Purim: The Villain Nobody's Booing
For Purim this year, Matthew Vander Els did not step up to teach as himself. He stepped up as Aaron Burr — third vice president of the United States, Princeton graduate at sixteen, decorated officer under George Washington, and, as history remembers him, the man who shot Hamilton. In character, he laid out the case the musical leaves off the stage: Hamilton's decade of public attacks, the sabotaged Senate race, the hair-trigger pistols Hamilton chose and knew about but never disclosed. "Broadway needed a villain," he said. "So history wrote that as me." The point was not really about Burr. It was about how a story gets told, who gets cast as the villain, and who the real villain actually is — a question he then turned on the Book of Esther, on Purim itself, and, eventually, on everyone in the room.
A Book Where God Won't Sign His Name
Esther is the only book in the Bible where God is never named — not Yahweh, not Elohim, not El Shaddai, not Adonai, not even "the Lord" or "heaven." No miracles, no prophets, no parted seas, no fire from the sky — just palace politics and a near-genocide. The Talmud records real rabbinic debate over whether the book even belonged in the canon. Vander Els argued that this silence is the point, not a flaw. "Esther is not a story about what God says," he said. "It is a story about what God does when he is not talking." Most of life is lived in that same silence — decisions made in the dark, prayers that seem to hit a concrete ceiling — and Esther exists in Scripture to say that God's silence is not his absence, but the shape his work often takes.
Haman Is the Symptom, Not the Disease
Everyone knows the villain to boo: Haman, son of Hammedatha, who casts lots — pur, an Akkadian, pagan word borrowed into the text and then translated for the reader — to pick the day he will annihilate every Jew in Persia. God, Vander Els noted, takes that pagan instrument of random fate and names the entire festival after it, Purim, "the enemy picks the weapon, and God picks the trophy case."
But Haman, he argued, is a symptom. The real root goes back five hundred years to 1 Samuel 15, where God commands King Saul to destroy the Amalekites — the nation that had attacked Israel from behind during the Exodus, picking off the weak and the children at the rear of the caravan. Saul wins the war but spares Agag, the Amalekite king, and keeps the best plunder for himself. He does ninety percent of what God commanded and calls it obedience. Samuel has to finish the job himself, then tells Saul he has lost the kingdom — not because he did nothing, but because he did almost everything. "Almost is not obedience," Vander Els said. "Partial is not faithful. Ninety percent is still disobedience."
Esther 3:1 identifies Haman as "the Agagite" — a descendant of the king Saul spared. Esther 2:5 identifies Mordecai as a Benjamite, "the son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish" — Saul's own tribe, deliberately paralleling 1 Samuel 9:1. Vander Els called it "Amalek versus Israel, round two," with a woman from Saul's tribe finishing the war her ancestor left undone. He also pointed to a rabbinic tradition noting that three unusually small Hebrew letters in the names of Haman's ten executed sons form the number 5707 — 1946 on the Hebrew calendar, the year ten Nazi war criminals were hanged at Nuremberg — evidence, in the rabbis' reading, that the pattern of Amalek reappears across generations, changing uniforms but never strategy. "What you refuse to confront," he said, "your grandchildren will inherit."
Esther's Turn: A Question, Not a Prophecy
Mordecai presses Esther to approach the king uninvited, a potential death sentence, telling her that if she stays silent, deliverance will come "from another place" (Hebrew: Makom Acher) — noting that Makom, "place," is itself a rabbinic name for God, HaMakom. Even the hint at God's presence in this book is hidden. His follow-up, "who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this," is a question, not a guarantee. "That is how calling actually works," Vander Els said. "You have to act before you know for sure." Esther answers, "If I perish, I perish" — in Hebrew a wordplay on avad, meaning both "lost" and "perish," recognizing she is already lost if she does nothing.
She doesn't rush. She fasts three days, then draws out two banquets rather than making her request at once. In the pause between them, the king suffers a sleepless night, reads the chronicles, and discovers Mordecai was never rewarded for once saving his life — setting up the reversal, venahafochu, where everything Haman built turns against him. Vander Els connected this pattern to Yeshua: three days in the tomb after Gethsemane's "not my will, but yours," and a pagan governor, Pilate, writing the sign over the cross just as pagan dice named the day of the Jews' destruction — God again letting his enemies write the caption before rewriting the ending.
Application
Vander Els called listeners to name their own "Agag" — the grudge, the secret, the calling buried under responsibility, the conversation or boundary kept postponed because it costs something. Saul's failure, he said, wasn't outright evil but partial obedience left to fester. The invitation was to actually finish what God has asked — to "kill the thing," confront the compromise, and not leave it for the next generation to face grown into something worse. At the same time, he pointed to Purim's command to feast, give gifts, and rejoice, because the reversal God works in silence is real: what looks like abandonment is often the setup for deliverance still being written.
Read the transcript (5,037 words)
Automated transcript, lightly edited for readability. Scripture appears as spoken; the video is the authoritative teaching.
Well, Shabbat Shalom, everybody. Let me see here. Good morning, everybody. My name is Matthew Vander Rells, and I am the pastor here at Founded in Truth Fellowship. But today we are celebrating Purim. And on Purim we like to dress up. I was the man I shot.
So, if you will indulge me, I will not be giving the message today as Matthew this morning. Because my name is Aaron Burr. I was the third vice president of the United States under Thomas Jefferson. He was a man I helped get in the chair. I did a lot of things. I pulled a lot of strings. I supported him. And when he made it there, he pretended like he didn't even know my name. He forgot about everything I did for him. But I also had the honor of serving as a United States Senator from New York. I was an officer in the Continental Army under General George Washington. It was in the army where I was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and from my understanding, I'm in good company in this room. At age 16, I was a Princeton graduate, and I personally led troops at the Battle of Monmouth, as well as argued cases before the Supreme Court. But you know me as the guy who shot Hamilton because somebody wrote a musical.
Hamilton's Real Legacy
Here's what the musical skips. Hamilton had a mouth he could not control and a pen he could not put down. If he was alive in your time, you would call him a keyboard warrior who trolls on the book of faces. He feuded publicly and fiercely with Jefferson, Adams, Madison. He nearly dueled Monroe. He once published a 95-page pamphlet, the Reynolds Pamphlet, where he went into very explicit detail about an extramarital affair that he took part in just so he could win another argument. That was Hamilton. And when it came to me, he spent over a decade sabotaging my Senate race, torpedoing my bid for governor, and publishing personal attacks even under his own name.
He did not even bother using a pseudonym like he did for everyone else. It got to a boiling point, I admit. And when I demanded satisfaction, it was legal. A proper duel to settle the matter once and for all. Hamilton chose the pistols. They belonged to his brother-in-law. What he did not mention was that there was a hidden hair trigger installed for an advantage on these pistols. You set it and the gun fires with a half pound of pull. He knew about it. I did not. He picked the weapons. He picked the advantage. We both showed up and one of us lost.
But Broadway, they needed a villain. So history wrote that as me. I'm the bad guy. And Lin-Manuel Miranda set music to it. But at least he made me handsome. I bring this up today because we are reading a story where everybody thinks they know who the villain really is. You boo his name every single year. You eat the cookies that are in the shape of his hat or his ears. But I want to show you the villain that nobody is booing. It's the one who died 500 years before this entire crisis. And then, if you will let me, I will show you the villain that you really were not expecting. And that is you. But do not worry. This story has a twist ending. They all do, especially with a god as relentless as this.
Would somebody please bring me the remote control? It is black, about yay long. Is it over there? We're talking about the book of Esther. Now before I get into—thanks, Mom.
Now before I get into the villain, I need to tell you something about this book itself that most people don't realize. For those of you who may not be familiar with the story of Esther, here is the short version. A Jewish girl named Esther becomes the queen of the Persian Empire while hiding her identity. Talk less. Smile more. When you go in, Esther, do not let them know what you're against or what you're for. That is how Esther survived the Persian court. But then, a man named Haman convinces the king to sign a decree to wipe out every single Jew in the empire. Esther has to risk her life to stop it. That is the story behind Purim. That is why we celebrate.
The Hidden God
But here is what most people don't realize. God is not mentioned in this book. Not once. There's not a Yahweh. There's not an Elohim. There is not an El Shaddai. There is not an Adonai. There's not even the Lord anywhere. Not even the word heaven is mentioned. It is the only book in the entire Bible where God refuses to put his name on any page. And the rabbis, they fought about it. The Talmud, Jewish literature of past, records the debate on whether Esther even belongs in the canon. There's no divine name, there's no miracles, there's no prophets, there's no parting of seas, there's no fire coming down from heaven, just palace politics and bureaucratic genocide. Some argued it should be thrown out entirely. And yet, here it is in your Bible.
Esther is not a story about what God says. It is a story about what God does when he is not talking. And if we're honest, most of your life, God is not talking. The ceiling is concrete. The prayers go up, but nothing audible comes down, usually. You are making decisions in the dark most of the time and doing the math alone, it feels like, and just hoping that you're not crazy for still believing. That is the book of Esther. And God put it in the Bible on purpose because he wanted you to know that his silence is not his absence. Silence is how he operates when he is setting up something you could not have even engineered yourself.
The Villain You Know
So, let's talk about the villain you know, and I will now allow those of you who have been holding back so long to get your boos out. Haman. Son of Hammedatha. He is the man who convinces the king of Persia, King Ahasuerus, to issue a decree annihilating every Jew in the Persian Empire. Men, women, children, all on a single day. And how does he pick the date? He casts lots, dice. He rolls dice. He lets fate decide.
Now, here is one of the more scholarly points of the message. The word in the text for lots is the word pur, like a cat. Pur.
Yes, since you bring it up, Martha Washington did name her tomcat after Hamilton because they acted so much alike. But that's a different sermon, so I'm sorry.
Pur. Pur is the word for lots, dice, but it's not even Hebrew. It's Akkadian. It's borrowed from Babylonian. It's a pagan word from a pagan practice, and the text actually has to pause here to translate it for the audience. They cast pur, that is, lots, hag oel in Hebrew, before Haman. You only had once. Don't be greedy. And God names the entire holiday after it. The festival of Purim, the plural for pur. God took the enemy's dice, the pagan instrument of random fate, and he turned them into the name of the permanent celebration. That should tell you everything you need to know about how this God operates. The enemy picks the weapon, and God picks the trophy case.
So, everybody knows Haman is the villain. You boo his name whenever it's read. You spin the groggers to drown him out. He is the antagonist, the archetype, the face on the wanted poster of the story. But ladies and gentlemen, Haman is the symptom. He is not the disease.
The Real Villain: 500 Years Before
Here's where everything shifts in the story. When the author of Esther introduces Haman in chapter 3, verse 1, he gives us a detail that most people read right past. He says, "After these things, King Ahasuerus promoted Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite." Now, if you don't know your Old Testament, that word means nothing. But if you do, you know that this is like a bomb with a lit fuse.
To understand what it fully means, I'm going to have to take you back 500 years before Esther was ever born. In 1 Samuel 15, God gives King Saul a direct command: Destroy the Amalekites. And this is not random or arbitrary. The Amalekites were the nation that attacked Israel during the Exodus. And they did not attack from the front like an army with honor. No, they came from behind. They picked off the weak at the end of the journey, at the end of the caravan. They picked off the elderly, the children who could not keep up at the back of the line.
Deuteronomy 25 says that God told Israel to blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. He says, "Do not forget."
So, Saul, he goes to war and he wins. He captures Agag, the king of the Amalekites. And this is where everything falls apart. Because Saul does not kill the king of the Amalekites. He spares Agag. He keeps the best livestock for himself. He does 90 percent of what God commanded and he calls it obedience. And then Samuel, the prophet, has to come behind him and finish the job himself. He executes Agag. And he delivers the verdict that then changes everything for King Saul. He looks directly at King Saul and he says, "You're going to lose everything because you have rejected the word of the Lord, you have also been rejected from being king any longer."
Saul loses everything. Not because he did nothing, but because he did almost everything. On this journey of faith, there's one thing that is certain: Almost is not obedience. Partial is not faithful. 90 percent is still disobedience.
Amalekite Revenge Across Centuries
Now, we fast forward 500 years. A descendant of the king that Saul refused to kill, Haman the Agagite, is orchestrating the genocide of the entire Jewish people. And who stands against him? Mordecai. And chapter 2, verse 5, gives us his genealogy with surgical precision. The author tells us, "Now there was a Jew in Susa, in the citadel, whose name was Mordecai, the son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, a Benjamite."
A Benjamite. That's the tribe of Benjamin. That's King Saul's tribe. The tribe of Saul.
The author of Esther here is not giving you a random family tree. He's loading a gun with a hair trigger. The genealogies in Esther 2:5 and 1 Samuel 9:1 are deliberately paralleled. It's the same tribe, the same ancestral line. It's the same unfinished war. This is not Haman versus Mordecai. This is Amalek versus Israel, round two, half a millennium later. And a woman from Saul's own tribe is going to finish the war that her ancestor was too compromised to complete. In the Esther scroll, when Haman's 10 sons are listed after their execution, their names are written [clears throat] in the Hebrew in a unique vertical column, unlike anything else in the text.
And the rabbis, they noticed that three of the Hebrew letters within the names are written unusually small. They stick out for some reason. It was a tav, a shin, and a zayin. And as a number, those letters could form the number 5707. And on the Hebrew calendar, 5707 corresponds with 1946. That was the same year that 10 Nazi war criminals were hung at Nuremberg. Now, you decide what to do with that. But this is how the rabbis have always read the theme, the threat of Amalek. Not as ancient history, but as a living pattern that continues to reoccur. An enemy that changes uniforms, but never changes their strategy. Pharaoh, Haman, Antiochus, Herod, Rome, the Inquisition, the pogroms, the Reich. The spirit does not retire, it just rebrands every generation.
The villain in this story is not simply Haman. Haman is the consequence. The villain is Saul. The man who did almost everything God asked and thought it was enough. And when Saul was so compromised, guess what Saul would not deal with in his generation became a genocide in Esther's generation. And there's a weighty message that goes along with that.
What you refuse to confront, your grandchildren will inherit. What you refuse to confront, your grandchildren will inherit.
What Are You Keeping Alive?
But, now I'd like to stop talking about Saul and start talking about you. Because if this is just some Bible history lesson, it's interesting, but it does not change anything. The question the Holy Spirit is asking this morning is not why did Saul fail? The question is what are you keeping alive? Maybe it is something dark. The grudge you have been feeding for so many years. The secret that owns you. The thing you swore you would deal with last year, but yet it's still sitting on your table. Maybe it's something that looks fine on the outside. The dream you keep putting off because the timing is not quite right. The conversation that you need to have with someone, but you're still waiting on that perfect moment. The calling that you felt 3 years ago that you buried under responsibility because sometimes obedience is just too expensive. The boundary that you need to set that will cost you that relationship, but save your household.
Saul's problem was not that he was evil. Saul's problem was that he was almost obedient. He got close. He did the hard part. He went to war. He won. He captured the king. And then at the finish line, he began to negotiate. He decided that 90% was close enough. And the 10% he left alive built gallows for his grandchildren.
So what is the Agag in your home? What is the thing you know God has been asking you to finish, to deal with, to say, to start, to stop, to confront, to release that you keep putting off because right now feels manageable? Because it does not shrink when you ignore it. It only grows. In fact, it gets promoted. And one day, hear me, one day, your children or your children's children will have to face, and they will not know that he is a descendant of something you could have dealt with right now today. That is terrifying.
But the thing about this book is it does not end with a villain. This book ends on a party. So, Mordecai, he tells Esther, "You have to go to the king. You have to intervene. There's a genocide coming." And Esther pushes back because approaching the king without being summoned is a death sentence. And he has not called for her in 30 days. The math on paper says obviously this is going to get her killed and it will not accomplish anything.
And Mordecai, he fires back. He fires back with two of the most important sentences in all of scripture. He says, "If you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place. But you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this? History has its eyes on you. That is what Mordecai is telling Esther.
Except it's not history watching. It is the God who will not say his name. There are two parts in the Hebrew here I would like for you to notice and call your attention to. First, the phrase another place. It will come from another place. The Hebrew is Makom Acher. And the rabbis of old, they noticed that Makom, place, is actually one of the traditional rabbinic names for God. HaMakom, the omnipresent one. So, in a book that will not say God's name, even the reference to God is hidden. Even the hint is encrypted. And what Mordecai is really saying is this, God's rescue is certain, Esther. Your participation is optional. God's plan has no bottleneck, but your blessing does.
And second, u'mi yodea, and who knows? That is not a prophecy. That's a question. There's no burning bush here. There's no certificate of divine appointment happening. Just a crisis that intersects with your position. And a question you cannot answer with certainty. And that is what and how calling actually works. You have to act before you know for sure.
If I Perish, I Perish
Esther's answer to Mordecai is one of the most courageous lines in the Bible. She states, "If I perish, I perish." Ka'asher avaded avaded. If I perish, I perish. And the Hebrew is a perfect verbal mirror here. The word avad reflected back on itself. It means both to be lost and to perish. She's saying, "I am already lost if I do nothing. The risk of action and the risk of inaction now have the same risk. And I'm not going to throw away my shot."
But she does not rush in. She does not rush in. She calls for a three-day feast. She gathers her people for covering first. Then she enters the throne room. The king, of course, extends the scepter of the winner of his beauty contest. And she lives. And she still does not blurt out her request. Instead, what does she do? She invites the king and Haman to a banquet that she's holding. And at the banquet, she waits for it. And then she invites them again to another banquet. She's willing to wait for it.
Everyone thinks waiting is weakness. Esther shows you that it is nothing more than lethal precision. And between the two banquets, in the pause, in the wait, that is when God moves. The king cannot sleep that night. He asks the servant to bring him the royal chronicles. This is the most boring document in the castle. And the servant opens up to the exact entry recording how Mordecai had once saved the king's life. And that's when the king realizes Mordecai was never rewarded. Oh, he was forgotten about. Looks like someone pulled a Jefferson.
The next morning, Haman shows up early to ask permission to execute Mordecai. He's tired of him. And before he can even open his mouth, the king asks him a question. What should be done for the man the king delights to honor? And of course, Haman, assuming the king is talking about him, he describes a lavish public parade. The royal robes should be given to him. He should ride on the royal horse, a herald shouting through the streets. And the king looks at him and he says, "Do exactly that, but for Mordecai." Haman now has to personally lead the honor parade for the man he came to kill. He has to hold the reins. He has to shout the honor.
Venahafochu: Everything Turned Upside Down
God writes in invisible ink, and he writes best in the spaces where you had the discipline to wait. And Esther finishes the war that Saul started but abandoned. A Benjamite woman completes what a Benjamite king could not. When Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, the British band reportedly played a song called The World Turned Upside Down. The impossible had happened. The colony had beat the empire.
The Hebrew has a phrase for that in verse 9:1. On the very day when the enemies of the Jews hoped to gain mastery over them, it was reversed. Venahafochu. And the Jews gained mastery over those who hated them. And it was turned upside down. The rabbis considered this phrase the thesis statement for the entire scroll. And when you look at the reversals stacked up in the story, it's breathtaking.
Haman's gallows become Haman's execution. The slaughter day becomes the victory day. The king's insomnia leads to Mordecai's honor. Esther's hidden identity becomes the reveal that saves the entire nation. And the pagan dice cast to pick the date of death became the name of the permanent holiday of joy. Everything is flipped. Everything is reversed. Every weapon is turned into a celebration.
But Venahafochu is not just the thesis of the book of Esther. It is the thesis of the entire Bible. The youngest son gets the blessing. The barren woman bears the nation. The shepherd boy kills the giant. The virgin, she conceives. The criminal on the cross saves the world. God's operating system is reversal.
And 3 days keep showing up in the story. Esther fasted for 3 days before entering the throne room and finding deliverance. And Yeshua lay in the tomb for 3 days after walking to the cross and became the deliverance. Esther said, "Ka'asher avadeti avadeti, if I perish, I perish." And Yeshua in the Garden of Gethsemane said, "Not my will, but yours." Same surrender, different thrones. The same God writing the reversal behind the scenes.
Because the cross is the ultimate v'nahafoch hu. The enemy's greatest weapon was death. And God reversed it into the doorway of eternal life. The moment Satan thought he had won, a crucified Messiah, a sealed tomb, silence from heaven. That was the setup for the greatest plot twist in the history of all the world.
Deal with Agag
3 days of silence, and on the third day, v'nahafoch hu—the reversal. And God did not sign his name to the cross, either. No, there was a sign, but Pilate wrote it. A pagan governor labeled it, just like a pagan dice named God. He lets his enemies write the captions, and then he rewrites the endings.
Now, here is where the guilt meets the grace. As my grandfather Jonathan Edwards once said, "Grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected." Because if this sermon ended back at Saul, if I left you sitting in the mirror, you would walk out of here crushed. And Purim—Purim is not a funeral. Purim is the most joyful day in the Jewish calendar. So both things can be true at the same time. Yes, what you refuse to deal with, your children will be fighting. That is real. That is Saul's legacy, and it should scare you into action this very day. But God does not leave the story there.
Into the Wreckage, a Queen
God sent Esther. That is real. Into the mess that Saul made, he sent this woman. God raised up a woman who finished it. Into the wreckage of one man's partial disobedience, God wrote a complete redemption. Saul failed, and God did not abandon Saul's people—instead he sent them a queen. You have failed. And God has not abandoned you and your family. He is already positioning the Esther in all of your stories. Maybe it is you. Maybe it is someone you are raising. Maybe it is someone who has not been born yet, but the reversal is coming. Because v'nahafoch hu is not a one-time event—it's simply God's signature move.
So I invite you today: deal with Agag. Deal with it. Yes, and absolutely, do the hard thing. Confront the compromise. Kill the thing God told you to kill. Do not leave it for your grandchildren. But also see where God opens the door for reversal, because God—who is not named in this book—is on every single page of your story, too. The dice are in the air over your life, and they were loaded before Haman ever picked them up to throw them. The silence that you are sitting in right now is not abandonment. It is simply the setup of what God is doing next. The invisible ink is drying, and one day you will be able to read what God wrote.
Feast, Give, Rejoice
And the Purim tradition commands you—hear me today—it commands you to feast, to give gifts to your friends, to give gifts to the poor, to rejoice until the sorrow is a memory and the joy is all that is left. Because that is what v'nahafoch hu, the reversal, produces. This is not just survival, not just relief—joy, feasting, generosity. A people who were marked for destruction now have so much abundance that they can't do anything else but give it away at the end of the story. That's why the detail of giving gifts is in there. They now have so much blessing and abundance because God moved even though he was silent. This is our story, too. This is where your story is heading—not the crisis, not the villain, not the mirror, but the party on the other side of the reversal.
Who lives? Who dies? Who tells the story? Purim answers that. God does. He just does not sign his name to it. A man who did 90% lost everything. And a woman who risked 100% saved a nation. And a man from Nazareth gave 100% of himself in a garden, on a cross, and in a tomb, and reversed the curse for all of us.
The Dice Were Never Random
The dice are in the air over your lives this morning. They were never random. There is no chance in this game, because it's rigged by the one who created it. So, be bold. Harness and hold on to faithfulness. Complete the race. Do not compromise. Do not negotiate when you're at the finish line. Fight the battle and complete it. Kill the thing that God wants you to kill. That produces the celebration. That shows his fingerprints. That shows that he was never far away. And despite him being silent, that didn't mean absence. He was right there the whole time. He was right there with you. And so now, now we go and we eat some hamantaschen. So, hag Purim sameach, everybody.
I would like to invite the worship team to come up to lead us in a more intimate time of service. And this is a time where we conclude with praise and worship. And the message today was a bit of a performance because of Purim—we have an excuse to be creative. But just because it was a bit of a performance doesn't mean that it was not filled with truth of the word of God. And I believe the Holy Spirit is moving today, just like the Holy Spirit always loves to move.
An Invitation to Kill It Today
But if there's something in your life that God's commanded you to kill and you're still leaving it alive, I invite you to make this day the day. If you need prayer for anything, if you would like to come up and have someone pray with you on how to kill that thing, or pray about a situation that you're going through—guys, we have a prayer warrior on either side of the stage. It's an appropriate time to do that. If you'd like to come up and leave something on the altar symbolically—something that you will not pick up, something that you're killing today—you can do that. It is appropriate today of all days. So, I invite you to stand. And during this time you can worship, you can pray, you can meditate, you can receive prayer.
Avinu Malkeinu, our Father, our King. Father, we thank you for the opportunity to once again dive into the story and the message of the book that you refused to sign your name to, simply to show that you are still more present than ever. Father, we thank you for your spirit. We thank you for your commitment to us even though sometimes we only give 90%. Father God, in the name of Yeshua, I ask that the Holy Spirit that you claim is within us today, that gives us the very life breath, that we would allow it to do its job. That we would
Closing Worship
stand firm boldly, moving forward, trimming away the things that we don't need to carry forward any longer. So that we can be modeled and molded into the shape of the king of kings, Yeshua, the lord of lords. We thank you, Father, in the name of Yeshua, our king, we pray. Amen. I love you, Lord. For your mercy never fails me. All my days, I've been held in your hands. From the moment that I wake up until I lay my head, I will sing of the goodness of God. All my life, you have been faithful. All my life, you have been so so good. With every breath that I inhale, I will I will sing of the I love voice.
You have led me through the fire and darkest nights. Your love is like no other. I've known you as a father. I've known you as a friend. And I have learned All my life, you have been All my life, you have been so so good. With every breath that I am able, I will sing of the goodness of God. Your goodness is running after. It's running after me. It's running With my life laid down, I surrender now. I give you everything. Your goodness is running after. It's running Your goodness is running after. It's running Your goodness is running after. It's running With my life laid down, I surrender now. I give you everything.
Your goodness running out. It's running out today. All my life you have been so so good. With every breath that I am able, oh, I will sing of the goodness of God. life you have been faithful. All my every breath that I am able, oh, I will sing of God. life you have been faithful. And all my life you have been so With every breath that I am able, oh, I will sing Oh, I will sing Sing the Shema with me. Hear, oh Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. Blessed is the name of his glorious kingdom for all eternity. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.
May the Lord lift up his countenance towards you and give you peace. Shabbat Shalom. It's really
