Transcription
Let's do Matthew, Matthew 15. If you're new with us, we're going through the Bible, we're studying through the Bible. We happen to be in Matthew. We're not going book by. We're going verse by verse. Really, I'm thinking we're at the point now where I'm beginning to think about what book we'll do next. And I'm thinking, not going to guarantee, but I'm thinking about doing the book of Revelation. Daniel. Daniel and Revelation go together as a church. A few years ago we did Revelation one, two, and three, and we looked at the letters to the seven churches. But then you get in, this is the last book in your Bible and it is a wild book. There's all kinds of, it's the genre of writing is apocalyptic, so it's a crazy set of material. But I think it would be good. I think it would be fun. I don't know. So you can begin to think about that if you have any special requests for what book we go through next, let me know.
Everybody set. So Matthew 15, Matthew 15 is where we're going to be at. Have you ever noticed how much we rely on rules and routines to feel accepted or secure? Think about that for a second. Rules and routines. Recently we moved our family, moved houses, and it took me a good couple of months to get into a routine where it just feels like I'm at peace within myself. Sometimes we rely on rules and routines to feel secure and accepted. You think about people who obsess over diets, fitness trends or their professional habits. They cling to them because they promise control or a sense of accomplishment, and ultimately the hope they'll, that will measure up whether it's our own standards or someone else's. This need for control isn't just cultural, it's deeply wired into us. Psychologists say that when life feels uncertain, humans naturally listen. They naturally create rules.
We naturally create rules or rituals to give ourselves a sense of security. We convince ourselves that if we just do everything right, check the right boxes, follow the right steps, we'll avoid failure or rejection. It's like if you're a fan of baseball, you know that there's all these different kind of rituals that baseball players will engage in. They'll wear the same socks for every game. They'll make sure not to step on the foul line as they're crossing onto the field. It's not about logic. It's about a desire to feel, a sense of control or to feel accepted or to feel safe. And we all have these things that we put into our life artificially, kind of based off of our own psychology, but also be based off of that sense of tribe to fit in. And so this morning in our text, we're going to see some traditions that the Pharisees had built in to give themselves a sense of righteousness, to give themselves a sense of superiority, moral and like religious superiority to substantiate this idea that they were the religious elites.
And we're going to unpack that because embedded in the Pharisees is a principle that you and I can tend towards, and God wants our hearts. He doesn't want us caught up in some kind of set of rules or artificial set of rules to just try to make ourselves feel more spiritual. He wants to genuinely have us feel spiritual because we're near him, because we're accepted in his presence. And so again, as I do every week, I'm going to ask you to look in your own mirror to reflect on your own life, on whether or not you are leaning into a sense of acceptance that you feel okay with God, that God's okay with you because some set of artificial routines or rituals, or is it because you know that the God of the universe sent his son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for your sins and that he's actually in love with you without your ritual or routine or your law?
The Pharisees obsession with traditions wasn't just about religion, it was their psychology. Their rules gave them a sense of control. In a chaotic world, they thought, if I can control the small things, I will feel clean, worthy, and accepted by God. Those are key words, clean, worthy, and accepted by God. And this morning, if you're doing anything in your life to try to make yourself feel clean, worthy, and accepted by God other than your faith in Christ, then you're not understanding your own state. We're going to talk about obedience and how it fits in. Jesus talks about that here. But we're going to look at this question that the Pharisees ask and how it reveals just their own artificial reaching for a cleanliness or a cleanness or a sense of acceptance in God's presence. Jesus is going to confront this in Matthew 15. Let's look at the first nine verses.
We're going to walk through this actually because I'm not going to read the 20. We're going to do verses one through 20. So it's a lengthy section. There's four scenes. What I think we should do is we should pray because I'm not going to read all 20 verses. I'm going to just read 'em to you and then we're going to explain it. Okay? So let's bow our heads together. Let's ask God to speak to us. God, we thank you for your word. You caused Matthew, the former tax collector, one of your apostles to write down this biography about your life and what you taught. And we're going to look into this record of your teaching, this encounter with the Pharisees and the crowds, the disciples, and with Peter. We're going to look at it. We want to hear how you want to use this in our life.
And so right now, we agree together that we're going to listen for your voice as we're going through this text that you're going to speak like illuminate, like open up our eyes to see what we need to see from this text. Thank you for loving us, that in your love, you want us to connect with this passage and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. So verse one in Matthew 15, it says this, then Jesus was approached by the Pharisees and the scribes from Jerusalem who asked, why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders for they don't wash their hands when they eat. So you'll notice here that the Pharisees come from Jerusalem. They come up to this. The last thing we saw was that Jesus was over in the region of Ezra. So imagine the nation of Israel. You have these two significant bodies of water.
The northern body of water is the sea of Galilee and it's got a bunch of small towns around it. This is where Jesus grew up and now he's teaching in this region down south you have the capital city of Jerusalem. And this is where the Pharisees hung out. It was the locust of power, the center of power, religious power, and that's where the Pharisees were. That was their headquarters. And they go up to Jesus. They approached Jesus and they ask him this question about their washing of their hands, but they say, your disciples are breaking a tradition of the elders. Now, the tradition of the elders, it was a set of oral laws. You see at this time, Judaism and what we call Torah, Moses' books, it's been around for 1500 years. And so there's been a number of different oral traditions that have risen up to help the Jewish people understand what did Moses' laws mean?
The 10 commandments and the 600 plus other commands that were there, what did those things, how did it work itself out? And so one of the traditions that had developed was this tradition around washing their hands. These traditions were meant to help the people follow God's law. They were often became burdensome and overshadowed the actual command. So imagine you have at this layer here, you have God's command. You can open up your Bible and you can find the command, but then you have another Jewish teacher that comes along and explains it and they add a layer of teaching, and then there's another layer that's added by another teacher and another layer. So finally you get this whole robust set of traditions that are burdensome, difficult to follow, weird stuff. Even to this day, Jewish people followed. Have you seen the fishing line that goes around New York City?
Have you heard about that? There recently was a cyclist that got clotheslined riding his bicycle across Manhattan, and it was because one of these Orthodox Jewish communities sticks up this little fishing line all around New York City because one of the rules is on the Sabbath, you're only allowed to go so far. You're only allowed to walk so far on the Sabbath day. But if you can put this fishing line up around New York City, it technically extends your property because the fishing line originates from your property, from your community, and it extends your community further. So as long as you're within walking distance of the fishing line, you're still observing the Sabbath until the guy gets clotheslined riding his bike along there and breaks your fishing line. But those are the types of traditions that we're talking about. That's what Judaism looked like at the time of Jesus.
And there's this ceremonial handwashing, now ceremonial handwashing. This isn't like hygiene stuff, right? It was a ritual that would signify spiritual cleanliness, an outward act that they believed made someone acceptable to God. There was a specific way to wash your hands. The water would run off your hands in a particular way that would drip off your hands, and it was just this tradition to symbolize that you are ceremonially clean and evidently the disciples were not doing it in the way that they were supposed to do it. And the Pharisees kind of put this question to Jesus. Now notice they're focused on an external behavior and it is a manmade rule. There's nothing in the Bible about washing your hands before you eat. Now, your mom may say there is, but you need to tell her there is no rule in there. It might be good hygiene, but it does not make you closer to God.
Do you understand that? It does not make you closer to God. Now, let's look at verses three through six. Verses three through six. He answered them. Why do you break God's commandment because of your tradition? Now, this here, this is Jesus that is responding to the question that has been put to him. Why do you break God's commandment because of it? Now, where's he going with this? This is pretty interesting, right? Because the question is posed to Jesus. Jesus turns around and he says, I've got a question for you, and he starts with this, why do you break? Well, what's he talking about? What is the commandment that they're breaking? Check this out. This is crazy. Look at this one. Okay, verse four, for God said, honor your father and mother and whoever speaks evil of father and mother must be put to death. What commandment is that?
That's a fifth commandment right out of the 10, out of the 10, this is easy. This is low hanging fruit. Every Jewish person knows this is the command of God. Jesus goes on, but you now imagine Jesus like he says, but you, Pharisees, whoever tells his father or mother, whatever benefit you might've received from me is a gift committed to the temple. Okay? What's going on here? You had Pharisees, the most religious people who had aged elderly parents, and they may have because of their nice cushy religious job, maybe they got little bit of extra savings on the side. Maybe they had some saved up money, and instead of taking that money and using that money to take care of their parents, instead what they were doing was they were saying, oh, this money here, it's called Corbin. The word Corbin means it's dedicated to God.
They were saying, yeah, I've got a savings account over here of $5,000, but I can't use it to help you because it's dedicated to God. Now I'm still using it. It's still there, but I can't take from those funds and help you out because it's dedicated to the temple. It was a cheeky way to get out of genuinely caring for your parents. Isn't that bad? Yeah. Isn't that horrible? Yeah. Whoever tells his father and mother, whatever benefit you might have received from me, oh, sorry, that's a gift dedicated. Now that sounds super religious, right? Oh wow, you're dedicating your stuff to the temple, but this to me looks like tax loopholes. Like how in America we kind of avoid our taxes in particular ways. They just found a loophole of like, well, I'm going to just call it Corbin, therefore I don't have to help my parents out. You got to be coldhearted not to help your parents out and to do something like that. It's so sad.
The Pharisees tradition made them feel clean, but in reality, they were using their religion to sidestep the commands of God. Do you see that? They were using this tradition to get out of following God, and they somehow were able to do this shady deal, and they seemed to function as if and still think I'm a good religious person, and Jesus is calling them on it. It wasn't just a mistake, it revealed a deeper problem. Their hearts were far from God. Imagine someone in our culture who's like they say they're really passionate about the environment. They're committed to recycling. They meticulously sort their paper and their plastic cans every week and proudly avoid using single use plastic on the surface. They feel like they're doing their part to save the planet, but that same person regularly flies around in a gas guzzling, private jet leaves the lights on all day, takes long, wasteful showers.
They feel good about themselves because of the small visible act of recycling, which is a cultural rule that symbolizes environmental care, but they're ignoring the bigger, more impactful behaviors that contribute to sustainability. It's that kind of thing, right? It's that kind of behavior trying to, we call that virtue signaling is usually the term that we use, but if you peel it away, there's hypocrisy there. Now, look at this in verse six, he says, he does not have to honor his father in this way. You have nullified the word of God because of your tradition. This is really important. You've taken basically and you've deleted the word of God. You've nullified, you've voided the word of God because of your tradition. All these layers of traditions have been stacked up, stacked up where it's like, where is even God's word under all this? Can you find it? Is it in there? Listen, religious people, us religious people, Christians, we are good at doing this kind of thing of having all of this kind of these traditions and get wrapped up in traditions. Some churches, they get all wrapped up in what's the color of the carpet going to be? There was churches that got divided over mask mandates back in Covid, and it's just like, okay, it's like all this stuff we can get caught up in, but where's the actual thing? The heart of God that's revealed in his word.
So Jesus goes, he's not done with the Pharisees yet. By the way, we're still in scene one. This is scene one with the Pharisees. He says, hypocrites, okay, if you have a painting on your wall of Jesus with that nice little lamb around his shoulders and he's like meek and mild, this is not the image you get, right? It's important that when you understand who Jesus is, sometimes he talks like this. Do you understand that? Okay. The important thing to understand and see about that is that when Jesus left, he said, I'm sending another like me, the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and sometimes the Holy Spirit says to you and I, you're a hypocrite, and that's okay. That doesn't mean that God's unloving. It means that the most helpful thing that we need at that moment is to hear that kind of truth. So Jesus speaks to these Pharisees and he says, hypocrites, Isaiah prophesied correctly about you.
When he said, what did Isaiah say? This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is from me, but that's not it. They worship me in vain teaching as doctrines, human commands. They worship me in vain teaching as doctrines, humans commands. I want to look at this for just a second. This whole idea of human commands, human commands, Dr. Phil, Oprah, social media, influencers, self-help books offer advice. They often sound practical and wise, but this is the danger. We start treating human teaching as if they're biblical truth and they creep into how we as disciples care for one another. This is what I mean. We have in our culture, we have mass media where there's chicken soup for the soul. There's Oprah, there's podcasts that are out there. We are inundated with a lot of different messaging about how to do life, and then you have the Bible, and then we get into a setting like this and people start sharing their life in a little while.
We're going to eat together and hopefully there's some vulnerability sharing the things that are going on with sickness in your health or your search for a job or the things that are difficult in your life. Maybe some of you will share your stories, and that's a real gift. If anybody does that for you today over lunch, would you just say thank you to them? Because nobody told them they had to share a little bit of their life with you, and that's a very generous thing to do. It's called being vulnerable. You're opening yourself up. Now, I want to encourage you as a church that as that happens, make sure that you're not giving out human commands as doctrine. Doctrine is God's teaching, right? Doctrine is God's teaching, and if you take and give advice, it's important to say when you're giving advice, this might be an idea. I don't know if it's in the Bible or not. The best advice you can give is, Hey, I know the Bible says something about that, but maybe you don't know everything about the Bible. Maybe you're not sure, okay? It's really important when you're around church people and you're giving advice that you're not taking your advice, Oprah Chicken Soup for the soul. You're not taking it and turning it into doctrine. Do you know why?
When you're in this setting, this is for you to come into this place is a step of vulnerability. You're in a place where we prayed a minute ago, holy Spirit speak to us. In order for the Holy Spirit to speak to us, we have to open up our hearts that that's a step of vulnerability. Some of us have been hurt deeply and we're like, the last thing I want to do is open up my heart, because the last time I did that, I was wounded, but here you are, you come into a place where God's at work and then you are around other Christians, and if the other Christians around you start giving you advice and they start telling you, this is what it means to be a follower of Jesus, but really it's just a little bit of Oprah is a little bit of chicken for the soup, for the soul.
You're giving bad advice. You're pairing, it might not even be bad advice, but there's this spiritual, what we call spiritual OT that's paired with it and then start, people start feeling like, man, I can't do what that person said. Well, it was just Oprah's advice, but it wasn't the Holy Spirit's advice. But they start feeling like, well, I heard that at church, and so that must be from God. That's dangerous. It's very dangerous because we start messing with each other's relationship with God. We were talking about this a couple of weeks ago. There was in the early church, they had this problem with getting meat. If you lived in Rome and you wanted to have a steak, a T-bone steak, you would go to the marketplace, but the meat that was being sold in the marketplace before it sold there, it was offered up as a sacrifice to a peg in God. And so you had this moral dilemma as a Christian, can I buy a piece of meat that was offered to an idol? What do you think?
Some people said, no, and so what you ended up with is by being a follower of Jesus and deciding, I can't eat meat offered to an idol. I need to be a vegetarian. So half the church was vegetarians. The other half of the church looked at that peg, that pegan offering, and they said, you know what? That idol isn't anything. It's just make believe. There is no other God, but the one true God, and offering something to that idol really doesn't make any difference. So Paul writes, and they're judging each other. There's a conflict going on in the church over this issue. Should you be a vegetarian? Should you eat meat offered to an idol? Here's the interesting thing. Paul says, listen, everybody needs to stand or fall based off faith. He says, the person who's a vegetarian, they're weak in faith. They need to be accepted, they need to be loved, but they're not out of yet where their faith is strong enough to believe that that meat offered to a idol is meaningless.
So Paul would've eaten the meat, but he said, I'm not going to actually eat the meat in front of my brother who's a vegetarian because I don't want to mess with their relationship with God. I don't want to hurt and I don't want to cause them. Let's use a modern example. Let's say that we have a Christian who's very sensitive. Their conscience is really sensitive about meat offered to an idol, and after church we say, Hey, let's go out for Chinese food. But we get over there to the Chinese restaurant and there's the little Buddha and they're offering incense and stuff to the Buddha, and our friend that's come with us, they're like, that's idolatry. That's paganism. I don't want to have anything to do with that. Now, Paul would have no problem eating at the Chinese food restaurant, but he wouldn't do it because the last thing he wants to do is be a part of this person who's sensitive feeling separated from God.
You see, if I go and do the things that I'm at liberty to do, but it then causes my brother in Christ to do that same thing, but then after the fact, let's say they eat there at the Chinese food restaurant and they're like, oh, man, I feel farther away from God. I ate there from this Pegan restaurant. Paul says, listen, don't eat there. Don't eat there. So here's the thing, we do a lot. We're going to do life together. We're doing a lot of life together. We're going to have whole meal together. Your relationship is so important with God. It's so important that we're not judging each other. It's so important that we're not trying to influence it. If somebody's sensitive to someone, we're not saying, oh, come on, get over it. Get over. It just toughen up. That's not what Paul did. Paul honored the weakness of their conscience.
He said, it's okay to be a vegetarian. That's okay. That's okay. You're weak in the faith, but that's okay. I love you. I don't judge you. You're still loved by God. Okay, so Jesus tells these Pharisees, he says, listen, you guys are hypocrites because you're taking this tradition that came along years and years, millennium later, and you're saying this is what it means to be clean and accepted before God, and you're nullifying the word of God. You're turning a human command into a doctrine, and that's wrong. Now, one of the obvious things from this is, man, it would be good to know what does God say? And he doesn't say, because we all listen to each other. We listen to Oprah, we listen to Dr. Phil, we listen to podcasts, we read books, and you got to be able to know, Hey, is this line up with what the Bible says or does it disagree with what the Bible says?
Some of the things you might hear is, have you ever heard people say, Hey, you need to cut that person out of your life. They're toxic. That's a common piece of advice. It's rooted in a cultural obsession with self protection, but it might ignore the ideas of forgiveness, reconciliation bearing with one another in love. It's more nuanced than just this kind of like, oh, cut those people out of your life. No, there's this Holy Spirit filled Holy Spirit led way of relating to other people. How about this one? You can't love others until you first love yourself, and while self-care has its place, scripture emphasizes loving God and others is the greatest command. It seems like our problem as humans is that we love ourselves too much. Now, there's a difference between loving yourself too much, putting yourself first and your conception of self, your self-identity.
Maybe that needs to be worked on some more. I think we all need to have the Holy Spirit really give us truth so we understand who we are, but we're all pretty in love with ourselves. I mean, we like ourselves a lot. I can see you guys all dressed up nice. You are not slobs. You look great, right? The Bible says, Hey, we need to love others more than ourselves. Or you watch any Disney movie, you hear this advice, follow your heart. It will guide you. Well, the Bible warns in Jeremiah says, are that our hearts are deceitful and God calls us to follow him and not our hearts, not our own feelings. So I want to keep encouraging you as followers of Jesus, that you're not making, that we are not making, that I'm not making the mistake of the Pharisees by just leaning into traditions, whether it's a Christian tradition, a cultural tradition.
What we want to lean into is what does the Bible say? What did Jesus teach? That's what it means to follow. Jesus is like knowing him, knowing his word, right? Amen. Okay, let's go to scene two. The crowds, the crowds, verses 10 and 11. Jesus calls the crowds together and he calls them to listen and to understand, listen and understand. He says, it's not what goes into your mouth. It defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth, now we're going back to handwashing, okay? We're going back to handwashing, and you've got the disciples who didn't wash their hands and they're, they're eating the food and the problem, the mistake that is going on is that they're thinking because they wash their hands, they are clean, and Jesus says, look, it's not about what goes into the mouth, that defiles what comes out of your mouth, that defiles a person.
That's it. That's what he teaches the crowd. Okay? Now, let's go to scene three verses 12 through 14, the disciples. So we go from the crowd. So we have Pharisees, we have the crowd. Now we have the disciples. The disciples came up and they said, do you know? Did you know, you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said, they're all ticked off. I don't know what the motivation was, whether the disciples are like, man, you can't isolate and get the religious elites ticked off. We're going to have a PR problem. But they bring this to Jesus, and here is Jesus's response. He says, every plant that my heavenly Father didn't plant will be uprooted remind you of some of kind of the parables that he's been teaching. And he's like, look it. He's basically saying, look, my father didn't plant the Pharisees. They're not my plant. They're self manmade religious characters in the story, but they're not from the father. Now, there are Pharisees who turn to Jesus and they become plants planted by the Father, but Jesus is helping his disciples look around the room and go, wait, those aren't, those aren't on my team. Those guys aren't on my father's team.
Them being upset is not a problem to me. That's not my crowd. Does that make sense? Yes. Alright, let's keep going. One more verse. Leave them alone. Here's the deal. They are blind guides and if a blind guide, and if the blind guide the blind, both will fall into a pit. He just is basically saying they're leading. They're leading, but they're blind. And you got to love his humor here. Think of the image of a blind person leading a crowd. That's not a great strategy, right? But Jesus is saying, this group of Pharisees, they're misguided. They're blind leading the blind. Okay, let's go to the fourth and final scene with Peter. Peter said, explain this parable to us. Help us understand what does this mean? And Jesus says, do you still lack understanding in this question? Again, this is one of those times where it seems like Jesus is being kind of harsh, but you got to appreciate from Jesus just his expectation.
Do you lack understanding? He's like, don't you get it? There is this, as we read through Matthew and Luke and through the gospels, it seems pretty clear that Jesus expects his followers to be mentally engaged. And I don't know what you do to stay mentally sharp and to be tracking with what's going on, but Jesus' expectations for his followers were high. Now, he recruited a bunch of simple fishermen. He didn't recruit the intellectuals of the day. He recruited fishermen, but the way he interacted with his disciples was this expectation that you're tracking, that you're getting it. Now, he gives his Holy Spirit and he talks about this in John, I'm sending my spirit and he's going to guide you into the truth. So you may feel like, look, I don't have a strong iq. I didn't do well in school. Hey, I'm one of those guys.
I didn't do well in school either. But here's the crazy thing, the spirit of God, if you're a follower of Jesus, the Spirit, the spirit of God, not like some fluffy Casper the ghost, but the spirit of God lives in you and can work in the midst of your brain cells and leads you in how to think. And so here, can I get an amen for that? Amen. Amen. Thank you. Yes, because we can be wise. We can be as simple people made wise by God, and we don't have to have some great pedigree, but the Holy Spirit and Jesus expects that you are learning and that you're getting it and you're tracking now, he says, don't you understand? Do you still lack understanding? Verse 17, do you realize that whatever goes into the mouth, passes into the stomach and it's eliminated? This is the digestive track.
How would they know that? Well, they've butchered animals. They maybe seen a dead body. They've seen kind of open it up and it's like, wow, there's all these systems in here and food is eliminated, right? You go to the bathroom and you're done with it. That's how food works because he's tapping into this idea that it's not what goes into your mouth that defiles you, it's what comes out of you. And so he says in verse 18, but what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart, and this defiles a person. Here's some examples from the heart. Come evil thoughts, murders, adultery, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies and slander. These things that make life horrible, that make people horrible. I mean, some of you have been hurt by the evil thoughts of others, the murderous intent of others, adultery, sexual immorality, theft. I mean anybody had anything stolen before? Okay, yeah, yeah. Testimonies. Anybody ever gossiped about you? Yeah. Okay. Yep. Slander. You ever been slandered? Somebody says, spreads a false report about you. He says all that stuff. It comes from the heart. It doesn't come from not washing your hands right before your meal. Jesus is like, your spiritual elites are blind leading you blind. I've come to redeem your heart. That's what we're after, we're after what's going on in the core of who we are.
These are the things. These are the things that defile Baltimore. These are the things that defile a person. These are the things that defile a family. But eating and with unwashed hands does not defile a person. Don't tell the C, DC what Jesus said now, but he's talking about that idea of closeness. He's talking about this idea of closeness being accepted before God. And you see that. He's saying, look, listen. How do you treat your parents? How do you treat your parents? How are you engaging with your words? How are you dealing with your community? Those things flow from the heart. Look, if the things that's coming out of your mouth or wicked, then you need a heart transplant. And the amazing thing is that Jesus came to deal with hearts. You see, God's already been working before Jesus came on the scene. We go back to Moses and the commands, the problem with Moses' commands is their external.
But the beautiful thing for us as followers of Jesus is, and what we celebrate when we take that cup, when we drink that cup, we say, this is the cup of the new covenant. The new covenant is literally a contract between heaven and you, that God is going to work in you no longer writing on a tablet of stone that you've got to memorize the 10 Commandments. But literally God has permission. God can now go to work inside of you and I to transform us, to take us from being, having these evil hearts, to having hearts that are tender and soft. And so Jesus here is pleading with his. Again, let's go back. Let's not hang out with the blind. Let's not hang out with the blind. Let's be with Jesus. Let's be with Jesus and let him deal with our hearts. Amen. Lord, we thank you for your word this morning. We're so grateful that you instruct us, that you teach us that you care, not about the external washing of hands, but the more important stuff of what's going on in our hearts. And God, we give you permission like Lord, go to work in us. Help us Lord to obey you. Help us to obey you. God, thank you for loving us enough that you work in us. God forgive us, cleanse us, and work in us by Your spirit. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.