The Danger of Being Your Own King // Noah Schutte

Let's pray.

Jesus, we give this time to you.

Lord, we pray that every word that comes from my mouth would be of you, and any word that is not of you would just be forgotten.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's read the word together as we stand.

Sorry, guys, that was confusing, I know.

Um Philippians 2, verses 9 through 11.

Philippians 2:9–11

Therefore, God has highly exalted him, being Jesus, and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

You may be seated.

You may be seated.

Good morning, church.

How are how are we doing?

Getting ready for the fourth?

Anybody who's going to a lake?

I feel like you gotta spend the fourth of July at a lake.

That's where we always go.

See the fireworks over the lake.

So good.

So good.

If you haven't done it before, you gotta do it.

But yeah, my name is Noah.

Again, my wife Abby and I.

We serve on the eldership team here at 614 Church.

Um our daughter Asa is the one with the cute buns in her hair that's running around underneath your feet.

Um we love this place.

This place is home.

I feel like I grew up here and it's a privilege to worship with you all.

Today, uh the verse I just read and what we're going to be talking about is the kingship of Christ.

His kingship is a beautiful thing, but I think this idea of kingship makes us uncomfortable because you know we look at history and we see so many poor examples of kings who wield their authority to oppress and for their own gain.

And even, you know, we live in a country that was founded on fleeing from a king.

But I was looking through history and found some actually kings that were great.

They did amazing things for their country, and the power that they had, they didn't wield it for their own gain, but for the gain of their country and their people.

This guy, the one example I found, his name was Sejong.

Can you guys say Sejong?

He was a king in South Korea, uh, Sejong the Great, and he created the whole alphabet that they used for their language.

He he established these government research programs that made incredible advancements in agriculture, in medicine, and science.

And he had this reputation for hearing out his advisors and allowing people to offer opinions, and he would often go with their ideas rather than his own.

He lifted heavy tax burdens off of the poorest in his country, and he was a huge social justice advocate for parental leave and health care and all these various things.

He was an incredible influence over his country.

And so the reality is kings are complicated.

Some are good, some are bad, but it's not kingship itself that is bad.

I think our adversion to kingship is more grounded in our human nature, in our Western culture that seeks to make the individual the king of his life rather than submitting to any other person.

And so today we're going to talk about the kingship of Christ.

And I hope it encourages you to take a proper view of his kingship and to submit to it as such.

My main point today for anyone taking notes is this the human heart is depraved and in desperate need for a king, but we are in denial.

Depraved just means there's nothing good.

There's nothing good about our heart.

We are totally lost in need of a Savior King.

Alright, if you're new with us, we've been going through the Old Testament, through a series we're calling the Patriarchs.

This series started with a man named Abraham who was met by God and called to that his family would be a blessing to all nations.

If you guys could throw up that map.

So Abraham, he's over off way off into the side of the map, and when we first meet him, and he journeys to Canaan, which is on your guise's right side of that map.

And he has some kids, and eventually one of his uh grandchildren is sold into slavery in Egypt, which is on your guys' left side of the map.

And through a crazy turn of events, he ends up being the savior for this family, and they get established in Egypt.

Then a few weeks ago, we read the Exodus story, where Egypt kind of the relationship goes sideways and they end up being oppressed in Egypt.

And that little black line is how they escaped from Egypt through the Red Sea, meeting with God at Mount Sinai, and then they were supposed to get into the promised land, but we saw them being unfaithful and they had to wander in the wilderness.

Eventually they get in and they're told to take the entire land that God has given it all to them, but they're not faithful to that promise from God.

They only take parts of the land and leave some of the natives in the land.

And so we see that because they did that, the natives of the land corrupt the nation of Israel with idol worship and with just these like pagan practices.

And that brings us to the book of Judges.

The book of Judges is now this playing out of Israel in the promised land that God had given them, but they are being corrupted constantly by the people around them.

And so the book of Judges wrestles with these two questions.

Will God allow his people's sin to go unpunished?

And will God allow his people's sin to push him away?

These questions seem to be in conflict because God, the answer to both of them is no.

Then in this enslavement, they become desperate and cry out to God for saving.

Then God raises up a judge who ends up saving them, and then they live at peace with God and serve him again, but it only lasts a little while longer, and the cycle continues.

And the the sad thing about the book of Judges is the story is not just like linear, like a merry-go-round where you just keep going around in the same way.

It's more like a toilet bowl, um, like this.

You know, you start out with Othniel, and Othnil is just kind of a good guy.

The only thing really wrong with Othnil is he's left-handed.

I guess they didn't like that.

Um and he he brings this lasting peace for the land of Israel.

But then it just keeps spiraling, it keeps spiraling down and down and down and down until we get to Samson, who like marries a Philistine and has just like no respect for God at all.

The only thing about him is that he's like the incredible Hulk made human.

Um, and he's he delivers Israel, but there's really no lasting peace.

And so where we're at today is even after Samson, at the very bottom of this story, where Israel has disobeyed God time and time again, and it has led them into darkness and depravity.

So before I go on to our text for today, I gotta I want to explain uh a biblical hermeneutic.

This hermeneutic is a rule for interpreting scripture.

Um we have to determine whether a text is descriptive or prescriptive.

So descriptive means it's telling you what you should do, and prescriptive is what it's telling you what you should do, and descriptive is it's telling you what happened.

It's not saying you should do this, it's just telling you what happened.

So, as an example, the Ten Commandments are prescriptive.

You should follow the Ten Commandments, but Abraham having a child with his wife's servant is descriptive.

You should not do that.

And so the Bible doesn't condone everything that happens within it.

There's plenty of immoral human action in the scriptures that God opposes.

Um, and that's very much the case with today's story.

Basically, everything that happens today, you should do the opposite.

Um, it gets pretty rough, I will warn you.

Um so again, as we enter in, my main point the human heart is depraved and in desperate need for a king, but we're in denial.

So we're gonna cover two stories today.

The first story is a story of religious hypocrisy rather than true devotion, and this story points us to our need for a righteous Savior king.

Alright, we're gonna be in Judges 17, if you guys want to flip there.

Judges 17, verses 1 through 6.

Judges 17:1–6

There was a man of the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Micah, and he said to his mother, The eleven hundred pieces of silver that were taken from you, about which you uttered a curse, and also spoke it in my ears, behold, the silver is with me, I took it.

And his mother said, Blessed be my son by the Lord, and he restored the eleven hundred pieces of silver to his mother.

And his mother said, I dedicate the silver to the Lord, from my hand for my son, to make a carved image and a metal image.

Now therefore I will restore it to you.

So when he restored the money to his mother, his mother took two hundred pieces of silver and gave it to the silversmith, who made it into a carved image and a metal image, and it was in the house of Micah.

And the man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephad and household gods, and ordained one of his sons who became his priest.

In those days there was no king in Israel.

Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

So in this passage we meet two complicated characters.

First, we have Micah.

The first thing we learned about Micah is that he stole eleven hundred pieces of silver from his mom.

That's a lot of money.

That's like over a hundred years worth of wages that he steals from his mom, and he only gives it back when she like utters a curse upon him.

Then we meet Micah's mom, and she gets really excited about this silver coming back, and she says that she dedicates it all to the Lord.

But then her actions do not line up with her words.

You see, she takes this these 1100 pieces of silver that she dedicates to the Lord, supposedly.

She only takes 200 pieces of silver and she makes an idol out of it.

So, like, completely wrong.

She should have taken the silver to the tabernacle, to the priests, and given it to them.

That would have been the proper way to dedicate it to the Lord.

But she chooses to do it in her own way.

And a carved image or an idol is it's so wrong because it's our own way of creating a God, our a God that we can understand, that we made ourselves, cannot lead us to worship of the true Almighty God who is bigger than we could create or even fathom.

So it makes God small and it leads us away from worshiping him as he truly is.

So then we go back to Micah.

He gets this idol from his mom and he builds a shrine and he ordains one of his sons as a priest.

He creates this very impressive religious space in his house, but it's far from what God instructed in the law of Moses.

He should have gone to the tabernacle to make sacrifices, but instead he's set up a place in his own home where it's comfortable, where it's convenient.

To the outsider, Micah probably would have seemed like a really pious, religious, good guy.

Man, look at this cool shrine you have and this cool idol you have.

Man, you even have a priest.

But ultimately, this is just religion that falls short of true worship because it is not how God wanted him to worship.

It, you know, God said explicitly that he was not supposed to make idols.

God said explicitly that sacrifices were to be made by Levites at the tabernacle.

So we see that Micah and his mother have not submitted themselves to God.

Rather, they like the appearance of religion in their life.

And so we see after setting up this shrine, Micah encounters a Levite who's kind of wandering through the wilderness, and he thinks, oh man, this is gonna be an upgrade to my household shrine.

I'm gonna have a real Levite being the priest to my idol.

And so he offers to pay the Levite to enlist him at his household shrine, and he thinks this is gonna bring him closer, but he's still so far off.

And we we see his heart is revealed.

In Judges 17, 13, it says this.

So we finally see his heart's revealed.

He thinks God's going to be impressed by his fancy shrine, by his fancy idol, by even his Levite, a priest.

But really, God is repulsed by this action, by this religious hypocrisy.

And we know this because in verse 6 it says, In those days there was no king in Israel.

Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

God sees the hypocrisy of this and is in judgment over it.

So my question for us today is how are we tempted to religious hypocrisy and how are we falling into it?

Some questions for you to consider, maybe write down.

Is God asking you to go all in on something?

And are you holding back or choosing to come up with your own idea like Micah's mom?

Are you trying, secondly, are you trying to give the appearance of religion in your life like Micah without true devotion to God as king?

And thirdly, do you expect that God owes you something based on your piety, like Micah with his Levite?

In the next chapter, we see that Micah's shrine, his idol, and even his Levite get taken from him when the tribe of Dan shows up and they're too strong for him.

And this is his response to them.

He says, You take my gods that I made and the priest and go away.

And what have I left?

We see that Micah's view of God has shrunk down to the size of an idol his mom made for him.

This idol had no power to provide for him, had no power to protect him.

It is worthless.

And so the tribe of Dan actually didn't steal anything from Micah.

They stole a bunch of worthless, useless things.

Micah still has access to the Almighty God, but he feels like he has nothing.

And this is why idols are so bad for us.

Firstly, they're not worthy of worship, and so they dishonor God.

They are powerless to protect us or bring us life, but and they are also easily destroyed and stolen.

And so they leave us with nothing.

And so this story shows us how the human heart is bent towards idol worship, making something, making God into something that we can understand, something we like, something that makes a little bit more sense to us, and it ultimately leads us to despair.

So here's my question for you.

How have you made God into an idol?

And maybe a way of thinking about that a little bit more easily.

Have you conveniently reinterpreted clear teachings of Scripture to fit your preferences?

Or secondly, do you only worship God in ways that are convenient and comfortable rather than how he would like to be worshipped?

And next, how have idols in your life left you desperate for the true God who has true authority?

You see, idols are cool in one way because they let you kind of live your life how you want to live it.

But they are really not so cool when you actually need to call upon them for something because you made them.

They're of your power and strength.

They have nothing to offer you in your time of need.

That is why you want to submit to the true God.

You do have to submit to his ways and his rules, but you get to call on him in your time of need.

And so this story points us to the fact that we're in denial of wanting to submit to the king, but actually we are desperate for him.

We need a savior king in our life.

Moving on to the second story.

The second story is not about religious hypocrisy, it's about rebellious depravity, away from obedience to God as king, and again points us to our need for a righteous savior.

Judges 19.

In those days there was no king in Israel.

A certain Levite was sojourning in the remote parts of the hill country of Ephraim.

He took himself a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah, and his concubine was unfaithful to him.

And she went away from him to her father's house at Bethlehem in Judah, and was there for some four months, and her husband arose and went after her to speak kindly to her and bring her back.

He had with him a servant and a couple of donkeys, and she brought him into her father's house.

And when the girl saw him, he came to joy with meet him to meet him.

So we see this this story begins again with this declaration that there were no kings in Israel.

So everything to follow we know that God sees as immoral and wrong.

So the first we have this Levite, and he the first thing we learn about him is that he has a concubine, which was a second-class partner, not a wife, just a second class partner.

And we see many other characters in the Bible have a concubine, but God does not condone this.

And second, we have the concubine.

She's in this awful situation, but even herself, she is not blameless.

She is unfaithful to this man she's given her commitment to, and runs off.

And so the backdrop of this story is just moral decline and departure from the teachings of God.

The story goes on.

We're going to skip a ways a little bit.

They reunite and they they end up traveling back to, they're trying to get back to their home, their hometown, and they stop in this Israelite city that they went on late into the night to try and get to an Israelite city because they didn't feel safe in another non-Israelite town.

And so we just see there's so much wrong in this story.

They're not welcomed in anybody's home when they arrive.

They're having to traverse through non-Israelite areas in the land that God has given them.

And so this story is nothing short of morally despicable in more ways than we can even imagine.

And you'll probably ask as I'm reading, why are we reading this in church?

And I can fully relate to that.

However, I believe that God has something for us in this scripture to teach us.

And also sadly, the the things, the events in this story happened today in this world, sadly in this country, and even sadder in this city.

And so I would ask it to you, open your hearts and just see what is God saying.

Judges 19, 22.

As they were making their hearts merry, this the couple got invited into a man's house finally late at night.

Behold, the men of the city, worthless fellows, surrounded the house, beating on the door, and they said to the old man, the master of the house, Bring out the man, the Levite, who came into your house, that we may know him.

So we start with the quote unquote worthless fellows.

They give no reason for their man the demand to know the man, and this is just an English euphemism of the original language for like sexually.

Assault or rape.

They give no reason for this.

This is just selfish hedonistic desire.

They just want what they want because they want it.

And when I say hedonism, that's just a term that means seeking of pleasure for pleasure's sake.

They don't, that it's just, this is what I want to do.

The story goes on.

And the man, the master of the house, went out to them and said to them, No, my brothers, do not act so wickedly.

Since this man has come into my house, do not do this vile thing.

Behold, here are my virgin daughter and his concubine.

Let me bring them out now, violate them and do with them what seems good to you.

But against this man, do not do this outrageous thing.

So now we have the old man, the master of the house, his turn.

He he seems like he's trying to be a tough guy and stand up to the mob, but he doesn't stand up to them.

He just does the absolute worst thing you could in offering up the most vulnerable, the most innocent in his house to this man, to this mob.

He should have said, I'll come out and you're gonna have to go through me to get to them.

But instead he just cowers to the mob.

Now we see the Levite joins in in the cowardice.

The mob doesn't listen to the old man, so the Levite takes it into his own hands and throws out someone he should be protecting and keeping safe.

Again, he should have been the one to go out there and say, You gotta go through me.

But he instead offers up the most vulnerable.

And just as a quick aside to the to the men in the room, I know this is a very extreme example, but you are the protectors of your house and the people around you who are vulnerable.

This is not how you ought to act, and just this way of offering them up to do the hard work of protecting and caring.

You are the one who goes first.

You are the one who leads, you are the one who takes the hits.

And and ladies, if if you are treated this way, this is not how you ought to be treated.

You ought to be protected, you ought to be cared for and defended.

And this is how God loves you.

He's the one who takes the hits, he's the one who died for you so that your enemies might be staved off from you.

So, because of this mob's hedonistic, sinful desires and these men's cowardice, this concubine experiences true hell on earth all night long.

The story goes on As morning appeared, the women came and fell at the door of the man's house where her master was until it was light.

And her master rose up in the morning, and we opened the doors of the house, and went out to go on his way.

Behold, there was his concubine lying on the floor of the house, with her hands on the threshold.

He said to her, Get up, let's be going.

But there was no answer.

Then he put her on the donkey, and the man rose up and went away to his home.

When he entered his house, he took a knife, and taking hold of his concubine, divided her limb by limb into twelve pieces, and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel, and all who saw it said, Such a thing has never happened and been seen from the day that the people of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt until this day.

Consider it, take counsel, and speak.

You can just feel the utter indifference from this guy.

He he he stays in the house all night long and doesn't even offer to help, care for her.

And when he sees her on the ground, he just tells her to get up, like she's an animal or something.

He doesn't even honor her body as was accustomed in the time.

He uses it as propaganda to get revenge on these men.

So the people of Gibeah in this story are obviously bad, but the Levites' actions are not any better.

The reaction from the rest of the people of Israel is proper.

They say, What the heck?

This nothing like this has ever happened.

This should be unheard of amongst God's people.

And so we see over the next two chapters, the rest of the tribes of Israel attempt to wipe out the tribe of Benjamin through the civil war, and after a ton of bloodshed and hypocrisy, the tribe of Benjamin is nearly wiped out.

And then even more innocent women are kidnapped to give to them.

It's a crazy story.

And all in all, there's no redeeming quality in this story.

It is just godless actions and moral rot all the way through.

And the story ends in Judges 21, 25, and it says this In those days there was no king in Israel.

Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

Again, the author is condemning this story as evil.

Before I go any further, if I seem angry, it is at this text.

I hope that's the what you feel as well.

I'm not angry with any of you.

But as appalling as this story is, atrocities like this occur today around the world, but in our city in 2025, according to Columbus crime statistics, there were 84 murders in 2025 and 38 rapes in Columbus.

These numbers are awful, and they're nothing compared to other parts of the world.

So we cannot distance ourselves too much from this story.

Romans 3.23 says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

We cannot be disgusted by the sin of the men of Gibeah and just be complacent with the sin in our own lives, because it's ultimately the same root cause.

Refusal to submit to the king, instead wanting to be the king of our own lives.

Which brings me back to my main point.

The human heart is depraved and in desperate need for a king, but we're in denial.

While preparing this sermon, I uh I found myself asking why questions a lot, like, why is this in the Bible?

Why are these two stories that seem to have nothing to do with each other back to back?

And uh a lot of the time, if I'm being honest, it was a why am I the one who has to preach on these texts?

Um but I got answers to a lot of those questions.

Um I think these stories can be understood together as two extremes on the ends of the same spectrum.

And so the spectrum is a life where someone has decided I want to be king rather than submitting to God as king.

So one extreme is Micah, the guy who has his own household shrine with his own idol and his own priest.

To the outsider, it seems like, man, Micah's a good guy.

I want to come over to Micah's house.

But it's this it's his heart is self-glorification, wanting to appear righteous, wanting to get something from God rather than worship God.

And then we have the other extreme, all the way, as far from Micah as possible, the men of Gibeah and this Levite, who are just cowardly, hedonistic, sinful, they want nothing, they have no care in the world for what anyone thinks of them.

They just want what they want and they want it now.

And they're not willing, they're not, they don't care about who they hurt on the way.

And these these these stories, they seem like they have nothing in common, but the Bible gives the same ruling on both of them.

In those days there was no king in Israel.

Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

This is because God's not condemning the specific action that of the individual, he's condemning the heart, condemning that we all want to be the king of our own life, that we refuse to submit to the true king.

In Romans 3, 10 through 12 it says, none is righteous, no not one.

No one understands, no one seeks for God, all have turned aside, together they have become worthless.

No one does good, not even one.

Scripture is clear.

We cannot look at the sin of others and distance ourselves from it too much.

The illustration that I've been thinking about to make this maybe a little bit more understandable is imagine if if Pastor David gave you a brief case of cash, 100K, just gave it to you, and he said, I want you are responsible to bring this to Linden Life.

They're an amazing ministry we partner with.

We're gonna invest in them to help them build out their ministry.

And he gives it to you.

And now it's up to you.

What are you gonna do with this cash?

The the what you you could honor him and just take it and give it to Linden Life.

Or maybe you get a bright idea and you're like, man, I could 100K, I could start a business.

You know, get my business off and running, and you know, in the end, I could actually give a little, I could give even more than 100K to Linden Life.

You know, if I have a successful business, maybe it's 200, 300K.

Or maybe a little bit differently, you say, oh man, this is a lot of money.

I could have a lot of fun with this.

I could buy a lot of alcohol, a lot of drugs, I could, I could really party it up with this stuff.

You see, to the outsider, the the businessman would look, man, like, look, he's really doing something, doing something good with his life.

And someone, we would look on the other person and say, Man, what are you doing?

You just threw your life away.

But the heart is the same.

You didn't obey what you were ought, what you ought to have done, which was do what Pastor David told you to do with what he gave you.

And so the money with God is he's given us a free will to decide what we want to do with our life.

He's told us the best thing for you and what you ought to do is worship me as king.

But he says it's up to you.

You can do what you want.

And some of us, we take that free will and we want to build up our life to look really good and fancy.

And some of us just say, man, I want to do what I want to do.

I don't care.

But honestly, we probably find ourselves in the middle of that spectrum.

Find ourselves sometimes wanting to look good, sometimes we just want to do what we want to do.

And so the response to this scripture is simple submit to God as king because he is worthy of it, and not doing so leads to death.

So I understand that this uh is a very somber message, but I don't want to leave us there.

I don't want to leave us sad as we go from church.

These stores point us to something.

These poor and more than something, they point us to someone.

The king, the righteous king who's meant to save.

That all of this is pointing to.

This righteous king, he embodies perfect justice and ultimately defeats evil.

He is the one who gets brutalized, chopped up as that woman did, as he dies on the cross for your sin.

And he is the hope, he is the truth.

Fulfilled in Revelation 21, 3 through 5, it says this, and behold, I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, he will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more.

There shall be there shall be no mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more, for their former things have passed away, and he who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new.

Can we stand to our feet this morning?

I just want to walk us through what does it look like to respond to this text as we've been, as it's as I've been reading it this morning.

I'm aware that if you've experienced some sort of evil or or violence like I'm talking about, that this could be hard to hear.

And I just want you to know that there is healing in the court of God.

There is healing in the king's court.

He wants to come alongside you and show you his justice and heal you of the wounds that have been inflicted on you.

And maybe, maybe you're someone here and you've done many things that you're not too proud of.

You you relate a lot with the men of Gibeah who just did what they wanted to do because they wanted to do it.

There is mercy in the king's court as well.

But it comes through repentance, saying that what I did was wrong, and I'm turning away from that to receive you, Jesus.

But for most of us, the the response is simple today: to submit to the king.

This is what it says in Philippians 2.

It says, Therefore God has highly exalted him, being Jesus, and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

So we see this picture that at one time when Jesus fully reveals himself, every knee will bow before him.

And so my offer today is would you bow your knee willingly before you are forced to bow at the end of times.

Can you close our eyes?

I just want to give us a chance to respond before the Lord for kind of the two ends of the spectrum that we're really talking about.

I want to start with just the religious hypocrisy, where we just want to look good for ourselves, but we we're doing it to get something from God rather than just doing because he's worthy of our worship.

If if you relate to that and you just want to repent of that and say, God, I'm sorry, can you just can you just lift your hands this morning as just a sign of repentance?

Thank you.

Thank you for everyone who's responding.

Lord, I just pray over these hands.

God, I pray just a breaking off of people pleasing and doing for our own sake.

And I just pray for utter devotion today.

Now for people, if you're if you're you're on the maybe a little you tend towards the other side of the spectrum and you just feel like, man, I just want to do what I want to do.

I don't want to submit to God, I want to do my own thing.

Could you just could you just lift your hands in response?

I see.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Lord, I pray for the I thank you for the the boldness and the honesty of these hands.

Lord, I just pray that they would find themselves at your knees, submitted to you, submitted to your rules and your ways, and that you would comfort them in their repentance.

We thank you, Jesus.

We thank you, Jesus.

So as the band goes on in worship, um I'm gonna tell you what I'm gonna do, and I would invite you to follow me, is I'm gonna come go to my seat and kneel before the king and repent and ask him to search my heart of where I've been unfaithful.

And after that, I'm going to enjoy his presence.

Because the good news is that, like I read in that story of Revelation, that this is he is a king who is worthy of worship, but he is also a father.

What you find is when you enter the king's court out of reverence, you don't find harshness.

You don't find an unrelatable king.

You find a father who wants to give you his presence, who wants to be with you, who wants to know you.

And so my ask this morning is would we respond to him as king and enjoy him as father?

And I don't know what that's gonna look like for you.

Maybe it's maybe it's sitting at your seat and enjoying him, maybe it's coming up front to kneel before him, just to get away from everybody else and respond to him.

But I would encourage you to respond.

If if if the king, if if we lived under a king and he was here today, there would be a proper way to respond.

And I'm here to tell you the king of kings is here today.

And there's a proper way to respond.

Will you do it?

I I hope that you will.