Judges: The Pattern | Guest Speaker: Brad O'Kelley

Thanks for having me today.

I was trying to figure out why I got asked for Samraps here, Russ is here, like all the normal guys are here, and I was trying to figure out why me.

You know, maybe I thought I was just that good of an elder or something like that or whatever it may be.

And then I read the passage of scripture that they wanted me to preach on.

I was like, that's why.

Nobody wants this.

So I got it.

Which is usually the way it goes with the fifth string guy.

You know, he needs some snaps every now and then.

Uh but that's just that's just part of it.

So we're going to Judges chapter three today.

Um, and just let's just buckle up, okay?

Let me just throw out that disclaimer real quick.

Let's just buckle up a little bit.

If your children are in here, there may be a point for some earmuffs.

Um there's a lot of a lot of things going on here, okay?

Um people getting hurt, wars going on, all kinds of stuff.

But I'm just gonna read through it, okay?

I didn't make a word of this up.

It's all in the Bible in Judges chapter 3.

Judges 3 · chapter mention

I promise you that.

So we're gonna read from Judges chapter 3.

Judges 3 · chapter mention

I'm reading out a New American Standard Version.

This is English Standard Version on the thing.

They're not very different, but there may be a couple words that are off there.

You'll you got it.

You'll be fine.

All right, so we're gonna start at Judges chapter 3 and verse 7, and here's what it says.

Judges 3 · chapter mention

It says, The sons of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals in the Ashirath.

And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel so that he sold them into the hands of Cushan Rashethim, the king of Mesopotamia, and the sons of Israel served Cushan Rashathim eight years.

When the sons of Israel cried to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the sons of Israel to deliver them, Othnel, the son of Kines, Caleb's younger brother.

The Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he judged Israel.

When he went out to war, the Lord gave Cushan Rashathim, king of Mesopotamia, into his hand, so that he prevailed over Cushan Rashathim.

We can stop saying that name now.

Then the land had rest forty years, and Othnel the son of Kines died.

Now the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord.

So the Lord strengthened Eglon, the king of Moab against Israel, because they had done evil in the sight of the Lord.

And he gathered to himself the sons of Amon and Amalek, and he went and defeated Israel, and they possessed the city of palm trees.

The sons of Israel served Eglon, the king of Moab, eighteen years.

Here's where it gets weird.

But when the sons of Israel cried to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for them, Ehud, the son of Jerah, the Benjamite, a left-handed man.

And the sons of Israel sent tribute to him by Eglon, the king of Moab.

Ehud made himself a sword which had two edges, a cubit in length, and he bound it on his right thigh under his cloak.

He presented the tribute to Eglon, king of Moab.

Now Eglon was a very fat man.

It came about when he had finished presenting the tribute that he sent away the people who had carried the tribute, but he himself turned back from the idols, which were at Gilgal, and he said, I have a secret message for you, O king.

And the king said, Keep silent.

And all who attended him left him.

Ehud came to him while he was sitting alone in his cool roof chamber, and Ehud said, I have a message from God for you.

And he arose from his seat.

Ehud stretched out his left hand, took the sword from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly.

The handle also went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade.

For he did not draw the sword out of his belly, and the refuse came out.

I I I warned you.

I told you.

Then Ehud went out into the vestibule, shut the doors of the roof chamber behind him, and locked them.

When he had gone out, his servants came and looked, and behold, the doors of the roof chamber were locked, and they said, He is only relieving himself in the cool room.

Oh boy.

They waited until they came, they became anxious, but behold, it did not open the doors in the roof chamber.

Therefore they took the key and opened them, and behold, their master had fallen to the floor dead.

Now Eh escaped, and they were delaying as they were delaying, and he passed by the idols and escaped to Shera.

And it came about when he had arrived that he blew the trumpet in the hill country of Ephraim, and the sons of Israel went down with him into the hill country, and he was in front of them.

And he said to them, Pursue them, for the Lord has given your enemies the Moabites into your hands.

So they went down after him and seized the fords of the Jordan opposite Moab, and they did not allow anyone to cross.

They struck down at that time about ten thousand Moabites, all robust and vibrant men, and no one escaped.

So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel, and the land was undisturbed for eighty years.

Thank God.

We are through with that.

Let me pray for us this morning.

Father, thank you for your word.

Even when there's so much that it's almost impossible to cover, we're so thankful that you speak to us through your word.

Lord, I pray this morning that as we get started, your word would be a lamp to our feet, a light to our path.

We'd hide its words in our hearts, Father, that you would make it as fire in my bones.

Lord, to present to your people.

Father, be with us during this message.

I pray, as always, that it's all of you and none of me.

Chris, in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Alright, so here's the deal.

Um, there is no way for us to cover all that.

I promise you this, we will not read all of that again.

Okay?

We're just not going to.

It's over, it's done, you made it through, it's great.

The thing you have to realize is that when you look at a book like Judges, we're not looking, trying to figure out every single person that comes along and every single date and all the stuff that they did.

It'd be impossible to cover that in this little bit of time we have on Sunday morning.

So we have to look at the patterns.

The patterns that go on in a book like Judges are what really matters.

And all of us are familiar with patterns, right?

Some of you, you work in patterns every day.

Whatever it may be, maybe you take a blueprint and that pattern is kind of the same where you start at one end, you finish at the other.

Some of you are a lot smarter than I am.

You work in the stock market and you think I can see the patterns of what's coming in the markets and all of this stuff.

I'm not smart enough for any of that.

I just know that there are patterns in my life, and I've discovered one of the newest patterns in my life is that we have to have every now and then a date night.

Now, let me tell you how this pattern begins.

Typically, I come home somewhere between Tuesday and Thursday, okay?

Walk in the door on one of those days.

At this point, our children have pushed my wife over the edge of return, and her response is that she needs a night off, and we must have a date night.

Now, that starts the pattern.

Here's the reason we really need a date night.

It's because one of you fools put on Instagram how great your life was at some restaurant you went to, and now we have to go.

And it's your fault.

That's how I end up at a place that only serves tapas.

If you're unfamiliar with tapas, it's Spanish for small plates.

If you're unfamiliar with the English term small plates, it's a quarter of the food at the full price.

And we end up at the tapas restaurant because someone went and it was glorious.

And now we must go on our date night.

To which I say, okay, let's go.

We shell out the money for the babysitter.

We don't have to put our kids to bed, which is the real treat.

We end up at this restaurant, and I, in a restaurant, am like a Pro Bowl quarterback.

You hand me the menu, and I'm looking for three receivers.

Number one is steak.

I want steak on the skinny post for six in the end zone.

You know what I mean?

That's what I'm looking for.

Second one I will settle for, check down in the flats out here is brisket and or pork.

I will take either one of those.

And then last is chicken out here that you dump it off to and hope you just get a couple yards out of.

That's what I'm looking for.

So when we end up at the top of the restaurant, I find steak.

And I'm happy.

Until the steak arrives.

And I realize that it is steak.

Steak.

And he goes, Can I get you anything else?

And my response is, Yes, the rest of it.

Wherever it is, bring the rest of it to me.

Because this, and Mandy's like, isn't this wonderful?

You can get all of these different places we can share.

It's gonna be amazing.

And I'm like, this sounds like the devil describing his eternal home, is what this sounds like.

I, this is terrible.

And and I'm situated at this point across the Marietta Square, watching people walk out of a steakhouse looking like they just ate a 72-ounce cowboy killer, and I'm over here nestled up with my small plate.

Because you went and had a great time.

And then we end the pattern, continues, and the pattern is we get in the car, and Mandy goes, Well, what'd you think?

To which I respond, I'm still hungry.

Where's the ice cream place?

And we end up there, and then I say, I wish we had gone to and name the place that we've been to a hundred times, that I wish we could have just gone back to and I could have spent my money there.

It's a pattern.

We go through this pattern all the time.

And as silly as that is, when you study a book like Judges, there is a pattern taking place all the time.

Even in the stabbings and the killings and the war and the weird things about fat people and all of this stuff, it's all a pattern that's happening.

And so this morning, I just want you to see the pattern because it's impossible for us to cover everything else.

So here is the first thing in the pattern that I want you to see.

The first thing is this sin enslaves.

We don't like to talk about sin.

It's not it's not fun to talk about sin ever, right?

That's just not a good time.

You don't like to be reminded of your sin.

I don't like to be reminded of my sin.

It's just something we don't like to talk about.

But at the end of the day, the truth of the matter from the word of God is that sin enslaves.

Now look at this.

Look at Judges chapter 3.

Judges 3 · chapter mention

We're just going to start in verse 7.

It says, the sons of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and Ashirath, false gods.

Okay?

It says literally, they forgot the Lord their God.

And the Hebrew word there literally implies that not just a forgetfulness, but they allowed their love for God to wither on the vine.

Get that in your head.

Can you imagine?

Do you know how long it takes for something to wither?

It doesn't happen necessarily overnight.

Sometimes that process takes a long time for it to wither.

And what God is showing us in His Word right here is that the Israelites, they didn't just all of a sudden have this constant wave of sin that came over them.

What it was was little by little this sin entered, and all of a sudden it turns into what?

This giant mountain that was upon them.

When we read about sin in the Bible, we like to think that it's this wave that just shows up and it just encompasses everything that it touches.

But the truth of the matter is it's probably more like your life and my life, especially.

I know my life, I don't know how great you are, but my life especially is that it doesn't come like a wave.

We allow it to come in piece by piece by piece until all of a sudden it's everywhere.

And and I know I remember this because I can remember bringing home our our first child into the house.

You know, I I know I didn't have any like real experience to share with dads at that point.

So it was, it was kind of my thing of, you know, I didn't know what we were getting into.

And there's and now that that we have three kids, and I there's two things that I tell new dads all the time, I'm like, your life is gonna change in two ways, and they will never be the same.

And those two things are trash and laundry.

You might as well, if you're a new dad, whenever you bring home kid number one, you might as well go get a job with Department of Sanitation.

Because you'd be better off.

All you're going to do is roll a trash can from the curb to the house and back again.

You'll see the dads in Marietta the first time, dads, they just stand at the curb holding the 90-gallon can, staring off into space.

Why?

Because somehow, someway, one child makes your trash go tenfold what it was before.

When Mandy and I were just lit, when it was just us with no kids, the trash guys would show up, you know, on Mondays and they'd be like, hey guys, good to see you.

Now they come by and it's just side-eye the whole time.

Because there's 72 bags by the curb.

How did it happen?

You brought home a kid.

You'll never wear clean clothes again until that kid's 10.

One day you're gonna come home, your wife's just gonna be sitting in the laundry room, piles of laundry all around her.

She'll probably be crying, she'll probably be drinking, and you'll and walk away.

You just turn around and walk off.

Turn your underwear inside out, wear the exact same thing tomorrow that you wore today.

Don't say a word.

I had no idea.

It all just snuck up on me.

It just all of a sudden it was like, what happened?

You brought a kid home.

When we talk about these things entering our lives little by little, it's not this wave that all of a sudden just overtakes you.

It's you when you look up and you go, How did we get here?

The sons of Israel are looking around, they have had peace up to this point.

They've been given the promised land, they know exactly where they are and what they have.

And guess what happens?

Is all of a sudden they look up and they go, Wait a minute, we've gotten so far off course we don't even know how to get back.

And they realize that it's so bad, they are literally enslaved to their sin.

And if you look at verse 12, not only do they do it once, verse 12 says, Now the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord.

So the Lord strengthened Eglon, the king of Moab against Israel, because they had done evil in the sight of the Lord.

And guess what?

If you continue on through Judges, do you know what you're gonna hear?

You're gonna hear that same verse over and over and over again, where they continually turn away from the sight of the Lord.

It could be up to 80 years.

In the case of Ehud, they had peace for 80 years.

And all of a sudden, throughout those 80 years, piece by piece, they let this sin come back in and enslave them, and they wake up one day and realize we're not even worshiping the one true God anymore.

We've gotten so far away from him.

And it enslaves.

The second thing I want you to see today is this desperation searches.

Desperation searches.

Judges 3, look at verse 9.

It says, When the sons of Israel cried to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the sons of Israel to deliver them.

Athnil, the son of Kines, Caleb's younger brother.

Look at verse 15.

We're jumping ahead.

But when the sons of Israel cried to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for them.

Ehud, the son of Jared, the Benjamin, a left-handed man, and the sons of Israel sent tribute to him, to Egon, to the king of Moab.

Now, what you've got to understand is this is that now that this sin is enslaved, and the Israelites, remember, we're looking at a pattern, okay?

The pattern is they become enslaved to this sin, and now out of their desperation, they've got to search for something to get back to the place where they know they should be.

Desperation always searches out a way to get back out of that desperate place.

You will always search for a place to become undesperate any longer.

Whether it be financially, I let me just uh there's been times, man, where financially, old Brad was looking around, desperately searching for a place to get back to a good spot, right?

We've had that point in our lives where we had to do that.

Maybe it's in your marriage, maybe it's in your family, maybe it's somewhere where desperately you seek out a place to go back to a good spot.

What the Israelites are doing here is that all of a sudden they reach this point where the only thing they can think to do, look at verse 9, when the sons of Israel cried to the Lord.

They hit a point in this enslavement of sin where the only way to get out of it is to literally cry out to God in desperation.

Can I just say something?

That's a brad problem, too.

I do the same thing.

It's not just some Old Testament passage that sits on a page and we read about it every now and then when we decide to flip past out of the New Testament and go study a book in the Old Testament.

It's not just something that sits on a page, it's something that I literally myself have had to do out of desperation.

Because just like the Israelites, you wake up one day and realize I've gotten so far off the course that I'm desperate to find a way out.

I know this will come as a shock to you.

I've been known maybe, allegedly, to enjoy a pinch of Copenhagen every now and then in my life.

I'd like for you to know that when we had kids, I quit.

I gave it up.

That's the worst.

Because my mom didn't raise a quitter.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, it's awful.

And so I'm I'm, you know, I'm desperate.

Like, I'm I'm in this thing, and like, you know, I you don't realize how that stuff takes a hold on you, man, until like you try to give it up, and then it's like, what is wrong with me?

Um, and so I would I would literally like seek out alternatives, trying to figure out like how can I get through.

I'm desperate here trying to figure out how to get through this.

And like one guy gave me this stuff that's made out of dried kudzu leaves.

It's got like stuff, it's and you're supposed to put it like it's even like I can smell it right now.

Do you know?

Do you have one of those in your life where you're like, I can't talk about it?

I can't talk about it.

One guy was like, no, you gotta use this particular kind of lifesaver, and and you you, you know, you uh yeah, 97 of them a day.

I don't think that's helping, you know what I mean?

Like, I that's not gonna do anything for me.

Another guy was like, oh no, you gotta take uh you can take a teabag and roll up this tea bag and put it in your mouth.

I'm like, this is what am I doing?

And finally, this one old man, I was telling him how much I'm struggling, you know.

I'm I'm like, I'm the addict, that's just like out of it at this point.

And I'm telling this one old man, and he's like, Don't you think you could just be man enough just to quit?

I'm like, I'll show that old codger, I'll just quit.

You know, like now it's a challenge, you know.

I'll show you, buddy.

And so sure enough, guess what worked?

Quitting.

Just cold turkey, just stopping, just not doing it anymore.

It's the only thing that worked.

I had desperately sought out all of these alternatives, all of which were terrible, awful, worse than the original thing, and yet desperately seeking those things out, the one thing that I finally realized is just stop.

Just stop doing it.

But it only came about when I got to that desperate point where nothing else was working.

Do you understand what's going on with Israel in this passage of scripture?

They call out to God because of the enslavement that their own sin put them in.

The only alternative to which is to cry out to an Almighty God in hopes that He has grace and peace and mercy on you to relieve the situation.

This is a desperate plea from Israel.

Why?

Because they've been enslaved to their sin, and out of that desperation, they are searching and searching for something to get them out of that place.

So remember, we're looking at a pattern.

Third thing I want you to see today is this God hears.

Look at verse 10.

Judges 3, verse 10.

Judges 3:10

It says, The Spirit of the Lord came upon him and he judged Israel.

This is talking about um Othnil.

Spirit of the Lord came upon him and he judged Israel when he went out to war.

The Lord gave Cushan Rashathium, king of Mesopotamia, into his hand, so that he prevailed over Cushan Rashathium.

Now, if we jump ahead to verses 16, now we see Ehud made himself a sword, and this is where we get into all the weird stuff.

The stabbings, all this, remember the stuff we read where Ehud goes out, he's a left-handed guy.

Let me tell you something.

If you ever really want a great, if you really want to feel like a scholar, go and study Ehud for a little while.

Just open up some Old Testament commentary.

You know, the books that are like this, they look like an encyclopedia.

Open it up and just study on Ehud because here's what's funny about Ehud.

Uh Old Testament guys like to argue about him, is what I figured out.

There's like two groups and they fight each other.

It's fun to watch.

They fight each other over Ehud.

You want to know why?

Because he was a Benjamite and he was left-handed.

The Bible literally says in verse, uh, what was that?

In verse 15, that he's left-handed.

A lot of Benjamites apparently were left-handed.

Did you know that?

I didn't.

Until I studied Ehud.

Guess what?

He's left-handed.

And you would think, why do I need to know that?

Well, the Old Testament guys, that's when you jump into the war room, buddy.

Guess what?

He would that some people say he was left handed because it was a disability.

They're saying he had no use of his right hand.

Then there's another group that says, those guys are idiots.

They don't know what they're talking about.

The reason he was left handed is because he was a Benjamite.

And it was because of where he was from.

And you sit there and go, what does it have to do with anything?

Where the guy's from if he's left handed.

Handed or right-handed?

And they go, Don't ask that question.

You just need to know his left-handed.

And you run yourself in circles trying to figure this guy out.

And the problem is this is that when you compare him to Othnil the first guy, Othnil was like, I call him like a true Marietta man, you know?

If Othnil lived in our city right now, all of y'all would be talking about Othnil.

Oh, he'd be the man, buddy.

He'd stroll up in here.

He had the wife, the kids, the pedigree, all of it.

You know what I'm saying?

He was he was from the house of Caleb.

That meant something, buddy.

Oh, if he showed up in here today, man, we'd be like, Othnil is here.

He was the man.

And if Ehud showed up here today, you go, who's that loser?

You have no clue who this guy is.

All we know is this is that the same thing happened.

Remember, we're looking at a pattern.

God heard the cries of his people, the desperate cries of his people, and guess what happened?

He raised up someone to come and do his work.

It didn't matter if the guy was the most important person in town or if he was a complete loser that nobody heard of.

The most important thing in this pattern is this.

He was sent by an almighty God.

Period.

And when you come from a place where sin has enslaved you and you're desperately looking for a way out, you're not concerned about the pedigree of the person that shows up.

What you're concerned with is the fact, can they get me to the place that I'm trying to get to in every single situation as we run through the book of Judges, every single one of these, when you read that Israel turns their back on the Lord, that they cry out to the Lord their God, you know what the very next thing you're gonna see is?

God hears them and raises someone up.

It never fails and it never happens out of obligation.

It always comes from God's love for his people.

There's a guy that I work with on a daily basis.

I love him.

I talked about our trash earlier.

It's funny, I didn't think these two things can go together.

Sometimes we produce so much trash that I take some to my office.

I work in the construction industry, so there's always a dumpster.

I don't want the trash guys to get mad.

I worry about things like that.

And and so I put it in my truck and I take it to the office to put it in our dumpster.

So I'll do the work, you know, like just don't be mad at me.

Um so I do that.

Well, one day I just kind of left it in there and forgot, and I come out at the end of the day and I'm like, oh, I gotta take the trash to the dumpster, and I look in the back of my truck, the trash is gone.

Like, that's weird.

I didn't think much of it, so I just kind of went on.

The next day somebody told me that a guy that I work with came and got the trash out of my truck and threw it in the dumpster for me.

So I went to him and I said, Hey man, I really appreciate that.

Thanks for doing it.

He goes, That's no problem.

Next couple days, some more trash appears in my truck, and I go out at the end of the day, I'm going to get it, and it's gone.

So I go back to the same guy.

I'm like, hey man, did you get the trash out of my truck again?

Yeah, no, don't worry about it.

I said, Wow, thanks, I appreciate that.

So then happens one more time, and all of a sudden, this time, I see him going to get the trash out of my truck, and I hear some other guys over here, and they tell him, hey, why don't you tell him to get his own trash?

Why are you getting the trash out of his truck?

Tell him to get his own trash.

And I kind of started thinking, I'm like, yeah, I mean, this doesn't look great, you know.

Like, I need to do this myself, you know.

So I go to the guy and I'm like, hey man, look, you don't you don't have to get the trash off my truck anymore.

Like, I'll I'll get it.

Don't worry about it.

I said, I kind of heard guys give me a hard time.

They're probably right.

Just leave it.

He calls me boss man, even though I'm not his boss.

He says, he says, Bossman, let me tell you something.

He said, You don't worry about what them fools over there say.

Because as far as they're concerned, I'm doing this out of obligation, and they have no idea that I'm doing it out of love.

Can I tell y'all something?

This is this is a guy that drives a backhoe for a living.

Probably said one of the most incredible.

That statement jumped all over me.

Do you understand?

I don't do this out of obligation, I do it out of love.

That that statement got all over me to the point to where I could not stop thinking about all of the things that I do in my life out of obligation instead of love.

Out of all the ways that I go about my day out of obligation instead of love, the people that I come across every single day and I treat them a certain way out of obligation instead of out of love.

Do you understand that when the nation of Israel cries out to God, seeking out of their desperation to get away from their sin, God does not raise up a leader out of obligation, he raises someone up out of love every single time.

It has nothing to do with how good or bad his people were.

He is a heavenly father that hears the cries of his children.

And he answers out of love.

The last thing I want you to see today is this.

The Savior delivers.

Look at Judges 3, verse 11.

Judges 3:11

It says, Then the land had rest 40 years, and Othnil, the son of Kines, died.

Look at verse 30.

It says, So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel, and the land was undisturbed for 80 years.

Think about that, for 40 years.

80 years in the case of Ehud, the guy that nobody knew, that nobody cared about.

He gave the nation of Israel the longest period of peace that they had ever had, ever recorded in Judges.

Eighty years is the longest era of peace.

That was ushered in by Ehud going out and doing what he did with the stabbings and all the stuff that we won't get back into.

All of that stuff.

And then Othniel, he gave 40 years of peace to these people, and they're in this place of peace and rest, and all of a sudden they realize our Savior, our God, has delivered us.

They complete the pattern.

The pattern is they slide into sin slowly, but they get enslaved by it.

They cry out in desperation to the Lord.

God hears them and then delivers.

And this pattern happens over and over and over again in the book of Judges.

You won't believe some of the stuff God delivers his people from as we study this book.

It's insane.

And we sit in a place like this today and we go, Brad, that's great.

Awesome.

Thanks for telling us the pattern.

What in the world does that have to do with us today?

And I'm glad you asked.

Because in John chapter 8, you're going to see what it's got to do with us.

John 8 · chapter mention

John chapter 8, this is the best.

John 8 · chapter mention

You ready?

We're going to start in verse 31.

It says, so Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed him, if you continue in my word, then you're truly disciples of mine, and you'll know the truth.

And the truth will make you free.

And they answered him, We are Abraham's descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone.

How is it that you say you will become free?

And Jesus answered them, Truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.

The slave does not remain in the house forever.

The son does remain forever.

So if the son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

Do you understand that from the time of Judges through all of the generations to these descendants of the very Israelites that we're talking about, Jesus is talking to their descendants, the people that truly had been enslaved.

Do you understand that from all of that time, from the book of Judges all the way to the book of John, the pattern never changed?

And the beauty is this neither did Almighty God.

He never changed.

Look at what he says to his people.

Verse 34.

They answered him, We're Abraham's descendants.

We have never yet been enslaved by anyone.

How is it that you say you will become free?

They are desperately searching for a reason to make all of this work.

Jesus is saying things to them that make no sense because they're going, We've been free our entire lives.

What are you talking about?

You have no clue.

We've always been free.

No one's ever enslaved us, not having the first clue that Jesus is talking about the first step of the pattern, which is sin in slaves.

They have no idea that it's not enslavement from another group of people.

They're enslaved by their sin.

Look at the second thing.

Desperation searches.

Look at verse 33.

We just read it.

They answered him.

We're Abraham's descendants.

They're searching for a reason to make all of this work.

But God hears, look at verse 35.

The slave does not remain in the house forever, the son does remain forever.

Jesus is making a distinction that this is not about you being a slave, it's about me being a savior.

He hears the cries of desperation, even though they don't realize they're desperate yet.

He's still eagerly trying to deliver them from their desperation.

And the very last thing in verse 36, what does Jesus tell them?

So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

Folks, the best we can do today is study the pattern.

That no matter where you are in your life, no matter what is happening with you, no matter what is going on, you need to know the pattern is still the same, but so is the Savior.

And whether you're entangled in sin and enslaved by it, whether you're desperately seeking to get out of the situation that you're in, you need to know today that God, in all of his infinite wisdom, hears you and has sent a savior to deliver you, whose name is Jesus.

My brothers and sisters, do not walk out of here today in the same pattern that you walked in.

Because there is a savior desperately seeking to deliver you.

Let's go to the Lord in prayer this morning.

Father.

In my mind, that made zero sense.

So I hope you'll make sense of it.

Thank you for your word.

Thank you for the pattern that you deliver us through.

That no matter where we are in our sin, in our enslavement, you deliver.

We love you.

We pray that you'd have your way with this time of communion, and we ask all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.