Everyone has dreams. David had a dream. He did not dream that dream alone; he shared his dream with the person in his life that he trusted more than any other–Nathan the prophet. This was the man who served as a moral compass in David’s life when David lost his. The dream was: let’s build a Temple! When Nathan heard the idea, he knew it was a good idea–even a great idea–and Nathan instantly responded, “Go do all that is in your heart, for God is with you.”
But that night God spoke to Nathan. God said, “You and David have a good idea but it is not my idea!” The fact that something is good–and maybe even great–does not mean it’s the right dream. This Sunday we will open one of the most important passages of Scripture, 2 Samuel 7. It is often called God’s unconditional covenant with David, or the Davidic Covenant. But in reality, it is God’s promise to redeem creation!
This is one of those passages you need to mark in your Bible and know well. Sometimes God says no to a good idea–maybe even a great idea–but what God says is, “Let me handle this! You want to do something for me, but I’m going to do something for you beyond your dreams!”
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Buddy Hoffman
Series: One Story: Digging Deeper
January 20, 2013
Famous Kings: What Does a King Look Like?
Deuteronomy 17:14-20
If you don’t have a Bible this morning, slip up your hand, because you’re going to need a Bible, because we’re going to look at a number of passages of Scripture. You’re also going to want to get that handout sheet. We’re in what we’re calling the One Story, and it’s about how the Bible fits together, because it really is a one-story thing. You who have been with us through this, you’ll remember this, I pray.
This is what? Kingdom Foundations. It’s Genesis 1-11. In there, this is where we find out who we are, how we got here, what we’re supposed to do while we’re here. It talks about how creation was good and beautiful and true and what happened…what happened now with death and disease and all kinds of problems. What happened is man committed rebellion and treason against God.
Chapter 12 of Genesis through the end of Genesis is Kingdom Families. The symbol is the star, because Abraham looks up into heaven and he says, “Listen, if you can count the stars, you’ll know how many offspring you’re going to have.”
Exodus is Kingdom Freedom. It’s Exodus and Numbers. This is really where the story actually begins. God used Moses to write the Pentateuch, and they were slaves. God set them free. If you don’t understand the narrative of the liberation…they didn’t set themselves free; God set them free. The Passover. The giving of the Torah. You cannot fully appreciate what goes on when John says, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” That’s all going back to Exodus.
Then there is Kingdom Fighting. That’s Joshua and Judges. This is where they take the land and that whole process. Now here’s where we are this week, and actually we were there last week also. This is 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 Kings 1-11. This is Famous Kings. I actually have in my Bible, for instance, if you look down at your sheet, 1 Samuel is Saul’s story. There are three famous kings. There’s Saul and there’s David and there’s Solomon.
Around the title, I drew a crown with the three peaks in it, and it’s about Saul. That’s really what it’s about. Now it starts off with Samuel, and it starts off with Hannah, and it’s a really interesting observation if you read through Samuel. Matthew is written on the structure of 1 Samuel. I mean, it’s just so very obvious. This is what is going on there. He is letting us know there is a new king, who King Jesus is.
Now in 2 Samuel is David’s story. Now he’s in 1 Samuel, but that’s really his interaction with Saul. At the end of 1 Samuel, Saul dies a tragic death. He falls on his sword. You’ve probably been in a business situation where somebody has said, “The only way we’re going to get out of this is if somebody just falls on their sword.” They don’t even know that phrase goes back to what Saul does. He falls on his sword.
Then you have David in 2 Samuel. Then 1 Kings 1-11, and that’s down on your sheet there, but if you want to just draw another crown there, and that’s the last peak. It really is the heyday of Israel’s strongest period. It’s Solomon’s story. Now then, 1 Kings 12 through 2 Kings 25 is the rest but not the best of the kings. If you don’t know that in 1 Kings 12 the kingdom becomes two kingdoms and is divided, you really lose the story of two-thirds of the Old Testament.
How many of you have seen Les Miserables? How many of you liked it. I’ve seen the movie three times already, and I’m going to go again this week. I love the story. I downloaded it off iTunes. I’m not all that good at it all, and so I downloaded it off iTunes, and somehow I pushed shuffle. Do you know what that means? So all the songs were out of order.
This is the second service. I have all kinds of time here. [Music from Les Miserables playing] Now where is that? That’s the beginning. He’s in jail. But if you start off with…
There was a time when men were kind
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting…
I’ll act like I’m singing it. This one… Oh yeah. There is a song here. I think it’s this one. This is the end.
And remember
The truth that once was spoken:
To love another person is to see the face of God.
This is the end of the movie. Now listen to this one.
Do you hear the people sing?
Lost in the valley of the night.
Now everybody here who is a Les Miserables snob, when you hear that last song, if you don’t cry, you don’t understand the story. Really. If when you hear that song, you don’t go, “Oh, yes!” you don’t understand the story, because none of those songs stand alone.
Now let me just tell you something. We have raised a generation of people who are absolutely illiterate of the story, and so when they hear Jesus, they don’t even know where he fits. It’s like, “Yeah, that Jesus. He was a pretty good guy, wasn’t he?” No! He was God. He was God rescuing us in the midst of a major mess.
Here’s where I want to go this morning. When you look at all those kings, don’t you ever when you read through those kings, think, “Couldn’t they just name one of them John or Chuck?” because they’re so absolutely hard to pronounce. Here’s what I want to do this morning. If you’ve ever read through the kings, and you were confused, and you said, “I don’t even know why this is in the Bible. What does this have to do with the story of redemption?” I want you to open your Bible to Deuteronomy 17.
In Deuteronomy 17, more than 400 years before Israel ever had a king, in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses says this. We’ll look at it there. Verse 14: “You are about to enter the land the LORD your God is giving you. When you take it over and settle there, you may think, ‘We should select a king to rule over us like the other nations around us.’ If this happens, be sure to select as king the man the LORD your God chooses. You must appoint a fellow Israelite; he may not be a foreigner.” (Deuteronomy 17:14-15)
Now I’m not going to get into it, but if you want to jot this down, 1 Samuel 8, this is when they come to Samuel and they said, “Samuel, we really want a king. We want a king like the other nations.” God had designed Israel to be a theocracy, that God would lead the nation of Israel. When they camped, they camped in formation where the tabernacle was the absolute center of the camp, it was the place that every other nation in the world reserved for the king. Israel’s King was God himself.
They go along like that for awhile, and they say, “We really want a king. We want a real king.” In The Message, it reads this way, “So Samuel told them, delivered God’s warning to the people who were asking him to give them a king. He said, ‘This is the way the kind of king you’re talking about operates. He’ll take your sons and make soldiers of them—chariotry, cavalry, infantry, regimented in battalions and squadrons. He’ll put some to forced labor on his farms, plowing and harvesting, and others to making either weapons of war or chariots in which he can ride in luxury.
He’ll put your daughters to work as beauticians and waitresses and cooks. He’ll conscript your best fields, vineyards, and orchards and hand them over to his special friends. He’ll tax your harvests and vintage to support his extensive bureaucracy. Your prize workers and best animals he’ll take for his own use. He’ll lay a tax on your flocks and you’ll end up no better than slaves. The day will come when you will cry in desperation because of this king you so much want for yourselves. But don’t expect God to answer.'” (1 Samuel 8:10-18)
Here’s what the people said. “But the people wouldn’t listen to Samuel. ‘No!’ they said. ‘We will have a king to rule us! Then we’ll be just like all the other nations. Our king will rule us and lead us and fight our battles.'” (1 Samuel 8:19-20) He warned them. He said, “This is what it’s going to look like.” They said, “We don’t care. We really want a king.” He says, “Listen. If that comes, you need a job description for what a king is supposed to do.”
How should a king rule over the people? Now if you have your sheet there, What Does a King Look Like? there are seven questions, and it helps you as you read through those kings to say, “Okay, oh, that was a good king. Okay, that was a bad king.” Now 1 and 2 Samuel at one time actually was one book. First and Second Kings was one book. The Hebrew canon is actually organized differently than the Protestant canon. They have the same books, but they’re organized differently. In the Hebrew canon, the kings are classified as the Prophets.
You read through the kings and you go, “Wait a minute. How is this prophetic? This is not prophecy. This doesn’t feel like one of the prophetic books like Jeremiah or Ezekiel or Daniel.” Here’s the reason it’s classified as the Prophets. Because this is the prophetic view of the job that the kings did. This is God’s eye view of the kings. It’s not some glorified vision of that they were right. It is what God sees and what God says about the kings and about what they did and what he thinks of it.
You see these phrases over and over again in the kings, “And he did what was pleasing in the sight of God,” or, “He did what was evil in the sight of God.” See, there are a lot of perspectives, but what God wants us to know is that God has a perspective on what we’re doing. God has a perspective on leadership. Now how this applies to you and me is that you have an influence, some level of rule over some sphere of your life, and the same truths that apply to those kings would be the prophetic view of our lives. So let’s just walk through them there.
1. How do they wage war? Verse 16: “The king must not build up a large stable of horses for himself or send his people to Egypt to buy horses, for the LORD has told you, ‘You must never return to Egypt.'” (Deuteronomy 17:16) So you read that and you kind of go, “Does God not like horses? Does God not like cowboys? What’s the deal? Why is God saying they must not build up this large stable of horses and not buy these horses and chariots from Egypt?”
Here’s the reason why. God wanted them to depend upon him for victory. God wanted the nation of Israel… You find many, many stories where God raises up and causes confusion among the enemies, and God gives great victory. Here’s what he says in Psalm 20. It’s a psalm of David. It says this very clearly, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.” (Psalm 20:7)
Now I can’t not say this. This is incredibly important. We as a nation, America, and I’m thankful for it, we have the greatest, most powerful machine of war the world has ever known. I’m thrilled we have a great army. It’s absolutely amazing. I don’t know if you realize this or not, but literally, any branch of our services could beat any other army in the world. I mean, just one of any of our branches, nobody is even a match for them. Not even close. But let me just say this because it’s incredibly important. If we think our security is in the fact that we have the best war machine in the world, we’re severely disillusioned.
I’m going to say something else, and I’m going to be really not PC today, okay? There was a time when presidents and generals would call the nation to prayer over battles, and they would pray about whether they should go into a battle or not. George Washington knelt and prayed at Valley Forge. If you look at some of the declarations where we go to war, the generals would pray, and the cadets would pray. They would pass out Bibles to everybody coming through the forces.
I have a good friend who is a general who gave his testimony in his uniform, and they strictly forbade him ever in public to give his testimony in his uniform. I’m going to tell you something. We need to be aware. We need to pray for our nation. When a nation forsakes God and thinks we can fight our battles on our own, we’re in trouble. Does anybody else feel that way? Well, if you don’t, that’s okay. You’re wrong.
2. How do they treat women? Look at this. “The king must not take many wives for himself…” Duh! And then he gives the reason. He says, “…because they will turn his heart away from the LORD.” (Deuteronomy 17:17) Now we need to recognize when we read Scripture that some things in Scripture are prescriptive and some things in Scripture are descriptive. Do you know the difference in there?
Some things God is saying, “You do this.” Now this is a prescriptive commandment. This is not like, “And they did this.” When people read through the kings, and they see the things David did, that Solomon did, that Rehoboam did, or they look through and they see things Judas…he goes out and hangs himself…that doesn’t mean God is saying, “You do that too.”
When we read the Scriptures, we need to read the reality that there are things that are commandments and they are prescriptive and that’s the way it’s supposed to be, and there are things we read in Scripture that are descriptive and it’s just the way somebody behaved or something they did at that particular time.
When you read in the Bible about polygamy and when you read in the Bible about sexual immorality, that is descriptive of somebody’s behavior, but the Bible is extremely clear about what marriage is and the fact that it’s holy. Genesis 2:22 says, “And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.” (Genesis 2:22) That’s descriptive. That’s not likely how you’re going to get your wife. “Well, how did you meet your wife?”
“Well, God reached over, pulled out a rib, boom!”
“Wow. That’s amazing.”
That’s just descriptive. That’s how it happened. “Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.'” (Genesis 2:23) Verse 24 is prescriptive. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24) That’s prescriptive. God’s plan for marriage…this is just going to bother a lot of people, and I don’t mean to do that on purpose, but it’s important that we say this…is one man for one woman for one lifetime. That’s God’s plan!
Matthew 19:4: This is talking about Jesus when they came and asked him about marriage. “And He answered and said to them, ‘Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning “made them male and female,” and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.'” (Matthew 19:4-6)
God designed marriage and he has the franchise on it. Now I know this bothers all kinds of people. David sinned; God still loved him. God still loved him! It doesn’t mean you don’t love people when they do things that are not right, but the reality is…I mean, this is the clear teaching of Scripture, and there is really no escaping from that reality…sex beyond the sanctity of marriage is sin. In every form whatsoever, sex beyond the sanctity of marriage is sin. I know people do not want to say that anymore.
When I do a wedding, I always say something like this. “I’m here today, and I’m not here as a wedding coordinator. I’m not here as an organizer. I’m not an officiator. I’m not a vendor, and I’m not here for the $50. I am here to speak for God. That’s my responsibility here. Here is what the Bible teaches, that marriage…when we step right here, we are on holy ground. This is sacred. It is not a contract between two people; it is a holy covenant to God.
All you people who have gathered together, you have been summoned not just to have a party, not just to celebrate that these people are getting married; you are gathered, you have been summoned to witness that they have exchanged these vows, and it is your job to cultivate and remind them of this covenant they made here before God today.”
The groom’s family sits on that side. That’s the reason the bride comes down the middle. It goes back to the time of Abraham when God walked in between, in the trough. Here’s what happens here, and this is how it happened in those ancient times. When tribes made covenants together, they became one tribe. They all became family. I always say to these people over here, “Listen. This is your son getting married, but today this is your daughter. From this day forward, this is your daughter.” And I always say to these people over here, “Listen. This is your daughter, but now this is your son.”
Now then let me just say this to you. You may be divorced. That doesn’t mean God hates you. I believe people who are divorced hate divorce more than people who aren’t divorced. They have experienced the ripping of the fabric of society. You go to weddings sometimes and like there’s just, “Who sits where and who showed up where?” You’re like, “These things are supposed to fit together like this,” and what we’ve done is when we mess with marriage, we rip apart not just two people; we rip the fabric of society.
You read through those stories of what happens when these vows are violated. Read the stories of David’s kids. Read the stories! They kill each other. One of the sons rapes another sister. The slaughter and the pain that David’s sin causes is absolutely indescribable. One of the saddest passages of Scripture is where David is waiting on news of what happened to his son Absalom, and when the news comes back that Absalom is dead, David just falls over and weeps. These are the words he says, “Absalom, Absalom, would God that I had died instead of you!”
David failed as a father. David failed as a husband. But let me tell you something. Those consequences of those choices, did God love David? Yes, God loved David, but sin… Sex outside the sanctity of marriage is sin. I don’t care what kind of sex it is, whether it’s adultery, or fornication, or homosexuality, and I know that’s like, you can’t say that, but I just did. It doesn’t mean that I hate anybody. God loved David.
It isn’t a popular message, but when John the Baptist stood up and said, “Herod, what you’ve just done in committing adultery is wrong,” they cut his head off. I have no question there are people who attend Grace Fellowship or who watch online will say, “If you’re going to take that narrow-minded position, we’re not going to support you.” Well, guess what? We are. We are, and we are not going to sidestep it. We’re not going to say, “Well, we’ve just chosen not to make that the focus of our ministry.” Do you know what? We don’t actually get to pick and choose the Bible.
Our responsibility… Now let me be really clear. Anybody who is mean, discriminating, hateful, hurtful to somebody who is in sin, you’re not living like Jesus. Look at what Jesus did to the woman taken in adultery. All those guys, they’re ready. They have their stones. They’re going to stone her. They’re going to kill her. Jesus, there in the middle of it, stoops down, and starts writing in the sand.
Everybody always wonders, “What did Jesus write?” Some people say he was writing the Ten Commandments because he said, “He who is without sin let him cast the first stone.” Do you know what I think he was writing? I think he was writing the names of their mistresses, and they started going, “Oh! Sheila.” It started with the oldest and moved all the way to the youngest. Maybe some of them had more than one name. You know, they had a longer list. “I’m out of here.”
“I’m out of here.”
“I’m out of here.”
“I’m out of here.” But do you know what? That story is always interesting to me because it says she was taken in adultery. Every time I read that story, I think, “Well, where’s the guy?” Last time I checked, it takes two to do adultery. The guy is not there. All they did is they dragged that woman in there to trap him. That’s all it was. It was a trap.
People want to trap you into saying things they can just twist around. They want to make it to say, “Oh, they hate homosexuals. They hate divorced people. They hate fornicators. They hate kids who have babies out of wedlock.” Now listen carefully to what I’m saying. That’s a lie. That’s a lie. We love them. We love them.
Because we love them, we’re going to tell the truth. We’re going to tell the truth. We’re going to say, “Listen. It’s destructive, and sex inside marriage is really constructive, and if you haven’t tried it, man, you just need to go practice.” I was listening to this right here. I was supposed to speak at that men’s thing. I’m trying to figure out how to get out of that. Everything about that sounds fun to me.
3. How do they handle wealth? He says, “And he must not accumulate large amounts of wealth in silver and gold for himself.” (Deuteronomy 17:17) Now I can’t actually read that without taking you over here and looking at Solomon for a minute. Look at 1 Kings 10:14. “Each year Solomon received…” Now in my dynamic translation here, it translates this differently. It says, “…about 25 tons of gold.” (1 Kings 10:14)
Does anybody have an older translation? What does it say? 666. Does anybody recognize that number? You’re going to find that again in Revelation 13 of the Antichrist. He is the anti-king. He has abandoned his whole thing there. Look down at verse 26. “Solomon built up a huge force of chariots and horses. He had 1,400 chariots and 12,000 horses.” (1 Kings 10:26)
Look at chapter 11, verse 1. “Now King Solomon loved many foreign women. Besides Pharaoh’s daughter, he married women from Moab, Ammon, Edom, Sidon, and from among the Hittites. The LORD had clearly instructed the people of Israel, ‘You must not marry them, because they will turn your hearts to their gods.’ Yet Solomon insisted on loving them anyway.” Look at this. “He had 700 wives…” (1 Kings 11:1-3) Seven hundred wives!
Have you ever seen that program Bridezillas? I’ve never actually seen a whole one, but I’ve seen little clips of it, and I’m wondering if the guy who was getting married saw those clips before they got married. Seven hundred! The phrase that is used there, wives of royal birth, that’s literally sarahs, princesses. “…and 300 concubines.” (1 Kings 11:3) I remember when I was a kid one time reading this and asking my mom, “What’s a concubine?” She said, “You’ll find out later.” So how do they handle wealth?
4. How do they regard the Word? In verse 18, “Also it shall be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this law in a book, from the one before the priests, the Levites.” (Deuteronomy 17:18) Here’s what they were supposed to do. They were supposed to go over to the priests’ place and sit down and write out their own personal copy of the book of Deuteronomy.
Now that’s a lot of homework! If I said to you, “This week, why don’t you go home and sit down and just on your word processor type out the whole book of Deuteronomy,” you’re going to go, “No, I know how to cut and paste. I don’t need to do that.” But God knows that something happens between your brain and your heart when you actually put that pen on paper. Something happens between here and here. It goes through here.
What he says…listen…he needs to go and sit down and write out his own personal copy. “And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God and be careful to observe all the words of this law and these statutes…” (Deuteronomy 17:19), which is the fifth real question.
5. Do they have a heart of worship? Who do they worship? What do they worship? Do they fear God? Do they observe the words of his law? What’s their heart attitude?
6. Are they wise? What it says there is, “…that his heart may not be lifted above his brethren…” (Deuteronomy 17:20) If you want a definition of wisdom, it’s this…pure, plain, simple. Wisdom is seeing things from God’s perspective. Everybody has wisdom, everybody has ideas, everybody has views on things. Read the book of Proverbs. Proverbs clearly teaches us that wisdom is where we see God’s perspective on a matter.
What we find when we see God’s perspective on a matter is that God has created us as brothers. We may have responsibilities, we may have authority, but it keeps us from hubris, imagining we are above the rules, that those things don’t apply to us, imagining we are wiser than God, that we can build better things than God can birth.
7. Do they respect the weight of leadership? This is really important. In verse 20b there, he says, “…that he may not turn aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left, and that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children in the midst of Israel.” (Deuteronomy 17:20) Do you know what leaders do? This is a real easy answer. Leaders lead. That’s what they do. Leaders lead.
If you think you’re a leader and no one is following you, you’re just out for a walk. Leaders lead. To lead is to influence. If you look at people who are responsible to lead, and they have that weight of understanding that that position carries with it the fact that you are going to impact and put your fingerprints all over people…
If you’re a schoolteacher and you are leading a classroom, those kids are learning more than just a bunch of information. You are creating a culture in that classroom. Teachers, is that true or not? Yes! Good teachers all know that. If you’re a father and a mother, you’re doing more than feeding and housing kids; you are creating culture in that room.
If you are a businessman and you are responsible for leading a business… I’ll tell you who’s a perfect example of this is Truett Cathy. I mean, it is a culture they have created. Don’t you love driving through Chick-fil-A and having them go… When you say, “Thank you,” do you know what they always say? “It’s my pleasure.” I love those words! “It’s my pleasure.” How is that possible? Every Chick-fil-A you go by. It’s because they serve Christian chicken. I’m not sure their shakes are Christian. I think those shakes are of the Devil.
If you look at the people you are responsible to lead, you will see a lot of you in them. If you look at the people you view as your leaders, you will see a lot of them in you. That’s why leadership is responsibility, and that’s why we must choose carefully the people we look to as leaders. To lead is more than a skill set. It’s more than an ability. Leaders create culture. Leaders not only move a direction; they draw people a direction.
All of the leaders are linked to the impact they have on the people they lead and the generations that follow after them. When you read through those kings, he goes, “And he led people into idolatry,” or, “He led the people away from idolatry,” or, “He led this direction.” What you do as a leader is massively important.
Now then, here’s where I want to wrap up. If you read this list of what a king looks like, none of those kings actually measure up. Did you know that? Do you know who measures up to this? Jesus. That’s who it measures up to, Jesus. As you read the New Testament, even things like, “How did he wage war?” He is standing in front of Pilate and he says, “I could call 10,000 angels, but my kingdom is not of this world.” Peter grabs a sword and cuts off a guy’s ear, and he goes, “I don’t need you to cut any ears off for me. I think I’ll put that one back.”
You start looking at it through what kind of king Jesus was, what we see here… This is why I say it’s so important you get the sequence of the story. When Jesus comes on the scene, the Gospel writers go, “Here is the King, the only King.” Here is what we need, you and I. We need King Jesus. Yeah. We need King Jesus.
Now let me just say one more thing. I love those bracelets people used to wear, “What Would Jesus Do?” and all that stuff. Do you know my only problem with that whole thing about what Jesus would do? It’s I am not Jesus, and I can’t do what Jesus would do. So what the Holy Spirit does is he puts Jesus in us in the Holy Spirit, and he does them through us.
It’s an amazing thing. It’s a miracle. It’s not just a decision of, “Okay, I’m going to bear down and do what Jesus would do.” No, this is the kingdom and this is what he says, “Change the way you think. The kingdom of God is right at hand.” Let’s pray.
Lord, thank you for you. Lord, we so very desperately want to be like you, and Lord, we don’t want to just be like you someday because we’re going to see you as you are, we want to be like you now because the world needs you now. We need you now. We need your kingdom now. We don’t want to be pharisaical, but Lord, we want to speak truth and love and love those whom we may deeply disagree with, because you did. You loved us. You graced us.
God, I’m fearful of not proclaiming your truth clearly. I’m not afraid of men, but I am fearful of not representing you well. Lord, I feel that weight and I know the congregation feels that weight because we have this shifting culture that it isn’t popular to say things that you said.
But Lord, somehow you said them in a way that sinners loved you! They were your friends. You hung out with them. Lord, we want to say truth but we want to say it so people know we love them. Lord, we need you as King. We need your kingdom to break in and break out. In your name, we pray, amen.