Sunday Morning, January 17, 2021 AM

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Michael Dirrim Pastor of Sunnyside Baptist Church OKC “Praise the LORD, Our Help and Shield!​” Part 4 Psalm 115:9-18

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Good morning, everyone. It's good to see all here worshiping with us at Sunnyside Baptist Church this morning.
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If you're joining us on live stream, we're glad that you're watching as well. A few announcements as we get started this morning, come back tonight for our evening service at 530.
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Be glad to share and fellowship with you then. Coming up Wednesday, this Wednesday, again, it's dinner for the whole church, not just the
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TAG families. So you are welcome to come. That starts at 545 in the evening and then
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Bible study and prayer for the adults and TAG for the kids. That's at 630. Our fighter verse for this week comes from the book of John, John chapter one, verses 12 and 13.
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But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
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So good verse to memorize this week. Church directory, there are some updates that are going to be coming.
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If you need to update information as far as like phone number or address, or even just to be included in the church directory.
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If you weren't in the last one, be sure and let Tristan Call know her contact information is in the bulletin.
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Our Christmas card box that's going to remain at the back of the auditorium. You're welcome to use that to give cards of encouragement or thank you or sympathy to members of the church.
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In addition to that, if you haven't already picked it up, your 2020 church contribution report maybe for tax purposes is back there as well.
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So be sure and pick that up. Looking ahead to a Sunday night, January 31st, two things going on then we'll have an all church music night.
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So if you have something special music wise that you'd like to share with our church, feel free and let
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Lisa Barcelo know regarding that. And then after service that night, there's also a truth group. So young adults, college aged kids, if you guys are interested in attending that.
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Related to that, there's a few spots left. If you would like to help contribute to a meal for a truth group, they'll eat about anything.
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I'm sure I've got a teenage son, so I know what that's like. So hot dogs, pizza, whatever, keep it simple.
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If you would like to help with that, please let Patty Hines know. And then finally,
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Operation Christmas Child, we just got done with Christmas, but we're going to get a head start on Christmas 2021,
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Operation Christmas Child. Jill Smoot and some of the other ladies have thought it'd be a good idea from month to month to kind of set a box out in the church foyer and sort of have items designated for you to donate for that month.
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So I think this month is maybe bars of soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes, washcloths.
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And then in February, it may be something different. But with the plan being we get to November, December timeframe, and we'll have a lot of stuff to sort of just assembly line and put together these shoe boxes for these kids.
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So feel free to give towards that. Any other announcements this morning that I might have missed?
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All right. It's good to be together, to worship together. We're going to have a time just to prepare our hearts in prayer for our morning worship.
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And then after we're done with that, Randy will open us in prayer. Father, we just want to thank you so much for the privilege of meeting together today and coming to worship you.
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And I pray that you just help us just to glorify you today in everything that we do.
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Thank you so much for Jesus and for what he's done for us. Thank you that we can come to you with all of our burdens, all of our cares.
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But Father, this time, we just want to worship you and praise you and thank you for your goodness to us.
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I pray, Father, that you would bless us today as we hear your word. And I pray that we would not only hear your word, but we would be hearers of the word.
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And Father, make us faithful witnesses for you throughout this week. Father, our nation is going through a lot of turmoil, but we just want to trust you.
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And I pray that we would be witnesses that would bring glory to you. I pray that you give wisdom to our leaders.
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Father, I just want to pray for our time together this morning that you would just speak through Brother Michael, and we thank you for him.
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Thank you for his family, and we pray your blessings upon them. I pray that you would encourage our hearts as we trust in you, and we ask it in Jesus' name.
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Would you stand with me for our call to worship? We're continuing in Psalms chapter 57.
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The Psalms is Psalm of David, wrote,
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I believe, wrote this while he was fleeing from King Saul in a cave.
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And so many of you have faced a lot of trials and various things in the past year and continuing on to this year.
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And so we just look to God's word this morning to see what
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David did. Read with me together. My soul is in the midst of lions.
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I lie down and ferry beasts, the children of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords.
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Be exalted, O God, above the heavens. Let your glory be over all the earth.
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And let's do that this morning. Let's sing, be exalted, O God, and also our
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God, our help in ages past. I will give thanks to thee,
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O Lord, among the people. I will sing praises to thee among the nations.
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For thy steadfast love is great, is great to the heavens.
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And thy faithfulness, thy faithfulness to the clouds.
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Be exalted, O God, above the heavens.
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Let thy glory be over all the earth.
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Be exalted, O God, above the heavens.
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Let thy glory be over all the earth.
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Ages past, our hope for years to come.
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Our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home.
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Under the shadow of thy throne, thy saints have dwelt secure.
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Sufficient is thy arm alone, and our defense is sure.
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Before the hills in order stood, for us received her frame.
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From everlasting, thou art God, to endless years the same.
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Time like candy to rolling stream, bears all its sons away.
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They fly forgotten as the dream dies at the opening day.
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Ages past, our hope for years to come.
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Be thou our guide, while life shall last, and our eternal home.
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If you have your Bibles with you this morning, would you please turn to the book of Deuteronomy, in the
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Old Testament, Deuteronomy chapter 31, and be reading verses 1 through 13.
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So Deuteronomy 31, verses 1 through 13.
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So Moses continued to speak these words to all Israel. And he said to them,
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I am 120 years old today. I am no longer able to go out and come in.
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The Lord has said to me, you shall not go over this Jordan. The Lord your
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God himself will go over before you. He will destroy these nations before you, so that you shall dispossess them.
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And Joshua will go over at your head, as the Lord has spoken. And the
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Lord will do to them as he did to Sihon and Og, the kings of the Amorites, and to their land when he destroyed them.
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And the Lord will give them over to you. And you shall do to them according to the whole commandment that I have commanded you.
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Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the
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Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.
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Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel, Be strong and courageous, for you shall go with his people into the land that the
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Lord has sworn to their fathers to give them. And you shall put them in possession of it.
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It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.
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Do not fear or be dismayed. Then Moses wrote this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carried the ark of the covenant of the
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Lord and to all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them at the end of every seven years, the set time in the year of release, at the
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Feast of Booths, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place that he will choose, you shall read this law before all
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Israel in their hearing. Assemble the people, men, women, and little ones, and the sojourner within your towns, that they may hear and learn to fear the
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Lord your God, and be careful to do all the words of this law. And that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the
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Lord your God, as long as you live in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess.
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Let us pray. Lord God Almighty, how we thank you for your word.
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How grateful we are that we are able to have your word, to hold it in our hands, to hear it, to read it, to study it, to memorize it, to meditate upon it.
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How grateful we are, Lord, that we don't have to wait seven years to hear it read, but that day by day, moment by moment, we have access to your word.
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Lord, may we walk in your truth, that your name would be glorified, and that Christ would be exalted.
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Lord, in this passage that we've read this morning, we see a change in leadership from Moses to Joshua.
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And yet, even as these men were in that position of leading the people of Israel, Lord, it is you who went before both of them.
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It is you, who was their help and their shield, their provider, their protector.
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Lord, as we in this country have a change in leadership this week,
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Lord, remind us again that we are grateful for people who serve in positions of leadership, that we as your people look to you as our head.
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You are our sovereign. You are the lawgiver. You are the judge.
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And so, Lord, we look to you, and we pray for your grace to be poured out upon our country.
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Lord, we confess that we are a people who have, in many ways, departed from your ways.
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And so we pray for repentance. We pray for revival. We pray,
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Lord, that you would rend the heavens and come down. Lord, we don't put our trust in horses.
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We don't put our trust in military might.
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Our trust is in you. Our national motto declares it, but in many ways, we have forsaken that.
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Lord, would you restore us to yourself? Lord, thank you for the blessing of being able to gather together this morning.
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May we be faithful to pray for our country. Not that America would be great, but that America would make your name great.
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And we give you glory and honor and blessing. In Jesus' name, amen.
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You may be seated. Our next song looks at Christ, the sure and steady anchor.
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Oh, we've got a mariner out here. A ship or boat has, there's another mariner out there.
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Our ship or boat has an anchor to keep it from drifting into the rocks and getting crushed.
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Like you're sleeping at night on the boat and you don't want to drift into the rocks overnight.
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The anchor is solid. It's heavy. It's firm. It's going to keep you from drifting.
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Also on a boat, we'll see here is this my ballast of assurance.
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A ballast is like a weight that's in the lower part of the boat to keep it from tipping over.
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You don't want to capsize if you're on a boat. But most importantly,
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Christ is the shore of our salvation. Ever faithful, ever true.
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We will hold fast to the anchor. She'll never be removed. Sing with me together.
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And my sails, they'll all be torn. In the suffering, in the sorrow, when my sinking hopes are few.
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I will hold fast to the anchor. It shall never be removed.
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Christ the sure and steady anchor while the tempest rages on.
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When temptation claims the battle and it seems the night is won.
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Deeper still than goes the anchor, though I trust things that are cursed.
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I will hold fast to the anchor. It shall never be removed.
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Christ the sure and steady anchor through the flood of unbelief.
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Oh would somehow, oh my soul now, lift your eyes to Calvary.
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This my ballast of assurance. See His love forever moved.
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I will hold fast to the anchor. It shall never be removed.
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Christ the sure and steady anchor as we face the wave of death.
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When these trials give way to glory and we draw our final breath.
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We will cross that great horizon, clouds behind and lights ignored.
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And the calm will be no better for the storm that we endure.
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Christ the sure of our salvation, ever faithful, ever true.
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We will hold fast to the anchor.
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It shall never be removed.
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Let's go to the Lord together in prayer. Father, I thank you for those that you have brought together here today.
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And I thank you for those who cannot be here due to distance and due to sickness and prudence.
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Father, I thank you for each and every one of them. And I pray that you would encourage us. I pray that you would have your way in our lives through your word.
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That you would build us up and grow us up together into Christ who is our head.
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And I thank you, Father, that not only is he our head, but he is also our anchor. Thank you for the hope that we have in our
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Savior Christ. And I pray today that you would, by the power of your
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Holy Spirit, that you would sanctify our thinking, our attitudes, and our way of living.
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That you would help us to follow Christ. That in all things, the light of Christ would shine forth in our lives.
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And I pray for these mercies. I pray for these graces. In the name of Jesus Christ, the one with whom you are well pleased.
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Amen. I invite you to open your Bibles, Psalm 115.
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We'll be looking at verses 12 and 13. This morning, verses 12 and 13.
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The title of this sermon is just one more part in our look at this psalm.
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Wherein the theme is that we praise the Lord as our hope and our shield. He is our hope and our shield.
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And we are repeatedly exhorted to trust in the Lord as our help and our shield.
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But how do we do that? How do we begin trusting in the Lord as our help and our shield?
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Day after day. From moment to moment. How do we trust in the Lord that He indeed is our help and that He is our shield?
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We begin by praising Him accordingly. By remembering who
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He is and what He has done. And praising Him as our help and our shield.
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Psalm 115 is part of the great Hallel. A collection of psalms that remember the goodness of God in light of the
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Passover. And the exodus of the children of Israel. The redemption of the children of Israel up out of Egypt.
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This is a portion in the psalms that teaches us the very basics of praise. What does it mean to worship
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God? What does it mean to bless God? What does it mean to give the hallelujah to God?
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So we are learning how to worship the Lord on His terms. We are considering Christ through the focus on Passover.
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And this key theme and this key term keeps coming back to us. That of hallelujah, praise the
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Lord. Psalm 115 in particular, you see in verses 1 -3, teaches us about worship.
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That it is not our glory. Worship is not about us, it's not about our works, about who we are, but about who
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God is. That's the very basic starting point of worship. Not to us, not to us, but to your name, give glory.
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It's verses 1 -3 and then verses 4 -8 show us the futility of our works, the works of our hands.
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The best we can do, the best craftsmanship that we can accomplish in silver and gold are nothing but dead foolish idols.
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Nothing praiseworthy there. Nothing that should attract our worship there. No, not our works, not the work of our hands, but the works of the
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Lord are praiseworthy. Verses 9 through the end of the psalm, His works of creation,
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His works of redemption, all the blessings that He gives to His people. Oh, these are praiseworthy. And it's not about us, it's still not to us.
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It's to His name that we are to give glory for all of the works that He does. In light of that,
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I invite you to stand with me if you're able, and I'm going to read verses 12 -18 of Psalm 115.
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These are the words of our Sovereign and Savior, Jesus Christ, through His prophet, by His Spirit.
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This is the word of the Lord. The Lord has been mindful of us. He will bless us.
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He will bless the house of Israel. He will bless the house of Aaron. He will bless those who fear the
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Lord, the small together with the great. May the Lord give you increase, you and your children.
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May you be blessed of the Lord, maker of heaven and earth. The heavens are the heavens of the
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Lord, but the earth He has given to the sons of men. The dead do not praise the
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Lord, nor do any who go down into silence. But as for us, we will bless the
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Lord from this time forth and forever. Praise the Lord. This is the word of the
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Lord. Praise be to God. You may be seated. I assume that some of you, that many of you, have been tuning the dial, tuning into the prophetic weather station lately.
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Have you heard the reports? The forecast? The forecast is mostly bad, with an increasing risk of disaster.
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There's a 95 % chance of pain and suffering, followed by ridicule and further loss. This system is being pushed through by an even bigger front of tyranny and persecution.
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Recommendations include staying in bed and waiting for the rapture. Heard that report lately?
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I don't know about you, but I think I'm tired of listening to reruns. I'm tired of listening to reruns.
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That particular script has been going out repeatedly for the last 200 years. You know, at some point, someone's got to go out there and turn off the car alarm.
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It keeps going off for no good reason. Erroneous sounds need to cease.
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This kind of thinking that is unbiblical needs to stop. In the name of Christ, our
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Sovereign and our Savior. Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 13, or chapter 10,
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I want us to consider what is written here. Hebrews 10, verse 19 to 25.
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Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he inaugurated for us through the veil that is his flesh, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.
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Now listen. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope, the confession of our hope, the confession of our hope without wavering.
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Why? For he who promised is faithful. Why do we hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering?
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Not because of any news report you're going to read, not because of anything you're going to listen to on the radio or scan on the internet.
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He who promises faithful and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
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What is this alien liturgy that has become sacred in the church where we look at one another and we say things like, well,
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I wouldn't get my hopes up. What is holy about that?
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What is biblical about that? What is righteous about that? Well, I wouldn't get my hopes up.
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Or don't get your hopes up. Who begins studying
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Psalm 115? Look, we are to praise the Lord as our help and our shield.
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That's difficult. It's difficult to trust the
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Lord as our help and our shield. We have to praise him accordingly.
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We have to think about who he is, make right application. And as we have zeroed in on who
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God is and how it is and why it is that the Lord is our help and our shield, we have been led by this psalm to lovingly worship him and to increase our faith in him.
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But in the Christian triad of virtues, there is faith and there is love. And of course, love is the greatest of these.
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But there is also hope. And hope is as essential to this
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Christian triad of virtues as movement is for a river. Water is the main thing in a river.
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And love is the main thing in the Christian life. But there is movement and there is hope in Christianity.
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There is hope among the people of God. We're going to be talking about today the virtue of hope. The right application of hope.
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And we're going to consider who we are in God's point of view. As God's people of grace, as God's people of grace, we should get our hopes up.
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As God's people of grace, we should get our hopes up. We've talked about the exaltation of our
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God, verses 1 -3, the excoriation of false gods in verses 4 -8, and the exhortation of the godly, verses 9 -11, and now the explanation of our good, verses 12 -13.
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verses 12 -13. You know, sometimes when a bad attitude arises in one of our children or grandchildren, it is time for this child's good to be expounded upon.
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You don't know how good you have it. Sometimes this is accomplished by contrast.
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Back in my day, sometimes this is accomplished by a list.
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Here's all the good that is in your life. Why are you not thankful for this? Why are you not being a good steward of all of this good in your life?
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Have you considered the good that God has brought into your life? The good must be expounded upon when there is toxic thinking, when there is an unrighteous attitude.
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And this goes for our children as well as God's children, because sometimes we have a bad attitude.
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Sometimes there's murmuring and complaining in the wilderness. Sometimes God's people have a bad attitude, toxic way of thinking, unrighteous approach to life, and we need to have our good expounded upon so that we will get our hopes up As God's people of grace, we should get our hopes up.
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And the first way to do that, I see in verse 12, to remember grace. The remembrance of grace will get our hopes up.
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See the beginning part of verse 12? The Lord has been mindful of us. He will bless us.
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The Lord has been mindful of us. He will bless us. Two key terms here, and I want to consider each one of them and then how they relate.
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Mindful and bless. And how do they come together? The word mindful.
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The word mindful does not refer to the state of obedient children. It does not speak to the state of exhausted students.
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Their mind is full. It certainly does not refer to the pagan mysticism of mindfulness where you're present in this moment here and now.
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The Hebrew word for mindful is zakar. It puts the zakar in Zachariah. Do you know any Zachariahs?
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Any Zachs? Zachariah means remembered of the
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Lord. What a great name. Zakar. Remembered.
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Mindful. And praise is given to God here for God being mindful of us. The worshippers of God have come together.
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There they are in the return from Babylon, return from Persia. They've gathered there in Jerusalem.
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They're rebuilding the city. They're trying to rebuild the temple. And they look at one another and they praise God and they say,
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He has remembered us. Now the question is, why is this praise worthy of an all -knowing
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God that He has recollected? Is that really any kind of big deal that an all -knowing
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God has recollected? But the point they're making is not necessarily that the all -knowing
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God has recollected, but that the Almighty God has rightly acted. That's the point that they're making.
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For God is not a man that He should forget the milk on the way home from work. But when the husband does recall his wife's request and walks in with two gallons of that white liquid gold, praise ensues.
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Oh! You remembered. But you see, it is the action that is praised, isn't it?
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It's not the recollection, but it is the right action that is praised. In God's perfect timing, you see,
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He remembers His people. He acts according to His covenant promises.
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In Exodus chapter 2, it says that when the people of God in Egypt, under their bondage, cried out to Him that God remembered them.
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He remembered His covenant promises to them. To Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
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And in this remembering is not that God says, oh, I forgot. But it's I now act in accordance with my promise, in accordance with my covenant word.
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It is the action that is praised here. The Lord has been mindful of us, they say, and rightly should they say it, for they're looking around at each other and there they are, returned from exile in Jerusalem, rebuilding it, rebuilding the temple in hopes and anticipation of the
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Messiah. We are back here in the promised land. We are here worshiping God. Why?
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Because the Lord has been mindful of us. That's why we're here. And the second word is bless.
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He has been mindful of us. He will bless us. Had a dear, elderly saint tell me one time that one of her favorite prophecy teachers had discovered in the apocryphal book of Enoch, he had discovered the first name of our 44th president,
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Barack Obama. And I responded that I was unsurprised that he was able to do so, since the transliteration of the
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Hebrew word for bless is simply Barack. And had he looked in the actual scripture in the
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Old Testament, he would have found it all over the place. Now the word
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Barack in Hebrew fundamentally means to kneel. That's the basic image of the word, to kneel.
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And that was something that our 44th president was skilled at, paying obeisance to foreign heads of state. So he lived up to his name.
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We know what that means, what that looks like for us to bless God. We humble ourselves before Him.
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We kneel. And we vocally praise Him and give Him glory. That makes sense, right?
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To bless God. We kneel before Him and give Him praise, praise that He deserves. But what could it possibly mean that God blesses us?
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It's the fundamental idea of the word bless means to kneel. God kneels toward us.
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You see, Psalm 115 is already declared, our God is in the heavens. Our God is in the heavens.
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And He does whatever He pleases. And when it pleases Him to bless, He must kneel toward us.
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He must condescend toward us. He must kneel in love toward us and do so irrespective of our merits.
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For the word bless and the word grace are almost identical.
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You can even see this in the New Testament where the word bless and the word grace in the original Greek are spelled almost exactly the same.
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You perhaps have experienced this in your life that when you were growing up it was time to eat the meal and before you ate the meal you said what?
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Grace. And now people say who will say the blessing? These words are direct synonyms of one another.
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When the idea that God will bless us must necessarily mean that He kneeled toward us without respect to our merits.
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It's grace. He has been mindful of us. He will bless us.
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It's because of who He is and not who we are. Spurgeon comments, it is God's nature to bless.
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It is His prerogative to bless. It is His glory to bless. It is His delight to bless.
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He has promised to bless and therefore be sure of this, that He will bless and bless and bless without ceasing.
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He has been mindful of us. He will bless us. Do we see the connection between the two terms?
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The has been and the will. What has been established orients our hope for what will be.
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What is redemptively historically upstream flows toward the eschatological ocean.
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What has been true and expressed by God who is faithful and gracious and merciful in accordance with His word, we can anticipate the same and more ahead.
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The continuity is preserved, you see, in the very nature and character of God, God unchanging.
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Now these worshippers are there building Jerusalem and the temple and they have hope. Things don't look the same as they used to.
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In fact, things don't look nearly as much anywhere close as they used to. They are a long, long ways from the glorious and heady days of Solomon and David.
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But they still have hope. Why? He will bless us because the Lord has been mindful of us.
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How is God mindful of them? What are they thinking about? They are thinking about concrete, actual, historical events.
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Things that God declared He would do and did and then declared what it meant that He did them.
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They are thinking about God's revelation of His faithfulness in history. He has been mindful of us.
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The birth of Isaac. The grain of Joseph. The gift of Canaan.
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The throne of David. And the return from exile. Yes, the
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Lord has been mindful of us in more than one way. And of course, above all these in their consideration was the
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Passover. He was mindful of them and delivered them from bondage in Egypt in the
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Exodus. Now these things are almost the same.
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Just a matter of tense. A matter of time. The Lord has been mindful of us because He has remembered
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His covenant promises. And He will bless us because He remembers
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His covenant promises. Saying that God will bless us, will bless us, will bless us is simply saying
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God will remember us, remember us, remember us. He will remember what
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He has declared, His promises, and thus He will act. And God has been mindful of us.
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What do we look back to? Do we not also have this confession as the people of God? The Lord has been mindful of us.
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How do we know that? He gave us His only begotten Son. He has been mindful of us.
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He has given us His Son, Jesus Christ. God incarnate, born of the
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Virgin Mary, living the righteous covenant -keeping life that none of us could, and all of us since Adam has failed to do, but He, the second
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Adam, has fulfilled it all. And He died on our place and for our sake, suffering the just judgment of God, so that we would know forgiveness and new life in His resurrection from the dead.
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God has been mindful of us in the person and work of Jesus Christ. So He will bless us.
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Get your hopes up! Through the remembrance of grace, practically speaking, we do this by teaching others.
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Psalm 22, verses 30 -31 sound similar to what we read this morning in Deuteronomy, about the one generation telling the next about what
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God has done. Psalm 22, 30 -31 Posterity will serve
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Him. It will be told of the Lord to the coming generation. They will come and declare
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His righteousness to a people who will be born, that He has performed it. Get your hopes up through the remembrance of grace.
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Tell somebody you suspect will live longer than you what Christ has done.
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Who Christ is. How the Lord has been mindful of us. Get your hopes up and stir others hopes up through the remembrance of grace.
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That's a very practical thing for us to do. Tell somebody else. Also, get your hope up through the remembrance of grace and this should be more than, you know, trying to fake it till we make it.
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Just tell others until you feel it. It should be really truly at the core of how we think.
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The way that we assess anything going on in our world today. In Romans chapter 8
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I think I'm going to simply read verse 32.
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Romans 8 and verse 32. You've probably heard the rest of it several times.
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I just want to read verse 32 because this is the same pattern of biblical thought that we have in Psalm 115.
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Now listen. He who did not spare his own son but delivered him over for us all he has been mindful of us.
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Hasn't he? He has been mindful of us. He who did not spare his own son but delivered him over for us all he who has been mindful of us he will bless us.
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How will he not also with him free to give us all things? Do you see how this works in our lives?
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Get your hopes up. Remember the grace of God. He has been mindful of us. He will certainly bless us.
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As certain as Jesus Christ died upon the cross and rose from the dead. He will bless us. That's how certain we are of the future.
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So get our hopes up. Get your hopes up through the remembrance of grace. And get your hopes up through considering the riches of grace.
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The riches of grace. You see this in verses 12 and 13.
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The Lord has been mindful of us. He will bless us. Now listen. He will bless the house of Israel. He will bless the house of Aaron.
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He will bless those who fear the Lord. The small together with the great. He will bless. He will bless. He will bless.
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He will bless. That's a rich blessing. That's incredibly rich.
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Now when we read that he will bless the house of Aaron, the house of Israel, the house of Aaron and those who fear the
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Lord, we remember that pattern from verses 9 through 11. The exhortation of the godly.
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This is the same group who has been told, talking to one another and they say, you need to trust in the
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Lord. You need to trust in the Lord. Why? He's your help and your shield. So they've been talking to one another saying you need to trust in the
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Lord because of who he is and what he does. And now the same group are expressing hope.
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He will bless the house of Aaron, the house of Israel, the house of Aaron and those who fear the Lord. And boy do they need blessing.
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They need it. They're not in a great place. This is after the desolation of the northern kingdom
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Samaria by the Assyrian mercenaries and the scattering of those ten northern tribes.
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This is after the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and his armies and the taking into exile of the people of Judah.
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This is during a time when the people of Israel, this people group of Israel, they have been scattered throughout the
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Medo -Persian Empire. And now some of them have gathered to rebuild and they're doing so in hope of what is yet to come.
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God has promised them through the prophet Jeremiah that he is going to establish the new covenant from Jerusalem.
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They need to plan to thrive and multiply during the times of their exile because they're going to come back and get ready for the
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Messiah and the new covenant. So here they are, they've come back, but boy are they in need of blessing.
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They are being mocked and they are being opposed by all the local people and they have no king in their city.
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They have to write appeals back to the emperor's office to try to get anything done when their local officials oppose them.
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Their city was once populated by hundreds of thousands and now they are occupying it with tens of thousands.
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They need blessing. They need blessing. And the house of Aaron is there.
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The Levites from the descendants of Aaron who are to be ministering in the temple. And of course, there's a couple of problems here because as it says in the books that detail the history of the return of the exiles, some of these priests could not quite trace their lineage very clearly.
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Are they really from Aaron or not? Do they really have a pure lineage or not?
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So the house of Aaron is greatly diminished. There's less priests than they really need.
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They don't have enough priests because their lineage is confusing and then they can't even follow all the instructions.
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There's no Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies. It's empty. Much of the sacred furniture was taken away by Nebuchadnezzar and defiled by Belshazzar.
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So, they are in need of blessing. And millions have come to know the basic beliefs of the exiled
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Jews who are synagoguing in every city that they live in. And some of them are actually, some of these
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Gentiles have adopted the hope of Messiah but this means they must abandon their hope and their dead gods.
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And Messiah has not yet arrived. So, the house of Israel, the house of Aaron, those who fear the
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Lord, they are all in need of hope. They are in need of blessing and they're living in hope of what is yet to come.
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They are hoping in this new covenant. They are hoping in the coming of Jesus Christ.
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In Jeremiah 33 verses 19 through 22, we hear this hope expressed.
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The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah saying, Thus says the Lord, If you can break my covenant for the day and my covenant for the night so that day and night will not be at their appointed time, then my covenant may also be broken with David my servant.
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Of course, there was some concern about this. I mean, if Jerusalem is going to be destroyed then the promises of God, well, they're all over.
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God says, you know, my promise about, my promises to you, my promises to David, they have about as good a chance as failing as you being able to stop day and night from happening.
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So, he's saying, get your hopes up. And then he says, my covenant, he's saying, my covenant may also be broken with David my servant, only if you can, you know, stop the day and night, so that he will not have a son to reign on his throne.
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And with the Levitical priests, my ministers, as the hosts of heaven cannot be counted, and the sand of sea cannot be measured, so I will multiply the descendants of David my servant, and the
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Levites who minister to me. It doesn't look like that right now as the worshipers are gathered together in Jerusalem.
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There is no king of David upon the throne, and the Levites are in great question. So, where is the, where is the fulfillment of this promise?
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In the son of David. In the son of David. When the son of David comes, and he creates a kingdom of priests.
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The hope is in Jesus Christ, who turns out to be above and beyond all that these old covenant believers would ask or think.
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They had hope in the coming Messiah. And lo and behold, a new
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Joshua, a new Yeshua, succeeds Moses and gathers his people into his Sabbath rest.
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And a greater high priest, one from Melchizedek, reorders the Levitical order into his own image.
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And the seed of Abraham blesses all the families of the earth, just as was promised, bringing in countless sons to glory.
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Countless sons to glory. He has been mindful of us. He will bless us.
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Let us be mindful of God that we may bless him. Let us think about what he has done in the new covenant, in the giving of Christ our
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Savior. Consider the riches of grace. That God, through Christ, gives you a new identity.
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Not a name of slavery and bondage to the various distinctions and desires of the world, but a new identity in Christ.
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One identified with Jesus Christ and who he is and what he has done.
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You are given new life by the resurrection power of Jesus Christ and the gift of the
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Holy Spirit. You are given new life. You are no longer dead and trespasses and sins. You are brought as a new creature into a new creation.
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God is renewing the creation through Christ. That you are given forgiveness of sins.
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That God no longer holds your transgressions against you, but as far as the east is from the west, so far as he cast your sins from him.
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No longer acting towards you or remembering your sins. That you have the propitiation of your guilt in Christ's death upon the cross.
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That God's justice is satisfied concerning your guilt. The guilt of your sin.
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The guilt of your rebellion against God. Not only are you not guilty, but you are considered righteous in his sight as the righteousness of Jesus Christ is reckoned to your account, imputed to you by faith in Christ.
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That you have the adoption into God's family by the merits of Christ. That you are adopted into God's family and that you may call
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God your father because you are his by the power of the
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Holy Spirit. And you are brought into union with Jesus Christ. Your elder brother, your savior, your sovereign.
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That you are in fellowship with him. That you are given the Holy Spirit who indwells you and who brings to mind the things that Christ has taught.
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An anointing which clarifies the word of God. God breathed scripture.
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The Holy Spirit who is working in you to build us all into God's holy temple.
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And this holy community where we can gather together in fellowship and love for one another and encourage one another and call each other to hope.
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And that we have knowledge and understanding and wisdom by the fear of the Lord that has been birthed within us by the work of the
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Holy Spirit. And that we are being sanctified in what we believe and how we act. Being brought out of the ensnaring sins.
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The destroying sins of our lives into the freedom of holiness and righteousness. And that we can pray.
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And we can pray to God that any place and any time in the name of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit we can communicate with our
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Heavenly Father and tell him what's on our hearts and ask him for what we need. And that we are being given spiritual gifts because we no longer operate according to the flesh but according to the
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Spirit. And that we can do works that matter for all of eternity by the power of the Holy Spirit and the way he equips us.
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We are not restricted to the arm of the flesh. And that we are co -heirs with Jesus who is the heir of all things.
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And so we are inheritors of all things. And that we have been given authority in Christ to speak his truth and act according to his will.
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And that we have a stewardship that is all of creation. And that we are to turn all that we possess in Christ into something glorious for God by his zeal.
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And that we have eternal life. Eternal life that we know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.
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And that we will know him and rejoice in him and live with him forever and ever without end. And that there is a resurrection ahead of us.
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And that this old corrupted sinful body will be laid to rest and be removed. And that our souls will be reunited with a glorified body.
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A resurrected body that has no ills and no sickness and no death.
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And that we will have fellowship with the triune God. The riches of grace.
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And there is not a single news report you're going to encounter that can even get close to tarnishing the treasures of grace.
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So get your hopes up by the remembrance of grace. And the riches of grace.
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And through the reasoning of grace. This is the very last part of verse 13. Where we read that God blesses and blesses and blesses.
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Look. The small together with the great. The small together with the great.
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This is the reasoning of grace. God blesses.
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Upon the world God pours his blessings of the new covenant. The bride is gathered.
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Revelation 19 verses 5 and following. And a voice came from the throne saying give praise to our
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God all you his bond servants. You who fear him the small and the great. That's psalm 115.
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Spirit has brought psalm 115 to mind in this vision in John's writing. You who fear him the small and the great.
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Then I heard something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder saying hallelujah.
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The great hallelujah. For the Lord our God the almighty reigns. He's in the heavens.
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He does whatever he pleases. Small and the great gathered together a countless number of the redeemed and look let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to him for the marriage of the lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready.
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He was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen bright and clean for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.
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Then he said to me right blessed are those who were invited to the marriage supper of the lamb and he said to me these are the true words of God who's invited to the marriage supper of the lamb who sits at the table of God of Christ who comes together to commune with him the small together with the great.
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The small together with the great. What kind of small?
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What kind of great? Yeah. Yes. There are all manner of hierarchies and disparities in our world today and there always has been.
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Always has been. There's always hierarchy and disparity even from the beginning.
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Small and great. Some are great in the word of God.
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We have the word of God in our language in a vast variety of translations and there are some who have very little of the word of God of anything at all.
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Maybe just a whisper maybe nothing at all. Yet there are those who are great in Christian heritage and have the blessing of many generations of people who love
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God and fear God and serve God and they live in the greatness of that blessing and there are those who don't have that.
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There are those who are great in wealth and those who are not so much. There are those who are great in health nothing ever seems to bother them and there are those who do not have a lot of health.
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There are those who are great in freedom and have a great deal of liberty and there are those who do not. There are those who have a lot of education and those who do not.
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There are the old covenant saints who are the not as great as the new covenant saints in the terms of their blessings.
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There's all manner of privilege isn't there? Which glorifies the
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God of grace. By the way in Acts 17 24 -27 sovereignly takes responsibility for the hierarchies and the disparities of the world.
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Takes full responsibility for it because it brings him glory and God unlike those who practice wokecraft is no respecter of persons.
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God is no respecter of persons. The small and the great are at the table of Christ and they don't have to cease being small or cease being great to be there.
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They're all at the table of Christ. The term equity and the term grace are considered synonyms only in the devil's thesaurus.
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The liturgy of paganism is despair. Which is why inequity is their favorite theme.
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To preach about, to sing about and to commune about. But it has nothing to do with grace.
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You see these inequities that they see and they are innumerable and there are no end to them.
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They are impossible to eliminate and so perfect for paganism because paganism must always despair.
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Must always despair. The whip must always crack and the goal never reached because despair is from paganism not from Christianity.
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We are here to get our hopes up. The wailing children in the marketplace who want us to despair with them.
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We don't have to sing their tune. We can live with our hopes up. We get our hopes up through the reasoning of grace.
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Great or small, small or great, we are stewards not slaves.
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You're not a slave of that which is considered small. You're not a slave of that which is considered great.
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We are not slaves of smallness or greatness and whatever disparity is cataloged and described of us.
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We are but stewards of whatever smallness and greatness that God in his sovereignty has bestowed to us.
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We are his stewards of our smallness. We are stewards of our greatness and these are the blessings of God.
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And our hope is this that what is yet to come in the name of Christ for the glory of God is not dependent on our smallness or our greatness.
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Much of the fear of believers today about what is on the horizon has to do with the fear of loss.
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Oh, what are we going to lose? How will we be diminished? And there's great fear about smallness.
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But the small together with the great are blessed of the Lord. The small together with the great are at the table of Christ.
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It's the zeal of the Lord of hosts that's going to accomplish it, not us. And so whatever we have in smallness or greatness, we are but stewards.
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The Lord has been mindful of us. He will bless us. So get our hopes up. We are the people of grace.
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Get your hopes up by remembering grace. Get your hopes up by considering the riches of grace. And get your hopes up by using the reasoning of grace.
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And may God be praised. Father, I thank you for the time we've had in your word. Lord, I thank you that you tell us all that you have done and call our attention to it that we would see your glory that we would see how worthy you are, how trustworthy you are, how praiseworthy you are.
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Because you call us to be a people of faith, people of love, a people who lives in hope.
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Father, I pray that you would grant this grace to us, that we would live in hope. In Jesus' name.
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Amen. Would you stand with me for our song of benediction?
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Our song is on page 606. Grace, Love, and Fellowship. Sing together.
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May the grace of Christ our Savior and the love of God our
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Father spirit be with us.
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Grace of Christ our Savior and the love of God our
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Father and the fellowship In the grace of the
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Son, the love of the Father, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all. We are dismissed.