Read now the word of God. It's found in 2 Kings chapter 5. 2 Kings chapter 5. The sermon this morning will focus on a large part of this chapter, verses 8 through 19. Pay special attention to those verses 8 through 19. Hear now the word of God. Now, the name of it, The captain of the host, the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and honorable, because by him the Lord had given deliverance unto Syria. He was also a mighty man in valor, but he was a leper. The Syrians had gone out by company had brought away captive out of the land of Israel a little maid. She waited on Dan and his wife. She said unto her mistress, when God my Lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria, that he would recover him from his leprosy. In one wink, he told his lord, saying, thus and thus, let the maid that is of the land of Israel The king of Syria said, go to, go. I will send a letter to the king of Israel. He departed, took with him 10 talons of silver and 6,000 pieces of gold and 10 changes of raiment. He brought the letter to the king of Israel saying, now, when this letter is coming to thee, behold, I have therewith sent Balaam into my servant to be the down-master and cover him in his legacy. When the king had passed, the king of Israel had a letter, and he read this close and said, to my God, to kill and to make alive, that this man that sent us is mean to recover a man of his leprosy. Wherefore, consider, I pray you, to see how we seek him. When Elisha, the man of God, had heard that the king of Israel had read his clothes, that he sent the king saying, Therefore hast thou read thy clothes? Let him come down to me, and ye shall know that there is a prophet in Israel. So David came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, Go and watch the Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean. The man that was robbed went away and said, Behold, I thought he would surely come out to me and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the lever. Are not the bond and harbor, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash it down and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage. In service this evening, I spoke up to him and said, my father, if the prophet did indeed do such a great thing, would his thought not have done it? But rather than do it, would he suffer to be washed and be cleaned? Then he went down and dipped himself seven times in Jordan. According to the saying of the man of God, his flesh came in like the flesh of a little child. He was pleased. He returned to the man of God. He and all his company came quickly before him, and he said, Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel. Now, therefore, I pray thee to take a blessing on thy servant. He said, As the Lord did before whom I stayed, I will receive none. And he urged him to take it, and he refused. Then he said, Shall there not then, I pray thee, be given to thy servant two meals worth of earth? For thy servant will henceforth offer neither burnt offerings nor sacrifice unto other gods, but unto the Lord. In this thing, the Lord partnered with my servant, that when my master called him to the house of Ribbon to worship, there he leadeth my body in, and I bowed myself in the house of Ribbon. When I bowed out myself in the house of Ribbon, the Lord partnered with my servant in this thing, to consider him for peace. But Gehazi, the servant and righteous man of God, said, Behold, my master hath spared Naaman of Assyria, and not receiving with his hands that which he brought, but as the Lord liveth, I will run after him, and take some from him. But Gehazi followed after Naaman, and when Naaman saw him running after him, he blinded down from the chariot, and immediately said, It is all my own. But he said, All is well. The Master had sent me saying, Behold, even thou, there, be come to me from Mount Ephraim, two young men, the sons of the prophets, to give them, I pray thee, a talon of silver, and two changes of garments. And they every said, We can't take the talons. Then he urged them, and he bound two talons of silver in two bags, and with two changes of garments, and laid them upon two of his servants, and they bared them before him. And when he came to the tower, he took them from their hand, and he stowed them in the house, and he let them go in the harbor. When he went in and stood before his master, Elisha said unto him, Whence comest thou, Levi? And he said, Thy servant went no whither. He said unto him, We went not by heart with thee, when the man came again from his chariot to meet thee. Is it a time to receive plenty, and to receive garments, and olive yards, and vineyards, and sheep, and oxen, and bed servants, and maidservants? A leprosy, therefore, they admit. We but repeat. in his first sermon in Nazareth, references the great miracle that we read about and summarizes it as the cleansing of Naaman. This cleansing of Naaman is a wonderful, glorious picture of our own salvation through Jesus of Nazareth, There are many truths that are emphasized in this passage. It is a picture of God's plan to bring the Gentiles into the house of Israel, into the church and covenant of God, through the rejection Well, the seed of Abraham, of Jesus as the desire, Jesus himself points out that significantly damaged in Assyria is a Gentile. And they are brought in to the covenant because of the rejection of Jesus. The Jews rejected Jesus because they had come to believe that God saved them because they were of the seed of Abraham, the physical seed of Abraham. Thus also they ignored and rejected God's promise that there would be a day that the nations would be brought in from all over the earth to worship God. Jesus references that in his very first sermon in Nazareth. and references the fact that at the time of the election, there were many lepers in Israel, but only one was saved. One was cleansed. That was Nehemiah the Syrian. When the Jews heard that, because the Jews, Jesus' hometown, they came in a rage, tried to kill him. Secondly, the word of God here emphasizes the fact that God uses providence in his work of salvation. In other words, God's great work of providence is subservient, is a servant to his greater work of salvation. Providence, we know, is God's everywhere present and almighty power, by which He upholds and governs all things, so that, as we read even in the Baptism before, He brings us all good and averts all evil or turns it to our profit. It is His providence serves His will to save us. God here, his providence, and his providence serving his salvation is evident that God rules over the apostasy of the nation of Israel at this time, so that Syria is given dominion over the nation of Israel, is raiding the nation of Israel, is taking captives and killing. And God rules over Providence so that this man's nailing is the head general of these armies causing death and destruction in the nation of Israel. God rules over Providence such that in one of these rings, a little Jewish girl is orphaned from her parents and becomes a maid in the king's house and under the king's servant, and by that maid even brings the word of God that there is yet a prophet in Israel in this apostate nation who is able to cleanse Naomi. Here's a picture, therefore, of the powerful grace of God, the powerful grace of God's work through such a little girl to witness to God that God had evidently an apostate nation where even Elijah thought he was the only one left. There were yet two parents. who have raised their children in the fear of God's name to believe in God. And though likely now are dead, their faith is strong, and she witnesses to the salvation of God through the prophet. A witness, a picture of the great grace of God saving this mighty, yet proud man who has been given a death sentence. The picture of the great grace that God used to cleanse this man, not only cleanse him, but spiritually renew him so that he is cleansed in soul and in spirit. Consider with me this morning the cleansing of Naaman, the establishing of the miracle, the humbling knees, and finally the infallible response. In order to understand this picture of the great and wonderful grace of God in salvation, we have to notice the establishing of the miracle that is before. Astonishing in the first place because the man that is healed is a leper. He was a great man, a host, a captain of the host of the nation of Syria and the king, a man of renown, a man of great power and wealth, but he was a leper. The significance of that is that in the Old Testament, Leprosy was the God-ordained picture of the corruption, of sin, and the death that it brings. The picture of sin and the depravity of natural man in heaven. This is not simply this nice story of how man was cured of a physical disease. so that the lesson here is that God is, in providence, able to cure us using certain means from our physical ailments and disease that would be to ignore the fact that in the New Testament, God no longer works such miracles through such means against physical diseases that ended with the last apostle and the completion of the Holy Scripture. And though God saves the body, he does that first by saving the soul through regeneration. And that's the great picture here. God made that claim in the Old Testament by dealing with the lepers in a very striking manner according to the law of God. Deuteronomy 24, verse 8, and the plague and what we seek to observe diligently and to do as I command it. What God's commands were, were severe in regard to the leper. The leper, when the leprosy was first noted, had to burn all of their clothes and to shave their head. They were declared defiled, polluted. They had to separate from all the fellowship and living of the people and cry out when in public, unclean, so that no one could be near them. Furthermore, if the leprosy was healed and taken away, then they could be restored to the fellowship of the people only by an appearance and examination by a priest, not a doctor, and by way of a coding sacrifice and not by a vote of the people. Leprosy was a picture of sin and death inasmuch as it was a pervasive disease that corrupted and defiled all the flesh so that it became dead and rotten. began with white, red spots on the surface of the skin that soon spread throughout the body, killing all the living flesh, deadening the nerve, destroying the lungs, destroying the extremities, the arms, the ears, all the flesh. so that it would fall off. The body would simply fall apart after this sin. Death seized the leper, claimed the leper as its own, and dragged the leper slowly as he fell apart into the grave. It's a picture. How, likewise, sin corrupts and destroys to a death us, not simply our flesh, but the entire man. Sin is a malignant power, an uncurable power, a corrupting power that corrupts not only body, but also soul, and it corrupts not only our living, but all of our spiritual life, our thinking, and our willing, and our knowledge. If we could see beneath our clothes what we really are by nature, it would be worse than that of the leper. We would see corruption. We would see rotting, stinking flesh. We would see a rotting, stinking soul. we would see the sinner who is the living dead. This infectious disease not only corrupts the whole person, but those with whom that person has fellowship and communes thereto belongs the picture. Today, the entire human race is infected with the leprosy of sin and death because of one man, our first father. The idea behind all the Old Testament laws where, while the leper was set outside the city, could no longer dwell with even his family and his children, could not even worship in the temple, must declare himself unclean, unclean, all of that. was due to the fact that it was a picture of the spiritual reality of what sin does, that sin corrupts. It corrupts and it ruins not only the first person or the original individual who has it, but all with whom they have fellowship and come into contact with. That too is even reflected in New Testament law, where sin, Sin that is corrupted, sin that is defiled, is the cause for removal from the fellowship of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ. If untreated or impure, the sinner must be banished from the fellowship of the Church that is clean in Jesus Christ. This leprosy was a picture in as much as that this was a product and terminal disease. There was no known cure, no known treatment. So that, even though it might take years, nevertheless, the end result was the corruption of the entire body and soul unto death. why the king responded the way he did. When the Syrian king approached him with a letter requesting that he yield, Naomi, the letter, he assumed that the Syrian king was seeking an occasion to do even further harm and destruction, to exert himself in destroying the nation by requiring that which was impossible, that which could not be done except through faith and through a prophet believing in God. Leprosy was also a picture of sin, that leprosy rendered one disgusting and gross to others. The leper became gross and repulsive to himself, not only, but to others. And the point here is that this disgusting, repulsive nature of the sin of the disease renders everything else that individual was basically worthless. That was Nathan Naaman. Naaman was a great man. Naaman was a man of valor. Naaman was a man who could command armies. who had respect and attention. Naomi had all kinds of wealth, had a wonderful family and home, servants to wait on him, but it was basically all rendered worthless by those words, but he was a lover. Nehemiah himself knew that. The king knew that. The king knew that the services Nehemiah could render him were at an end, that soon he himself would be so corrupted with this disease, so gross and so vile, that he would no longer be able to lead his armies or be of any use to the nation that's sinned. It doesn't matter what family you were born into. It doesn't matter how wonderful it is, your wife and your family. It doesn't matter how much money you have in the bank account. It doesn't matter what men think of you and how wonderful you are, how glorious you are. It doesn't matter if you're a man who has courage and valor to lead armies, who is looked up to and respected, second only to the king in power and might. All of it is made worthless by sin. That takes it all away by bringing us down to great in-depth. But that's not the extent of the astonishing aspect of the miracle. Heading to that is that Naaman was a Syrian. That is, he was an uncircumcised Gentile. And that was the second point that Jesus made in mentioning this great miracle in his sermon. Not only was Naaman a leper, but he was a Syrian. That is, he was outside the covenant. He was outside the kingdom of God. Therefore, he was banished by law from ever entering into the sanctuary of God. Even if he had converted to the Jewish religion, he could not enter into the tabernacle. He could not partake of the Passover. He could not ever own property in the land of Canaan. He would forever be, as it were, outside the kingdom. So also sin. Sin renders one outside the kingdom and comfort of God. Sin strips away all rights to God, all access to God. Sin renders the sinner lost in his ignorance so that there must even be a witness before he realizes that there may be a prophet who could possibly heal him from this disease. He is cut off, not simply from the fellowship of human beings, cut off of the fellowship of God and of his people. So there was an astonishing miracle that was performed that day by God giving us two miracles we should see. Here's first, what Jesus calls the cleansing of the leprosy itself. At the command of Elisha, at the urging of his servants, Nan finally humbles himself and dips himself into the Jordan River seven times. When he comes out of the Jordan River, his flesh has become like that of a little child. This was, as a word of resurrection, a man in the dead. No longer was his flesh subject to the dropping power of that leprosy. No longer could that leprosy continue to extend its influence over his body so that soon it would become a corpse. No longer was he inflicted with this pervasive chronic disease that not only would kill him, but that rendered him gross and disgusting in the eyes of the people. His flesh had been reborn and he had come out of it alive. He was filled with hope and joy over his curing of that sickness. And of course, There was an even greater miracle, which was the finding of David in his heart and soul of sin and of death. There was the great miracle of spiritual regeneration and renewal. Daniel emerged from the Jordan River, not only cleansed from corruption in his flesh, but the death of sin in his heart and soul. He went in hopeless. He went in proud. He went in dead in sin. He went in uncircumcised in heart. He ran in a ribbon-worshipping idolater. and he emerged a hope-filled, humble, born-again, circumcised in heart, forgiven, and sanctified child of God, who thus, I know, there is no other God but Jehovah God. That was a miracle, even the great miracle here. The wonder of grace, more glorious than the cleansing of its luck received, is the great miracle that we read about in our own canons as preformed Article 12. This is a regeneration so highly celebrated in scripture and denominated a new creation, a resurrection from the dead, a making alive which God works in us without our aid. But this is no lie. It's reflected merely by the anecdotal preaching of the gospel, by moral summation, or such a mode of operation that after God has performed his part, it still remains in the power of man to be regenerated or not. But it is evidently a supernatural work, most powerful, and at the same time most delightful, astonishing, mysterious, and ineffable. Heading to the wonder and glory of the cleansing of the demon was the humbling means that God used to effect this. God used, of course, the humbling means of him washing in the Jordan seven times. Elijah When Nehemen appears before him, remains in his house, he simply issues forth the command, to wash yourself at the Jordan seven times, verse 10. The servants repeat that command, simply as, wash and be clean. The humbling means was a strip of water, a body of water in the land of Canaan. Only the Jordan River, forbidden, were the means of any other waters in Syria or around Israel. But only those waters, back in the middle of Israel. Man was cleansed in obedience to the promise of God's word. There was no power in the water all by itself, of course, but there was power only in the command and the promise of God to wash and then be clean. That is, of course, a picture, a picture of the humbling means of the blood of the eternal Son of God, Jesus Christ, who has come in our flesh, the sprinkling of that blood on the heart and souls of an individual by the Holy Spirit. We found that the Holy Spirit, taking the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and sprinkling it upon the heart of an individual, what we call regeneration and conversion. The effect is that the power of sin and corruption and death is broken individualist claims from the repulsive mass of sin that invades them, that pervades their soul, that corrupts all of their thinking and willing, all of their actions and all that they are by nature in Adam. It is what cleanses them from the shame of sin and the power of sin, from the corruption of sin, from the condemnation of sin, cleanses them from the evil thoughts of sin, the vile lusts of sin, the power and influence of sin over who and what they are. In fact, the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit is big because the power of Christ's life is eternal, everlasting, Life is what is in the immediate heart of life of a child of God. They are empowered to despise their sin, despise their original nature. They are empowered to despise their sin and to flee from it, to recognize that sin, to repent of that sin and turn from that sin. The life of Jesus Christ empowers them to use the faculties of their body and of their soul no longer as service to sin, and in the service of sin, but to use them in dedication to the service of God their new master. That's the effect and the wonder of this humbling meeting. The humbling means is the application of that blood of Jesus Christ in the church where God has established His covenant and nowhere else. That's the significance of the fact that Nehemiah is cleansed not only by washing the Jordan River within the bounds of Israel, but the fact that he was washed in that Jordan River seven times with the children that we have recognized there a great number of the covenant picture that Jesus cleanses by his blood and applies the power of his blood to the spirit only by his word and spirit and only when his word and spirit is applied to the official ministry of the church, to the ordained pastorate, It is sprinkled and applied where God has established His covenant of grace, and therefore is present by the fellowship of His Son through the Holy Spirit. It is the word, therefore, of the humbling means of the application of the blood of Jesus Christ through the preaching of the word and through the holy sacraments in the established church. That was the word. Name it, wash, and be clean. That's the word we preach. That's the word repent and believe in Jesus Christ. That's the word believe. Thou shalt be forgiven all of your sins. Of course all of that is a picture of God's grace. the humbling grace of God and the humbling means by which that grace is administered and given. We are delivered only by the humble means of the ministry, by the ministry of the Holy Spirit, the true Church of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are not delivered by some power that is dependent upon or derived upon the institution itself or upon any individual such as myself. This is all significant as can be. The significance of the fact that the word delivered by a faithful prophet was found in otherwise apostate nation of Israel. Why was it that Nehemiah was healed at the time he was healed? And where he was healed? At a time when the nation of Israel is apostate, so apostate that its office-bearers are corrupted. that even its king is an unbeliever and is filled with despair at a time when the only witness, God, is in a single prophet and in a little Jewish girl who is in captivity. What's God saying here, the application of his word and his spirit, even though administered within the covenant kingdom of God, is administered through prophets, is administered through sacraments, and the application of water, it does not depend upon them for its efficacy. and they are only signs and only means for God to administer the reality which is His Spirit and the application of the blood of Jesus Christ. Those are humbling means and a humbling grace. This is why He enlightened Himself did not deliver, to command to wash and to clean in prison, while he remained hidden in his house and did not bother to go to the door. why God even works through the voice and word of those unbelieving servants of Nehemiah. God in all is emphasizing the humbling, humbling grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. It's exactly because of this that such salvation The meanings of salvation are considered foolishness and young godliness, so foolish to name any of them that he turns away. That's the attitude always followed in the world as a natural man and in the false charity. That is our own natural tendency. We should not exceed ourselves. The world is corrupt, filled with corruption, filled with trouble, filled with misery, such that even the world notices. The false church notices. Those who claim to be followers of God notice. We ourselves notice. But we turn away from the Word of God that says, walk and be clean. We are ignorant of that word, but when we hear it, we say, no, that couldn't possibly fix my troubles and help me with my misery. What we need is spending more money. What we need is more government programs and influence. What we need is to read more books. What we need is more education. What we need is more pleasure and fun. What we need is more gurus to tell us what to do. We need more programs to go to. We need more lecturers to listen to. We need more things to hear and to do. We need better teachers. We need this, and we need that. In a certain way, there are things in that list that could bring some help, some alleviation of some misery and trouble in regard to perhaps our flesh and our body, but not everything. All of those things are rendered worthless and vanity without the word of God. What this Word of God points us to is simply a humbling, lowly means of watching and believing. Do you suffer? Do you suffer the misery of corruption, sin, and of death, and its pervasive influence? Do you fight with yourself under power so you're filled with despair and anxiety? Do you find yourself tempted to go here, to go there? This solution and that solution, here now in the Word of God, wash and be clean. The reason we are not only in the world of the false church, but we ourselves are tempted to turn away from that simple Word of God and its promise is because it's too simple. As even the servants of Naaman recognized, it's no great thing. It's a little thing, a small thing that's humbling to us when we preach that there's only power to cleanse in the blood of Jesus Christ and the application of that blood simply by faith. Believing like that little Jewish maid. Becoming like little children who say, wow, if you would only hear the word of God, if you would only see the prophet and listen to what he has to say, you would be clean. We say, that can't be. The reason he turned away is because it's a humbling need. That's why Hamlet turned away. He was so angry and grieved. He was offended because he was a proud man. He was offended because he was a narcissist. He took pride in who he was and what he was and his possessions. He took pride in the fact that he was the general of all the armies and he had all these riches and all this honor. He was somebody. Now to be told he has to go to Israel. And then notice going to Israel didn't begin with some holy prophet in some small village somewhere, but it begins with the king. Let's go to the king, the man of power and influence in Israel, even though he's under our power and influence. Let's go to him. Let's see what he knows, what he believes, and find out there's nothing there either. They have to go over this place far off. He has to get down from the glorious position of the chariot, get down in the dust, go knock on the wooden door. And then the man doesn't even come to the door. Why Elisha didn't bother to come to the door? Elisha did that deliberately. Elisha knew who was at the door, Elisha knew who was coming, and he knew that if God had sent this man, there were two lessons he had to learn about God. The first is that Lord is God, and he's no respecter of persons. He's not impressed with early glory and honor. He doesn't care who you are. He doesn't care if you're a king or a Jewish maid. He shows mercy to who people show mercy to. The second thing you have to learn is that the Lord heals by grace, and grace alone. And that's the way of humility. To be healed, one must be knocked off his perch. The salvation of our God begins in the dust, doesn't begin upon a throne. No, our God takes us from the dust, from our corruption, and he sets us on a throne. He takes us from the humbling people that we are, causes us to see that, and lifts us up out of the dust to sit next to him in the kingdom of heaven. You would have had to learn that there's only one way to be washed and cleaned, and that is by being. Not by words. Not by being somebody. Not by presenting to God all sorts of things of who we are and what we are. That's indicating twice. In verse 12, and then by the servants in verse 13. That was the Word of God, man. Believe, simply believe the Word of God and His promise. Today, I would preach to you that you can be cleansed and washed by spending all of your money, by dedicating your life in a moment to God, By giving away all your money. By creating a certain amount of time for dating. Watching a special diet. By doing this and doing that. All of those things are things you would do. We would tell everybody about it. We would declare to everybody, this is what I'm doing to fix my life. This is what I'm doing to fix my body. This is what I'm doing to bring peace to my soul. I'm doing this and I'm doing that. The Lord isn't here. The word is believe. Simply believe. Believe that God heals, that God saves, and that God washes. not how a heartful means. Naaman was still at the end of that river to dip himself in seven times, and of that he would be glad. But God makes very clear that he himself is the one who brought Naaman from his perch, from his chariot, from his riches, And God is the one who made man to cast all those aside and simply believe the words of the prophet. That's God's melody. It has gotten greater. It's free. It's never earned. It's never deserved. It's never granted because of who and what we are. Never given to us because of what we've done or how we've done it. God touches all of Israel. apostate, wicked, idolatrous Israel, a nation that still claimed to be worshippers of God, but nothing but idolaters and unbelievers. There were many, many lovers, Jesus said. Many. But God took pity on one, and he wasn't even in the nation. It was Assyria who let the army of Assyria into the region that had killed, that had murdered, that had taken away property, that had stolen children. A man, surely, that can't be saved. A man, surely, that is beyond redemption. The man truly that God was bound to have mercy to, but Jesus says of all of them, that's the one God chose. God takes him from his stranded community to be healed and to go to heaven. That beloved is our salvation. If we reject that salvation, which is what happened to this young man, We reject it because we will not receive that. We do not want that kind of salvation. We might like the idea of being cleansed of our leprosy, but not that way. And not with the result, certainly, that comes of nailing. There was an infallible response of this cleansing, or in effect, we might say, that also is remarkable. That too is a picture of our salvation. We see not only that Nehemiah went into that river, the gross, disgusting, vain leper who emerged clean and new and invigorated and encouraged. But he went in an unbeliever. He went in a child who was of the devil. He went in, as it were, to that river as one who was lost. And he came out a child of God. Now, as I said, it doesn't take away from the fact that God was already at work. He was God's child and God accepted him there. God had already regenerated his heart. There's an important picture there. And even when we consider the humble means that God uses, such as baptism or washing seven times in the Jordan River, that it is always a picture of what God has done or will do. It's not the case that we have this and we do this, and that God now baptizes us as a sign of what we've done. Well, it's always a sign and a picture of what God has done. We do it by faith, believing in God's hand, and perhaps in many cases it's already been generated, our little infant Because Nehemiah is a Syrian, his picture is a response, in fact, or a picture of our own salvation as Gentiles, who in what we are. We need to remember that. We are good God. We are not children of Abraham by nature. We are here because God at one time or another, not only, if you're at our heart, not only sprinkled blood of Jesus Christ upon us personally, but did that before us. that we have relatives who are brought from the same idolatry, from the same idolatry as Renard worshipping Nehemiah. Perhaps we're maybe even great people, even great people in the world, yet God took him. We, like Israel, may not forget the use of God's truth in Israel and Abraham is of its greatest. Now, God, therefore, doesn't stay along physical lines. Now, God doesn't save us exactly because we were born to this or that person in the church. But God still uses God's greatest. He's pleased to use that, to use our children, to save them from our guilt. But it's always, always the greatest. If we forget that, then we reject our Lord Jesus Christ. God goes somewhere else. Many lovers, Jesus said, but none cleansed. He gave them a lover. Glory to our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, here, simple word, a humbling word, wash and be clean. Amen. Let us pray. Lord our God, we pray that we may be humbled by thy word, humbled from our pride, from our self-seeking and self-service, places so great an honor upon glory, wealth, and status, who we are even in the church, so that we will now receive thy word. The Lord our God, humble our hearts, so that we may indeed believe We are cleansed by the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ and the application of that blood of the Holy Spirit. And being cleansed, we are made into creatures whose lives no longer belong to the idols, but belong anymore to kings and princes, but belong to you. So grant no more disgrace unto us and to our children. Amen.