Revelation: A Message to Pergamum

Okay.

How are you guys doing?

Is that amazing?

Amazing sharing time, amazing what God is doing.

If you are with us for the first time, we are working our way through the last book of your Bible.

It's called the Revelation of John.

Some people call it the Apocalypse of Jesus.

And we're working our way through some letters that were written to seven churches.

Jesus told John to write to these seven churches that were alive and thriving,

sometimes well, sometimes not so well, in what is modern-day Turkey.

Remember the first church we talked about?

The first church was Ephesus.

We said that was a church that, though they did everything right,

they thought everything right, they did everything right, everything was perfect,

Jesus comes to them and says they have one thing wrong.

They lost their first love.

They lost their love for Christ.

Their Christian life had become dull.

It just became mechanical.

They just did, did, did, but they didn't realize why they were doing it.

They didn't love Christ.

And we talked about how you can know if your Christian life is becoming dull.

We said sometimes the first indication is that we lose joy.

We lose joy of what God's done in our life.

We lose joy of looking at the cross.

We lose joy of thinking about what we were and what we are now.

We said another way you could tell if you're losing perspective in your life is that you see people differently.

I mean, you see people more as a burden.

You see people more as a hassle.

You see people more as an inconvenience.

You're just so busy.

You need to be doing things.

And they come up and they want to talk and they're going to take your time.

And, you know, it's just such an inconvenience.

You know, you always hear the pastors or people in the church sometimes say, you know, the church would be great if it weren't for the people.

And that's one of those symbols that you're losing your joy.

You're losing your perspective.

Another thing might be that you have this better view of yourself than you really are.

You start to think of yourself as more important than you really are.

I remember the very first church that I served in, we were talking about serving and giving and tithing and how we can serve as a body.

And at the end of this time, one of the older members came up and he said, you know, I'm a chief executive of this huge company.

And nothing that you're showing me on this list of how I can serve, nothing here is worthy of my time.

Nothing is worthy of my time.

My time is so important.

There's nothing I can do for your church that's even worthy of that.

I just can't do anything.

And as a young guy, I looked at him and I didn't know what to say, right?

Right?

Because I didn't know all the game rules and how you acted and what you did in this church because I was new to this church.

And all I could say was, well, I'll pray for you.

But what I wanted to say was I'm so glad that Jesus doesn't say that about us.

You know, I'm so busy.

I'm in heaven.

I'm controlling everything.

And I just got to do all these things.

And it's just really inconvenient for me to come down and put myself on a cross.

Because anyway, you're going to forget about me next week and you're going to do something wrong.

I mean, that's what I wanted to say.

But I didn't say that.

And in this message, Jesus says to the church of Ephesus, come back.

Remember what it was like when I first loved you.

Remember what your relationship was like.

Come back.

The next church we talked about was last week.

We talked about the church of Smyrna.

And we said the church of Smyrna is a church of bitterness.

It's a church that was being crushed.

And all this persecution happened into it.

And Jesus just comes to this church and he just encourages them to hang in there.

He just says, hang in there.

I'm with you.

Hang in there.

It's okay.

Hang in there.

No matter what happens, it's not going to even compare to what you're going to receive when you get in heaven and glory.

People were being martyred for their faith.

It was interesting.

Last week after this sermon, I got this email from a church that we work with in America.

And this is the email.

Hey, we'd like for you to prayer request for Dan and Marilyn.

They're missionaries.

They're working in the areas that have been taken over by ISIS.

And they're asking that we shower them in prayer.

ISIS has taken over the town they're in today.

And he said that ISIS is systematically going house to house to all the Christians and asking the children to denounce Jesus.

He said so far no child has.

And so far all of them have been killed.

But not the parents.

They want the parents to watch.

The UN has withdrawn and the missionaries are on their own.

And the Western missionaries are determined to stick it out for the sake of the families that they have been ministering to, even if it means their own death.

They're very afraid now.

They have no idea how to begin ministering to those families who've lost their children.

Yet they ask us to pray that God would give them a voice and hands to serve and help.

Even so, they're begging for courage to live out their life in such dire circumstances.

And like the children, accept martyrdom if that is what they're called to do.

These brave parents have told their children, they went to each of their childs and said,

Do you think we should stay?

And all the children said, Yes, we have to stay.

We have to take care of these people.

What if that means you being killed?

And all the children said, We're willing to do that.

So please surround us in your prayers and hope and perseverance.

The next day, a message came.

We lost the city of Karakush.

It fell to ISIS, and now they are beheading children systematically.

This is a city we've been smuggling food to.

ISIS pushed back the Pursh Megha, and they are within 10 minutes of our outpost.

And our team is working diligently.

Thousands are flooding into the city to escape.

The UN has evacuated the site.

Our team is unmoved, and we'll stay.

Will you pray for us?

Smyrna was a church that was being crushed.

You know that there are more people who are going to be killed for their faith these 100 years

than all the other 100 years put together in the life of the church.

And we as God's people, we need to be praying for them.

He encourages Smyrna to hang in there, even amongst the bitterness,

because at the end you're going to receive the crown of life.

You'll meet Christ.

Today we come to the church of Pergamum, however you want to say it.

It's the church, most people would say, of worldliness.

It's the church of compromise.

It's the church of struggle.

The word actually means to be thoroughly married.

And the idea is that the church was so thoroughly integrated to the community and to the culture

that sometimes people didn't know what was Christian and what was Pergamum.

Pergamum was this amazing city.

It was an ancient city.

It was built on this massive mountain.

It was a strategic city.

It had great military value.

Alexander the Great took over the city, and he stored all his riches in there.

The historians told us that he put billions and billions of dollars of gold

from all the countries and nations that he conquered.

Pergamum was a royal city, and it was loyal to Rome.

It was one of the few cities that Rome had given the right to capital punishment.

Most of the time, if you wanted to practice capital punishment,

you had to send the person to Rome to be killed, especially if they were a Roman citizen.

But in Pergamum, that wasn't true.

They were so loyal that the Romans gave them the right to kill whoever they wanted.

The symbol of this power was a sword.

It was a two-edged sword.

It was used in Calvary.

It was very sharp.

Pergamum became this amazing center for intellectual discussion.

Eumenes, he's an inventor.

He probably invented parchment, or he perfected it.

And so he got this idea of how to write on animal skins.

And so Pergamum had this library.

It was the largest library in the world.

There were over 200,000 volumes in it.

It was so significant throughout history that when Anthony wanted to marry Cleopatra,

he took the library and he gave it to her as a wedding gift,

and she took it down to Alexandria.

It was a center of politics and religion.

On its hill behind the city as you walked into it,

on its hill there were 50 different temples to different gods.

There were 50 different gods you could worship in Pergamum.

There was Zeus and Dionysus and Venus and Esclepulos.

And almost every week, we're told in the calendar,

almost every week there were two or three days of holidays.

I mean, if you think Hong Kong has a lot of holidays,

Pergamum had holidays after holidays after holidays.

In the ancient world, you could choose whatever god you wanted to serve.

Did you know that?

If you wanted to follow a god, you basically chose the god you wanted to follow

based on your preferences, based on your ambitions,

based on your desires, based on what kind of life you wanted to live.

I mean, if you wanted pleasure, you served the god of Dionysus.

If you wanted power, you served Zeus.

If you wanted money, you served Morgan Stanley or J.P. Morgan.

If you wanted wealth or health, you served another god.

But here, you could serve almost any god you wanted, and it was amazing.

And what worship usually looked like was this,

because we talk about it a lot in Scripture.

You would walk into the temple.

You would pay your money.

You would bow before the idols.

They would give you an animal.

You would kill the animal.

You would give the animal to the priest.

The priest would take the animal, and he would cook it,

and you would have this massive meal.

And after this massive meal was cooked, everybody would eat.

You'd have this massive meal, and then the temple prostitutes would come out,

and you would just have sex with as many temple prostitutes as you could.

So you paid.

You bowed.

You killed.

You ate.

And you had sex.

And that's how you communed with God.

And over and over and over this happened,

and often these celebrations spread out from the temple,

and they took over the whole city.

Pergamum was also this medical center.

It was this amazing place where people would go,

because the spas and the baths, everybody believed,

had this healing power, and so people went there.

It was the home of Galen.

Galen, if you know anything about medicine,

Galen is probably the second most famous medical person in history.

The first one is Hippocrates.

You take the Hippocratic Oath.

But the second one is Galen, and Galen grew up there,

and he ended up being the physician for all of these Caesars afterwards.

Galen is the father of anatomy and physiology and pharmacology

and pathology and neurology.

He created all these things and thought through all these things.

So it was this amazing intellectual place.

In this place, there was this temple.

It was to the God of healing.

His name was Asclepius, A-S-C-L-E-P-I-E-U-S.

Say that fast, really quick times.

Asclepius.

He was a snake.

He was a snake.

So today, when you go in the hospital and you see a pole and you see a snake on it,

that's Asclepius.

He's the God of healing.

So last night, we were driving home after Eric's party,

and we drove beside an ambulance.

And on the back door of the ambulance, what do you have?

You have Asclepius.

There's a little rod there with a little snake there.

So doesn't that make you feel good when you get in the ambulance?

You're in a car with a pagan god symbol on the back of it, right?

He's the God of healing.

And he was a snake.

And it's interesting, his history behind him, because a lot of people said that he came from the Bible.

In Numbers chapter 21, there's a story.

Numbers 21 · chapter mention

And the people of God are going through the desert and through the wilderness,

and they're complaining about, God, we have to eat this manna again.

We have to hit the rocks and get the water, and it's so bad.

Why don't we just go back to Egypt?

And God just says, okay.

And God causes all these snakes to come out of the ground.

And so all these snakes in Numbers 21 are biting the people, and the people are dying.

And they start, oh, God, we're so sorry.

Please forgive us.

We're sorry for complaining.

And they go to Moses and say, Moses, please help us.

We're perishing.

And so Moses goes to God, and he intercedes for God, to the people.

And God says, okay, this is what I want you to do.

I want to make a serpent, a bronze serpent, and stick it on a pole.

And lift it up high.

There's some foreshadowing here.

Who else was lifted up high?

And so whenever somebody's bit by a snake, you lift it up high, and they look up,

and they see that they're healed.

And so he did that, and the people were healed, and God relented on the snakes.

Well, a little later on in 2 Kings, I think, chapter 16, you go into the temple of God,

and you see this pole on the snake there.

And now the people aren't worshiping as a symbol of healing.

They're worshiping it as a God.

And as an example, what we do as people, God gives us these great things that we enjoy,

and we use, and they're for our benefits.

But all of a sudden, we start worshiping him, and they become gods in our life.

And so this was Asclepius.

He was a very interesting person.

This is what you did when you went into his temple.

You went into his temple, and the temple floor was covered with snakes.

So you're sick.

You want to be healed.

You go into the temple, and you lay down.

You lay down, and you go to sleep.

And as you go to sleep, all the snakes are just kind of crawling all over you.

And then when you wake up, you feel better, or you have this dream,

and they tell you how to get healed.

So I don't know how many of us could last that long,

but if you wanted to get healed, you went into this temple,

and you had all the snakes crawl all over you.

And this is what Pergamum was like.

Can you imagine living there?

It was a center, again, of emperor worship.

It was the first place where Caesar, who was alive,

Dominion was the Caesar,

and he was the first Caesar who said,

I'm not dead yet.

I'm still alive, but I still want you to call me God.

And I still want you to call me king.

And so wherever you walk in the houses,

you know, we had these little Buddha shrines

where we go into people's houses and buildings and like that.

They had little altars to Caesar,

and you'd walk by, and you'd pick up a little incense,

and you'd go, Caesar is Lord.

But he changed it.

He said he didn't want you to say Caesar is Lord.

He says he wants you to say Caesar is Lord and Savior.

And so everybody did that.

And so you just walked into buildings,

and you'd pick that up,

and you'd go, Kyrie, Caesar, Caesar is Lord, Caesar is Savior.

And that's what you did wherever you went.

And if you wanted to survive in that culture,

that's what you did.

And so we get to this story,

and now God has planted this little church, Pergamum.

And it's in the center of all of those things.

I mean, life is difficult.

It's pressure.

It's intense outward persecution,

and all of these things going on in them.

And he starts off in this verse,

and if you look in your Bible,

or if you look in your bulletin,

he says in verse 12, this is what he says.

To the angel of the church of Pergamum, write,

the one who has the sharp two-edged sword say this.

Now make a note to yourself.

Whenever God starts a letter off this way,

it's not a good thing.

It's not a good thing,

because a sharp two-edged sword was a symbol of authority,

and it was a symbol of judgment.

And what it meant was that judgment was coming to them.

And everybody who read this letter would have been feared.

They would have been afraid.

They would have been scared.

They'd go, okay, what's going on here?

Something bad is going to happen.

It'd be like, so in college,

I had this roommate who was not very sharp.

And so he drove a car around,

and it was his dad's car,

and he figured that if he didn't register it

with the campus police,

that he could just get as many tickets as he wanted,

and no one would ever know whose car it was.

And so he got about 55 tickets.

And one day, I wake up Saturday in the morning,

I get a phone call from his dad.

And his dad says,

tell my son I'm coming.

The dad.

The one who owns the car.

Well, you know right away what's going to happen, right?

He says, I'm the one who's coming.

I'm the one who owns the car.

And what happened was that his car was taken away

because the dad removed it.

And in that same way,

Jesus is telling the church that I'm coming,

and I'm bringing judgment.

What we're going to learn is that this church

struggled with this idea of judgment.

They struggled with it in their culture.

They didn't want to be judged by their peers.

They didn't want to be judged by their work.

They didn't want to be judged by the culture.

They didn't want to be judged by Rome.

And so they basically just didn't say anything.

And what Jesus says here is by choosing

to live like the world,

you choose to receive my judgment.

It's very interesting.

I mean, we live in a culture here, right, in Hong Kong,

where outward perception is everything.

Perception is everything.

Truth means nothing.

It's only how you perceive.

If you perceived okay, that's okay.

But what's really going on in your life

or in your heart means nothing.

And that's the same with the church of Pergamum.

They were struggling with things going on inside of them.

Now, Smyrna, they were struggling with pressure

and things hitting them from outside.

But Pergamum is struggling with things going on inside of them.

They're struggling with pressure

and people making poor choices

and not walking with God

and not fearing the Lord,

but they're fearing Caesar

and fearing their peers

and fearing their friends.

And Jesus says that if we do this,

we risk everything.

We risk judgment from Him.

So I want to start off our time

by asking you a question.

Who do you fear?

Who do you worry about being judged by?

Whose judgment concerns you?

I mean, is there anything in your life right now

that if God were to look into it,

He wouldn't be pleased?

Is there anything in your life right now

that you would be afraid

of showing your community group?

The people in Pergamum were.

And Jesus says,

I know what's going on in your life.

I know what's going on in your hearts.

I know that you struggle with being judged

by your family and your work

and your peers and your spouse

and your society and your culture

and everything is slamming you.

But what He says is,

what you should worry about more

is being judged by me.

I think we forget that sometimes, don't we?

I mean, often we forget

that we serve a holy God

who's righteous and who holds the sword.

And we live lives that are worried

about outward perception

and how people see us.

And what He says to the church of Pergamum,

what He says to us is,

be careful.

Be careful.

Verse 13, He goes on

and He gives this huge commendation to them.

He says, I know where you live.

I know that you live

in the middle of Satan's throne.

I mean, they lived in the worst place in the world.

I mean, it was terrible.

And I know that you're there

and I know that you're facing these persecutions

and I know that outwardly

things are hitting you

and I know that you're holding to my name.

And when He says that,

it means you're holding to God's character.

You're holding to His values.

You're holding to who He is.

The whole to His name.

The name was everything.

That's why we pray

and we say, in the name of Jesus.

It means God's will be done.

And He says, I know you're doing all these things.

You're holding up under the persecution.

You're holding on to my name.

Even in the midst of Antipas being killed.

Antipas is a really interesting story.

You don't read a lot about him in Scripture.

You see some inferences to him.

But he was a doctor.

And we're told that he was a doctor

and he had been sharing his faith with people illegally

and people were coming to Christ.

And all of a sudden,

the authorities came on him and said,

we want you to stop this.

And if you don't stop this

and if you don't burn the incense

and praise Caesar,

you're going to be killed.

And Antipas said, okay.

And so what they did was

they had this big cow made out of bronze

and they stuck him inside of it

and they started a fire underneath it

and they cooked him alive

for the sake of Jesus.

And Jesus says, I see these things.

I see your faith.

I know you're hanging in there.

You're doing all these things.

You're holding on to my name.

My reputation is important to you.

You're not allowing it to be soiled

or hurt or damaged.

You're walking with me.

You're not giving up.

That's amazing.

One of the early church fathers said this.

He said, deny the faith

is saying that we believe that life here,

life now,

is greater than what God has to offer me.

He said, to deny Christ

is to say that the world

can offer you something better than Jesus.

So maybe that's a question

we need to ask ourselves starting off.

Who can offer us the best thing?

Who's it worth serving?

The people of Pergamum

held strong with the outside pressure.

They held strong with the persecution.

They kept to God's name.

They held on to him.

But in verse 14,

Jesus says something very hard to them.

He says, but I have these things against you

and these things,

there are some of you

who are teaching of Balaam

and there are some of you

who are teaching of Nicholas.

And Balaam told Balak

to put a stumbling block

before the sons of Israel

to eat the things sacrificed to idols

and commit acts of immorality.

Now there's a lot of history here

but I'm just going to fly through it

and what I'm going to say,

this is what happened.

The people of God

were going through Israel.

They're going through the promised land

to Israel

and they were just this locust

and the king of Moab, Balaam,

comes to this prophet Balaam

who is well known.

I mean, God actually spoke to him.

You read in passages,

go back tonight

and read Numbers 21, 22, 23, 24, 25.

Fascinating passages.

And so he comes to Balaam

and he says,

I want you to curse God's people.

And God speaks to Balaam.

He said, what does that guy want?

There's some people coming in,

they're tearing up everything,

I want you to curse them.

And God says,

no, they're my people.

Don't curse them.

If you curse them,

you're in trouble.

And so Balaam goes

and he says,

you know, I can't do it,

I'm sorry,

and the people leave

and they come back

and we'll give you even more money.

And Balaam goes this,

even if you were to give me like,

oh, 10 million dollars,

I still couldn't do it.

You know what he's asking there.

He's asking for 10 million dollars

because that's his price.

That's where he wants

to get bought out on.

And so they bring Balaam in

and Balaam tries to curse

God's people and he can't.

And so what you see

after four times is

Balaam comes to Balak

and he says,

I can't curse God's people,

but I tell you what I can do.

If you want to make

God's people stumble,

this is what you do.

You go hire those Moabite girls,

they're really hot,

they're really good looking.

Hire them

and they're going to come

into the guys

and spend time with them

and hang out with them

and flirt with them.

And then after a while,

they're going to take

into a ceremony.

And in this ceremony,

they're going to bow a little

and eat some food

and then they're going to have

something that's going

to be amazing.

They're going to have

all these relationships.

And if you do this,

God's people's hearts

are going to fall away from him.

And you know what happens?

It works.

Balak hires the prostitutes,

the women come in

and they basically

take the people of God's hearts

away from God

and the people start

to serve other gods.

and what you see there

is that God's people

make this choice

and they make a choice

of saying,

I can serve God

but I can also serve

whoever.

I can do this

for Friday through Monday

but on Sunday,

I'm going to do this.

And so what you see

is that there's people

in the church

who basically have hearts

that are divided.

And the problem

that you see

in the church of Pergamum

is that when John

comes and he writes

to him is this,

the problem is

is the leaders

say nothing.

The leaders

say nothing.

The leaders

are so fearful

of what people

are going to say.

They're so fearful

of what people

are going to think.

They're so fearful

of looking bad

and seeming bad

and narrow-minded

and against the culture.

They say nothing.

And Jesus says,

you know,

that's really interesting

because if you don't

say something,

I'm going to have

to say something.

And I'm going to have

to come in

amidst the church

and remove all

those people

who are serving

two gods.

You see what that says?

Leaders had a choice

and they chose

not to follow God

because they wanted

to serve other things

and other idols

in their life.

In the church,

we call that

church discipline.

There's sometimes

things happen

amongst the people

of God

and the leaders

and the elders

are called to come in

and say,

hey, you know,

this isn't right.

This isn't good.

This isn't the way

we honor the Lord.

This isn't the way

we make God's name great.

This isn't the way

we do things.

But the people

in the church of Pergamum,

they didn't understand that

because they were

so caught up

in living like the world

around them

that their lives

looked no different

than the people

who were in the temple

burning the incense.

And Jesus says,

you can't do that.

I was a young pastor.

Someone came to me

and said,

hey, you know,

your music leader,

he's incredibly gifted,

but he's in this bar

and it's an alternative

lifestyle bar

and he's drinking

and he's getting drunk

and he's talking about

all these other things

and this person

wasn't even in the church.

And they said to me,

you know,

is that way the church

is supposed to act?

And I went to all

the other elders

and teachers.

I said,

so what do we do

about this?

And they said,

you know,

that's just a really hard call.

Maybe we shouldn't

do anything.

But I kept thinking

about this church.

I kept thinking

about God's honor

and God's grace.

And I'm not saying this

because I'm so great

because I've had people

do these same things

to me.

People loved me

so much

when they saw

that I was wandering,

they came and they grabbed me

and said,

what are you doing?

And so I went there

and I talked to that brother

and he talked about

what was going on

in his life

and I'll never forget

his words.

He said,

you know,

everyone knew

this was happening

but you're the only person

who ever loved me enough

to come and ask me

what's going on

in my life.

The church of Pergamum

was conflicted

and John is saying

don't be that way.

Serve the Lord.

Trust Him.

Love Him.

Take care of Him.

He ends the passage

in verse 17

with this promise.

This promise is

if you will do

these things,

if you'll honor me,

if you'll walk with me,

if you'll serve me,

I'll give you

secret hidden manna

and I'll give you

white stone.

All these things mean,

all they are

is their symbolism

and what the symbolism is

is their symbolism

for intimacy

with God.

A relationship

with God.

You know,

I think the problem

with us

and with Tobin,

I think the problem

with the church

of Smyrna,

of Pergamum,

I think maybe

the problem

with some of us

in Watermark

is this.

We come to Christ,

we're walking

with the Lord,

but in the back

of our mind

we wonder,

is God really good?

Is God really going

to take care of me?

Does God really know

my name?

Does He really have

a relationship with me?

And because we wonder

and we fear,

we gather things

around us.

We gather stuff.

We gather money.

We gather resources.

All of these things

we do,

just like the church

of Pergamum,

because we worried

if God was good enough,

was He really going

to take care of us?

And the way

the story ends,

Jesus says,

if you have any doubt

about that,

all you have to do

is look at the cross

and realize

what I've done for you.

Do I love you?

You bet I do.

Do I care for you?

You bet I do.

Am I going to feed you?

You bet I am.

Am I going to have

a relationship with you?

You know I will.

And John

is speaking

to this church

and He's speaking

to us

and He's asking us

to examine our hearts

and to see

who we're serving.

He's asking us

to know people

well enough

around us

so that when they

are falling away

and they're doing

things that they

shouldn't do,

that we can grab

John and say,

hey brother,

what are you doing

about this?

He's asking us

to care about

His name

more

than our name

because the passage

says that the world

is looking at us

and they want to see

is our God

really God?

Is He really good?

Can we trust Him?

Can we trust Him?

The church of Pergamum.

It was a church

that struggled

with worldliness.

It was a church

that struggled

with different things

they wanted to have.

It was a church

that struggled

with compromise.

Ultimately,

it was a church

that struggled

with love

because they didn't

know God

loved them

as much as He does.

Father,

we thank You

for this day.

We thank You

for Your goodness

and Your faithfulness

in our life.

We thank You

for Your Word

that never changes.

We thank You

for these stories

of these churches,

some of them

long dead,

not existing.

If we were to go

back to Turkey today,

there are 74 million people

and only 2,400 Christians.

And we wonder,

we wonder why.

Father,

I pray for our church.

I pray that we would be

a church that wouldn't

love the world

more than we love You.

I pray that we would be

a church that understands

Your goodness,

that we can look

at the cross

whenever we have doubt

and confusion

and realize that You're there,

You care,

You're involved,

You know us,

You're walking with us.

Father,

I pray for those

in our church right now

who don't know You.

I pray as they hear

these words

and they take part

in this community

and they listen

to the music

that they would

ask questions.

I pray that You

would open their eyes

to Your Son,

Christ,

and they would realize

that out of all the gods,

He is the only true one.

He is the only one

that will sustain us.

He's the only one

that will know us

and be involved

in our lives.

He's the only one

that goes through

the hard times

and the persecution

and the pain

and the suffering.

He's the only one

worthy of our praise.

Father,

I pray for us

as a church

as we sit here

on the western side

of Hong Kong Island.

I pray that we would not

fear our bosses

and our jobs

and our work

and we wouldn't worry

about the judgment

that's the past

more than we worry

about Your judgment.

I pray for our hearts.

I pray for my heart.

I pray that You would

speak to us of areas

that we need to be

concerned of

I pray that we would

come before You

as Your people

and as You

encourage them

in verse 16

repent.

Repent.

Turn away.

Confess.

Confess that Jesus is Lord.

So Lord,

we come before You

and we just worship You.

We thank You

for Your Son.

We pray all these things

in His holy name.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.