Messages

Don't Kill the Messenger

Date:8/2/20

Series: Matthew

Passage: Matthew 23:29-39

Speaker: Jeff Thompson

As Jesus wraps up his famous "woes" teaching, he hits on the heavy subject of how we react when God sends a messenger into our lives.

 

Transcription (automatically-generated):

In this covid-19 season, New Hope Church and God Rock Church are joining together to facilitate both online and in-person weekly services.

And so I have the joy of teaching alongside Pastor BJA as New Hope Church joins God Rock Church in going through the gospel of Matthew there toward the end of Chapter 23.

And when we get into Chapter 24, we're going to hear some fascinating and incredibly timely end times prophecy shared by none other than Jesus himself in his teaching known as the all of that discourse. To make sure that you're looking forward to that, we got a great series of studies coming up.

So what's been happening in the Life and Ministry of Jesus leading up to Chapter 23? We're right at the end of Jesus ministry.

He's just days away from being crucified on the cross and he knows this. He's fully aware of what is coming.

It's the feast of Passover in the city of Jerusalem, the biggest feast of the year, which would cause the population of the city to swell into the millions as Jewish pilgrims from across Israel and indeed the world would flood the holy city to take part in the festivities.

By this point, the Jewish religious leaders, the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the scribes have made up their minds.

They are going to arrange for Jesus to be killed one way or another.

They've been verbally sparring with Jesus for most of the day in the courtyard of the temple, likely in front of a large audience of onlookers.

But their efforts to trap and ensnare Jesus with tough questions have backfired, resulting in a revelation of Jesus brilliance as he answered their questions with staggering genius.

And after responding to their agenda for what was likely ours, Jesus preaches his final public sermon, and he directs it straight at those same religious leaders.

And that's the scene as we head into Chapter 23.

Now, let me just ask you, what would you expect Jesus final public sermon to be like? What would you expect the vibe to be? I think the majority of people would expect it to be extra warm, extra loving, something that applies to to everybody and stays away from controversy.

You know, if it were me, I'd probably be looking to go out with a home run in my final message, some some really funny stories to get a few laughs and warm everybody up and then lead them effortlessly into a deep truth that hits hard and makes them all sort of nod their heads and say, wow, what a what a profound message. That's what the the human being in me would want to do for my last message.

But let's just say Jesus decided to take a different approach, because while you may have heard Jesus chastise and criticize the religious leaders before, none of that compares to the absolute smack down Jesus is going to lay on them in Chapter 23.

And if you've been going through the message series with Pastor BJ, then you know what I'm talking about.

These religious leaders have have spent the day quizzing and inspecting and questioning Jesus theology and teachings. But in Chapter twenty three, Jesus shares the results of his inspection of them.

And their lives and their hearts and spoiler alert, the results are not good. But remember. This is Jesus. He's the sinless son of God. He's not petty like you or I tend to be. He doesn't lash out to get revenge or because it feels good to put his enemies in their place. He's not doing it to stroke his own ego and use his overwhelming intellect and insight to humiliate them.

Everything Jesus does, everything is with a righteous motivation for good and godly reasons.

And even this verbal assault is no different. This is Jesus' final attempt to shock some of these religious leaders into repentance.

The apostle Paul wrote that it's the kindness of God that leads us to repentance.

But when we refuse to respond to that kindness and goodness, the Lord will often turn up the heat in our lives and do everything he can to help us see the truth.

Because when it comes to saving the lost, when it comes to getting us to the place where we cry out for forgiveness and can receive forgiveness from God, listen, all options are on the table for the Lord.

He will do whatever it takes to open our eyes, our ears and our hearts to the truth as we often talk about it. New hope. God loves you enough to let the bottom fall out of your life, if that's what it'll take to get you to turn to him.

It's the kindness of God for you. Bible nerds. The bulk of Jesus message directed to the religious leaders is found in verses 13 through 35, and Bible scholars have noticed something very interesting.

Jesus first recorded public sermon was the famous Sermon on the Mount, and that sermon includes the also famous Beatitudes, where Jesus pronounces eight blessings that follow certain attitudes.

Here in Matthew 23, we find Jesus final public sermon, and in it he pronounces upon the religious leaders a series of woes that also follow certain attitudes.

And if you want to go back and compare the two messages in your own studies, you can hop into your church's website and listen to Pastor BJA or myself teach through Matthew five and just compare the two. You'll get some interesting insights. Now, one final disclaimer before we jump into the text.

I've heard a lot of messages, a lot of messages that deal with the Pharisees. And often the way they're taught is with the attitude that this applies to other people.

You know, have you ever known a Christian who was a hypocrite like the Pharisees?

And we all not our heads and we think, yeah, yeah, that guy was a jerk. You know, that woman was awful. But I don't believe that's how the Lord intended us to read his word.

Because when we do that, the danger is that we develop a mindset where every time some kind of warning or correction comes up in the Bible, we think of someone else that it applies to instead of ourselves.

So we read about Jesus correcting someone and we think, oh, I know someone who really needs to hear this.

One of the things that Jesus has been highlighting over and over again here in Chapter 23 is that it's the fool who says, I don't need to hear any of this.

This doesn't really apply to me. I don't struggle with that and I never will. But it's the wise man or woman who humbly says, Lord, show me the sin that lurks in my own heart illuminated for me so that I might not be deceived by it. There's tremendous Pharisee potential in each of us. We're all capable of being enormous hypocrites.

And so today, as we study through the words of Jesus, let's do it with a heart that says, Jesus, if you have a word of correction for me today, I'm open. Make me more like you do your work in my life.

So wherever you're watching this, say, this is for me, this is for me. Don't elbow the person next to you and say this is for you. Say This is for me. And I know you're like, this is weird. You're on a screen. I'm not going to do it. He's not going to know if I do it or not.

But just do it anyway. Say this is for me, OK?

Now that we're all in the right mindset here, let's dive into the text.

So Jesus is continuing to address the Jewish religious leaders as we pick things up in verse twenty nine, he says, woe to you, you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous and say, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.

As Jesus is going to point out in a moment, Israel had a long and dark history of killing the prophets that God sent to them, a prophet was somebody's chosen and empowered by God for the purpose of being his messenger to a specific person or persons or people group in a specific place at a specific time. And when Israel as a people went off the rails spiritually, when they turned their backs on God, he would send them a prophet to call them to repent and turn back to God.

But the lives of those prophets pretty much always ended the same way. They were murdered by the very people they were sent to minister to.

In Jesus Day in Israel, the religious leaders would make a big deal about turning the tombs of those profits into monuments, they would venerate the prophets of old as great men and say, you know, it's too bad that our forefathers forefathers were the ones who were alive when God sent Israel these prophets, because if we'd been there at that time, we wouldn't have killed them.

We would have listened. We would have responded to God. Now, what's the glaring irony in that attitude? What's the obvious hypocrisy that these religious leaders are demonstrating? In a couple of days, they're going to murder Jesus, they're going to murder Jesus, something John's gospel tells us they've been planning and plotting ever since Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.

They're going to murder a man who's not only a prophet, but the son of God. He's messiah. He's God in the flesh. He's the pathway to salvation. From the moment Jesus began ministering and teaching publicly, these religious leaders have opposed him. They fought him. They've resisted him at every turn. And yet they say we would never kill a prophet.

We love the truth.

We welcome the truth. We recognize when God is speaking.

Jesus knows exactly what's going on in their hearts, he knows about their plans to murder him, and he knows that those plans are going to come to fruition in the next few days. That's why Jesus says in verse 31, therefore, you are witnesses against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.

Fill up then the measure of your father's guilt. Here's the point Jesus is making. You acknowledge that the profits your fathers killed or sent by God, and deep down you know that I'm sent by God. Your father's knew that the prophets were sent by God and they killed them anyway. You know that I'm sent by God and you're going to kill me anyway. You are your father's sons, so get on with it.

Then he says, serpent's brood of vipers in this place, in this time, everybody in the audience would have understood that what Jesus was saying and using this phrase was, you're not only sons of your fathers, you're sons of Satan.

You're not only acting like your father, you're acting like Satan. So imagine the scene that there's probably hundreds of people listening in Temple Mount Feast of Passover City is jammed and audiences developed.

And Jesus is saying this to the most important politicians and religious leaders in the holy city of Jerusalem.

I think it would be an understatement to say you could have cut the tension with a knife because nobody nobody talked to these guys that way. Jesus keeps speaking and he says, how can you escape the condemnation of how Jesus is saying, if you reject the messengers that I send you for the specific purpose of saving you from hell?

How are you going to be saved? The implication you're not going to be saved. Verse 34, therefore, indeed underlined this. I send you prophets, wise men and scribes. Now, did you catch that? Who did Jesus just say was the one who sent Israel, the prophets, wisemen and scribe's? Who did Jesus just say was the one who sent Israel, Samuel, Elijah, Elijah, Jeremiah, even John the Baptist?

He says he did. He did, Jesus sent them this is one of those places in scripture where Jesus is explicitly claiming to be God.

He is claiming that he is concerned with the salvation of people. And out of that concern, he himself is the one who sent these prophets as messengers to preach the way of salvation.

Also, notice that Jesus speaks in the present tense, which means he's going to continue to send prophets to Israel. And what does Jesus say that they're going to do to those that he's going to send them in the future? He says some of them you will kill and crucify. And some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city. And that's exactly what the Jews would do to the apostles and the early church, they would work hand in hand with the ruling Roman authorities to persecute the Christians and the early church viciously during the first few decades of the church's existence.

Jesus keeps speaking in verse 35 that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth from the blood of righteous evil able to the blood of Zakharia, son of Barika, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

For those of you who are students of the Bible who killed Abel, it was his brother, right? His brother Cain, now in scripture.

Cain, a good guy or a bad guy, is being called a son of Cain a good thing or a bad thing?

It's a bad thing, and what Jesus is referring to is is a spirit that is present in all who reject the truth because the truth requires us to admit that we're sinners.

The truth requires us to admit that we're at fault that were broken and that we need a savior, and if you go back to Genesis four and you read about when Cain killed his brother Abel, you'll find that the central issue there was Cain not wanting to be corrected by God.

And so we took out his anger on his brother, who was not being corrected by God at that moment because he didn't need to be.

Jesus is telling us that Abel was serving the role of prophet in the life of his brother Cain at that moment in time.

That's the link that Jesus is making. He's telling the religious leaders that they're walking the same path of Cain.

They're walking in the same spirit as Cain. That same spirit that was at work at Cain is at work in them. Jesus is standing right in front of them, offering them truth and salvation. But they don't want to hear it because they don't want to see receive the correction of Jesus, they don't want to hear the message that they're sinners who need a savior.

They've been missing the mark. They don't want to hear it, they just don't want to hear it. And then Jesus talks about Zacharia, a classic Old Testament prophet who has a book bearing his name in the Bible, and even though Scripture doesn't detail his death, it was apparently widely known among the Jews as a matter of history, and it's referenced here by Jesus.

Jesus is saying, just as your father was killed, all the prophets able to zacharia A to Z, you're doing the same thing.

You're plotting to kill me right now, and you're going to kill the prophets, the apostles that I send you in the future. Back in Matthew five, when Jesus was sharing the Beatitudes, he said, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

But to these religious leaders, Jesus says you're the ones doing the persecuting. You're the ones persecuting men for righteousness, so woe to you. It's so easy for us to say, man, those religious leaders are the worst. But we can so easily be like them when we when we say, you know, if I had been in the Garden of Eden, we'd all still be in the Garden of Eden because I wouldn't have eaten the forbidden fruit. I wouldn't have disobeyed God.

The problem is that you've got a track record over the course of your entire love, your entire life, which says the exact opposite, your life and mine prove that we would have disobeyed God sooner or later and it would have been sooner. Well, Jeff, if I had had a perfect start like they did, I wouldn't have messed it up. Or how about this?

If I'd been raised in a better home, I wouldn't struggle with the sins I do right now, if I had had better parents, if I hadn't been exposed to certain things, if I didn't go through the trauma that I went through, if I wasn't under the pressure that I've been under, I wouldn't struggle with sin. Our brother Paul famously set the record straight by telling us the truth plainly. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And because God loves us, he sends us messengers to point us to the truth, to salvation. The greatest messenger, of course, is Jesus. Because he didn't simply point the way to salvation, he became the way to salvation by living, dying and rising from the dead in our place. And if you're here right now, if you're listening to this message or watching this message, it's because God sent you messengers.

Parents, friends, siblings, co-workers, church volunteers, God uses all kinds of people, and if you're not a follower of Jesus yet, no, this. Right now. I am one of God's messengers in your life, and he has sent me to tell you that you are a sinner who needs a savior and that savior is Jesus. But the first step in finding salvation, the first rung on the ladder is to admit that we need a savior.

It's admitting that sin is a death sentence in our lives that we cannot free ourselves from because, as Pastor B.J. shared last week, the problem is too deeply rooted inside of us.

So would you make a note of this? We cannot have sins forgiven that we refuse to admit exist. We cannot have sins forgiven, that we refuse to admit exist. Now, please hear me on this.

You can't read yourself into the Beatitudes, you can't read yourself into the blessings of God and claim them and and pretend that they apply to you and your life while simultaneously rejecting the messengers that God sends into your life, rejecting the idea that you're a sinner who needs a savior.

You can't claim and expect to receive the goodness and kindness of God and think that you're all right with God while you're simultaneously rejecting the messengers that he sends into your life.

It's a package deal. You and I are either in the Beatitudes or we're in the woes.

We're either welcoming and receiving God's messengers to us or we're rejecting his message and his messengers.

Jesus is standing right in front of us, and we're either welcoming him as a blessing. Or rejecting him and choosing a life in an eternity that is defined by WO. My first question for us is this are we welcoming Jesus in the truth or are we rejecting him? Are we welcoming Jesus in the truth? Or are we rejecting him? If you're a believer. And you have welcomed Jesus into your life. You've welcomed the gospel, you've turned to Jesus for forgiveness and received him as your lord and savior.

My question for you is this are you welcoming the Holy Spirit's leadership in your life?

The Holy Spirit is better, he's better than any prophet, Jesus told his disciples that having the Holy Spirit with them was better than having him with them physically on the Earth.

Really, that's what he said. Jesus called the Holy Spirit the helper. And he's better than having Jesus physically on the Earth because the Holy Spirit is with us always. He never leaves us. He's with us every moment of the day. He speaks to us. He leads us. He guides us. He's available to us any time and all the time. He illuminates the scriptures. He helps us understand the Bible and he points us to the truth and he convicts us of sin.

For those of us who are believers, the question is, are we welcoming the leadership of the Holy Spirit in our lives, God's messenger to us moment to moment, day by day, when the Holy Spirit illuminates something in God's word, when the Holy Spirit speaks to my heart, when he sends a person to give me a message, when he speaks through a person's counsel, do I receive it with joy in humility, saying, Oh, Lord, thank you for speaking to me.

Thank you for your correction that I might walk in the paths that lead to life instead of the roads that lead to death.

Or do I despise the correction of the Lord? Yeah, I know it says that in your word, but my situation's different. Yeah, I know there are ways believer in there sharing the truth with me, but it's just not for me right now or how about this?

It's just hard for me to receive it from that person.

I won't ask how we all do it, listening to the Lord when he speaks through our spouse and I apologize for the tension I just created for some of you who are watching this at home with your spouse. But listen, it is not a small thing.

To reject the counsel of God, let me say that again, it is not a small thing to reject the counsel of God.

It is not a light issue to have the God of the universe care enough about us to send us a messenger.

And then ignore them. God help us to be humble, help us to listen. Whether we've been walking with him for a short time or for a long time. Now Jesus shifts gears and he begins to prophesy, Jesus begins to address future events that will unfold in decades and then in Chapter 24 millennia, this is a big deal, to put it mildly.

This is Jesus, God in the flesh prophesy.

So I think we can take it to the bank, his opening statement in verse 36 is assuredly I say to you. All these things will come upon this generation. In just a few days, the Jewish crowd will cry out for the death of Jesus and shout at Pontius Pilot, his blood be upon us and our children.

Because the Jews, as a people had and would continue to reject Jesus judgment was going to come upon them and that judgment would come in the form of the very things they did to those whom God sent them.

It would be persecution. It would be bloodshed. It would be death in less than 40 years time.

Jerusalem. Would be annihilated. And hundreds of thousands would be slaughtered. Including 10000 Jews in Damascus who would have their throats slit by the Romans. As Jesus is speaking this, he's almost certainly weeping. It's Solamente, he's grieving and I really want us to understand this because it shows us the heart of God.

Despite their hard and callous hearts. Despite their rejection of him. Jesus doesn't say. Good riddance now. Now. He's heartbroken over the path they've chosen. Knowing that the religious leaders are plotting his death and would have him killed in a few days, Jesus still wants them to turn to him and find forgiveness. It's the heart of God described by Peter when he wrote that God is not willing, that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, that's what God wants.

So with tears streaming down his face, Jesus cries out, Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. He's referring to the Jews as a people here, not the literal city of Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones, those who are sent to her, how often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.

That's the heart of God toward Israel and that's the heart of God toward every person, whoever you are, no matter what you've done, no matter how bloody and sinful your history might be. God is still saying to you, if you'd come to me, if you just come to me, I'd welcome you. I take you in. I forgive you. After listing their history of killing the prophets, Jesus still says, my heart for you hasn't changed.

I still love you.

I still want to forgive you, but you refuse to receive me. And I have to point something out for you, theology students, because we're here in the text, Calvinism has a real, real problem with this verse because Jesus said I wanted this for you. But you were not willing, Jesus explicitly declares that his will and his desire was that Israel repent and turn to him. The problem was not God's will or desire. Jesus says the problem was their will or desire.

The problem was Israel's will.

So think on that some more if you're inclined to study such things. Verse 38 C, your house.

Israel is left to you desolate.

Now we know from history the terrible things that lay ahead for Israel in the very near future. The decades after this Jerusalem and indeed the whole nation of Israel would be annihilated and destroyed.

The Jewish people would be scattered across the earth as they fled for their lives.

In the event known as the diaspora, Israel as a country would cease to exist.

But there's still hope because listen to how Jesus concludes this tale of woe, he says, for I say to you, speaking to the Jewish people specifically, you shall see me no more till would you underline the word till you shall see me no more till you say. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. It was just a few days before this that the event known as Palm Sunday had taken place. Jesus had ridden into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, presenting himself publicly as messiah.

And Scripture tells us that the crowd had shouted out. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Jesus now says Israel, even though you've rejected me and will soon kill me, the day is going to come when you will once again see me and cry out.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. It's not an if, it's a wet. And when you say it again, Israel, you're going to say it with full understanding. So when's that going to happen? That's the next logical question, right? Well, in order for me to give you an answer that doesn't turn into a whole nother message series, I'm going to have to use some terms that some of you may not be familiar with.

If you're one of those people, I'd encourage you to check out our message series on the Book of Revelation on our website.

I put the link to that on your outlines right at the end of the tribulation, that coming seven year period of God's wrath being poured out on the earth, described in Revelation Chapter six through 18, right at the end of the tribulation, Israel is going to be in a bad place.

Antichrist and his military forces will be seeking to wipe every Jew off the face of the earth and it will look like it's right about to happen.

But then the most incredible thing is going to take place, Jesus will return to the earth with us, his saints, in the event known as the second coming, and when he does, he will appear literally to the Jewish people on the earth.

And in that moment, the blindness or the hardening of Israel's hearts that Paul describes in Romans 11 will be lifted.

And if you don't buy that, just go and read Romans 11, just read it, just read it in an instant. The Jewish people will recognize Jesus as messiah, and Zacharia, 12, an Old Testament prophet, describes what their reaction will be at that moment. The Lord says this, the verse is on your outlines and I will pour on the house of David, that's just a term for Israel and the Jews. I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplication that underline this.

Then they will look on me whom they pierced. They will look on me whom they pierced.

That's when they will see Jesus again at the second coming and then Zachariah goes on and says, yes, they will mourn for him as one mourns for his only son and grieve for him as one grieves for a first born.

So Israel's first reaction when they see Jesus at the second coming will be overwhelming grief because they'll realize that Jesus was and is Messiah.

And for 2000 years, they missed him. They missed him, and not only did they miss him, but they murdered him. And that realization will break their hearts. But in Matthew, Jesus told us what their second reaction will be. Because Jesus, as they're weeping, is going to reassure them that he's not done with them, they still have a future and he still loves them. And in response, they will cry out once more, this time with full understanding.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of Lord. In the Old Testament, hundreds of years before Jesus came to the Earth as a man, the prophet Hozier recorded this prophecy from the perspective of Jesus also on your outlines.

From Jesus perspective, Jesus speaking, he says, I will return again to my place, so that means he will have had to leave his place at some point.

Right.

And of course, he did. When he came to the Earth as a man, Jesus says, I will return again to my place.

Till till they acknowledge their offense. Then they will seek my face in their affliction, they will earnestly seek me, so when this concise little prophecy Jesus shares that he's going to come to the Earth, then he's going to return to heaven.

But the Jewish people won't see him again. Until what?

Until they acknowledge their offense.

And it's going to be in the tribulation as the pressure is overwhelming. As two out of every three Jews loses their lives to persecution, they're going to cry out to the Lord. They're going to repent.

They're going to seek him in excuse me, in earnest. And when they do that, they're going to find them.

He's going to come to them. What's going to cause them to recognize Jesus in the future? It's going to be affliction, it's going to be the tribulation specifically. So here's what I want us to take away from that.

And we're closing with this if you're not a follower of Jesus. You cannot know him, you cannot have your sins forgiven, you cannot experience his blessings until you confess the truth that you are a sinner.

Until you receive his correction, if you refuse to do that, you are doing the same thing these Jewish religious leaders do and did, they stood right in front of Jesus.

They hurt him. They saw him, and they didn't want to hear it.

But if you respond to him or you'll be gathered under the wings of Jesus, you'll find yourself welcomed, received and and loved and adopted into the family of God, most importantly.

You'll find yourself forgiven, you'll find yourself forgiven if you are a follower of Jesus and God is speaking to you about an area of your life.

You need to know that rejecting God's messenger, the Holy Spirit. Is going to result in a distance between you and God or you'll still be saved and God won't leave you, he's not going to abandon abandon you, but but you'll find yourself no longer experiencing that closeness.

You'll find yourself no longer experiencing intimacy with God in your relationship with him and the reality of his presence in your life.

So if that's you. You've been ignoring the Holy Spirit, putting him off, rejecting him, repent, confess your sin to the Lord, turn away from it, seek his face and obey him and you'll find the experience of his presence returning to your life.

Hey, with that, let's close in prayer wherever you are, would you would you buy your hat and close your eyes with me? And and I want to give an opportunity first to anyone out there who who may not have received the gift of salvation. And you're recognizing that that you've rejected the messengers Jesus has sent to you. But but you want to change that. You want to turn to him in this moment. You want to give your life to him.

You say, yes, Lord, I see it.

I understand I'm a sinner that needs forgiveness and I need you. I cannot save myself. If that's you, would you just say, Jesus, come into my life, be my lord, be my savior, be my God, I'm giving my life to you. And as you make that decision, God, through his Holy Spirit, is going to come into your life and is going to begin a great work in your life.

He's going to begin filling you with his peace and filling you with his wholeness.

And if you're doing that for the first time, I just want to ask you to go to our website, my new hope, that's the gospel, and watch a little bit longer video about the gospel specifically so that you can know what Jesus has done for you.

Fill out a form.

There's you don't slip through the cracks and we'll get in touch with you and we'll get you started in your new relationship with Jesus. We're so happy for you if you've just made that decision.

And then let me pray for the rest of us. Father, thank you so much that you love us enough to speak to us.

You love us enough to send messengers and to send your spirit into our lives so that we can know how to live and how to live in a way that leads to blessing and wholeness and and then an eternal reward, Lord God, to live for something that matters.

So help us to listen. Help us to say yes always to you, Lord, help us to hear the voice of your spirit and respond with humility and help us to be humble.

However, you choose to speak to us, Lord, and through whomever you choose to speak to us, help us to always be ready to listen and to respond.

Jesus, thank you for loving us. Thought in your name. We pray. Amen.

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