Understanding the Role of the Redeemer: A Biblical Exploration

In this sermon, Preston delves into the Biblical concept of the 'Redeemer'. Beginning with an insightful word study on 'redeemer' from the Old Testament, Preston examines its concrete examples in the Hebrew tradition, focusing on the role of the kinsman redeemer. He connects these ancient practices to the New Testament revelation of Jesus Christ as the ultimate Redeemer. Through passages from books like Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Romans, Preston explains how Jesus forgives our sins, adopts us into the family of God, and enables us to share in His inheritance. This sermon aims to deepen understanding of redemption and inspire listeners to model Christ's redemptive acts in their lives.

00:00 Welcome and Introduction
01:17 The Concept of Redeemer in the Old Testament
04:18 Examples of Kinsman Redeemer in Action
15:49 God as the Ultimate Redeemer
20:35 Jesus as Our Redeemer in the New Testament
30:14 Call to Emulate the Redeemer
31:26 Conclusion and Invitation

Transcript

Good morning. If you would go and turn your Bibles to Leviticus chapter 25. That's where we'll be in just a few short moments. But thank you all for being here this morning. If you're visiting with us, we're thankful whatever brings you here this morning. Whether it's family or just a short weekend trip to the lake, we're thankful that you're here and you chose to start your week off in worship in song with us and partaking the table in the supper with us.

I want to thank Owen for his songs. I always know when I'm gonna preach on Sunday that I'm gonna get a text if, if Owen's preaching or leading singing the next day. He's always gonna text me the day before and, and ask me, you know, what am I preaching on? So you can start planning his songs. And he always does a really good job.

And so many, so many of our song leaders, especially our young men, who's such a good job of planning our songs for us to help lead our minds and worship. And I think that definitely came through this morning. I appreciate your participation in our singing this morning as well. Because it was very powerful and really helpful for me this morning.

Well, this morning we're gonna be doing a a i, I've been telling you, I'm trying to preach some different sermon, different types of sermons. So I'm doing, for me, the dreaded word, study sermon this morning. I heard a lot of those growing up and so I don't think I've ever preached one myself just 'cause I was tired of hearing them growing up.

But. I'm gonna try to do one this morning. We're gonna do a word study over the word redeemer. In Hebrew, gale is the word for the kinsman redeemer. We'll talk about in just a few moments and the verb to redeem God. And so we're gonna look at some of these words in the Old Testament. 'cause I think a lot of times we, we throw words around are we sing about redemption or God being our redeemer, Christ being our redeemer.

As we just have done this morning, a lot of times we, we throw these words. Around. And a lot of us know what these words mean. Maybe in part or maybe wholly what they mean, but maybe there's some people among us who don't know those words. Whether it's you're a visitor, you're a newer Christian, or maybe you're just some of our young people here in our congregation, and maybe this word, these words that get thrown around you, it's maybe you're afraid to ask what they mean because you know, everybody else knows what these words mean.

And even still, maybe all us in this room might know what it means to be a redeemer or to redeem someone. But even, you know, familiarity kind of breeds contempt. We, we get to know words really well, but over time, maybe they've started to become abstract to us and maybe they lose their power altogether.

And so words like redeemer or redeem, they, they do take on kind of a more abstract meaning in the New Testament. But in the Old Testament, there are some really concrete examples of what it means to be a redeemer or to redeem someone. And I want to go over this background today to help us kind of ground and have a more solid understanding of how Jesus is our spiritual redeemer and who he is called to be, to take on the role of redeemers ourselves and the way that we interact with our fellow man.

And so we're gonna jump right in this morning and talk about the Old Testament concept of redeemer, these redeemers in the Old Testament. And there's two kind of key points that I want you to think about. When we talk about what it means to go gal, to redeem someone or to take on the role of a, a Goel a, a Goel, a kinsman redeemer.

And first is that to redeem someone, it meant doing something for someone that they were unable to do themselves. You were acting on behalf of someone in a certain situation because they are not able to get themselves out of that situation. And likewise, the underlying motivation beneath these acts of redemption in the Old Testament laws, as we're gonna see in just a second.

Family ties. You redeem the people that are closest to you. You redeem your kin, your next of kin. And so the Kinsman Redeemer acts behalf acts on the behalf of his family. I like what one of my favorite writers Christopher JH Wright says about this individual. He says. Those who are required to take action are not necessarily those responsible for the problem in the sense of being guilty of causing it, but they are responsible under God for those in danger of falling through the cracks of society.

Such persons at risk must be restored in one way or another. And so these people that we're even talking about, they go, ill, he, they act for people who are not able. Act for themselves. And the reason they do that is because they're family. And so there's a lot of different scenarios in which kinsman redeemer is called to act on behalf of his his family.

And we're gonna talk about four examples of those. And I think the most common definition that I heard growing up when you asked him what does it mean to redeem, people would say, you know, to buy back. And that's a really good partial definition because our first two examples are literally about buying something or someone back, purchasing someone back or something back that has been lost.

And one of those examples would be the land inheritance. In the ancient world, you think about how different it is today, people lived through subsistence, subsistence, farming. They their life, whether they experience life or death, depending on, you know, can we make a good crop this year? Can we make food for ourselves?

And things happen. Famines came, there were marauders that came. They stole people's food. Sometimes your crops just failed. And so the lines between life and death for people in the ancient world was really easy. It was really fine. It was easy to fall on hard times. If worse came to worse? Well, the Israelites, well, they'd sell their ancestral land.

Maybe they had debts that they had incurred, and so they'd sell their property. Or maybe they're just trying to survive and so they sell their land. At this time when a Goel is asked to redeem a brother's land, look at Leviticus 25 verse 25. There's a lot of, a lot more laws related to these type of things.

But I'm gonna try and kind of distill these down pretty succinctly for us today. I've also put some references you can compare for yourself on some kind of narrative examples on how these laws play out, if you're wanting some more of those to study in your own time. And so Jeremiah 32 would be a good example of this land inheritance and a redeemer acting on behalf of his family member.

Leviticus 25. 25 says If a brother becomes poor and sells part of his property, then his nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his brother has sold and redeeming land for the Israelites. They had, of course, a practical purpose for, you know, being able to save people's property so they could go on and, and, and not live a life of perpetual poverty.

But it also had a, a theological purpose too, inheriting land. If any of you have land that you've inherited from family, we know, well, it's valuable in that sense, but it's even more so valuable for the Israelites because the land was a gift given to them based on God's promises to Abraham their father.

And so keeping that land within your tribe, within your family, passing that on to your descendants is a way to participate. In the promises God had given to his people. And so it was a, it was very important for the redeemer to step in and to buy that land back so it wouldn't be lost. But not only were there transactions made by the redeemer in terms of land, but also in people, if people had sold their property.

Look in Leviticus 25, 47 through 49, just a few verses down, maybe people had already sold their land. Well, now what do you, what do you sell in the ancient world to survive or to pay debts? Well. I have to sell myself and my family into debt slavery. In the jubilee year laws, they record this kind of downward spiral of poverty where things get worse and worse in a person's life in which a, a redeemer was called to do everything that they could to prevent this from happening.

Or if it has already come to pass to redeem. His kinsmen, they're in verse 35 through 38. I'm just gonna summarize these. They're meant to sustain their kinsmen when they become poor to, to lift them up and treat them as a sojourner within the land. They're not to, they're to lend money to them, but not with interest.

And if maybe they came to a point they needed to sell themselves as a, as a debt slave, well, the kinsman redeemer supposed to buy that that family member as a debt slave, but not treat them. Is a debt slave, but treat them as a hired hand until the next jubilee year. But the worst kind of case scenario, the kind of bottom of this debt slavery situation would be when a brother had sold himself to a foreigner within the land.

And look in verse 47. He says, if a stranger or sojourner with you becomes rich and your brother beside him becomes poor and sells himself to the stranger or sojourner with you, or to a member of the stranger's clan, then after he is sold, he may be redeemed. One of his brothers may redeem him, or his uncle or his cousin may redeem him, or a close relative from his clan may redeem him.

Or if he grows rich, he may redeem himself. So the point is no matter how deep a brother might go in terms of poverty, as long as the redeemer or the family members were able, whoever had the opportunity to, they were to go and, and redeem their kinsmen. And I think these first two examples, they definitely showed them the financial sacrifice.

The kinsman redeemer was supposed to make, but redemption, the Old Testament is a lot bigger than just that idea of buying someone, buying someone or something back. It's more than just a monetary transaction. Redemption was something that was also a matter of life and death. And so the Leverate marriage laws, maybe you're familiar with because of Jesus' teachings on these things.

Labor at marriage was one those situations, you know, death was, as we said, it was a very common reality in the ancient world. It's not like today where people live much older into their, their elder years. But it was not unusual for someone to die a premature death. And there was instances where a husband might die.

Then at that point, if no offspring had been made on behalf of this dead brother or a redeemer was supposed to step in for him and look. In Deuteronomy 25, verse five through six says, if brothers dwell together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger.

Her husband's brother shall go into her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her. In the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. And so as we read that law, what we notice absent is the word redeemer or two redeem.

But that's why these narrative kind of recounting of these laws playing out are really important. If we read Ruth three and four, you'll see the idea, the, the language of redeemer and redemption come up over and over again because that's a, a. Kind of a narrative story that's showing these laws play out.

And so while it's not present here, the idea of redemption is in terms of the live and marriage is present elsewhere in the Old Testament. When we think about Ruth's story in the context of the, the elaborate marriage laws, we know what exposure looked like for women whose husbands had died, who were left without offspring.

The the dangers that they faced that not only was there poverty, but there was also shame, there was alienation from the community. And so Ruth and other women who were in positions where they needed a live redeemer to step in for them, they, they needed redemption. And all these laws, this, this law in particular, I think is really maybe strange to us on the other side of the cross.

But the idea of course, was on the one hand to protect the woman who had been left alone. But also to protect the lineage of the husband. Even in death, the man who had died, he would still have an heir that would carry on the name of his family and his clan, and that his inheritance, as we mentioned, it would continue to be passed on to his descendants so that his lineage would not be blotted out of Israel forever.

Because that's how you live on in the ancient world you live on through your descendants, through your family name. So the live at marriage lives were another kind of situation of life and death, but also was the, the role of the blood avenger, the most hardcore of the four. I think another instance where the redeemer would step in is in, in instances of wrongful death.

Maybe manslaughter or homicide. If you want to turn to Deuteronomy chapter 19, looking verses 11 through 13. In these sort of situations, the the redeemer, the goel, he takes on the role of the Goel hadam, the blood redeemer is literally how it's translated. ESV says Blood avenger. For those guilty who had had soldered somebody unintentionally and, you know, manslaughter type situations, we know they had opportunities to flee to these places called sanctuary cities where they, if they were being pursued by this blood avenger, this kinsman redeemer, they could flee there and they could be protected.

As long as they were inside the city walls, the elders of the city would keep them. Safe. But in the cases of homicide, if someone had had sought out and intentionally killed someone as we're about to read, well they were to be put to death. There was no safety for this type of person. No other blood could pay the price, but the man slayers and so looking dere 19 verse 11, it says, but if anyone hates his neighbor and lies and wait for him and attacks him and strikes him fatally so that he dies and flees into one of these cities.

Then the elders of his city shall send and take him from there and hand him over to the avenger of blood so that he may die. Your eye shall not pity him, but you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from Israel so that he, it may be well with you in, in these type of cases. And in instances of wrongful death, of course, justice had to be made.

But even more, what was important was the shedding of innocent blood. It, it polluted the land. There was real consequences to this type of situation. If you read Second Samuel 21 21, the first part of that chapter actually talks about a famine that arises because of a deed that Saul had done killing some of the gibeonites people breaking that covenant and a famine comes out because of the blood guilt in the land.

They had real adverse effects that required atonement to be made in these sort of situations. The land had to be purified, and there's a lot more we could say about this and it's, it is really strange and foreign to us in our day and age. But the idea is really the point is to eliminate anything in Israel's community life that could threaten their relationship to God in the covenant that they had made with him.

In all of these examples, as strange as they might be for us, and maybe they're hard for us to relate to in some different senses, we understand by reading these that the, the redeemer and whatever role he is called to take, he takes on a very vital role in the life of Israel. He helps keep peace in safety in the in Israel society.

But even more than that, we also understand that Israel, even though they had pragmatic or practical reasons for doing what they were doing, acting as kinsman redeemer, they also had a theological motivation to redeem their kin as well. Why is is that? Well, because Yahweh, Israel's, God, he was their model redeemer, the one who had redeemed them from the from Egypt in the Exodus.

We recall that story. God had redeemed Israel. He had did what, what Israel was unable to do for themselves. He saved them from slavery. His motivation, like the kinsman redeemer, it was, it was because of a kinship agreement that covenant that he had made with their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and keeping his promises to the patriarch God took on the role of the Goel, the kinsman redeemer.

And similar to these Leverett laws on behalf of Abraham and his sons, God made Israel his own firstborn son. He stepped in for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and looked at Israel, their Abraham's descendants, and said, this is my firstborn son. Because their future was threatened, their life had been threatened by Pharaoh In Exodus chapter one.

They had been held in bondage, their children had been killed, thrown into the Nile. They're the, they're fulfilling that commission that God had given in Genesis chapter one, for humanity to be fruitful and multiply. And Pharaoh had been trying to prevent this from happening. He was afraid of what Israel was capable of.

And so he threatened their life and future. And God steps in as this elaborate acting on behalf of Abraham, but also. For the future of the descendants of Abraham's people as well. And so he says in Exodus four he, he's talking to Moses Yahweh says, then you shall say to Pharaoh, thus says the Lord.

Israel is my firstborn son. And I say to you, let my son go that he may serve me. If you refuse to let him go, go. Behold I will kill your for firstborn son. Even more if we kind of follow the story in Exodus, God's own words. In Exodus chapter six, they echo for us a lot of the same responsibilities that we just read about in these redemption laws.

We see the idea of kinship, redemption of slaves, this judgment that God is bringing as a blood avenger and the issue of land inheritance. We see first in Exodus chapter six and verse two, if you'll turn over there. This idea of a kinship bond. Again, the the covenant that he had made with their forefathers being the motivation for why he's coming to save Israel from slavery says God spoke to Moses and said to him, I am Yahweh the Lord.

I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name, the Lord. I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan. In which they lived as sojourners and as we continually see the idea of slaves being freed, he says, moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold his slaves, and I have remembered my covenant.

He goes on to take on the role similar to the blood avenger when he says, save therefore to the people of Israel, I am Yahweh and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them. And here's our word, our redemption word. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment, I will take you to be my people and I will be your God and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.

And then lastly, we see the concern of inheritance of the land. And he says, and I will bring you into the land, which I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord. And so in all of these responsibilities that we just read about and the kinsman redeemer is called to act.

He's meant to embody God's own redemption of Israel and the Exodus. By modeling the true goil, well, in their redemption of Kinsman Israel. One, they showed obedience to Yahweh and they showed thankfulness for the salvation that he had given them. But they also extended the same grace that they had experienced in the Exodus and that they continued to experience in the land with their fellow man.

So with all of these kind of concrete images and the way that that God worked through the exodus and the way he called his people to act, to model his own character, his own divine acts of redemption. With all this background in our head, now, we can kind of turn to the New Testament and see how the New Testament describes Jesus', our redeemer ourselves.

These concrete examples will help us hopefully flesh out how Jesus or flesh out Jesus' own redemption of us. Of course in the New Testament it's written in Greek and so it's a different word. Apo aosis is the word that appears often or lu or lu, excuse me. But we won't focus as much on that as we did in the Old Testament.

But one of the first points I want to kind of highlight and, and shows some parallels between the laws of redemption of Jesus is that Jesus redeems us by forgiving our debt of sin. Turn me in Colossians chapter one. Colossians chapter one. We're actually gonna look at verses 12 through 14 here, and there's plenty of examples we can look at.

We're just gonna look at these two in Colossians in one Peter. But in his, a letter to Colossal Paul is he's bringing up a lot of things about growing and growing and walking in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, the way that the gospel has changed how they lived. And among other things, Paul is here praying for them, and he's praying that these churches would continue.

He says, giving thanks to the father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints and light he has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. And so we got some of the connecting ideas to the Old Testament concept of redemption.

There's this. Domain of darkness. This place from which we are unable to save ourselves from, we can't deliver ourselves out of this place, and yet Jesus comes delivers. He redeems us through the forgiveness of sins. If you look in chapter two, just a page or two over in your Bible, in chapter two, verse 13, Paul even goes on in this letter to refer to this forgiveness of sins.

He says, as canceling the record of debt that stood against us with legal demands. So here, our life, that was our life formerly in SIN is, is kind of talked about metaphorically is a life of debt that needed forgiveness. And so we had those kind of connecting threads. But turn me now to one Peter one, chapter eight, or verse 18 through 19, Peter's talking to Christians who were being persecuted by their local community and he's trying to help them, encourage them to continue to live lives of holiness and godliness in the face of this persecution.

And he calls to mind for them the redemption they have in Christ. And notice in one Peter how Jesus' blood here is talked about as a ransom is how our word lareau is, is translated here. Not so much redemption, although they're connected as we'll see in a second. But Ransome, he says in verse 18, continuing a thought, he says, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways, inherited from your forefathers.

Not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. And though the idea of ransoming here is a little bit it's kind of a little bit different. There is still, the image is still really familiar to us, right? You, when someone's ran, being ransome, they've been taken, right?

And then they need a person with a particular set of skills to come and to save them. If you know, you know, no, they don't need Liam Neeson. Right? Or realistically, they need, just need somebody to come pay the price, who will come and release them from their captor. And here Peter uses the imagery of this ransom to talk about our life, former, formerly under sin, our former futile ways that we inherited from our forefathers that held us prisoner.

And again, this differs a little bit in the imagery from the gole laws 'cause the person's usually willingly selling themself as a slave. But the principle of paying a price for someone to be redeemed is still present, except this time it's not money that's being exchanged. The transaction isn't gold or silver, these perishable things that Peter says, but it's the precious blood of Christ.

It's not, you know, unlike the blood redeemer, it's not the murderer, but it's the spotless lamb of God that pays the price. Here, the redeemer takes it on by, by shedding his own blood, and so Jesus like the kinsman redeemer, he redeems us by forgiving our debt of sin. But also there's the element of kinship as well as being this underlying motivation that Jesus treats us as family through adoption.

In Colossians Paul, he had talked about the kingdom of God in terms of this inheritance, an inheritance that we now have access to because our sins are forgiven. But he says that this inheritance in Romans chapter eight, if you'll turn over there, Galatians chapter four as well, can be a good parallel passage if you wanna study later where some of the similar ideas are being communicated.

This inheritance is a consequence of our adoption into the family of God that we now share in this inheritance because we've been a part, been made a part of the family of God. And so the ideas of kinship and inheritance that we've seen before in the Old Testament laws, they kind of come together here in Romans, chapter eight.

Paul says, so then brothers, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live for all who are led by the spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba Father.

Spirit himself, bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And notice what he says here. And if children then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. And so Paul contrasts this life of, of the flesh with the life and the spirit.

And notice again, those kind of similar concepts related to these Old Testament laws appear again. Those who have life in the spirit, they have freedom from this, this spirit of slavery. They have this kinship through adoption and they have an inheritance with Christ. And just as all these laws that we read, our redeemer Jesus, he takes on this role similar to that of a, a family protector.

He wasn't the one responsible for our sins, but Jesus chose, chose to treat us as a as a destitute family member. I'm sure we probably all got family members that were like, okay, my cousin, you know, Bobby or something, you know, he's just the, he's the family screw up. He's always getting in him himself in a situation, so you have to go pull him out of.

That's kind of how Jesus, you know, he doesn't, he doesn't look, look at us like that, that screw up, that like, oh, here we go again. No. He sees us as that family member, that destitute family member who he had to go after and save. And he did it willingly and gladly, and he redeemed us not to make us, you know, second class members of the household, but had the same relationship with God that he does.

Even more so. I love Romans cadre because he says he, he has made us now a fellow heir with him sharing his inheritance. I have no right to it. I lost every every right that I might have had to in the first place, and yet Christ has redeemed us. He's brought us back and he's allowed us to share once again with his inheritance.

So when we think about all of these Old Testament images, we think about how they kind of foreshadow their copies and images of, of what Christ ultimately came to, to do for us. Well, maybe they feel far removed from us. We might feel these, these laws that we read about are really far removed. But I think we, we see the parallels in Jesus.

We realize that they, they really aren't. We may never have been destitute. We may never have been a slave. We may never have been a victim of violence, but I definitely can tell you that I know what it feels like to have lost my inheritance from God. I know what it feels like to be sold as a slave to my sin.

I know what it feels like to be without hope and certainty about my future. I, I definitely know what it feels like to be subject to death itself. We all know what it feels like to be helpless, to be in a situation we put ourselves in and, and we're not able to do anything about it. We can't save ourselves from the place we put ourselves in.

And while we may not relate to these laws, and maybe they're neither boring to you, I think I, I know y'all know I'm a, a nerd for the Old Testament, so it's interesting to me. But maybe it's not for you. Maybe it's hard to relate to these things, but I know that each and every one of us in this room knows what it feels like to need a redeemer to step in for us on our behalf.

And thank God Jesus was sent to step in as our kinsman redeemer. But not only do we know what it feels like to need redemption, but we all have a responsibility to model him as well. Just like Israel, we've witnessed the great and mighty acts of God as he's come to redeem us through his own son, Jesus, our Savior in Redeemer, and in modeling him, it's not that we in any way can forgive the sins of other people any more than Israel could have brought themselves out of Egypt themselves.

Modeling. Our redeemer is about searching out for those people who can't help themselves, whether that's in a physical kind of situation, a financial maybe type situation, or we in a spiritual situation where they are lost in debt to sin and need to be brought to Jesus so their debt can be paid because he's the only one who has the blood that can pay that price.

But it's also about allowing the grace that Jesus has given us, as, as that that destitute family member, letting that grace motivate us to share our inheritance that's been shared with us, with other people as well, so that they can be adopted into the family of God just as we have been. So this morning I hope we've been able to do two things.

I hope, one, I I hope you've seen the, the beauty and the continuity between the old and the New Testament. The, I picked up a book the other day and the title of the book was called The Old Testament, always Relevant. And I hope you see the relevancy of the Old Testament, how it can ground our faith in the New Testament.

Help us see Christ afresh and more concretely. I hope that secondly, that's helped you see, see the redemption that Jesus has brought for you in, in a more realistic light, something that you can hold onto a little bit more. Thanks be to God for doing all these great and mighty deeds through his ancient people, the Israelites, and bringing them and being His, the, the model redeemer through the Exodus and throughout their story and the exile all the way up to Jesus were these shadows and these copies.

Have led to the revelation of his wondrous plan of redemption. It really is a wondrous and mysterious plan that was revealed in his son, Jesus Christ, our redeemer. This morning, if you want this freedom from the dead of your sin to have back that inheritance that you've lost. If you want a hope for your future and your life to be vindicated from death in the future by the resurrection of the dead.

Well, we can help you with that this morning because we can put you in contact with the one person who can pay that price to have you freed, and that's Jesus Christ, our savior, our redeemer. And so if we can help you with that this morning to help you follow after his footsteps in the waters of baptisms, for the forgiveness of your sins so that you can rise and walk a newness of life, a life of freedom.

For him of life, of self sacrifice and service to one another. Well, we'd love to help you this morning if you'll come now as we stand and as we sing.

I am.