The Pharisee and the Tax Collector

Are you are you a confident person? If I were to ask somebody that knew that knows you, would they say, 'Yeah, that person's confident. Or or maybe you're you're not a confident person. Or maybe you're just confident in certain situations. I know for me, like that's that's uh that's that's the key is that in different situations, I'm super confident, others not so confident. Uh where are you the most confident though? Are you the most confident at your job? What about at home with your family? You just have this confidence that that comes with you being with them. Maybe maybe you're really confident in a kitchen. You can walk in, you know exactly what you're doing in that kitchen and produce something that's that's delicious. Maybe on the basketball court. We all know the guy that looks the most confident, right? And has no reason to be. We all know that guy. But confidence, it can get us into trouble. I know for me, I was reminded of the story uh when I was a college pastor and I was I just graduated college. So, I was I was in a new phase of my life and I I felt really confident in my ability because I've been working with this college ministry for a few years and and we had grown it and and we were seeing a lot of new people come and get involved and lives being changed and and we had welcome week fall of 2012. It was a good year. And you know what welcome week is where all the college students come back from the summer. And and for college ministry, this is a big week because you form a lot of relationships and you're trying to get people connected to what you're doing in your ministry to see if you can get them to commit and be a part of what you're doing that school year. Well, you do a bunch of fun things like uh we played Wally this one night of welcome week. You know what Wally is? It's volleyball but in a raetball court and you can hit it off the wall. Okay, make sense? Well, I didn't have a whole lot of confidence in my abilities to play this. I've only played it a handful of times. So, when it came time for for me to serve, I hit it off the wall above the net or opposite wall and it landed right on the other side of the net and I scored a point for my team. Great. I'm not about to embarrass myself in front of all these people. A lot of them are new to our ministry. So, I try again. It's my turn again. Hit it. Same spot. Like, man, I'm good at this. My confidence is growing. I do three, four, five, six in a row. About the fifth one, my co-directors look back like, "Mitch, what are you doing?" I'm like, "I'm scoring points for my team. What do you think that I'm doing?" And about the sixth, seventh time, they said, "Mitch, you got to stop." I said, "What do you mean?" And in that moment, I realized, "Oh, I'm scoring points on this poor little girl that nobody knew. She's brand new, first time away from home, and I'm just embarrassing the mess out of this girl, scoring points all over. You know, confidence, it can get us in trouble. And today's story is told to some people who are confident, but this confidence has gotten them into trouble. It's a it's a big problem for them. So Jesus uh Luke 18:9 is where we're going to start. He he's about to tell the story. He says, "To some who are confident of their own righteousness and look down on everyone else." Jesus told this parable. So he's about to tell the story and and this audience that he's telling this story to are people that are in their own hearts and their own minds, they're thinking, "I'm good with God. I'm I'm a righteous person. I'm confident in my own ability to be a good person. Good enough that that I'm I'm good with God. I'm okay with him." They were banking on their own righteousness. And and that word righteousness means that there's no need for punishment. There's no need for penalty. There's no reason to be in trouble with God because you got it. And they were convinced of their own ability to do good. And it created this feeling of superiority of thinking that they were better than other people. And and actually if you if you read the KJV, old school KJV, it says that they despised others. They despised everyone else. And that word looked down on on everyone else. It it means the rest of everybody means everybody. They looked down on they were non-discriminatory in how they despised people. They looked at everybody and and they despised them and thought they were better than them. They thought they were superior than literally everyone. And they're probably thinking like other people, they have life wrong. They have this how to navigate our religion wrong, but I have it right. These other people aren't as wise as me. They aren't as skilled as me. Uh they are less than what I am. I'm just straight up better than them. And this is kind of a heavy place to start. But that kind of attitude where you look down on people, that's a lonely place to be. you putting yourself on on your own pedestal and everybody else is down here and you're up there like it's lonely. It's not only is it lonely, it's it's a terrible place to be. The core issue here and with these people that Jesus is about to tell the story to, the core issue with them is not that they look down on others. That's a problem, but that's not the core issue. The core issue is is that their confidence is in their own ability to be good and to be right with God. That they were confident in their own ability themselves to do things and to say things and navigate their life in a way that they were right with God. And in our uh in North Raleigh here, we we live in a high achievement area. I know this room is full of all different kinds of confidence. I've had conversations with with a lot of you and and this room is not short of confidence. I know that. And I want us to not talk about confidence in like our jobs and sports or different things like that, but the kind of confidence that we're going to talk about today and what Jesus is getting after is spiritual confidence. How to navigate your spiritual life in a way that's right that that gets you where you need to be. And so it's meant for us to see where we are placing our spiritual confidence. So I want us to start with that question in mind. Where am I placing my spiritual confidence? That's that's maybe the probably yes the most conf the most important confidence in our life is our spiritual confidence. Where are we putting that? So he tells the story in verse 10. Two men went up to the temple to pray. One a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. This is a familiar story, a familiar act, a familiar familiar characters that Jesus is setting up here, but they may not be as familiar to us. They are not as familiar to us as they were to the people Jesus is telling the story to originally. So, I want us to imagine this experience so that we can hear it in a similar way that these first listeners heard it. If you were a Jew heading to the temple to pray in first century Jerusalem, it's something you might have done in the morning and the evening to sync up with the sacrifices that were happening at the temple. First, you you may uh you may have taken a a a ritual bath called a mikvah beforehand to make sure that you were that you were pure, that it was this tangible thing that they participated in that that helped them be like, "Okay, now I'm ready to go to the temple and pray." And Jerusalem is probably bustling with all kinds of people. And and you would have to climb up out of the city and onto the temple mount and you would be above the city and and as you pass through the gates of the temple, you would see these big courtyards and you would see the temple and you see these white stones and and this experience and the whole setup is meant to inspire awe. It's meant to to remind you of like, oh yeah, God is he's holy. Well, I should approach him with reverence. I should approach him with wonder. And the Pharisee, he would walk toward the temple with confidence and a sense of belonging, familiarity. He'd be he'd be dressed in a familiar outfit that let people know just by looking at him who he was and how holy you were supposed to perceive him. And as he greeted different people, they would almost certainly greet him with respect, real respect. And upon reaching the the Temple Mount, he'd walk through the courtyards with this feeling of I I'm I belong here. This is where I'm supposed to be. And he would enter confidently. But the tax collector, he would head to the temple with a different posture. He would be used to people looking down on him and knowing their thoughts of him viewing him as a traitor working for the empire Rome that he worked for them and he was a traitor and he was corrupt and that he would steal from his own people to benefit and he probably was wearing some nice clothes and what that represented to the people around him was his thievery and his treachery and he was a traitor and that's he benefited from that so much so that he had had some money. He had some nice things and everybody knew it and he could people could see it. People would actively avoid him. And as he walked up to the temple and he walked through the gates and he walked he would enter the courtyard, he maybe feel exposed. He can't hide who he is. People know him. They know what he does for a living. He know he knew how other people saw him. And having that scene in mind, let's get back to the story that Jesus is telling. And he says, 'The Pharisees stood by himself and he prayed, "God, I thank you that I am not like other people, robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. He is putting distance between him and everybody else. He is he's making himself different from other people. He's he's this is dehumanizing language. This is him putting himself up on a pedestal. And he says, "I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all that I get. I follow the law to a tea. I follow it and I even go a step above and I and I am I am a a great obeyer of what you have to say, God. And look at me and look how well that I do it. And everybody else knows it, too, that I am better than them at doing the things that you ask us to do. See the Pharisee, he had confidence without clarity. And where does he lack clarity in this prayer to God? There's not a whiff of his need for God. He's obeying the law. So much so that he could point to himself, rightfully so, and say, "Look how good I am at obeying the law." But he failed to see what the law was meant to do. That all those rules, all those traditions, all those different things that he had to do to to to to show that he was obedient to the law, he failed to see what that was actually supposed to reveal. He thinks to himself that he's good. He has all the answers. He has no need for punishment. He has no need for penalty. He's righteous. and he even communicates gratitude for his own righteousness and his own goodness. And the law it's this is not a a moral framework. Never was meant to be that. But they would they transformed it into that at Jesus's time. It was not a transactional system even though that's what it became in Jesus's time. It was meant to be a revelation. The Apostle Paul being a Pharisee himself knew this quite well. And because of where he's at when he writes these words, he understands it almost better than anybody else. In Romans chapter 3, he writes these words about the law that the Pharisee in the story is bragging so much about his ability to follow. Verse 19, Romans 3. Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law. Rather, through the law, we become conscious of our sin. See, God's law always was meant to point to our need for something outside of ourselves. It was never meant to point to our ability to perform. It was meant to point to our inability to perform. It's a great equalizer. Uh I live in the flight path. Raise your hand if you live in the flight path. Yeah. Yeah. Clap it up for flight path. Yeah. Um, and I'm reminded of the airport way more than I want to be reminded of the airport. And at the airport, it's a great equalizer. Typically, how the president gets here through the airport. You may even have seen celebrities in the airport. You may have even sat next to a celebrity on an airplane. And I have a buddy that was traveling uh I think to Ireland, a good buddy of mine, and he was standing in line for TSA and and he was looking and he's like, "That's Timothy Olant waiting in the same line that I am." If you don't know who he is, that's fine. He's like a bel celebrity probably. But this guy, he was a fan of a couple of his shows and and he says, "Mr. Olphant." He whispered it and Timothy Olant turned around. He's like, "Who is saying Mr. Olafant?" Like a weirdo. And this guy is weird. And then he and he says, "Can I can I take a picture with you?" And so my buddy has a picture with him and Timothy Olafan. The airport like no telling who you're going to see. This is great equalizer to realize like, "Oh, we all if we got to go on an airplane, we all got to go to the same location and and get it get on this." Like it's not there's no of course there's private planes and all that, but there's still you got to go to the airport for that. And that's what the law was meant to reveal. It's like we're all human. We all put our pants on the same way. Well, not to get into that too much, but this law is like this great equalizer that we're all falling short. There's nobody good enough. There's none righteous. And yet, the Pharisee in this story is using the law to say, "There ain't nobody like me. I look down on all y'all. None of y'all can compare to what I do for God." H. No clarity. He's confident. No, he can't see the hand in front of his face. Back to our story, the tax collector, verse 13, he stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but he beat his breast and said, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner. What's weird about this story is you have the Pharisee whose whole career and legacy and status and income. All that was based on the law. All that came from the law. He was supposed to know it better than anybody. And here's this tax collector that that has shoved his heritage, shoved the Mosaic law to the side and said, "You know what? I'm going to go after money. I'm going to I'm going to be a traitor. I'm going to go after what what I want in my life despite me being this this pariah in in my world. I'm going to go after that. And in this moment, in this story, Jesus is making this point very very palpable to the listeners. He's saying, "This guy understands what the law is supposed to do." For whatever reason, what brought this guy to the temple to pray? The words of his prayer reveals to the listeners of the story. This guy gets it. And this Pharisee is clueless. The tax collector had clarity without any confidence. He couldn't even raise his head. He couldn't point to his own ability. He couldn't point to his own accomplishments. See, an encounter with God reveals your need for him. And he begs for mercy. He for whatever whatever is happening in this guy's life, we don't know. But what we do know is he is standing in the temple courtyard having this real encounter with a holy God and he's saying God like I need mercy. I am standing before you a sinner. I need something from you that I can't get from anywhere else. Will you give it to me? You see, God's wrath is a is a real thing. And what the law shows us is that we're all subject to that wrath. We're all separated from God. We're all willfully separated from God. We all make decisions that where God says, "Hey, come be with me." And we say, "Nope, not interested." Every single one of us have done that. And what we can see here is that when we have a real encounter with God and we and we have some clarity and we we realize we have no reason to be confident and we have every reason to beg for mercy to for God to turn his wrath from us and for him to to give us something that we don't deserve and for us to receive mercy from the one place that that we can actually get true true mercy from. And of course, this not of course you may not know. I don't I don't want to assume anything, but some of you you probably thought the same thing I did when I read this. It reminds me of of Isaiah standing in the throne room of God. And Isaiah, he's 700 years before Jesus and he's the kingdom is starting to decline and the wickedness of of Israel and the kingdom of Judah starting to catch up with them. And Isaiah, he stands out amongst the people that he's living with. And he is a holy man. He is he is the mouthpiece of God to to God's people. And he's given this vision where he sees a little glimpse of God. And this is his response. He says, "Woe to me, I cried. I am ruined for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the king, the Lord Almighty. I'm having a real encounter with God. There's un I can't deny that I'm having a real encounter with God and I'm in trouble. I'm a dead man. I am a man of unclean lips. I'm People may look at me and say that I am holy, but standing in the presence of God, I know for a fact I'm in trouble. There's no confidence when Isaiah is standing before God there. But there's immense amounts of clarity, revelation of the reality of who he is and and a little glimpse of who God is. And the end of our story that Jesus is telling here, it reveals a little bit more about this truth about who we are and how we're actually supposed to view God and how we need to approach him. And Jesus says to wrap up the story, verse 14, Luke 18, I tell you that this man, talking about the tax collector that couldn't even raise his head, who was a traitor, despicable, hated, and actually bad person, Jesus says, "This man rather than the other one who everybody respected, knew was a good person, who did all the right things, this guy went home justified before God for all those who exalt themselves will be humbled and all those who humble themselves will be exalted. The truth that Jesus is trying to reveal to these listeners of this story that had confidence in their own ability to be a righteous person so much so that they thought they they legitimately thought that they were way better than everybody else. What he's revealing here is that the scariest confidence to have is one that convinces you that you don't need God. That's a terrifying place to be. And we live in a day and time and location in our city where this is something we need to be keenly aware of. This can seep in to our culture in a way that that's difficult in other places because you probably earned your way here in some form or fashion. You probably worked hard to get to where you are in life. You probably have managed your finances well. You probably studied hard. You probably made good decisions. You might have married the right person that benefited you in the long run. You may have been raising your kids the right way. You may have done everything the way that you're supposed to do and you've you've choreographed your life in a way that you feel pretty confident in it. But guess what? That's that is something you can buy into the to the point where you wake up one day and you're living your life as if you don't need God. It's easy to do. Another angle of this apostle Paul former Pharisee. He writes this in his words to the letters of the Philippians talking about this hum this idea of of being exalted. They will become humble and the humble will become exalted. He writes this about Jesus where he gives instructions to us first. In your relationship with one another that have the same mindset as Christ Jesus who being in very nature he was he was God. He was God. He did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. There's another translation something to be grasped or something to be used or for your own benefit. He didn't he was God and he's like you know what I'm not going to use the fact that I'm God for my benefit. Rather he made himself nothing by the very taking the very nature of a servant being made in a human likeness. He he had the human experience and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. He had the human experience, but he had an extreme human experience because he not just died like every human has died, but he died as a criminal, as a murderer, as somebody who was who was condemned and executed by the state. Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and he gave him the name that is above every name. This this guy that was that was put on a cross as a criminal and murdered in the Roman Empire which I think about every day. You supposed to forget about him. He was supposed to never be remembered. The reason that you did that to people was a reminder of like you're nobody and we have all this power over you. We're in charge. And guess what happened? Jesus subjected himself to that kind of death. And therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name because he was God and he took on human flesh and he had the human experience and he humbled himself to die. And through that, God exalts him that every name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ was Lord to the glory of the father. The guy who had no reason to embrace humanity other than to demonstrate what life is supposed to be lived and to reconcile sinful man to a holy God. He humbled himself to that. He brought himself low. He He made himself accessible. He made himself the propitiation. He became the subject of God's wrath for us so that we wouldn't have to experience that. And through that humility to demonstrate this life-changing truth that God takes humility and through that he lifts up. He exalts. The same guy who wrote these words in the next chapter. He this is this is the apostle Paul a former Pharisee. He used man he used to be the best Pharisee. He talks about this in Philippians 3 verse4. voices. Though I myself have reasons for such confidence. Confidence to navigate God's law. Confidence to be a good enough person. Confidence to be somebody that people would look at and say, "Man, they have it figured out." He says, "Though I I myself have reasons for such confidence. If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day, just like the law says, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews. I have the pedigree. He's saying in regards to the law, a Pharisee, the elite, no one's better at this than me, he's saying. As for zeal, persecuting the church, I'm the best. I I I kill people for the sake of God's law. As for righteousness based on the law, faultless. I was I never messed up. Essentially, he's saying, and he goes on, he says, "But whatever were gains to me, I now consider loss. Whatever wins I stacked up, I consider them loss for the sake of Christ." Why? Paul's at the top. The Pharisees Saul was was winning at life in their world. Everyone looked at him and said, "That's the way it's done. That guy has it all. I want my kid to be like Saul. I want what Saul has. Man, I wish I could have been as good as Saul. I wish that that I had what he had. I wish that I was as moral as him. I wish that I could navigate life as good as he is. I I wish that I had the pedigree that he has. But he says that he whatever those gains were, he now considers a loss. Verse eight, he says, "What is more, I consider everything a loss because this is this is the reason why because of the surpassing surpassing worth of knowing Christ." knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For whose sake I've lost all things, every bit of that stuff is gone. I have no status in that world anymore. I have no money because of that. I don't I don't I don't even have the clothes I used to have. I don't have any of that. says, "I consider them garbage that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, my ability to navigate and obey it, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith." H Paul had this experience where he was had had this real encounter with God and he realized that how he was navigating his life and all the things that he had accumulated and all the prestige, all the comfort, all the material wealth, all that he had gotten it all wrong. None of those things made him right with God. None of those things got him what he needed on a spiritual level. Righteousness does not come from obedience to the law. It can only come from faith in Jesus. His righteous his righteousness. Faith in the way that he lived his life. the faith of what's his suffering meant, what his death does for you, his resurrection. He continues in verse 10. He says, "I want to know Christ." Yes, I want to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings. Wait right there. He's saying that he had this life that was nothing but great from a worldly standpoint. He says, "This life that I was living is garbage, but this life over here, the reason I consider that garbage is because this life of suffering, this life of persecution, this life of of traveling and telling people about Jesus only for them to turn around and hate me and beat me and arrest me. This is good. This is treasure. This is value." Oh man. I don't know about you, but I don't have that perspective. I love this over there. I I as a church leader, I love the blessings that God gives me through the church. But here's where it gets scary. It gets scary whenever you look at what God has given you that's meant to be a blessing. is meant to be something that you can turn around and bless others when it tricks you into thinking that you did this and you don't need God. It tricks you into thinking that you earned it. Tricks you into thinking that that this makes you somehow good with God, that you're free from the penalty. when really the the reality is the reason that you're free from the penalty, the reason that you can be looked at by God and be presented as a righteous person is is only from your dependence on what Jesus has done for you. And that's it. That's it. But we hold on to the things that the world tells us makes us good. What our flesh tells us is actually going to make us a a better person. Verse 10, Philippians 3. I want to know Christ. Yes. To know the power of his resurrection, participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. I don't Do you want that? Do you want to participate in his sufferings? Do you want to become like Jesus in his death? How's that? How does that make sense that we could even want that? Verse 11, he says, "And so somehow attaining the resurrection of the dead, we're all going to have our lives come to an end one day unless Jesus comes back." Like, that's just that's just the truth. What Paul's saying here, he knows that he's faced he's faced death at this point in his life so many times. And he's looking at that and saying, I want what Jesus offers. I want the life that Jesus wants for me. I want to depend on that more than anything else. That my confidence comes from the power of Christ within me. That my confidence comes from that I know that I'm doing what God wants me to do. I know that I'm following Jesus with all that I have. that I'm participating in sufferings. I know the power of his resurrection. I believe in the power of the resurrection. And I will somehow one of these days get it. And when my life ends and when everything passes away in this world that he knows that he will spend eternity with God forever. You need this power that all can only come from Jesus. and dependence on him because like we're all facing that same destination. This physical life is going to end and one of two things are going to happen. Either you depended on Jesus and his righteousness, his sacrifice, his sufferings, his payment on the cross to cover where you willfully separated yourself from God or you didn't and you are forever going to be separated from God. Those are the two options. Eternal union with God, eternal separation. And the thin line between the two is where your confidence lies. Your confidence for you to spend eternity with God forever. And the life that he wants you to have, that eternal life that he is asking you, hey, I'm offering it to you is the only way to get it is to depend and have confidence in Jesus. And that's it. Nothing else. Not your ability to perform at your job, not your ability to make money, not your ability to navigate hard, none of that. None of that. Only your dependence on Jesus. That's it. We convince ourselves through all the cool things about life, all the comforting things about life that that we don't need mercy from God. And a scary place to be is that you have this confidence that you've been convinced that you don't need him because of these things. The writer of Hebrews, he writes about Jesus. He says, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who is tempted in every way." Jesus is this Messiah. He's this Lord. He's this God who experienced temptation in every way just as we are and just as we have experienced that he did not sin. And it's through that that we now have something that we can't get from anywhere else. says, "Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." Jesus gives mercy to those who know they need it. and this lie that seeps into our hearts and our minds that we don't need mercy. Look at all that I've accomplished. Look how people view me. Look at my reputation. Look how far that I've come. I don't need it. I did this. Jesus gives mercy to to those who know they need it. And what's scary about this story that Jesus tells is the religious person who claimed to know God that had no clarity on his need for God. And the person that had walked away essentially from the faith that had experienced some things in his life that realized he knew he couldn't get mercy from anywhere else. and he comes to God humbly asking God to give it to him with no confidence in his ability to get it. Where's your confidence coming from? Money, your your ability to endure hard times. I've had some conversations recently where that's a stumbling block for people when it comes to the good news of Jesus. I got through this past situation and I depended on myself to get through it. I didn't need God. Where was God then? Your own wisdom. You have confidence in that. Your own status, what people say about you. And here's the thing that's I really want us to think about. Are you getting confidence from your church involvement? Your involvement here doesn't save you. If you didn't know that here, if you didn't know that that your presence here and your full participation here, that does not give you mercy. That does not unite you with God. Your confidence should come from the clarity and knowing that you have received the mercy that God offers through Jesus. And that only comes from you saying, "God, I trust in nothing else. Not my money, not my status, not my reputation, not my plans, not my ability to endure hard times. I'm only trusting in your in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And if that's what I take, if that's what it takes to get it, I abandon everything else and I trust and depend on that and that's it. And when you do that, the holy, we have this promise where the Holy Spirit of God comes and indwells you and you can live this life where you can face the things that scares me to read what Paul wrote about about the persecutions, the sufferings, the starvation, the good times, the bad times. And you can do it because not because of you, because your dependence on the power of Christ within you. So where's your confidence coming from? Needs to come from the work of Jesus, his life, death, and resurrection. Let's pray this morning for us to embrace it like never before. Got to pray for the people in this room that may be struggling with this idea that they can't earn goodness, earn righteousness apart from you. The people that are trying to navigate this life in a way that's that's based on their performance, their wisdom, their abilities. I pray that in some ways in that that are undeniable, multiple way, whatever it takes that you reveal to them their need for you that you remove their confidence and their ability within themselves and they depend on what you've done for them through Jesus. I pray for those of us that we have this head knowledge that we need to trust you with everything that we need to trust you for for us to receive mercy. But somewhere along the way, we've made it about us and made it about our performance. I pray that you reveal to us in a way in a in an undeniable way that we need your mercy. We can't be good enough. That we can't perform enough. We can't achieve enough. Now, we need you. Whatever we're putting our confidence in, reveal to us that those things are trash compared to knowing you, knowing Jesus, pursuing the kind of life that you're asking us to have. We ask that you just renew our minds, transform our hearts and to embrace your mercy and to treasure your mercy and to and to live lives of humble persons that have received your mercy that have been transformed because of your grace. And we are just living out the life that that you're asking us to live. Not because of ambition, not because of wanting to accomplish, but because of your honor and your glory and to be witnesses to tell people how you've changed our life. We ask you remove whatever we're holding on to. Help us to let go of it. Be merciful upon us. Help us to receive that mercy. We ask that you do this in the name of Jesus. Amen.