AUG 4 2024 | Josiah S1E4 | Josiah the Destroyer

Sea Change Church · AUG 4 2024 | Josiah – S1 Ep 4: Josiah the Destroyer
2 Kings 23:8-14
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech. And he removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the son at the entrance to the house of the Lord, by the chamber of Nathan-Melech the chamberlain, which was in the precincts. And he burned the chariots of the son with fire.

And the altars on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars that Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord, he pulled down and broke in pieces, and cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron. And the king defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem, to the south of the Mount of Corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth, the abomination of the Sidonians, and for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, and for Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites.

And he broke in pieces the pillars, and cut down the Asherim, and filled their places with the bones of men. This is the word of the Lord. Well, good morning. Welcome to church. If you have your Bible, open up to 2 Kings 23, 8 through 14. We're in the English Standard Version now. The one in your pews is an NIV, so it might be a little different, but we're going to be switching over to the English Standard Version as a church.

I'll give you some more info on that later in the fall, tell you what we're doing and why. We are on week four, I believe, of this life of Josiah, one of the most influential kings in all of Israel, who took Israel from walking away from God, where they had actually forgotten God. They didn't even know what the Bible was. They didn't even know what the law was.

He had sent one of his priests in to go tidy up the temple that was full of false idols, and they happened to find this dusty book. They looked at that book. It was the law of God. They read it, and they're like, rut-ro, we'd better send this over to the king and let him read it. The king read it, and he responded because he was already a man after whom God had placed his favor upon and was a man after God's own heart.

It says that he followed in the ways of his father David. We know that David was not his father. Ammon was his father and who walked in evil ways. And then the most wicked, probably king of all the kings, Manasseh, was his grandfather. And Manasseh was one who did everything from burn his children alive to Molech, which was still happening here.

You saw that in this passage. They were doing all these different things, and it was a very evil kingdom. It said he did more wrong than all the Ammonites kicked all the Ammonites together, and that God had actually kicked the Ammonites out and said that the earth had spewed them out because of their wickedness. So if you're competing with the Ammonites as one person, pretty solid, you know what I mean, in regard to debauchery and that what was happening here.

I want to say one thing at the beginning, and I want this passage to really be something you can look at personally, that you can say, okay, does my life ebb and flow between times of really seeking after God and times of letting off the throttle and how far you go from one ebb and flow to the other? People say that there is an arc of history, right?

And I believe if there is an arc of history, it's when Jesus died on the cross is the apex of that arc. But I have found that history is more of a wave. It goes up and down, and civilizations go up and down in regard to their following of God or not following God or of paganism, and they swing back and forth. And it always gives me hope because I've seen very dark cultures before switch back and begin to follow God.

When Josiah shows up on the scene, he inherits, at eight years old as the king, a country that has become completely pagan. They don't even know what is happening anymore in regard to the law of the Lord or the things that God has done with Abraham and the history of those that had gone before him. And as he was there and he inherited that, he realized that there needed to be a shift.

There needed to be a change. If you look at what was happening with this pagan culture, it's probably no different than the majority of pagans that you have seen in throughout history. The Picts did the same things as the Vikings. The Vikings did the same things as the Celts. The Celts did the same things as some of the African shaman religions, as those that were in the Holy Land.

There is a theme of paganism that has some certain characteristics. And you're actually seeing these characteristics as our culture seems to be swinging to a time of neo-paganism. And here's what some of them are. One, you have nature worship. That was happening. The Aserith pole was part of nature worship. Fertility, these big poles. You've seen a May pole in the past.

That's kind of the same thing, you know, where they go around with the strings. We did that. Matter of fact, when I was in elementary school, we did that as a thing in elementary school in the 70s. It was like, oh, so I didn't even know I'm not worshiping pagan gods accidentally, you know, in sixth grade at Briarpatch Elementary. But it was big in the 70s.

Child sacrifice was a thing. Obviously, they would sacrifice their children for convenience or for one reason or another. And in this country, that happens to the tune of a million children per year. You have polytheism, more than just one god, many gods. You have witchcraft. If you don't think there's a rise of witchcraft, I want to encourage you, go to Crown Books or Barnes & Noble over there in Mira Mesa.

Go in there. There's a whole section, probably almost the length of this church, width of this church, that is just witchcraft and alchemy. And the best of the books are put behind lock and key because I guess witches steal. So they all lock those up. Makes sense. And then whether it's the Vikings or the Celts, like I said, or any of these other religions or same thing that was happening in South America in paganism, you have hypersexuality.

You just have this massive hypersexuality. We know that Josiah clears out all the male temple prostitutes. So all this was happening in the holy house of God. There's a key word for you today that I want you to write down. I want you to write down the word at the top of the notes. There's a space for it. Defile. The word defile is used three times in the passage.

Now, this time, Josiah is not taking something that is holy and defiling it, which has happened to the temple of the Lord. It has been defiled, right? They've put all these altars to Baal. They have male temple prostitution happen. It's said earlier at the beginning in the ESV that there's a gate called the Joshua Gate. I believe it's the Joshua Gate.

And there was another gate that they put beside it. And this gate, they said, you've got to walk through this gate first. So it was a little gate, like a little arc. And you walked through the arch. And then you could walk through the other gate. But it really symbolized a gateway of paganism that was happening. And so he came in. And he defiled the things which they were now calling holy.

They had completely forgotten God. They had completely forgotten God's book. When he read it, he tore his clothes, as you remember, and repented. That's why we have repent, reform, and restore. Today we're talking about restoration. And I really want to set this passage up so we can look at our lives. And we can ask our lives, are there things that we are allowing into our lives to defile our lives?

And what does it mean to defile our lives? Josiah goes and he takes the things that they now call holy and he defiles them. He takes the Aserith poles. He takes them to the Kidron Valley, it says there in the passage. And he turns them into dust. The Kidron Valley is where Jesus, where the Garden of Gethsemane is, where Jesus walked through when he was going to be crucified up, you know, to the cross or where that was.

The Kidron Valley is not far from the place of the skull. A lot has happened in the Kidron Valley. And he goes there and he defiles them. We'll tell you how he defiles them and why he does that and why he puts human bones on those things. But he takes the things that actually defile holiness, that have become holy. In the culture, it says in the scripture, it says they will call what is evil good and what is good evil.

And we have begun in our neo-paganistic culture is to take things that are extremely wicked, extremely evil, that are in the tenets of paganism that I showed you, and now they are the holiest things that you can see. They are the holiest things that you can do, things that are evil. I was talking to somebody about my view on sexual relationship between a man and a woman and how it should be within marriage and blah, blah, blah.

And somebody said, isn't that extreme? I thought, why is that extreme? And then they shared the things that they thought were not extreme. And I'm like, are you, what? Like, is, like all of a sudden the things that are normal, like having a family and kids that have been normal for thousands of years, all of a sudden that's incredibly extreme. I'm the extreme one at the moment.

And Josiah takes extreme measures because when a culture or a life, because once again, let's put this up against our lives, have been taken over by things that defile us, sometimes it takes extreme measures. I would say that some of us in here today maybe need some extreme measures. Maybe it's time to take some extreme measures. There are some things that you know, and I'm not going to tell you what they all are, that you think these things are defiling me.

In Corinthians it says that our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, right? And that temple serves in the same way that Josiah's temple does, and the things that we allow. It says do not turn your body over to these things. So we see him doing that, and the word today is defile. So defile, the antonym of defile, you can write this down, it is not in the notes, is to consecrate.

Consecrate means to take something, because nothing it says from outside the body, Jesus said, is what makes you to be unclean. It's just how your heart attaches to them, and then what comes out from those things. It says nothing is unclean. Some people can have a glass of wine, some people like myself can't. For me to drink is sin. God has told me it's sin, and for one thing the scripture says is sin to one, not sin to another.

And other people, they have no problem with it. Is there something that has been defiled, and is there something that needs to be consecrated? I was actually thinking, what would it look like to consecrate this? To consecrate your phone. This phone has the power to do incredible good in your life. It has the power to become a high place, and do incredibly bad things in your life.

I'm not saying everyone's looking at porn on their phone. That's not what I'm saying. But maybe you're just doom scrolling for two hours, jealousies in your heart, bitterness. Bitterness. You're a political hack, and all you do is think about politics. You're just so you have bitterness. Jesus actually says that bitterness is one of the things that defiles us.

What does it mean if you were to consecrate and to say with this, or whatever it is in your life, I want to make this holy? And that is the juxtaposition and the change that Josiah was making, and that's where we find him in the passage. Josiah removes the things that were there, and he goes in verses 8, 10, and 13. There's the word defiled. You can circle that.

I think I highlighted it in the notes, and we're going to be looking at the things on our own lives that defile us. Here's one point. I have a one-point sermon today. I love the one-point sermon. Easier for a guy like me. Demolish and destroy that which is depraved. Demolish and destroy the depraved. What do I mean by depraved? Depravity. A lot of definitions.

I spent a lot of time looking at that definition. The most simplest definition is anything that is depraved is what corrupts you, what corrupts your mental health, your mental state with God, your mind that is no longer set upon God. You're set upon the house you want. You think about that house you want. You think about that thing you want. It could be something amazing like a child.

It could be all these things. But that thing has become a high place for you. I will say there's rarely a person I've met. I've never met anyone that doesn't have a high place of some kind. A ladder they're trying to get to, an addiction, there's some high place. What Josiah does is he takes extreme measures and he breaks down the high places. And so demolish and destroy that which is depraved.

If you can think, is there anything that's corrupting me? Is my tongue corrupting me? Well, look at a verse by Jesus in just a moment where he mentions a whole list of things. We tend to think, when you think of things that cause depravity or corrupt you, we think of a lot of like really hardcore things, like things I would never do. But Jesus actually filters that down.

We'll just look at that in a second. Let's go to number one, verse eight. And he brought the priest out of the cities of Judah, and he defiled their high places. From Geba to Beersheba, he broke down the high places of the gates that were at the entrance of the gate. That's that extra gate that I talked to you about. Of Joshua, the governor of the city, which was on one's left at the gate of the city.

So they had this separate gate that you would walk through before you actually got to walk into the holy area. The one thing that I like about Josiah is Josiah took a survey of every area of the kingdom of Judah, and he went through every single area. There's multiple kings that said, well, he removed the high places from the temple and from the city of Jerusalem or something like that.

But he left them here and he left them there. And why would you do that? Well, it's politically good as a king if you don't upset your people, especially if 70% of the people are worshiping these gods. We know this started with Solomon. Solomon said, don't take any foreign wives. Why? Because they will turn your heart against God into idols. And by the end of Solomon's life, even though he was the wisest man in the world, he was worshiping false idols.

That's not a good look for Solomon. You can be the wisest person in the world, but having wisdom and then knowing what to do with the wisdom and following it are two different things. And so he takes an expanse and he looks at everything in their life. How do we do this in our life? Well, you sit down and you look at every area of your life, your physical life, your financial life, your heart's intent, your desires, your tongue.

It's an expansive look at your entire life. You take a survey. In AA, they call it taking an inventory. You take an inventory of your life and you look at and you say to yourself, does this thing corrupt me in any way? You know, if you find with a little yeast, leavens the dough, like Jesus says, if you just take some flour, beautiful flour, and you just take a pinch of leaven.

I just started some new sourdough, right? So I just started a new sourdough starter. So if anybody wants some, I'll get you some sweet sourdough starter. And I feed it every single day. But if I were to just even take a pinch, this big, take a loaf of yeast, of flour and water, and I put that in there, what's going to happen? It's going to defile it.

The thing about defilement is the things that defile us want more territory. Sin has a lust for your life. It will not stop. You might be able to manage it for a while. Just like those two guys in the 80s that had the white tigers. Like for a long time, right? That tiger, which until, I'm not going to say what happened, but it wasn't great. Right?

Right now you're in Vegas. The lights are on. You're having a heck of a time. You're eating steak dinner. You've got lions. You know. Sin is coming after you. And I guess the thing is, is what defiles. We tend to want to have a grouping of things. Hey, I won't touch that anymore. I'm a Christian. I won't touch that. Just over here. Just a little pinch of that yeast.

A little pinch of that dough. Put it in there. It's all good because I can manage that. Until it leavens the whole bread and it rises to a place we don't want to go. I would say we all have high places. And it says, if you go back to verse 8. Go back to verse 8. And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah and defiled the high places where the priest had made offerings.

I'll stop right there. You will make an offering. You will know a high place because you make an offering to it. You'll make an offering of your time. So if you're just here and you just got this addiction to this thing. And it's just taking the time that God has given you to steward. And you're just wasting it for distraction or whatever reason.

You will make an offering to it. You're offering your attention. You're offering your time. You're offering your heart. We saw in 2014 for women especially and young girls especially depression anxiety go through the roof as soon as Instagram came on. And many of the people who do the studies say because that's a comparison thing where all that comparison is happening and people are becoming discontent and anxious about their lives.

I'm not a sociologist. I just play one on the radio. But I would say that probably makes some sense to me. All of us have high places and we all sacrifice to the high place. We make offerings to that. We offer our health. We offer our attitudes. We offer our minds. We offer whatever it is. But it is impossible to have a high place in your life and not make an offering to it.

You will offer something. And these things act as idols and they act as images. I would say with the rise of the phone, the ability to worship images on your phone, to take your attention, to give your heart, to give your mind, to give your covetousness to your phone. It could just be your Pinterest account. I'm not saying it has to be some crazy account in the dark web.

That thing can become something that we give our attention, our focus. It becomes an image, a graven image that is there that we see and we set up. And he came and he went to all of all the territory. He left no stone unturned because it said he followed God with all of his heart, his soul, his mind, his strength. Like whom? Like his father David did.

It doesn't mean he's perfect. I'm not calling you to be perfect. But when there was a mistake, there was repentance for that mistake and a decision to leave no quarter for anything that is sin. Francis Schaeffer has a quote. It's in your notes. It says, One of the things about having high places is high places give you control. They give you control.

They will satisfy you. They will give you what you want, when you want it. I met an alcoholic and he said, you know, the one thing, I could always trust alcohol. I could depend on it. It was always there for me. It always did what I wanted it to do until it didn't. And then it controlled me. And that's how sin is. Sin is that tiger. Sin is that living in the bread.

And so we all have these high places. You look at, once again, go back to verse 8. And he brought out the priest out of the cities of Judah and he defiled the high places. Circle that word defiled if you haven't already. He desecrated it. To desecrate doesn't just mean to stop doing it. When you defile something, when you desecrate something, it's not just a physical act.

It's a spiritual act. These were holy high places that had a group of priests who worshipped and led people astray by worshipping these idols. And when he went, he actually did things to ruin their spiritual significance and to let God, once again, take control and give God's authority over that. What would it look like if you consecrated your phone to the Holy Spirit?

If you said to yourself, Holy Spirit, direct how I use this. Even for business. Holy Spirit, direct my bank account. I got a bank account, God. I want to give it to you. How would you have me spend? I'm not talking about navel gazing where you start tripping. Am I in the center of God's will on this magical precipice? No. God's grace makes the center of his will a lot bigger than we think.

It's not a needle point, right? But what would it look like if you consecrate that thing? What if you consecrated your health? These are things. We have a temple of the Holy Spirit. I hope I'm not overstepping, but these are the things I look at for my own personal life. What would I do if I consecrated what my eyes looked at? What if I consecrated my tongue?

No longer use slander. No longer speak negatively about people. No longer let bitterness become a root within your heart. We know that Jesus, this is not in your notes. You can put the number down. When he talks about defilement, Mark 7 20, you can look it up later. Jesus, when he talks about defilement, he said this. What comes out of a person is what defiles him.

Using that same word that was used in the Hebrew, obviously in the Greek iteration of it. For from within, out of the heart of man, that's mankind, ladies, Anthropos, so that's you too, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality. And then he starts whittling it down. Theft. That means cheating on your taxes, even five bucks. Murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.

Foolishness. Like, that would have been me for like all my 20s, right? 23. All of these things come from within and they defile a person. It is so easy to flip through the TV and think those people are so defiled. And realize sometimes I just get into foolish talk, just foolishness. Just stuff that doesn't need to be said, right? Whatever it is. Because Josiah left no stone unturned.

Once again, I'm not saying be legalistic. I'm saying just you do it out of a love for God. When you clean your house because you feel like when you're a kid, your parents are going to be on restrictions and you better get the house clean by, like I told my daughter this week. It's been all summer. She was giving me grief too. I'm like, I've told you one thing all summer.

Summer ends on Tuesday. Next Tuesday, I've asked you to clean your room once. That's it. Give me a break. So she did it. There's a difference between when you're under the law or when, like for your wife, she gets back from a trip and you take and wash your car for her. Or for your husband. You do something for your husband. There's a different vibe, right?

When you're living out of that. So I'm not saying you're defiling the things that defile you. You're spiritually breaking those things in the spirit realm that are over you because of some law that you're going to be, God's going to be mad at you. We do it out of love for him because we want to be close to him. These things put a wedge between us.

So when an anxious thought comes on to you, it's going to be harder to get to the place of peace with God because you have these wedges of defilement in your life. Because you have these things that we basically put up and they act as a wall, as a barrier that break our relationship. The scripture says, husbands, if you don't treat your wives well, then God won't answer your prayers.

There are these things that defile us. And so if you speak to your wife with a harsh tongue or your husband with a harsh tongue or whatever it is, these things will hinder us as we go. So desecration is a spiritual act. And the antonym of defilement or desecration would be consecration. Begin to consecrate your lives. We all have high places. The word defile, those three times there, if you look at verse 8, if you look at verse 10, and if you look at verse 13, the word is tomeh.

That is a Hebrew word. And it means to be fouled, especially in a ceremonial sense, to contaminate it, to pollute oneself, to make yourself unclean. This is something the Jews took way too far, right? Jesus said, well, if someone, you know, you can't heal. Jesus, you're going to defile yourself because you're working on the Sabbath, because that's one of the Ten Commandments, right?

And Jesus said, no, I can heal on the Sabbath. We're not going to make some law. I'm not telling you to make a law. I'm telling you to consecrate all the areas of your life that might defile you in love to God, because you love him so much and you love his presence. When you do this, you will begin at some point to experience more and more of his presence.

When those thoughts come, when those dark nights come or whatever, you'll be closer to the touch of him. You'll experience him in a different way because you've consecrated your life. Maybe there's, you know, there's things. There's all these things that you can consecrate. So what did Josiah do in closing? He did a few things. He pulled down the altars.

He destroyed the gateways. He burned the chariots. He threw the bones. And I'm not talking about dominoes, right? Go to verse 12. Pull down the altars. And this is all practical for you guys. And the altars on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, he was a bad king, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars that Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord, he pulled down.

He broke them into pieces, cast dust onto them into the brook of the Kidron Valley. One, I think when you do this, the place where he pulled these down was a communal meeting spot. There was these altars that had been put up in the courtyards before you went into the Holy of Holies, and I'm sure they had besmirched the Holy of Holies as well.

We've shown those courtyards in the past. What he was doing, he was doing publicly. Now, I'm not saying that you do this, and you go, you know, go to Starbucks, and you're like, coffee is of the devil, and start tearing stuff down. You know what I mean? I'm not saying that. Coffee is not of the devil. It is of God himself. It will be in heaven. Just Jesus just there.

Look at the crema, Jesus. It's amazing. You can see what my high place is, obviously. But he wasn't, let me just say, this is the basic idea of it. He wasn't afraid of what people thought. And if you're going to pull down some of the altars in your life, people are going to know that they were pulled down, especially if you're running with a crew that likes those altars.

You know what? Just not going to be there on Friday night anymore. Or whatever the thing is, I'm going to do something else instead. He basically wasn't afraid of that. And he did it in a way which there was nothing left for him to work with. He turned it into dust. When I was in my 20s, I was really into my CD collection. So if you're older or younger than a Gen X, they were these little discs, and they were still, just kidding.

And I had a stereo that could have competed. Like it was legit. And my cool little Pathfinder. I was so into my truck and my music. And I'm sure my ears have paid the price for it. And I had three to four to five hundred CDs, right? And I had them in my car. And it was just, I just loved it. And not long after I accepted, I mean, rededicated my life back to Christ, he said, hey, I want that to go.

And I was like, no, not the CD. I said, I'm going to sell it. And he's like, I'm not asking you to give that because my CDs were not great. Not great. Some of them were okay. But some of them weren't great, you know? And he's, I'm not asking you to give those to somebody else, you know, so you can defile them. I want you to break them up. And I was like, ah.

So I did it. I went and destroyed all my CDs. This is one of three times God had me do this because I kept rebuying them, you know? Took the hammer. You got to be careful with a hammer and CDs. Those things would put an eye out, you know? But it was something that I had to do. And people noticed when they rode with me, my music changed. You know, the things that I was listening to, people will know.

So pull down the altars. That's the first thing. Are there some things, there's some high places. You might not even think I'm worshiping Adam, but they become high places for you. Destroy the gateway. Joshua destroyed any gateway that led to destruction and defilement. Gateways of your body are your eyes, your mouth, your ears. These are the things, your TV, your phone.

They said that when the 1950s that they loved that they got a, they've been trying to get into the house to influence a household because the family unit was hard to influence behind their walls. And once they got a TV in there, they knew they could influence the home, the structure of the home in the 1950s. That's scary, right? Well, imagine this.

Don't give your kids one of these until they're like 16, unless it's just a flip phone, you know what I'm saying? Like, just trust me on that one. Or at least, you know, monitor it in a pretty stable way. But what are the gateways? Define what the gateways are in your life. Shut them down. Destroy the gateways. Now, once again, remember there was a separate gateway?

There's other gateways that should be open. God's word is a gateway. It's a gateway to peace. Worship is a gateway. Prayer is a gateway. Next one is burn the chariots. And I love this one. Go to verse 11. Verse 11 says, actually, I'll start at the beginning of verse 11. It was just verse 11b. And he removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun.

Once again, they love worshiping creation. We see that in our neo-pagan culture today. And at the entrance to the house of the Lord, the chamber of Nathan Malak, the chamberlain, which was the precincts, he burned the chariots of the sun with fire. Now, if you remember about these chariots, they would buy these chariots from Egypt. And they were expensive.

I think he said they were like 3,000 shekels each. There's some number in there. But they weren't cheap, right? Because they had been dedicated, he could have just said, because he's a king and this is an expensive, you know, thing. He could have just said, you know what? We're just going to take the sun emblems off and we're just going to keep them.

He felt it was important enough to just destroy them. I mean, what king destroys chariots? Chariots are important in antiquity. Why? Because they make you a nation that can compete against other nations. He was willing to take a safety risk, something that I think would make you feel unsafe, but also a financial risk in order to burn those chariots.

And then the final one that he did in verse 14 is he threw the bones. What do I mean by that? Verse 14. And he broke into pieces the pillars and cut down the asurums, and he filled their places with the bones of men. Why? Why would he do that? I told you it's a spiritual act as well as a physical act. It's easy to just take that thing that you're trying to get away from, like I did many times during my addiction, and throw it away or flush it down the toilet or throw it into Mission Valley or something like that, which I did multiple times, just go to the top of a hill, throw my bong away or something like that, only to go back to Obie and buy another one the next week.

So I finally didn't. It's easy to do that if it's just a physical act. But if it's not a spiritual act, you're not going to have the dunamis. Now, dunamis is that Greek word, that power. And one of the functions of dunamis is not just to raise the dead and do things of that nature, but it's power to overcome addictions and for moral clarity and moral power.

So it has to be a spiritual act as well when you do these things. You can have an accountability partner or whatever. Why did he throw bones? Because back in the day, the Jews were not allowed, even other nations were not allowed to touch the dead. The dead and the bones of people, anything that touched them was unclean and you couldn't clean it again.

And so he actually took the bones. Another time I think he crushed it up into powder. When he went up to Bethel, I believe he crushed it up into powder. And all of these things of evil worship, he took bones and he had the bones and he put the bones on them in the Kidron Valley, which is the place where Jesus would eventually go. And he did a spiritual act with the physical act.

It's got to be both. Even AA, which started with Christian Roots, is a spiritual program that does physical things. So two things as we go, just some practical takeaways for this week. Number one. Three, actually. I added one. Identify your altars. I said that already. Identify your altars. Sit and say, okay, I have an altar here. I'm not going to offer myself to it anymore.

Destroy the gates. Change the gates. Destroy whatever it takes. Whatever those gates are, if it means getting rid of the television in your home. I don't know what it is. Is it podcasts? You know, podcasts is a new thing. And I realized I was listening to so many podcasts, it was affecting my just mental happiness. You know what I mean? I was listening to things that make me angry all the time.

I'm like, why do I keep doing this? Why do I keep listening to things? I put my finger in the electrical socket. That was amazing. Let's do it again. Just because it's distraction. You know? For me, I just want a distraction. Distraction is the new addiction, right? Destroy the gates. And then, finally, just consecrate your life. Find the, just consecrate your life.

Consecrate just whatever it is. It could be anything from meals to your sexual life to your financial life. Just consecrate. God, this is yours. And I just invite the Holy Spirit in. And I will tell you, any act that you cannot, most any act, I'll give it a little bit of a caveat, that you cannot invite the Holy Spirit into in your life, hey, be a part of this with me, is probably an act you don't want to be a part of.

That you can't say, Holy Spirit, be with, like right now, I want you here in this moment. I welcome you. What I generally did back in the day when I was running from God is, Jesus, you stay over there and I'll call you when I need you. As opposed, a consecrated life is a wife that walks with God. But I will say, a consecrated life is a life of peace, of margin.

The mind set upon God walks in peace. That's what it says. The mind that is stayed upon God walks on peace. Amen? Amen. We're going to give you a chance now to consecrate yourselves before we take the communion. If you would stand, we will have you come forward. We'll hold the communion. And I have our communion team come forward. And then we will take it together as a church.

If you have never made a decision to follow Jesus, we would ask, and the Bible says as well, don't take communion. Just wait until you're ready to make it. If you're just checking Jesus out right now, no harm, no foul. But if you need, if you are today going to take communion, in your own heart, we'll take a moment of silence. Ask forgiveness. It's just a moment to ask forgiveness, to consecrate ourselves before God, to make our place holy because of the blood of Jesus, that we might take that communion.

Let me just take a moment of silence. Lord, we thank you, God, now as we get ready to take this holy meal. It is a holy meal that sacrifices a meal that you consecrated, that is about your body and your blood that was broken for us, that we might have communion with you. We thank you, Jesus, and we give you praise. Come forward for the communion.

Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our God, our maker. Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our God, our maker. For he is our God. And we are the people of his pasture. Just the sheep of his pasture. Just the sheep of his pasture. Just the sheep of his pasture. And we have a man, and the one the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the For He is our God And we are the people of His pasture And the sheep of His hand Just the sheep of His hand You are my strength when I am weak You are the treasure that I seek You are my all in all Seeking You as a precious jewel Lord, to give up I'd be a fool You are my all in all Jesus, Lamb of God Worthy is Your name Jesus, Lamb of God Worthy is Your name Jesus, Lamb of God Worthy is Your name Jesus, Lamb of God Worthy is Your name Please Lord Jesus, on the night of His arrest Jesus took bread And He gave thanks to God He broke it and gave it to His disciples Let's just take this and break it if we would He said, take and eat This is my body given for you Do this in remembrance of me Let's take the bread In the same way He took the cup This cup is the new covenant Sealed in my blood Shed for you For the forgiveness of sins Whenever you drink it Do this in remembrance of me Let's take the cup Gracious God May we who have received this sacrament Live in unity of Your Holy Spirit That we may show forth Your gifts To all the world We ask in the name of Jesus Christ Amen We're going to say the Lord's prayer together Our Father Who art in heaven Hallowed be Thy name Thy kingdom come Thy will be done On earth as it is in heaven Give us this day Our daily bread And forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those Who trespass against us And lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil For Thine is the kingdom And the power And the glory Forever and ever Amen I'm going to ask the prayer team To come forward If you need prayer Today after the service If you just want someone To pray for you To one of these issues Or you just want to come sit And just be in peace By yourself The front row will be open Chris will be in Olin will be praying Playing a little bit And if you extend your hands I want to bless you Before we send you out Lord Jesus I bless your people God Now as you've spoken to us Give us the dunamis The power of your spirit To walk in the conviction Not in guilt But a conviction Of your Holy Spirit That we might consecrate To have a life That is meant to be rebuilt As we reform our lives God That you might restore them God To even better Than they've ever been God I bless the marriages I bless the words That we use I bless the health Lord All the things That are going to be positive In the fruit of your garden As we walk with you And we consecrate To you With our temples Of the Holy Spirit Which is our bodies So I send you out now In the name of the Father The Son