Yom Teruah and Hannah's Prayer

Automated transcript, lightly edited for readability. Scripture appears as spoken; the video is the authoritative teaching.

Again, Shabbat shalom everybody. Uh, welcome to Founded in Truth Fellowship and happy Yom Terua Hakame celebrating today. This is great. Um, so we're going to talk about that uh, of course in the message today. Uh, and then we're going to end with some loud noise as we do every year. Uh, so brace yourself. Uh, it's it's a bittersweet thing for me. Um, I love it, but also uh we allow the kids to take over with some horns and uh it is it we allow we allow them to do it until we can't take it anymore. And so it's it's a favorite for sure. So uh every single week we read through the Torah portion, right?

Uh and that's that's the traditional division of the Torah into sections uh so that everybody uh is focused and meditating on the same section of the Torah every week. And this has been a tradition for centuries uh in Judaism. Uh and we partake in that same uh tradition as well as Al led us in today. Um and also paired with the Torah portion that is sectioned out every single week, the reading, the standardized reading uh of the weekly scriptures, uh there's a second reading that is matched with it uh out of the prophets generally and this one's called the Haftra portion and the word means like the concluding reading, right?

So you read the Torah portion and then you read the concluding portion which is a part of the prophets of course in the Old Testament. And the thing about the Ha Torah is it typically uh long time ago when everything was put together uh it typically gets picked because it matches or at least it kind of flows with the reading or the the day of of the Torah portion. Uh for example, when we read Noak, uh the Torah portion that covers Noah's flood, u the haftava haft that was chosen to match it is Isaiah 54 where Isaiah happens to mention the waters of Noah. Easy, right? Um so you have a second um a second reading and um yeah, they try to match it up.

The Haftarah Nobody Would Have Paired

Uh so today is a feast day and there are feast day readings sometimes and they they get a little wonky in the schedule but it's Yum Turua also known of course as Roshana um but the Hofour reading for today is about a woman named Hana the Hannah right um from Sam one and and that's a strange pair I think uh because the day is yum tua uh it's the day of loud noises is what it is. It's the day of clamor. You could say the day of the blast, the day of trumpets. Um, out of everything on God's calendar in the Bible, this is the one with volume and trumpets and shouting in a rule full a room full of noise and clamor.

But the haur portion that has been traditionally matched with it is about a woman who prays silently and her name is Hannah. and she goes up to the tabernacle at Shiloh uh with her family every year. Um and as the tradition, she goes up to worship. And Hana really wants a child. She wants to be a mother. Uh but she does not have a child. Uh she's barren. And there's another woman in the story who has kids. Um and she's she's not a very nice person about it to Hannah. uh she kind of shoves it in Hannah's face um that she doesn't have kids, but look at me. I happen to have kids.

Like look at this. You know, and there's a lesson in that uh for sure. Like those poor kids of hers growing up knowing that they're being leveraged to reinforce a parent's security rather than being guided in life as functional human beings. Um and it's just so it's so interesting because the other woman enjoyed bringing up truth as a truthful fact. The truth is the Lord has kept Hannah from conceiving. But sometimes you don't have to speak falsehoods in order to display cruelty. You ever see someone think that they're righteous for speaking truth and they're standing on truth uh when really they're just enjoying causing pain in other people? So this year when Hannah goes up to Shiloh to worship, uh she reaches a breaking point.

Uh she gets up from dinner and she just goes off to pray. And the text says that she was deeply hurt. She was grieved uh even when she prayed and she cried tears. She wept. She has been hoping and praying for so long. And how many of you have ever prayed about something that was deep within you that caused you grief and you prayed for so long and you kind of end up running out of different ways to pray as if it's a puzzle you got to unlock? The words don't even change anymore. You're just stuck. This is where Hannah is in the story. And it takes place, of course, in 1 Samuel uh 1:12-13.

Says, "While she continued praying in the Lord's presence, Eli watched her mouth, and Hannah was praying silently and though her lips were moving, her voice could not be heard. And Eli thought she was drunk. She had a whole prayer within her that never made a sound when it came out. It was a prayer from her heart. It says, I mean, she had words to stay. And Eli is sitting there and he's watching her. He's watching her mouth move, but nothing's coming out. He's the priest. Um, this is the guy whose whole job uh is to be the representative of people to God and back from God to people. He's the guy.

Uh, right. And and he looks at her and he goes, "How long are you going to be drunk? You just you're acting weird. Put the wine away. Stop with the beer." Right? And uh and I don't think he was trying to be mean. I think he was just kind of be being lazy a little bit in his in his role. Uh but we're going to come back that to that in a few minutes. um because I wanted to kind of lay that as as the intro or the on-ramp into uh what today is. Um Yom Tura and hopefully uh hopefully I can tie it together to something that's edifying. Um there's always the risk, right?

A Feast Day With Almost No Instructions

Yum Turua. Today's a feast day according to the Bible. Um it's a pretty big deal as all feast days are festival days. And there's a list of course of these days in Leviticus uh 23 that God calls his moed hootin and hollerin the best way that we can with trumpet literal brass trumpets and we have silver trumpets and we have chauffars and we have uh laughter and screaming. Um so there must be a lot of details in the Bible that actually explain to us what the day is about. Right. Wrong. Yeah. Sorry. It's the feast day gives you almost nothing about uh what it's actually for and what you're specifically supposed to do uh and how to do it, right?

And here here's what we have from Leviticus 23. Uh tell the Israelites in the seventh month on the first day of the month, you are to have a day of complete rest, commemoration, and trumpet blasts and a sacred assembly. That's it. That's what you got. That's what you got to work with. Um that's our day, the first day of the seventh month. So what do we do? Well, it looks like we make loud noises and we commemorate um and so I'm going to attempt to try to draw from this at least a context for what today's about because even if we don't know the details on how ancient Israelites may have celebrated this day, maybe at least we can understand the context and the weight of what today represents regardless of that.

So there's two words in Hebrew here that we want to look at. Um there's the word that's translated here is trumpet blasts which is terua and then there's the word for commemorate uh which is zikuron memorial to remember a remembrance. So tera is a word that just means noise. Okay. Um that's it. Many many translations will say trumpet blast and there's a reason for that. Uh, but a trumpet blast could be a terua, but a terua is not a trumpet blast. It's just a noise. Um, it's And then we have the memorial or a remembrance. It's a memorial of a shout, maybe a shouting memorial. And this is how the Torah labels this day.

And the phrase here in Leviticus 23 leaves us with two things that really aren't helpful, two vacuums. U the first one is God says make a big noise a terua but he never tells us what's supposed to make the noise. So we kind of default to trumpets because it's pretty and that's what there's scriptural reasons for that as well. Uh but it doesn't say chauffear. It doesn't say trumpet. Uh Numbers 29 also has some details about this day and its celebration. It doesn't give us a clue either. It just says terua. A blast or a shout or a loud noise or a clamor. Uh, it could be loud. It could be annoying.

Um, it could be loud and annoying. Sometimes it is. And that's okay. Um, just wait. I think God laughs when kids celebrate his feast days and he sees how the parents react because I'm going to give you a sneak peek. We're going to let the kids blow a whole bunch of horns that we hand out every single year. And we lose all control. And I say that like, okay, they blow up for 30 seconds. No, we lose all control. We You get uncomfortable. It's like, all right, we've celebrated. And I love that. Uh because I love being vulnerable with the celebration of God. Um so, a memorial. Here's the second kind of vacuum, the frustration with what the scripture doesn't tell us, what God doesn't tell us.

He never tells us what kind of memorial it is or who is remembering Who's doing the remembering? It's a day of remembrance. Who? For what? Why? So, we have a day named after a sound and God will not tell us what makes the sound or who it's for. So, terua is generally a noun and um and you can go through the scriptures and you can look up where this word appears in all the varying places. Um and you can kind of get an idea of what type of sound it is and what it describes. Uh but again, the only issue is it kind of jumps. Uh for example, over in Job, uh a terua is what fills a man's mouth and his lips followed by laughter.

Um, so a terua can absolutely be just a shout, something that comes from your mouth, your face, right? Uh, but elsewhere in the Torah, it's what comes out of the hammered silver trumpets blown by the priests. And again, the issue is none of the verses in Torah really help us define it. Terua just means noise. What about Zikarum? A memorial for who? For what? Well, Numbers chapter 10 actually helps us in a direction uh with that. Uh God is giving Moses instructions for two silver trumpets and these are the official silver trumpets and they are going to signal uh the beginning of celebrations, the beginning of months, all kinds of things going into battle.

The Silver Trumpets in Numbers 10

Um and he tells them when to blow them. And here's what it says in Numbers 10. says, "When you enter into battle in your land against an adversary who is attacking you, sound short blasts on the trumpets, and you will be remembered before the Lord your God and be saved from your enemies. You will be remembered before the Lord your God." That's a nice clue. But it's interesting because this verse tells us which way the remembering is going. See, a lot of times we look at the feast days and we're like, it's a day it's a day that we should remember God, you know? Yeah. No, this is this is God remembering us, which is neat, but also concerning depending on how we define that, right?

Am I the only Sorry, I like to say things out loud. It's just The Bible is meant, it has twists and turns in it because thinking and meditating on the word is what generates you to have a capacity for wisdom, to have a capacity of nuance for God's word in a world that's not black and white, right? And so we we I used to view the Bible as golden tablets that fell out of the sky, right? Um Adam had a KJV with his name stamped on it as soon as he woke up, right? and and and on my faith journey and the more I learn about the Bible and how amazing it is, that's not how it it's not what it is.

We look at the Torah and and many of us we fall into the trap of thinking the Torah is legislation. It's laws. No, the Torah has laws in it. But the first 60 chapters are narrative. It's a story that the laws are a part of. It's a story that's going to teach us something about God, his people, and God in you. And so there's a lot of things in the Bible that's is it gonna remember me, right? There's comedy, there's poetry, there's word plays, the authors, the Holy Spirit has inspired the authors to do amazing things. Um, so if I say something like it's concerning, uh, I think it's meant to be, yeah, how do we define this?

It's an acceptable thing to ask questions. Um, so here you uh are remembered before the Lord your God. And now the very next verse takes the same instrument uh and it takes it out of the context of going into battle and it uh associates it with the calendar of God, the feast days. You you are to sound the trumpets over your burnt offerings and your fellowship sacrifices and on your joyous occasions, your appointed festivals, the Modim, and the beginning of each of your months. So when the new month starts with the new moon, it's probably extra loud on the seventh month, right? your appointed feast days, the beginning of those months.

So, what do the blasts do? They will serve as a reminder for you before God. A blast goes up and God remembers his people. U but again, why does God need to be reminded? Is is God like Dory from Finding Nemo? I mean that's what I was it's a legitimate question after reading these verses. Just keep swim. No, I I don't believe that. Um in English, remember the remember u the way that we we define it is a memory word like someone almost forgets and then they it comes back to them. Oh yeah, I like seashells. Right? And if that is what it is, interesting. Uh then the entire holiday is about us yelling to get God to remember that we'll still we're still down here.

Don't forget about us. Um not the most ideal celebration of the day. U and there's a way that you could read that in certain parts of the story of the Bible. Uh but some parts of the story are meant to teach you, not supply you with answers about the infinite nature of God. Um but that is not what this verb does when we look at it in the Hebrew and where it occurs throughout scripture. So, if you dare to continue this journey with me, uh we'll jump over to Genesis 8, which is, of course, the story of Noah. Oh, we're doing it again. Someone's back there. Am I going to fight you?

What God Remembering Actually Does

Are you gonna There's not a There's no Genesis 81 there. Please hold. No. I'm going to go back one. Well, enough of this. Genesis 8:1 says, it says that God remembered Noah's that word as well as all the wildlife and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. God caused a wind to pass over the earth and the water began to subside. God remembered Noah. And then what happened? the same verse. A wind moved. A wind moved and the water started going down. Then we have Exodus 2. After a long time, this is the story of the Exodus, right? Starting out into the Exodus. Uh after a long time, the king of Egypt died.

The Israelites groaned because of their difficult labor. They cried out and their cry uh and their cry for help because of the difficult labor ascending to God. Then God heard their groaning and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God saw the Israelites and God knew. So we have these two examples with Noah and of course the Israelites in Egypt. And both times remembering is tied to God turning towards somebody. And both times something moves after with Israel. God remembers at the end of chapter 2. And then by chapter 3, there is a bush burning on a mountain with Moses standing before it. The verb is not doing what our English word remember does.

Um but we can follow the pattern. When scripture says God remembers somebody, what follows again and again and again is God turning toward them and keeping something he's already promised. It's time to activate. It's as if as a literary theme throughout the scriptures when God remembers, you should expect God to move in the very next thing because that's that's there's a pattern in the scripture um of course with these but God also sets up reminders for himself uh and it and it kind of makes the the tabernacle scene uh pretty neat. So, in Exodus chapter 28, God is designing, of course, the high priest's uniform. It has all the things, and it's really cool.

Um, but he wants two stones, um, with the names of Israel's 12 tribes, uh, carved in them, uh, half and half on each side, um, in the order of their their birth. And then both the stones must be fastened to the shoulders of the high priest. And here's what God says in Exodus 28. He says, "Fasten both stones on the shoulder pieces of the ephod as memorial stones for the Israelites. Aaron will carry their names on his two shoulders before the Lord as a reminder. Memorial stones in Hebrews a zone. Same word um same word." And what were these stones for? Aaron walks into the presence of God and on each soldier there's a rock with names dremeled in them.

And the text says twice that it was for remembrance before the Lord. So we have silver trumpets sounding over offerings and we have two engraved stones on the high priest's shoulders. These are things that are placed in front of God on purpose so that his people are in front of him as well. And then we have Yum Turua the first day of the seventh month. And God says zone terra, a memorial. Um, same word as the trumpets and numbers. Same word as the stones in Exodus. But look what the reminder is made of this time when God speaks to Israel in Leviticus 23. It's not a stone. It's a sound.

You Are the Memorial

So one day a year, the thing that goes in front of him is not an object. It is his people making a noise. In other words, you did not come here today to observe a memorial. You are the memorial. And there's a real difference of course between this memorial and the others that we've read about. Um the stones don't have to do anything. Like someone took their time and they cut all the names of them a long time ago and they fastened glued them onto the fastened eod and from that point forward they just sat there on the shoulder of the high priest. That memorial just works by simply being created and moving around with the priest existing.

This one, this memorial that represents today, someone actually has to do it. That's what God said on the calendar for the first day of the seventh month. It's not a rock. It's a day marked by a sound coming off of his people, the Israelites, which is pretty cool. But again, the question then becomes, what is the sound supposed to be? And I think that if I pitch that question, which I did, I guess if I pitch the question, what do you think this sound is supposed to be that is supposed to represent the memorial God? Many of us would probably think, well, it needs to be a confident sound, right?

Maybe an aggressive sound. Um maybe uh maybe it has to be a pretty sound on you know right tone right don't make the sound if you can't sing you know has to be pretty maybe it's a sound of let's go let's do this God yes maybe it's aggressive right the sound of winning I go back to the sound of one of the examples that we read about that caused God to remember to zechron to act. And it was in Exodus chapter 2 where of course the people were shouting and cheering and blowing chauffars, right? And everyone remembered or God remembered that's what the Israelites were doing in Egypt, having a party.

The Sound Israel Actually Made

Yay. No, they were groaning. They were groaning. The Israelites groaned. That's They weren't praying. It doesn't say that they it doesn't say that they repented. Uh it does not say that the sound was even addressed to God. They groaned. It says they cried out. And it says it went up. That is the sound that a person makes when they've lost hope. when it's been generations upon generations of the same type oppression and it's not getting better. It's when you can remember how your great-grandfather was oppressed and is living this life in this cage. And now your grandfather and your father are the same thing. And now it's you, but you're looking at your son and he's being trained in the same template of Egypt and oppression.

And it's only getting worse. And it is the sound of hopelessness. God told Abraham his descendants would be strangers in a land not their own and would be oppressed there for 400 years. This is what the tail end of that promise sounds like. It's grief. It's hopelessness. It's not a display of mighty faith. Uh it's not a farce confidence we think being faithful is supposed to look like when all you can do is grieve. And what happened when the noise of grief was heard by God? God heard their groan, their groanings, and God remembered the covenant. God saw and God knew. God saw and he knew. And he was not remembering their volume.

He was not remembering how many of them turned out and were groaning all at once. Uh he wasn't remembering or triggered by how loud they got uh or how well their groaning sounded. Um, it just says that God remembered his covenant. And that's the object of the verd of remembrance, the covenant. That's the thing he turned toward because it was a promise that he had already made. In Genesis 15 is when he made it. He says, "Then the Lord said to Abram, know this for certain. Your offspring will be resident aliens for 400 years in a land that does not belong to them, and they will be enslaved and oppressed.

However, I will judge the nation they served and afterward they will go out with many possessions and afterwards they will go out. That is God is saying the rescue's coming from the beginning. And he says it centuries earlier before there was a pharaoh there to oppress the people before they were making bricks and straw uh before anybody was there as far as the Israelites Jacob. So when we go down to chapter 2 and that cry is finally heard. It finally goes up. The cry is not what planned the rescue mission. It was already planned from the beginning. It had just been sitting there for centuries. And God is now activated in his covenant, activated in his promise.

And then the very next thing that God says out of a burning bush says,"I have observed the misery of my people in Egypt and have heard them crying out because of their oppressors. I know about their sufferings and I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians. I have come down. Come down." The cry went up and he came down. That's a pattern throughout the story of the Bible. It starts after the garden. Mankind is intimately engaged with the father and then after the whole garden scene, you begin to see a separation that forms between heaven and earth. Uh that's part of the story, right? And God is now up up and people are now down.

And then some people try to go up up and they get scattered, right? The babble. But that's that's the pattern throughout the Bible. separation of heaven and earth and God's rescue mission to merge it. And when we jump to Romans in the New Testament, Paul is writing to the church there, people in Rome, and he's talking about the whole creation waiting on God to put things right. And he says this about the groaning. He says, "For we know what the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now." And four verses later, he gets specific about what that sounds like coming out of a person. He says, "In the same way, the spirit also helps us in our weakness because we do not know what to pray for, as we should, but the spirit himself intercedes for us with inexpressable groanings.

The Spirit Groans Along With You

Look at what he just said. We don't know what to pray for as we should." That's Paul, right? Right in scripture. He's going at it. And he just completes the thought by saying, "You know what? The spirit's in there groaning. The spirit's in there." The word for groaning in in Romans 8 is stenogos. And um when the old Greek translation of Exodus describes what the slaves were doing in Egypt, uh the translators reached for that same word in the Septuagent. God heard their stenogos. same word between Romans 8 and the Greek uh Exodus. And the other word in Paul's sentence means inexpressable. Inexpressable, he's describing groaning that never makes it into words.

And so if we put those two together, the sound Israel made in Egypt, uh the one with no words, Paul says that when they've reached that place, that point, um you've been ground down so low that your words can't even form for the grief that exists within you. The spirit himself is in it with you. Yes, you're you're not sitting alone trying to signal to God that you need help because God is not dory. The spirit is there experiencing it with you, along with you, by your side, petitioning with And so I say all that to get back to Hannah. In 1st Samuel 11:11, it says that making a vow, she pleaded, "Lord of armies, if you will take notice of your servants's affliction, remember and not forget me, and give your servant a son.

I will give him to the Lord all of the days of his life, and his hair will never be cut. remember and don't forget me. That's our root zakaron. It's the same one in Leviticus. And the zakar, the verb is what's coming out of her mouth now. She is standing in front of God asking him to do the very thing this day is named for to remember. And she's asking it with her mouth moving but no sound coming out. And the man who's supposed to know what God sounds like looks at her and completely misses everything that's going on. There was a whole vow and he just thought she was drunk.

But what happens next? What happens when the remembrance when the promises when the time has come? When God remembers what happens next, he moves. The next morning, Elena and Hannah got up early to worship before the Lord. Afterwards, they returned home to Rama. Then, Elana was intimate with his wife Hannah, and the Lord remembered her. Guys, if God remembering means God moving, what is the next thing in the chapter? She conceives and the son that she has is Samuel and Samuel is the prophet who goes on to anoint David. This chapter is the hav for today's feast day. And the reason given for pairing it with this day is that it's a day for remembrance the way that God does.

Somebody a long time ago put these two stories together based on that word. The text never says Hannah made a terua. I don't think it has to. I say that because look at what the chapter demonstrates and it demonstrates it clearly. It's a prayer that no one could hear still arrived to God and God still moved. If you're bear with me for one more example, um we're going to go to the very end of the Bible, Revelation. John is looking into the throne room, Revelation 5, and he tells us what the elders are holding in their hands uh before they bow and submit themselves to the authority and the victory of the lamb that has been killed, who is standing.

The Prayers Already on the Altar

Revelation 58. When he took the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb. Each one had a harp and golden bowls filled with incense, which are the prayers of the saints. Which are the prayers of who? The saints. Somebody's holding the prayers in front of the throne. And then three chapters later in Revelation 8, he states, "Then I saw seven angels who stood in the presence of God. Seven trumpets were given to them." So we have seven angels, seven trumpets handed out and then nothing happens. They just kind of stand there holding them, right? Another angel with a golden incense burner came and stood at the altar.

He was given a large amount of incense to offer with the prayers of all of the saints on the golden altar in front of the throne. The smoke of the incense with the prayers of the saints went up in the presence of God from the angel's hand. It was the prayers of all the saints on the altar in front of the throne. And what do they do? They go up. That phrase went up. It's the same Greek verb that's used in the Greek Old Testament Exodus uses for the cries that went up from Egypt. So the angel took the incense burner, filled it with fire from the altar, and harlled it to the earth.

And there were peels of thunder, rumblings, flashes, and lightning, and an earthquake. And the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to blow them. The prayers came up, and the fire came down. And then the trumpets, something ascends. God comes down to it. And there is a noise with those trumpets. And when they finally picked up, the prayers are already up there, already in front of him before the trumpets were ever even blown. Before there was a Terua, the pray the prayers were already there. And who do they belong to? He doesn't say some of the saints, does he? He says all of them. Everyone. Today is a day when God is with us.

And our prayers are with him. And we bring ourselves as a declaration and a reminder of that. We show up. We declare the covenant. We declare the presence of God is with us. We declare that we are not alone. We declare that God is about to move. And so in a few minutes, we're going to make that sound together. I don't want to ask you to perform. Um, but I am going to ask you to be a part of it instead of just watching it. Leviticus does not say that every individual has to open their mouths. Um, And I guess I just want to point out those people in here today that might not have a shout of joy to give to God.

I guess I want to speak to the people of today that are groaning more and more and maybe praising a little bit less and less. I want to speak to the Hannah's today. I want to speak to the Israelites today who are in Egypt. I want to see speak to those who are hurting and in pain and feel like they need to somehow shout for joy today to pretend to participate in this feast day because that's what they're supposed to do and that's what God wants and that's what fill in the blank the narratives about what it looks like to be a faithful person follower of God because if I don't look just right, if I don't do the right things, then maybe God won't appreciate me and hear my cries and hear my prayers.

And I'm here to tell you that the prayers are already before God. He knows you. He sees you. And you don't have to make a joyful noise today. You can groan. You can cry. You can scream. You can make a terua. And you can pick the genre. Because all of them are declaring that God is with us already. And despite where I find myself, despite the groaning, despite the grief that has overtaken me, God is here with me. And the Holy Spirit within me has the authority and the power to guide me where I need to go. And it is groaning along with me, and that's okay. Hannah prayed a vow that no one could hear, and God remembered her anyway.

So maybe that's you today. Maybe you don't have a vow to scream out. Maybe you just move your lips to be a reminder of the covenant of God. To be a reminder that God is still about to move in your life. To be a reminder that he does not leave his people. It's called the prince of peace for a reason because that's what goes before him. With that said, I'd like to end with this verse. Happy are the people who know the joyful shout. May they walk in the light from your face. Happy are the people that know the shout and the one it belongs to. Right. And so with that, I invite the worship team to come up and please stand.

We're going to conclude today with a song. And you can worship with us. You can praise with us. You can get excited about the feast day with us. But maybe you need prayer today. Maybe you thought you were going to come today and pretend to be happy. You can only do that for so long, right? Guys, I invite you. We have a prayer team on either side of the stage. We'll join you in your grief today. We'll join you in your sadness. We'll join you in your hopelessness. us and we will go before the father together knowing that God is already there with us. Maybe you have something today that uh you brought in that you've been carrying a really long time and it's heavy and you realize that you could probably tura a lot more if you just left it here today.

If that's you today, we have a symbolic altar down here. It's a stage, but the symbolism is what carries the power. And I invite you if that's you today. If you have something in your life that you've carried for tall far too long and you're ready, you're ready to make that commitment. You want a terua with joy. You want a terua with release. You want a teru with freedom. As I invite you to step out during worship, and you can come down here, just you and God, and you can symbolically kneel down and place that on the stage. And you can walk away knowing that you've taken the first steps of declaring that God has never left you.

He's still with you. Chains are being broken. Amen. And victory is being declared. After worship, we're going to come together. We're going to invite the kids to lead us in a big terura. And so I invite you to stay for that as well. Ava Meno, our father, our king. Father, we thank you for this opportunity to to to revisit your word, the story of you and us, the story of the power of heaven and earth, your kingdom merging heaven and earth. Father God, I ask that on today yum terua, the day of the noise, the day of the clamor, the day of shouting, Father, I ask that you would hear our praise.

You would hear our joy. You would hear our grief. You would hear our sadness. You would hear our anger. You would hear our hopelessness. You would hear us. And as we cry out to you in whatever that looks like, we would be reminded that it is also the Holy Spirit that joins us in those groanings today because you never leave us, forsake us. We thank you, Father, for the opportunity to celebrate this day with you. In the name of Yeshua, our King, we pray. Amen.