Now I invite the rest of you to open your Bibles to the book of Nehemiah. We're here now at the last chapter of Nehemiah, although this is not going to be our last day in Nehemiah. This might take two or three weeks to get through Nehemiah chapter 13, but we're actually going to be bouncing around trying to tie some themes together. So this morning we're going to be looking at verses 1 through 9 and then jumping ahead to verses 23 through 29. We are getting close to the end of our series going through the history of the book of Nehemiah and seeing how the people in those days needed to reclaim the good things of God in the past in order for their children to be able to have a better future. Some of the elements we're going to be seeing here in God's Word is just how quickly victories that are won can be lost when we are clinging and putting our hopes in the wrong things. When we're looking to our human leaders than rather to God being our king and leader and ruler over us. And we also see just the importance of a culture. that looks to God above everything else. You're gonna be thinking about Christian culture. What does a Christian culture mean? And is Christian culture, is that a good thing or a bad thing for believers? Think about that, that concept of a Christian culture. What does that mean? And maybe a passage that has some questions for you might give you some rich insights in knowing how to delight and understand the word of God more fully. But as we do come to God seeking to understand his purpose, let's offer this prayer. God, we do thank you that you record your history for us, and we recognize that when we forget your history, sometimes the commandments of your word seem so strange and foreign to us. And we see a mention of the foreigners in this passage that might give us some confusion. God, we're so thankful that you did not let us remain as foreigners from your family and your kingdom, but that you have graciously welcomed us in. So God, give us a deeper understanding of this wonderful, beautiful history of redemption and how we can make your glories and wonders known in the way that we live our lives today. Father, we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. So friends, I now invite you to stand in body or in spirit as we look together at Nehemiah chapter 13, starting with verse one. Hear these words, Lord. On that day, they read from the book of Moses and the hearing of the people. And in it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God. For they did not meet the people of Israel with bread and water, but hired Balaam against them to curse them. Yet our God turned the curse into a blessing. As soon as the people heard the law, they separated from Israel all those of foreign descent. Now before this, Elisha, the priest, who was appointed over the chambers of the house of God and who was related to Tobiah, prepared for Tobiah a large chamber where they had previously put the grain offering, the frankincense, the vessels, and the tithes of grain, wine, and oil, which were given by commandment to the Levites, singers, and gatekeepers, and the contributions for the priests. While this was taking place, I was not in Jerusalem, for in the 32nd year of Artaxerxes, king of Babylon, I went to the king. And after some time I asked leave of the king and came to Jerusalem. And then I discovered the evil that Eliashiv had done for Tobiah, preparing for him a chamber in the courts of the house of God. And I was very angry and threw all the household furniture of Tobiah out of the chamber. Then I gave orders and they cleansed the chambers and brought back there the vessels of the house of God with the grain offerings and the frankincense. And then we jump ahead to verse 23. In those days, I also saw the Jews who had married the women of Ashdod, Amnon and Moab. And half the children spoke the language of Ashdod and could not speak the language of Judah, but only the language of each people. And I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair. and I made them take an oath in the name of God, saying, you shall not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. Did not Solomon, king of Israel, sin on account of such women? Among many nations, there was no king like him, and he was beloved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless, foreign women made even him to sin. Shall we then listen to you and do all this great evil and act treacherously against our God by marrying foreign women? And one of the sons of Jehoiada, the son of Elisha, the high priest, was the son-in-law of Sambalot, the whore knight. Therefore I chased him from me. Remember them, oh my God, because they have desecrated the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites. Brothers and sisters, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of God helps us stand forever. You can be seated. So you've likely heard before the name of Elon Musk. He's the creator of SpaceX, the creator of Tesla. He's the one who purchased Twitter. And regardless of what you might think of the Cybertruck, I heard guys debating just yesterday if they like the look of the Cybertruck or not. Setting all that aside, one of the things we can recognize is that this is a man who has been a major cultural influence on America. But I bring him up because a couple weeks ago, in an interview, he has said that Christianity has been a major influence on his life. And though he doesn't believe that Jesus Christ is our Lord and King, that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, what he does love is Christian culture. And he joins a lot of cultural influencers right now who all of a sudden are rediscovering that there is something valuable about these Christian people and the way that they live their lives. And maybe we can extract our favorite things of what Christianity teaches. So you get people like Elon Musk says, I really like the morality of Christians. You know, love your neighbor, that kind of an idea. These are great concepts that are out there. But when you think about this idea of Christian culture. What do we mean by Christian culture? And one of the things I think people mean when they talk about Christian culture is the fruit that comes from the tree of Christianity. These are the byproducts, these are the outpourings of Christianity, the moral system of things like you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness. When we have a society that holds to these standards, our societies are healthier, better places. And so we see there are many people who say, I love the fruit that comes from the tree of Christianity. And yet they do not believe in the tree itself. They do not believe that Jesus Christ, who gives us such fruit, is truly God who became man. And so for somebody to say that they love the fruit that comes from the tree, but do not believe in the tree itself, is a kind of foolishness, as if somebody says, I love apple trees, but I don't believe, or I love eating apples, but I do not believe in apple trees. I think those trees, they're just getting in the way. You know, I tried eating the tree, it didn't taste any good at all. So when they come to an apple tree and they see fruit that's high on the top branches, and they go, man, that fruit up there looks really good, but the tree's just getting in the way, and then they cut the tree down so they can reach the fruit, and you can enjoy the fruit of an apple tree that's been cut down for a little while, right? But what happens after not too long? The fruit will not continue to grow. The fruit will die away, because the fruit is just a byproduct. The real power, the real life, is in the tree, the roots, in everything that comes with it. And so what we see in this Christian culture is that for many people, when we talk about Christian culture, we're talking about the moral byproducts, which are good things, and people delight in it. That's one of the things we need to recognize. There's a lot of people who look at the morals that come from Christianity and say, there's something really special about this. Hey, Christians, you've got something good going on. When they get a lot of influencers to say, maybe I'm going to think about Christianity again. There is a hope that's there. But if we become too influenced by the influencers and say, well, I like the culture that you're making and we make Christianity about the fruit rather than the tree. Then what, we get a generation or two where we get some peace? But I think one of the reasons why peace and stability in Western society seems to be fading right now is because too many of us have already cut down the tree. And so when we think about Christian culture, Christian culture can be a danger if it's focused on the wrong thing. But we have an opportunity to create Christian culture that is about the tree itself. to create a Christian culture that is about Jesus Christ himself. He's our delight. He is our joy and the fruit. It's just a byproduct of having a great king and savior. And so we're at a tipping point right now. If we let the influencers influence the church, then we're cutting a cut down the tree and we'll lose the fruit with it. But right now, as we're in a place where people are all of a sudden starting to rediscover Christianity, we have a chance to say, if you like the fruit, just wait till you get a chance to meet the tree. That's where we are right now. And I bring up this idea of Christian culture. What could it mean? How has it been misleading? Because we see the importance of culture and a cultural debate that is taking place in the days of Nehemiah. Let's look again at what we read. In verse one, we see the context of, you know, actually what we see is there's gonna be two periods of time we're reading. We're reading, you know, first about Nehemiah and before he left Jerusalem to go back to his boss, you know, the king of Babylon, and then later when he comes back again. We see here in the beginning, as Nehemiah is still leading over them, they just re-signed a covenant promise to the Lord. And what did they do on that day? It says, on that day they read from the book of Moses in the hearing of the people. And it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God. And so we see that their culture, while Nehemiah was leading them, was one that would continue to be centered around the word of God. In their celebrations, in their gatherings, what did they do? They read God's word. And because the word of God was such a central part of their gatherings and their cultural understanding, that they were rediscovering the commandments of God and the truths that he had spoken to them in the past, including that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter into the assembly of God. you Now, this seems a surprise to them that they had forgotten, they had overlooked this principle here. And we might read this one and at first go, well, that's kind of surprising to me. Foreigners, outsiders, they never get the chance to come and worship God? Well, what if they want to come and worship God? What is going on here? This sounds a little racist, right? Is this what Christianity and Judaism is supposed to be about? What's happening here? One of the principles up front that, when we read the Bible, we want to interpret scripture with scripture. We want to read the Bible in all of its contexts, and by the end of this, I hope you'll see and understand that the Bible is not a racist book, and that it is a book of invitation for all people to come and worship the Lord, but we need to understand that there is something dangerous about the cultures of this world, and we have to make that distinction. What is it that we need to make sure that we keep outside of our Christian culture? And how do we become a people of invitation? There's a balance that's there. Hopefully you'll understand a little better by the time we're done. But let's look at the very specific reason that's given to us why these two nations were told that they could never come into the assembly of God, to give worship to God in the temple place. And the history for this particular command is said in verse two, for they did not meet the people of Israel with bread and water, but hired Balaam against them to curse them. Yet our God turned the curse into a blessing. It was going back to the book of Deuteronomy where they found this commandment, and the context of this is when the people of Israel were wandering through the wilderness, and as they had the chance to come close to the promised land, they had to go through the lands of their cousins. They had to go through the lands of the nations that they were related to by blood, but they were distinct from because of their worship. And so as they were going through the lands of the Ammonites and the Moabites, instead of them having a chance to greet the Israelites and make friends and allies of them and saying, hey, you know, we shared the same great, great, great grandfather. Maybe we should be buddies again. Instead of them coming with an invitation of we're gonna share food, we're gonna share our water with you, but let's look out for each other. No, instead, they withheld that invitation. They did not offer them bread, they did not offer them water, and instead they took a corrupt prophet by the name of Balaam, and they hired him to give a curse upon the people of Israel. That's an interesting story to read another time with Balaam and his donkey, but the end result of it is because this was, even though he was a wicked prophet, could only speak the words that God had given him, and so he spoke a word of blessing rather than a curse for the people of Israel. But Balaam, because he was wicked, and realized that the one true God of the universe was protecting the people because they were clinging to him, to this true God, for their life and for their protection, Balaam came up with another plot. How about we corrupt their culture? What if we corrupt their culture so the people separate themselves from this God? Because if they don't have land, they don't have food, they don't have water, except for what their Lord gives them, if we cut them off from God, then they are going to be cut off from every help and hope that they have. So what was the plot that they had? Well, they got the women of Moab to go and hang out with the men of Israel, to seduce them, to use the sexual desires of men, to entice the men, to love the women of Moab, knowing that our hearts tend to love what the people we love love. And so this is just this understanding of, I know we rightly teach and believe the Bible talks about men, we're called to be the heads of the household, but women don't think that that means that you have no power. And the more your husband loves you, the more he will love the things that you love. And when you have a heart that loves the Lord, that is good news. You will help to lead your husband to love the Lord better. And yet what happens when you come with women who worship false gods, who come to entice the hearts of men, their hearts are drawn away from the Lord. And what came is a toxic mixture of a couple of things. One was the depravity of sexuality with the prostitution that was being done through these women. But then also came a message of Hey, when you come and worship us, worship our gods as well because really they're the same gods. All the religions are basically the same religion. Come give your offerings to this statue. Let's sacrifice our children to this statue because this is the god that saved you from Egypt. All the religions, aren't they just the same thing? Understanding that if we think that you can swap out the tree and still get the same fruit, if we believe that lie, then we're gonna be cutting ourselves off from the Lord and all the benefits that come from it. You can't swap out the tree, cut it down, and get the same fruit. And yet this was the lie that was being told to the people at that time. And so, what we see is that the men did turn their hearts away from the Lord, the true God, and followed for a time these false gods until the Levites came with the sword and corrected them. But we see that this twisted cocktail of sexuality and the belief that every religion is really the same is still in effect in the world today. So we think of just this idea that really isn't all the religions the same? I was just looking up some statistics on religion in the United States and some of the things we find is quite disturbing. You know, from just two years ago, when you looked at some research that is done by Pew Research and other places, when you look at Americans and their religious expression, we see that around 70% of Americans call themselves Christians. You might think, hey, that's good news right there. 70%, you know, could be better, but that's not bad. But then when you look at, what does it mean for these people to be active members of the church? we see is that of Americans who call themselves Christians, only about 20% of them are active in churches. And that's including Mormons, that's including all sorts of spinoffs of Christianity, this includes places like the Roman Catholic Church. And so if we were gonna be looking at Protestant Bible-believing churches that are rooted in the word of God and the person of Jesus Christ, We're looking at, even though we have about 70% of Americans calling themselves Christians, about only 8% of people who are actively attending church. And so what does that mean for the vast majority of people who call themselves Christians, but are not actually engaged in the people of God and the word of God? What they're holding on to is cultural Christianity. They're looking to the fruit, but they're not looking to the Savior. And so we see that this cultural concept that you can swap out the tree and get the same thing is still in effect in this world. Or we also still have, too, the sexual corruptions that are seeking to draw away the hearts of the people. And in our society, we might not see the kind of prostitution that the Moabites sent into the Israelite camp there, but we don't need prostitutes wandering the streets when we have things like the internet and pornography and the rampant effect of pornography in our culture. we look at American adults, we see that about 60% of American adults are routinely making use of pornography. And when we look at younger generations, the percentage goes up. We're looking at for For men, we're looking at over 80%. And when we look at women of the younger generations, we're still looking at over 70%. This is not just a problem with men. This is the problem with our sinful, fallen hearts. and the sexualization of our culture has become so pervasive that we see people who are celebrating when drag queens are going and reading to children at children's story hour in public libraries and in public schools. We see teachers who are reading books to kids asking kindergartners or even people as young as preschool about their sexual preferences as if that should be a conversation that children should be having at such a young age. Or maybe you've heard just some of the Internet storm that has come in the last few days of the Olympic opening ceremony, that there is a debate right now of, did they recreate the scene of Jesus with his disciples in the Last Supper, but recreate it with, you know, the God of Dionysus and drag queens? That's the worst case scenario as they're making a mockery of Christianity. That's the worst case scenario. But what's the best case scenario in this dilemma right now? Is that there was a whole lot of drag queens that were being celebrated as this is the best that humanity has to offer. And if that's the best case scenario, friends, Are we not in a place that's still dealing with the same twisted cocktail as what the people in the days of Moses dealt with when the Moabites tried to separate the people, their hearts from the Lord by corrupting their culture and saying, you can get rid of the tree, let's just keep the fruit over here. So friends, we see that there is still a problem. But there's some good news in the passage. Good news is that under Nehemiah's leadership, when the people, as they were reading the word of God, they saw this commandment of God, they responded to it. In verse three it says, as soon as the people heard the law, they separated from Israel all those of foreign descent. So they took action, they took it seriously, which that's good, we like that seriousness, but, What do we get? After some time, Nehemiah, he goes back to his boss. He made a promise to go back to his boss. And we see that very not long after Nehemiah had left, the people went right back to their very same sins they did before. It did not take very long for them to double down on the foolish sins, intermingling the worship of God with the worship of the cultures that were around them. And part of what this points us to is that they were putting the hope of their nation in the man Nehemiah, who we see is not a perfect man. when their hope really should have been in the Lord himself. So again, sometimes we make people the fruit of the tree that create our churches, our cultures, when it really should be Christ. And if you put too much hope into your pastor, you will be disappointed. We see, because they did not have their hearts in the right place, they went back to the very same sins. And part of what is being described here is that their foolishness, slipping back into their sins, they did it so strongly, so quickly, that even Eliaship, the priest, made a room for Tobiah in the temple courts of God. Do you think of saying, hey, these people from these nations, they should not be invited to come into the courts of God. You have one of the priests, possibly the high priest, who was also named Eliashib. Their hearts went so quickly back the other direction that not only did they let someone like Tobiah come in, but they made an apartment for him in the courts of the Lord. And how did Tobiah have such an influence over the leadership of Israel that they were able to do something like that? We see that they, like Elisha and his family, was intermarrying with Tobiah. Or we saw, you know, too, that you have, you know, one of the sons of Jehoiada, the son of Elisha, the priest, was the son-in-law of Sanballat, the Hornite. And so we see that, again, this idea of intermarrying, sexuality being a thing that draws us away from the Lord, that when we start to love those who do not love the Lord, the principle I said earlier is true, that the more we love someone, the more we love the things they love. If they do not love God, then our hearts are gonna be pulled away from the tree, thinking that the fruit is an acceptable alternative. So friends, this is why it is so important for us to be very mindful of who is it that we marry, and who is it that we're going to encourage our children to marry. Because I have heard and seen far too many stories of people who fall in love with someone who It's okay with Christianity, they're cultural Christians, but they don't know and love the Lord himself. And then later on, it creates trouble. As we see, unfortunately, the stereotype that is far too often of maybe you have a mother who, because she loves the Lord, wants to come to church, but the dad wants to stay home on the couch watching TV, and you have the kids. Where do you think that they're going to want to be? It's hard enough if you're married to somebody who does not love the Lord, but it's gonna be even harder to persuade your children to know and love the Lord. And so why do we see such a fierceness in Nehemiah? Maybe he does overplay his hand a little bit. We could discuss that a little bit later on, not this morning, but did he overplay his hand on his fierceness? Well, there's a reason for his fierceness, that he wants to protect the children of God's people. and their hearts have been turned away so much so that even the priests themselves, they're families. are not faithful to the Lord. Speaking of the children, we see that the children, their hearts have become so ignorant of the ways of the Lord that we read this in verse 23 and 24. It says, in those days also I saw the Jews who had married women of Ashdod, Amnon, and Moab, and half their children spoke the language of Ashdod, and they could not speak the language of Judah, but only the language of each people. So they were so unfamiliar with Israel that even if they did show up at a time and a place of worship, they'd have no idea what was being said. And again, do we not see similar effects happening in our culture today? We have a younger generation that unfortunately is so undiscipled that even youth pastors are again looking at research and demographics and studies. Maybe about five years ago Pew Research, they did a study where Even of youth pastors, only 12% of youth pastors believe that the Bible is the word of God and that Jesus Christ is God who became man, who died on the cross to pay for the penalty of our sins. If the youth pastors are so ignorant of the word of God, then what do we expect of the discipleship of our children? And so we see that the problems of the past continue to be the problems of the day today. But they don't have to be the problems of the future. So what's the solution? What's the hope? Because there's a lot of bad news in this chapter, right? This is one of the things we have to recognize with the history of Nehemiah, where it starts with trouble, and they face a lot of difficulties, but in the middle, it's like you get a great victory. The Lord provided, they got a wall. They're getting back into the worship of the Lord. They're reviving the feasts and the festivals. This is good, but it really ends anticlimactic. But what's the hope here? Because if we're not reading this chapter within the broader context of the word of God, then what we would take away from here is that we should hate foreigners, right? That's the solution. We should not talk to or be nice to people who look different than us, right? Is that what the Bible is telling us here? Thankfully, some of you are shaking your heads. You already know that can't be the answer here. But what are we dealing with? We're dealing with the problem of intermarriage between insiders and outsiders. Those who are the insiders of God's family have been marrying outsiders and loving the loves of those outsiders. It's not an issue of race, it's an issue of religion. But what is the problem of the intermarriage between insiders and outsiders? Ironically, the solution that is offered to us in the Bible is the marriage of an insider to an outsider. Isn't that just the opposite of what you said, Pastor? Again, let's think about the Bible in context. There are many beautiful, wonderful stories of those who are part of the family of God, who married those, who were born of these very nations that we're spoken of here, that have become beautiful stories of redemption. One of those stories is a woman named Ruth. Have you guys heard about Ruth before? Yeah? Just beautiful book of the Bible, beautiful history there. But Ruth was not born as an Israelite. She was born in Moab. So what does that mean? She is a Moabite woman. And what do we say about Moabite women, right? But what do we see about the history of this particular Moabite? She recognized that the gods of her people, the gods of the culture that she was brought up in were false, were failing fantasies of godhood. And so she rejected the gods of her upbringing and saw that the God of Israel was the one true God. She repented of her sins, she turned to the Lord, and in her faith of the Lord, She was regarded not as a wicked person that could not be invited into the people of God, but because of her faith, she was seen as made pure and holy, so much so that a man of great high regard and respect among the people of Israel, Boaz, fell in love with her and went to great extents to marry her so that she would be restored and redeemed in the eyes of all the people But it was ultimately because of her faith that she became not a Moabite, but an Israelite. And it was through the marriage that this outsider fully became an insider. Now what is another thing that we know about this woman, Ruth? We look at her genealogy, and we see from her family came a man by the name of David, became the king of Israel. How could you have a king come from the family of a Moabite? Because what we saw, the commandment that they looked at when they were studying the book of Moses, was in Deuteronomy, where it says, you can't even let a child of a Moabite, 10 generations later, come into the courts of God. And yet how could King David come in? Because she was no longer a Moabite, she was an Israelite. Because it's not about blood, it's about faith. And what do we know about the children of King David? As the generations go on, came another king by the name of Jesus Christ, who is the child of a Moabite. And yet, because of the faith of the family being passed down, because we know the birth of, we know who the father of Jesus Christ is, being the Lord himself, even Jesus Christ, the descendant of the Moabite. He is the one who we put our hope, our faith, our strength in. He is the one who is our healer. He is the one who is the redeemer of the nations. It is because He, of Him, that we, who are the foreigners, who by our birth and descendancy, we would be seen as even more foreign than the Moabites themselves. People like you and I get invited into the family of God. because Jesus is the descendant of a Moabite. What did he do? Jesus Christ, who is also the Son of God, who became man, he came into this world, he died on the cross to pay for the legal debt of our sins, so that in the eyes of God, he looks at us, and by our faith, when we repent of our sins, put our faith in him, God looks at us and says, you are one of my people. And because of Jesus Christ, we are adopted to become sons and daughters of the family of God. It is only through Jesus Christ that we could be considered insiders, not outsiders. So much so, that not only are we invited into the family, but we are invited to a wedding. Not just as a guest of the wedding, But the church, many times in the Bible, is called the Bride of Christ. We are so welcomed into the family that, like Ruth, we are married in, that we are given a status of purity and beauty, of which it's as if we were never outsiders at all. We who are the enemies of God, we are full members of His family, beloved by God. And so this is where we see when we think about what is Christian culture. If we're just talking about the fruits of, hey, you know, be nice to your neighbors. Don't lie. Don't steal. You know, don't drink. Don't chew. Don't go with girls that do. Anyone heard that one before? But yeah, but it's just like if we want just if we want to think Christianity is just a culture of rules Every religion of the world has rules and even those who think that they have no religion They still have rules and those rules are not going to be things that save us But it is only the husband of the church and us being the bride of Christ That's our hope It's the tree And so friends, when we think about these cultural battles and sometimes the cultural things that we talk about, it gets messy. And we see that are there real dangers about the cultures of the world that do not know or love the Lord? Yes, we need to be very aware of the dangers of culture. But because we see the power of the culture that God builds around his own son, even though we need to be aware of the dangers, I want to encourage you that we should not fear culture. But instead, we need to build culture. If a false culture is the source of the problem, it's not to get rid of culture, because we see God is saying, keep out those who want to corrupt your culture, because the culture of God's people is so good, so pure, so beautiful, it is worth protecting. So the solution to the problem is for us to be people who build a culture, but a culture that is focused on Christ. And if this is indeed a culture, then the culture needs to extend beyond the walls of this building. We cannot call it a culture if it only means the hour that we spend when we gather together. A culture of Christ is going to impact every single aspect of your life. When you go home, the things you do with your family, the things you do in your private time, when you go to work, the way you engage in business, the hobbies that you participate in, all of these things, Jesus Christ declares that everything of our life belongs to Him. And we want to bring everything under the dominion of Christ. So much so that when people look at us and the way we do business, the way that we have family, fun, the way that we have fellowship, the hobbies that we have, every moment of our life, we want people to see us and say, you love that tree, don't you? If we are building a Christian culture that saves rather than condemns people to just a shinier version of hell, it needs to be about Christ and Christ alone. Fruit is just a side perk. But as long as we have a people right now that are hungering and searching for more and say, hey, that fruit is very beautiful, this is an opportunity for us to say, yeah, I'll love that fruit too. But if you love that fruit so much, just wait till I introduce you to the tree. Friends, we need to build this culture. Let us pray that the Lord does this in us. God, thank you so much for making us to be a people that are so much more than our birth. Regardless of the nations and the families and the people that we are born in, we are all born in our sin and our foolishness. We're born as enemies of you. And yet it is because of Jesus Christ, and only because of Jesus Christ, can we be welcomed into your family. Sons and daughters. but also the pride of your own son, Jesus Christ. What a radical, beautiful thing that you give us. So Father, help us to cherish you so much that we do stand out from the rest of the world. And we pray that you give us the wisdom to know what are the things of the culture that we need to reject and say, no, there is no room for that in the family of God. but also see how can we join what we read about there in Revelation. The bride joins your spirit in inviting the peoples of the world. We may exclude sin from our culture, but let us not exclude people. Let us make that invitation that all may see and hear and know that you are the Lord and that you truly are good. Make us to be such a people. We cannot do that on our own, but we will do that through you. So Father, we pray this in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ.