So we're looking in the Book of Judges, where we're at in our series today, and I'm going to read this scripture to you. It's quite a few verses. The Book of Judges, chapter 3, verses 12 through the end of the chapter. I'm going to read it. We're going to talk about it.

Okay, good. I'm going to give you just a second to, like, find that if you're using the Bible and the rack in front of you is on page 270, that makes it easier. And then you're also following the same version that I'm using here, which is the net, the new English translation. And there's especially one part in every single translation that I just wholeheartedly am fed up with. I disagree with it, and I'm going to wait for you.

I'm not going to tell you what it is now. You're going to have to wait until I reveal that later. But every translation I've ever read gets it wrong. And we're going to talk about why that is not. Not that I really know much more than some of the Bible translator guys.

They just. They missed a detail on it and they got it wrong. And that's why you got me to help you figure that out. Okay, I don't hear so many pages flipping anymore, so let's start reading. In Judges 3, verse 12, the Israelites again did evil in the Lord's sight.

The Lord gave King Eglon of Moab control over Israel because they had done evil in the Lord's sight. Now, now I do want to tell you that anytime you read a name of a person or a place, it's good to, like, write a note down. That's why you have a handout, by the way, too, and say, like, who is this person? Where is this place? What is the significance of that?

If you want to know, what does the Bible mean? Because a lot of people say, oh, I wish God would speak to me. Sometimes you have to say, he's spoken to you. Now. You have to try to understand sometimes what the significance of that thing was.

So we'll talk about Moab and Eglon and some of those things in a little bit. Eglon, verse 13, formed alliances with the Ammonites and Amalekites. He came and defeated Israel, and they seized the city of date palm trees. That's quite a name. The Israelites were subject to King Eglon of Moab for 18 years.

When the Israelites cried out for help to the Lord, he raised up a Deliverer for them. His name was Ehud, son of Gera, the Benjaminite Benjamite. It was one of those things, Benjaminite sounds good. A left handed man. The Israelites sent him to King Eglon of Moab with their tribute payment.

Ehud made himself a sword. See, I like this guy already. He's like, he can make swords. What a cool guy. And it's not just any sword.

Listen to this. It had two edges and it was 18 inches long. Or some of your translations might say a cubit long. A cubit was the measurement like from the tips of your fingers to your elbow. If you're a really tall guy with long arms, I guess a cubit's a little bit longer and we think that's a dumb way to measure stuff.

Well, have you ever heard of something that's a foot long? Some of you, all your feet like, you know, are pretty long, mine included. And some of you have like shorter feet. So that's why we're like, okay, we got to standardize what's an inch and 12ft to an inch, you know, all that stuff. And so a cubit is a weird way of measuring stuff, but it's really about 18 inches.

So he's got an 18 inch long double edged sword. Now listen to this. He. And also remember he was a left handed guy. So he straps it to his right leg.

You're not looking for it there. You're not looking for a guy to have a sword over there because most guys aren't left handed. So he straps it to his right leg, his right thigh. Now he brought verse 17, the tribute payment to King Eglon of Moab. Listen to this.

Now Eglon was a very fat man. I'm not saying it like, I'm not labeling him that way. I know you're not supposed to talk about that these days. Because of people's body image. We're supposed to have a, you know, a really healthy image of our body.

Eglon was really fat. I mean massively fat, like morbidly obese this guy was. And Ehud, after he had brought the tribute payment, he. He dismissed the people who had carried it. He went back at once.

He went back at once until he reached the carved images at Gilgal. Some of you might say a different thing. Like stone quarries. Anybody say that in their Bible? Anybody say something to do with rocks or something like that?

Anything. You're not, you think, oh, you're not supposed to talk in church, huh? Shout it out. Oh, okay. Anybody else is not using the one I'm using.

The idols near Gilgal. Carved images near Gilgal. Anyone else? All right, we'll keep going.

He saw those and he turned back. He said to King Eglon, I have a secret message for you, O King, from God. Eglon said, be quiet. And all his attendants left. When Ehud approached him, he was sitting in his well ventilated upper room all by himself.

Ehud said, I have a message from God for you. When Eglon rose up from his seat, Ehud reached with his left hand, pulled the sword from his right thigh and drove it into Eglon's belly. The handle went in after the blade. The fat closed around the blade, for Ehu did not pull the sword out of his belly. As Ehud went out into the vestibule, he closed the doors of the upper room behind him and locked them.

When Ehud had left, King Eglon's servants came up and saw the locked doors of the upper room. They said, the Bible, if you ever thought, is like nice and pretty, is not. I don't even know if we would let kids under 18 come in and watch the movie of the Bible alone, you know what I'm saying? They'd have to have a parent with them. They said he must be relieving himself in the well ventilated inner room.

In other words, the bathroom. That's what we're talking about. In case you need me to like cut through the storyline here. They waited so long that they were embarrassed, but they did not open the doors of the upper room. Finally they took the key and opened the doors.

Right before their eyes was their master sprawled out dead on the floor. Now Ehud had escaped while they were delaying. When he passed the carved images, the idols, the stone things, whatever it is, he escaped to Sira. When he reached Sira, he blew a trumpet in the Ephraimite hill country and the Israelites went down with him from the hill country With Ehud in the lead. They said to them, or he said to them, follow me, for the Lord is about to defeat your enemies.

The Moabites, they followed him, captured the fords of the Jordan river opposite of Moab and and did not let anyone cross. That day they killed about 10,000 Moabites, all strong and capable warriors, and not one escaped. Israel humiliated Moab that day and the land had rest for 80 years. After Ehud came Shamgar, son of anath. He killed 600 Philistines with an ox goad.

And like Ehud, he delivered Israel. Now I could have cut off that last verse, but I just think that's so cool. This guy gets like an ox goad, something made to just drive oxen along, and he just destroys 600 of Israel's enemies in one day, like, in one shot. What an awesome guy, right? Like, I know we're not, like, going out and, like, killing a bunch of people, but these were people that had avowed themselves to be at war against the people of God.

And so he's like, nope, we're not dealing with that. We're going to put a stop to it. And so he's like, what do I have in my hand? And. And he picks up this ox goat, and he's like, I'm going to war, baby.

And he goes after 600 guys all by himself. That's the guy you want on your team, right? Okay, but why in the world are they in this mess? Let's pray for a minute and get going on this text, okay? God, we thank you for your word.

We thank you that you have given us your scriptures, that we can learn from them. Lord, help us to understand them, to apply them to our lives today. And to recognize more than anything else that Jesus Christ is the one that truly saves us, that we would only find our salvation in him, and that through his blood and his sacrifice, that we would know that we can have our relationship with you restored in Christ's name. Amen.

So I wonder, what were you doing 18 years ago? I don't mean 18 years ago. Like, at this exact moment, 18 years ago today. It's not like, where were you on 9, 11, or where were you when you heard this tragic thing? But what were you doing about 18 years ago in your life?

Can you get a general idea of that?

Like, Elijah, you were probably about, like, in kindergarten, you know what I'm saying? But it's like. It's like I'm just looking around, like, I think everybody here, though, is pretty much like, you know, they were born at least at this point. And so it's like, okay, like, what were you doing 18 years ago? Yeah, yeah.

You're about the same age, right? Same deal. Yeah. You don't remember, but you know where you were at. And so, like, what were you doing 18 years ago?

And what has your life looked like for the past 18 years? Like, what? How many things have you accomplished and done in that amount of time? It's a long time. Now, imagine spending that amount of time just working so that you can pay your share of the tribute to a ruler, a king.

That doesn't Believe in your God that actually hates your God, hates your religion, and is working to stamp it out and to change everything about who you are. Can you imagine doing that? Yeah, you can. You've been paying taxes this whole time, I assume. And so you've been doing the same thing.

Like you've been paying taxes to a government that really doesn't believe in the things you believe in and. And is really trying to get you to stop. No matter how free we think we are, there's all these subtle things that are trying to stop that. Right. Well, anyway, that's my joke, but it's kind of serious.

So for 18 years, all of their work, all of their. What might have been extra money or money for their hopes and dreams, for their family or their vacation fund or whatever it might be, all of that is going to pay tribute to a guy that totally doesn't like them. And the question is, how did they get there? How did they get to that place? And why?

So we've been looking. And this is our. On this week, as we're looking at this. This is like our last week, we turned a page in your book. You know, we start unit three next week.

This one, we've been talking about the start of the nation of Israel and who they were called to be and what their role was that God had assigned to them. The nation of Israel was to be a nation that helped to communicate to the rest of the world who God is. They were to be a holy nation. And it says, God says, you will be my treasured people. Like God says he loves the nation of Israel, he has chosen to love them in a special way so that they can be a blessing to the rest of the world, to all other nations and peoples in the world.

The problem is they keep getting it wrong over and over. In the Book of Judges, especially that we read this one passage from the Book of Judges. I mean, we could do a whole series through here. So good. But it shows us so much about who we are so many times, over and over and over again, we find ourselves straying from God, doing our own thing.

And then God saying, okay, I've got to bring you back. I've got to do something that corrals you back. There's something. And maybe it's a world event and God starts getting a hold of your heart. Maybe it's something bad that happens, and you're like, hey, you know what?

I'm gonna. You know, I'm gonna use this thing even though it was bad, or maybe there was evil at Its core. I'm gonna use that to show you that there's something missing in your life. And that one thing that's missing is God. You're not devoted to God, you're not serving God.

You haven't come to him for salvation. You've been trying to find all these things that the world offers you to save. Say, these are the things that will make me happy, or these are the things that will draw me to God or to happiness. And you haven't turned to God for those things. Israel had been just totally sinning against God.

They'd been doing everything that they felt like doing and none of the things God had told them to do. And so they lost their identity for a moment. Not completely, but they lost their identity as God's chosen servants who, through whom? The rest of the world, in all of their evil pagan idol worshiping ways, they were supposed to see God in the way the Israelites lived. I want to tell you, I'm not one of these people that says that the Christian church has replaced Israel in God's plan.

But God has, through his son Jesus Christ, given us the Great Commission, we call it, which is to go and reach out to all people who don't know God and to tell them the good news of Jesus Christ. And he's called us to do that so many times. Like the Israelites, we fail at doing that. We get excited to do things our way. We get excited to just kind of try our own solutions in this world and try to worship these idols or pay tribute to these rulers over us and think that that's going to be the thing that saves us.

Look, I've been guilty at political election seasons when I think maybe whether that's on a local, like school board level all the way up from, you know, senators and representatives and governors and presidents. I've been guilty of buying into this idea that says, man, if we can just get this election right, we're gonna get there. Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican in your political nature, you've seen where your party has had the controlling share of, of the Houses and the presidency and all these things. And you're like, oh, we've got this many governors and we've got this majority in the Senate and the House and we can pass anything that we want that's according to our party's agenda and you still can't. They still don't get it done.

It's like, how does that happen? And we realize, like, we put our hope in this thing that really isn't going to pan out. We're paying tribute to it in a way. We've been doing it for years. So there's this guy, this guy named Ehud.

Now he's just like, he starts out as a normal guy. The only thing special about him is he is chosen by the rest of the people to be the leader of a group of folks that takes all the money that they've raised that they have to come and bring it to this fat king named Eglon. And they have to bring it to him to what, make him a little bit fatter. It really feels like paying taxes to me. It really does.

Like, the government is so bloated and so fat. And they're like, ah, just give us more. It's like, why? What are you gonna do with it? You're gonna argue about it.

Shut the government down for I don't know how long has been going on now. And it's like, this is ridiculous anyway, I swear, I gotta get off the government thing, okay? So I'm really not even that worked up about it. It just kind of keeps going on. But I see these parallels in it and I'm like, oh, my goodness, what a mess.

You got to know a little bit about Moab, though, for a second, because Moab, oh, boy. If you know the start of Moab, you think the world's messed up today. You think some of our, like, shows that we've had, you know, like, see who's the dad? Or see, you know what, you know, these lawsuits that people have, you know, like Judge Judy or whatever, all these guys. And you think some of that stuff is rough.

Oh, the Bible, it doesn't just, like, whitewash stuff and only give us the pretty stuff. Have you ever noticed that? If you haven't, you haven't read it enough. The Bible tells us all the dirty details of humanity. It tells us the things that even the good people, like the ones that are supposedly the followers of God.

It even tells us the ways that they messed up in that way. I think it encourages us to be honest about our lives. Like we. Where is it in my life that I've messed up? Where is it that I've been led astray or put my hope in the wrong thing?

So I'm going to tell you just a brief version of where these Moabite people came from, of which Eglon was their leader. The Moabite people find their origins to the nephew of Abraham, who he kind of raised like a son. When Abraham's brother died, he kind of he didn't adopt his nephew named Lot. L O t He didn't adopt Lot, but. But he kind of took him under his wing and watched out for him.

Especially when Lot got himself into trouble, Abraham went after him. We talked about that a few weeks ago. With his 318 trained men, his mercenary army. I just love that so much. He's a private citizen with a mercenary army.

How cool is that? Anyway, so Lot, he lives in the place. You've heard of the cities that he lived in, Sodom and Gomorrah. He lives in that region. He's got his wife, his two daughters.

They're engaged to a couple guys. He's. And God's going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of their evil wickedness that those cities have. And so God sends two angels to go rescue Lot and bring him and his family out of there. His two soon to be sons in law won't come along, so he's just going to take his wife and daughters and leave the city.

As they're leaving, the angels told them, don't look back. In other words, you're leaving that behind. Don't look at it like, with like. Like wistfulness, like longing for it. Don't look at it for, like, just to weep over its destruction.

When God chooses to destroy something, our job is to look at it and say, yes, amen. That is good, holy and righteous. And so God is casting his judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot's wife turns around and looks back and sees the destruction. And the Bible says she turns to a pillar of salt. I don't think we can find that because I'm pretty sure the rain would have washed her away by now.

I don't know. But she. So she's gone. So it's now just Lot and his two daughters. And this is where it gets.

Sorry I'm telling you this, even, but it's in the Bible and we're going to cover it. They decide that they don't think there's any more men. They think everybody's been destroyed. So they decide, this sounds really terrible to us, because it is. They decide they're going to get their dad drunk one at a time and they're each going to sleep with him so that they can get impregnated and have offspring to carry on the family line.

Okay, we can get beyond that now. That's where the Moabites come from. Like, nasty, drunken rape, incest. Okay. Like, makes our court system look tame these days.

Some of the stuff that comes through there. So that's where the Moabites start their family line from. Not exactly a picture of, like, holiness, righteousness, following God, etc. Right. They begin worshiping idols as a nation.

They put their trust in things that they built, in things that they carved out of wood, stone, metal. They begin to look at how they can persecute the people of God. And even though God raised up large King Eglon to judge the nation of Israel, that doesn't mean he's without sin in the matter. God has always judged the people that he has used. He's allowed them to step in and be his tool for judgment against his people.

But he will still punish them because they have chosen to ignore who God is. King Eglon was, as we said, a very morbidly obese man. He was, even though he reigned in Moab, which was just a little bit kind of south of where Jericho is, he had a summer home that we believe archaeologists have found, and we think that this is probably where they brought the tribute to him. He had a summer home that he had built on top of the ruins of the city of Jericho, the first city that the Israelites about, you know, between. By the time he had invaded, it was over 50, maybe close to 60 years before that they had destroyed or God had destroyed the city of Jericho.

Eglon builds a summer kind of hangout place there so that he can spend the summers there. He's wealthy, he can do it, he can kind of oversee the people that he's, you know, exacting tribute from and all that. And so he has a summer palace there, summer hideaway there. And that, we believe, is where they brought the tribute to him. And as he's kind of hanging out there, they've been paying this tribute to him for 18 years.

And God starts stirring something up in the heart of this man named Ehud to say it's time to do something. And I believe the people probably were starting to feel the burden of not only the tribute, but really of their sin that drove them to that place. Like it was their sin. It was their abandoning God in the way that they lived, in the way that they didn't really have a ruler. They, in fact, Judges the book.

The author of the Book of Judges tells us a few times that every person in the nation of Israel did as they saw fit because there was no ruler in Israel. And there's something that happens when we see a lack of spiritual leadership in our country. In any nation, people tend to leave God. We need Godly men and women that will stand up and say, and pastor, it's not just you and me. It's not just the pastors, is it?

It's got to come from more. It's got to come from the people to say, we're not living this way anymore. We're not putting our hope in these false things. We're going to stand up and we're going to say like, like, as the people of God, it's like, I'm not waiting for somebody else to do something. I'm.

I'm going to be the one to do it. Now, I'm not telling you to make a sword. I mean, if you want to be somebody that makes swords and knives and sell them online, that's cool. But don't start like getting on these like back site searches on the Internet being like, who do I need to go after first? Don't do that.

That's not what I'm saying to do. Our battle is actually not against the people. It's against the spiritual forces that these people are serving and honoring. We don't have hatred against somebody that Reggie, somebody that Reggie back here, he works in a group that is working with pregnancy care centers around the area. And it's like, we're not mad at people that have had abortions.

We're not mad at the doctors that provide them. We recognize that they are serving something that is evil in the hearts of people that is driving them to this. We're not mad about people that have a different idea about gender, ideology and sexual orientation. Just because the news and the media out there is trying to say, oh, you have to be divided against these people. No, as Christ followers, we love the people that are caught up in believing these things.

But we also know that there is something satanic at work in people that is trying to say God is taking. You're taking the sexuality that God has given you and you're perverting it for the wrong reasons. And we believe that there's something satanic at work in those mindsets and ideologies. We're not upset at people that drink too many sugary soft drinks. They're killing us, guys.

Oh man. It's like these things are nasty for us. We're not even mad. So much of the companies that do it, we bought the stuff. But Satan is at work in so many ways to try to kill us.

John 10:10 says Satan came to steal, kill and destroy. That's his mo. That's what he wants to do. He doesn't like the People of God, and he wants you dead. And whatever means or method he can use to do that, he's going to do.

The question is, when are the people of God going to stand up and say, enough is enough. We're not living that way anymore. So you've got this sentiment among the people that I believe is beginning to ignite where they say, we've had enough. The way we're living is not how God created us to live. One of the things that we talked about yesterday in this training day that we went to, I can't even tell you.

I don't even think they talked about it very much. But there was one word that kept sticking out at me, and it was flourish. One of the goals that we have in bringing help to people is that people will find a way as human beings to flourish in the way that God has created you. Flourishing is like this kind of abundant living that God created you to have. And so many times we're not living that way.

The flourishment or the flourishing of human people is one of the things that God wants us to do, because he created us that way. And sin has robbed that from us. And God wants to restore that to us. And so there was this spark that was happening amongst the people. But this guy named Ehud steps up and he says, I'm the guy.

He makes this awesome sword and he hides it. And then what does he do? He brings the tribute and leaves. If we're watching this as a movie, that moment our hearts just sink. What?

I thought he was the guy. I thought he was the main character. I thought he was the one with the, like, the will and the energy and the drive to do this, the conviction to do it. He doesn't do anything. Our hopes kind of fall.

Maybe he wasn't the guy. Maybe you've been there in some place before too. You think God's calling me to do something? I'm gonna spend time in prayer. I'm gonna fast, I'm gonna do all this stuff.

And then nothing happens. And you're just like, maybe I wasn't the guy. The gal, whatever.

But then he's on his way back, and he's with the people that have come with him. Ehud is going back home. They're probably just shuffling in the dirt, heads down, and they see something. And this thing that they see is where our translations have all gotten it wrong. Pile of stones, carved images, quarry, whatever idols.

They all miss the point. See, you have to go back in your scriptures, and we actually, it was written in our in our book from last week, there was a note in there that talked about this. But when the people of Israel had crossed over through the Jordan river, they crossed in into the Jordan river, into the promised land on dry ground. You remember this story if you've ever heard this before. They cross over on dry ground.

And what they did was in the middle of this river that was normally at flood stage. God had stopped up the water upstream so that his people could march through on dry ground. And as they do that, he says, okay. Joshua, the leader at that point says, guys, I want each one of you, each tribe of Israel. There's 12 tribes, I want each one of you, one representative from each one to take a stone, a large rock out of the middle of the river, out of the middle of the river.

And I want you to take that and heft it on your shoulders. Now these are heavy and I want you to carry that until the place where we sat down for the night. Now I remember going backpacking years ago. I still got my backpacking gear. It's just not fun in Florida.

It's way too hot and it's flat and that's not cool. I like, like mountainous, you know, trails. Well, I remember growing up in Michigan, there was this guy named Gary and he would, he would take this hiking trip every year or two. He had a big motorhome and we'd pile a whole bunch of men, boys, teenagers in there and we would go up north into the top of the upper peninsula of Michigan along Lake Superior. It is a very superior lake.

It is superior in so many ways, both in size, clarity and it's cold. Oh, it's cold water. We get up there and we go backpacking, following this trail in and out of the woods. It's beautiful, it's great. We put our backpacks down for lunchtime.

We're going to go eat our lunch. All this food that we've dried, food and canned food and stuff that we've packed and we're going to eat our lunch and we set our packs down and we're playing in the water and stuff and then we put our packs on and we're like, oh, these are heavy. And we walk and we walk for a few more hours. And Gary and his cousin that came, they had little children, like seven, eight year old boys and they're getting tired. So now we're actually putting a kid on our shoulders and carrying a kid with his little like school sized backpack and our backpack, it was heavy and we sat down for the evening.

We're Inside the woods, a little bit off the lake, kind of blocking the wind from us. It's really cold. And Gary says, all right, everybody get the rocks out of your backpacks. We gotta make a campfire ring. And we're like, we don't have rocks in our packs.

He's like, yeah, you do. I put them in there at lunchtime while you guys were playing in the water, he had taken these big, like, granite rocks and put them in our backpacks. And, I mean, he probably added about 10 pounds to each of our packs. Plus, when we had to carry the kids, it's like, oh, my goodness, what a mess. And so, sure enough, we had this nice campfire ring.

And who knows how many hikers have enjoyed that over time when they decided that that was their camping place for the night. So these guys in Israel, they're carrying these rocks on their shoulders and they're carrying them to the place where they set down camp for the night. Do you know what the name of that place was? It was Gilgal. Oh, it was in Gilgal.

What did they do with those rocks? They made a monument.

Some people might have started thinking it was an idol or a pile of rocks or carved images. No, no, no. It was the place where they set these stones so that when Israelites would walk past them later, they would say, what do these stones mean? Oh, God has helped us thus far on our journey. The promise being, if he's helped us this far, he will help us yet some more.

You know those goosebumps. I knew I was gonna say this, and I'm still getting them right now. Oh, folks, do you realize what is happening here? They carried these big, stupid, heavy rocks. It means nothing at the moment.

They got them out of the middle of the Jordan River. It's a testimony to the fact that God can stop the waters of the Jordan River. It's a testimony that he can also knock over the stones, the walls of Jericho. That even a guy named Fat King Eglon. I don't think that was his name, but I call him that.

Even a guy named Fat King Eglon, a palace, a summer palace on top of the ruins of Jericho. And that's not going to be enough to stop God. And we're going to. When we see those stones, when we go past this place, we'll see this pile of 12 big stones and we'll say, what do these stones mean? These mean that God has miraculously helped us so far and he's promised to continue doing it.

Eglon. He sees the ehud. Sees those stones and he's like, oh, I know this story. He turns around, he's like, king, I've got a message for you from God. Oh, really?

What's that message? It's a sword. Sorry. Like, it was a little bit of trickery, but he's like, this is it. We're done with this.

Israel will be free from the reign of Eglon. We're in this spiritual battle. Ephesians 6 tells us that. 6:12 tells us that we are in a battle, but it's not a battle against people, like, not against flesh and blood. This is a battle against spiritual forces that are going on.

And sometimes there are people that are the embodiment of those forces. We don't take guns or knives to them. In fact, we decry that kind of thing. When it's happened in our world, especially over the last few years, what we do is we spend time on our knees in prayer. And the monument that we have as believers in Christ, the thing that we see is that Jesus Christ came to this earth for those who had that little spark inside of them.

That said, there has to be a time where we say, this is enough. We're done paying tribute to evil. We're done giving our lives over to the things that are actually robbing life from us and stealing life from us. Folks, when we get to the elements that we have, they're just juice. And I think they say it's bread.

It's a little wafer. When we get to those folks, that's our little monument. And we see that monument and it says, God has done something. Not only has he been with us so far, but he has done everything to bring us into communion and relationship with Him. He has saved us, and he promises to continue saving us.

It is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for you and for me that matters. And if you have gotten to a place in your life where you recognize that the blood of Jesus Christ means something for you, it's then and only then that you can claim that victory in Jesus Christ.

We call this believer's communion. We do this because Jesus told us to. He commanded us to remember what he did by doing this. But also it's our testimony in our lives. If you receive Jesus, it's our testimony to what he has already done, how he has already worked to save you.

And it's our belief that you continue on in that salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ. And so if you've received Jesus Christ as your Savior, you're invited to participate in this today. If you haven't received Christ as your Savior, I gotta tell you, these mean nothing to you. These elements have no purpose in your life. You can ingest it and nothing will change and nothing will happen.

You have to say, Jesus Christ is my Savior. It is through the blood of Jesus Christ that I know that I am no longer held down having to pay tribute to the evil things of this world. Amen. So I want to pray for a minute with you, and I want to give you the opportunity, if you've never received Jesus Christ as your savior, to pray that because this will mean something totally different to you. At that point, the.