God's Faithfulness (Samson) 3

Morning. The question I want to start out with is, what is the secret to success? This is an important question because it really determines how we're going to live and how we answer that question. And well, it's the key question of our texts at some level. It's a question that our text brings up. And anytime I can find a question like that and Google it, it always brings such fantastic reward. So here's what I found from our culture, our quotes from folks in our society. Before everything else, getting ready is the secret to success. The secret of success is consistency of purpose. The secret of success is hidden in your daily habits. There's a real truth to these. The secret of success is making your vocation your vacation. Now that one's cute. You see what he did there? That's Mark Twain. The secret to success is to start from scratch and keep on scratching. The secret of success in life is for man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes. The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you. Now that's from Tony Robbins. Let me just give you a little insight here. What he's selling, your neighbor's buying. That's the way we naturally think. Next, people become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves, they have the first secret to success. And then finally, the cynic. There's no secret about success. Did you ever know a successful man who didn't talk to you about it? Now, the one thing all of these figures, these little anecdotes have in common is it has to do with us, our strength, our competence. And let me just say, it is remarkable that God has made us in His image, that we are made with amazing ability to do such things like brain surgery. We can know so much and do much, but it's really sad that we take all those good gifts, and you see the weakness of man, and that we always use them for self-serving purposes. The question, what is the secret to success that drives our story? Really, Samson is strong. What is the secret to your strength, Samson? Spoiler alert, the secret to his strength is this. God is with him. God is for him. That's the secret to any Christian's success. That is the secret to anyone who actually fulfills God's call in their life. They trust that God is with them. God is for them. Now, those quotes before, we can look down on them and see like there's a, there's a, there's a misconstrued, there's a, there's an idea here that's wrong because it's, it's about us. But that's our natural way of thinking. That is the default position for most. And so this morning, God is calling us out from living in our own competence, in our own strength. And we're gonna see, God is powerful. And He is able to fulfill His purpose. The main point of our passage this morning is this. God sets us apart for His purpose, and His purpose does not fail. God sets us apart for His purpose, and His purpose does not fail. The main question we should be asking, are we aligned with God's purpose? What's stunning about Samson is that he is set apart for God's purpose. He pretty much does everything opposed to God's purpose, and yet God still fulfills what he decides he's going to do. We should be asking, how can we not be like that? How can we align ourselves with God's purpose? We're looking at Judges 16. If you're using a pew Bible, that's page 215. If you don't have a Bible, please take that home with you. We first see verses one to three, there's kind of this shorter story. And it seems like it's like a bonus story here, because if you look at chapter 15, verse 20, we see what is normally the conclusion for a judge's life. And he judged Israel for 20 years in the days of the Philistines. It seems that there should be a nice closing there with how Samson ends, but we have a, we continue. In this very short story of how Samson, after his wife is murdered because of his own sin, he now goes and, as we saw before, he saw a woman of the Philistines in Timnah. He demanded her. Now we see him being controlled by his eyes again, verse one. And there he saw a prostitute. Now, he goes to Gaza. This is on the southern coastal border of Judah. Not quite the most south, but very south. Judah had not driven out the Canaanites. The Philistines, another foreign people, they've actually, they're a nautical people. They took up the coastline, naturally. And Samson, The man set apart by God, given great power by God, he should have already learned his mistake from what he did before in Timnah. He decides it looks like to go comfort himself with the loss of his wife by going in line with a prostitute. That's startling. A man who has been set apart by God, he's now lying with a, not just a Philistine, not just a Canaanite, not just a one who does not fear the one true God. but someone who's paid for sex. It's also interesting, the Gazites, they've heard of Samson, and so they come up with a plot. All right, at midnight, not at midnight, we're gonna lie in wait all night, and then we're gonna jump on him when he wakes. So they've heard of him, they know he's dangerous, but apparently they haven't heard enough, because they should know that's just not gonna work. So it's interesting, we don't know if Samson heard about their plot, we don't know why he gets up at midnight. We just know this guy gets up at midnight, takes the city gate, and carries it up a hill. Alright, the city gate, that's the most important structure of a city. The wall is the strength, right? The wall, that's the strong part of the city. But the gate, that's the weak link in the wall. That's where you go in and out. And so it's most important that your gate is as strong as possible because that's where you're most vulnerable. So Samson picks up the pillars, the crossbar, and the gates, I assume he puts on his back, I'm assuming a picture of a squat, and then he just walks it up a hill. Now, I was once going down Humpback, and I watched a wrestling team carrying dumbbell plates up, and I thought, what in the world? But this guy, he squatted a whole city gate, and he's walking up the mountain. Because God is with him, God is for him. They are left somewhat embarrassed. Think about it. Every morning they wake up and they see their gate up on the hill. That's supposed to be their strength, their security. In the next morning, they wake up with it staring back at them. Now, let's back up and let's look at this. Very discouraging aspect of his life. We see he's still got us there with him, but the whole narrative wakes up with him getting himself in trouble, putting himself in a place where he's not supposed to be. He is with the Philistines, and he's lying with a prostitute. He's supposed to be God's instrument to save Israel from the Philistines, but here he is again, intimately lying with them. Now, this is what we call gross sin. Sex has been designed by God to bring a husband and a wife into an intimate, personal union. It is a wonderful gift that has a very specific purpose. But here he's decided he's going to go pay a woman for his own pleasure. We call it gross, not because we look at it and we think, oh, that's gross. It's not about how we feel about it. It's the fact that it's obvious. Even the non-Christian, even the secular would say, there's something wrong with this. This is not the way it's supposed to be. You see, we need to have a thick understanding of sin. We need to have a strong understanding of what sin is, because the more we understand sin, the more we cry out for a Savior. The more we understand how sin works, and how deep our sin goes, the more we rejoice that we have a Savior. There's hidden sin. There's sins of commission. There's sin of omission. Here's my main concern. If your understanding of sin is limited to what you see other people do that you would never do, you're probably in danger of being a false Christian. If your understanding of sin is limited to only those things that you see other people do that you would never do, that is a dangerous, dangerous view of sin. Because you're thinking, you don't need a Savior. This is gross sin, but I want to make it very clear, this is not the most important sin that we see. Samson is not delighting in God. That's the most dangerous sin. He is not rejoicing in, glorifying in, rejoicing in the one God who has called him and saved him. That's what's so dangerous about Samson. That's what's most dangerous about us. As we move on to the main story here, there's four women in Samson's story. His mother, who is barren, who has promised a child, she's unnamed. His wife in Timnah, she's unnamed. The prostitute, she's unnamed. But now we come to Delilah, verse four, in the Valley of Sorrow. Now, the way I think the story is best ordered is, as we look at it, there's different testings. This is one of the themes in Judges. God is testing Israel. Israel is testing God. And we see that there's different people being tested. And the first test is Delilah. Delilah is tested. Samson loves her. He has committed himself to her. This is not just a simple feeling. He cares for her greatly. And the Philistines use that His weakness is women. They use that against him. And the lords, there's five Philistine lords, they come up to her and they say, if you'll seduce him, we'll give you 55 pieces of silver, 1,100 each. Now, we don't know exactly how to equate what that will look like in today's currency, but that is a fortune that I'm pretty sure her grandchildren could not spend. This is a great wealth promise. And so she is being tempted to love money, to betray this man who loves her. And if you notice here, we need you to find out what his secret is. See where his great strength lies. There's something so unusual about this guy who can carry a city gate up a hill. There's got to be a secret there. It's unusual. It's obvious. Can you find it? Next we see that she tests Samson. Samson is tested. There's three different attempts at first. This is verses six through 14. And I want you to see in these three attempts that our narrator is a very good storyteller. They all have key elements that repeat. Notice verse six, Delilah said to Samson. Verse 10, then Delilah said to Samson. Verse 13, then Delilah said to Samson. Each one catching her eye, she's still persevering and continuing on in her pursuit to know what his secret is because she wants that money. Notice he always responds with some kind of a lie that's mischievous. Samson said, if you buy me with seven fresh bowstrings, and then he said, if you buy me with new ropes, and then he says, if you'll put my hair in a weave. This is getting odd. Then every time she actively betrays him, and then she cries out, notice verse 9, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. Verse 12, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. Verse 14, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. This is good storytelling. the continued repetition, you start thinking, Samson, have you figured anything out yet? If you look at this first one, verses 6 to 9, bind me with fresh bow strings. These are made out of cartilage, and it's fresh. Fresh cartilage from a carcass. What's wrong with that? He's a Nazarite. He has been called to be a Nazirite from early on, and we saw this whenever he was in Timnah. Over and over again, he's touching the carcass, over and over again, he's pursuing the fruit of the vine. He is completely, he's actually telling her to do something, and God said, do not do this. The second one, Timnah 12, we've already tried new ropes. The folks who tried to capture him in chapter 15, they bound him with new ropes, and they just fell off of him, and the Spirit came upon him. And then 13 to 14 is a scary one. Not only is it that when is he going to learn his lesson, he starts involving his hair, which we know is going to be the real secret. He's getting dangerously close to what he at least understands to be the secret. She's after the knowledge. He keeps playing games with her. And we kind of are left, what in the world is he doing? Why does he keep playing this game? Remember back in Timnah, he likes giving riddles. He likes putting himself in very difficult situations. He seems to like to show off his strength. What I think we see here is a man who is completely controlled by self-love. He's self-consumed. We see self-love all over Judges. Delilah, it appears in the form of greed. Abimelech, anger. Gideon, abuse. Samson, it's lust. For whatever reason, he loves this woman, and he keeps playing this game. And he kind of wants to say, dude, you got to get out of there. She's trying to destroy you, but yet you're playing around like you're in control. His self-love has become so self-deceiving, it's scary. Then we have the fourth attempt. And this is where God is tested. Verse 15. She said to them, she said to Samson, how can you say I love you when your heart is not with me? This particular episode has the same elements but a lot more detail. It's the key turning point of the story of Samson. Now we need to recall, if we go back to chapter 14, we do need to see that there's a pattern in his life and he never learns his lesson And in 1416, Samson's wife wept over him because he would not tell her the answer to the riddle. She says to him, you only hate me, you do not love me, you've put a riddle to my people and you've not told me what it is. And he said to her, but I have not told my father and my mother, and shall I tell you? Verse 17, she wept. Before him, the seven days that their feast lasted on the seventh day, he told her, because she pressed him hard. Look at verse 16 of chapter 16. And when she pressed him hard, her words day after day, and urged him, his soul was vexed to death. The first time he answered his wife who pressed him hard, it led to her dying and the whole city being burned up, and now he's not learned his lesson. I want you to notice also, heart is mentioned four times in this passage. Verse 15, when your heart is not with me. Verse 17, and he told her all his heart. Verse 18, Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart. And then, come again, for he told me all his heart. Now we usually think of heart like in Valentine's Day, like, hey, I heart you. That's not how the Bible uses hearts. It's your seed of thought and commitment. It's your desires. It's your volition. He had committed himself fully to her in a way that's completely betraying God. How can you say you love me when you won't tell me? what your relation with God is like. The real secret to your success. Notice here, he's playing games. She says, you're mocking me. He is. He's just entertaining himself. But what he's really doing is he's playing games with God's plan and promise. He's playing the fool. Verse 16, she presses hard. She nags him so long that he finally vexed to the point where he says, I can't handle this anymore. Now, I want to pause here. It's very interesting that when we're walking in sin, we're very easily frustrated. When you're walking with God, you're rarely frustrated. When you're committed to living in sin and playing around with God and playing in sin, it's just so easy to be frustrated. But when you're walking with God, you're usually marked by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Samson appears to have none of these. He's a man who lacks any kind of self-control. What is, I see, he demands and takes. He abandons God. Let's look at verse 17. And he told her all this hard. And he said to her, now this is the first time we actually see Samson having real self-awareness. A razor has never come upon my head. For I've been a Nazarite to God from my mother's womb. If my head is shaved from my strength, then my strength will leave me. And I should become weak and be like any other man. Now there's three commands of being a Nazarite. No fruit of the vine, no touching of a dead carcass, and his hair not being cut. Now the other two he's ignored almost completely. Why this one? Why the hair? Is this kind of like a three strikes and you're out concept? Is the hair more important? We really don't know. He seems to see that it's bound up in his hair, but I want to make it very clear, the secret to his strength is again, the Lord is with him, the Lord is for him. The hair is somehow connected. God has used his hair to be the way in which he reveals that. But his real strength is from the Lord. Again, we see him just blind. His love for himself, his, his overconfidence leads him to just foolishness. Then Delilah begins the plot. She goes to the Philistines, come again. He's told me his heart. She's confident. She then convinces him to, to sleep on her lap. He's in a very vulnerable position. She has his hair cut off. And then she cries out, as before, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. Verse 20. He awoke from his sleep and he said, I will go out as at other times and shake myself free. Now, I'm really cheap. I like to wait as long as possible for a haircut. There's times I've gone about nine months, and then when you get that nine months kind of just weave and you get it cut, you wake up the next morning thinking, wow, something's missing. Like when you get that much haircut off. Let's just pretend this dude's 20 years old, He's had 20 years of hair, and he doesn't realize it's gone. He just jumps up and says, at other times, I'm going to go. He doesn't actually realize there's something different. That seems odd to me. His seven marks are shaved off. He gets up to go fight, and then the narrator tells us something very important, verse 20. Something Samson does not know, but is essential for what we see. He did not know that the Lord had left him. He goes out and he's fighting in his own strength, not with the Lord. We need to camp out here for a moment because Samson is a picture of Israel. Samson, his mother could not have children. God brought Samson the child through a promise, just like Israel was born through a promise to Abraham and Sarah. Just as Israel was given clear commandments on what it means to now be God's set-apart people, He is given clear commandments. The Nazarite vow. And just like Israel completely ignores those commandments, He completely ignores His vow. And what makes Israel so special is the simple truth that God is with them and God is for them. He says as much in Deuteronomy 7. If you remember that chapter, God says, I did not choose you because you were many. Talking to the nation of Israel. I didn't choose you because you were more powerful. I loved you because I loved you. It was God's power of love. It's the fact that God says I'm going to be with you is what makes Israel special. It's the fact that God says I'm with you that makes Samson anyway strong. And now we see that the, because of his continued forsaking God, God leaves him to suffer the consequences for his sin. Verse 21. And the Philistines seized him, And they gouged out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with bronze shackles, and he ground at the mill in the prison. This proud man, who always pursued what his eyes saw, is left blind like a beast of burden. The proud has been brought low. God has disciplined the one he loves. I don't want you to see something also. There's great consequence for his continued practice of sin and forsaking God and everything he said. But then verse 22, God's Word always has a promise. The hair of his head began to grow back. After he'd been shaved. We see there a little glimpse. We see there the slightest hope. God is not done. Before we move on and see what happens next, I want to give us two things. First, a warning. Let's see how dangerous sin is. A warning. We must pause and realize when we start getting wrapped up in sin, when we start thinking we can make our own decisions better than what God says, it leads to a blindness. It leads to a self-deception. It leads to self-destruction. destroying other relationships. This is what Samson has done with his own life when he takes control of it. Then we see hope. It's the second thing. How good God is. God has been so patient all these years, from Timnah to the prostitute, and now Delilah. He just now disciplines him in a way that is destructive. He can't see. But God's not finished. We can see what Paul says in 2nd Timothy 2.13, a trustworthy saying. If we are faithless, He remains faithful. If we are faithless, He remains faithful. The last section is daggone tested. This is the God of the Philistines. Actually, it's a Canaanite God that the Philistines have adopted. The Lord The Lord's, the five lords of the Philistines, they plotted his demise. I want you to see something. They rejoice and they said, our God has given Samson, our enemy, into our hand. And they said, it's important we recognize the repetition, verse 24, our God has given our enemy into our hand, the ravager of our country who has killed many of us. The Philistines are singing this about a false god for this brief victory. This is sad and scary because Israel was supposed to be singing this song. Israel is the one who has been oppressed by the Philistines for 20 years. They're the ones who are supposed to be singing the song our God has given us. Our God has given our enemy into our hands. But here we see the song that's supposed to be reserved for the one true God who gives true salvation. The pagan is singing it. Over Samson. They bring him out to have a good laugh. They've been drinking. They've gotten married. And notice there, verse 25, they called out Samson so he could entertain them. Now, he's not a jester. He's not juggling. He's sitting there, not seeing anything that's going on, knowing that they're all looking at Him, mocking, deriding. He's just the entertainment in that they all mock Him. They're laughing at Him. He can hear what they're saying. He can hear the laughter. He who was seeking to be entertained with the different jokes and riddles and the mocking of Delilah, he is now the entertainment for the Philistines. Verse 26, Samson said to the young man who had been leading him, where are the pillars? And our narrator, again, he gives us something that's very important. All the lords of the Philistines were there. All the chiefs, all the leaders. And there were about 3,000 men and women looking upon Samson to be entertained. There's a lot of people here, and very important people. And then finally, we see Samson pray. This is only his second prayer. The first prayer was when he was exhausted after killing 1,000 with the jawbone of a donkey. That's the end of chapter 15. And that prayer was, God, how is it that you're gonna deliver me from all those Philistines and you're gonna let me die of thirst? Here he calls out again. Oh Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once to avenge me for my two eyes. He looks up to God and he asks for redemption. He asked that God would give him one more force of strength. And so he puts his hands on the pillars. The pillars would hold up this entire area. And his last words, let me die with the Philistines. And then he tore down the entire structure. And interestingly, our author lets us see, in his death, he killed more Philistines than he did in his life. We need to remember something. Chapter 14, verse 4, the Lord was seeking an opportunity for the Philistines. God was seeking to deliver Israel from these people, these lords who are oppressing His one holy nation, and this is it. It's amazing when you think of how Samson has really seemed to hinder God's plan all along, but at the end of the day, God's plan still succeeds. in his death after becoming blinded and entrapped like a beast of burden, God still accomplishes his plan that through Samson, he overcomes the Philistines. This shows how powerful God is. There are three main takeaways I want us to see from the story. First, the story is a great warning to us. Samson stands as a representative of Israel. He was called out. He was instructed. And he ignored the holy status and the holy commands of God his entire life, and yet God remained faithful. Samson is called out. He's set apart. That's what makes him so significant. He ignores all of God's commands, but yet God still remains committed to him. So I hope you see, Samson is like Israel. He's a leader of Israel who's just like them. And the most important thing we can actually walk away with this morning, one of the most important things, is this. He's not just like Israel. He's just like us. Samson's just like us. We've been set apart. We've been called. We've been empowered in a way that's actually greater than Samson. We don't have his physical strength, but the Holy Spirit actually resides within us so that we can resist sin, something Samson could not do. We're given clear instruction. And how much, like Samson, all the day disregard God, how he's called us out of darkness, how he's called us into light, and how he's given us such rich instructions to obey. Samson's controlled by his eyes. He's controlled by his sinful desires. Whatever he likes, he takes. That's not the way of the Christian. If you're not denying yourself as Jesus commanded, you're probably too much like Samson. Repent. Jesus our Savior tells us it's better for us to take our eye out than to face the destruction that sin will cause. It's better to be physically blind than to let your eyes continue to control you in a way that gets you constantly into sin. Young men, old men, boys and girls, be deathly afraid of what you let your eyes see. It's shaping you. What you let yourself be entertained by, it's changing your lives. It's directing what you delight in. Pornography, delighting in images of men and women, is not only going to corrupt how you see your fellow sisters and brothers, it's going to corrupt the way you see God. Matthew 5, 8. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Protect your eyes. Protect your heart, so that you can delight in and rejoice in the one true God, who is worthy of all praise. Don't settle for less. It's amazing. We do what we desire. We need to start thinking about ourselves rightly in light of God's Word. We need to stop letting our pride swell up in us that leads us to blindness. One of the things we really need is exhortation. A practical way to protect yourself is to put yourself under regular exhortation, like right now. The more you can involve yourself in other Christian meetings, Bible studies, prayer groups, the more we're actually with each other and not just hanging out watching games, but spending time together, exhorting, encouraging, challenging, the more faithful we'll be. We need to realize we need that kind of exhortation. If you don't think you need that exhortation, you need to be part of the people who are exhorting others. We really are all so prone to sin. We need that kind of constant encouragement and challenge. So first, a warning. Second, praise God. Praise God that He is powerful and faithful to save. Our own sin does not hinder God. He's omnipotent. And if you want a definition of omnipotent, here it is. It's simple. God can do what He wants to do. God can do what He wants to do. When He commits Himself to judging 3,000 Philistines, He's going to judge those 3,000 Philistines. When God commits Himself to saving the murderer, the rapist, God saves that murderer rapist by sending His own Son to die for even those kinds of sins. Yes, even those kinds of sins. The most important thing we can see and we can praise God is that He's with us. He's for us. And the Savior we have is so much better than Samson. Praise God, our Savior is better than Samson. Samson appears to disobey in every step of the way. Jesus was perfect. He obeyed God at all times in every way. Samson's life is marked by a self-love. Jesus' life is marked by a love for God and his disciples. Samson is easily deceived and controlled by sinful impulse. He's a fool. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. He's bound to the Father. He has fortitude. Samson sought vengeance for the sins done against him. He wanted the people punished who sinned against him. Jesus Christ came to take on the punishment those who sinned against him deserve. He came to actually take the punishment we deserve upon himself so that we would not be punished. Rejoice. Say hallelujah, what a Savior, what a friend. He saves me, he helps me, he keeps me, he loves me. If you're not a Christian this morning, if you're like me, there's a part of you that says, I wish God would just show me the secret of success and it would look like a list. I love lists. I love a good list that I get to make because that means I'm in control of it. And when I make a to-do list, I like to put menial tasks on it, like find my keys, put the key in the ignition. You know, I start my day, look how successful I am today. That's my self-righteousness. I want to feel like I'm in control, and I have power, and I can do something. God doesn't give us a list like that, but God actually does give us a list. You can look at the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments, they're not there for you to say, how hard can I work to do all these things? No, they're there to say, wow, I can see I'm full of lust, anger, greed, deception. Well, when I look at the law of God, I just leave frustrated that that does not describe me. That is the Ten Commandments in a way that I don't do those things. No, it reveals that I do all those things God says not to do. And then I get frustrated that there's nothing I can do to stop that in my own strength. And that's the sweet spot. That's where God wants us, so that we then cry out, I am a sinner in need of a Savior. Because unless you actually get to that spot where you realize there's nothing you can do, you're not going to cry out for a Savior. So if you want to know what God wants you to do, Confess you're a sinner and Jesus Christ is the only Savior. Confess, I am a sinner. I cannot control this lust. I cannot control this anger. I cannot control this greed. I cannot control this lying. I need help. I need saving. And blessed be the Lord Jesus Christ who delivers me from this body of sin. We're to be warned. We're to praise God that He is the Savior. And third, we are to remember that we are set apart for a holy purpose. The first thing about Samson is he's set apart for a mission, and then he completely ignores the mission. God does it anyway. But what would the story look like if Samson actually obeyed God? What would it look like if Samson actually aligned himself in a way that said, God, I want you to use me. I'm going to obey you. What's amazing, God is faithful to His ways, but He never blesses disobedience. That's why Samson dies, a blind man, like and with the Philistines. Church, we're set apart. We're not set apart just to kind of say, all right, now I'm free for sin. I don't have to worry about guilt. No, we're set apart for a purpose. We're to be light to the nations. We're to be light to our neighbors. We're declaring the truth of God in the way we talk and the way we act. I ask, what is our energy devoted to? The question isn't, am I on mission? The question is this, what mission am I on? Is it my own self-pleasure? Is it my own self-described mission? Or am I actually aligning myself with the commands and the mission of God in a way that He's going to bless my obedience so that I can see His glory? See, a successful church is just this. One who trusts His promises. One who obeys His commands. That's what it means to be successful. To trust His promises, that He's with us, He's for us, that He's coming again to obey His commands, to bear each other's burdens, and to proclaim the gospel to the lost. Submit to what His Word says. Rely on His strength. Exalt Christ so that He will draw us closer to Himself. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank You for Your Word in that it shows us, here in the story of Samson, that despite everything we're seeing with our own eyes, You are at work in all things. You are going to bring about a great work of redemption. You are always working even in and through and over against our sin. Our sin does not hinder you. We praise you for that. We praise you that you saved us even while we were sinners. And I pray that now you'll be drawing new believers to yourself. I pray that even now you'll be drawing us, the church, to be united together so that we will glorify you. But we thank you that you call the people to be set apart. You give us your good words to trust and obey. We thank you that you've given us your Holy Spirit so that we can rely upon you and glorify you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.