadowed in Leviticus.

We have the privilege of living in the reality that Moses and the Jews could never be a part of. They could only be in the vague foreshadowing. And that is, we live in the reality where Christ has given Himself, Christ has offered Himself as the ultimate sacrifice for us. The Holy Spirit is present with us, not in any tent of meeting, not in a tabernacle where we have to come to meet, but in our bodies and in the gathering of believers.

The challenge for us is to live in that reality in holiness and righteousness through the divine power of God.

Let's pray. Thank You, Lord, for the very sobering and powerful picture of Yourself that we see here in Leviticus. Forgive us for missing many of these truths often in our lives. Help us to live in awe and in soberness and respect for Your holiness and Your righteousness, and help us to seek holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.

Thank You that as we give our small sacrifices, what we can, You in turn come back and bless us so abundantly and so amazingly that there's no comparison. Thank You that You are a God of love. You're a God of personal relationship. You are a God of mercy, at the same time that You're a God of righteousness and holiness. I pray You bless everyone that's here tonight. Bless our coming week, that we live in the reality of Your presence in our lives in a real way. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.