Sunday Sermon: Let Your Yes be Yes and Your No be No (Matthew 5:33-37)

Matthew 5:33-37 in the Sermon on the Mount

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a New Testament book.

On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament, and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday. Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe.

Well good morning. Please take your Bible and open to Matthew chapter 5, and today we're looking at the section in verses 33 through 37 in our series on the Sermon on the Mount. This is Matthew chapter 5, starting in verse 33.

Matthew writing the words of Christ. Again, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not swear falsely, but you shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn. But I say to you, do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is His footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.

And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say simply be yes or no. Anything more than this comes from evil. Let us come to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your goodness.

We thank You for Your favor upon us through our Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray that these words that we have considered today would be written on our hearts. That we would consider a righteousness that is not our own, but the righteousness of Christ, our Savior, who has been given to us, who died for us, who rose again from the grave, so that by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, we have nothing to fear of death, but we have everlasting life.

And fellowship with God, even now, and so also forever. You have made a covenant with us through the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that whoever believes in Him will not perish under the judgment of God, but we have become heirs, fellow heirs with Christ of Your eternal kingdom.

And so, as we have been united to You in this covenant sealed by the blood of Jesus, may we live according to Christ. May we be a reflection of His goodness and His character in all the way that we live and in the things that we say and do.

Let others hear by our words that we are worshipers of Jesus. Let them see by our actions that we're imitators of Christ and point others to the Father, to the gospel that You have given through Your Son Jesus, so that by faith in this gospel men and women and people from everywhere may be saved by faith in our Lord Christ.

Lead us in paths of righteousness for Your name's sake. To You we give all the glory, and it's in the name of Jesus that we pray, and all God's people said, Amen. There's a story of legend that goes like this.

A wealthy man from London was driving his Rolls Royce through the Swiss Alps. As he traveled the winding road at high altitude, he heard a startling twang in the front of his automobile. His front coil spring had broken.

Stranded, the man called the Rolls Royce headquarters in London, unsure if they'd be able to help him. Now in case you aren't familiar with Rolls Royce, they are a luxury automobile made in the United Kingdom and owned by BMW.

Their cars can range from $300 ,000 on the low end to the $13 million swept tail, the most expensive car ever built. Now that's a lot of money, but a car that's worth that much money comes with a no mileage limit warranty.

Where this man had broken down, it took very little time before a plane swooped in and landed on the road. Now this plane wouldn't have come from London. Rolls Royce has dealerships in many places throughout Europe, but still the wealthy man was impressed by how quickly they had arrived.

The mechanics brought their tools, they put in a new spring, and they got the wealthy car owner on his way. Weeks later when he had returned to London, he expected to find a bill for the stellar roadside assistance that he had received, but he did not see one.

So he called their London offices again and the representative answered and said, Sir, how is your car running? The man said, Oh, it's running great. I haven't had a single other problem with it. I was just calling to inquire about the bill for the roadside assistance that you gave me.

I'm sorry, sir, a bill? The representative said. Yes, the man replied. What do repairs like that on a Rolls Royce cost? There must be some mistakes, sir, the representative said. Our cars don't break down.

Now maybe the story is true or maybe it's just the stuff of legend, but I think that it serves to illustrate that when you make a commitment to produce quality work, you stand by your commitment. This is understood in the business world.

A good reputation is everything. If you buy a product or you pay for other goods or services, you expect to receive what you paid for. If a manufacturer or a tradesman providing a service cannot do the job that they say that they are going to do, they're quickly going to lose business and fold.

If you have a good reputation for good quality work, then you make money. But if you have a bad reputation or you do bad work, then you lose money. If we understand this principle as it applies to good business, how much more should we understand this principle as it applies to good behavior?

There's a word we use for upstanding moral character. That word is integrity. A person with good integrity is someone who does what they say that they are going to do. They have strong moral principles.

They're known for keeping their word. They keep and live by those principles. They are undivided. They are consistent. They are ethical. If you are known for good integrity, you have a reputation for being a quality human being.

A good reputation is achieved over time. I think we all know in our heart of hearts what it takes to develop a reputation for good character. Know what is right and do it. Are you impressed with anyone who says something like, I swear I'm a good person?

Or I swear on my mother's grave I would never do such a wicked thing. Are you convinced by these qualifications that they're good people? On the contrary, most of us tend to be a little suspicious when a person has to make such qualifications of their character.

Here in Matthew 5, verses 33 -37, Jesus tells us, His disciples, quite plainly, not to swear by anything, know what God has said and do what He says. Mean what you say, say what you mean. Say what you're going to do and do what you say you're going to do.

If you think that swearing by anything is going to make you, your thoughts, and your actions more righteous, Jesus straight up says what He thinks of this. He says it's evil. Let us consider the word of Christ today that we may know what is good and is pleasing in His sight.

Now I'm going to divide this up into two parts. We're going to first look at this text in the context of everything else that we've studied up to this point here in the Sermon on the Mount. And then we're going to look at the text itself and understand the instruction our Lord Christ is giving to us.

Along the way we're going to pick up practical implications, the applications that we have of this text and how it can be exercised and lived out and applied to our lives. So first of all, let's do a brief recap in understanding rightly the placement of this instruction in the Sermon on the Mount concerning oaths.

Now as I've said to you many times now as we've been going through this series, so much of the Sermon on the Mount is ripped out of context and misapplied. This is not one of the more popular sections of the Sermon on the Mount.

In fact, in most of my study Bibles and in my commentaries, there were fewer notes on this section of Matthew 5 than any other section. It tends to be one of those parts that we read quickly and we rush past.

We tend to look at it, I think, as being pretty self-explanatory. Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Nevertheless, we still have a tendency to break all this stuff up and lose focus, especially if you have the ESV Bible because, man, it's just all the way through the Sermon on the Mount.

It's every three or four verses just breaking up subjects and kind of tearing it apart. When Matthew was compiling this discourse, giving us in brevity the teachings of Jesus there on this mountain in Galilee, Matthew wasn't piecemealing all of this together.

He wasn't saying, okay, here I'm going to talk about hate and here I'm going to talk about divorce and here we're going to talk about oaths. There is a deliberate flow to all of this. So if you can imagine that the chapters and the verses and the subject breaks aren't there, it might be a little bit easier for you to see how all of this fits.

Once again, as we begin in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is speaking the message of the kingdom. That's the way he started his earthly ministry. That's the way he began this sermon. And a kingdom has laws.

In verse 17, he said, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. And in fact, even in Romans chapter three, verse 31, the apostle Paul says we uphold the law.

In Romans chapter 13, verse 10, it says that love is the fulfilling of the law. So no one is permitted to relax even the least of these commandments, as Jesus has said here in Matthew chapter five. If they relax even the least of the commandments, they are demonstrating that God's laws do not matter to them.

What follows from here, Jesus giving this warning, is his address regarding particular laws. And he demonstrates the intention of the law. The law is not merely something external, but it is meant to demonstrate the righteousness of God's character and reveal to us in light of God's character that we are not righteous.

Romans 3 .20 says, for by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. Later on in Romans 7 .7, Paul says, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin, for I would not have known what it is to covet.

If the law had not said, you shall not covet. So how were the Pharisees using the law? The Pharisees, the scribes, the teachers of the law, they believed that they could be made righteous by their ability to keep the law.

But understand something about the Pharisees' intentions here. It wasn't merely that they thought, hey, if I just follow all these laws, then I'm going to be righteous. What they would do, because they selfishly believed in their own minds that I am capable of keeping this law and so making myself righteous, what they would do is they would twist the law.

They would reduce the law of God down to a level that was attainable, which is a slander against God's holiness. Let me give you an example of this. Just two months ago, 20-year-old Armand Duplantis of Louisiana set the world pole vault record by clearing 6 .17 meters on the pole vault at the Copernicus Cup in Poland.

In more American measurements, that's nearly seven yards high, or about as tall as two basketball goals stacked on top of one another. Now I've always been intrigued by pole vaulting. Yeah, I'm impressed that you were able to get up there, but eventually you're going to have to come back down.

So getting up there is one thing, coming back down is another. So let's say that you decided, I am going to beat Duplantis' record, but I'm no athlete. I don't know the first thing about pole vaulting technique, and I'm kind of scared of heights.

So I'm going to lower the bar to two feet. At that height, I don't even need a pole. I'm just going to jump over the bar onto the mat and boom, I have just beaten Duplantis' pole vault record. Well, that would be absurd.

No one would even let you down on the track to compete under such a ridiculous and subjective standard. You have literally lowered the bar in order to beat the pole vault record, which is to set no record at all.

That's just kind of a crude example of what a person does when they twist God's law in order to make it more attainable so they can appear more righteous than they really are. They lower the bar. They bring God down and they raise man up.

They lessen God's standards, and that is a slander against God's holy character. Perhaps that helps you better understand what Jesus meant when he said, therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

Meaning, they're not even going to let you down on the field to attempt that pole vault record. You won't even be in the kingdom of heaven. We have to see the law for what it is so that we understand we could never ascend to the height of God's righteous standard.

We need someone who can get us there, and that someone is Jesus. Now understand, Jesus did not lower the bar to make it so we could get over the bar. Rather, Jesus kept the law perfectly, and if we are in Christ, he raises us up to be seated on high in glory with him.

Colossians 3 .1 says, Jesus goes on to say, If you are a follower of Jesus, you do have a righteousness that exceeds the scribes and the Pharisees. You have the righteousness of Christ. From here in Matthew 5, Jesus goes on to explain,.

You have heard that it was said to those of old, You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.

If a person has hatred in their heart for another person, it's the same as if they have murdered in their heart. Once again, Jesus is saying, don't think that just because you haven't murdered someone that you've never broken this law.

You've missed the point of the law. Loving your neighbor is the fulfillment of the law. So if you hate your neighbor, you are not keeping the law. You are breaking the law. Again, you cannot bring the law down to your level in order to be more righteous.

In verse 27, Jesus says,. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. As with murder and hatred, this is a heart issue.

Just because you haven't slept with another man's wife doesn't mean that you have kept the seventh commandment. Last week we looked at verses 31 and 32. It was also said, Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.

But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. You can probably see how we go from talking about murder to talking about adultery.

Jesus simply went from the sixth commandment to the seventh commandment, using both commandments to expose the sinful heart. Then in going from talking about adultery to talking about divorce, in both places Jesus is addressing the covenant of marriage, indirectly with regards to adultery and directly with regards to divorce.

So now we get to talking about oaths, and you should see how this naturally flows from having talked about marriage. Marriage is a covenant union. An oath is taken, a solemn promise before God and before witnesses to have and to hold to this person and no other till death parts you.

And even here with regards to oaths, Jesus is still confronting heart issues. Now, that's part one, and I hope that I've helped you to establish context. And now we're going to look at the text itself.

In verse 33, Jesus begins this section the same way that he's begun every topic on the law. He says, Again you have heard that it was said to those of old. And then he quotes something from the Old Testament.

You shall not swear falsely, but you shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn. Where was this said to those of old? What Jesus is quoting here is Leviticus 19 .12. We read, You shall not swear by my name falsely and so profane the name of your God.

I am the Lord. Now, to clarify something here, Jesus is not saying that we should not swear or make any kind of oath in any way, shape, form, or fashion because we have oaths and covenants and contracts that are made in both the Old and the New Testaments.

Furthermore, you will see the Lord swear by his own name. By myself I have sworn, says the Lord. And he encourages the children of Israel. Swear today by the Lord. So it's not that we're not supposed to make oaths.

We're not supposed to sign contracts. You can't put your hand on the Bible and say, I swear to tell the truth and the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. That's not what Jesus is saying.

But rather do not make these commitments thinking that by swearing upon something you have made your commitment more righteous or more holy or that you are somehow more righteous or more holy because you've made such a swear.

Furthermore, if you swear by the Lord, and here's the real caution here. Here's the real warning that Jesus is giving. He's saying, if you swear by the Lord, don't be hasty to do such a thing. For if you do not keep the word that you have sworn, you've now used the name of the Lord your God in vain and you've committed blasphemy and you're adding sin upon sin.

You can probably tell by this text how the Pharisees were misapplying. Leviticus 19 .12. After all, it does not say, you shall not swear by my name at all. It says, you shall not swear by my name falsely.

So the Pharisees, the scribes, and everyone following their teaching were attempting to validate the sincerity of their oaths and promises by swearing upon sacred things. Believing that such swearing made their commitments more genuine or more holy.

But when you're talking about a group of teachers who acknowledge God with their lips but their hearts are far from Him. Remember that from Isaiah, which Jesus is going to accuse the Pharisees of later on.

If they acknowledge God with their lips but their heart is far from Him, then everything that they do swearing by the name of God is in vain. It's blasphemy. It does not add anything to their commitment at all.

On the contrary, it makes their commitment less sincere. What good or what value is it at all? When the focus is on yourself instead of on God or the person to whom you are making such an oath. Consider more broadly the context of this law as we have it in Leviticus 19.

I'm going to start in verse 9 and read through verse 18. When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest.

And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner. I am the Lord your God. You shall not steal.

You shall not deal falsely. You shall not lie to one another. You shall not swear by my name falsely and so profane the name of the Lord your God. I am the Lord. There was verse 12 that Jesus quoted here in Matthew 5.

Going on, you shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you all night until the morning. You shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear the Lord your God.

You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness you shall judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand up against the life of your neighbor.

I am the Lord. You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

I am the Lord. Boy, our understanding of this instruction can sure change when we look at it in context, right? What are the people of God being instructed to do here in this section of Leviticus 19? What is the subject?

Love your neighbor. That's the context. Love your neighbor. Everything is with regards to loving your neighbor. Leave the gleanings of your harvest for your neighbor. Do not steal or deal falsely with your neighbor.

Pay what is owed to your neighbor. Do not mislead your neighbor. Do not slander your neighbor. Do not unfairly judge your neighbor. Do not hate but reason frankly with your neighbor. Do not take vengeance out upon your neighbor.

Love your neighbor as yourself, as the Lord has instructed you. So understand then the implication of this. If you think that you must swear by God, by Jerusalem, by your own head, to validate your commitments, you are not considering the needs of your neighbor.

You're more concerned with yourself than you are with your neighbor. Your focus is on you, not on God by whom you have sworn, and not on the person to whom you have sworn. Again, what's happening here is that you are lowering the bar to make righteousness more attainable, which you cannot do.

Consider what Jesus goes on to say in verse 34. But I say to you, do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God. So can you bring down the heavens or bring God's throne down to your level?

That's even more absurd than lowering the pole vault bar so you can break the pole vault record. Verse 35, do not swear by the earth, for it is his footstool. In case you need to be told, the world does not revolve around you.

Going on, do not swear by Jerusalem, for that is the city of the great king. The implication here is not that Jerusalem is in and of itself holy, but rather that God makes Jerusalem holy. So you're not making yourself more holy by swearing upon this, that, or the other.

God is the one who sanctifies. Stop trying to leverage your own righteousness. You don't have any. You and I, we need the righteousness of Christ. Psalm 48 too says this, beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth is Mount Zion in the far north, the city of the great king.

That's a reference to Jerusalem. The reason Jerusalem is holy is because God is there. So likewise, my friends, you are made holy because God is within you. If you are a follower of Jesus, he has given you his spirit, and you have been made a temple of the Holy One.

Look now at verse 36, and do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Notice that as we're progressing through this list here, we've started high and we're coming down lower and lower.

Jesus started this by saying, do not swear by heaven, do not swear by the earth, do not swear by Jerusalem, don't even swear by your own self, for you cannot even determine your own hair color. Now I know that we live in a modern industrial commercialized age where you think that you can make your hair a different color, but you cannot.

You're just hiding the truth. That's fine. If you want to look younger and not like you have a whole lot of gray hair, that's up to you. Just don't think that you're actually reversing the aging effects and making yourself younger than you really are.

James 4 verses 13 through 16 says this, Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow, we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit. Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.

What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. As it is, you boast in your arrogance, and all such boasting is evil.

Who are you to swear even by your own integrity? I talked at the start of the sermon about knowing what is right and doing it. You know what is right because of what God says is right, not what the culture says is right, and especially not what you think in and of yourself is right.

We know what is right when we study the law of God. Yes, we are not under the law but under grace, Romans 6 .14, meaning that we will not be judged by the law. It does not mean that the law no longer has any application.

We know what is good and pleasing and acceptable to God when we study His law. On Thursday evening in our Old Testament Bible study, we just started going through Psalm 119. And one of the things I said to the group on Thursday evening, and I said this before as well when we were talking about the law earlier in Matthew 5, Psalm 119 is a love song to God for His law.

It's a love song of appreciation for the law of God. Verse 9 in Psalm 119 says, Teach me your statutes. Romans 12 .2 says, Discern the will of God how? By studying His law, which is good and acceptable and perfect.

By the way, Paul said so earlier in Romans 7 .12. So the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. You cannot be righteous by your own standard. That's called self-righteousness.

I cannot even begin to tell you the number of times that I've had someone call me self-righteous because I said to them what God says is right and what God says is wrong according to His Word. I'm not the one who's being self-righteous here.

I have acknowledged. I have no righteousness. I must appeal to the Word of God. If you reject God's Word as your standard for goodness, then it is you who are the self-righteous one. Yet who are you to determine what righteousness is?

You can't even determine the color of your hair. James 4 .14 again says, That's about as good as your subjective sense of morality is worth. It's going to be here for a little while and then guess what?

Tomorrow you're going to change your mind. You're going to have a different set of rules tomorrow than you had today. Just look around at the culture. Even the culture's sense of moral uprightness changes with the wind.

The Me Too movement declares, Until a woman has stepped forward accusing the liberal presidential candidate Joe Biden of sexual assault. Suddenly their moral standard is gone. Where are all those people who are decrying Brett Kavanaugh or President Trump?

But do not think that this is just a pattern among liberals. Conservatives excoriated Bill Clinton for his adultery, and rightly so, but then they turned a blind eye to Donald Trump's adulterous character.

When we try to establish moral standards by human precepts, things go bad. We have to be fixed on something permanent, and that someone is Christ. Jesus is even going to close the Sermon on the Mount by talking about being built on the rock of Christ.

And when the storms beat against the house, the house stands firm. Folks, our culture is in absolute turmoil right now. I don't have to tell you that. We're seeing it worldwide. Why? Because Christ is not our foundation.

When the pandemic hit and things started getting shut down, we started naming what was essential and what was not essential. Right at the top of the list of non-essentials, at the top of that list, was churches.

How can I say that? How do I say that it was at the top of that list? Because when the governors were coming out and were saying, we're shutting down these services, there was only one entity they were specifically naming as cannot meet, and that was churches on Sunday morning.

They were even saying this before we got to talking about bars and casinos and strip clubs and abortion clinics. That is the number one indicator, folks, that we are a thoroughly secular culture. This culture swears upon itself.

And here is God saying, as He did on a mountain in Galilee 2 ,000 years ago, do not swear by your own head, for you cannot even make one hair white or black. Job 14, 1 through 5, which I quoted to you in the prayer this morning, man who is born of a woman is few of days and full of trouble.

He comes out like a flower and withers. He flees like a shadow and continues not. Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean thing? There is not one. Since man's days are determined and the number of his months are with you, and you have appointed his limits that he cannot pass.

And so finally here in verse 37, Jesus says, let what you say simply be yes or no. Anything more than this comes from evil. And again, Jesus is not saying we don't make oaths and any kind of oath that you make is a sin.

After all, God Himself has made oaths. God has made a covenant with us and He has sealed that covenant in the blood of Jesus Christ. Whoever believes in Jesus has fellowship with God by the covenant that He has made through His Son.

When Jesus says that anything more than yes or no comes from evil, who is Jesus talking to? Remember, His audience according to Matthew 5 .1 is His disciples. Yes, the crowds are there, but He's teaching those who are there to learn.

The word disciple means learner. Those who follow Jesus, where does their righteousness come from? As we've already understood, if we are in Christ, we have a righteousness that comes from Christ. If you are a follower of Jesus and you have the righteousness of Christ, let me ask you this, my friends.

Why would you ever commit your way by any other standard? If Jesus is the ultimate good, and He is, then of course swearing by anything else would be evil. Jesus says, simply let your yes be yes and your no be no.

And again, the standard is not yourself. This is being said to a disciple of Jesus who understands, especially by this point in His teaching, God is the standard. Consider James again, this time chapter 5 verse 12,.

But above all, my brothers, do not swear either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but simply let your yes be yes and your no be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation. Let your word be enough because you know God's word is enough.

As I said in the beginning, you know how important it is to have a good reputation. You trust in companies that have good reputations. So how much more important is it for us as followers of Christ that we reflect the righteousness of Christ?

Will you in your reputation be a reflection of Christ? Will you be pointing back to Jesus with your words and with your actions? Will you be demonstrating in the way that you live your life, that you live under the governance and the counsel of God, your Savior?

Proverbs 22 .1 says,. A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver and gold. Let's consider that for a moment. A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver and gold.

Consider whose name it is that has been written on our hearts as followers of Jesus. Whose name are we under? The name that is above every name. The name at which every knee will bow and tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Whose favor is it that we have? We have the favor of God. Jesus saying to the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, My grace is sufficient for you. The Lord Jesus Christ is the name that is above every name.

He died on the cross for your sins. He was raised from death. He ascended into heaven where He is seated at the right hand of the throne of God, and He is interceding for you on your behalf. He will forgive you your sins, and He will lead you in paths of righteousness for His name's sake.

By grace you are saved through faith, and this is not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not a result of your works, so that no man may boast. Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. Verse 10 goes on to say that God has prepared for us good works that we may walk in them.

So know what Jesus has said and do what He has said. To the glory of God above. As Jesus said earlier in Matthew 5, 16, Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

I'm going to close here with the words of Obadiah Sedgwick, 17th century English clergyman addressing the parliament at Westminster. He said the following, It is not in vain, nay, it is very good to draw near to God.

Not one prayer that gets to heaven is lost. Sometimes divine wisdom doth take respite, but at this time divine goodness made haste. You had scarce begun your prayers, but God prevented you, prevented your scarcity, with answers.

Our work on earth is done best when our work in heaven is done first. You plainly see that God can, and which way He can, provide for His own glory, His people's safety, and His enemies' shame. It is a superlative wisdom to interest our persons in God and God in our actions.

When we have once gained and engaged Him, we are then above all the world. In John 14, 6, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. There is the standard of righteousness in Christ and in Christ alone.