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Jordan Hines
September 3, 2023 at 9:30 AM
1 King 15
Godliness
We can have hope and live godly in a dark world. How can we prevail?
Godliness is Only One Generation Away
By Jordan Hines
We're happy to have Jordan and Jennie Hines here. They're from Altoona and that's maybe about all I know about them this morning. But I'm sure Jordan will introduce us when he gets up here, but Jenny's going to share a little bit of music for us, so we're glad to have you.
Come on up. What gift of grace? Jesus, my redeemer there is no more forever righteousness and freedom my steadfast love, my deep and bound sea dear this I hold. My hope is only Jesus all my life is fully bound to his.
Strange and divine I can sing holy spine cannot I but to Christ in me but I am not forsaken for by my side my favorite he will stay I live around in weakness and rejoicing for in my need his power is displayed to this I hope my shepherd will be back through the deepest valley will lead all. The night has been won and I shall overcome. Yet not I, but to Christ in me the future for the price it has made.
For Jesus bled and suffered from my pardon and he was raised to overthrow the grave. To this I hope my sin has been defeated. Jesus now and never is my plea.
All the chains. Release. I can sing.
I am free and I but to Christ in me with every breath I long to Father Jesus for he has said that he will bring me home and day by day I know he will. Renew me until I stand with joy before the throne to this I hold my hope is only Jesus all the glory evermore to him when the race is complete still my lips shall repeat yet not I but through Christ in me good morning. Thank you for having me.
My name is Jordan Hines. My wife Jenny, the talented musician of our family, just did a great job of setting our hearts in the right place, of putting Christ first. And that is our focus, that is our goal to worship with you this morning, to focus on the glory of God and how we ought to respond.
And this morning we're going to be in One Kings, chapter 15. As you turn there, we're going to be talking about hope, about Godliness, about the fact that we can be Godly people, despite how dark our world is. If you spend any time watching the news or reading a newspaper or online, you'll notice that there are a lot of dark things happening in our world.
A lot of evil men trying to accomplish evil means. And it's easy, as the world becomes darker, to become discouraged and to think, how can the church prosper? How can Christ church prevail? Today we are going to see that Godliness is only one generation away. We can turn our lives toward Godliness, even though the world around us is very dark.
I want to read just a couple of verses before I pray. First kings chapter 15, verses nine through eleven, say this in the 20th year of Jereboam, the King of Israel, ASA began to reign over Judah, and he reigned 41 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Maacah, the daughter of Absalom, and ASA did what was right in the eyes of the Lord as David, his father, had done.
Let's pray and ask God for help this morning. God, we are joyful to be around Your Word. We are praising the Lord that we are around other believers who share in our hope, share in our joy.
I pray that this morning, as we look at this passage of Scripture, as we look at these kings, that we would indeed be grateful for their example, for the encouragement that we can live, Godly, even in dark surroundings. Help us to focus, help us to learn, help us to become different people as a result of Your Holy Spirit working in us this morning, I pray these things in Your Son's name. Amen.
Ronald Reagan once said that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on to them to do the same.
Or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States when men were free. Ronald Reagan, a famous president, said this in the midst of a political and social climate to solve political and social problems, you and I are in a very different world. You and I are facing very different problems.
In a way, we are facing far more serious problems, not politically, but morally. We are facing a climate that has cast aside absolute truth. Instead of doing that, they want to pursue their own agenda, their own truth.
There is no God, there is no truth, says the world, and there is no faith in Christ that saves according to the world. The world is turning darker around us, and as we consider our identity as Christians, we have to consider our hope. We have to know that no matter how dark it gets, there is still hope.
There is still Christ. There is still our foundation in who he is and what he has done for us. So as we look at our crisis ahead of us, we have to be reminded, and today we're going to be reminded of three different people.
And as we look through these three different people's lives, we're going to see three generations of a family. We're going to see the sins of the Father in Abijah. This is One Kings, chapter 15, the first eight verses.
This is the sins of a father who has set a legacy for his Son that is wicked. And then the next verses, nine to 24, is the faith of the Son. That's king ASA.
We're going to focus on him today. We're going to see just how he responded to this legacy as his father had left him. And then we're going to see a legacy of faithfulness in his Son, in Jehoshaphat, and that's going to be in One Kings 22, verses 41 to 50.
And as we are in Kings, it's going to be read differently than a proverb or a psalm or a New Testament book. We're going to see themes pop up like the heart of David, like pursuing after your father. We're going to see Fatherhood, we're going to see idolatry.
We're going to see a land that is corrupt, a land that is filled with idolatry and praise the Lord. We're also going to see Godliness. I pray that we would see Godliness in our own lives.
And as we look at these men, we're also going to see sort of a pattern emerge. The first section of each person is going to be just who is this person? Which is very simple. Who is the person we're talking about? When did they rule? What are they doing here? And then we're going to see a verdict, if you will.
It's going to say, he walked with the Lord or he didn't walk with the Lord. And then the next part of the passage is going to be, how did he walk with the Lord? Or how did he not walk with the Lord? What is the evidence? And we're going to start in a historical time period, 17 years into the divided kingdom. The kingdom has been divided and Jereboam, who is a wicked king, is in the north.
And Rehoboam, who is a wicked king, has just died and he was ruling the south. And we find ourselves in the line of David. We're in the kingdom of Judah, in the line of David, David to Solomon, to Rehoboam.
Now to Abijah, the fourth generation here. And the big idea here that we're going to see is that God wants us to pass on a Godly legacy. And even though we are not kings, even though we don't live in a time where there are borders in the northern kingdom and a southern kingdom, we live in a place where there is wickedness.
Where there is evil. Even in our own families. People who aren't saved, people who affect the way that we live.
We live in a time where we need this message just as much as they did. So turn with me again to First Kings 15. We're going to start with just verse one and two, with the sins of the Father and Abijah.
Now, in the 18th year of the King of Jeroboam, the son of Nebot, abijam began to reign over Judah. He reigned for three years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Maacah, the daughter of Absalom.
This is who he is. This is his name. This is when he ruled.
It's the 18th year of Israel. So it's a very young, early kingdom. They're relatively young in their history, so they're still establishing these patterns.
And if you are familiar at all with the kings, you can see, probably look in your mind, you can see a chart where the evil kings and the good kings and the evil kings stack way up here, and the good kings are just a couple, right? And there are no righteous kings of the northern kingdom of Israel. And we find ourselves looking at a person as well. Here Maachah.
In these first couple verses, Maachah is an interesting person to look at because this is the granddaughter of Absalom, who we know is David's rebellious son. She is the favorite of Rehoboam's eight wives, the mother of Abijah, and the grandmother of our main character and our main person today, ASA. So this person doesn't have a great foundation to build off of.
But what does the Bible say? What does verse three say about his character? It says that he walked in the sins that his father did before him. He walked in the sins that his father did before him, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father. So what scripture does here, what God does here through the Holy Spirit, is he opens up the heart and he shows us not just what this person did, but what is this person's intentions.
He walked in sin as his father did. And we'll see this come up over and over again. And it's very common to see that our fathers and our spiritual fathers even have a great impact on us.
And I would even go as far to say is the people in our lives that affect us the most are often the people we care the most about. And we get to choose who we listen to, who we pattern our life after. You can even think back in your life, who is that person in your life who you say that person is a Godly man or a Godly woman? They pursued God.
They are pursuing God with their life, and I want to live like them. Or maybe you're thinking in a more negative sense and you're thinking, that person, I love them, but they're not living for Christ. They're not bringing me to Godliness.
And this Abijah here, he has a lot of examples of what not to do. His grandfather is Solomon, and in his old age, Solomon turned from Godliness. One kings eleven, verse four says, for when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father.
And think about Abijah's father, the next generation down Rehoboam. And just a few chapters later, in verse chapter 14, verse 22, and Judah did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins. And they committed more than all that their fathers had done so.
As bad as the kingdom was before in wickedness, this next generation was even more wicked. It was getting worse. It was an epidemic of wickedness, of rebellion towards God.
And the idea here is that they were walking in the ways of their father. And we understand this. Think of even at your job, on your first day on the job, you follow someone's example.
You say, this person's been here for a while, they know what they're doing. I'm going to do what they're doing and hope it turns out well. And sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.
Depends on who's your trainer. Many of you have been to a college. Maybe you've visited on a college visitor weekend and maybe you got stuck with the one person that probably shouldn't have been an ambassador for the college.
And you realize this person isn't a great example of this college. I had a weekend like that one time and I was assured by many other people, this is not normal. This is not supposed to happen.
And time and time again you can have people in our lives that steer us the wrong way. And yet there are also examples of people who steer us the right way. In my life, this was very personal to me.
I grew up with a business in the family. My dad had a cleaning business and I started by doing very simple tasks. It was a cleaning business.
So I would just fill up mop buckets and stuff like that. Then eventually, years and years later, I was running the big machinery and all the stuff my dad was doing because I was able to watch him do it. And he showed me how to do it in a spiritual sense.
Our spiritual fathers lead us and guide us and teach us. Think of Paul. Follow me as I follow Christ.
We follow people who follow Christ. We follow people who show us, who give us a good example. But unfortunately, in Abijah's case, its heart is being exposed as one that does not wholly follow after God.
This is reminiscent of his relative, his great great grandfather David. And we know that the Lord here looks at the heart that's found in one Samuel 16, verse seven. But the Lord said to Samuel, do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature because I have rejected him.
For the Lord sees not as man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. See, when we look at something, we have a very limited perspective.
We can't see the person's heart. We just see this person's strong, this person's brave, this person's a good communicator, this person's wise. And we don't see their heart as just as God looks at David and he says, this is a man after my own heart.
God looks at Abijah and even though he might have been in the line of David a communicator to the people, a smart, intelligent person, a leader of men. He was not wholly true to God. And we find here that it is far more important to pursue God than to have great accolades and to have great achievements on this earth.
And yet, in verse four and five, we find an unexpected turn. Nevertheless, for David's sake, the Lord his God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem, setting up his son after him and establishing Jerusalem. Because David did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and did not turn aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.
These promises that were given to the people in the line of David are given because of God's faithfulness, because David, his father, walked in them. These promises are being preserved. And this lamp that the sign of this promise is referring to a lineage, a ruling lineage.
So even though this king is wicked, this king is not pursuing God. He's not leading the people after righteousness. God continues to give him a place in the kingdom.
And the mercy that's being applied here is being applied through David's account one Samuel seven, verses twelve to 16 refers to this when your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to Him a father, and he will be to me a son.
When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of sons of men. But my steadfast love will not depart from Him. But my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away before you.
And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever. Now, as dispensationalists, we understand that some of these promises are yet to come.
Some of these promises are yet to be revealed to us. Yet we also understand that these promises are being implemented in our passage here. Even though there is iniquity in the kingdom, God is faithful.
God is still loving, and he shows mercy. And even though there is mercy, even though there is the faithfulness of God, there must still be consequences. Verse six and the end of verse seven.
Talk about these consequences. Now, there was war between Rehoboam and Jereboam all the days of his life, and there was war between Abijam and Jeroboam. The consequences here is that there is war, there is conflict.
And this conflict is affecting not just the king, but the whole nation. The sins of Abijah are not just affecting him, they are affecting his family, his people, everyone around him. Be sure to know that your sins don't just affect you, they affect the people around you, because they are affecting your heart.
The people around you, their heart, your legacy, they are affecting change, which is a scary part, because when we sin, we don't often think, I'm just doing this for myself, and somehow it might affect someone else, it might lead someone to ungodliness. No, we think about ourselves in that moment, right? We think about what we want. We don't think, what if someone's watching me right now? What if that person who emulates my life, who mimics my life, does this? Would I be proud of them? Would I want them to keep pursuing this? God wants us to be fully committed to him.
God wants us to reject the selfishness of ungodliness, the selfishness of sin, and pursue him. He is a jealous God, as we learned from Joshua 24, godliness in the life of Abijah or Godlessness is evident, and Godliness here is greater than personal gain. Sin has the consequences in his life and sin has consequences in our life.
As we look at Abijah's life, we can see what a failure it was. And we can see it was a failure because the idols of his heart, the idols of his desires, hindered him from walking with God. And as you think through what we're talking about now, this is a dark, bleak background.
As we began, we talked about how dark and bleak our world is. This is what he grew up in. This is what ASA watched.
And perhaps someone stepped into his life and said, ASA, do you see what's happening in your father's kingdom? This is just my sanctified imagination here, but I don't think it's too much to say that something or someone had to have an effect on ASA in order for him to turn this around. Because ASA grew up watching wickedness. He saw evil around him.
So clearly God got a hold of his heart and changed his life. Verses nine to 24 are the section where we're going to talk about ASA. Verses nine and ten is really this first statement of who he is, though.
Let's look at verse nine and ten. In the 20th year of Jeroboam, the King of Israel, ASA began to reign over Judah, and he reigned 41 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Maacah, the daughter of Absalom.
This is who we're talking about. This is the man who has these wicked relatives. A wicked legacy is being passed down to him, and yet something is different, something is unexpected here.
Look at verse eleven and then verse 14 with me. And ASA did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as David, his father, had done. But the high places were not taken away in verse 14.
Nevertheless, the heart of ASA was wholly true to the Lord all his days. What does this say about ASA? What does this say about who he was? As a man. It says that he rejected what was normal, he rejected what was easy.
He decided to be different. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. And this happens a couple times, but in these verdicts, there are these two statements.
ASA did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. And the second statement is as his father had done. That means that David was pursuing God.
David walked with God. And ASA, following that example, walked with God. And my prayer for my life, and hopefully your prayer for your life, is that when someone watches you and emulates you, they are pursuing Christ because you're pursuing Christ.
And as we look at our lives, it's easy to see times that we haven't walked with Christ. And like our lives, there is evidence. And as we read through the evidence, verses twelve and 13, and then verse 15 to 22, let's think through just how we are people.
And the people that we're reading about are not just characters in a movie or a book. These are real people and they're complicated. So there are good things and there are bad things in ACA's life.
And yet God looks at the heart. Let's look at verse twelve and 13. 1st, he put away the male cult prostitutes out of the land and removed all the idols his father had made.
He also removed Maacah, his mother, from being Queen Mother because she had made an abominable image for Asherah. And ASA cut down her image and burned it in the Brook Kidron jumping down to verse 15. And he brought into the house of the Lord the sacred gifts of his father and his own sacred gifts, silver and gold and vessels.
And there was war between ASA and Baasha, king of Israel, all their days. Baasha, king of Israel, went up against Judah and built Rama. He might permit no one to go up or come into ASA, king of Judah.
And ASA took all the silver and the gold that were left in the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king's house and gave them into the hand of his servants. And King ASA sent to Ben Hadad, the son of Timberman, and the son of Hazeon, the king of Syria, who lived in Damascus, saying, let there be a covenant between me and you, as there was between my father and your father. Behold, I am sending to you a present of silver and gold.
Go break your covenant with Baasha, king of Israel, that he may withdraw from me. And Ben Hadad listened to King ASA and sent the commanders of the armies against the cities of Israel and conquered Aijon, Dan, Abel, Beth, Maacah and Sinareth with all the lands of Naftali. And when Baasha heard of it, he stopped building Rama and he lived in Tirzah.
And King ASA made a proclamation to all Judah. None was exempt. Then they carried away the stones of Rama and its timber with which Baasha had been building.
And with them, King ASA built GABA and Benjamin and Mizpah. There's a lot going on here. There's a lot.
When you talk about a man's legacy, especially as a king, there's a complicated relationship with the people and with other nations and there's a lot of complications going on here. Let's just go through a couple of things that happened here in this list. First, he put away all the male cult, prostitutes out of the land.
He removed the prostitution from the land, which is objectively, a good thing, objectively a thing that would glorify God, that would detract from the sinfulness and wickedness of the land. It would focus them more on Godliness. He also removed the idols his fathers had made.
Again, that idea of fathers coming up, he removed them. But seemingly more dramatic here, he removed Maacah from being Queen Mother because she made a detestable image. And this is made to a pagan goddess.
He removed his mother from power. This is the cost of making disciples, the cost of living for Christ. This man understood what it was to pursue God above all else, even above family alliances, above familial relationships.
It was more important to him to keep his walk with God, right, than his walk with his relatives. And I'm sure that as ASA is doing this, as he's making these decrees and these things are happening, that the people of Israel that are righteous are looking at this king and saying there might be hope, there might be a chance we could have a Godly nation. Because what's happening here is that things are changing, the culture is changing.
And if this man stands up and represents the people and does a Godly thing by removing these idols, by removing wickedness from the land, we can stand up for Christ. We can stand up for our God too. Just like in our culture, when someone stands up for Godliness, when someone stands up to sin in their lives, especially when it's public and they cry against it, even when it's something they might get persecuted for, we have hope and we see that there is a way to stand up against the sin in our lives.
And yet, as grand as these things are, I don't want us to miss the fact that it's not always this dramatic. Sometimes it's just a sin in our hearts. It's not just a sin, right? It's a sin against God.
The sin that Jesus Christ died for, that God takes very seriously. So you may think, well, this man ASA cutting down images and removing prostitution and burning idols and taking his mother away from power this is really a man after God's own heart, a man who pursued God. But I can't possibly do this.
We can. It may not look like this for you. It might mean saying no to that sin that easily besets you.
Maybe it means asking for forgiveness. Maybe it means establishing a pattern of walking with God, reading your Bible and praying. Maybe it means just making that simple decision that when the Holy Spirit prompts you to do it, you take that step of obedience, of faith.
It is just as important. Then we come to some more complicated issues in his life. He brought the sacred gifts of his father and his own gifts into the house of the Lord.
And he made a covenant with an Assyrian king to defend against an enemy. He said, this army's coming after me, and there's no hope except this wicked king of Syria. Maybe I can go to him and I can make an alliance with him, just like I think my dad did.
I've seen it done before. It worked, but it's not what God wanted. God wanted ASA to rely on him.
He wanted ASA to rely on God, even though it seemed impossible. And there is wickedness in his life. And as there is wickedness, there is consequences for wickedness.
In the sister passage, two Chronicles 16, seven to 14. You can turn there. We're going to be reading that passage here.
In a moment, we're going to see the consequences for this. And if you read through Kings and Chronicles, you can see that these books cross over a great deal. They complement each other, and they give us a bigger picture of what's going on.
Kings is more succinct, but Chronicles gives us a more in depth view of the real consequences for what's happening here. Two Chronicles, 16, verses seven to 14. At that time, Hananiah the Seer came to ASA, king of Judah, and said to him, because you relied on the king of Syria and did not rely on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Syria has escaped you.
Then he asked a question were not the Ethiopians and the Libyans a huge army with very many chariots and horsemen? Yet because you relied on the Lord, he gave them into your hand. But the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him. You have done foolishly in this, for from now on, you will have wars.
And verse ten is ASA's response. Then ASA was angry with the Seer and put him in the stocks in prison, for he was in a rage with him because of this. And ASA had inflicted cruelties upon some of the people at the time.
At the same time, the acts of ASA, from the first to the last, are written in the books of the kings of Judah and Israel. In the 39th year of his reign, ASA was diseased in his feet, and his disease became severe. Yet even in his disease, he did not seek the Lord, but sought help from physicians.
And ASA slept with his fathers, dying in the. 41st year of his reign, they buried him in a tomb that he had cut for himself in the city of David. They laid him on a buyer that had been filled with various kinds of spices prepared by perfumers art, and they made a very great fire in his honor.
Another interesting passage that really gives us a great view of some of the consequences for wickedness. And you may be thinking, this is supposed to be a righteous king, a king that pursues God, but there are very real times in our lives, and we sin too, right? And yet the mercy of God, the grace of God, is still sufficient for us. ASA receives consequences for relying on a wicked king in the face of military peril.
And then he is diseased in his feet. And instead of relying on the Lord crying to God and asking God for help, he just goes to physicians and doesn't trust the Lord. He doesn't seek the Lord in this matter, and he sleeps, dying in the 41st year of his reign.
A man who sought the Lord in his young age forgot the Lord in his old age. ASA was not perfect, but surprisingly here after reading this passage, he was a man who pursued God, and on a human level that perplexes us, we don't understand. But God looks at the heart, and God sees this man's heart.
Even though ASA was not perfect, he was called a man who sought the Lord. And we need this grace too, right? Even though this man at times did not pursue God, did not make the right decision, the grace of God was very evident in his life, and God worked in his life, and God did great things, and he showed the people of Israel how to live Godly with his life. I praise the Lord that ASA is not just this perfect figure with no faults, because now we get to see into his life and see that it wasn't about ASA at all.
It was about the God that ASA served. It's about the grace of God in his life. ASA needed god.
And my friend. You need God, and I need God. We need to be reminded of that every single day.
ACA's life also reminds us of something. It reminds us that our legacies can change. Godliness is only one generation away.
We can be Godly people. We can leave a Godly legacy even if we didn't have that ourselves, even if we weren't given righteousness as a pattern. Look with me at ASA's son, just to see this pattern repeat itself.
First Kings Chapter 22 I want to read a couple verses just to talk about the legacy that ASA leaves behind. His son's name is Jehoshaphat. Verse 41 and 42 says Jehoshaphat, the son of ASA, began to reign over Judah in the fourth year of Ahab, King of Israel.
Jehoshaphat was 39 years old when he began, and reign began to reign and he reigned 25 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Azaba and his daughter of Shehi. And we come several chapters later because many kings of the north have lived, ruled, and perished because of their wickedness.
And now we come to a Godly King who rules. His father ruled 40 years, 41 years, and his son rules 25 years, which is an anomaly in the history of Israel and Judah. It's a sign that God was working, God was blessing.
But now that we know who we're talking about and where we are, let's think about who he is. Look at verse 43 with me. One Kings 22 43.
This is a very clear, succinct verdict on the life of Jehoshaphat. He walked in all the ways of ASA, his father. He did not turn aside from it doing what was right in the sight of the Lord.
Again, this pattern of these two statements, he walked in the ways of ASA's father. He did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and both those things were congruent. If someone were to walk in the ways of your life, would that be congruent with the ways of Godliness? Right now? I would pray that we would examine our lives today.
We would see things in our lives, and even though we're not perfect, the people around us would see that we are not content sinning. I'm not calling you to be perfect. The word of God here is not calling you to be perfect.
It is calling you to be sanctified. It's calling you to grow in Christ likeness. We are called to walk in the ways of Godliness.
And if we are looking at our fathers and our mothers and our teachers and we're seeing Godliness, we are to pursue those things. But notice that what is consistent here, even though we might have wicked people be looking at wicked people or righteous people, what's the same here is the word of God. What's the same here is the standard of Godliness.
So as we look at Godliness, we compare what we're being taught to the Word of God compared to what the Spirit is doing in our lives. We are to pursue Godliness above all. The legacy of a father is found in his Son.
The legacy of a righteous man is found in Godliness. We find if you this is for extra credit this week. If you want to look up some more passages and think through how complicated people are, think about a righteous king's error.
King ASA from Two Chronicles 16 and think about a wicked king's righteousness Abijam, ASA's father from Two Chronicles 13. But as we have seen, we have seen legacies passed down the long lasting effect of them. We are to be men of God.
We are to be women of God, young adults pursuing Christ, senior citizens, teenagers, whatever. You are a child of God, are you leaving behind a legacy of Godliness? What do you need to do today to pursue Godliness. Because you and I have a choice.
We have to pursue Christ. I'll leave it to you. The same way Joshua left it to the people of Israel when he was perishing, when he was dying.
And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me, in my house, we will serve the Lord. Who will you serve today? God.
Thank you so much for the truth of legacy, the truth that you have empowered us through the Holy Spirit to live lives that are pure. Help us to forsake the sin in our lives. Help us to pursue Godliness.
Help us to recognize that people are watching us and to know that we ought to be living in Christ-likeness because of who you are. I pray these things in your son's name. Amen.
