An Ancient Prayer for Evil's End

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the Erickson Covenant Podcast. We are so glad that you've joined us today. We confess that we don't have all the answers, but as a community, we seek to find and follow Jesus and to discover daily the life he has always wanted for us. We hope this message will be encouraging and will inspire you to take the next steps on your spiritual journey. If we can help you in any way, please connect with us. The easiest way is through our website at Erickson Covenant Ca. Let's get started. [00:00:37] Speaker B: We've enjoyed a summertime, a wonderful summertime. I think of unearthing these ancient prayers. We've been going through various ancient prayers that we've been able to dig up, some of them long forgotten, some of them newly discovered. Maybe for you, where we've dug into the Old Testament and we've found these beautiful prayers that have been applicable to so many things. I've been hearing from quite a number of you how much you've appreciated it. I'm glad to hear that. I hope it's beefed up your prayer repertoire like it's like it's done for me. We've covered a lot of ground. We've looked at prayers for scriptural insight. We've looked at prayers for wisdom. We've looked at prayers that we can use when we don't know what to do. We've looked at prayers about numbering our days. We've covered a lot of different ground. [00:01:22] Speaker A: And. [00:01:22] Speaker B: And for our final message today, we're going to unearth one more ancient prayer that will give us the words to pray for evil's end. And I think we need this kind of prayer, don't we? We need to be able to pray a prayer for evil's end in our world that still writhes in the coils of evil, where wickedness wreaks havoc. And often without any recognition, without any reckoning. We see evil bringing ruin and we pray for the ruin of evil. In some ways, today's teaching follows straight on from last week. Last week we explored the ancient prayer for when all seems lost that comes out of the prophet Habakkuk that despite the worst possible disaster that he could imagine, Habakkuk makes the choice to rejoice in the sovereign Savior God. And if you missed that message or any of the messages we've been doing this summer, I know you'd find it fruitful. Them on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, on our website, you'll find them encouraging. The reason why I draw attention, though, to last week's teaching is that some might have assumed wrongly. I think that the choice to rejoice when things go wrong means that we're supposed to live sort of in a blissful state of denial, you know, denial about what's truly bad. That somehow to be faithful means we just gotta sort of stay happy. Clappy, positive, positive all the time, acting as though all is well when all really is not well. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. Making the choice to rejoice in God, our sovereign Savior, when things go wrong has to do with trusting that our good sovereign Lord is the source, the true source of our joy and strength. When things are going wrong, we're acknowledging that, that in spite of that, we still trust. But we are able to lament and cry out to God from those places of pain, or when we witness evil and do that in a trusting, even joyful way as we take joy in the Lord. The Bible is very clear that lamenting evil and rejoicing in the Lord actually goes hand in hand. And we'll put some of that together today. Well, as we've been doing so far, we're going to start with the ancient prayer itself. Before we dig a bit further into it, we unearth today's ancient prayer, of course, at the end of Psalm 10, which we just heard read. Psalm 10 explicitly calls evil for what it is and calls on God to act in justice and in judgment on evil. And we just heard it read. But I'm going to read the whole psalm again with no apologies. I'm going to read it because I want us to hear the whole context again as we then focus on the specific prayer for evil's end that's found in verse 15. So here's the Psalm 10 again. I'm going to read it for you. You can just listen, follow along in your Bibles. I'm reading from the new international version. It won't be on the screen. Why, Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? In his arrogance the wicked man hunts down the weak who are caught in the schemes he devises. He boasts about the cravings of his heart. He blesses the greedy and reviles the Lord in his pride. The wicked man does not seek him in all his thoughts. There's no room for God. His ways are always prosperous. Your laws are rejected by him. He sneers at all his enemies. He says to himself, nothing will ever shake me. He swears no one will ever do me harm. His mouth is full of lies and threats. Trouble and evil are under his tongue. He lies in wait near the villages for ambush. From ambush he murders the innocent. His eyes watch in secret for his victims. Like a lion in cover, he lies in wait. He lies in wait to catch the helpless. He catches the helpless and drags them off in his net. His victims are crushed, they collapse, they fall under his strengths. He says to himself, God will never notice. He covers his face and never sees. Arise, Lord. Lift up your hand, O God, do not forget the helpless. Why does the wicked man revile God? Why does he say to himself, he won't call me to account. But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted. You consider their grief and take it in hand. The victims commit themselves to you. You are the helper of the fatherless. Break the arm of the wicked man. Call the evildoer to account that would not otherwise be found out. For his wickedness that would not otherwise be found out. The Lord is king forever and ever. The nations will perish from his land. You, Lord, hear the desire of the afflicted. You encourage them and you listen to their cry, Defending the fatherless and the oppressed so that mere earthly mortals will never again strike terror. A powerful psalm. Hey. [00:06:44] Speaker A: Whoo. [00:06:47] Speaker B: Gets me kind of going. We can pray the whole psalm, you know, it's a good thing to do. Take a psalm, pray the whole thing. But today we're going to focus in on verse 15. Notice how the whole of Psalm 10 kind of cradles the this specific prayer for evil's end. Psalm 15, Psalm 10. 15, verse 15. Break the arm of the wicked man. Call the evildoer to account for his wickedness that would not otherwise be found out. That's an ancient prayer that we can pray for evil's end. Can you think of times when we need to pray this prayer? Some atrocious act of abuse shows up on your social feed, or you hear it from a friend. You can pray this ancient prayer for God to act in power and in judgment to break the arm of that abuser. Maybe you see some kind of persistent wickedness that's just destroying people's lives. You can cry out to God to call the people who are doing this to account, account for their wickedness. Maybe you're experiencing ongoing troubles from someone that is hell bent on harming you. You can pull out this prayer and use it if you'd like. Break the arm of the wicked man. Call the evildoer to account for his wickedness that would not otherwise be found out. Now, does it surprise you a little bit that we can pray a prayer like this? You Know this is not an isolated verse. It's not like it's a one off somewhere. There's many other judgment prayers like this that pop up all over the Psalms. Let me give you a little tiny sampling of them. In Psalm 58, 6 we read, Break the teeth in their mouths, O God, Lord, tear out the fangs of those lions. In Psalm 17 we read, May what you have stored up for the wicked fill their bellies. May their children gorge themselves on it. May there be leftovers for their little ones. Psalm 140 we read, May burning coals fall on them. May they be thrown into the fire, into miry pits, never to rise. We could go on, but we won't. Some are pretty gruesome. Now, if we're only loosely familiar with the Psalms, these harsh prayers might really surprise us. The Psalms are a collected, inspired collection of 150 prayers, songs, poems that have formed the worship liturgy of God's people from long before Jesus was born, right through the history of the church up to today. God's people have been praying these prayers for thousands of years. So how do they fit exactly? Well, within the Psalms collection, there's lots of different types of Psalms. And if you've read them or tried to pray them, you can pick this up. There's wisdom psalms and creation psalms and praise psalms and lament psalms. Broadly speaking, though, the Psalms fall into what Eugene Peterson summarizes two categories, help and thanks. I think that's helpful. Help and thanks. Now, the reality is these categories can be really intertwined. You can see it show up in, you know, the same psalm can have help and thanks in it. That's how it works. Other subgenres can sometimes show up in the same Psalm too, but the thanks category is pretty clear, pretty easy to detect. These are psalms that are filled with praise, wonder, awe for who God is and what God has done. And we love these psalms. These are the ones we want to read out in public worship. These are the ones that make us want sing along, right? Yes. And then there's the help psalms. They also stand out, also fairly easy to detect. They are God, you know, the people in the psalm, we're asking God to rescue and to save us from trouble. And they often have the question embedded within it, how long, O Lord? Because there's a cry out for God to do something, for God to act quickly. And they can really resonate with us when we're in pain or in confusion or grief or anger. Well, it's actually within this help category of psalm that we also discover Sometimes, not always, but sometimes. We can discover a particular prayer focus on evil, when God's people call upon Yahweh to judge and to destroy the wicked. And these judgment prayers, or even the whole psalm, are sometimes called imprecatory psalms. How do you like that one? And why? Because they call down imprecations, the kind of thing you're not supposed to do in traffic. They call down imprecations. That is, these psalms call down. Or the prayer within the psalm calls down evil or harm or judgment, even curses upon the evildoers, upon the wicked. Now, understandably, these imprecatory psalms don't get quite as much airtime in public worship, maybe not even in private devotion, although I suspect they get a little more airtime there. The thanks psalms and the praise psalms, the help psalms, we get those. But these kinds of psalms, they can be very harsh, and we're not sure what to do with them. We don't know how they fit. And partly it's because we don't want to just read out that kind of song publicly without giving some interpretive guidance, you know, at least not in front of the kids, you understand? And so that could be that. But if we're really honest, it might be we just feel uncomfortable with the words, with what's being said in these prayers. They feel too harsh, they feel too violent, they feel too judgy. We just want to be nice. Or is that just me? [00:12:44] Speaker A: Or. [00:12:44] Speaker B: These words sometimes don't fit. What if we're honest, we can have some pretty fluffy, unbiblical ideas about Jesus as a guy who just never said anything harsh, which. Read the Gospels, you'll discover something different. But we can have this idea that Jesus is all just kind of fluffy and mushy and gush, you know, instead of Jesus, who actually challenges people and has real things to say. And we can think, well, if Jesus is all about mushy love, then these psalms feel really out of sync. But if we're really honest, the reason many of us feel uncomfortable with this kind of judgment prayer on evildoers is because we've never really experienced evil like we've never really experienced true malevolence. We don't know what it's like to face absolute diabolical evil and see it destroy families and ruin people and wreak havoc. For anyone who has looked the devil straight in the eyes, these prayers are much, much easier to pray. Well, regardless of our discomfort, we actually need to learn to pray these prayers properly. They're in the scriptures. They're part of God's inspired word. They're part of the church's worship liturgy. We need to be able to pray God's will in the face of evil and call down God's judgment on the wicked. We need to pray them, and we can pray them, and we can do so in the light of the good news of Jesus. So before we go any further, let me pray for us. Jesus, we know that you prayed the psalms, and we need to as well. And we ask for your spirit's help now for us to take this message in the light of the gospel, in the light of who you are, with a confidence that you have come to destroy the works of the evil one, to bring death and destruction to its end. And we're praying according to your will. So help us now, Lord, to understand these things. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Well, we'll begin at the end of Psalm 10. It's a climactic note, and it really helps us understand something important. Praying to God for evil's end springs from our confidence that that God is holy, God is righteous, that Jesus is the rightful Lord over the world. And the end of Psalm 10 captures it beautifully. You know, after detailing all that bit about the wicked, which is a lot of it, in this psalm, and then praying for evil's end, here's what we read at the end. The Lord is king forever and ever. The nations will perish from his land. You, Lord, hear the desire of the afflicted. You encourage them and you listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed so that merely earthly mortals will never again strike terror. All our prayers for evil's end align with who God is. The Lord who is king forever, the God who hears the afflicted, the defender of the fatherless and the oppressed, who is committed to ending evil's reign of terror on earth. This is who God is. And this is revealed all the way through the whole Bible. This is what it means, that the God who is good is always a God who has wrath. Now, I know that that strikes some of us odd. I spoke about this at the end of July, July 26, to be exact. If you want to find it, you can go back and listen, but it's important to remember how much we want a God of wrath. Now, wrath is not what sometimes we commonly think culturally as God having a freak outfit or flipping out because things aren't going his way. That's not wrath. That's not godly wrath. That's not what God. It means that God is a God of wrath. Rather, this is a God who doesn't ignore or diminish or downplay true evil. We don't want a God who does that. We want a God who is just. You want a God who is just. Usually you want a God who is just, just not toward you. Right? But when we step back and realize we want a God who is against evil, who's committed to bringing it to his end. And that's why we explored how we need to understand what the wrath of God is. The wrath of God is his settled holy opposition to anything that defames his holy character, that defaces his human images and destroys his good creation. I'll say that one more time. I didn't put a slide up like I did back in July, but I wanted you to hear it. Because we hear wrath and we think freaking out, we think childish, we think immature. That's not what's going on. The wrath of God is God's settled whole opposition to anything that defames his holy character, defaces his human images and destroys his good creation. We want a God of wrath. And this is the God to whom we pray. A good God who is not only intimately aware of the cries of the hurting, but also a good God who is well informed about the deeds of the wicked. They cannot hide from him, no matter what they think. This is a God who hears and sees. This is a God who has wrath for evil's actions and is committed to destroying evil where it stands. And because of this, this gives us confidence. When we pray our prayers for justice and judgment, they don't fall on deaf ears. They fall on compassionate ears, committed ears. Our cries for judgment fall on listening ones, on good and wrathful ones. They align with the very heart and the very intentions of our good God Almighty. And so it's with that confidence in hand that we can take up and pray. Psalm 10:15. Break the arm of the wicked man. Call the evildoer to account for his wickedness that would not otherwise be found. Let me ask you, don't say it out loud, but what evil men or wicked women spring to your mind that you need to pray this prayer for what evildoers must be stopped. I don't need to chronicle for you the kind of people who qualify for some divine arm snapping. But there's a few. I'm sure some of them are well known, might pop right into your mind. They might be making headlines. But there's many more who are tightly guarded, hidden from public awareness. We don't even know about them. And they don't think God even sees the wicked in need of judgment. Range from despotic tyrants to vile sexual abusers to child killers, to slave traders, filth dealers, freedom stealers. They're all over the place, and we only know a tiny fraction of them. But God knows them all. And so that's why we pray, break the arm of the wicked man, call the evildoer to account for his wickedness that would not otherwise be found out. We want to see wicked people stopped. We want to see evildoers held to account. And we pray for the Father to act quickly in the name of Jesus. But this leads us to an important question, doesn't it? How can we really pray this prayer in the name of Jesus, the Jesus who told us to love our enemies? I mean, is it loving to pray this kind of prayer, folks? And what's more, as we heard read a little earlier, when Jesus was being violently tortured and crucified by wicked men, he did not in fact, call down imprecations on his killers. Instead, he cried out, father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. So how can we take up this prayer that God would break the arm of the wicked or smash their teeth or toss them in the fire? In light of Jesus own teaching, his own example, can we really pray for the destruction of evil people? Yes, we can. And here's how. First, we pray that evil will end through the repentance of those same wicked men and women. We pray that they might turn away from their sin and wickedness and follow Jesus, rejecting evil, embracing the Lord of Heaven and earth, and actively seeking to do justly and love mercy and walk humbly before God. And that is, in fact, what God wants most. God wants the wicked to repent rather than be destroyed. He tells us exactly that through the prophet Ezekiel. As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways. When we pray that God might break the arm of the wicked, we are praying first that God might crush them into a place of true repentance. You know, a snapped arm and some smashed teeth is a small price to pay for realizing with horror the state of your sin and crying out for forgiveness. We're praying the heart of God when we pray that prayer. The heart of God who died in the place of sinners who would rather see the wicked become one of his own kids than to simply be destroyed forever. The apostle Peter told us the Same thing when he was explaining why the Lord delayed his coming. He said, the Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. You know, it was many years ago when I was first struck by how we can pray these imprecatory psalms in this Jesus way. I remember it so clearly. I was riding on a train from Germany to Switzerland, which I have not done very many times. In fact, I've done it once, lest you think I'm some vast world traveler. I was riding a train from Germany to Switzerland. I was reading the Confessions of St. Augustine, and it was there that I first heard this gospel twist as Augustine prayed for the destruction of the wicked using the Psalms through repentance from sin. Here's how the great African bishop put it. I'm quoting how I cried out to Thee, my God, when I read the Psalms of David. Those songs of faith, those sounds of devotion. I burned to recite them if I could, to the whole universe to stem the pride of the human race. And yet they are sung throughout the world, and there is no one who can hide himself from thy heat. How I sighed over the wicked. I was angry with them and then I pitied them. For I heard thy voice speaking in my heart, telling me not to desire their destruction in a spirit of malice, but rather that they might be slain to their old selves so that they could live unto thee. And I remember looking up in shock when I read this. What a way to pray, these imprecatory psalms. What a way to pray for the destruction of the wicked. I am to pray according to Augustine, his example. Augustine was doing this to pray that the wicked might be slain to their old selves so that they could live unto God. And suddenly, click, click, click, click, click. All these prayers started to make sense for me as a person in Christ who has trusted in Christ for my salvation. I know that my personal sin is so gross and so grievous that Jesus the Son of God, Jesus the most innocent man, Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the spotless, blameless Lamb of God. He suffered and died in my place because of my sin so that I could be forgiven my sin. Jesus was destroyed by my sin, so that my sinful self would be destroyed through his death and my new creation self would be raised in his resurrection life. Now that's true for all of us who have trusted in Christ for our salvation. Because as we read in Romans, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and the wages of that sin are paid out in full. The wages are death. But we're told the gift of God is eternal life. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, a great exchange has taken place on the cross. Jesus has swapped us out for himself. The most innocent dying for the truly guilty. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And when you really get that down deep and you really understand this is the gospel, this is the good news, that's what really took place on the cross. It led to the destruction of you. Your sinful you destroyed, gone. And it led to the resurrection of the new creation, you. Well, then you can begin to pray that other grievous sinners might be destroyed in the same way that wicked men and evil women would be slain to their old selves, to quote our brother Augustine, so that they could live unto God. You can pray in grace and in the name of Jesus for their true destruction and their true salvation. As it happens, you know, that actually does happen. Wicked men do repent. Evil women do turn around. Hearts of stone do become hearts of flesh again by the work of the Holy Spirit. John Newton was once a slave ship captain, and I cannot imagine a more wicked occupation. John Newton personified the diabolical, evil and dark wickedness crisscrossing the Atlantic Ocean as he profited from the vile trade of human flesh. And yet. And yet, through the work of the Holy Spirit, bringing about deep repentance, John Newton, the wicked sinner, was destroyed. And John Newton, the saved wretch, lived on, became a committed abolitionist, joining forces with the great William Wilberforce to combat evil, slavery and end the transatlantic slave trade. And it was John Newton, some of you already know this, who then composed the greatest of all Christian hymns, relaying his own testimony when he sang Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. John Newton was living proof that God can destroy an evil man by making him new again in Christ. And so, first and foremost, when we pray for the destruction of the wicked, we pray along with the heart of our merciful, forgiving God that they would be destroyed as sinners and then transformed into saints. But what if they don't repent? What if they refuse to turn and they continue to wreak ruin on others? Well, we press on to pray that God will act swiftly to end their wickedness, holding them to account and bringing evil to its end. We don't just pray this for the human forces of evil that we can see, whether that's men or women or organizations or governments or corporations. We also pray this with the knowledge that there are unseen forces of evil powers and principalities and rulers in the spiritual realms that are always sitting behind the evil that we can see. We pray for the end of both persons and powers that again defame God's holy character, deface God's human images and destroy God's good creation. We pray against those things, and as we do, we join God's own battle in the heavenly realms. We're told in Ephesians that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. And we call out to God to act decisively to bring evil to its final end, to route out the forces of darkness forever. We stand in the full armor of God, as the larger context of Ephesians 6 says. And we pray that God's will will be done. And we do this in confidence in God's power and his promise, because we know that one way or the other, Jesus is coming. And when he comes in glory, as we confess today in the Creed at communion time, he will judge the living and the dead. His kingdom will never end. Either God will judge them, or they will be judged in Christ because the wicked have cried out to God for mercy, have turned from their sin and accepted Jesus for their forgiveness, or God will judge them by their own filthy actions as the wicked refuse God's offer of mercy, reject Jesus as their rightful Lord, continue in their ruinous evil, and then receive the just eternal punishment for their own sin. That's one or the other. Let Jesus pay or pay for it yourself. That's how it ends. God has made a merciful way for wickedness to end repentance from sin, receiving the righteousness of Christ. But he's also made a way for evil to mercifully end. And he will do that when he finally destroys all wickedness forever. That day is coming. And so while we do pray for repentance, we also pray that evil men and women and unseen forces will be stopped now, will be judged soon, we'll be halted before they go on to do more active. And that's because our prayer for evil's end are also an intercession on behalf of the helpless and the hurting. God hears our cries. He hears their cries by the Spirit. We hear them too. We hear the cries of the helpless and we're crying out in solidarity with their suffering. We're confident that God sees them and hears them, sees us and hears us and so we're praying on their behalf, too. This is actually what sits toward the end of Psalm 10, right before Psalm 10:15, verse 14. And it mirrors how it ends. It's this reminder of who God is. Like a sandwich. It reminds us who this God is that we're crying out to. It's instructive for us right before the prayer to break the arm of the wicked and call the evil Dru to account. We're reminded you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted, you consider their grief and take it to hand. The victims commit themselves to you. You are the helper of the fatherless. And then, of course, in the end, it echoes the same thing. What does this mean? We pray for evil's end to a God who hears, and we pray it on behalf of those who are hurting. We pray first that evil people will be destroyed through repentance and salvation. But if not that, we do pray that God will bring them soon to ruin so that they, along with unseen evil forces, will never again strike terror. There's so many hurting people out there that God calls us to pray for and on behalf of. So we say, lord, hear our prayer for evil's end. Break the arm of the wicked. Call the evildoer to account for his wickedness that would not otherwise be found. Break the teeth in their mouths, O God, rip those fangs out, you know? And if they don't repent and they don't turn, then may burning coals fall on them. May they be thrown into the fire, into miry pits, never to rise. All of this can be prayed with confidence because God has committed himself fully to evil's end. Jesus told us that he came to destroy the works of the evil one. And then Jesus beat evil at its own game, dying to defeat death, forgiving all those who repent and trust in him, destroying the forces of evil who are willing, unwilling to repent, and then restoring all that has been lost through new creation. And that's why we can both rejoice in the Lord, trusting in him, and also cry out for evil's end. We know who's at the helm, and we know how the story ends. In the final picture of the Bible, we hear these glorious words ring out, and I want you to listen to them and how they describe the climactic fulfillment of all our prayers and all of God's heart. And it's found right at the end. Revelation, chapter 21. I just want to read a few verses for you. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there was no longer any sea. I saw the holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, look, God's dwelling place is now among the people. And he will dwell with them. They will be his people. And God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There'll be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who is seated on the throne said, I am making everything new. Then he said, write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. He said to me, it is done. I am the alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty, I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this. And I will be their God and they will be my children. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars, they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death. That's quite a final picture, friend. And that's the arc of all our prayers. This is where all that we're praying, all that we're aiming at, all that God is doing comes to its climax. The final destiny when God's dwelling place is among humans. The final destiny of both the righteous and the wicked, when everything has been made new and evil is no more. We join all of heaven and earth when we pray that God's kingdom would come, that his will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. We pray that in the name of our good Father, in the name of our sovereign Lord Jesus, in the name of our saving Holy Spirit. That's how we pray it. And we pray for evil's end. Let's pray together. Jesus, thank you for your total and complete commitment to bringing evil to its end, for doing that through the cross, for dying to save us from sin and committing yourself to bring evil, all the forces of evil, to its full and complete end. Lord Jesus, we acknowledge that we ourselves are sinners, that we ourselves are the wicked. We confess to you that it is only because of you that we can be saved. We confess to you that we trust you for our salvation. If there's anyone here today that has never done that and needs to, I pray, Lord Jesus, that you would help them recognize that it's time to explore further. It's time to come to you, Lord Jesus. I pray that you'd be drawing us all in confidence to come near to you, to align ourselves with your heart, to pray along with you that your kingdom would come and your will would be done. We pray all of this in the name of Jesus. Amen. [00:38:33] Speaker A: Thanks for listening in today. We hope you feel encouraged and challenged. If you know someone who would benefit from what you have heard today, please share this podcast. For more information or if you have questions, you can connect with us through our website, Erickson Covenant ca. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Erickson Covenant Church.