Proverbs 7: The Adulteress Is the Adversary
Elder Michael Villalobos preaches from Proverbs 7 (read for us in Portuguese) about how our adversary tempts us away from God and towards destruction. Discussion points: The adulteress in the passage stand for our enemy Satan or anything that can lure us away from God; we are made for community, which includes care and accountability; life without God, pursuing our own wants, leads to destruction in this life and for eternity.
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Scripture reader: Our scripture reading today is from Proverbs chapter 7. I'll be reading from a Portuguese translation, and you can follow along in English. When I finish reading, I'll say this is the word of the Lord. Please respond with thanks be to God.
My son, keep my words and treasure up my commandments with you;
keep my commandments and live; keep my teaching as the apple of your eye;
bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart.
Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,” and call insight your intimate friend,
to keep you from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words.
For at the window of my house I have looked out through my lattice,
and I have seen among the simple, I have perceived among the youths, a young man lacking sense,
passing along the street near her corner, taking the road to her house
in the twilight, in the evening, at the time of night and darkness.
And behold, the woman meets him, dressed as a prostitute, wily of heart.
She is loud and wayward; her feet do not stay at home;
now in the street, now in the market, and at every corner she lies in wait.
She seizes him and kisses him, and with bold face she says to him,
“I had to offer sacrifices, and today I have paid my vows;
so now I have come out to meet you, to seek you eagerly, and I have found you.
I have spread my couch with coverings, colored linens from Egyptian linen;
I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.
Come, let us take our fill of love till morning; let us delight ourselves with love.
For my husband is not at home; he has gone on a long journey;
he took a bag of money with him; at full moon he will come home.”
With much seductive speech she persuades him; with her smooth talk she compels him.
All at once he follows her, as an ox goes to the slaughter, or as a stag is caught fast
till an arrow pierces its liver; as a bird rushes into a snare; he does not know that it will cost him his life.
And now, O sons, listen to me, and be attentive to the words of my mouth.
Let not your heart turn aside to her ways; do not stray into her paths,
for many a victim has she laid low, and all her slain are a mighty throng.
Her house is the way to Sheol, going down to the chambers of death.
This is the word of the Lord.
Preacher: Good morning church. My name is Michael, and by God's grace, I am an elder here at this church. yeah, this morning, it is by that same grace, that has brought me thus far that, it's my privilege to preach God's word to you. I know Proverbs is a little bit of an unusual, you know, book to, yeah, book to hear from, and, it's definitely unusual psalm, you know. We are doing a series in the Psalms, over the course of the summer, but you know, me being the, I've been called a hipster before. I don't, I feel like I haven't heard that term in a long time, but, I just, you know, felt like the Lord was calling me to preach from the proverbs, so that's what we're getting this morning.
You know, I, I think we often write off proverbs as a bit of an IKEA instruction manual, you know, build your life by doing part A and then put that into part B and then you'll get part C, this, you know, useless dresser, but, I think that really the pattern is do A get B, do if you don't do A, you won't get B. We're gonna dig into this, and I think that this passage in particular, Proverbs 7, has a little bit more beneath the surface. So we're gonna dig into this together and we're gonna look at 3 different points today.
Number one, the adulteress, that was spoken of in the passage is the adversary. So this passage is for everyone, just because you've never been tempted by an adulteress doesn't mean that this word isn't for you. Wisdom spoken out here is living out what is truly good through the word of God. And Jesus, who is wisdom personified, has defeated the adversary and has made a way for you to come home. My prayer for us this morning is that the spirit of God. Would speak through me to break the spell of the adversary. Whatever the siren song is that the adversary is singing to you, to call you down to the house of death. I pray that you would wake up. That you would hear the good word of the Lord, and that you would turn into the house of wisdom and away from the house of death.
Let's dig into this passage. If you're a member here, you'll know that one of our community commitments is that we speak good news and then good advice. this passage starts with a little bit of both good news and good advice, but we're actually gonna skip over that and we're gonna talk a little bit about the problem first. So we'll get back there, I promise, but we're gonna start, in verse 5. So after the father warns his son to keep away from the adulteress and her flattery, um. We're, we're gonna get into the, well, there's gonna be a little bit more about the story now.
I, I wanna talk a little bit about this adulteress. She is a recurring character in the 1st 9 books of Proverbs. So the 1st 9 books have, another common pattern where we see a father warning his son, and it typically ends up being a warning to go towards wisdom and away from the house of folly or this adulterous character. I'll say it again later on, but I just want to make sure we're on the same page here. this is much more like a parable than a directive. Now in the same way that building your house on a solid foundation of rock as we sang about, is a good idea and building it on sand is a bad idea, but what Jesus really cares about is not your architecture of your house but of your life. so too this story is much less about saying no to adulteresses and much more about the pattern of temptation that we will encounter when our adversary comes against us.
Especially when you recognize that the adversary who's coming against you is not just, you know, some adulteress who has access to Egyptian linen but is a tens of thousands of years old dragon who has successfully tricked billions to come down into his house of death and desperately wants you to make the same choice. So, our adversary is quite powerful, but thankfully, as we'll see Jesus is, is much more so. And here's where I need to, here's my first confession actually. That that I have for you.
But before I, I get into this, I wanna talk a little bit about my faith background and this will hopefully help frame up a little bit about why we're talking about Proverbs today. So I was born into a non-denominational Bible church, emphasis on the Bible part. we had a lot of focus on what the Bible said, and on scripture memorization, and that was really great. I learned a lot of scripture, but I would say that there were a couple of ways that, I sort of missed, what I kind of could have gotten out of scripture growing up, and one of those is just having a really plain interpretation of scripture, not really thinking about it beneath the surface, not looking at the style, not looking at the overarching patterns.
You know, for example, I thought Left Behind the Left Behind series, was basically just like a prophecy. I was like that's exactly what it's gonna be like, and every time that like you know my parents were gone I was like, did it happen? And I also, yeah, I grew up as a young earth creationist like if you're a young earth creationist, there's plenty of space for that. I I think that there's some compelling arguments that take into account the style of the, the epic poem that's in Genesis one, but I grew up thinking that, being very mad at my Earth science teacher when I went to public school because I was like, you're not teaching out of the textbook. Genesis one, that's the only textbook about how the Earth was made, so anyway, all this to say I think I had a little bit of a, you know, too straightforward understanding of the scriptures.
So, with with that, as we look at this passage. I, I grew up thinking, you know, even having read it, you know, into my adulthood that this was just a warning against loose women and it was something that I thought was going to be a big problem in my life, you know, this, these women who are on every street corner and who you know have to be repeatedly warned against. I was like, man, I'm really gonna have to watch out whenever I get older, you know, these, they're gonna try to get me. Yeah. I'm very sorry. I've I've learned a lot, you know, about that over the years, but it wasn't until recently that I felt like the Lord was revealing to me that this isn't just a an adversary who, who wants something from me in this way, but it's, it's the adversary, you know, Satan, right?
So what makes me say that? Let's go back into the passage and break this down. Start in verse 5, verse 5. To keep you from the forbidden woman from the adulteress with her smooth words, for at the window of my house I've looked out through my lattice, and I've seen among the simple, I've perceived among the youths, a young man lacking sense, passing along the street near her corner, taking the road to her house in the twilight in the evening at the time of night and darkness. So here we have our everyman. Someone lacking sense labeled as simple. A phrase that's used 7 times in the first 9 chapters of Proverbs. The father goes further to say that the man lacks sense, so he's really doubling down on this idea that this the simplicity, this simple-mindedness, this lacking of sense is is a real problem that his ignorance is is an issue.
Church, whether it seems fair or not, the world is not a place where ignorance is a just excuse for evil. The Puritan author William Gurnall spit some pretty hot fire on this topic, and I'm gonna share that with you here. He says ignorance is a spiritual cataract, but pride keeps this kind of person from seeking a physician. He often considers himself too good to learn from another man and too bad to be taught by God. Heed this warning if you are such a one. God will accept neither excuse for clinging to ignorances when you stand before him.
I don't know about y'all, but that, that. I find that really convicting. That idea of of how important it is that we understand the the gravity of what we've been entrusted with in life. Sitting here today, you might have a a GED or a PhD, but regardless of what you've learned, you will be held to account for your actions before the Lord and judged by his standard of righteousness. And so our uninformed protagonist moves on, you know, we've we've seen him, we've identified that he's ignorant and he moves on seemingly unknowingly going down the road to her house, and yet curiously chooses to do so under the cover of darkness. If our guy doesn't know that he's doing something wrong because he's ignorant of it, some part of him seems to because he chooses to do so at night. When no one is able to see him or call him out.
Jesus even contrast himself against the darkness by calling himself light. You see what I'm getting at? Whether I, I, I don't know that there's anyone in here who has you know, done something like this, who's who's gone into sin without having the idea of it and without wanting to stay covered up. So the adulteress here represents anything that could lure you away from devotion to God. Anything that you might be tempted to seek out without wanting others to know what's going on. Maybe you don't want people to know that you're obsessed with your career and that it's really who your God is. Maybe you don't want people to know that you're really proud of how smart you are and how many degrees you've collected. Maybe you don't want people to know how much you desire comfort and how willing to compromise you are to get it. Maybe it's, you know, nationalism for you or there's a bitterness that you hold as with your dreams of revenge or an addiction that you feel has helped you or other forms of self-medication or approval or take your pick of whatever created thing sits on the throne of your heart instead of Jesus. Whatever that is, don't let it remain in darkness church. We need to chase it out into the light.
Let's pick back up in verse 10 and walk through the, the next interaction now that we've seen a little bit of these dynamics here. And behold, the woman meets him, dressed as a prostitute, wildly of heart. She is loud and wayward, and her feet do not stay at home. So we see the adversary set up here, described in a way that looks attractive to the eyes. But is labeled appropriately by the wise father. Furthermore, the adversary is flashy and loud and exciting and attention grabbing. This isn't a quiet whisper. It's a bold, persistent. Play at overpowering your senses. And removing your reason. She doesn't wait for you to stumble, she meets you head on, armed with appearance and attitude. So she's going after him. In a very aggressive manner, knowing that he's ignorant and utilizing every angle she can to make herself look attractive.
Verse 12, now in the street, now in the market, and in every corner she lies in wait. This when I was listening to it, recently is really where the spirit caught my attention. Because this can't be a real woman, cause mortals can't lie in wait at every corner. and so now I'm relieved to know that it's not a person I have to worry about but is actually. Someone who is much more present. This, when I was listening to this passage, the spirit called to mind 1 Peter 5:8, which says, your adversary of the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. So this is the adversary that we're up against. It's loud, flashy. Roaring lion that is desperately seeking to devour you.
So we, we see that there's this pattern here. We see that there's this adversary that we have. And there is a solution that's offered in the first 4 verses which we'll get back to, but we're going to continue walking through these tactics because it is helpful to understand the way that the enemy works because this is how God reveals to us what we've, you know, what we've turned a blind eye to. So let's continue on as we see more about this unfortunate interaction.
Verse 13, she seizes him and kisses him, and with bold face she says to him, I had to offer sacrifices, and today I've paid my vows. There's a hook here with something that seems nice, a kiss. Right? And it's immediately followed by justification. I've paid my dues. This action is justified. How often are we tempted with the same? How often do we think we deserve some little indulgence because of how hard we've worked? I put in the time and I deserve this thing. God will understand, right? The adversary has employed these tricks for a long time because they work. And this passage is laying out the playbook so that you can recognize it when, not if. They're attempted on you.
As we continue on in verse 15. So now I have come out to meet you, to seek you eagerly, and I have found you. I've spread my couch with coverings, colored linens from Egyptian, linen, perfume my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. Come, let us take our fill of love till morning and let us delight ourselves in love. Here we have the adversary saying, I want you and I've done all this for you. Come and seal the deal and do this thing that you want. Sometimes just the idea of being wanted by someone else is enough to crack. It's enough to crack us and break us and make us, you know, compromise.
The loneliness epidemic that's going on right now in our country is measurable. An NIH study recently showed that average alone time increased by 24 hours per person per month, and the time with friends decreased by 20 hours per month. So we're continuing to spend more time alone and we're continually being isolated. In a similar time frame, those with at most 3 close friends. Doubled from 27% in 1990 to 49% in 2021. I, it used to be that about 25% of people could only count 3 friends and that everyone else had more than that and now about 50% of us can only say that we have 3 friends or or less.
Friends, we were made to be in community. That's one of the things that I love about this church is the way that we care for one another and the way that we practice real Christian community. But sometimes we want community so badly. That we're willing to go along with the crowd or with a person who says that they want us to come along with them, even if we know it's wrong. What I get return in return for a little compromise is nice, so why not just give in. And then we have a real doozy, which is another convincing argument that the enemy tries to bring.
Verse 19, for my husband is not at home. He's gone on a long journey. He took a bag of money with him at full moon, he will come home. With much seductive speech she persuades him with her smooth talk. She compels him. This final seduction is haunting. Because it's the lie of zero accountability. Like I said before, I don't believe that there's a person in this room who hasn't done something they know that they shouldn't have done at some point thinking no one will know. There won't be any consequences for this because no one will ever find out. Yet God says in Jeremiah 23:24, can a man hide himself in his secret place so that I cannot see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth, declares the Lord. Friends, you cannot hide from God. That's a good thing.
Pride makes us think that we can fool others. And pride is something that I unfortunately know plenty about. to share a little bit more about my life, when Alex and I first moved to the Boston area in 2013, I had a nice job as a traveling consultant. Back in those days for some reason they would have these kids straight out of college fly down to another place on a Monday morning, sit in a room, write code together or even just word documents together, pay for all of my meals, pay for nice hotel rooms, and then I would fly back on Thursdays. so I had this, you know, nice job, but shortly after we got here, the project that I was on ended and I was on the bench or what some people would call the beach because it's a nice vacation.
At first I enjoyed it and didn't think much of working extra days from home since everyone was on their projects anyway and there wouldn't be anyone in the office. After about a month, I started to say, you know, I've, I've had enough vacation here. Why don't I raise visibility to how available I am and, you know, say like, hey, you know, if you guys need help, I'm here, I'm available, like, you know, choose me. But after about a month, no one seemed to care, or, you know, so I was trying that and so we're at the end of month two of not really having anything meaningful to do being employed, but with no direction.
And so then I adopted a new strategy of hiding, and trying to lower visibility. Pretending to be busy, at work, but not really having anything meaningful to do. And so I found myself, working from home more often working from home I'd also, to get specific, I got into the game League of Legends back then, I didn't have any kids, and my wife Alexa, or well, my fiancé at the time Alexa, was pretty busy with grad school and so she didn't really have a ton of time to interact and so I didn't see much point in going to bed at a reasonable time when I could easily queue up another game and. I get very frustrated at it not going exactly the way I wanted it to. Which led to another one.
In that same time, while I was staying up late playing video games and sometimes playing video games in the middle of the work day because nothing mattered, two other things crept in. And to be honest with you, one of them was, was porn. I developed a very rough porn addiction where that that ended up becoming a huge part of how I spent my evenings. And I also ended up consuming an excessive amount of alcohol during that time. When you don't have to get up the next day, what does it matter? What does another drink matter? Just gonna queue up games and drink and, you know, do whatever I want, navigate to the underbelly of the Internet. Because no one will know.
At the, at the bottom of this trough, this would be where entire business days would go. I'm ashamed to admit. This season of employment, but without any direction and just kind of wallowing between addictions lasted for almost 9 months. The enemy had showed me something I wanted. Comfort, distraction. And told me I'd earned it for the the work I'd done or because I was treated unfairly or because I had, you know, lost too many games or because you know my fiancé wasn't as available as I wanted her to be or because I was here alone in a new city. Take your pick of flimsy arguments. But that was my whole existence. That was, that was all that I thought about and that was all that I really was. If anybody had asked me how I was doing or how my week was, and I was honest, that would have been the answer that this is what I've been doing is I've been alone in my room, just sinning.
I believe I was still a Christian at the time, but I was dead. I was dead in my trespasses and sins, and I was useless in the fight for the kingdom of God. That the enemy had completely taken me out of the equation. And yeah, was as good as someone who is spiritually dead.
To continue the grimness while I was focused on myself and while I'm in my own prison, Alexa was going through what she would say is the worst year of her life. I'm not gonna walk through as much detail, but She was in a pit of depression and shame. Having been having convinced herself that the choices that she'd made in life would lead nowhere. And so her anxiety drew her to scroll LinkedIn, desperately looking for someone's life that she could copy for hours a day and hours a night. To keep up with her grad school schedule, she ended up consuming a lot of caffeine. And then had a hard time sleeping. Oh, and caffeine spikes your anxiety, by the way. So she would be anxiously scrolling well into the night, losing sleep, driving herself deeper into depression. A lot of our conversations at the time, as I recall, were about the desire for a time machine because that seemed to be the best way that she could undo the decisions that she made.
Things were bleak in that first year, church. Thankfully we had started coming to City on a Hill, our third week in Boston. But we were in the depths of it. And I'd encourage you if you're here and you're in the depths of it. Don't struggle alone. This didn't end for us until we started being honest with our community group and with our friends about what was really going on. We had to share about our struggles. We had to, to drag this out into the light to not give the enemy power to tor trust and darkness. For her, part of the way out was God telling her one day that he didn't create her to have a life like anyone else's. And that was part of the the, the step stool that allowed her to step up out of the pit.
For me, it wasn't anything specific that the that the Lord said, that snapped me out of it, and this has been a struggle that I've had. Well, at least, on the, the underbelly of the Internet side, it's been a struggle in my life since I was around 7 years old and that was the the worst of it, and it's been something that the enemies continued to try to hit me with, and I don't know if there will be a day that I can have a phone without accountability software on it. But I'm grateful to say that. I've won more battles than I've lost in the years since. This is a decade ago and it still is horrible to talk about.
Friends, we're, we're far from perfect. We came into our marriage, somehow, by God's grace, after that horrible year. And got married what next week will be 11 years ago. The Lord has given us two beautiful children, this beautiful community, a beautiful home that we have. And if it wasn't for him and for him bringing us up out of the pit, I would not be standing before you now, preaching God's word to you. I don't think I'd be married. I don't even know if I'd be on this earth. If I had stayed in that pit. Life was turning gray and had no meaning.
My dear friends, this is the exact warning that is given at the end of this passage. In verses 22 through 27. All at once he follows her as an ox goes to the slaughter or as a stag is caught fast. Till an arrow pierces its liver as a bird rushes into a snare, he does not know that it will cost him his life. Now, sons, listen to me, be attentive to the words in my mouth. Let not your heart turn aside from her ways. Do not stray her into her paths, for many a victim has she laid low. All her slain are a mighty throng. Her house is the way to Sheol going down to the chambers of death. In each of these illustrations that the father gives, he's driving home the point. I think it's said well in in a timeless illustration that sin will take you farther than you want to go. Keep you longer than you wanted to stay. And cost you more than you wanted to pay. It will cost you your life if you live it in ignorance of the gospel.
The good news for us, all of us here today, is that Jesus calls us up out of the adversary's house, urging us to live as we were created to be. To worship our Creator with our whole lives by loving him with our heart, soul, mind and strength, and loving our neighbor as ourself. There's something beautiful in the self-forgetfulness that's taught by Jesus in these two commandments that summarize the law and the prophets. When you focus on yourself, on what makes me comfortable, on what I want to achieve on me controlling my life. This is ultimately leading towards folly. This is ultimately leading towards death. When you focus on building the kingdom, when you focus on others as Jesus calls us to, this is, this is what he tells us will lead us to life. It's not to say that you should disregard yourself. I mean, Jesus often assumes that you, if you're loving your neighbor as yourself, you do care for yourself. But that we are free in Christ and not exclusively worry about whether we can control our own lives.
This is what Christ, who is wisdom personified, taught us. And this is the same encouragement that I give you. Love the Lord first, and then love your neighbors, love your community as yourself, and your cup will overflow with joy, church. This kind of life centered on love, freed from self-absorption. Is not something that we invent. It's something that we receive, that we're given. And long before Jesus articulated the greatest commandment. The the father that's in Proverbs. This passage that we've read was urging his son towards the same path. A life ordered by God's word anchored in intimacy and wisdom. Let's look back at the good news at the beginning of the passage.
Verses 1 through 4. My son, keep my words and treasure up my commandments with you. Keep my commandments and live. Keep my teaching as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers, write them on the tablet of your heart. Say to wisdom, you are my sister, and call insight your intimate friend. There's again layers of language here. Treasure my commandments, protect them as the object of your affection. Write them on the tablet of your heart or internalize them so that this becomes who you are. Rather than haphazardly stumbling into bed with the adversary, instead say to wisdom, the word, the commands of God, Jesus, you are my family, you are my friend, you are the one who I'm living for.
In this greatest commandment to love God, we have this this key to life. But the thing that really unlocks the key to understanding and loving God is to, to know Him. I think that this is important. that we know who it is that we're loving. Because we can't love someone that we don't know. AW Tozer warns of this quite well in his opening to the book knowledge of the Holy. He says what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. So if we are to practice this verse of these greatest two commandments, we need to know God. If we don't know God, questions like, doesn't God condone slavery or isn't God pro genocide, after all, he had the Israelites do, or any of the any number of the questions that start with, how could a loving God. Fill in the blank. All of these will sound unsettling or unanswerable. Or be something that you just choose to avoid if you don't know him.
So now we have a problem. Love without knowledge is naive at best. And at worst, is masking something else. Often this thing that's masking is our own pride, directing the love back at our idea of what we think is good. Interestingly, scripture addresses the idea of claiming to know God. Without loving him pretty directly in 1 John chapter 2. John writes, My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. Whoever says I know him but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
I love the way that this passage lays out the father's urging towards wisdom. With the context of Christ. It's such good news. Looking back at that passage where how John refers to Jesus as Jesus Christ the righteous. I I I love that because there is no one else who is righteous. He's the only one who followed the wise path that's outlined in Proverbs. And yet, he followed the wise path and then went down into death to steal us away from it, to conquer the adversary down in there in his own house. All for you. To bring you up out of it, because on your own you are hopelessly outmatched against these tricks of the adversary. It's worked for billions. His resume is stacked, and he'll get you too.
But Jesus provides a way for us to say no. If we keep to his commandments. He offers us life abundant. In these things that he calls us to. Only through faith in him are you truly able to live wisely. You might think you're wise. But if you aren't following his commandments, you don't know God. You can't love God and you aren't following the path and you are following the path of your own foolishness that is warned of here that ultimately leads to death. Our Jesus was bound to a cross. So you wouldn't have to be. He entered hell so that you could be freed from it. And now risen and glorified, he wraps himself around you by his spirit. So that you can walk free. From the lies of the adversary and say yes to life in him.
And Church, even if you've walked into the adversary's house thousands of times, even if you're a repeat customer with many punch cards, I too am one of those. It was hard to share about that story. And my life has not been perfect by any stretch. But I am endeavoring to follow Jesus. I'm endeavoring to know him, to learn his commandments, and to pursue him with my whole life. So even if you failed more times than you can count. He is still waiting for you with open arms and calls you to be with him. My son, my daughter, come. Come out of that place and come home. It won't be easy. I'm not gonna lie to you. But it will be better. It'll cost you something. But it will give you, he will give you everything, if you follow him.
Each week we commemorate the sacrifice of Jesus that has led to our freedom by taking communion together. On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took a loaf of bread and he broke it saying this is my body broken for you. And then he took the cup and said, this cup is the new cup of my blood. Do this in remembrance of me. If you're not a believer here today, this is the only part of our gathering that we'd ask you not to participate in. This is because Jesus told us that this is a sacred meal to commemorate the covenant that he entered into with us if you've received salvation. Instead, we ask that that you consider entering into that covenant today. We'll have some folks who are ready to pray with you in the back if you'd like to go back there and talk with them about leaving behind the the path of the adversary in death and joining him in life. Now if you'd pray with me as we enter into our time of communion, I'd appreciate it.
Father, you have given us the words of eternal life. You've made yourself known to us through your scripture. You have told us what wisdom is, and you have sent your son to be wisdom and to fill us with your wisdom. Father, it's my prayer that you would use my feeble words today. That you would magnify them by your spirit and that you would use your word, that is not feeble, your word that is enduring and perfect, to change lives, to draw people out of death, draw them into life, Lord. Let the hearers here today come to know you, come to know you anew. But not of one of them stay facing the enemy, facing whatever he's called them to in temptation, but would they turn to you and receive life. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.