Distorted Faith

So, let me ask you to open your Bibles. We're here and we're in a series in 2 Kings, 2 Kings chapter 17, and today we have the opportunity to finish off this chapter, this sad saga of the fall of Israel.

2 Kings 17 · chapter mention

We saw last week that we have a king, a last king of Israel, ironically named Hosea, which is a variant of Joshua. And unlike the very first Joshua that led them into the Promised Land, then unfortunately this Joshua, King Hosea, has done some things that have led the people right on out of the Promised Land.

And there are some new developments happening in this land. So, pick up with me in verse 24, 2 Kings 17, verse 24. I'm going to read through the end of the chapter through verse 41.

2 Kings 17:24

And the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Kata, Abba, Hamath, Sephar, Vame, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the people of Israel.

And they took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities. And at the beginning of their dwelling there, they did not fear the Lord. Therefore, the Lord sent lions among them which killed some of them.

So the king of Assyria was told, The nations that you have carried away and placed in the cities of Samaria do not know the God of the land, the law of the God of the land.

Therefore, he has sent lions among them, and behold, they are killing them because they do not know the law of the God of the land. Then the king of Assyria commanded, Send there one of the priests whom you carried away from there, and let him go and dwell there, and teach them the law of the God of the land.

So one of the priests whom they had carried off away from Samaria came and lived at Bethel and taught them how they should fear the Lord. But every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the shrines of the high places that the Samaritans had made, every nation in the cities in which they lived.

The men of Babylon made Sakoth-Banoth, the men of Koth made Nergal, the men of Hamath made Ashima, and the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burned their children in the fire to Adramelic and Anamelech, the gods of the Sepharvim.

They also feared the Lord and appointed from among themselves all sorts of people as priests of the high places who sacrificed for them in the shrines of the high places.

So they feared the Lord, but also served their own gods after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away. To this day they do according to the former manner.

They do not fear the Lord, and they do not follow His statutes, or the rules, or the law, or the commandment that the Lord commanded the children of Jacob, whom He named Israel.

The Lord made a covenant with them and commanded them, You shall not fear other gods, or bow yourselves to them, or serve them or sacrifice to them.

But you shall fear the Lord, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt with great power and an outstretched arm. You shall bow yourselves to Him, and to Him shall you sacrifice.

And the statutes and the rules and the law and the commandment that He wrote for you, you shall always be careful to do. You shall not fear other gods, and you shall not forget the covenant that I have made with you.

You shall not fear other gods, but you shall fear the Lord your God, and He will deliver you out of the hand of your enemies. However, they would not listen, but did according to their former manner.

So these nations feared the Lord and also served their carved images, their children did likewise, and their children's children, as their fathers did, so they do to this day.

Would you pray with me once more? Heavenly Father, we come to You again, submitting ourselves to Your Word. Lord, we trust that there is truth here for our lives that we desperately need.

Father, we lift up those in our church family, even those who can't be here today, and we pray for them. We pray, Father, that You would comfort, that You would provide, that You would meet needs.

Father, for those of us in the congregation that are facing uncertainty in the days and weeks ahead, Father, we pray that Your peace would be felt.

We trust You, and we love You. And we pray this in the name of Your Son, in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

So again, picking up from last week, remember the fall of Israel, this great nation at one time, caving to wave upon wave of idolatry, showing themselves to be wicked, and not just that, but stubborn, refusing to listen.

Finally, it's over for the northern kingdom. Only the southern kingdom of Judah remains. And as I mentioned, the last straw came with this king, Hosea, who did what?

He literally bent his neck to the king of Egypt to try to get the Egyptians to save them from Assyria in a move that looked like Israel going back under the yoke of slavery.

Samaria falls to Assyria, and many thousands and thousands of Israelites are deported. They're carried off to a strange land. But what we see here today, in verse 24, is how the king of Assyria, he's also bringing some new folks in.

Consistent with Assyrian deportation policy, it's not just export, it's also import. And they have imported people, listed here in verse 24, from Babylon, Kata, Ava, Hamath, and Sepharvan.

These are basically people from the regions around Syria and Babylon. And the goal of this import-export policy was to take the people that you conquered and go and resettle them as colonists in a strange land.

They were pretty good to their prisoners once they conquered them. Make them feel as free as possible. Make sure they have what they need. In fact, the Assyrians were known for wanting their subjects to be dependent on them, like a good policy of big government.

They had it back then, too. And if your subjects depend on you, then they are less likely to make trouble. And the hope was that soon, soon, Assyrian rule would not be seen as such a bad thing.

And that maybe the conquered, resettled peoples, hey, maybe they'll even transfer their loyalties to us. Or at least forget their own. Because with their identities so tied to their culture and their land that they are no longer in, all of that being a thing of the past, it's a pretty effective way

to tamp down any feelings of nationalism and any ideas about rebellion. So that's the Assyrian policy. That's what's happening here. Many in Israel are transferred out, and now new peoples are brought in, and we know that over the next several hundreds of years, they will intermarry and become a new race of people.

But while these new peoples have not been able to hang on to their culture, they couldn't bring the culture with them, or they certainly couldn't bring their own land, strangely, there was something that the Assyrians were quite comfortable and in fact encouraged all these strange new people to bring,

and that was their false gods. The Assyrians' policy of religious tolerance was basically, do what you want. You've got a foreign god from back home?

Great, bring them here. Make a new one. Carve a new idol. Build a new high place. Put your idol in the existing high places. We are totally fine with that.

And that's exactly what happens in the land of Israel. And it turns out to be a pretty big problem when you're in Yahweh's sacred land. We go on to read about this really bizarre and frankly frightening development in verse 25.

Did you catch the part about the lions? Verse 25, And at the beginning of their dwelling there they did not fear the Lord. Therefore the Lord sent lions among them which killed some of them.

You know, about 10 years ago I had a chance to take a trip to Africa and on that trip we went on a safari. Now that's not the kind of safari where you're out there walking with a weapon and you're going to shoot something.

It was the kind that you get into a vehicle and drive around, right? And I remember the distinct feeling I had in the safari park. There was like part of me that was really wanting to see a lion.

And then there was part of me that was like maybe it'd be okay if we don't. Imagine for these newly settled peoples they are not on safari. They're just trying to survive.

They don't have firearms. All they have are maybe minimal weapons. I don't imagine that conquered peoples are encouraged to have a lot of weapons.

They've got to do self-defense very up close and personal. How's that going to go when you're face to face with a literal man eater who suddenly decides that it likes the taste of human flesh?

There are stories like this and some of them not that long ago. I think one of the most famous stories comes out of Africa in the year 1898.

Maybe you've heard it. It was made into a feature film called The Ghost and the Darkness. It was based on the real life story of the Sabo man eaters and it's a true story of two, just two lions that terrorized a railroad construction project building a bridge in Kenya.

Over a period of nine months those two lions stalked the campsite nightly. They drug off workers one by one. they say that the crews tried to build some defenses to try to scare off the lions with campfires.

They even built a perimeter fence out of thorns but to no avail. The lions still got through and they became increasingly brazen and aggressive as the months went on.

By the end of it all it took several hunters armed with high-powered rifles to finally be able to bring down those lions. They have their hides in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

By the time it was all done the death toll was at 140. Two lions. The British Army officer in charge the one who actually killed the lions Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson he wrote a book recounting his experience and here's the interesting part.

He described in the book how many of the locals believed that the two lions were either driven by evil spirits or were themselves evil spirits incarnate.

Try to imagine if you're someone from Babylon or this Hamath wherever that is and you're new to the region of Samaria you're unfamiliar with the lay of the land and you have no or very few weapons at your disposal because you're a conquered people and worst of all this lion problem

the Lord is behind it. Yahweh is behind it. That's what verse 25 tells us is that the Lord sent these lions. We don't even know how many. Were there only two?

Were there 20? 200? This is not the first time that the Bible records God using wild beasts as instruments of judgment lions in particular. We could go back to 1 Kings chapter 13 chapter 20 in both of those chapters the Lord had a disobedient prophet

1 Kings 13 · chapter mention

taken out by a lion. Not to mention that actually one of the curses for breaking the covenant noted in Deuteronomy 32 was that the Lord would send the quote unquote teeth of wild beasts.

Well it doesn't take very long for word to get back to Assyria and in verse 26 the king of Assyria hears this report of this terrible thing happening along with a pretty accurate theological explanation why.

And in verse 26 this is what he hears the nations you've carried away in place there they do not know the law of the God of the land. That's why he sent lions among them.

And so what's our king of Assyria decide to do? Well he orders for one of the priests just one to be sent back so this is one of the deportees to be sent back into the land of Israel.

He says send that guy back there let him teach the new settlers the law of the God of the land. We somehow have made that God angry so this will take care of the problem.

That's the plan and we're not explicitly told that it works but it may have. Here's what we do know is that this priest comes and he chooses to take up residence at Bethel.

Bethel being one of the two places if we remember Bethel and Dan where the shrines the original golden calves were set up. An infamous site not a good sign.

And the priest decides to make this his home base for teaching the people catechizing the people in the law of the God of the land in how they should fear this God how they should fear the Lord.

And what's the results? Well they are mixed as in literally mixed because verse 29 shows us that our new Samaritan settlers what they're doing is they're basically taking what's already on their plates and they're just adding another portion right?

Another option. They don't stop worshiping their false gods they just add Yahweh worship into the mix. Verse 29 but every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the shrines of the high places that the Samaritans had made.

And we go on to get this list starting in verse 30 a list of all the gods that each of these people groups made you've got the men of Babylon making this god and you've got the men of Cuth making that god right on down to these Sepharvites who don't look now but they're burning their children in the fire

to these two gods a couple of gods who strangely bear names that sound very similar to Moloch's name. It's Adrammelech and Anamelech Melech Moloch Tomato Tomato kind of the same.

You know the funny thing is with this list of these gods I was doing some reading this week and scholars have a hard time identifying most of them.

There's pages and pages in the commentaries trying to make attempts to connect we think this is this god the trouble is is that the names aren't spelled right in the Bible and we think we've come to the realization we think that the the Hebrew authors did this intentionally.

They intentionally misspelled the names of the foreign gods by adding a letter here and there changing it slightly as a way of mocking them.

They refused to spell their names right as a way to essentially belittle and discredit them. I mean imagine if you just put like an extra consonant in someone's name and they corrected you and you're like no I'm just going to call you that.

And as for a priest who's been brought back here to teach the people how to fear the Lord he's not doing a very good job. Somebody needs to tell this priest that you know the course called Fearing the Lord 101 it involves starting with the first commandment of the ten right?

you shall have no other gods. But in resettled Samaria it's apparently going to be a smorgasbord of faith. A buffet of gods to fill your plate how you like.

Like a job fair or if you're my age a college fair. Any of you ever been to a college fair? Has it been a long time maybe? Or maybe your kids aren't there yet but they may be someday.

I've been to a few college fairs in our area coincidentally they're held at Bethel University. And you know I've often wondered it's a strange feeling when you're pulling up to a Christian college fair at a university like Bethel and you think wow they're really willing to host this.

So you know you drive onto campus it's Bethel's campus and you park it Bethel's parking lot and you walk into the Y Camp Center which is Bethel's gymnasium and there is BU paraphernalia appropriately so everywhere you know big old logo painted on the gym floor I remember thinking

does the host college Bethel get to pick their best spot? I think they do but it's a weird feeling. It's like you walk in and you've got all these other Christian colleges like hey over here you want to think about our college take a pen it's a strange feeling

and maybe that helps you get the point here here in Samaria it should be Yahweh only but it's it's a college fair of gods and so when our narrator gets to verse 32 and after this list of all these other gods now tries to tell us oh oh oh

they also feared the Lord scholars say we should probably put some big air quotes around the word fear yeah yeah they also feared the Lord no they didn't you can't fear the Lord when you're fearing all these other gods too they are mutually

exclusive things but when you're getting bad advice namely bad priestly advice which is also encouraging you verse 32 to appoint from among yourselves all sorts of people as priests which is a big no-no to go serve in ministry

positions up at all those high places which are also a big no-no well this is as they say a big spiritual train wreck a disaster because taking the faith and doing what you want contrary to that faith's teaching refashioning

it and making it what you want it to be adapting it for your needs and getting creative with new rules and new ethics about what's right and wrong and changing what you don't like we have a word for that it's a word I've mentioned before and if you're a note taker I'd like you to maybe get familiar with it the word

is syncretism s-y syncretism it's when you merge together different beliefs different ideas about what is right and wrong when you blend together different ideas about who you're going to worship and how you're going to worship that god that is

syncretism the great church father john chrysostom had some pretty insightful things to say about what was happening back here he talked about these sumerians and he said this he said they combined and worshipped both evil spirits and the lord combining things

that were as he puts it altogether incompatible oil and water and he's exactly right they are incompatible and so from our narrator's perspective writing about this about a couple hundred years after the fact after the fall of samaria and this deport import situation

he says in verse 34 that they do according to their former manner and they're still doing it to my day narrator to this day verse 34 they really do not fear the lord and they do not follow the statutes or the rules or the law or the commandment that the lord

commanded the children of jacob whom he named israel because that's what the covenant of the lord required following his rules and his commands as given all rooted in and and flowing from this overarching command that you shall not

verse 35 you shall not fear other gods or bow down to them it is supposed to be exclusive worship and devotion god said you shall fear the lord and him only because he is the god who with an outstretched arm brought you up out of the land of egypt with

great power you know it's funny how in the next several verses here at the end of our passage our narrator keeps saying the same thing over and over did you catch this end of verse 37 he says it a second time god said you shall not fear other gods and then by the end of verse 38 it's a

third time you shall not fear other gods however verse 40 he tells us that they would not listen but did according to their former manner syncretism it shall be idolatry shall

continue the choice will be a covenant breaking wavering between two opinions choosing both options verse 41 so these nations feared the lord and also serve their carved images

modern day scholar peter light heart got the quote on the screen he puts it this way he writes Israel came into the land charged with the duty of purging the land of pagan shrines and establishing Yahweh's worship in a

tragic reversal the land is brought back to its pre conquest state full of idolatrous shrines and we also learn at the very end that it's like father like son like mother like daughter because as it turns out

approximately 100% of the time the kids are watching right the kids are watching aren't the kids always watching what moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas are doing the kids are always watching and their

children verse 41 did likewise and their children's children as their fathers did so they do to this day are we ever going to get any good news again in kings stay tuned we will

the old news I should say the bad news is a little tiresome but bear with us because very soon we're going to meet a good king in Judah his name is Hezekiah but seriously our narrator here what is He showing us He's showing us it's not just a loss

of pure worship in this what had formerly been the northern kingdom in this land called Samaria it's not just a loss of worship it's a loss of complete loss of identity because these newly mixed sometimes called Samarian Samaria

Samarian people you realize if we fast forward about 700 years and get to the New Testament they're called the Samaritans purebred Jews in Jesus' day looked down on the Samaritans in the first century AD they would live their lives as a people just

to the north of Israel just outside of Galilee they were still trying to worship God that's the ironic thing is actually it seems like their worship kind of tamed itself down a bit they were trying to worship God only problem was they were doing it at a high place called Mount Gerizim

they're still trying to worship Yahweh even if they didn't know how to do it the right way you could say that they had a faith the Samaritans of Jesus day but it had become distorted even in Jesus day it was still distorted and that's why Jesus if you've

read John and come across chapter 4 that's why Jesus would often engage the Samaritans but one day in that chapter he walked into a village of Samaria very intentionally and he sat down by a well and he struck up a conversation with a certain woman who'd come to draw water at that

well and the two of them began to talk and very quickly the conversation went to matters of faith and theology and what did Jesus tell her in John chapter 4 he said this in verse 22 he said you Samaritans pay close attention you worship what you do not know

John 4 · chapter mention

I don't think until this week studying 2nd Kings 17 I fully understood what he meant because what he's saying is that your faith is distorted and what I would suggest to us is that our passage here in 2nd Kings 17 is actually the

origin story or the backstory for how it got distorted and I think it's here for more than just informational purposes I think it's here as a warning a warning even for people like you and me a warning about how and in what kinds of ways our

faith can get distorted because here in this chapter I think we see several distortions and so if you'll let me I'd like to draw out three of them three ways faith got distorted first one is this distortion number one when faith

just wards off disaster when your faith just wards off disaster remember what the first thing was that happened in our story these newly imported pagan peoples bring in all their false gods they start worshipping and then

what happens somebody hears some roaring in the distance right somebody knows somebody that got drug off and eaten by a lion and then it's happening again people are being killed and somehow somebody figures out that the god of the land is angry and they get word back to the king of Assyria

and what does the king of Assyria decide to do send them a priest teach them the god of the land so it will stop my friends this is just a faith that is trying to ward off disaster the only reason the priest is sent back to teach them

is because they're trying to ward off this lion disaster and so I would simply ask us what's it like in your life do you ever at times find yourself using your faith like this just to ward off disaster have you

been distant from the Lord have you been uninterested in your faith until something disastrous is happening around you and then you run to it and you cling to it sometimes some people do this when there's a crisis in the family sometimes we do this when there's a sudden

diagnosis or a marriage issue or a scary job situation some kind of relational mess on your hands the lions of disaster can strike us in a lot of different ways today can't they and here's the thing when faith just wards off disaster

that's not good enough because the true God wants more than that he wants your heart he wants your repentance and your faith and he's given his son to make that possible because it's only in the true fear of the Lord that real

deliverance will be found so that's the first distortion of our faith is when it just wards off disaster here's the second one number two when faith turns inclusive hang on to that word to !

inclusive what happens new nations show up right they're brought in by the Assyrians they don't fear the Lord they don't know the Lord lions start attacking leading to the priest being sent in to teach them the law of the God of the land and yet where do things end up going verse 29 again take a look

but every nation still made its own God I hear that like in the words of a ring announcer and still right the champion and still they still made their own gods and then we get this whole big list of them each God that each people group made

that word made keeps popping up in this paragraph ! They made this God they made that God it almost makes you want to jump in there and say but guys what about Yahweh the Lord and they would say oh yeah yeah we got one for him too yeah that's good verse 32 we also fear the Lord

and it's right about then that we realize what a nonsensical contradiction this is this statement that we read in verse 33 so they again put the air quotes around it so they feared the Lord but also served their own gods after the manner of

the nations from among whom they had been carried away no no no wait guys wait you gotta pick one which is it gonna be are you gonna fear and serve the Lord or are you gonna keep worshiping your own gods and the answer appears to be yes yes because we're

inclusive we include all the gods we like Nurgle and Ashima and Nibhaz and Tartak and Yahweh yeah him too but that my friends is a monumental distortion of our faith because true faith

in the Lord means exclusive devotion the Christian faith is an exclusive faith and any faith that walks down a road of inclusivity is a distortion I'd even go so far as to say it's a contradiction

it'd be like going to a wedding anybody been to a marriage ceremony and you're sitting there and you watch a groom stand up front in front of everybody and take a vow that he will be unfaithful to his bride what that's not what marriage is marriage

is exclusive not inclusive and it's the same with the worship of God and this is why we keep hearing our narrator over and over repeatedly emphasizing you shall not fear other gods you shall not fear other gods you shall not fear other gods

you know even by the time we get to the New Testament to Jesus day he understood this clearly he's the son of God which is why we hear him in Matthew chapter 4 it is temptation what's he saying when the devil tempts him the third time for Matthew 4

Matthew 4 · chapter mention Matthew 4:10

verse 10 then Jesus said to him be gone Satan away from me Satan for it is written you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve you know he was actually quoting from Deuteronomy chapter 6 Jesus was here it is it's Deuteronomy chapter 6

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention Deuteronomy 6:13

verse 13 it is the Lord your God you shall fear him you shall serve some translations him only shall you serve and by his name shall you swear and just to be crystal clear let me give you the next two verses in Deuteronomy 6 it goes on verse 14

you shall not go after other gods the gods of the peoples around you for the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God lest the anger of the Lord your God be kindled against you and he destroy you from off the face of the earth so what does this mean to say

that if we make our faith inclusive it distorts it it means that when sources around us in our world whether it's our friends or our teachers or our co-workers or some social media influencer or media pundit or even

a scholar if someone tries to tell you that our Christian faith should be inclusive that interfaith is a word sometimes used is good and there are many different paths even sometimes you hear it from books written by so-called Christian

scholars published by so-called Christian publishers saying things like you know Christ can be found in the redemptive elements of our neighboring faiths and those worshipers if they're sincere they can be saved even without explicitly coming to trust in Jesus

it means that we recognize that for the error that it is for the distortion that it is of our exclusive faith in Christ alone but there's another way that we see the faith getting distorted here and I don't want to miss this it comes so quickly we

almost might miss it take a look again at verse 32 verse 32 they also feared the Lord and appointed from among themselves all sorts of people as priests of the high places now God's word has got a couple of problems with that statement

number one let's start with the places wrong places priests were supposed to serve at the properly designated place not high places only at the tabernacle at first and then later the temple what this tells us is that there is an order an

appropriateness there are things that are proper about even the where that worship is done let alone the how

personnel issue because God's priests could not just be from any one any tribe not just from all sorts of people for Israel he designated one tribe the tribe of Levi and from that tribe were all the temple workers and guards and then within that tribe

one family and that was the family of Aaron and his descendants only they could be the priests that's what God said but when you're including worship at prohibited places in prohibited ways and you're including personnel who are not qualified for

that ministry you have a distortion church we have a faith that's handed down to us and that this book the Bible gives us parameters for and we cannot simply change things or remove restrictions or

decide to put people in roles who are not qualified to be in those roles according to the word of the Lord we cannot do that just to be more inclusive scripture gives us today clear qualifications for church leaders for pastors and to

make our own practices more inclusive than God's word is another way that we distort the faith and finally let me give you a third way third way to distort the faith number three is when faith becomes here's that word again syncretized

when faith becomes syncretized we see how Samaria did it merging together the worship of their own gods with the worship of Yahweh they feared both their equal opportunity fearers right and they engaged in their worship by blending

and mixing in all the pagan customs and places it was total syncretism in Israel and it makes me wonder what are some of the ways that people like us could be tempted to syncretize today sometimes it's when we try to make the Christian faith a

little more Jewish you heard of that let's get back to the Jewish roots let's celebrate some of the things that the ancient Israelites did you know what let's start living the old covenant let's start obeying parts of the law not just because it's fun but because we think you should

that's syncretism and and or how about when the church blends in new age practices and things that we get from eastern religions you can find books and YouTube channels and all kinds of videos that tell you ways to do that often

you see this in conversations around spiritual disciplines em spiritual disciplines em are great I mean many of them we should do but sometimes we should think twice when a spiritual discipline says clear your mind empty your mind we're called to fill our mind with God with God's word

or when we this is the latest craze get ready if you haven't heard it yet teaching us to pray in ways that don't rely on words right how would that relationship be with your children or with your spouse if you just decided we're going to take vows of silence some of you are like maybe it would be

better for a day or two but seriously how are you going to relate to someone that you're in a covenant with that you're committed to that you love if you are not going to use words I check just to be sure but when Jesus prayed in scripture he used words Paul the

apostle the other apostles appear to use words you say well but what about that part about the spirit intercedes with groans I mean well there could be a little bit of that too but that doesn't mean that we're just like silent and mute and the spirit doing all the praying it's hard to ask for forgiveness if you don't

use any words it's hard to make your requests known to God without words it's hard to praise and adore the Lord if you don't use words sometimes the church today gives in to syncretism when it comes to our gathered worship spaces and we should think about that too

we live in a day where society our world around us worships rock stars and artists and celebrities and performers who take to stages and who perform and are quite good at it sometimes I wonder do our churches reflect

a little bit of this too much have we blended this in do even our worship spaces sometimes look more like performance venues do our fellowship spaces sometimes do we let them be dictated by the coffee shop

vibe that we all want to have we would like to do some remodeling at some point here soon but we're not going to build a coffee shop because that's not what we are whether it's for your spaces or children's ministry spaces we're not sky zone sometimes the kids

act like it but we're not sky zone or Chuck E Cheese or wherever it is I don't know

you get the point we must remember that if we blend and syncretize and mix in without thinking the ways of our world to the point where we without meaning to end up prioritizing worldly goals or imitating worldly

values it's going to distort our faith and that's why it's the role of every church and really every believer to constantly evaluate the what and the how of what we're doing testing everything against

the only true rule and perfect guide that we have which is God's timeless word amen can I ask you would you stand with me and bow your heads let's pray as a team comes to lead us in a final song

Lord we want to have a pure faith father you sent your son Jesus to die to pay a very particular price for our sins Lord even in the ways that you prepared the world for this moment

with the sacrificial system of the ancient Israelites Lord you were preparing to give us that needed necessary once for all sacrificial lamb of Jesus your son and we praise you we thank you for him and so Lord whether we are here as a single person or a teen or a mother or a

father or a grandparent Lord all of us want to pass on to those around us to those who are watching us a faith that is not distorted we want to worship you in ways that are pure as your son even said to that Samaritan woman in spirit and truth and so

father just guard our hearts and minds in the Lord Jesus guard us from the ways that we can inadvertently distort it with inclusivity or with syncretism or with making it a good luck charm you are not any of that Lord and you are not worship like that

we love you we thank you for the gift of your word we thank you for this church and for the folks that you have brought together to be the people of redeemer and we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ amen