Pierce My Ear, Lord by Allen Greeley
293 | Seven sermon summer surfin’ spectacular
Choose Lifelong Servitude to the Master
Grab your surfboards and pack up your moving pods — the Seven Sermon Summer Surfin' Spectacular continues! This week, podcast fan-favorite Allen Greeley returns to unpack one of the most bizarre and ancient laws in the Torah: the ear-piercing ceremony of Deuteronomy 15. Why would a released slave in ancient Israel voluntarily choose to remain a servant forever? By examining the historical context of debt slavery versus human trafficking, Allen shows how an awl driven into a wooden doorpost reveals the overwhelming goodness of a master. We'll trace this ancient ceremony straight into Paul's argument in Romans 6 to discover what it means to present our bodies as voluntary, lifelong "slaves to righteousness." If you're tired of serving God out of cold duty or fear, this sermon is a refreshing call to declare: "Pierce my ear, Lord — I want to stay in Your house forever!"
Takeaways
The Big Idea: Believers choose lifelong, wholehearted servitude to Christ not out of fear or obligation, but as a joyful response of love to a Master who paid their impossible debt.
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Summer Surfing Welcome
Bryan: Well, cowabunga everyone, and welcome to the Seven Sermon Summer Surfing Spectacular. I'm Bryan Schiele.
Ryan: I'm Ryan Joy
Bryan: And thanks so much for coming back here, everyone, and we've got another sermon here with Allen Greeley, who I think he was, like, the star of the first, uh, Seven Sermon Summer Surfing
Ryan: definitely. Featuring Allen Greeley
Bryan: sermons back to back, and, uh, this time he's contributing a sermon. This one's super cool. It's about earrings. I have no idea what's going on in this one, but, uh, I'm glad you're gonna get to talk to him a little bit more about it just to figure out, like, what was inside of Allen's brain when he wrote this sermon.
Uh, just some super cool stuff.
Vacation Banter
Bryan: I was actually imagining, though, as a sort of a conversation between us before we get started, do you, do you have a place over the summer that's, like, your go-to place if you're gonna vacation? Do you guys do, like, the summer vacations, or you're always kind of, like, sticking around the house?
Ryan: there's a lake house that we really like that we've gotten, like, the last three or four years for, uh, a week, week and a half. We've even gotten it in the winter, which was really interesting because it was, like, the place that you look out and s- usually see a lake where we take kayaks out and, and the kids swim.
Now we were looking out and seeing somebody ice fishing right out our window and other stuff like that. But anyway, yeah, there's a lake house about an hour away we really like and, um, you know, we're, we're gonna head down for a family reunion down, uh, around Ark Encounter this year, um, down around Cincinnati in, in Kentucky.
So that's a new one. But what about you? You have, like, a, a go-to spot for the summer?
Bryan: I don't think we've ever really done anything consistently as a family over the summer. A lot of times for us growing up, it was like the winter we would always go up to Montana as a, uh, as a winter activity over the break there. But like I don't think we've ever really done anything consistently over the summer except for kind of just stick around the house.
But, um,
Ryan: know what's really fun is spending the summer, and this is like your f- your family trip, packing all of your stuff up in a giant pod and then moving it all to a completely new spot in another state. Do you, have you tried that?
Bryan: I, I, I think I should try that. I, I f- that just feels like a blast. I, you, the way you describe it there.
Ryan: So,
Bryan: so
Ryan: so that's what Bryan is spending his whole summer doing actually.
Bryan: Yes, unfortunately.
Theme Staying With Christ
Bryan: So we're talking here in this episode about this moment where we think about our connection with Christ and how, how could we be anywhere else besides Christ's side? And that's sort of the, the idea here as, as his servants, as, as Allen's gonna talk about, as his slaves. And so, you know, if you don't have a go-to place to land over the summer, let's hope that we all develop a go-to place by the side of our Lord.
Excited for this conversation that you're gonna have with Allen, uh, coming up here.
Ear Piercing Law Setup
Ryan: Well, having, uh, been involved in the inaugural Summer Surfing Spectacular, Bryan can say the whole name, I don't know how to, but w- well, well, we're good to ha- It's, it's good to have you back on, Allen, and featuring a sermon here about ear piercing. Not the
Allen: physical kind. No, not, not so much of that. I d- don't wanna discourage anybody from listening.
Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, this one moves from a kind of bizarre Old Testament law right to the heart of what it means to love Jesus and to serve Jesus. And so before we hear the sermon, I wanna ask about this law and how it works out a- and the meaning for our service today. We, we won't give away too much about the law itself.
You can unpack that. Uh, basically, a slave could choose to have their ear pierced to show that they wanna stay in their master's house. But getting into that, you have to deal with this sort of hot button topic of slavery in the Bible. It's something that comes up more often than I might think whenever I talk to skeptics or I read about different things that people are asking questions about, and you start out addressing that.
How do you relate to texts like this, whether it's about slavery or some other strange thing in the Book of Leviticus or whatever, where there's a lot of distance to cover to place yourself in that world just to get started?
Allen: Yeah, it, it's a-- It can be difficult for sure. Um, the first thing though, I know you guys believe this, um, a ton because I listen to you and you guys do this well.
First step is kind of just to think about the original context. So what did it mean to the people in that time, in that moment? Why did they have that law? And it's the most unexciting thing to do in our Bible study is to think about what it meant for someone else. Right. But I think we can jump too far ahead sometimes.
Ryan: Mm-hmm.
Allen: But if you, if, if you can start there and really understand what was going on in that particular culture, why they're being given this law, then some of the applications become a little bit w- more specific and acute, uh, for, for our time. So I think that's the best way to, to go about, you know, any, any ancient thing, is just to think about it in its original context first.
Ryan: So I shouldn't just flip open my Bible and whatever it says, you know, uh, go and get the all and go against the doorpost and pierce your ear and just take that literally. I should figure out what is authoritatively be- being said to its original, original au- uh, audience. That's, that's a really helpful just hermeneutic tip.
And then I guess moving on from there to that final step where we are thinking about how this applies to us and, you know, th- th- so many of these lessons have really rich points for us and, and this is no exception. And as I listened, it felt to me like the sermon is really about two views of serving Christ, and I, I'm sure you see both all the time.
I see it. I've lived with both in my life. One where we serve mostly from fear, and the other where we serve from love, and that's not to say there's no fear of God or all of those kinds of things, but w- I don't wanna live in I have to or what will he do to me if I don't? I wanna live in why would I ever want to be anywhere but with you in your house?
And that's really what this, where this sermon ends. And I just wanted to ask you, kind of thinking personally and about our listeners as they start to take this to heart, how does that decision to follow the Lord in love change our walk with him? What difference does it make for us if every person listening lives with that prayer from today on, "Pierce my ear, Lord.
I choose you as master"?
Allen: Well, I think it's the only way to serve. I, I'm not saying that- You know, there is no fear of judgment, um-
Ryan: Sure ...
Allen: or there, uh, obviously the scripture is just full of speaking about a reverent, respectful fear- Mm-hmm ... of the Lord. Um, but when it comes to punishment or when it comes to, you know, eternal life and the goodness of God versus, uh, serving him from, from fear of, of punishment, there's only one choice.
So I didn't bring this up in the, in the lesson, but as people listen to the sermon, um, and, and have it unpacked, this, this will make more sense. But in that Old Testament law, when a slave wanted to stay, they're only given one context for wanting to stay. Mm-hmm. And, and, and if this context in this Deuteronomy, this weird Deuteronomy law can be taken forward, and I, and I try to do a, a good job of making sure people see just how, um, d- just how direct the parallels are to the language that Paul uses.
There's only one motivation for that slave wanting to stay, and that's the goodness of the master.
Ryan: Yeah.
Allen: Um, and I think it just, it, it, it changes everything. I know it has for, for me. Um, I know certain segments of Christians can get a little scared of talking too much about how good God is and his love and his grace and his mercy, um, because they view it as a way of excusing certain things, but that is never, never the context, uh, the correct way of viewing his goodness.
It's always, "I wanna give myself to you. You are so good." And so when you see in that, in this weird Deuteronomy law about why these slaves wanted to stay, it's the only context, uh, th- that we're given, and I think that's very significant to, to our application as we think about staying with him and serving him all the days of our life.
Ryan: Well, that's, it's beautiful and helpful, and I think probably whets our appetite perfectly to lead into this sermon. So thanks again for being on and, uh, for sharing this sermon, which I know is gonna bless all of our listeners.
Reading Ancient Texts
Ryan: Pierce My Ear, Lord, I Want to Stay Forever by Allen Greeley.
Allen: Ponder with me one of the ancient and strange laws in the Torah about slavery and the beautiful privilege it is to choose servitude, to choose slavery in God's house. Last weekend, I was in Boston with my wife, and it was an absolutely lovely time. I'd never spent much time in Boston before. I was there a little over 20 years ago with some buddies for a baseball game at Fenway, and then we left right away.
So I don't remember realizing that it was such an old city, and I don't mean the city itself. I mean some of the things inside the city. There are still buildings and parks and streets and church buildings and castles that still exist that were built in the 1600s. The 1600s. When I think about the birth of the nation with the Declaration of Independence in 1776, I oftentimes forget just how much history there was here in America prior to that.
So as I was walking through Boston, seeing signs and buildings and streets that go back to the early 1600s, I'm just being blown away by their age. And while I'm taking all of this in, I had several moments of reflection about how old the scripture is. Scripture dates back thousands of years, and we don't even bat an eye to speak about the dates, you know, associated with the Old and New Testaments.
I speak about first century Christianity and first century Jewish practices and Second Temple Judaism, which predates Jesus. We speak about Old Testament wars and cultures and the dates associated with them, and we speak about all of these things, which are thousands of years old, without the age of it kind of taking our breath away.
But then I see a building which goes back to the early 1600s in Boston, and all of a sudden I'm stunned and I'm shocked and I'm impressed. I say all of that to say, isn't it stunning that we are studying such an ancient book authored thousands of years ago in cultures vastly different from ours, under governments vastly different from ours, and yet here we are thousands of years later with these texts in our hands, reading them and studying them and praying over them.
Fascinating. And as, uh, as impressed as I was standing in front of those buildings in Boston from almost four hundred years ago, as impressed as I was of those things, the fact that so many dedicate their lives to reading and studying and living by documents from thousands of years ago is way more impressive than some building, you know, four hundred years ago.
And the fact that they are as relevant, the scriptures, the fact that they are as relevant as they are, that is all the more impressive. It's shocking, really. Shocking that such ancient documents can still have an, an influence on us and still wield an influence in our society, as evil as it is. I think it's just one more reason to believe the scriptures are the word of God.
I realize that may not be the best reason. I don't think it's the best reason to believe scripture is the, the word of God. There are better reasons to believe that. But the relevancy of these ancient texts a-and the influence that they still wield is definitely evidence of something special. If someone was a skeptic, and I realize we don't have very many skeptics listening to this podcast, but if someone was a skeptic in your family or amongst your friends, coworkers, it should give people pause that such ancient texts are as relevant and influential today.
Living Active Word
Allen: Um, but is it that ancient, though? Think about this. The Hebrews writer says in Hebrews 4:12 that the Word of God is living and active. I wanna think about that first phrase there. I know the verse is longer than that. The verse goes on to talk about how the Word of God i- is like a sword that has two edges, and it's so sharp and effective that this sword can cut to the innermost part of our being, to our spirits, souls, thoughts, intentions of our heart.
Those are all words that come from the last part of that verse. Hear those again. Spirits, souls, thoughts, intentions. The Word of God is getting to all of those, to our innermost being if we will allow it. Well, how can a text so ancient touch us so deeply? Because in one sense, it's not ancient. This is where I wanna call your attention to that first phrase again.
It's living and it's active. He doesn't call it like, "Ah, it's really, really old." No, it's living and it's active. We don't call ancient things living and active. We call them old, dead, out of date, outdated, irrelevant, but we certainly don't call ancient things living and active. So I, I realize when the documents were penned is ancient, and the cultures they lived in were ancient to us, but scripture's purpose, its goal, its aim, its ability, scripture's ability to cut to our innermost being, that is as alive and active as it ever was.
This lesson is not about evangelism, but I can't hardly make this point about the living Word of God without making the application of evangelism. The Word of God in the 21st century is just as powerful in doing what it was always meant to do, touch human hearts. And going back to the apologetics, the, the evidence is part of this, all of this, going back to the apologetics, from a God that claims to have been alive, always been alive, you would expect that of his message, wouldn't you?
Scripture claims that God was, God is, God always will be. That's partly what his name means, Yahweh. Well, if God is past, present, and future, you would expect him to produce a message that is always relevant, always active. You would expect him to deliver us a message that is past, present, and future too, and he has.
Here we are, thousands of years later, studying it as something with present-day relevancy. Well, why do I bring up how relevant the scriptures are when we're about to study something about slavery? If you heard my opening lines of the, of the podcast, this episode, I mentioned looking into one of the most ancient and strange laws about slavery in the law of Moses, and I, I say all of what I did about the relevancy and the power and the ability of scripture in current day to say that as ancient and weird as the law is that we're about to look at, the principles behind it are as alive and active as, as they ever were.
It's, it's sharper than a two-edged sword, and hopefully it will pierce us. Hopefully this message will pierce us to the innermost spots of our heart.
Deuteronomy Slave Release
Allen: The text I'm talking about has to do with slaves that wanted to remain slaves and an ear-piercing ceremony that indicated permanent servitude. Ear-piercing ceremony and wanting to remain as slaves?
What? I'm talking about Deuteronomy fifteen. As most everyone is familiar with, every week had a Sabbath day, a rest day. They worked for six days, and then on the seventh they rested, imitating what God did in creation. What many people are not f- as familiar with, uh, was Sabbath years. And I'm not talking about the year of Jubilee, which happened every fiftieth year.
I'm talking about the Sabbath years that came around every seven years. So just like there was a Sabbath day that came around every week, every seventh day was the, the Sabbath, there was Seb- Sabbath years on the seventh year, and very special things were supposed to happen during those seventh years, such as the release of debt and the release of any slave.
So here is the law stated as clearly as ever in the Old Testament. This is Deuteronomy fifteen and verse twelve. "If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you." So they could have Hebrew slaves as a way of people paying off debts, but that slavery was supposed to last until the seventh Sabbath year.
So y- if you had a s- slave start working for you in year three, you know, in between the Sabbath years, then you could have them as a slave in year four and five and six as well. But in the seventh year, no matter when they started working for you, in the seventh year, they had to go free Now, we all need to understand because of American culture and, and American history, I think it's appropriate to point this out.
This is not human trafficking that's being discussed in Deuteronomy fifteen. This is not human trafficking. Like, I've got a human here that's worth ten thousand dollars. Who wants him or her? That is not what the law of Moses permitted. What the law of Moses permitted was slavery to pay off debts. So if somebody owed you money they could not pay, they could work for you for six years or however many years until the seventh Sabbath year.
Servitude or slavery under the law of Moses was permitted as a way of paying off these kinds of debts, and that's why in the context about paying off debts, you almost always have a context that mentions slavery. Is it-- It was a way of paying off money that you owed. So again, we're not talking about human trafficking.
We're speaking about someone being in debt, not being able to pay the debt, and then offering themselves as labor as a way of paying off the debt. It would be like me owing you a hundred dollars, and if I'm not able to pay off that hundred dollars, then I, I might come to you and say, "Hey, I'll, I'll mow your lawn ten times for free to eliminate that debt."
However, no matter the amount of money owed, no matter the amount of time served as a slave, once that seventh year came around, all debt was erased. All slaves were set free.
Ear Piercing Ceremony
Allen: Keeping people in permanent debt and permanent slavery was illegal under the law of Moses unless Unless someone wanted to voluntarily remain as a slave.
Unless someone wanted to voluntarily and permanently remain as a slave. Well, why would someone in their right mind wanna permanently be a slave when freedom is being offered in the seventh year? Evidently, some masters were gonna be so gracious, some masters were gonna be so merciful that some slaves would want to stay.
Some slaves were gonna be so comfortable in serving the person that they owed money to that they w- and they would be taken care of so well, that they would not want to leave. And so God offers an ear-piercing ceremony as a s- as a way of saying, "I wanna permanently remain as a servant in this house." So this is Deuteronomy 15:16-17.
Moses says, "But if he," the slave, "if the slave says to you, 'I will not go out from you,' because he loves you and he loves your household, since he is well off with you, then you shall take an awl and put it, and put it through his ear into the door, and he shall be your slave forever. And to your female slave you shall do the same."
That is, females were to get the same offer as the male. So every seventh year, you know, if you had been in debt and you had to work as a slave, um, couldn't pay the debt, your debt was canceled, and you were set free from your slavery. Hallelujah. I mean, what a gracious and merciful and compassionate law. I, I made this point in a Bible class recently.
It was not on the podcast, but there is not an ancient law that even comes close to the gracious, merciful things that the Law of Moses contained in it. Nothing even comes close to these gracious offerings in the ancient Near East. Nothing God's law in the Torah stands supreme in its mercy and compassion in comparison to other ancient Near Eastern laws.
We have a tendency to look back and say, "Well, look how archaic the Old Testament is." Uh, we might even call it brutal or harsh at times. But when you compare the law of Moses to other ancient Near Eastern laws, their neighbors, it stands supreme in its compassion. And I like to point that out whenever I can, because too oftentimes the Old Testament gets a bad rap for being harsh.
I mean, that, that's other people's description, not mine. But the people who make that criticism are not thinking about it in terms of other ancient laws, their, their neighbors. They're looking at it from the wrong perspective. So the stipulation was, getting back to Deuteronomy 15, if you were a debt slave and you loved your master, and your master loved you, and your master loved your family, was kind to your family, and you were well off with your master, life in your master's house was not all bad.
They loved you, and you were appreciated, and you were taken care of. You could stay in that house forever. And if that was the decision, the law was that they would take an awl and pierce the ears of the slave against the door of the house. An awl is basically a nail. Um, not an exact parallel, but think about a, a nail.
It was a really sharp tool with a really sharp, uh, point on it for punching holes in things like leather or animal skins. When animal skins got really dried out, they'd become hard and tough like, like leather. And to punch a hole in it, you had to use an awl. So think about punching a hole like in a leather belt.
You'd have to have something pretty sharp to punch a hole in a, in a, in a leather belt. So they would take the, the slave, put their ear up against the door of the house, and then punch a hole in that ear as a sign they have chosen to stay. And it's not, it's not like you're re-upping, you know, for a contract of seven more years until the next Sabbath year.
This was a permanent decision. You better be convinced you wanted to stay. So if you saw a fellow Israelite with a hole in their ear, you knew, "Hey, that's a, that's a permanent slave right there." And you would also know their master has... why their master has not released them in the seventh Sabbath year.
It wasn't like they were being disobedient to the s- to the slave.
Romans 6 Parallels
Allen: It was a free will choice of, of the slave themselves Now I want to take everything that we just spoke about and I want to package it in language that Paul uses about the life of a Christian. Specifically, the ideas about debt slavery prior to coming into the master's house, the opportunity to leave the master's house, and the willingness to stay permanently in the house.
Here are those three things one more time. Debt slavery prior to the master's house, the opportunity to leave the master's house, but the willingness to stay permanently in the master's house. And you can probably already guess where we're going with those three phrases, and the reason you can guess so easily where we're headed is because all of those concepts are on the lips or the pen of the Apostle Paul in many places.
But I think the clearest one is Romans 6. If you're following along, please turn over to Romans 6. We'll be there in just a second. We don't talk enough about the ending of Romans 6. We talk a lot about the beginning of Romans 6 a ton because it's, it's such a clear teaching on, on baptism. But in my experience, this, this is just mine, we haven't spoken enough about the last part of Romans 6.
The, the big picture idea here of, of, in, in this chapter from Paul is that we should not go back to the sinful lifestyle that we died to when we became a Christian. This is the, the question in verse two. He asks, and I quote, "How can we who died to sin still live in it?" If we actually died to sin when we became a Christian, why would you return to the sinful lifestyle that you died to?
Doesn't make any sense. And then Paul retells what they did to become a Christian. Here's what you did when you became a Christian. You did exactly what Christ did. You died, you were buried, and you were resurrected. As Christ died on the cross, we died with Jesus to our sins. As Christ was buried in the tomb, so we are buried with Jesus when we are buried in the waters of baptism.
As Christ resurrected from the dead, so we are raised with Christ from the waters of baptism, our grave, our tomb, to walk in newness of life. Christ died, we died with him when we died to sin. Christ was buried, we were buried with him in baptism. Christ was raised, we were raised with him when we came out of our burial of our baptism.
We've got a new life, just like Christ. All of these amazing images and parallels just jump right off the page, and they're right there, and they're so easy to see. We died with Jesus, we're buried with Jesus, we're raised with Jesus when we repented and were baptized into him And that's normally why we come to Romans six, and praise God for Romans six.
It's one of the clearest images of what people are doing when we obey the gospel. But the question now is, which Paul already introduced to us in verse two, was this. "Okay, now that we've done all of that in the, in, in obedience to the gospel, what now? Do we just go back to our old lives now? Do we just revert back to old habits now?
What do we do now that we've obeyed?" And Paul's gonna say, "No, we, we don't go back to what we died to." But instead, when we chose to obey the gospel, we made the decision to have our ears pierced. We made the free will decision, "I want to stay in God's house as an obedient slave." Listen to Romans six now, picking up in, in this last part, Romans six verse 15 and 16.
"What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means. Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin which leads to death or of obedience which leads to righteousness?" For Paul, I want you to notice this, for Paul, s- slavery is not the choice.
The choice is, who do you wanna be a slave to? Christ and his marvelous love and grace and mercy, or do you wanna serve and be a slave to the monstrosity that is sin, that will inevitably lead you to death? But notice that slavery is not the choice. You and I will be a slave. The choice is, to steal a phrase from Joshua in the great sermon where he said, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord," he said, "Choose you this day whom you will serve."
Can I paraphrase just for a second? Choose your slavery. So allow me to talk about this passage in Romans six in the Deuteronomy terms of that slave law in order to be ultra clear about the point that I see Paul making. When we become a Christian, you're in God's house now. As Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy three, "The household of God is the church of the living God."
And why did you make that decision? Why did you make the decision to be in God's house? He paid your debt. That's how people became slaves of their master in the Old Testament. You either owed your master a huge debt or your master had paid off your debt and, and you were repaying him that way. However you wanna look at it, Christ paid the ransom.
We owe him everything. He gave us everything in Christ. And through obedience of the gospel, you started serving in God's house, but oh, you can leave whenever you want You can go back to your old way of living anytime you want. And your debt is always paid by Christ if you ever wanna come back. You can always leave, and that will lead to death, the ending of verse sixteen.
Just like it always does outside of God's house, it leads to death. But you can always come back because your debt is always paid in Christ. And because you have that amazing grace, and it is amazing, should you leave the house of God? Is that what we should do? After all, I mean, the debt's already paid for, and we've got grace available to, for me to return, and maybe I should leave the house and then come back after a while.
Maybe I should leave the house for decades and then maybe come back Well, while that is available, you, you coming back, Paul says that's not the decision you made. Paul says when you became a Christian, you presented the members of your body as a free will slave to God, much like the slave did in, in Deuteronomy 15 that wanted to stay permanently because of how great the master was to him and his family.
And you too made the decision when you became a Christian to become a free will permanent slave. I'm dropping down now to verse 19 in Romans 6. He says, "I'm speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations." Let, let me pause it here. Um, I am too. In this lesson, I, I'm speaking in human terms in this lesson.
We're using Deuteronomy 15 and all of its physical laws and physical terms to help us think through these things. It's like Paul is telling the Roman church, "If I had to put this in all spiritual language, I, I don't think you'd really understand it because of your limitations." And no offense, I don't think the American Church is any better than the Roman Church.
We, we need these physical analogies to help us understand better. We need these physical parallels to help us see what we are committed to in obeying the gospel. Now, finishing verse 19 says, "I'm, I'm speaking in human terms here for your limitations," and now quote again, "For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, leading to more lawlessness," and that's where sin ends up.
It just keeps getting worse and worse. So now, last part of verse 19, "So now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification." Did you hear that last part? A- I, I know you heard it audibly. Did you hear it with faith?
Pierce My Ear Commitment
Allen: Paul says, "You took the members of your body," okay? "And you said, 'I'm all yours to sin.'"
That's what happened before your conversion. That's what happened prior to being a Christian. You took your members of your body and you said, "Sin, I'm all yours." But now that you've obeyed the gospel, Paul says, "You took your body and you told the Lord, 'All right, I'm all yours. All my body, everything that is mine, my mind, my body, my heart, my soul, my strength, it's all yours.
Here's my ear,' as it were. 'Do it.' You know, 'I've got my eyes closed, got my fist clenched. I'm biting down on a piece of wood. Go ahead and impale my ear, God.'" After all, he was impaled for you While we're talking about piercing and impaling, we might as well bring that up, the greatest reason to offer him up, to offer ourselves up to him.
Impale my ear. I want to be in your house now. This is how Paul is describing the commitment when we obey the gospel. I never want to leave. You're so good to me, God. You take care of me. You paid my ransom debt. You were impaled for me. So go ahead, impale my ear. I never want to leave. And I don't. I don't want to leave, and by God's grace, I won't.
God bless
Wrap Up And Farewell
Bryan: All right, well, yet again, uh, an amazing sermon from Allen. Really appreciate him jumping onto the podcast. Um, if you wanna find out more about where Allen's preaching, uh, we'll have links to that in the show notes so that you can go hear more of Allen's sermons there or go, uh, tune into his podcast.
Thanks, uh, everyone for tuning in. Wherever you are this summer, hope you are having a blast. Looking forward to coming back for another season of the podcast here in short order, and until next episode everyone, may the Lord bless you and keep you
Ryan: Shalom