Show Notes
Matthew 10:34-37
Pastor Stephen Lauer
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Let's take the Lord's help together in prayer.
[00:00:06] O God, your Word is eternal.
[00:00:08] Jesus tells us that heaven and earth may pass away, but his words will not pass away.
[00:00:15] We find in this great comfort, but we find in this, in your Word, O God, something sure and certain that we can turn to in every time of need in our lives.
[00:00:28] And we always find that which we need.
[00:00:33] And our experience then teaches us, O God, what your Word confirms, that your Word gives us life, that it's like a light shining in our pathway as we go through life, and it shows us the way that we should go to please you.
[00:00:54] We thank you that as your word leads us to the Lord Jesus Christ and to faith in him, there we find forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
[00:01:06] And we thank you that as the Bible, your Word leads us to the words, the commands of our King Jesus, we find how we ought to live.
[00:01:19] We confess though, O God, that the sin that remains in us, the weakness of our minds and hearts, these things make it hard for us sometimes to understand.
[00:01:33] Jesus commands what is it that he is calling us to?
[00:01:37] And often when we come to understand them, we have trouble obeying them.
[00:01:43] We know they're good for us, but our sinful hearts are stubborn.
[00:01:48] So we ask, O God, that by your spirit you would help us melt away the hardness of our hearts, root out the sin that is there that tries to confuse us and keep us from you.
[00:02:03] Help us to see not only Jesus commands, but help us to see Jesus, our Savior and our King, and that we might be drawn to him in love and out of love and thanksgiving to him.
[00:02:17] Be ready to serve you.
[00:02:20] Be gracious to us and bless us by your word we ask in Jesus name, Amen.
[00:02:28] And we turn to our sermon text from Matthew 10. We're going to read Matthew 10:34, 37 continuing our walk through Jesus instructions to the apostles as he sends them out on the Gospel mission.
[00:02:51] We come now to this section about bringing not peace but a sword.
[00:02:57] Hear God's word then, beginning in verse 34 of Matthew 10 do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth.
[00:03:08] I have not come to bring peace but a sword, for I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter in law against her mother in law.
[00:03:25] And a person's enemies will be those of his own household.
[00:03:32] Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
[00:03:43] Thus far, God's word, please be Seated.
[00:03:54] Well, if there's a group of men lined up in a field and they're holding swords in their hands, what's about to happen?
[00:04:10] It's a battle.
[00:04:12] There's about to be a battle.
[00:04:17] It's warfare. These are soldiers armed and ready for battle, ready to fight, ready to take those swords and dispatch the enemy. In other words, kill the enemy soldiers and take and conquer and do whatever it is that they were sent to do there by their king.
[00:04:36] Jesus here in these verses, says that he came to bring a sword.
[00:04:44] In other words, Jesus is telling us, telling the disciples and us, like a warrior who comes prepared for battle.
[00:04:53] He came with a sword to bring war.
[00:05:01] That's the heart of this passage. Jesus is warning us, telling us, assuring us, promising us that he came to fight a battle.
[00:05:10] And the image he uses to tell us that is that he came with a sword. And that's our theme. Jesus brings a sword.
[00:05:17] We'll look at three things just kind of walking through the passage. A sword and peace.
[00:05:24] War and peace would have had more of a ring to it, but a sword and peace.
[00:05:29] A sword in the family is the second point. And then thirdly, a sword and love. A sword and peace. A sword in the family and a sword and love.
[00:05:43] Jesus says, do not think that I came to bring peace on earth.
[00:05:48] This is, of course, meant to be jarring. Jesus is trying to shock us. You know, like you grab a person by the shoulders and shake them and say, hey, you need to get this through your head.
[00:06:00] This is serious. I'm not kidding around.
[00:06:05] We tend to think of Jesus as being the one who brings peace. Isaiah, chapter nine. There's those verses we love to read at Christmas time about the child who is to be born to us, the Son who is given. And one of his titles is that he is the prince of peace.
[00:06:23] Surely Jesus, the Messiah, that son who was born that Isaiah foretold, surely he came to bring peace. He's the king, the prince or ruler of peace.
[00:06:35] And of course, when he was born, the angels who appeared to the shepherds glorified God and praised him, saying, glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace among men, with whom he that is with whom God is well pleased. So surely, Jesus, you came to bring peace.
[00:07:00] Surely your purpose was to bring peace for everybody everywhere on earth.
[00:07:09] Now, if you think about Jesus teaching, just take for example, the Sermon on the Mount, and you think through the things that he teaches on the Sermon on the Mount, you could reasonably even conjecture, think that, boy. If everybody everywhere who heard Jesus preaching in the Sermon on the Mount. If every single person were to hear it and repent and turn to Jesus and follow what Jesus says on the Sermon on the Mount, then we would probably have peace.
[00:07:41] That's a reasonable inference. I think it's reasonable to read Jesus preaching there and think with everybody followed this, we would have peace on earth.
[00:07:53] If these are the things that are going through your mind as you think about Jesus in peace, there's something reasonable there. But Jesus wants to grab you, as it were, by the shoulders and say, I didn't come to bring peace. I came to bring a sword.
[00:08:10] The fact is that not everyone who hears Jesus preaching repents and believes.
[00:08:19] Not everyone in Jesus own day. Matter of fact, most of the Jews who heard Jesus preaching did not repent and turn to him and become his disciples.
[00:08:30] You might say Jesus came preaching peace, forgiveness of sins, at peace with God. And most people rejected it.
[00:08:38] Yes, he came bringing peace, but people would not accept it.
[00:08:45] People don't accept the gospel. That is to say, not all people accept the gospel. And in the future they will continue to reject it.
[00:08:56] No, when Jesus says, I didn't come to bring peace, but I came to bring a sword, he's talking about peace here on earth, not peace between us and God. And then within his kingdom, those who are Christians, they ought to have peace. He's talking about peace among man here on earth.
[00:09:16] Jesus says, I came to bring a sword.
[00:09:20] Let's look at Jesus sword.
[00:09:25] Jesus, as it were, is saying, I came as a warrior. I came as a conquering king.
[00:09:33] I came with a sword, doing battle with my enemies.
[00:09:37] I came to conquer them and to set up my kingdom over them.
[00:09:45] Jesus came as a warrior with a sword.
[00:09:48] Think of how Isaiah saw Jesus in the prophecy of when Messiah would come.
[00:09:54] Isaiah 50:9.
[00:09:56] The chapter lays out all of the sins of God's people, the things that we struggle with.
[00:10:03] And towards the end of the chapter, Isaiah says, God looked at the sins of his people. He saw that there was no one to save.
[00:10:13] And then we read in verse 17, he put on righteousness as a breastplate and a helmet of salvation on his head. He put on garments of vengeance for clothing and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak.
[00:10:28] Isaiah saw Messiah coming as a warrior, armed and ready for battle. We sing about this same idea in Psalm 45, verse three.
[00:10:42] We love singing Psalm 45. It's a beautiful picture of Jesus, our king. Here we read in verse three, gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty One, in your splendor and majesty. In your majesty. Ride out victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness.
[00:11:02] Let your right hand teach you awesome deeds.
[00:11:09] Jesus is the warrior king that we sing about in Psalm 45 and that Isaiah saw and many other Old Testament passages foretold. He says, I came to do battle to conquer my enemies and set up my kingdom.
[00:11:24] What is Jesus sword?
[00:11:28] His sword is the thing that he uses as he goes around Galilee. We've been reading here in the Gospel of Matthew and the context is he's going around Galilee and what is he doing?
[00:11:40] He's using his sword.
[00:11:43] He's preaching the gospel.
[00:11:46] Jesus sword that he wields is the word of God.
[00:11:52] Now he is sending his disciples out to wield the same sword. The they're going to go preach. So he says to them, I didn't come to bring peace, but I came bringing a sword. And now I'm handing you the same sword and sending you out. And here's what's going to happen.
[00:12:09] Warfare and division.
[00:12:13] We read about it. For example, the sword in Ephesians 6, the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Incidentally, if you look up all of the cross References In Ephesians 6, the description of the armor of God, they reference the armor of Messiah in the book of Isaiah, like what we just read about. In other words, the armor of God is the armor that Jesus came wearing that he then hands over to you to use in your battle with sin. That's an aside, but it makes the point. The sword is sword of the spirit that Jesus wields is the word of God. That's Jesus sword. What does a sword do? Jesus says, I didn't come to bring peace. I came bringing a sword. A sword means war.
[00:12:58] Jesus comes and he fights.
[00:13:02] He fights a war against the kingdom of darkness. Go back to Matthew 4 and you'll see that as Jesus begins his ministry, he invades the kingdom of darkness. He comes to the region where people are sitting in the shadow of death. And in darkness he comes invading the devil's territory to do battle with the devil and with demons. And that's what he does, right? He goes around preaching the gospel and casting out demons, setting men free from the kingdom of darkness. He does that with his sword, the word of God.
[00:13:37] Jesus fights with his sword to set sinners free from slavery to sin, Satan and this world.
[00:13:48] Now that sword that he wields, that fight that he's engaged in, is a fight for what?
[00:13:54] The hearts of men?
[00:13:57] He's fighting for sinners.
[00:14:01] He's Fighting a battle against the sin in your heart. And in my heart.
[00:14:06] From that time we read in Matthew 4:17. From that time Jesus began to preach and say, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
[00:14:17] What's he doing?
[00:14:18] He's calling us to turn in the heart, to turn into a 180, turn completely around, turn away from sin. And to Jesus, he's fighting for our hearts.
[00:14:34] He wants to turn us away from sin and to service to God in his kingdom.
[00:14:39] Jesus takes his sword and he aims it at our hearts. And that's what the sword of the word of God does, doesn't it? Sharper than any two edged sword. Pierces joints and marrow.
[00:14:52] It judges our hearts, it convicts us, it condemns us, and it calls us to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.
[00:15:01] That's what Jesus is doing with his word, his sword.
[00:15:07] Jesus came not to bring peace, but a sword to do battle with sin. Has his sword pierced your heart?
[00:15:16] Jesus comes to you, you who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, you who sit in chains, enslaved to sin and the devil.
[00:15:27] And he calls you repent, turn to me and be saved.
[00:15:37] We said we would look at the sword in peace. Now we'll look at the sword in the family. Jesus brings a sword, fighting against sin, delivering men from darkness. And Jesus says that the result of that sword going out through his preaching, through the preaching of the disciples, as the kingdom advances, the result of that sword at work is that this sword is going to divide families.
[00:16:07] The gospel is going to divide families.
[00:16:10] Pretty terrible stuff. Fathers against sons against their fathers, daughters against their mothers, daughter in laws against mother in laws. You're going to have enemies in your own household. Jesus says, what's going on here?
[00:16:26] Well, if we take that imagery of Jesus wielding a sword like a warrior coming to conquer his enemies, bring his enemies under his reign, deliver them from darkness and bring them into his kingdom of light. Take them out of sin, bring them into righteousness.
[00:16:44] Then there are some who will be conquered by Jesus sword.
[00:16:50] The result of the gospel preaching is that some will be conquered by Jesus sword. Jesus sword will strike their hearts and find its mark.
[00:17:00] And when that happens, those who are conquered will be changed.
[00:17:06] When one nation conquers another nation, it subjugates that nation and it makes it a part of itself.
[00:17:13] Trying to think we don't like it when that happens anymore. But what if America were to go down and conquer Mexico and we would make Mexico a part of the United States? I'm not saying we should do that, just illustrating the point is that we would make Mexico a part of America, a part of our kingdom. You might say that's what Jesus does. He makes those who he conquers a part of his kingdom and he changes us.
[00:17:41] People who are changed show signs of that change.
[00:17:47] Think of those that Peter preached to on the day of Pentecost. He preached the gospel to them. He told them about how Jesus was the Messiah and that he had been put to death on the cross, but that he had risen from the dead.
[00:18:00] And the men who are listening, they who heard it, we read, they were pierced to the heart. The sword of the word of the Gospel had pierced their hearts. They said, brethren, what shall we do? Repent and be baptized.
[00:18:16] That was the answer. And they repented. And they were baptized that very same day. What happens to people who repent and turn to Christ?
[00:18:24] Their hearts begin to change.
[00:18:27] Their lives begin to change.
[00:18:29] This is the call of Jesus on every Christian.
[00:18:33] Jesus is saying, I came. I conquered you. You're in my army now. And now you're on my side. So with me, you're going to join my fight against sin.
[00:18:43] Your sin.
[00:18:45] You're going to become a different person because you're going to join me in fighting your sin.
[00:18:51] I'm going to take my sword and cut out those sinful desires that you have in your heart, and I'm going to replace them with good desires. We call them the fruit of the Spirit.
[00:19:02] Think, for example, of that wicked sinner Zacchaeus, the short guy who had to climb up into the sycamore tree. Jesus came and pierced his heart through with the preaching of the gospel. Zacchaeus said, jesus come to my house. He repented and he was a changed man. What did he do? All those people that he had cheated and swindled as a tax collector, he took his money and he paid it all back and he gave everything he had to the poor.
[00:19:30] That's a change. It's a man whose heart has been changed by the sword of the gospel.
[00:19:36] Now that conquered person joins Jesus army, fights against his sin.
[00:19:44] Sin within him, it fights against the devil and temptation.
[00:19:48] That conquered person now joining Jesus army in fight, fights against the world that tries to lead him astray.
[00:19:57] We take up the sword of the word and wield it in our lives.
[00:20:04] Are you at war?
[00:20:06] Do you wake up every morning saying, I'm at war?
[00:20:10] Jesus didn't bring peace between me and sin. He brought me to enter his war against sin. I'm at war. My family's at war against sin. And. And we're Going to fight today, standing with Jesus.
[00:20:24] That's someone whom Jesus has conquered.
[00:20:27] But Jesus says, I didn't bring peace, but a sword. And that sword affects families.
[00:20:35] There are family members who haven't been conquered by Jesus sword.
[00:20:41] Jesus is saying, as that gospel goes out in the midst of the most wonderful of institutions, the family, where we bear children, tenderly, raise them and love them, where we care for one another through thick and thin, where we have lifelong commitments to one another, where we care for our cousins and our grandchildren, where we honor and love and serve one another in that wonderful family unit. Jesus says there's going to be division.
[00:21:14] Those wonderful relationships are going to be upended and overturned as the gospel brings division.
[00:21:23] Why?
[00:21:24] Because when the sword conquers some but doesn't conquer others, those others who reject the gospel, it has the opposite effect on them. Instead of softening their hearts and causing them to begin to fight against sin, the the gospel drives them further away from Christ.
[00:21:42] They're hardened to it.
[00:21:46] People who reject the gospel become enemies of King Jesus, especially in the worst expressions of it. There's this kind of division Jesus is describing.
[00:21:57] Here's probably one of the worst examples of the gospel as it pierces men's hearts and they reject it and they aren't conquered by it. And that's when Stephen in Acts chapter 7, preached the gospel before the Sanhedrin. He finishes this wonderful sermon laying out Jesus Messiah. He says, Jesus is standing at the right hand of God, reigning from on high. There's the king.
[00:22:22] And what do we hear when these men, they heard these things, they were cut to the heart and they gnashed on him with their teeth.
[00:22:32] And then they went and they stoned him in their anger and wrath against him. The gospel had the opposite effect on them.
[00:22:43] This has been this way since the very beginning. If you go back to Genesis in the garden, when God first preached the gospel, he said what the gospel promise was, that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent's head.
[00:22:59] One day I'm going to send a man who will be born of woman, who will overturn what the serpent has caused.
[00:23:06] And then he says, I'm going to put enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. There's two groups within mankind and even within families, those who respond to the gospel and believe it, those who reject it, who reject Christ as king.
[00:23:23] This hatred of the gospel, Jesus is saying, is going to be so strong that it will overturn even the closest, tightest, tenderest relationships of all, those within the family.
[00:23:39] How does this work? Why does this happen?
[00:23:41] Think about it this way. There's the Christian whom Jesus has conquered, who's fighting sin. And then there's his family members who have rejected the gospel, who instead you might say are leaning towards sin.
[00:23:54] The Christian is trying to flee sin and follow Christ, fight it. But the non believer believing family members are pursuing sin, they're giving themselves over to it.
[00:24:08] All sorts of things cause conflict as the Christian seeks to fight sin in the family.
[00:24:14] Maybe it's how you keep the Sabbath.
[00:24:17] You go to worship God on Sunday but your family members don't. And there's friction around that.
[00:24:24] When I was growing up, my family lived on the other side of the world in Japan. We were missionaries there and every couple years we would come back to visit our family members. Here in America we would visit one of my sets of grandparents. We would stay with them for a week or two. And when Sunday rolled around, my grandmother, who was not a believer, would get very upset with my mother and it would often be kind of a miserable day. She would get upset with us because she didn't understand why it was that we had flown all the way around the globe, brought the grandkids to visit them. This was once every two, three, four years. She hadn't seen us in a long time. Why did you bring the family all the way here? And then you, instead of spending time with me, you go and you worship God and she made life miserable for my mother.
[00:25:17] Lots of people experience things like this from unbelieving family members.
[00:25:23] Maybe it's sinful family patterns.
[00:25:28] Every family has certain sinful patterns that we struggle with.
[00:25:32] And when a person becomes a Christian, his family members may not understand why he won't continue to participate in, in the ways that we've behaved as a family that are sinful.
[00:25:45] Maybe an obvious example would be if you had a couple and one of them say the wife gets becomes a Christian. The non believing husband becomes upset because his wife won't drink with him every weekend. They always used to go drinking every weekend and now she won't.
[00:26:02] He doesn't understand, he's angry, he's upset.
[00:26:06] It causes division. You can think of all sorts of examples like this.
[00:26:11] Wherever Jesus sword strikes true, it causes division as some are conquered and others are hardened.
[00:26:23] We need to be at war.
[00:26:27] Jesus is at war with your sin.
[00:26:31] You thirdly, we'll look at the sword and love the sword and love this kind of disruption that Jesus brings through the gospel sword is going to put a huge strain on anyone you can imagine the strain that you have even in a Christian home, when there's disagreement about how to do something or whether to do something, we have difficulty. We have to work through it. Sometimes we don't.
[00:27:07] It's all the harder if you're the Christian and your spouse or your children or your parents are not.
[00:27:21] Jesus wants us to recognize that if we're to be called his disciples, to be worthy of him, we have to love him first. In the midst of all this difficulty and struggle, division, he says, you need to love me first.
[00:27:40] I'm sending you and I'm bringing a sword into your family, and you need to love me first.
[00:27:50] Now when he says to love him more, the first thing we're going to observe here is that implicit in that is that we are to love our non Christian family members.
[00:28:06] He says, if you love father or mother, son or daughter more than me, then you're not worthy of me.
[00:28:15] But that presumes that we are called to love them.
[00:28:19] He doesn't say, love me and don't love your family. Rather he says, love me first and love your family.
[00:28:28] Now let's think about it first in terms of the warning, because that's how it's stated.
[00:28:33] Don't love your family more than Jesus.
[00:28:37] What's going on? If it weren't obvious at this point, we'll draw it out.
[00:28:41] Family can probably, of all the people in our lives, put the very greatest pressure on us, can't they?
[00:28:48] It's hard to say no to mom or dad as an adult. With parents, it's very hard to say no to them. If they ask us to do something or if they want to do things a certain way.
[00:28:59] Family can be manipulative. They know us. They know us better than anyone else. And they can push our buttons and tug our heartstrings and manipulate us. They can put immense pressure on us.
[00:29:12] Family can cut us off.
[00:29:14] They can say, because of the way you're treating me, you say you're a Christian, but you're really dishonoring me. I'm going to cut you off relationally, maybe even I'm going to disown you and cut you out of the will. Now, maybe you have or haven't experienced those kinds of things, but if you go to other cultures, societies where Christians convert and their family members are pagans, this happens all the time. I saw it many times growing up in Japan as the gospel went to non Christians in order to be baptized and become a Christian. Often they had to leave their families behind.
[00:29:48] Families, probably of all the people in our lives, our family members can put the greatest pressure on us.
[00:29:54] And we love them and we want to have a relationship with them.
[00:29:59] And so there's a tendency to cave to their demands, dishonor and not love and obey Christ.
[00:30:07] That's what Jesus is saying here. Love me first, and don't give in to their pressure when they call you to follow in their ways and to sin.
[00:30:20] Now, the flip side of that that we pointed out is that Jesus is still calling us to love our family in spite of all that they may do, however awful it may be.
[00:30:31] Jesus is saying here, keep loving your family.
[00:30:37] You say, how can I love my family when they treat me so terribly?
[00:30:42] They manipulate me, they dishonor me, they twist my words, they've even cut me off. How can I keep loving them when they have made themselves my enemy?
[00:30:55] That's what Jesus says here, right?
[00:30:59] Just think a couple chapters back, have they made you their enemy? Do you have enemies in your home? Now, what does Jesus say?
[00:31:08] But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
[00:31:18] It's like he's taking that sword and he's twisting it.
[00:31:22] He the very hardest of relationships, and he says, they've made you their enemies and I want you to show them my love.
[00:31:31] That's hard.
[00:31:32] That's hard.
[00:31:39] But Jesus is with you.
[00:31:43] He came to bring a sword.
[00:31:45] He stands with you as you stand there, opposing your family members, fighting your own sin, fighting their sin.
[00:31:53] Jesus is with you, fighting your sin.
[00:31:58] He's fighting the darkness. He started first.
[00:32:01] You followed after him. You joined him in that battle, and he's fighting sin with you.
[00:32:13] I want to turn to the second idea Jesus has here, which is that you need to love Jesus more.
[00:32:20] Love Jesus more than your family. Love your family even when they're enemies. Especially when they're enemies. But love Jesus more. I've got three reasons for you. And then we're wrapping up.
[00:32:31] Love Jesus more than your family because he's fighting for you.
[00:32:37] Your family members oppose you.
[00:32:40] They put pressure on you to not obey Jesus.
[00:32:44] They want to draw you back into darkness and sin.
[00:32:47] Love Jesus more than them and obey him because he's fighting with you and for you.
[00:32:55] Secondly, love Jesus more than your family because he is your forever family.
[00:33:04] You have a temporal, an earthly family, a mother and father who bore you, raised you.
[00:33:10] They're your earthly family.
[00:33:13] But that's all they are.
[00:33:16] Mom, dad, sister, brother. Those relations are for here and now, in this life. They're your family for a lifetime.
[00:33:25] But just A lifetime.
[00:33:29] Furthermore, they may turn on you, persecute you, even disown you.
[00:33:36] But King Jesus is your brother, your elder brother. He took you and he brought you into the family of God, an eternal family, a forever family.
[00:33:48] He is your forever brother, your forever family.
[00:33:52] He will not turn his back on you. He will never leave you or forsake you. And he wields his sword to protect you.
[00:34:01] Love Jesus more than you love your earthly family.
[00:34:05] Thirdly, and finally, love Jesus because he loves you more than your earthly family loves you.
[00:34:16] Your parents gave birth to you.
[00:34:19] They raised you from the time you were a baby.
[00:34:22] They gave you everything you needed.
[00:34:25] They continued to care for you on into adulthood.
[00:34:29] You may feel at times like they've always been there for me. How can I not love them when they demand things of me?
[00:34:38] But they do not love you more than Jesus loves you.
[00:34:43] Your King loved you so much that he went to the cross and he died for you.
[00:34:49] When you think of this problem, of the sword that divides you from your family members, think of Jesus hands and his feet and his side.
[00:35:01] They bear the marks of the sword of God's wrath that pierced him so that he might save you.
[00:35:11] No family member here on earth can do that for you. I can't do that for you, but Jesus did that for you.
[00:35:19] Love him most of all because he loves you more than anyone else. Let's pray.
[00:35:26] Lord Jesus, our God and our King, we confess that once again we are in awe of your great love.
[00:35:39] A love that had no beginning for you loved us from all eternity.
[00:35:47] A love that took you to the cross for us, and a love that has no end.
[00:35:54] Oh, Jesus. Our hearts are so often drawn to other things. And one of the strongest of pulls is the wonderful gift of earthly family.
[00:36:05] Lo Jesus, help us to see it for what it is and to see you for what you are, that we might be drawn to you and that we might be ready and willing to give every area of our lives and our hearts to you.
[00:36:20] You purchased them, they belong to you.
[00:36:24] So help us to submit them to you by your spirit. Graciously, lovingly. We ask that you would take every area of our hearts that is in any kind of sin, whether it's unbelief and doubts, whether it's the pursuit of sinful things and worldly lusts, or whether it's compromises in relationships or whatever it may be. Lord Jesus, you know what it is. We ask that you would take our hearts and by your sword and by your spirit, subdue them and make them yours that we might devote ourselves to you with our whole heart, soul and mind and strength. That we might love you above all.
[00:37:07] Hear us, we ask Amen.
